Agreed about conquering one’s fears. Otherwise they possess you. What caught my eye is your method for conquering them. Very, very Biblical.

Thank you regarding the compliment on my knowledge of animating tools. I’m a semi-retired free-lance computer consultant. I did this stuff most of my adult life and was damned good at it. I was mostly self-taught and could pick things up rather quickly.

Synfig freaking kicks ass. There’s no other way to describe it. Its developer produced a “proof of concept” demo clip five years ago. Here’s its link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwSZZivjQMo

Granted, the story is rather center-Leftie, but the reason I’m posting its URL here is that this three-minute film was made by only six people. And that’s why I’m excited about Synfig: It’s possible to make this level of animation in your own home!

That main PC you described almost knocked me over! When I first worked with BRL-CAD, I created a bit of geometry that took 14 consecutive calendar days of non-stop computing to render. Your PC would render it in under five minutes.

As regards to Linux emulation, CelTX and BRL-CAD can run under Windows. Someone might have compiled Synfig to do so as well. I don’t think Cinelerra would run under it, at least not the latest version.

I tend to use Fedora as my Linux of choice, although I’ll build KDE on top of it because I dislike Fedora’s “blu-ray” GUI or whatever they call it.

As far as writing or comedy goes, I have normal fears; I just choose to tackle them instead of letting them run my life. Take public speaking, I feared it more than anything, but decided accept a lecture request at a local College on Electricity to Electronics just to see if I could conquer it. Did it for 5 years after that, mission accomplished. The key? Extensive, extensive preparation and remember to breathe.

I do have access to several computers, one with incredible video power. However it is set up with Windows Vista 64-bit, not Linux. It’s an Intel 4 core Duo, Dual video card, Dual GPU nVidia on card SLI machine with 6 gigs of ram and 8 Solid State Drives (SSD) in RAID 0 with striping. It’s a $15,000 monster. Maybe I could use Linux emulation?

I can convert one or two of the older lame machines to Linux to practice. Is there a preferred GUI for the package or is it command line? I’ve had dealings with many flavors of Linux (even Minix) and have no real preference. It’s powerful, but a pain compared to the ease of use, software selection and interoperability of Micro$oft stuff. But I can see it is a vital counter to M$’s near Monopopoly. Apple stuff is pretty, but I don’t deal with any of it in my world. Corporate and Office software is where I make a buck.

Pat, is there a way Green Dragon and I can get together off-line without announcing who, where, what, when, why in this forum and taking up bandwidth here?

(cont.)

Let me know how your screenwriting turns out. You are a braver man than I to attempt comedy. Well, I do make a “stab at it,” so to speak when the Hero of my first film talks over chow with his fellow Marines how he “helped” his Drill Instructor acquire the nickname of “scarface” which only made him even more frightening to the next batch of recruits (in the best Jake Busey meets R. Lee Ermi tradition).

Pat

Thanks for the info about the war occuring within the govt. This is was I saw coming back around Thanksgiving or so, Our military and law enforcement need our help and support, now, more than ever.

If you have an extra PC that you can load Linux onto, here are the tools I’m currently using:

CelTX – (www.celtx.com) This is an all-in-one media pre-production package. In addition to screenplay writing, it also handles storyboarding, scheduling, element tagging, etc., etc.

Synfig – (www.synfig.org) This started as a proprietary 2-D animation package based on vector arithmetic in which every last little facet can be changed as a “wave point” on the time line. The developers (Voria Studios) had hopes of making feature-length films but the business model didn’t work out. So, rather than scrapping the software they released it under the GPL license.

Its user interface resembles GIMP or Photoshop in its use of “layers” to assemble all the parts. What’s nice is that those layers can also be references to other animation files that other people are working on, and stored in CVS archives. As a result, the animators can work out of their homes and update the CVS archive as a sequence is completed. It also means that each character in the scene being animated is a separate layer, which means it can be a separate SIF (as it’s called) file, so you can have multiple people working on one scene simultaneously without stepping on one another’s toes.

It’s also quite powerful in its handling of lighting or another pseudo 3-D effects.

A newer feature being developed by the Synfig community is some sort of “parameter” or “scripting” function, so that procedurally-based animation becomes possible. Things like particle effects, etc. I haven’t dug deeply into it yet, but it looks like a promising “hook” for something like the “Massive” system that Peter Jackson used to animate his fight scenes in Lord of the Rings.

The latest feature that’s now stable is an “import” function that allows you to import image files, such as jpegs, for each keyframe in the time line. What this means is you could shoot the scene live-action in HD, edit it together, and then import selected frames to guide your keyframing, much like rotoscoping.

I should also mention that ability to reference other SIFs means you can draw your character one time from a variety of different angles, and then link to the appropriate SIF for the scene being animated. That was a BIG bugaboo when I first experimented with Synfig, because the typical character could take 10 to 12 hours or more to draw in.

BRL-CAD – (www.brlcad.com) This is actually a 3-D solid-geometry modeling package from the U.S. Army. It was the one I cut my CGI teeth on, and spent quite a bit of time tinkering with its source code to produce photorealism. As a production shortcut, I’m thinking of using BRL-CAD to design in the “sets” for the film, and then using its ray tracer (RT) to render a 2-D “cartoon” image that serves as the background upon which Synfig’s animation is layered. BRL-CAD could be useful for those scenes where you want a “moving camera,” such as when you are following someone around a corner, for example. Stuff like that.

Cinelerra – (www.heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php) This is a robust and quite powerful video editor. I think it’s damn near Avid but without the price tag. Still learning all of its potential.

(cont.)

“But on the other hand, what if professional politicians set up the game board, spiked the dice and made the rules and the CEO’s just did what they could and what they could get away with, then when things went sour they cried out to Uncle Sam for help and he was all to willing to step in and bail them out, with conditions of course. Yeah, I’m probably wrong about that too. Never mind.”

Yep, your wrong about being wrong. The rules were made so restrictive that a disabling amount of the companies intellectual and other capital was diverted to skirting and lobbying the government. In the end those bright enough to be running companies in the first place were also bright enough to mostly “get theirs” even when the government forced them to do the untenable.

Am I wrong in thinking that some of the corporations are complicit in bringing socialism to our beloved country? Could it be that their failure was purposeful? Money paid to CEO’s (golden parachutes) to mismanage and drive their corporations into the ground so that Uncle Sam could ride in on a white horse and save the day? Yeah, I may be wrong about that.

But on the other hand, what if professional politicians set up the game board, spiked the dice and made the rules and the CEO’s just did what they could and what they could get away with, then when things went sour they cried out to Uncle Sam for help and he was all to willing to step in and bail them out, with conditions of course. Yeah, I’m probably wrong about that too. Never mind.

Future News cast:
“In the news today, the last taxpaying citizen in the United States, John Doe, was seen running towards the Mexican Border (Colorado and Mexi-Utah border) with his $5 paycheck. He made good his escape because the 4,000 man task force dedicated to making sure he made it to work were found passed out in front of their computer monitors. They were all drunk and had pissed their pants. No one was surprised as statistics show this to be normal in all levels of Government. One of the employees was quoted to have said “I was just havin’ a little liquid lunch and blacked out like I always do, when I came to, he was gone”! John Doe was last seen on Mexican Television station LaRaza-Coca-UniVision asking for political asylum and offering his paycheck as payment.”