D A L I F . C O M - 3D

Nearly there... nearly

nospam@example.com (Dalif) — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 08:06:57 +0200

Filing this under 3D as well, just for kicks.

I'm about to quit me job, ladies and in a broader sense gentlemen. That's right. Quit it. I'm fed up. Had enough. Sick of the very notion of going in to this place everyday. I've written my notice. Just waiting for the oppertune moment to hand it in. It's not gonna be pretty... I'm sure of it. It's gonna be met with, first of all, surprise. Then secondly it'll be met with slight anger, and all sorts of arguments will be put up. I'm prepared for all of them, and I don't really care about burning this particular bridge behind me. It's a shit bridge anyway. Sick of it to be honest.

What will the future hold for me? I dunno for sure. I've half typed out some applications. I'm trying out for a few gaming companies, altho I doubt I have any sort of skills they'll be looking for. Gonna stay in touch with a few of the blokes from this current job, and see if I can combine their forces with a few other friends of mine. Get a game going or something. That'd be pretty cool, to be honest. And that's sort of what I've wanted the whole way through. Make games. I'll be applying at a few hotels along the way as well. I mean, that's almost a surefire way to get a job (for me anyway).

Lastly, we got a new guy working with us the other day. He was hired as a salesman, but we all know nobody gives a fuck about our company, because our boss is a dick, so... he's gonna end up being another graphics artist in here with nothing but the most lame of jobs to do. I don't like him, of course. He's quite a bit older than me, which, as such, is fine. But he's just... I dunno what it is. He seems geeky in the non-cool way (yeah, there IS a cool way to be a geek). And he has his cell phone in a chord around his neck. So it's dangling in front of his rather large gut. Annoying! Sometimes he stuffs it inside his shirt, so there's a large sqaure outline of a cell on his rather large gut, poking through his shirt. Gaah. Also his beard is greying in an annoying manner, and his hair is combed back in an annoying manner. Hmmm... perhaps it's just me being fizzy with this job? Perhaps, but he's still annoying.. EVERYBODY IS!1111111111 It's quit time.

Another technologic era is coming to an end

nospam@example.com (Dalif) — Thu, 17 May 2007 00:26:23 +0200

Yeah.. I bought a new comp today. After having this bad boy I'm on now for just over 4 years, it's time to cave in, and fork out some dough for a new one. It's gonna be thousands of hertz of Processor goodness, coupled with some killer graphics, some nice memory and a spiffing case to keep it all in. Yup, the start of a new era. But I'm gonna miss this old one tho.. it's been like a brother to me. Always there when I needed it, and to be fair, I haven't had problems with it for years. It's the most stable install I've ever had. Runs like a doozy... most of the time. After a defragmentation of me old harddrives, I've gained like 40% speed back.

Anyway, the new box will arrive Friday, which means I'll be occupied for the weekend. I'm off work for 4 full days, and it's just needed bigtime. Just going to bed at night, and knowing I don't have to wake up at a specific time the morning after. mmmmm one of my favorite feelings in the world.

On a slightly related, but not really, note; I've considered starting to play poker, just so I'd have something to do when I was at home anyway. Online that is. But I'm not sure I'd enjoy it a whole lot. Also, when I get my new box, coupled with this new LOVELY monitor, hopefully I'll be able to do a lot more 3D modelling at home. And that's gonna be swell. Should keep me busy at night, I hope. I'll pot pics and updates on the gear, as soon as I've got it. Cheers!

The Goodbye Screen

nospam@example.com (Dalif) — Mon, 14 May 2007 19:29:23 +0200

I'm chalking this one down on a few categories just for kicks.

Anyway, I bought a new monitor the other day. So far it's been my 19" Samsung 930BF that I got for Christmas in '05 along side my old trusty Sony Trinitron 17". The 17" from Sony was the first monitor I ever bought while actually caring about what I got, and it's served me for 6 years now. It had a brief 1 year hiatus, where I thought I had lost it, but on the very day I was going to throw it out, I decided I might as well yank the backcover off, and have a look inside if I could fix the problem. Turned out, I was able to fix it afterall. Messing around a bit, I found a little fuse that I figured I'd try changing. Lo and behold, the monitor worked like a charm after that. But now, it's over... and I'm gonna miss it. Had some good times with that monitor.. good times indeed. Remember when I wanted to watch an episode of Scrubs, and the monitor played it for me? Yeah I remember too.. like it happened yesterday. Good times.

