Cheap Food

"Cheap" and "Food" really have no relation."Profit" and "Food" have all the relation.

Feeding the world has become a global effort. Even in America were the food is plentiful and their are television channels to prove it. Food has turned into a business. Big business, share holders and everything. Food isn't a utility; its a fuel. Food can't be faked. It can't have additives to replace the nutrients that are lost while processing it for packaging, shipping, and to have a shelf life.

The food industry has asked the american people to look the other way while they pillage our food stores and demand that we buy overly processed/modified foods. I'm not going to get into the health problems some say are caused by this.

Why?

In my mind even if you took all the processed food off the market tomorrow and the Wallmart turned into a Whole food store. By whole foods a mean the foods them selfs not the Brand.

What would happen next?

Getting Ready

Nothing can prepare you for having a baby. At least your first. In fact you do a whole bunch of other stuff to keep yourself from thinking about it. You paint you clean. You Shop. Cribs, and strollers. Car seats and bottles. None of that can prepare you for who your child is.

Coffee

Don’t worry nobody is saying you won’t be able to have your 10 mins to make coffee and enjoy it. What people are saying is while your enjoying that cup of coffee your thoughts will be different. Not only the thoughts but why those thoughts are there. Your Kid. Perfection.

No your kid is not going to be perfect and neither are you, but we want to be as close as we can. We want to bring meaningful life skills that help our kids progress in life. Not just in the moment.

RedGuard1.glow

Nuke gets very powerful the more you use its layer and channel system. Ask any nuke artist and many will say the same thing. It's one of those features that you wonder how you lived without for so long.

Let me explain.

In compositing you have layers and channels. Each layer can have 4 channels. R for red, G for green and B for blue. The 4th channel being the alpha channel. That comes in black or white.

In Nuke you can have more than that. You can make them on the fly as your compositing. They can also come from a outside source such as a 3d application, or even Photoshop.

Everyday i work with source plates that includes and red channel, a green channel and blue channel. The alpha is either black or white. Now things can get fancy. Say I do color correction to the source plate. I also make a clean plate so we can replace/hide an object or talent. Both the clean plate and the color corrected src plate can have its own named layer and channels to go with it.

We can also do this with mattes. We can create a new channel called door.matte. Now anywhere in the compositing tree you can use that channel to control color of anything else you might need.This gets even more cool with normals passes and other fancy images that applications can produce. This topic is for its own post.

Why is this powerful?

This makes for very clean and easily readable scripts for one. You can setup your scripts in batches or groups of nodes an not have have pipes zigzagging in the node graph. Which is nice when you are working with other artists. Rotoscoping nodes on top, tracking and other cleanup under that and so on.

Please feel free to post how you use the Layer/Channel system in nuke. and why its powerful to you in your everyday work.

First Time Father

A friend of mine is having a baby soon. I have been thinking of things that made things easier.

First time father

  • Get a washer and dyer that can handle running 24/7 for 6 months. You have to be prepared for contant laundry. Not 2 loads a day but 4 or 5. Shopping for a washer and dyer and waiting for it to come, all while caring for a infant and a new mother. Not a good combo.

  • Get a dishwasher that can run 24/7 for 6 months. This falls into the same category as the cloths washer and dryer just its a separate appliance so I made different items. You will be doing a huge amount of dishes. some that need to be washed in very hot water.

  • Get a car seat that you can take your new infant into the house, or store without extracting the kid from the seat and placing him into another stroller, of crib at home. This means your kid can nap while you cruise around doing errands without waking him/her up. This is huge.

  • Remember to keep something the same. Pick something that you do everyday. Something simple. I'm not talking about the gym or going to a baseball game. No, I'm talking about showering times, making coffee. Reading a favorite columist or author. This will make you feel normal for those minutes. Trust me you are going to need it.

  • Don't forget about your wife. While its hard to forget about her, you will find that most things will start to have to do with the baby also, not just your wife. Find those things that you can keep up and make her feel special too. She is working her ass off, she deserves it.

  • Get a pair of head phones, and some kind of moblie audio player. I like the in-ear kind if you can stand it because I can just have one earbud in one ear and be listening to the room with the other. I found listening to to soft music, audio book or Podcast while helping a sleep deprived baby or folding laundry a great tool.

  • After about a week with the baby find sometime to sit down with your wife and figure out who is good at what. Meaning if you make a better faster breakfast, you make breakfast not your wife. This is not a time for wasted strokes. This is about getting the most done in a very little amount of time.

