Problem with Google Images and Firefox - 2

By browsing the internet, my brother Massimo found out the solution for the problem described here. This problem is due to the router.

As explained here: 

"When image results are to be displayed, Safari and Firefox make multiple simultaneous connections to the host to retrieve them. This is usually faster than downloading one and moving on to the next and on and on."

...

"Some consumer-level SPI firewalls misinterpret the attempt to open that many simultaneous connections to one server as a "SYN flood" and block the traffic. Not good, especially when the connections are being made from your machine to an outside host, so the firewall is effectively blocking you from perpetrating what it thinks is a SYN flood."

The SYN flood attack is visible in the router logs. The solution:

"If your router allows configuration of its SPI firewall, you may be able to solve this problem if it has a setting labeled something like:

Maximum incomplete TCP/UDP sessions number from same host

On those routers, this setting is often set to a default of "10"; simply increasing this value to a much higher value - many have had good luck with "20" - will allow accesses to work as desired and will also allow some room for possible future expansion in the number of simultaneous queries made.

If your router does not offer such a setting, there's no solution other than to disable the firewall.

Note that any operating system - Linux, Solaris, even perhaps Windows 7 - could trigger the same problem. You can even generate the same issue in Windows XP by applying "speed tweaks" such as this."

Modeling a Cylon Raider - Entire model

Some screenshots of the entire model:

Cylon Raider - Perspective - Hires

Modeling a Cylon Raider - Central part

Yesterday I modeled the central part of my Cylon Raider. After the wings, this is the last part.

I decided to use a poly sphere to start sculpting the geometry. I chose to decrease the subdivisions axis to 12 and the subdivisions height to 8. At the end of the process it will be evident that these values are probably too low. I wanted to sculpt the piece as fast as I could, so I didn't need too much geometry. The sphere has been rotated by 90 degrees about X and Y. After that, I deleted the part filled with the yellow cross-hatching.

The "fuselage" is symmetrical, so it's possible to model half of it and then mirror on X axis. I decided to start the modeling process from the top  of the central part. The geometry has been scaled on the Y axis. The low poly geometry comes in very handy because it's possible to sculpt the shape easily. Obviously, it's possible to add some more geometry inserting edge loops.

The shape was finished extruding the border edges. I decided to extract some parts to handle the model.  I added some edge loops to  reinforce the hard edges and not to have weird results when  I'll smooth the shape The image on the left is the low poly model. It has to be smoothed but it's quite similar to the original one.

This is the final geometry. As said before, I understimated the shape, because I wanted to model it quickly, so I needed to smooth two times the low poly model. The result is good but this is piece of geometry is quite heavy. It should be retopologized, but I have not much time now and texturing the model will be a time-consuming process, so, probably, I will let the model melt my cpus.


Best regards.

Shelf buttons for loading and unloading Maya plugins

Shelf buttons for loading and unloading Maya plugins are very useful and, as a matter of fact, I use them every day.  I'd want to clarify that this method is not mine, but I don't remember where I read it, so I cannot give notice of copyright nor the right credits. I hope to correct this post as soon as possible.

Loading the plugin: we can copy (fixing the path to the plugin) the following lines to the Script Editor, select the text and drag it to the Shelf Bar:

{
    string $pluginFile = "c:\\path\\to\\plugin.mll";
    loadPlugin $pluginFile;
}

Unloading the plugin: same as above.

{
     string $pluginFile = "c:\\path\\to\\plugin.mll";
     if ( `pluginInfo -query -loaded $pluginFile` &&!
          `pluginInfo -query -unloadOk $pluginFile` )
         file -f -new;
     unloadPlugin plugin.mll;
}

Best regards.

Modeling a Cylon Raider - the wings

I have a couple of free days, so I want to start to model my last homage to Battlestar Galactica, one of my favorite TV Shows.

After the Viper MK II and the Cylon Centurion, it's the turn of the Cylon Raider.

I've found this blueprint as reference, so the first step is to crop all of the images in Photoshop. I will have four different images at the end of the process (top, left, bottom and rear) to import into Maya 2011 as image planes. It's important to use horizontal and vertical guides in Photoshop to resize correctly the images, because the references must have same dimensions.

First impressions: the original model is fantastic, I love the design and the final look, this fighter is really awesome. I don't know the authot but I'd like to pay him a compliment. It is interesting to notice that the model is composed of 4 parts: the wings (I can model one of them and then mirror it), the engines, the weapons and the central part. The fighter hasn't a linear design, but it's possible to break down it into 4 parts to ease the modeling process.

I decided to get started from the wings. I think the wings are the funniest and the most difficult part of this model. I'm using traditional methods to model the wing, nothing fancy: I get started from a box, extruded it a lot of times, added some edge rings and moved the vertices to match my reference images. I'd want to create a low poly model, because I'd like to animate a fight between the viper and the raider and obviously the raider will be destroyed.

Anyway, during the modeling process, I prefer to smooth the mesh to see if it's correct and perfectly rounded. This step helps me to notice that the bottom needs some correction.

In the meantime I decided to use the references as texture, so, in a next article, I'd like to share my method to project the images from a camera to create a new texture. First of all I will create the UV maps, then I will project the reference images from a given camera (unfortunately, it's not possible to use an orthographic one).


Best regards.