Anyway, the 226BW 22" monitor from Samsung will pick up where old Sony left off, and so far things are looking splendido. Found out tho, that I only have one DVI and one VGA exit on my gfx card, so.... when I buy a new comp, I need to make absolutely sure the fucker has two DVI exits.. because running vga on a nice tft monitor just doesn't quite cut it.

I'll post an image later on, when I've decided it's time to yank up the old cam and snap a pic. Got around to vacuuming the place, and I must admit, it sorely needed it. So now that I have a new monitor for working with 3D, step 1 in my masterplan to better my skills have been completed. Step 2 is a little more daring, as it requires me to fork out quite a load of cash, but I daresay it's for the best. Step 2 is buying a whole new comp. I'll update you guys on the specifics later on. For now, I'm gonna marvel at this gem... crystal clear image, crisp colors and a sleek design. Yeah.. I'm happy.

More praise makes Dalif a working boy

nospam@example.com (Dalif) — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:00:37 +0200

Had another customer at the office today. A guy for whom I made 2 exterior shots. It was some buildings they want to build and sell up north somewhere. Butt ugly if you ask me, but then.. nobody did. So I just modelled them. As usual, Jakob had nothing but badmouthing left for the project. And while it was kind of ugly, and I know he's only joking, it was still nice to hear the client be very happy about it today. Had a few points he wanted to do, and then we talked about adding some more stuff... but overall, he was pretty happy. That's two strikes for Dalif.. let's hope he can go for the shutout.

On a completely seperate and unrelated note, I wanted to show off my recent tweaking of foobar2k, a music program a la winamp I recently installed. It's open source and has a lot of cool features. Special thanks goes out to Grue for giving me a hand in configuring it. It's not completely done yet, but I think it's pretty damn nice as is. Anyway, that's all for now. Enjoy!

Portfolio Upgrade: Borupshave

nospam@example.com (Dalif) — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 12:24:01 +0200

Just finished the final touch on my latest job at work. Check it out in my gallery, or go directly there by clicking here.

Work taking a step up

nospam@example.com (Dalif) — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 19:35:35 +0200

I've been complaining about work a bit on here before, I think. And with good reason (if I do say so myself). It's been about as much fun as a kick in the groin to work there the last 6months. And while it's still only beginning, at least I was assigned to an actual job the past week. One that was concluded for my part today. And the best thing... the people who were paying for the images loved them. They didn't have a single problem with it. I was amazed, and proud at the same time.

Jakob, my mentor in there, was doing the actual presentation. He's a good guy, but he has a habit of being too negative. I know he's joking most of the time, but when you hear your work is shit for the 5th time in a week, it still sort of gets to you. And yesterday, I had forgotten to correctly configure the cameras, when I send the pictures off our renderservers, so they were basically unusable today. Fair enough. So we had to go with the renders from the day before, that, while fine as such, weren't exactly how we had imagined them. But that turned out to work to our advantage. The people from the real estate agent were awestruck with the images, and the realism. I guess that's the cool thing about doing something that not a lot of people can do. They are almost always amazed by your work.

It took away a lot of the selfdoubt I, unfortunately, am prone to feel. When I looked at the images, I felt they were dull and boring, and just plain ugly. I didn't feel like I did them as well as I should've and that the others working there could've done them better. So hearing people being overly excited about my work, really gave me a confidence boost. It was damn nice, to be honest. And I couldn't help but feel a little gleeful towards Jakob. I never boast or gloat, but I couldn't help smiling and sort of wanted to say: see.. they did like them afterall. But I didn't. That's not my style.