  • Have fun and laugh. My wife and I have had really good times, cleaning taking care of Kamden. Some extremely funny moments that only my wife and I have witnessed. That is he real magic.

I hope these help. If I think of others I will post them up as well.

Other fathers if you have more post them in the comments.

michael

OmniFocus/Siri

I'm really liking the Siri/OmniFocus integration.

Placing your tasks within the things to do list or a GTD workflow is the part that screws me up. How many times have you said to someone if it isn't in the calendar it doesn't exist? Well now I have no excuse. Not that wanted one to begin with.

It was always a worry that I wouldn't be able to use my system with Apples. The thought of Siri was great. I have been using Siri ever since getting the iPhone 4s. Communicating with my wife while driving. Adding thing to the calendar is easier with Siri. Asking a question and a setting a timer. All things that I would avoid.

While the reminders app is focused and suited for most, I was wanting more earlier. I have been using OnmiFocus for sometime. It also working better as also for reminders but also for projects and multiple action tasks.

Now that can have Siri place events in OmniFocus sky's the limit. So thanks OmniGroup for taking the time and making it work.

Michael

Swipe Left

Recently I came across this problem.

I had downloaded some podcasts on the iPhone. At work when I have no
Podcasts to listen to I grab some thru the iTunes app on the phone. Before iOS 5 the podcasts were treated like any other podcast that had come from a iTunes sync. But now those podcasts seem to have made a home on my iPhone and would not be deleted. Listen to or not.

Answer swipe left. delete

Gestures do solve some ui problems. Just not all of them. If you don't know it there you can't use them. It's not a new flaw it's a old one. If a command is buried in a menu and you don't know about it, you can't use it.

Photoshop is guilty of this. Content aware fill is a great tool. It's not a 100% fix but workable. I recently used it for a clean plate. Got me close and I painted the the rest of it. This tool fills in areas with content from surrounding areas. Sounds cool, huh! It is, but it's in a menu. My dad might use this a lot but I had to show him that it was there. Gestures adds a layer we didn't have before. Going from on the road with my laptop to my office is a change. My MacbookPro is plugged into a external monitor. As a result I no longer have a track pad. And now with the change to more of a iOS interface in Mac OS X a track pad is almost a must.

Michael

Should Lists Have Notifications

I share 4 lists with my wife. When she or I add a item should we have the option to be notified when an item is added.

Since notifications have got so much better with iOS 5 shouldn't a subscriber of that list be notified when things change. I guess the calendar doesn't tell me when she adds a new calendar event. I feel like that is different. When Rikki adds milk to the list I would like to know. She is counting on having milk. I'm forced to look at the calendar when making a entry. With the groceries list I'm not. Siri adds a item. I don't engage that list til I'm at the store. Maybe setup a reminder to look at the groceries list when I leave work. Siri adds a whole different problem. Processing data that really should have to be read from a list.

I'll keep mulling this over.

Michael

5 Nodes No Connection

A work in progress.

I am making a node setup for a despill with the difference added back on top.

Five Nodes and no connection:

curNode = nuke.selectedNodes()

mergediff = nuke.nodes.Merge2()
mergediff.knob('operation').setValue('difference')

mergeplus = nuke.nodes.Merge2()
mergeplus.knob('operation').setValue('plus')


sat = nuke.nodes.Saturation()
sat.knob('saturation').setValue('0')


ibk = nuke.nodes.IBKGizmoV3()

Have a good one,

michaelb

An Introduction

This journal is about creative thought. It’s pretty simple I have thoughts, I’m working on getting them out of the box. Visual Effects is something I know a fair amount about. I feel that it is a good place to start. Some but not all post wil be visual effects related. Some of the post will be related to personal thoughts others will be tech and geek related. maybe some python, markdown and other tips and tricks.

I am going to call it Labs. Mainly so I don’t feel that it is a final. more of a one off place where I can do a brain dump.

I hope you enjoy.

First a little about myself. I am a father and a husband.

I am a compositor at Level256. We are a team of artists that work together to solve complex problems. We are a Nuke/Maya House.

My Reel

Most of this work was done while at Pacific Title and Art Studio. I was a staff Shake compositor there. My time there was the best. What I learned there is a great foundation on to which I have pilled tricks and tools for Compositing. This Blog will go into that.