I setup a new SWF file in Flash Professional and imported the video to stage. I chose to create keyframes for each frame of the video, set the JPG compression rate to 100 and then exported the video as a SWF. This was the only method I could find that would make the video loop seamlessly. It solved one problem but introduced another.

As the application ran I monitored the memory usage and soon discovered that the application ate up more and more memory for each time the video looped. To solve this problem I forced the garbage collector to run each time the video completed a loop. This kept the memory usage stable and the application has now been running for about a month.

This is how you run the garbage collector:

System.gc()

My example doesn’t give you a perfect character rig, but it shows the basic principle. To make the mesh deform properly, you should look into using morph maps. I haven’t done so yet, but will most likely do it sometime soon.

I stumbled across a discussion on the Luxology forum (Bone deformations in Modo 302) that gave me a clue of how to do it. At first, I tried different ways of parenting the locators, deformers, channel linking and so on. But nothing seemed to do the trick. That was until I read a comment by Michael Blackbourn.

You dynamic parent the weightmap locators to a control structure.

After bending my mind around that rather minimalistic and somewhat cryptic comment, I suddenly realized what Michael was talking about. And it’s bloody simple!

Here’s how I did it:

1. Setup a chain of 3 locators, and apply IK to them.
2. Build a mesh with enough polygons to deform properly.
3. Setup 3 weight maps: one for each of the joints of the IK chain.
4. Add weight map deformers for each of the weight maps.
   And now comes the trick:
5. Hit the Compensation button (found under the Animation tab) to prevent the mesh from relocating.
6. Dynamically parent each of the weight map deformers to each of the locators of the IK chain.

That’s it!

Remember When dynamically linking an object to another you need to first select the child, and then the soon to be parent item.

I have made a short screen recording just to show how easy it is. Skinning IK in modo (About 20 Mb QuickTime) The example I show in the screen recording is not beautiful, but it shows the basic principle.

Happy animating!

Anyway, I’ve always liked the Bialetti logo. The cute, but proud, little italian man. As I was waiting for the coffee to finish, I looked at the little man and realized it shouldn’t be difficult to make him in 3D. Not the smartest thought to get when you are trying to do some work, but it did appear anyway.

Trying to find the Bialetti logo in a resolution good enough to be used as a backdrop for the 3D model, I stumbled across a website where I learned this:

Between 1957 and 1977, Carosello [the Carousel] was a 10-minute spot of advertising broadcast every night on Italian national television immediately after the evening news. More like a variety show than hard-sell publicity, it was so popular that it became normal practice in Italian households that dopo Carosello, tutti a nanna (‘all the kids to bed after Carosello’). A familiar cartoon figure on Carosello was the ‘little man with a moustache’, who had his finger raised high in the air while his mouth formed the letters of the alphabet. He was a caricature of Alfonso Bialetti (1888-1970), founder of Bialetti Industrie S.p.A., the Italian cookware giant, and the inventor of the Moka Express coffee pot.

You can read the rest of the story at theflorentine.net.

I’m not the fastest modeller, but I wasn’t aiming for stress either, so I spent about 2 hours on the sketch. Still not finished though -Alfonso is missing his jacket and vest- but that’ll come sometime. With this sketch I wanted to catch the overall scale and feel of Alfonso. Later, I’ll use it as a template for a high resolution model.

Click on one of the lines to make the little plus icon appear. Click the plus icon to add a new line.

Give it a key name of UIPrerenderedIcon.

The value is by default set to String, but we need to change it to Boolean. Right-click the newly created line, choose Value Type > Boolean.

The value has now magically transformed into a check box.

Click it!

And you’re done. It’s as easy as that.

while (this.numChildren > 0)
{
    removeChild(this.getChildAt(0));
}

Update:

And when you want to remove a child as a part of an event handler, do this:

event.target.parent.removeChild(event.target);

Let’s say you want to delete the button you just clicked. The button dispatches an event, and this line of code goes in the event handler. event.target is the button (or what ever object you clicked). It does look at bit strange, because you have to tell the button that it’s parent should delete the button. The button can’t delete itself.