I'll upload the pictures to the gallery when they're completely done. On a related note, I just got a note from my boss that I'll go up one notch on the pay-scale come April first. That's good news, if I've ever heard any :)

A whole new world, and I'm falling behind.

nospam@example.com (Dalif) — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 03:09:28 +0100

This comp I'm on atm, writing to you all my delightful and insightful posts, has been with me since spring of 2003 (roughly). It's been a good friend in my hours of despair, and helped me accomplish a lot of things. But sadly, I fear our ways may part in the not too distant future. Was introduced to a new program at work today, one that I had heard about, but never tried. It's called Mudbox, and it's an excellent, small and easy to use tool for doing fine tweaking and dynamic 3D modelling. I exported an alien hand I had been modelling to the program, and started getting things into shape. Made a somewhat realistic looking hand into a very true to life hand, with wrinkles, crinkles and curves and what have we. I was very surprised at how easy this program was to use. Now, my comp at work is a piece of shit. It's the worst comp in the entire company. Not sure why I ended up with it, but there we are. However, it was able to run this program and have me model the hand, with no problems. The same can't be said about my home comp. And since I can't hardly model anything in max on this comp either, it's nearing an end for my friend here. Sad as I am to say it. Now all I need is somebody/thing to finance a new comp. I'm gonna need a fast and powerful one, since I'm reading up on animation, and ideally will get started with that soon. And I'm also considering a larger monitor.. a good 22" widescreen would do the trick.

Oh the dreams...

Tossers

nospam@example.com (Dalif) — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 10:00:25 +0100

Damn other people can be annoying sometimes. I hate being asked to do something, that the person who asks me knows I've not done before, but still expects me to work fucking magic, and just allakazham a finished product up in 5minutes. I mean, sure I'll do it, because it's nice to try new things, and learn. But it's not nice when the learning curve is 5minutes, where it should be 2 days. And what really bakes my noodle is, when the guy who asks me to do stuff acts like it's the easiest thing in the world to do, and the only reason he isn't doing it is because he's busy doing something totally irrelevant and pointless. When everybody knows it's really because he can't do a damn thing himself.

But, alas, I managed to finish it, and I'll display it here later on, for the world to see. It's by far anything amazing, but it's the first one of it's kind I've done, so that counts for something. All great people had to start somewhere, you know :)

First day, new life

nospam@example.com (Dalif) — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 09:48:21 +0200

Yes! I am no longer a student of 3D, but a full blown 3D graphics artist with a job. That's right folks, today is "graduation". In other words, today I work for pay, and not for pleasure... ok that's perhaps not the best way to put it, but what I mean is, I work now.. work. For money. End of the month, I will no longer be extremely poor. I'll be a guy who just doesn't have a lot of money :)

It's nice to know tho, that from now on, things will improve financially. It may be hard, seing as there is a lot of work to be done, and I'm still not as experienced in 3D as I'd like to be, but again... life's a work in progress, is it not? And while I'm not a student as such, I'll hopefully never stop learning. And when I've mastered this particular branch we're mostly dealing with here, I'll ideally opt for different paths, like animation and moviemaking. That's there the real fun is.

Anyway, just a quick word, indicating that this day will mark the beginning of my "professional" life. This is the area of interest, I'll be dealing with most of my life. That's good to know somehow :) I'm gonna go out and have a few beers after work, to celebrate. Cheers!

Switcharoo

nospam@example.com (Dalif) — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 10:17:39 +0200

I was finally granted the right to a better machine at work. One that can render faster and more efficiently. I've used a decent, but still crappy computer for the last year now, and because I don't whine or complain much, it's been left as is. And I've not minded terribly. I don't usually mind when I'm not the first in line for new stuff. As long as mine works, I'm ok. But my co-workers, one in particular who whines a lot, got something new last year, so I decided I'd like to get something new now. Well not new, but better. I finally did two days ago, and now have the task to set it all up. That's fine as such, but damn... this comp I'm on now is set up almost perfectly, and there is no way I can transfer it all, without forgetting something or missing another thing. I hate that. Ideally, I could just copy the HDD and let that be it. But it's not the best way to do it. Thankfully, I found an extension for firefox, that allows me to transfer almost ALL aspects of my browser setup. Prefs, extensions, bookmarks, plugins, themes etc. etc... just transferred it now, and it it got 90% or so. So that's pretty cool. mIRC I can just copy over, gaim I'll prolly have to do a vanilla install. Ain't too hard. Total Commander the same, not much set up in there yet anyway.

If you ever need to move firefox around, I'd suggest using this extension. Works like a charm.