Today I’m starting a lip sync test with audio for a DDA animation we are working on. This will be the first time I’ve attempted to use audio in a 3d program besides 3ds Max, which allows you to directly import the audio and work with the waveform directly on the timeline.

For this project, I once again turn to Third Wish Software’s excellent Magpie lip syncing program, which helps the animator key out the mouth movements needed before going into the 3d program. This helps me test and time the animation ahead of time, eliminating the trial and error stage of animating to audio.

In other very cool news, I came across this article today, about some scientists who are working on ray tracing games. Make sure you watch the video - it’s really impressive stuff! Ray Tracing is an advanced method of 3d rendering which helps a 3d artists simulate shadows, reflections, refractions, projections, and a whole slew of other stuff in a 3d program, creating much more realistic renders.

So far, it has never been used in games due to the large amount of time needed for current gen machines to calculate the rays. These guys have applied ray tracing to Enemy Territories: Quake Wars, an existing current-gen PC game, and it totally works! It’s really exciting to think that the high-quality 3d rendering techniques we use at DDA will, at some point in the future, be able to be calculated in real time. That just saves us render time, allowing us to turn client projects around faster than ever!

This Morning, I am taking care of some things for an actor to be in a new video to be added to our own DDA site. There are so many actors out there who may be George Clooney in so many ways (as Elizabeth says). We have a great cadre of 60 actors in our DDA Actors Gallery for our clients to look through and get to know, so that they are able to choose the one that is just right for their needs. Today, I had to understand how to handle an actor ’s contract situation. Being a union actor, there is a lot of extra paperwork involved. It was all rather technical and sometimes confusing, but in the end it will all be worth it. I know that the video production guys, flash programmers, and animation artists will make this new video amazing. It will feature a character animation interacting with a live actor. These guys never cease to amaze me! Can’t wait to see what’s next…

What’s that? I’m not looking forward to the weekend?!?!? This is insanity. Ok, well, I am looking forward to the weekend, I have a lot to accomplish and I am looking forward to the physical labor. In fact I am going to recruit Luke to paint. While most of the time he would not be interested, it may work. What I’m not looking forward to is sitting on the phone with people. I have to cancel an online game account (which won’t let you cancel in their ‘change subscription’ page, which annoys me to NO END) and I am going to have to deal with *gulp* Microsoft support.

This past winter, my trusty computer that was with me for a long time, well, blew up. After days (weeks even) of trying to replace parts and getting frustrated with the troubleshooting, lack of local parts stores (how I miss CompUSA) and an outrageous restocking fee for shipping back a motherboard/cpu combo that was DOA, I went to the store and bought a new computer. This new computer came preinstalled with Vista. It actually wasn’t too bad. I couldn’t use my old usb drive enclosures, so that was definitely a problem, but otherwise, it seemed to run ok for what it was needed for, a family computer.

That is until service pack 1.

I know what you’re thinking, service pack 1 disabled and destroyed programs and hardware. Well, not exactly. See, I can’t install service pack 1. At all. I get a random error message about 2 minutes into the install. I tried disabling and uninstalling anything that might be causing it to not work, restarted and rebooted and did everything Microsoft said might work. Of course it didn’t. Their help files haven’t ever actually been helpful. So, eventually I will have to bite the bullet and call their ‘tech support’ for help. I’m certainly not looking forward to that, but I can’t deal with having some things not currently working, like annoying popup messages that my security is turned off, when it’s clearly not.

I really hate the things I can’t fix myself.