f r e e f a c

A little known fact about blender is that you can use it as a handy little flipbook/seamless animation player by launching it with blender -a filepath/filename (where the file can be an avi or the first in series of pngs /jpgs /etc) This is the same player launched when you click “anim” from the 3D interface.

Recently, Kursad - relatively new to blender and linux but not to 3D, asked me about:

1. a nice seamless player on linux (blender -a and djv) , and:
2. how to change framerate on the blender player.

I searched for docs, but didn’t find any, so I asked Ton on IRC for the source file for the player ( it’s playanim.c ), and I also looked at the output of blender –help. This is what I found out:

From blender –help:

• blender -a -f  fps fps-base filename.extension gives you a starting framerate - I think fps-base should be set to 1 unless you want ntsc where it is 30 and 1.001 (the default is 25 1)
• blender -a -p  x y gives you a coord for the lower left corner of the window
• blender -a -m prevents buffering (reads each image from disk- you probably don’t want this?)
• You can also use -s startframe and -e endframe

Looking through playanim.c gave me the following things you can press while the player is playing:

• a toggles skip/noskip frames
• p toggles pingpong mode (plays forward then back etc/
• shift / key displays info in the terminal
• / plays at 5 fps
• left arrow goes a frame back *
• shift left arrow goes to the first frame *
• right arrow goes a frame forward *
• shift right arrow goes to the last frame *
• down arrow goes back 10 frames *
• shift down arrow goes back 1 frame and prints info on the window *
• up arrow goes 10 frames forward *
• shift up arrow goes 1 frame forward and prints info on the window *
• dragging the left mouse across the frame scrubs the animation (the left is first frame, the right is the last frame ) *
• shift = key does something I don’t understand (presumably adds a pause frame) and prints pause: number of times you pressed it
• = key speeds it up
• shift - key works the reverse of shift = key
• - key slows it down
• numpad enter pauses (like return)
• not quite sure what numpad . does
• numpad 1 plays at 60 pfs
• numpad 2 plays at 50 fps
• numpad 3 plays at 30 fps
• shift numpad 4 plays 24 fps
• numpad 4 plays 25 fps
• numpad 5 plays 20 fps
• numpad 6 plays 15 fps
• numpad 7 plays 12 fps
• numpad 8 plays 10 fps
• numpad 9 plays 6 fps
• numpad + zooms in
• numpad - zooms out
• esc quits

Another nice option is djv (  http://djv.sourceforge.net )

* these options pause the player in addition to their stated effect

The blog is back!

Sorry for the long hiatus- we just switched hosts in anticipation of uploading much more content, and the backup / restore / configure cycle just took a bit longer than we thought. great new things coming soon!

Well, somehow I managed to make this a page and not a post when I wrote it, and just noticed… so here it is again:

quick blog from a (wirelessly connected!) train from amsterdam.
in bug 17902 (which he fixed) ton made some quick tips about making raytracing less slow- mostly common sense, but I thought I’d capture them here in case they don’t get noticed on the bugtracker:
” Tips for using Blender Octree well:

• exclude anything from being “traceable” if it doesn’t *cast* shadow (it will receive) like floors
• make sure the bounding box of the total environment is small as possible (you had a curve lying around far away in bottom)
• use larger octree resolutions on bigger scenes.”

Probably old information, but it is rather helpful, so worth repeating.

This version of Mancandy is for use (as the versioning suggests) for the upcoming blender 2.48. from now on, I’m going to keep mancandy versioning aligned with blender versioning to make it easy to answer which version with which.

Changes from 2.0:

• (compatibility) Bones thighbend.L/R, calfbend.L/R, forearmbender.L/R, bicepbender.L/R,Neckbend and any other constraints with local/local space have the offset button checked. This fixes problems with forward cycling introduced with constraint refactor in blender 2.46 (this is really just a workaround, my hope is that offset bone and constraints will play nicer in future blender versions)
• (compatibility) Action constraints, e.g. on eyebase.L,jawfan and jaw, have had their values changed to the “right” target rotation min/max. Previous blender versions required inputing incorrect numbers for correct behavior, when this was fixed (again in 2.46) action constraints on the mouth and eyes broke, resulting in a lopsided expression. This should now work again.
• (new feature) Bone groups introduced: This is rather hackish, done just as an example, but there is now a “left”, “right”, “torso”, “mouth”, “cheeks”, “eyes” and “benders” colored bone groups, to allow a bit better 3D view and action editor organization. This just an example, it’s trivial to add new groups, change the colors, etc. Have fun!
• (new feature) Bone Wire toggle activated on controls: it is no longer neccessary to change the proxy armature draw mode to “Wire” in scene files; the bones will automatically display as wireframes.
• (new feature) Group Layer visiblity: the Mancandy Group Layers are only visible in layer 2; this means that a- linked mancandy only shows the mesh, and b- I could unhide everything in the library file. Now people wishing to use mancandy without linking won’t have a “where did the armature go” moment, and people wishing to link will still only see the mesh (and the proxy armature when they add it)
• (fix) Made everything selectable again in the library file: making empties/curves/etc unselectable proved to be more trouble than it was worth, causing many trips to the outliner.
• (new feature) IK constraint improvements: deleted kneerotIK.L/R, armrot.L/R and the rotational IK constraints on thigh and upper-arm bones, instead using pole vector on the arm and leg IKs, with new bones as targets: elbowIK.L/R, kneeIK.L/R . This is better behaved, and allows more posing flexibility. Note this causes a slight need to tweak old actions, as the knee and elbow positions might need fixing.
• (new feature) IK/FK switching improvments: removed MCdriven etc actions from the library file (it is no longer needed) and the objects IK_FK.L/R IK_FKbase.L/R. IK/FK switching now uses the bones IKFK.L/R which are parented to bone IKFK_parent (so you can place the controls where you want them). In brief, the controls drive copy rotation constraints (not IK constraints) on toparm.R/L, lowarm.R/L and hand.R/L to a new chain in Armature layer 12 toparmIK.R/L, lowarmIK.R/L, and handIK.R/L. you no longer need to fiddle with special actions to do IK/FK switching, and all your animation will be contained in the same action.
• (fix) Protected all bone layers, not just the visible ones.
• (didn’t fix) slight misalignment of foot.L/R and of the roll of knee_stretch.R; you can fix it in your own downloaded versions, but changing this would break too severely many walks.
• (cleanup) Unused actions (and their IPOblocks) such as MCdriven, MCdriven.001, Action.001, etc have been removed from the file.

