Software/Hardware Gadgets

[Eagle]

Just experimented with it a bit. Must point out that I never ever used such kind of 3d-program before. So please don´t be too critical.

 

It´s a modell for an imperial cruiser card on which I´m working at the moment. The cruiser modell is based on a modell which should have been used in the movie "The Humanoid", but never made it into that movie. It looks very imperial because of the bridge design, so I felt it would fit perfectly into the SW universe:

 

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/8687/cruisercaprebil2.th.png

 

And those are pics of the model so far:

 

http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/4538/cruiser1ap5.th.png

 

http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/681/cruiser2ht9.th.png

 

Google Sketchup is really easy to use.

 

I´m curious if I ever can manage to put some textures on it or even import it into the game.

[Darth_Rob]

Nicely done Eagle. Thats better than anything I can do.

[Mad78]

Well done Eagle. Very good work for a first try.

 

You should try experimenting to see if you can texture it and put it in Reb using only SketchUp.

[Eagle]

Hm, thx, I will try to do that. Up till now I have no clue how much work this will afford to do that.

[Krytos]

Nice eagle!

If you can see what formats you can save it/export it as I might be able to take it and turn it into a Rebellion compatible file for you

[Mad78]

The program does export to .3ds but the file will need some tweaking before it can be used in Reb.

[Eagle]

Thank you.

 

I´ve made a new thread for this, so we can stay on topic here and can discuss all about the model there.

[Defender_16]

That ship looks decent Eagle.

Kinda like an old-old Republic ship. Not complaining just the colours make it look aged.

[Eagle]

And why not!? It could be indeed a really old republic carrier. That would be a cool idea for its background: An old carrier still in imperial service since the old days of the clone wars.

 

Thanks for the inspiration, Def!

[Eagle]

This might be of interest for all the modellers. Microsoft took over that company and so their 3D-Modelling Software "truespace" is now available as download ... for free! A software which was available for 600 $ untill now. Check it out:

 

http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/showpost.php?p=71696&postcount=45

 

All you have to do is register here. There are also some tutorial videos for the price of 79 $ each available as free download now.

 

In their forum you can find lots of hints and solutions:

http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/index.php

 

Fe I like that ATAT-Modell :

http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/showthread.php?t=5858

[Mad78]

T-t-t-truespace for FREE!!! I can't believe it! Must give it a try! Still I guess I will still end up using 3dsMax. Anybody here use Blender?

[Eagle]

When I tried to model that repucblic cruiser mentioned above, Colonel Olorin suggested to try Blender instead of Sketchup. I tried to cope with it but I failed. But I guess if you are firm in using editors and stuff you wont have any problem making models with it.

[Mad78]

I tried Blender but the interface is so innovative that I always feel lost. The thing is that 3dsMax's interface is so simple that its hard to change platform (though its a pity that max is only available on PC). Speaking of 3dsMax. I have recently been working alot on it. It may be time for me to post some new pics in the Art thread.

[Krytos]

Ok, so I've got an iPod Touch - don't worry though, I havn't lost my mind or moral upstanding as I didn't buy the thing (work gave everyone one for free).

 

So, the thing is, I hate a lot of things about it - infact here's a quick run down:

Pros:

*Looks pretty

*Touch screen is nifty

*Thin as all hell

*Solid State Hard Drive

*Free

 

Cons:

*Form over function, see bellow:

*Get COVERED in dirt, finger prints and grease. Within 5 minutes of people opening theirs at work the bitching started over the dirt

*Userbility isn't exactly as usable as Apple likes you to think. It's not intuative - as an office of 40 (that includes software engineers, programers, directors, artists, office admin) had problems getting the thing to do what they wanted without trying several times

*Touch screen gets dirty and is horrible to use with small things (like the "keyboard")

 

*iTunes. I can't stress how I HATE iTunes - but more the other crap that it installs, the bloat and that you can only use that software with the device.

 

Obviously lots of cons.

 

But the crux is, I've got the thing, work surelly would like to see me use it but I want to get rid of one big con - iTunes. Does anyone out there have any idea how to get around iTunes and maybe even some of the other crap. I'm thinking BS might be a good source of info here?

Does anyone know about this: Winpwn

 

I also found this image on Wiki, I'd love to turn it into that

[DarthTofu]

? What's so bad about iTunes? Admittedly, I don't use the program on a regular basis, but it works fine whenever I want to use it. The only annoying bit is that I can't transfer songs from iTunes to Windows Moviemaker without first running them through a converter, but somehow I doubt you have the same bothersome issue.

[Darth_Rob]

I have no problem with itunes. I use it since I have an ipod, and I generally like it. Though like Tofu said, you really cant transfer files out of itunes...

