Mudbox 2012 x64 on Ubuntu 11.04

If you have installed Maya 2012 on Ubuntu 11.04, you can install Mudbox 2012 only, otherwise you'll need to install all stuff (flexnetclient, flexnetserver...) and check out if you have all required packages.

Maya 2012 x64 on Ubuntu 11.04

Maya 2012 x64 is incredibly fast on Ubuntu 11.04. Unfortunately Autodesk doesn't support Ubuntu and the packages we can download are rpms. Anyway, I'm trying Maya now and it works very well on ubuntu 11.04. Here the steps I followed to install Maya 2012 Hotfix 1:

Xrayunwrap 1.5 for 3Ds Max

I bought this small piece of software and I'd like to recommend it. Xrayunwrap is "a real single click solution to speed up work pipeline in the creation of UV mapping". It works fine and it's very easy to use. Below a couple of video tutorials made by RayLight.

Best regards.

MEM's Max2Maya - Maya viewport navigation in 3Ds Max

It's very uncomfortable to switch between Maya and Max because of the different viewport navigation styles. Depending on the project I'm working on, I like to choose between Maya and Max or rather use both of them. Unfortunately, if I work with one of two softwares intensely, it's quite difficult to go back to the other one, because I'm prone to use the last navigation style. As said here, I prefer Maya navigation style because it's fast, logic and easy to remember.

MEM's Max2Maya solved my problem smartly.

MEM's Max2Maya "is basically an alternate viewport navigation inside 3ds Max that tries to mimic maya's Alt + Click viewport navigation to some extent". Essentially MEM's Max2Maya is an excellent, free alternative of Switcher for 3ds Max, a commercial solution by digitalRaster.

I thought to use autohotkey to achieve the same result using a script like this one, but MEM's Max2Maya works fine with 3ds Max 2011 Subscription Advantage Pack, so why wasting time? 

MEM's Max2Maya will install a global hook to supervise mouse and keyboard inputs and send them back to Max.

Best regards.

LayoutTools 2011 on Maya Subscription Advantage Pack 2011

If you install this piece of software, you could notice that LayoutTools 2011 (formerly LevelTools) Documentation won't work. To fix the problem we have to open LT_generalProc.mel, search for global proc LT_help() and replace this string

"/maya/2011/LT_docs/LayoutTools.htm"

with

"/maya/2011.5/LT_docs/LayoutTools.htm"

Best regards.

New tutorial to start as an JDownloader Developer

JDownloader.org published a new tutorial to start as an JDownloader Developer. Very cool. I'd like to add a very simple feature: an audio alarm when captcha popup appears.

Best regards.

JSubs - Download automatico di sottotitoli da Subsfactory

Oltre che da Itasa, JSubs supporta ora il download automatico anche da Subsfactory. Purtroppo Subsfactory cataloga i sottotitoli in modi sempre diversi e il programma può fallire  la ricerca. Comunque questa opzione è molto comoda perché può succedere che un sito sia più veloce di un altro nel rilascio dei sottotitoli o che alcune serie siano supportate da uno solo di essi. Nella finestra delle Impostazioni è possibile scegliere la modalità di scaricamento: se si utilizzano entrambi i siti, JSubs cercherà i sottotitoli prima su Itasa e poi su Subsfactory.

Il programma permette ora di salvare un filtro per ogni serie TV. Cosa significa concretamente? Un esempio pratico: le puntate della stagione corrente della serie V vengono rilasciate con titolo del tipo V.2009.S02E04...avi. Analizzando il titolo, JSubs crede che la serie si chiami V 2009, mentre su Itasa e Subsfactory è catalogata semplicemente come V. Impostando il filtro per questa serie, si dice al programma di cercare la serie V e non V 2009.

Visto che il programma supporta ora entrambi i siti, ho aggiornato tutto di conseguenza: per esempio, l'RSS viewer scarica i feed da entrambi i siti e permette di scaricare i sottotitoli anche dal browser. L'interfaccia è rimasta simile, così come il comportamento di JSubsCMDL.exe, la versione da riga di comando utilizzata per il menù contestuale o programmi come uTorrent, che pure supporta entrambi i siti.

Un paio di note: JSubs è un programma JAVA, gli exe contenuti contenuti nel pacchetto sono Java Executable Wrappers, ricavati dai file jar. Sono più confortevoli per chi usa Windows e più facilmente utilizzabili in alcune situazioni.

Subsfactory non necessita di un login per scaricare i sottitoli quindi è molto più veloce. 

Nel pacchetto è incluso il codice sorgente (non sgrezzato a dire il vero, ma il tempo è quello che è), l'altra volta m'ero dimenticato di metterlo. Il programma è sempre in versione beta e rilasciato sotto GPL. 

