Github for Unity - Use Latest Version

You need to use v1.0.1.  Otherwise, the "push" will be grayed out in the plugin.  For some reason, when I downloaded the plugin from the Unity Asset Store, I did not get the latest version.  I will freely admit that it might be user error on my part because I am still figuring out Unity.  Anyway, you can download Github for Unity from here:

https://github.com/github-for-unity/Unity/releases

Book Review: Designing the User Experience of Game Development Tools

I started to read David Lightbown's Designing the User Experience of Game Development Tools after seeing him speak at GDC 2017.  This pdf describes the talk.  I am about two-thirds of the way through the book.

I really wish someone had written this book a long time ago!  Most of my time at work is devoted to writing tools to help artists.  Yes, this book has "game development" in the title and is written by somebody who works for Ubisoft.  However, the insights are applicable to anyone who writes tools for a living.  In my case, I am a Pipeline TD, who works in animated television.

The book is slim, and that's a good thing.  The author gets to the point and explains the material in a straight forward manner with plenty of real world examples.  I have started to use some of the techniques in the book at work.  For example, I wanted to pitch a tool to a production, so I made a series of mockups that acted as a storyboard that showed how the tool would work to get buy in from the the producers and the CG supervisor.

All in all, this book deserves a place in any technical director's bookshelf.

UE4 and Sequencer

I attended a Studio Workshop today at Siggraph called UE4 Virtual Movie Production and Sequencer.  Sequencer is pretty impressive and now you have everything you need to make a movie inside Unreal.  Basically, Sequencer lets you record your gameplay animation and edit the "footage" on a timeline.  You can even do multiple takes and add audio!  The game engine has assets that resemble real world filmmaking equipment (camera rigs and tracks).

One limitation is that the workflow is not super intuitive.  Actually, the workflow is probably intuitive to an Unreal Engine pro, which I am not.  At one point, I stopped trying to follow along with the instructor and just started watching him.  The other limitation, which is probably a limitation that anyone trying to make a movie inside a game engine is going to come across, is that you are limited to the Unreal Engine "look".  Maybe you can render movies generated by Unreal using other renderers?  Of course, if you did that, then the virtual filmmaking process will no longer be a real time one.

Finding A Bug in an Open Source Project

Kinda feeling proud of myself.  I helped locate a bug in Mongoengine:

https://github.com/MongoEngine/mongoengine/issues/1278#issuecomment-226260261

Yes, the little things in life make it worth living!

:-)

What Is Dead May Never Die

Yes, I stole a title from the article to use as a title in my blog.  Of course, they stole from a television show, so I think I get away with it.

Anyway, the article covers something that I am currently struggling with right now.

https://late.am/post/2016/04/28/delete-your-dead-code.html

This is especially difficult when you inherited a code base.  I am still trying to figure out parts of the one I inherited.  Anyway, food for thought...

When advice is a mistake (from Rob Galanakis)

Ha!  This made me laugh!

http://www.robg3d.com/2016/03/when-advice-turns-out-to-be-a-mistake/

He makes some valid points.

Mob Programming

Has anyone out there tried mob programming?  Seems like pair programming on steroids...

http://mobprogramming.org/mob-programming-basics/

I'm intrigued!

Siggraph 2015!

Siggraph is always a blast, and this year was no exception. I caught up with old friends and attended a lot of exciting talks and left feeling invigorated and exhausted at the same time!

The big topics this year were virtual/augmented reality and real time rendering (kind of like GDC actually).  The technology is becoming more advanced and the price point on the equipment is dropping, so a lot of companies are now investing money into VR with hopes of creating something they can monetize.

The good news is that this might translate into new jobs if the research bears fruit.  In general, I have noticed more hiring this year, and I cannott help but wonder if the interest in VR has something to do with it.  Companies will need artists and programmers to help create these new experiences.

Unfortunately, the one downside that I can see is the jobs in demand will center around people who can work entirely in CG.  If you are a compositor or a roto artist, you might be out of luck.  However, someone from ILMxLab did say that people have been researching recreating reality with footage of reality, so we will have to see if that research bears fruit, which brings me back to one of my earlier points.