[Krytos]

iTunes, by itself wouldn't be that bad - but it's one of the most bloated pieces of software out there. It installs additional programs in the background (I'd tell you to look up Bonjour, as an example, on wikipedia, but conveniently the criticism section as been edited out - check the history if you want, there's a lot that's been removed), hogs resources (a test a few months ago and one in the office when we got the things found that it was using double the RAM and about about 15% more processing power than WMP, which isn't exactly a stream lined player), doesn't like to "play" with various formats thanks to Apple's DRM crap (but if you stick to MP3s, you should be fine), all the crap you have to fill in just to use it, the fact that without giving it permission it raids your system for information, it constantly does things without asking you etc. etc.

I could go on, but I don't want to turn this into a rant ... again

 

Now that I mentioned rants though ... looking into the iPod Touch and iPhone, I can't believe Apple have gotten away again with letting out shoddy products. Apart from the rather long list of product faults I've found, it's part of iTunes to back up the Operating system in case (more like when ) the unit stuffs up and you need to reload the firmware. Maybe I'm going to have to stick with iTunes then for when the thing craps itself. Which, again, occured to a few people the first time they tried to use it or tried to update it.

 

Then there's crap like Apple charging for the latest version of their firmware, which should have been shipped with the damn thing and not the broken excuse that it comes.

 

Oh well, it's still stuck in the box and will be until I find a solution that suits me better.

 

EDIT: Sorry, kinda turned into a rant didn't it

[Lord_La_forge]

It was a rant, but you're right. Bonjour is one of the most annoying things I ever had on my machine.

iTunes sucks. It's simple but also dumb (can't config anything, no advanced library functions...)

Apple takes user-friendliness to a whole new level. To a level where they can do anything to a user, just because they have the brand for it.

[Guest Scathane]

This Bonjour thing is new to me... However, you can read about disabling it here. For the rest, I must say that I prefer iTunes for managing and playing my music over most other programs. Of course, it might have something to do with the fact that I have an older iPod...

[Mad78]

I quite like iTunes. i use it on my Mac but I must say that for the Windows PC I do prefer to use Songbird or VLC.

[Krytos]

Well, I took the plunge and opened the thing. So far it's been a mixture of good and bad. Good: it's pretty and somethings are nice and the features are nice.

That said, using this keyboard is a royal pain, Internet browsing is very slow (and this is at home), there are no scroll bars unless you're scrolling, features don't work easily, and the touch screen doesn't work how you'd expect most of the time. There's more (good and bad) but I'll leave that for a real keyboard.

 

EDIT: Right, real keyboard! Ok, so I haven't used it as an mp3 player (yet). Control over features is lacking, you seem to have control for a bit, but a lot of options aren't available. Somethings are a breeze (which is great and gives the intended Apple feel), others are a pain in the butt - for example, changing the location for the weather app requires clicking a tiny "i" on the bottom right that you can't zoom in to make it easier to press. It was next to impossible to press and took over 5 minutes of mashing to get.

The web browser is quite nice, I never liked Safari for a desktop - but the iPod/iPhone version is nice for its purpose. Multiwindow browsing in the program is nice and streamlined, elbiet it suffers from something a lot of the apps have, small buttons/icons to press.

The touch screen is hypersensitive, and is a pain really. You accidently scroll around, touching the wrong letter when typing, moving to another letter and brushing the screen dropping in the wrong letter etc. Moving the cursor while typing is a nice idea, that doesn't work too well - you hold down on the screen and it magnifies where you're holding and you move along to where you want to type. But, in practice the thick and pretty border on the magnifying glass gets in the way, it's hard to be exact when you want to delete a letter or add in at a point and worst yet was using this website where I had to hold the cursor zoom several lines above the text to navigate on the line I wanted. Hopefully this issue is resolved with later firmware, else anything beyond browsing on the thing is rather pointless as writing a note is tedious as is.

The multi-touch is really nice, not the best I've used, but works well for most things - zooming in is great (and a must for a lot of apps) but zooming out is rather bad. Websites and apps with input fields suffer from this as the device doesn't know if you're intentionlly selecting a field or just trying to navigate. Nevertheless, it's smooth and nice and one of the better things I've run into so far.

The portrait/landscape ability is a nice touch, smooth animation and a treat for most things. The only complain I have is while using the net it decided to go into landscape and stay there even though I was holding the device in portrait all along.

Powering off is annoying (as you need to unlock the shutdown even after holding down the power button), though the screen locking isn't too bad (we'll see when I actually use it out and about.

And finally, the thing is bloody dirt already

Overall, I'm getting a feeling of form over function as expected - and honestly, the number of quirks and bugs I've run into already surprised even me.

 

Oh, and so far iTunes is on an old, sacrificed machine