My mum and my sister are the kinds of people that like buying presents. They like it when we come up as they go a bit nuts spoiling the grandkids rotten which makes for a nice full tree. Every year they ask me what I want for Christmas and every year I've told them the same thing: get something from Oxfam Unwrapped or contribute some money to the bek's New Cintiq fund (my Old Faithful 12WX is getting a bit jittery in its old age, but I need a replacement sometime in the not-too-distant future). So whenever I come home for Christmas I usually end up with a little pile of stuff.
We're reaching the end of the year so it's been a bit slack on the socially accepted learning front as everyone is a bit tired and over it. There's been a lot of playing going on and in our usual fashion the 2015 program has already been modified before we could even think about starting it. Instead of doing bookwork every day, we're alternating with cooking where the kids will choose a recipe, check we have all of the ingredients before commencing (and write out shopping list to be able to do something next session if they really want a thing we don't have all the ingredients for) and do it themselves from start to finish. I will help with/supervise dangerous things (such as putting things in and out of ovens and anything that requires cooking on stove top) but they are otherwise on their own.
And on goes the love/hate relationship with Linux. Setting up my Cintiq is one of the things that makes me really loathe it and want to go jumping back onto my iMac and ignore the possibility of art on Linux forever. My first attempt was an abysmal fail (I blew up Unity and had to spend a bit of time fixing it and it never completely recovered, and due to the nature of the child who owned that particular machine it ended up with Win7 on it). If I didn't need a Linux server for web dev (which is why I got the laptop) I would have just bought a MacBook.
Don't care about the rambling documentation? No worries, just copy/paste the script. You may need to change some button assignments for your setup.
This is probably not necessary but first I grabbed latest Nvidia drivers.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa -y
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-340
At 8yo's request: "Make him frown!" (all the bases are gender neutral)
Seeing something mildly disturbing
Shock horror! I could have opened its mouth more but I was too lazy to go back to object mode to show the rig layer to be able to grab the jaw controller
To get a point that was moved incorrectly for whatever reason in a shape key and needs to be reset to the "Basis" position, from Adhi on StackExchange:
Use Blend From Shape:
Kind of wish there was a slightly less arseabout way to do it but a way is better than no way.
Still shape keying. Base is partially amused.
So far I've got all of a left eye wink and a half smile. Once I got the left half smile right and figure out where the eyelashes go I'll mirror those shape keys and then do some really basic expression parts around happy, sad, angry and surprise which generally use the entire face. Then make some phonemes with help from this useful phoneme shape guide someone had thoughtfully thrown at the internet.
Sculpt mode is awesome for shape keying.
7yo (about one of 9yo's friends): He always chases me when I don't want to be chased and doesn't chased me when I do want to be chased! Boys are just like that!
me: It doesn't get any better as you get older.
9yo (watching the Speed Racer movie): It's really bad.
me: Why are you watching it then?
9yo: I'm just watching it so I can go "WHAT?!" at it.
/etc/apache2/apache2.conf - find the directory bits and make sure the /var/www one looks like:
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo a2enmod headers
Make sure all the site configuration files in /etc/apache2/sites-available have .conf on the end (especially if upgrading from previous Apache and it doesn't seem to be backwards compatible despite what the Linode library says).
Don't forget to sudo a2ensite all-the-sites.conf
Thought to do a quickie render rather than a screencap of the handstand splits, decided I couldn't be bothered fixing the lights at this stage so ticked the "Freestyle" box and left it at default everything.
It's pretty cool; I could almost pretend I know how to draw with this.
Vaguely related, grease pencil is the most useful thing ever put into a 3d app.
bek can rig, though I'm sure I'm probably doing it horribly wrong. It's a combination of rigging techniques learned in Lightwave and playing with the Armature modifier, with one tangent into using bendy bones (single bones with multiple segments) for the spine from the head down and then two bendy bones for neck and spine.
Had to put one more controller in to flex the spine in the right direction. The neck flexes one way (looking downward) fine but will not flex the other way (it's jaggy in this pose, effects can be seen if you look carefully at the neck), adding another shape to control the flex like I did with the spine didn't help and neither did my aforementioned tangent into bendy bones.