Category: Spatial Computing

if it has to do with meat and data sharing a 3d space, this is where it’s discussed.

DJ Cyberpunk at Necto for Factory 18

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Last Monday I was once again privileged to spin Factory at Necto for the 18th anniversary of the night.

Set list:

  • Dead Stars (Version) – Covenant
  • Lack of Sense (Razormaid Mix) – Tribantura
  • Dream Machine – Lazerhawk
  • Avernus Dorsa – Vector Hold
  • Disappoint (Negative Format Remix) – Assemblage 23
  • PUPPETMASTER – REIN
  • Citizens (Shinra Remix) – Randolph & Mortimer
  • Le Disko (Ferry Corsten Mix) – Shiny Toy Guns
  • Onslaught – Alex & Tokyo Rose
  • Take the World – She Wants Revenge
  • Circling Overland – Front 242
  • More – Odonis Odonis
  • Wild Animal (Aura Shred Remix) – Hante.
  • Demon Chaser (feat
… Read the rest
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The VM205 Oscilloscope and Logic Analyzer, Part 3

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Virtual Machines.

Turns out I can emulate a raspberry pi in software using QEMU. QEMU is not for the faint of heart, because it’s all command line and you have to start on a Linux system. Should I have splurged for the UTM Mac app? Probably. But if you’re going to do this, here are useful links.

https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-run-the-raspberry-pi-os-in-a-virtual-machine-with-qemu-and-kvm
The doc is rotting, change the “buster”-specific stuff to a Bullseye install.

To get around the fact that libvert is fucked:
https://computingforgeeks.com/use-virt-manager-as-non-root-user/

Still no joy.

After all that, it’s still no good, because the Versatile Board used in the emulation has a … Read the rest

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The VM205 Oscilloscope and Logic Analyzer: Part 2

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Getting it working.

TL;DR: I extended an API I found on GitHub to support the pigpio libraries.

This was an exercise in updating a C++ API to support a library now shipped with newer versions of the Raspberry Pi. As mentioned earlier, I found and forked a GitHub repo as a place to start.

That API supported a specific Broadcom chipset used on older Raspberry Pi boards, but I have a Pi 3B+ and a much newer 64bit OS, so I needed to go another way.

The pigpio libraries and dev libraries are available as Debian packages, so installing … Read the rest

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The VM205 Oscilloscope and Logic Analyzer, Part 1

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1. Initial steps.

On little more than an impulse, I purchased a VM205 Oscilloscope and Logic Analyzer shield off eBay for thirty bucks. My thinking was that if I could reverse-engineer the remote control protocol on a cheap LED ceiling light, I could build some sleazy Teensy hack to control the light colors through HomeAssistant. The VM205 gets its own entry because it’s a project in and of itself, and looks to require some porting, especially if I want to run the latest OS. Fallback, of course, is to run an OS and kernel recommended in the VM205 docs.

The … Read the rest

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Trial by Flame

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Making the most of a 30-day trial of Autodesk’s Flame.

Flame is really the ultimate badass in finishing work, where all the elements of a TV show or commercial, or even FX shots on a feature film come together and get baked out in all the different resolutions and formats required to deliver it to a client for broadcast, stream, or theatrical release, or whatever else they can think of.

To that end, Autodesk lets you drive it around for 30 days before they hit you up for a subscription, which is substantial, so if you’re attempting to learn it, … Read the rest

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VEX and Attribute Subscripts

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So many things about Houdini can trip you up, then eat your face off while you’re down. Today’s example is the VEX dot operator. I haven’t ridden the VEX horse into battle in a very, very long time, and like any horse, if you’re not paying attention, it’ll do what it wants, not what you want.

I’m a visual person. I see stuff and make choices based on that. So what I see in Houdini’s Geometry Spreadsheet are columns with headers like this:

P[x]    P[y]     P[z]   direction[0] direction [1]  distance

P is a vector with 3 components. Any time you … Read the rest

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Houdini HDA Python Module and You

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I’m getting reacquainted with Houdini of late, and getting back to grips with Houdini Digital Assets.  these are encapsulated chunks of pipeline that support all manner of neat stuff, and they’re usually full of Python scripts that do interesting things with whatever’s going into and out of them.   But they can have some glitchy behavior.

One that’s now bitten me in the ass twice (6 years apart) is the fact that the HDA’s Python Module has no idea where the hell it is.  It doesn’t know where it’s instantiated and it doesn’t know anything about what’s attached to it, or … Read the rest

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Zen and the Houdini Text Editor

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houdinifxSplash.jpg

A career ago, I was a Senior Houdini Artist and Senior Creative Consultant for Side Effects Software, makers of the the amazing DCC package, Houdini.   Houdini allows you to do all kinds of amazing stuff, and a quick Youtube or Vimeo search will reveal the mindblowing works of talented artists who have picked up this oddball workflow and run with it at the speed of light, proving that it’s not just for FX pipeline nerds anymore.  There’s also a lot of stuff that may not look great, but don’t let that put you off: people are sharing their learning … Read the rest

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Threads and Cores.

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Eventually, I’ll need to upgrade my dev workstation from the 4-core Intel Core i5 I have now to something a little speedier and beefier. Unreal Engine 4 likes to recompile its shader library often enough that it slows me down, and building for multiple platforms can take its toll as well.

I think I’m going to go AMD this round, probably a 12 or 16 core Threadripper, and in my poking around, I found this article by Sebastian Aaltonen, founder of Second Order Games and formerly a lead rendering engineer at Ubisoft.

Lots of solid advice and test results in … Read the rest

Read More » Threads and Cores.
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