Category Archives: Software
Want to animate the next Futurama?
Now you can!
According to a press release, Toonz, the software used to animate Futurama as well as the highly-regarded Princess Mononoke and one of my favorites, the animation masterpiece Howl’s Moving Castle, will be made open source and free at an announcement during the Anime Japan expo this week. It is a full-featured animation package, that allows for digital animation, or the scanning and animating of paper drawings. That’s what lends to the hand-drawn nature of many of Studio Ghibli’s films, who animated the latter two films I mentioned.
This isn’t the first time this has happened, remember. Renderman, Pixar’s animation software used in all their movies, was made free for non-commercial use a little over a year ago. If you’ve ever wanted to see what goes into this kind of animation, or try your hand at it yourself (it’s not for the faint of heart), then now’s your chance!
Toonz
R.I.P Ray Tomlinson
I have been so busy lately it’s hard to put into words, however I had to take some time to acknowledge the passing of Ray Tomlinson. That may not be one of the most famous names in computing history, but his invention certainly is.
Ray is the inventor of email, and the nomenclature including the ‘@’ sign to indicate the system on which the message was to be delivered. It’s a shame more don’t know his name, considering how profound his impact on computing was – not just for computery-y types back in 1971 when he first developed the thing, but for every single individual on the planet as the years went on. So important was it, that he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2012.
He was the stereotypical engineer, very pragmatic and matter-of-fact when he spoke, however back in the very early seventies that’s the kind of person that made these incredible contributions. His developments set the tone for electronic communication for decades.
Although the use of email is on the decline and incline at the same time, it is still an entrenched, foundational component of what made the Internet the revolutionary, culture-changing thing it is. I mean, teens don’t use it, but that’s probably for the best.
Bam!
It’s finally happening! Vive Preorders will start on Feb. 29, and I’ll be there even though ordering one will force me to give up luxuries like food and shelter for a few months. It will be worth it, I’m sure, however one of the lingering issues many people are facing is whether their PC will be powerful enough to drive the hardware for a compelling experience.
That’s a valid question, with HTC themselves providing some recommendations for VR-ready PCs. I have a PC, though, one I almost bankrupted myself to build, so needless to say I was crossing my fingers it would be enough.
Thoughtfully, Valve released a test via Steam that determines if your PC is VR ready. I downloaded it, it ran a neat – if two-screened – version of the Aperture Labs demo from when I tried the Vive back in November, and gave me my results.
VR, here I come!
Damn right
If you’re interested, here’s what the demo looked like while running (Screenshot taken from Steam store page, although it looked exactly the same on my machine).
Vive test
