Mon 30 Oct 2006
Come and see us this week at the Gnomon school! we are going to show ‘A Gentleman’s Duel’, the CG shortfilm we recently have finished at Blur Studio. After the screening other workmates and me will be talking about the techniques and tools we had to develop at the studio to produce it. Hope you enjoy it!
November 2nd 2006 at Gnomon School ( 7:00 pm )
www.xsila.com
www.gnomon3d.com
Thu 23 Mar 2006
Blur Studio, an Academy Award nominated digital animation studio, is seeking a C++ programmer.This position is responsible for the development and maintenance of tools to support the production process.
This position is an integral part of our production team, straddling the line between the Scripters and System Administrators. Responsibilities include the development and maintenance of our home-grown render farm software, asset management system and other tools integral to our production process. Previous experience developing multi-user GUI applications with C++ and PostgreSQL is highly desired. We love Free Software and extensively use Linux, GCC, Qt4 and other open source tools.
** Candidates with a strong programming background will be considered regardless of specific technology experience. **
This position is fulltime and on-site at our offices near the beach in Venice, CA.
About Blur
Blur Studio was founded ten years ago with one goal: To make an environment where artists can thrive and create great imagery. To get there we’ve walked a different road than most companies, and we believe it’s been a better journey for both our clients and all of the folks that work here. We’ve chosen to select work that’s the most creatively fulfilling vs. just bank account filling. We’ve chosen to grow our company with staff positions vs. hiring legions of freelance folks because we like to know whom we’re working with and want to build of atmosphere of teamwork. We’ve chosen to create the kind of environment that allows artists as much creative freedom as possible in a deadline-driven structure that promotes efficiency.
Blur’s technology infrastructure matches the artistic spirit of the company 100%. Of our three co-owners, one is the CTO, thus ensuring that the technology decision making loop remains tight and efficient. Along with the same creative freedom afford to our Artists, Coders have unprecedented access throughout the studio’s entire workflow to improve process, systems and quickly implement changes.
Check out Blur Studio at www.blur.com
Please send your resume’ and an example of your code to: tom@blur.com
In the subject line of your e mail please place: Re: C++ Programmer
Or by snail mail:
Blur Studio
Attn: Tom Dillon
589 Venice Boulevard
Venice, Ca 90291
Sat 26 Nov 2005
3ds Max References
References are like record of the relationships that exist between objects and elements of the scene. For example a Boolean-object is dependent upon its two operand objects, so anytime one of them changes the Boolean-object gets notified so it can calculate the new result, a lookat constraint is dependent upon the look-at object that is pointing to (target camera could be an example of this), or consider a simple sphere where the radius is animated, anytime this parameter is changed notifies the sphere object in order to make it bigger or smaller. References are not usually very well known by scripters, however Max architecture is heavily based on them, so I thought that some useful examples could help scripters to understand their utility. I've been playing with references enough to say that they can give you access to all the information you need from an element of your scene, areas that you couldn't access through getPropNames or subAnims.
How do I use references?
refs.dependents <MAXWrapper_object> [immediateOnly:<boolean>]
would give us an array of elements that depend of the object specified. Note that those elements could be objects, controllers, parameter blocks, etc... all of them are references to the object specified. If immediateOnly parameter is true, only the immediate dependents of the specified object would be returned.
refs.dependsOn <MAXWrapper_object>
would return an array of elements that the specified object directly depends on. For example if we ask a sphere what are its dependencies, it returns the transform controller, the sphere parameter block, and the layer where the sphere is located.
refs.dependencyLoopTest <MAXWrapper_object> <maxwrapper_object>
basically allows us to test the dependency loop between two references in the scene. For example if object A had a look-at constraint that points to Object B, and we try to create a look-at constraint for this object B, we couldn't use the object A as a target because it would create an infinite loop: I'm looking what you are looking, but ey! you were looking what I was looking , but ... wasn't I looking what you were looking ? ...
Example 1: Accessing to all controllers of an object
References become very handy in cases where you would have go through all properties/subanim/controllers/submaterials etc. Imagine you want to grab all the controllers of an object in your scene. The typical approach to this problem would be to get the subanims and go through them looking for controllers. But what happens if some controllers have subcontrollers or a controller depends of a different controller.
Example 3: Scene References
Here is a trick if you want to get almost all references that are in your scene:
As you can see, it returns an array of very useful references, that we could recurse to grab almost everything in the scene.
Example 4: Show me all!
Last week I noticed that there was an activeX installed in the 3dsMax root directory, it is called addFlow4.ocx so I investigated a bit more and voila! we have an Flowcharting activeX installed by default! very interesting to create flowcharts like the schematic editor. I was thinking that combining references with a powerful way to see them will make us understand much better the way 3ds max works under the hood, so I wondered what if I create the flowchart of the references in the scene, or for the selected object, or for the current renderer... This a script that uses both, references and the flow activeX and it displays the all references that are going on in the current scene.
I hope this helps, and people consider using more often references in their scripts.
Download: [ ReferenceViewer.ms 
]
Fri 15 Jul 2005
We are looking for a talented coder/scripter here at Blur. If you think you know everything about Maxscript, you love making artist's life easier, and even better, you have some experience writing plugins for 3dsmax, let us know! we have a position right here waiting for you.
I warn you ... you would end working with me though! 
but I promise that it will be in very cool and challenging projects and indeed with some of the most talented and dedicated people in this field.
Drop me an email if you are interested, or send your resume’ and an example of your code to Blur Studio, tom@blur.com
Diego Garcia Huerta
Tools Programmer
www.blur.com
(Diego 04 October 2005) We found Eric! but we are always looking for talented people so if you are interested send the resume anyway!
Mon 23 May 2005
I had never been in E3 Exhibition before, this year was the first time and I have to say that I'm very impressed, It reminded me like Siggraph's old golden days. I don't play videogames a lot but I always like to take a look at the last gadget in the market, and this year was indeed the perfect year because the anouncement of the new consoles PS3, XBOX2, Nintendo Revolution, 2006 sounds very promising!
During E3 I had the oportunity to take a look at what Blur did for the exhibition, "Hellgate London", "Aeonflux", "Company of heroes", "Shadow", etc ... I mainly worked on pipeline tools so people could previsualize their job before sending it to renderfarm, and a bunch of tools that improved the workflow considerably.
Here there are some pictures of the event:
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.