A meno di grossi errori o di radicali cambiamenti dei siti, rimarrà così per un po'. Il prossimo aggiornamento riguarderà le subroutine per scaricare i sottotitoli in modo corretto da subsfactory ma non ho idea di quando potrò farlo.

Download pacchetto: JSubs v0.1.1b (binari e codice sorgente)

Risultato del controllo antivirus del pacchetto da parte di VirusTotal

Se avete problemi scrivetemi a bolli dot stefano at gmail dot com

Chiudo questo argomento con tutti i link degli articoli sul programma:

• Breve spiegazione del timer e del menù contestuale
• Utilizzo del programma con uTorrent per il download automatico dei sottotitoli

Saluti

CGPersia Toolbar v0.1.1

Version 0.1.1 was approved by Mozilla. This update will be delivered to users automatically and will be compatible with Firefox 4.0.*.

Changelog:

• Fixed small bug with escaping certain characters in dynamic buttons' menuitems.
• Removed 'Hottest threads'
• Added button for the blog
• Added the possibility to enable/disable each dynamic button  separately

Note: I added a button for Latest CGpeers Torrents but server seems to me to be not so responsive (sometimes the list doesn't appear loading the homepage) and, in any case, I have a doubt about this feature, so I removed it for now.

More to come:
CGBookmarks
New search engine

Best regards

bttv and fglrx

After installed the Linux display driver for an ATI Radeon HD 3450 on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx, bttv stopped to work properly. As said in a previous post, unloading and reloading bttv is a temporary fix that works. It makes me think that something wrong happens when modules are loaded. So I decided to blacklist bttv and load it at the end of each multiuser runlevel through rc.local. Using rc.local requires us to place the right command before the exit status.  I used this command:

/sbin/modprobe bttv card=1 tuner=0 radio=0 pll=0  gbuffers=4 gpiomask=0x23000f audiomux=0x230002,0x230002,0x230000,0x230000

at the top of the file. After that, bttv works fine but it's not a permanent solution.
As a matter of fact, an older kern.log lists this error (boot time):

(bttv0) irq 17: nobody cared (try booting with the "irqpoll" option)

...

(bttv_irq+0x0/0x4a0 [bttv])

 Disabling IRQ #17

Loading bttv at the end of each multiuser runlevel doesn't fix the problem forever but just hides it from me.

stefano@ARAGORN:~$ dmesg | grep bttv [      27.447360] bttv: driver version 0.9.18 loaded ... [     27.448437] IRQ 17/bttv0: IRQF_DISABLED is not guaranteed on shared IRQs

I suspect that a different pci slot for my tv card would solve the problem. We'll see...

Best regards

ATI Radeon HD 3450 & Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04

Driver radeon: I'm experiencing a lot of problems with this cheap card

VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV620 LE AGP [Radeon HD 3450]

using the driver radeon on Ubuntu 10.04: inability to use Compiz, slow flash videos, ridicolous performances in general. 

The main cause: KMS.
"Kernel mode-setting (KMS) shifts responsibility for selecting and setting up the graphics mode from X.org to the kernel. When X.org is started, it then detects and uses the mode without any further mode changes. This promises to make booting faster, more graphical, and less flickery."

Solution (for me):

1. Open /etc/default/grub in a text editor
2. Replace
   
   
   GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
   
   with
   
   
   GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash radeon.modeset=1"
   
   
3. Update grub2: sudo update-grub
4. Reboot

Note 1: Pay attention to grub2: in my humble opinion it's the worst software I have ever seen on Ubuntu.

Note 2: Not tested yet but the following fix should work fine:

echo options radeon modeset=1 > /etc/modprobe.d/radeon-kms.conf

If so,  don't modify /etc/default/grub.

Driver fglrx:  this fantastic installation guide explains all we need to know about the driver fglrx. I recommend to install the driver manually.

Note: if we installed the driver and, after the reboot, Xserver returns an error like this:

(EE) Can't load FireGL DRM library (libfglrxdrm.so)
(EE) fglrx: Failed to load module "fglrxdrm" 
(module does not exist, 0)
(EE) fglrx(0): Failed to load DRM library
(EE) fglrx(0): Preint failed
(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.

probably update-alternatives has not created symbolic links to the files in the fglrx directory because the very related gl_conf entry has been set to manual. we have to remove the driver, and change the gl_conf into automatic mode before a new installation with this command:

sudo update-alternatives --auto gl_conf

another lecture of interest about this argument here.

AFAIK, the unique issue for me with this driver regards the bttv driver: if I run tvtime, bttv returns a bunch of these messages:

bttv0: timeout: drop=29 irq=46/104431, risc=3261a4d4,
bits: VSYNC HSYNC OFLOW RISCI

Unloading and reloading bttv is a temporary fix that works for now.

Best regards.