VR is hot again.  In the past, people have gotten excited about creating VR experiences for the consumer only to have the technology not work out for some reason.  We will have to see if the research dollars actually create services or products that people other than computer graphics nerds want to buy.  I urge cautious optimism.

Noodling around...

Finally got around to playing with Unity this weekend.  Never underestimate the importance of noodling around and indulging one's curiosity.

C# and Unity

After a couple of months since GDC, I finally cracked open Learning C# Programming with Unity 3D by Alex Okita today.  This book is really targeted at the beginner programmer, which is surprising because I never considered using a game engine to teach programming (let alone C# programming).  Will let you know what I think of this...

Mel Syntax Highlighting For Sublime Text!

This is really exciting (at least for me)!  Someone has created a package that will do syntax highlighting for MEL in Sublime Text!

https://packagecontrol.io/packages/MayaSublime

Going to try this puppy out!

No 'var' on class fields in C#

This is why you can't have nice things...

Seriously, I struggled with this issue for two days before I wrapped my head around it:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2009/01/26/why-no-var-on-fields.aspx?wa=wsignin1.0

Composition versus Inheritance

As I try to become a better programmer, I find myself tackling (for me) new coding paradigms.  Lately, I have been struggling to learn about the difference between composition and inheritance and when to use which.  This exhaustive Stack Overflow hits a lot of good points:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/49002/prefer-composition-over-inheritance#_=_

GDC Diary 2

Wow.  Never expected GDC to be so exhausting!  I'm not even going to any parties.

I have been noticing several trends:

• Mobile (and making money from)
• Virtual reality
• Alternative controllers
• Reaching an international audience
• Diversity (Actual the audience is much more diverse than I thought it would be.)

GDC Diary 1

Wow.  Talk about sensory overload.  I didn't expect GDC to be so big!  Everybody here reminds me of people that either attended the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science or the Cal Arts Character Animation Department.  My main problem is that there is almost too much to see and do.

I was pleasantly surprised that the Video Game History Museum had an Atari exhibit.  Haven't played Missile Command in ages!

Fixing homebrew after installing Yosemite

Well...well...installing Yosemite broke homebrew.  Big surprise.  I figured out how to fix it by checking out:

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/153790/how-to-fix-brew-after-its-upgrade-to-yosemite

>$ brew

/usr/local/bin/brew: /usr/local/Library/brew.rb: /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

/usr/local/bin/brew: line 23: /usr/local/Library/brew.rb: Undefined error: 0

>$ cd /usr/local/Library

>$ ls

Aliases/       Contributions/ ENV/           Formula/       Homebrew/      LinkedKegs/    Taps/          brew.rb*

>$ git pull origin master

...bunch of stuff...

Then you can run 'brew update'.

Understanding Python's With Statement

Turns out the 'with' statement in Python is fairly straight forward.  Here is an article (oldie but goodie) that gives a quick thumbnail sketch of how that statement works:

http://effbot.org/zone/python-with-statement.htm

On another note, this is the first blog of the New Year!

Parsing Excel with Python

Cos sometimes you don't want to deal with xml, csv, json or any other text format.  Check out https://openpyxl.readthedocs.org/en/latest/.

Design Patterns

I generally avoid buying computer books because they become outdated very quickly.  However, Design Patterns by Gamma, Helm, Johnson, and Vlissides is an exception (probably due to its general nature):

http://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns-Elements-Reusable-Object-Oriented/dp/0201633612/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411492186&sr=1-1&keywords=design+patterns

 This book makes me rethink how I approach object oriented programming.

Setting the PYTHONPATH with the Powershell permanently

I actually got a lot of tips on how to do this through this article:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff730964.aspx

If you have the .NET Framework, you can do the following:

> [Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("PYTHONPATH", "D:/mypath", "User")

In order to see the changes, you need to open a new Powershell.