TIFF vs PNG
So I told you the other day that I had troubles with Linux, but also that I was developing stuff. This picture shows some of the best parts of Linux, especially those that I have done. First off, You notice that it is KDE. Yup, I haven't tried GNOME, but I like KDE well enough to stick with it. In fact, I deleted GNOME off my computer to preseve precious diskspace. In the top left is Konqueror, the web browser, file manager, and plug-in viewer. One plug-in that I use often is the C++ viewer, which is just KWrite inside the browser with a fast, stable read-access mode. KWrite is the tool of choice for developers. C/C++ syntax hilighting as seen here, as well as many more. It's user interface is such that one might want to have it's children -- literally. It is very fast to develop in KWrite. The one thing that it lacks is a multiple document in one window. If it had that, we'd have to call it EditPlus, my favorite Windows editor which I am writing this rant in. But KWrite solved a problem I was having: a perfect C++ editor. I tried KEdit and stayed away from KWrite because I assumed that it was like MSWrite. Another editor I tried was KDevelop. It is very close to being a MS Dev Studio killer. Except one thing: I can't get Ctrl-S to map to save, Ctrl-C to copy, and Ctrl-V to paste. That was intolerable. I would say that if something doesn't work out of the box, it doesn't work. But if I really said that, I'd say that Linux doesn't work (for me, anyway). But I persevered and here I am. Anyhoo, the second problem was the insessant crashing. Every time I did anything cool or opened too many documents, it came crashing around my ears and booted me out to the shell. What can I say, at least it didn't bluescreen. In fact, Linux crashes are much nicer than any Windows crash. You can just keep working for all it cares. That's what memory management is all about. But I found that my crashing was indeed due to running out of free memory. Why was I running out of free memory? I was running 12 daemons (five of which were hefty RAM users and five others were duplicates of a HD switcher utility) in the task menu. Why didn't I see them? When I first got into KDE, the Task Bar was cluttered, so I closed everything that I didn't want to ever click on. One was the task menu. So when I finally found that, I closed them all and found that I had 40 MB of free RAM. That's right: under KDE, running in 1600x1200 with only the shell program running, I had enough RAM to last through the winter. So I opened Konqueror. Down to 35 MB. I opened KWrite, down to 30 MB. I opened up 4 more KWrites and was down to 20 MB. I opened up GIMP and went down to 5 MB (GIMP is a bit on the bloat side with all its extensions/plug-ins). I opened up my OpenGL renderer. Down to 2 MB. Yes, that is what Linux is all about. Closing down GIMP, I could rest assured that my computer would never be slowed down or crashed due to a swap file. If I could get KDevelop to work, I would save an extra 10 MB of RAM for an OGG Vorbis Player and the Man Files for OpenGL and XLib. In the 20 hours that I've worked in Linux since I discovered the source of missing RAM, I've crashed out of X-Windows four times and never out of Linux. I haven't worked on my sound card or network card drivers since because I am so happy with developing.
If you're stuck in Windows, you'll never guess where this screenshot came from. If you've dabbled with Linux or Unix, you'll recognize the icon in the upper left hand corner. If you like the Quartz window theme as much as me, the upper right should tell you how I made this screenshot. I spent this entire weekend working on Linux. When I say entire, I mean day, night, sleep, eat, and think. I spent a few hours in Windows using MilkShape3D working on a new model which I delighted you with yesterday. That is one program that Linux does not have. However, I am expecting Mete to make the port or something. He probably doesn't want to go GPL. I gotta hand it to him for business tactics, though. His shareware is very secure. No leeches there. The price of MS3D is very low (Can you afford $20). Tools and upgrades are always free. The support is amazing via forums and e-mail with the creator himself. The new tutorials make it easy for hapless newbies to get going. But MS3D is very user-friendly. It is practically the antithesis of Blender (which recently went GPL, I might add, when the authors became sick of it). The user base is medium sized. I wouldn't call it small because it's not just me and two of my friends. It's huge. In fact, the entire indy game development community (even Linux) is supporting MS3D. I mean, are we going to support 3D Studio Max for $100 for students? What about Maya for $100 for students? Lightwave, bla bla bla, they cost an arm and a leg. What indy game developers need is cheap, easy, and powerful. And they get it with MilkShape3D. So you shouldn't be surprised when I bust out my very first Linux program that loads a model and it's in ms3d format. Of course, I gotta give proper props to the original writers of the program I used:
When I get in my groove, I can tell you one thing: you best not be in my way, 'cause I'm one crazy sucka. This is part of my plan for the perfect model. It is body 2 version 0.1. About the name, I've decided to start naming my models so that I can identify them easier. All my models are named stuff like jav40gs1p5.ms3d and stuff like that. Of course, that tells me that it is Javantea using body number 40 and it is the g style and then animation is used for scene 1 page 5. But that's kinda confusing. What about jav33es.ms3d? What is it for? I have no idea. I have to open up MS3D to see wtf it is. And when one is in pursuit of the perfect model, one accumulates over 400 models and model revisions in one year. That's right, there are two dozen EGv1s, one dozen EGv2s, at least 100 Javs, and about 200 seperate body parts. Getting things as good as they are takes a lot of work. Enough about my agony, what about this model? Well, I was looking at the EG model (aka the DA model) and the Jav 40 model and I was absolutely amazed at how good they are. I could easily use them for the rest of JF models and not have to worry much about people dissing my artistic talent. But then I thought: the fruits of one year of modeling is hardly a finished product. So I thought about all the small problems I have with the two models. The first is pinching. If you aren't familiar with pinching, it's when a model uses a skeleton and you rotate the skeleton, the faces turn inside-out. You might be able to see it on some of the JF comic pages. I try to get rid of this as much as possible. So I decided to use diverse tactics on this model. Instead of the cross pose, I decided to put the arms at 45 degrees downward. That will help fight pinching when the arms are down at the sides, which is the more likely pose. I also bent things so that they would work right under the circumstances that are usually in my animations: punching, kicking, running, talking using body language. This model specifically targets pinching. I think that it is my best model in the view of working with the skeleton. You've probably noticed that the body is not in correct proportions to reality; I noticed that also. When I have time I'll stretch them to the correct measurements. I have them for myself. Of course, I am not exactly a correctly measured person, but who is. I'm 6'2" and very lanky. My arms are long, my legs are long, and I'm fairly thin. What can I do about it? It doesn't show it enough in JF, but my reach is good enough to punch a short person without fear of a counterpunch (perhaps you'll see in Scene 1, Page 6-8).
