One of my favorite tools out of all that I have built, projector, has been updated to version 2.4! The worst part about v2.3 was how much time reprojector took to do it’s thing and the inspector windows popping up getting in the way. The best solution I could find at the time (about 1 year ago) was using GUI scripting which was a ridiculous hack that basically just presses the correct buttons quickly. 2.4 uses and includes the command line utility “seticon” written by Sveinbjorn Thordarson which changes icons very seamlessly. This update also allows changing multiple folder icons with projector and reprojector simultaneously. So if you have multiple folders you would like to add project folders to, drag them onto projector. If you have folders that all need the same icon, drag them all onto reprojector.

projector_v2.4 download page. . .

Log:
v2.4 – reprojector reworked to change icons instantly, change multiple folder icons at the same time, error checking
v2.3 – added auto-checking for Application Support folder, allows user to add their own folders/icons, design icon
v2.2 – added Premiere Pro and Shake icons
v2.0 – released! (new workflow including reprojector)
v1.0 – released!

[ andoru.labs | $ ]

ready steady bang – 30 ways from Ed Barrett on Vimeo.

This game is a blast because the animation is amazing. Simple as that.

[Ready Steady Bang]

MayaMaya has been updated to v1.1.1 and now is a universal tool that simply asks you to choose your Maya location on startup. You may need to reset the preferences if you have been using an older version of MayaMaya.

Download: MayaMaya

[andoru.labs]

For a look at their process, take a look at this CGSociety article posted up awhile back discussing their early Cartoon Network bumpers. They are using the physically accurate Maxwell Render to do things that would be incredibly difficult to do with traditional stop motion but able to achieve using 3D packages and impeccable traditional animation skills. The only thing the computer is really letting them do here is have a more controlled workflow. I would love to see some storyboards, I am sure they have carefully keyframed these beautiful little shorts well before they even start thinking about rendering.

[Meindbender]

Maya x_x updated to v1.1. Support for Maya 2012. 2012 is good, it’s splash screen is real big…

Maya x_x download page. . .

Log:
[2011.04.09: v1.1] – updated for Maya 2012
[2010.11.21: v1.0] – released!

[andoru.labs]

[ T2 | claudia.chagüi | chris waner ]

projector updated to v2.3. Now allows the User to add custom icons and have then automatically recognized by the apps.

projector_v2.3 download page. . .

Log:
v2.3 – added auto-checking for Application Support folder, allows user to add their own folders/icons, design icon
v2.2 – added Premiere Pro and Shake icons
v2.0 – released! (new workflow including reprojector)
v1.0 – released!

[andoru.labs]

. . . and has started to become more and more an identity for this site. I present to you cubeBot, and glimpse at where this little guy is headed.

cubeBot character sheet

cubeBot render tests.

And a simple look at his natural habitat:

cubeBot environment test (13MB .mov)

A big collection of cubes driven by some simple MEL expressions.

A lot more coming up in regards to this project. (Including but not limited to) Original score by Ekahwerdna, crowd and character animation, and some sexy sexy UI work.

[andoru.projects]

RenderQ_v1.2.1 with new preference system, default flags saved per application, some bug fixes, and a simple addition to sleep…mode.

RenderQ_v1.2.1 download page. . .

Log:
[2010.10.28 - v1.2.1]:

-ask for actual path for each render engine
-checks for current preferences and resets if required
-fixed localization issue related to file type naming
-ask to save default flags for each renderer
-adjusted render_fin sound volume and added sleepmode sound

[andoru.labs]

Not being one to do things half-assed I present to you:

light table!

A glorious new web app for the iPad (maybe the iPhone if you’re in the flip-book mood) that displays an incredible white background image as far as the eyes can see. Just visit the above link (or type “andrewandoru.com/lt”) and add this to your home screen:

Visit the site using the home screen icon and you will see this:

Find a nice chip clip, and you pretty much have yourself one of these:

Animate!

[andoru.labs]

Maya is an application that can sometimes crash. It is always due to user-error of course, but for those moments when your pathetic human brain is unable to keep up with the technology, Maya x_x is there for you.

Maya x_x is an AppleScript application based off of a fantastic shell script written by Dave Girard to easily open the recovery file Maya generates when it crashes. The clever bit of this app (the shell script) takes a look in your /var/log/system.log file for “Fatal Error”, a string of text that is common to all recent versions of Maya when a crash is detected and a recovery file is saved, and pulls out the proper path of the newly generated recovery file. LIke this. . .