Note:

If you’re working with Flex, use this.removeAllChildren(); Thank you Bjørnar

The bug is related to adding custom application icons. You do this by editing the application’s xml file. To be more precise, at the lines which looks like these:

<!-- The icon to display for the file type. Optional. -->
<icon>
   <image16x16>icon_16.png</image16x16>
   <image32x32>icon_32.png</image32x32>
   <image48x48>icon_48.png</image48x48>
   <!--image128x128></image128x128-->
</icon>

The solution to this bug is actually quite simple. Simply comment out the icons you don’t plan to use -just like I have done in the example above. Oh, and be sure to tick the check box “Copy non-embedded files to output folder” in Project -> Properties -> Flex Compiler.

The Rambling Thoughts Blog has an easy to follow article on how to change the database prefix of your wordpress installation. What they forget to mention is that the changes you have to do in the usermeta table has to be done on ALL user accounts. If you don’t do it you might end up getting this error message when trying to log in:

You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page.

If you’re interested in securing your blog, head over to Lorelle and read the article Firewalling and Hack Proofing your Wordpress blog. It contains links to other interesting and very helpful articles on the subject.

I spent a whole day trying to figure out why I only got square boxes, a couple of random numbers and an occasional ‘f’ now and then. I read somewhere that the configuration file for the socket server had to match the settings of the serial drivers. I didn’t pay much attention to it because I took it for granted that it was configured using a set of common settings. It turned out that I was wrong.

My drivers were set to 9600 baud, while my socket server ran at 19200 baud. Setting the socket server to 9600 baud solved all of my problems! Yes, all of them.

At sunday, nov 30th, I headed up to Cecilie & Rune’s flat for a creative workshop. The whole idea was just to have fun while fiddling with Super Sculpey and whatnot. I packed some of my tools and as I was on my way out, I thought about what to sculpt. I had no idea, so I grabbed a book that was small enough to fit in my bag.

The book is called “The Black Frog’s Doodles – you know… teapots and stuff” and is filled with beautifully drawn sketches by the french artist Igor-Alban Chevalier aka The Black Frog. Flipping through the pages I stumbled across a page with the drawing of Fritz Leopold. As I was only going to stay for about half a day, Fritz seemed like the perfect size for a few hours worth of sculpting.

Not so long ago I read that boiling your Super Sculpey model is in many ways better than burning it in the oven. The heat gets spread more evenly around the sculpture. Fritz was initially going to be boiled, but the cigar worried me a bit. It’s quite small, so I was afraid it would fall off (allthough there’s a secretly hidden piece of metal wire on the inside of the cigar, attaching it to Fritz’ mouth). Anyway, he went into the oven on about 120°C for about an hour.

After uploading the pictures to flickr I thought I’d send Igor-Alban an e-mail, telling him about how Fritz made into the third dimension. He replied only moments later, with something in the lines of “Ahahahaha Excellent!”. I guess he liked it

Check out Fritz for yourself at my flickr set “Stuff I’ve made“.

The future plans for Fritz is to sand down the worst parts and then paint him. I’m also playing with the idea of making a mold so that I can replicate him. I’m not sure yet. What ever might happend, I’ll post more pictures to the flickr set and articles here.

Fieldrunners for iPhone

A couple of days ago I purchased the game Fieldrunners (by Subatomic Studios) for my iPhone, and in an instant it became my (so far) alltime favorite iPhone game.

The concept is simple; kill the creeps before they get out of sight. Unlike the popular Flash Elements TD, Fieldrunners take a slightly different perspective and removes the track. The field is left completely open for you to decide where you will place the turrets.

There are already written a few other reviews of the game, so I won’t bother repeating what’s already been written. If you want to know more about the game, have a look at these sites:

• iPhone App Review: The best game for the iPhone, Fieldrunners
• OS X Reality: New Highly Addictive Tower Defense Game Fieldrunners for the iPhone (With screenshots and video)
• The Unofficial Apple Weblog: Fieldrunners: DTD for iPhone
• Touch Arcade: ‘Fieldrunners’ Delivers a Very Polished Tower Defense Game
• ars technica: Review: Fieldrunners for iPhone appeals to Tower Defense nerds (A thorough review)
• Macworld: Review: Fieldrunners for iPhone

There are also alternatives to Fieldrunners, both for iPhone/iPod Touch and your computer;

• Flash Elements TD 1.0
• Flash Elements TD 2.0
• Desktop TD
• Protector
• Vector TD
• Zombie Attack! (iTunes link)
• Hordes of Orcs (for OS X and Windows)
• TowerDefend (for iPhone and iPod Touch)

Convinced? Buy Fieldrunners at AppStore!