I followed along in a tutorial diligently to create my first kind of complex rig. Solid enough model, great concept to try, good tutorial. Tried things on my own and found that duplicating shape keys in Blender 2.65 uses a different system all together.

Even after upgrading to the latest version, one project of mine was not behaving correctly in one of three views. No matter what I selected, the view was locked to center on the 3D Cursor in Blender. Fixing it’s a breeze, breaking it without knowing, however, that was harder.

After hearing that WETA and the boys used ZBrush for The Two Towers and Return of the King and contributed to the second ZBrush release with their advice, I thought, “Shit yeah! I’m getting that!” After Photoshop 6 many years ago, ZBrush was the second software I ever shelled out good money for. Its interface stared at me and ZSpheres floated around and I was utterly stumped. Totally fucking bewildered is more like it. With Release 4, I got all excited again – Pixologic was offering FREE upgrades if you could prove you were ever a customer. I could. I downloaded it to Windows 7 and again, its interface stared at me and ZSpheres floated around and I was utterly stumped. Now I was pissed.

Then, something happened. I visited Pixologic’s website ready to give this another go – Sculptris, a free download and “unlimited” software was available to “cut your teeth on” giving you the modeling tools without all those ZShits messing you up. It’s taken a while, but I have some good advice if you’re just starting out…

Does your new Textpattern installation invite and show comments three times? Just out of the box, the new Textpattern 4.5.2 is a gleaming machine of new HTML and CSS – if you’ve not designed your own CMS but used the default, messing with the Admin side of things can get that Comment Display to stutter. Here’s how to stop it…

There are times when Windows 7’s LAN Manager authentication level are such that your user name and password to access other network assets aren’t remembered. You can push all the interface buttons you like, it won’t help. We have to dig deep so Win7 remembers our password for some network connections….

There’s tons of ways to read your e-book and each device carries with it a file format it’s most comfortable displaying. Even if your Kindle claims that it’s PDF friendly, it might not display the way you want – or you’re stuck with a KOBO full of books you’d like converted to another e-reader’s native file type. What began on Halloween, 2006 called libprs500 to support SONY e-readers on Linux is now expanded and named Calibre to tackle almost all your e-book converter needs.

Quite a tough title to understand – far from being “average,” FDRTools Averaging method for establishing High Dynamic Range in a picture is ABOVE average, and today you get the reason you should shoot multiple sets of Bracketing, or multiple EO/0 shots of whatever it is that you would like to Tone Map since Tone Mapping is quite another thing.

Tough problem to come down the pike – Windows 7 64-bit Home Edition won’t show AutoPlay or AutoRun in Context Menu and Control Panel settings having no effect. CF or SD Card won’t load the AutoPlay pop-up! That’s frustrating and simple answers like checking Use AutoPlay for all Media and Devices in the AutoPlay settings in Control Panel are over-ridden by something that supersedes that location – doesn’t work! There’s a culprit down deep in the Registry. Fire it up…

A few days ago, my computer began opening a folder called Common when Windows XP starts. I feared the worst, but it’s mostly nothing. Making it stop is as simple and harmless as changing the name of the folder or deleting the folder. Why it comes up is of possible interest….

So dig this little Version 4 download teaser: ZBrush 4 is a free upgrade for all customers – even someone who purchased the very first ZBrush release 10 years ago. It is not necessary to have any copy of ZBrush currently installed in order to install version 4.0. If you have a license for an earlier version of ZBrush you will fall into one of two categories:…. Source Don’t know, don’t care? I’ll be brief about Pixologic’s ZBrush history…