"/var/folders/Sn/SnHxMpN7Gh82+IKBgzDDxU+++TI/-Tmp-/andoru.20101121.0159.ma"

. . .not exactly any easy file to find if you have to go digging around yourself. Maya x_x also checks that output to see which version of Maya generated the crash log, and opens the recovery file in the appropriate version of the app. It also gives you a simple app to throw in your utilities folder (or wherever you like), that you can easily call up from Spotlight by typing Cmd+Space, and “maya x”, and pressing return.

This is designed to work with Maya 2009-2011, and as long as Maya actually generates a recovery file, all should be well. While this won’t automatically close any scene you currently have open but it is a good idea to just use this app right after the crash occurs, and always make sure to give the recovery scene a once over to make sure nothing is out of the ordinary.

Download: Maya x_x download page. . .

Log:
[2010.11.21: v1.0] – released!

To answer some questions in advance, After Effects and Nuke have pretty decent crash recovery and automatic save systems build right in. After Effects will even put up a pop-up showing where the recovery file is saved. There is a great tool called AE Suicide that will force AE to crash more elegantly and hopefully generate this recovery file. Nuke’s built in autosave system does the job just fine, and Nuke rarely crashes.

Enjoy! If there are any issues, concerns, or requests please contact: andoruLABS.support. It is quite possible there could be a few little bugs or improvements that could be made so don’t be afraid to contact me. This app is free, no donations allowed on this one. . .

[andoru.labs] | [dave.girard]

AEae and MayaMaya have both been updated to include basic preferences and drag and drop functionality. This means you can now launch the app normally to open a specific number of new instances of the apps, or you can drag and drop project files onto the app to automatically open each one up in separate instances.

Download: AEae | MayaMaya

[andoru.labs]

Not only does this MacBook look happy to be rendering frames, it is happy to be alive at all. Having a steady not-for-profit job is just icing on the cake. Although battered and bruised, this little guy is perfectly functional and can help get the job done.

Just using OS X’s built-in Screen Sharing functionality, some AppleScript tools, and some clever render setup it is easy to get renders offloaded from the main workstation.

Look how happy these frames are!

So, not really a “farm”, but I can guarantee this MacBook puts forward more effort per frame than other nameless render farm nodes. . .

(Peter Moxom wisely points out its closer resemblance to a garden rather than a farm)

[andoru.labs]

Quick update to RenderQ to v1.2 to work with latest 32/64bit release of Nuke (make sure to Reset Preferences). Also added system sleep and maya project settings…

RenderQ_v1.2

[andoru.labs]

Rolling on a great tip off from the one and only David Bagsby, I am participating in Bill Plympton’s shot for shot remake of “Guard Dog”, a 2005 Oscar nominated short. I liked the dog, and it’s barking and what not so I will be working on shot 51 of the film. Check it out when it’s all put together later this year!

And speaking of animation, I just added 2:1 templates to my set of storyboard templates, and I have started to create dedicated pages for more of the tools under /labs.

[bill.plympton] | [david.bagsby]

Probably the most valuable couple of megabytes on this site, my storyboard templates have continuously been one of the top sources of traffic. For me, storyboarding is simultaneously the most rewarding and frustrating part of the film making process. It is very rare that a scripted scene survives the storyboarding step unscathed. While you really don’t need anything special to produce a great sequence of storyboard panels (choices range from the lowly diner napkin to the highest end Wacom Cintiq), we live in a world where people offer up all shorts of wonderful options and tools free of charge, and you would be silly not to take a look at them. I never found anything I really liked to draw my panels on so I put together some of my own a little while back.

Recently I updated them just a bit and while I tend to do most of by story boarding on one of these beauties. . .

. . . I also put together some .psd versions for people that like to work digitally from start to finish. Working in Photoshop also gives you the ability to mask off panels and shuffle things around easily.

You can checkout some examples of these templates in use on my current Floating World project page.

Demo:

QuickTime Version 1280×800 (26MB)

iPhone Version (8MB)

Download: andoru.LABS 2010 Storyboard Templates (1.54MB .zip)

Log:
[feel free to use and distribute these in accordance to the CC license presented at the bottom of this site]
-2010.8.06 – Updated for 2010 and simplified
-2010.8.06 – Added .PSD templates for digital storyboarding

Like I already mentioned, there are many ways to create a storyboard. Being arguably the most important part of the film-making process I recommend doing it with some class. . .

If there are any issues or concerns please contact: andoruLABS.support. Also, these templates are free but feel free to donate if you find them useful.

[andoru.labs]

Full steam ahead. Dried Up (a film some good friends of mine made) received the Silver Medal in Animation at the Student Academy awards on June 12th in Beverly Hills. Even better the award was presented by Henry Selick.

