Today I had some hours to implemented the matrices. I found a little matrix class someone created so I don’t have to rely on numeric. This saved my day compared to the p00p I wrote for testing.

So feature wise the basics are there. Now it creates a comp with all the shapes. Or as alternative a couple of DFSH files.

Still on the Todo:
- optional apect ratio override
- linear polys
- the lua interface for easier access in fusion
- maybe a template for the comp so it will be compatible with other fusion versions

Not much left, we’re almost there. After that I will give it to certain people for beta testing. I will have to clean up, especially possible bugs for the public releases. Give me a message to labs bfloch com to apply for testing.

Stuff left out that might be in future releases:
- other primitives
- grouping
- maybe colors :-)
- direct creation of polys in fusion (would rely on pyEyeon)

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If you ever wondered what the “decomposeMatrix” plugin in your Maya installation does:
it decomposes a matrix. Say what?
You input a matrix and get the proper translate, rotate, scale and shear values.
Why the hell would I do this?

Here a nice scenario I encountered. I had a camera movement and wanted to add a layer of animation. It would be easier to animate if I “baked” the movement of the first camera and used a second camera with additional movement.

So I’ve created a group for all objects (except the camera) connected the inverseMatrix of the first camera to a decompose node and connected these transformation to the group.
Now I “baked” the camera movement and was able to create a second camera which I animated around the group. The first camera can be changed without affecting the second one. Neat stuff I wanted to share.

If you need an example tell me.

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Step by step it’s coming along. I’ve rewritten the main functionality of the SVG to fusion translator in python and added some functionality. I called this baby SVGet.
In general you should be able to import basic shapes and it even creates a nice comp for you! But there are some features like matrices / transformations which must be available to ensure that more SVG shapes are supported. Also only paths/polybezier lines are supported. I want to include at least linear lines, too. Cubic lines / B-Splines are supported by SVG but I haven’t seen an app that creates them. So no Cubic lines this time.

Shapes like circles etc. could be added in future but are not that important. Also I need to think of how to solve matrices with shapes like circles. Should work for translate, scale and rotate but as soon as skew or custom matrices are involved we have a problem. In this case a circle polyshape would need to take over. Not worth the trouble for now.

Also I don’t think that I will support colors in this basic release. Something for the future (or community). I want to concentrate on the paths now.

The public beta will start as soon as the “must have” features are included. This should be the start to close the gap between graphic and compositing department in fusion.

Now I can do gnus AND penguins

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studiodaily [1] hosts an interesting talk about editing systems and their future. Worth to watch (and quite entertaining, too).

[1] Alhpadogs Lounge on editing (studiodaily.com)

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The frameCache node in maya is very handy for delaying animations. This script makes use of it to created delayed transform animations or copies of such.
The partner script bfUpdateFrameCache updates them in case maya messed up while you changed the animation afterwards. Check this poor dummy animation for an example:

This was a great chance to test maya’s python bindings. Well they are a bit more awkward compared to mel. But as long as I can use pythons great oo concepts it is forgivable.

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I’ve put a little command line batch utility to the output [1] which enables you to easily change your IP address from within the commandline in windows.
Tested on XP SP3.

Usage:
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changeip.bat adapter static|dhcp [IP] [Gateway] [DNS]

Examples:
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Change Network adapter "LAN" to dhcp
changeip.bat "LAN" dhcp

Change Network adapter "LAN" to IP 192.168.0.1 (leave Gateway and DNS as is)
changeip.bat "LAN" static 192.168.0.1

Change Network adapter "LAN" to IP 192.168.0.1 (Gateway and DNS to none)
changeip.bat "LAN" static 192.168.0.1 none none

Change Network adapter "LAN" to IP 192.168.0.1 with gateway 192.168.0.2
and DNS 192.168.0.4
changeip.bat "LAN" static 192.168.0.1 192.168.0.2 192.168.0.4

Look for it under tools/other.

[1] output (labs.bfloch.com)

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Some geek info about the importer…

As you may have noticed from various sources I’m working on a SVG importer/translator script for fusion. I wrote a prototype in Qt (C++) and decided to rewrite it in plain python.

The status so far is that XML Parsing is mostly done and the linked lists are build. There are some steps needed to apply all transformation matrices to the path object which can be kind of tricky. I’ve ignored this step in the prototype to only parse paths within one path or without transformation. Actually you would need to merge down all paths to a single path which can be easily done within Illustrator. But I want allow support for conventional SVGs so “I will do the math".

On the other hand I won’t support color and gradient data. Also different shapes besides paths / polyshapes (B-Splines) will be ignored. The importer is written object oriented though so more SVG features can be added in future by myself or others.

Here again the screenshot from the working prototype. Since I’ve dropped Qt / pyQt for this tool there won’t be a nice preview in the final version. I didn’t want to force people to install pyQt to use this (yet ). But the script is planned to be usable as commandline script so you can embed it into your pipeline or do batch conversion.

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Welcome to my laboratory!

I feel like Dexter. This sub site will help to separate my private blog from useful stuff I create. Hope to provide you with great ideas, scripts, tools or applications. Feel free to comment!

/script links to this blog.
/output contains the files.

Also check out my /links section.
EDIT: Did I mention that there is a nice Atom/RSS feed?

Cheers
Blazej

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