mattestela

Amazing discord community

Realised I haven't made a post here for a while, I'd say the biggest thing of note since last writing here is how the discord has taken off. I mainly use the discord to occasionally text chat, post a link, but there's a vibrant core community now who are active 24x7, and have especially taken the voice chat...

More tops

Been on a tops spree at work last few weeks, have gone from seething hatred to quite enjoying it. Lots of rough edges still, but has definitely enabled me to get a LOT of work done that would have been very hard otherwise.Updated a lot of the tops notes, added examples, have a read:https://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/index.p...

New job, new focus! Git and Hda's

Hey all,As you probably heard by now I've taken a new job with Ryot focusing on AR and realtime. I've had to hit the ground running on some areas I wasn't too familiar with, but was probably well overdue for covering.Most places I've worked have used git in some form, occasionally I'd learn just eno...

PDG/Tops

My next wave of activity has been around PDG/Tops. We need to get farm support going for our students this year, so I've done a lot of investigations around Tractor support within PDG.It's been a bumpy ride, but it feels like its calming down, and I've learned some other important PDG bits on the way. Inter...

The mandatory update on sales tax

I assume you've all seen this by now, Patreon HQ is sending me increasingly panicky messages to remind you all about this update, so I've copied their form letter and pasted it below as our Patreon overlords have demanded.Basically GST is coming. We're used to it in Australia, I'm guessing most other co...

cgwiki 2.0

Well, probably closer to 5.0 if you look into the full timeline going back to about 2001, but as far as most people know, 2.0.I installed MediaWiki in 2014, added some plugins and skins since then, but the core software hadn't been refreshed in 6 years.Dreamhost forced my hand with warnings that they were depreciat...

May updates

Hey all, I don't use this handy post thing enough, time to dust it off and say hi.So like everyone it's been interesting dealing with all this covid stuff. Our uni got 1 week warning to take everything online, luckily our IT stuff (all 2 of them!) are amazing, managed to get all 44 students and 8 staff onto Nom...

One more thing...

A few of you have boosted your monthly pledge, which is awesome, but not the point of my twitter post. To be clear I don't expect my current patreon folk to pay more money, I'm perfectly happy with whatever you're comfortable to pledge. It was more a drive to get any of the general public who are using the ...

Hey hey

Just thought I'd drop you all a quick note. How are you? Yeah? Oh I'm fine, thanks for asking. :)You might've seen my twitter post poking folk for Patreon support. I noticed I lost a lot of supporters over January which I understand; it's a new year, take a fresh look at finances and all that. I had ass...

Siggraph 2018

Well that was fun! Amazed that SideFx invited me for a second time, and even more amazed that I got to be part of a panel about the history of Houdini, which is crazy considering how little time I've used it. Still, managed to share some stories (and admit the first time I used Houdini was a cracked copy of v2 circ...

June update

Hey Patreots (that's a thing right?)So I'm 4 month into this new teaching thing, still really enjoying it. Interestingly I've noticed my wiki updates slowed once I joined the university. Most of the wiki updates were directly related to a production issue at Animal Logic, now that I don't have that pres...

New tiers!

On advice from my legal team (ok, a offhand comment from a friend), I've added $1, $5, $10, $20 tiers.There is absolutely no difference between them, no exclusive content, no tshirts, no one-on-one web chats, its just a easy way to set a payment level you're comfortable with.

Thanks!

Well that was a crazy month. The vex tutorial was pretty popular, I started a new job teaching at the UTS-Animal Logic Academy, and the new discord chat is a winner. Also there was an amazing increase in Patreon supporters, thanks to all of you who have signed up!Now that my main role is education, I might be able to s...

Updated discord link

If you use the one in the email link its expired. I updated the post on patreon but it doesn't re-send an email. Ugh, computers.Anyway, this link should work:https://discord.gg/AeFx88fAgain, don't share it around until I work out the auto-patreon-discord-bot-send-invites thing. :)

CGWiki Discord

Ok nerds, come at me:https://discord.gg/AeFx88fThat's a free-for-all link until I work out how to limit the invites and stuff, don't share it around for the moment.I think it should be possible to auto-generate custom links directly from patreon, I'll have a look tonight.