From Right. Henry Selick, Isaiah Powers, Jeremy Casper.

If you haven’t already make sure to check out the film:

Congratulations to all those involved. Very well deserved!

[dried up] | [isaiah.powers] | [jeremy.casper] | [stuart.bury]

Remember all those render droplet apps I was always going on about? Forget about them. I haven’t told any of them yet, but their services are no longer required. Each app performed it’s job perfectly well, but I am all about teamwork here, and there is no “Q” in team. . .

Which has nothing to do with RenderQ, the latest update to the render droplet apps; which not only combines the functionality of MayaRender, AERender, NukeRender, and all of their Q counterparts, it does them all one better by using a little bit of intelligence. RenderQ is a drag and drop render queue app that will send Maya, After Effects, Nuke, C4D, and Shake renders to Terminal and queue them up for easy and efficient local rendering. It is now very easy to set preferences for the version of each app you are using, as well as enabling and disabling additional flags for each filetype. RenderQ will also automatically detect the filetype and submit the job accordingly.

Also included is RenderQ maitre d’ to pause and resume renders and will also show which render engine is currently active and the last job submitted to the queue.

Demo:

QuickTime Version 1280×800 (92MB)

iPhone Version

Support for more apps could very well be coming in the future. A $0-25 donation is customary. I prefer to keep this sort of thing on the honor system rather than setting up some sort of direct cost. If you use this tool at a facility I suppose a site license will cost you $0-$1000.

Download: RenderQ download page…

Enjoy! If there are any issues or concerns please contact: andoruLABS.support. One thing I didn’t mention in the demo is that there is also a simple app included to reset the RenderQ preferences. It is quite possible there could be a few little bugs or improvements that could be made so don’t be afraid to contact me. Also, this app is free but feel free to donate, as many hours of work were put into it.

[andoru.labs]

With a bit of testing and a tiny bit of additional code I was able to build a basic queueing system into my render droplet apps. Instead of having each version open up a new Terminal window and start a separate simultaneous render, the “Q” versions of the apps will send everything to one Terminal window and render them one after the other. Not only does this make the apps easier to use, it should actually make rendering with all of them much more efficient, especially when you need to render multiple project files, scenes, or scripts. Now you can get them all set to render with the “Q” droplets and go to sleep, go drink some coffee, or better yet, go work on something else.

Demo:

QuickTime Version 1440×900 (46MB)

iPhone Version

Download: AEaeCS5 (165KB .zip)

Log:
-2010.5.1: Updated for After Effects CS5
-2010.5.6: added “Q” version

Download: MayaRender (6.7MB .zip)
Includes MayaRender2009-2011.

Log:
-2009-12-1: added 2010 versions plus V-Ray, and 3delight droplets.
-2010-3-10: fixed Maya 2010 versions to work with the changes that were made to the location of the “render” binary.
-2010-3-20: fixed typos in latest Mental Ray versions (2009 & 2010) and removed “mail_cmd” in MayaRender2010 (universal version), top secret feature coming soon. . .
-2010-4-10: Updated for Maya 2011
-2010-5-06: Added “Q” versions

Download: NukeRender (725KB .zip)
Includes NukeRender6.0v5, for instructions on older versions go to NukeRender page.

Log:
-2009-5-01: Updated for Nuke6.0v5
-2010-5-06: Added “Q” versions

Enjoy! If there are any issues or concerns please contact: andoruLABS.support. Also, this app is free but feel free to donate like a maniac.

[andoru.labs]

AEae. . .

. . . and AERender have both been updated for After Effects CS5. I worked night and day to make this happen, changing the 4 to a 5 took a good 2 mins out of my life. Once again more time was spent on the new icons. But I must. . .

Download: AEaeCS5 (165KB .zip)

Log:
-2010.5.1: basic functionality

Download: AERenderCS5 (748KB .zip)

Log:
-2010.5.1: basic functionality

I have tested both with no problems but as usual, if there are any issues or concerns please contact: andoruLABS.support. Also, these apps are free but feel free to donate if you have the means.

COMING SOON:

“Q” versions of all the render droplet apps! With a slight adjustment to the scripts, I have found a way to allow a simple but effective queuing system to all the droplets. Will be available soon. . .

And for the record, RotoBrush is cool and all, but the addition of the FreeForm plugin is HUGE for anyone doing Matte Paintings, nearly all of the bicubic cards (3D point manipulation) functionality of Nuke and the camera controls from Maya equal a 3D workspace that is finally enjoyable to use. Bravo CS5, Bravo. And don’t even get me started about photoshop.

[andoru.labs]