Mancandy 2.48 should be the last version to go with the blender 2.4 series. Next version of mancandy will be for versions 2.50, and incompatible with older rigs (I can finally fix those misalignment problems) but hopefully, much much better.

Please test! other than the noted differences (the elbow and knee rotation controls, and the IK/FK switching, this version should work fine on old actions), and for sure should have no problems in new files, so long as you are using blender 2.48 (any of the rc versions will work for now)

Oh yeah, a download (mancandy 2.48! ) link.

Edit: since blender 2.48 got released, and I didn’t find any bugs (at least no new ones), I’ve decided that this is mancandy_2.48 official; as a result, I’ve renamed the download link,but if you already got 2.48_rc1 you don’t need to download; it’s the same file.

Some nice people invited me to give a blender demo for the software freedom day event in Boston. Here are the details as I know them right now:

Date/time: Sept 20th, 11:30 to 12:20

Location: encuentro 5, 33 Harrison Ave, 5th floor, Boston, MA 02111
http://www.encuentro5.org/

Topic/contents: A general intro to blender (no advanced animation or rigging demo), with a bit of blender history and such thrown in at the end.

So, if you’re in the general area, come on down! There should be a lot of interesting talks/demos/etc at the event, and all us blenderheads (and anyone else) can always do a mini blender geekout session after or during.

This week’s post brought to you courtesy of the folks at Spark Digital Entertainment, the letter “R” and the color purple.

Hi folks, pretty rushed here, deadlines, etc. I’m having a blast- Spark is great (
Rome is pretty nice too, hopefully I’ll get some time to really see it later). I’ll have no time to get to some tasks until late July, so here are some previews:

• Get Mancandy v2.3 here. This version should work fine with blender 2.46 and beyond, when I have time I will test and fully document the small changes, in the form of a new video to be added to the faq.
• Mancandy translation effort: when I’m back I’ll work on proofing the texts for subtitles.. other english speaking proofers: don’t wait for me!
• Website:  big changes coming soon (probably not till August).

More later, including hopefully some surprises.

Bassam

Sparkde is a an animation studio located in Rome that is switching to an open source production pipeline. As part of this effort, I am joining them to help rig and animate an upcoming project in blender. I’ve been busy rigging this past week and a half,  and will be in the studio for the next 4-5 weeks for the animation. The project is for CNIPA (Center for infotech in Public Administration), and it will be made as I said with blender for 3D ( Fedora Linux as the operating system for the studio).

I’m thrilled to go work on the movie and meet the team, including Enrico Valenza (EnV) who worked on Elephants Dream and on Big Buck Bunny. I hope this starts open source filmmaking movement in Italy - after all, Rome, Open City sparked the Italian Neorealism movement

Thanks to the efforts of blender users Jedihi and Drip Stone (and no thanks to my slow proofreading self) a MancandyFAQ translation effort is underway; the first goal is to produce timed english subtitles transcribed from the videos, which can then be translated into many languages (I believe the first two will be Spanish and Chinese). Here is the thread on blenderartists, and here is the wiki (in Chinese). Thanks guys, I promise to do a little proofreading every night.

EDIT: forgot to put the URL for the english language wiki on blender.org. Maybe more transcribers / translators would like to join the effort. I’m really thrilled at this, both as a practical example of the benefits of open content, and because one of my regrets about the original DVD was that it was english only.

I just updated my demoreel to the 2007 reel- it’s very similar to the old one with a few new things, and it’s (sorry) re-encoded from the DVD reel- I couldn’t find my original source project (whoops).

I’m using the cortado applet from flumotion to stream the .ogg source. I’m not terribly sure this is the right thing ™ to do, since I have trouble on my own machine viewing it (audio cuts out sometimes), and I’m not sure how many people can view it. I also have the .ogg, an avi and mp4 for download.

So if anyone reading this knows if there is an intersection of open source/patent free and playable easily on linux/windows/macos way to embed video on a page, let me know! I might end up using flash/flowplayer, or quicktime-style embedding (mplayerplugin can handle this on linux) but there is still the small matter of codecs.