Speaking of feedback...

It's pretty simple to make a discord.I could see the vex tutorial benefiting from us all interacting, would you folk be interested in a private discord? Patreons only, keep it small, I rule it with an iron fist.

20 days of Vex

Well, 17 and a half at the moment, but thats the plan.I had a bit of a chat with Grant Inouye when he became a supporter, talking about how there's a reasonable number of Houdini folk who are comfortable with sops and dops, but still avoid Vex.Thinking about how to approach this, I was reminded of my current obsess...

Blades (last one I swear)

https://twitter.com/thecgwiki/status/960420648097955840... well, at least until the next one...Like an idiot I didn't save the file that made the gif, but I reverse engineered something similar from the flap setup.Main thing here was playing around with the wind tunnel options, it setups up a constant force, and se...

Last one, shockwave 3d_2

Aww, little fireballs, cute. :)Gif preview:https://twitter.com/thecgwiki/status/960269285003165697

more 2d pyro examples

Here, while I tidy them up and think of more interesting examples for the wiki. :)editOh, and the flap one too, forgot that! Tho I think I left all the previous versions in each file, so the shockwav3d file has all the bits needed to recreated the earlier files.Main thing thats interesting (to me anyway) was this was m...

Thanks for the feedback!

Lots of responses in comments, private messages, even some people on the q2a site itself, that's a pretty clear 'live the wiki alone'. Done.I think a S.O. style site has lots of potential, but as a few of you have suggested, feels like it'd be better on the sidefx side, or if they decide they don't ...

Wiki vs stack overflow vs future directions

First of all, I'm amazed at the update in people supporting me; something happened in the last month or two where there's been a tipping point, and growth is starting to get exponential. Don't know if it'll last, and its still not enough to quit my day job (far from it), but still, wow, thanks everyone ...

Rbd Leaves, Rbd creatures

A work challenge became a fun little diversion, became a super fun time hole.I just blatted all this down in the last 2 hours, have a read, let me know if anything isn't clear before I share this on twitter n stuff.http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/index.php?title=ConstraintNetworks2-matt

For loops

An odforce post (and some recent work stuff) led me to look at for loops a bit closer, started to sketch out a longer tutorial.Still a work in progress, needs more images, more text, more hips. If you have any feedback/questions, lemme know!http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/index.php?title=ForLoops

Back into production for a bit

I've been asked to help out with finishing Peter Rabbit, which is interesting in that I'm running shots (I haven't really run shots in years), and do simulation (I don't really like simulation, and simulation under end-of-show pressure, when I haven't done it for a while, is not ideal!).That said, a...

First stream! Sort of!

Nathan contacted me via Twitter, asking if I could help him with a particle droplet problem. The kids were quiet(ish) and I was keen to test the streaming, so thought we'd try a live session. I think it worked pretty well after a few teething issues.Skip to about 7 mins in, and probably play it at double speed, run...

stream test 2

test stream

https://go.twitch.tv/cgwiki/just kicking the tyres on all this stuff (obs, twitch, things), only just noticed that i can do it with youtube too, and its apparently pre-integrated with patreon, might try that next.

Twitch stream?

So apparently The Young People are into twitch streams. Along with fidget spinners and 'fast and the furious' films, these are things I don't understand cos I'm old, but I can appreciate others enjoy.I realised that while I don't have enough time to make polished Entagma style tutorials, I could pro...

Fake FEM with grains

Been a while since doing anything fun or silly with Houdini (work is keeping me busy with UE4 atm), but made this after some chat in the Houdini Discord chat. I think this might be the worst thing I've done to that poor pig.http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/index.php?title=HoudiniDops#Grain_fake_FEM