Jerusalem 2111

     So, I, Andrew Petersen, on behalf of Digital Fruit, will be making an entry into the Jerusalem 2111 video contest.  This is a contest for a video about what Jerusalem will look like in 100 years.  I plan to use this to showcase my talent in three dimensional design, and to help me work out some of the bugs in my render pipeline.  I hope this will be a great learning experience, and will help me to learn the development process for CG video.

Post 100!!!

     So, now that we have reached the mythical 100th post, I think that it is time to celebrate.  What better way to celebrate than to have a sale!  Any one who comes in to Digital Fruit and mentions the this one-hundredth post will get $10 off their next tech.  This promotion will run until the end of October, so any of you late comers on the back to school wagon, or just those haunted by the ghosts of fall, drop on in and get $10 off your much needed tech service.

You'll Be Missed, Brian Woods

     I know that I'm posting this late to be breaking news, but that isn't the point of this post.  This post is something of a memorial.
     I'll be honest, until my wife read me the article on today.com, I would never have known who Brian Woods was.  Now I do, and I'm sorry he's gone.
     Brian Woods was only 33, a married man, and an expectant father.  He was also the lead designer at game house Relic Entertainment.  If what I've read has any truth, he and I have a lot in common.  But the attributes I hope to share the most are love and bravery.
     Why, do you ask?  Because in Brian Woods final moments, that is what he exemplified.  Dieing in a car crash, he had the presence of mind and heroic heart to turn the vehicle he was driving just right so that his life was taken, and the lives of his wife and unborn child were saved.  As an expectant father, I can certainly relate to those feelings I'm sure he felt in those final moments, and I can only hope I would be so good as to do what he did in those same circumstances.
     To his family, my condolences, for I know he will be missed, and to Brian, farewell.

Eureka! I've Got It!

     Nightmare Before Christmas quote aside (I've been listening to the soundtrack way too much lately), I really have got it.  I've been having problems using Blender's built in distributed rendering to work in Windows, and I hadn't even tried messing with it in Ubuntu,  when I had a strike of brilliance!  The error message I was getting led me to think that my problem was in using a natively Linux program in a Windows environment.
     When Blender would load, it would tell me it couldn't open the file at such and such location, giving me a huge string of text that wasn't anywhere near what the proper file path was.  So, I went in, mapped the folder to a network drive on the other computers that I was using, and tried opening again.  This time the file opened without a hitch.
     Then I simple directed Blender to this new network drive for the location of the render, and voile, simple render farm.
     I know this post seems rather cryptic, but anyone who has tried to use Blender's built in render farm has probably spent time pulling their hair out because of it.  I hope this helps any young, aspiring Blender artists to achieve their dreams.
     Till next time, catch you on the flip side.

Checking In

     So, just checking in and making sure I keep all you fans out there updated to the goings on of Digital Fruit.  I'm in over my head, but here's the news.
     First, the Eeble cartoon is coming along fine.  I haven't had much time to do more animation, but character development and scene setup have progressed smoothly.
     Second, Epic, though still behind schedule, is moving along.  I'm getting help now with composing the score, and with story development.  We're working to polish it up and make it really shine.
     Thirdly, the tech side of things has been booming, with calls coming in daily.  This probably contributes to the delays in the other projects, but that's okay, its money now to fund projects later.  Some nasty bug cropping up on this end though, so watch your online habits carefully.
     Fourth, my learning of the 3D suite Blender is coming along nicely, and I'm finding that once I've found some research material, the learning curve isn't as steep as I originally thought.  I'm going to try and enter into some CG competitions here soon, and maybe Digital Fruit will get some kudos.
     Finally, web site development of digitalfruit.biz is kind of at a standstill.  All the studying I've done in Javascript has been hampered by the fact that I can't get any of my own code to work on a website.  I'm going to have to redouble my efforts and start from the basics again, going over everything until the problems with my designs become apparent.
     So, that's all for now, I'll write again with another update.

Props for Opera

     So, I'm sitting here writing a post awarding a browser the Digital Fruit seal of approval because only one of the Fab Five(IE, Chrome, FireFox, Opera, Safari), actually renders the Digital Fruit website near-100% with no fuss.  This award goes to Opera, which is the only browser I haven't had to fight tooth and nail, using all sorts of CSS tricks to try and get the website to work 100%.  If any of you want to know what I'm talking about, got to the Opera website, download and install it, and then go to digitalfruit.biz.  See how nice that looks?  That is the work of a good browser if ever I saw one.
     I'm now going to go and work on getting this site to look proper in the other four browsers. :(

Website Update

     So, its just a quick update today.  I've finally gotten the video mechanics for digitalfruit.biz up and running, and so now the hard labor can begin.  I'll post again when I have something a little more substantial.
     Talk to you later.

Dredging Up the Dead!

     Ha!  You thought I had forgotten!  But I now have a full second of test animation for the Eeble cartoon.  I'm also introducing two new characters into the Eeble cast, Mr. Carrot and Mrs. Parsnip.  Only Mrs. Parsnip will be making an appearance in this first cartoon, but as Eeble has an accumulated history in my creative works, I'm sure I'll crop up using him again.
     So, as a teaser, here is a sketch frame from the parts I've been working on.

     Talk to you next time.
     (Update, here is the link to the Digital Fruit TV section and the one second clip.  I know it isn't much, but its the first step forward.  digitalfruit.biz/entertainment/video/eeble)