Looking for work

I just wanted to put it out there that I’m looking for work, preferably in northern California in the U.S., though I’m willing to work pretty much anywhere that’s less than 2000 ft (600 meters) above sea level (for health reasons).  I can be reached at my email address, joeedh@gmail.com.

Thanks.

Integration!

I’ve been extremely sick the past few months, but Campbell Barton came to the rescue!  Thanks to him and several others (whose names I need to find and verify so I can attribute them too), bmesh is scheduled for 2.63.  I’m unspeakably grateful.  Bmesh has been a long journey, that involved three complete rewrites of the mesh code.  I did the first, Geoffry Bantle and I did the second, and I did the third using his excellent bmesh 2.0 kernel as a base.  Many others helped along the way.

Campbell and the others all deserve our thanks for stepping in to finish this third, final push.  Thanks to them, blender will have a fully industry-competitive mesh modeler.  Modeling has always been blender’s Achilles heel–but not anymore!  I’d also like to thank all those who donated to me over the years.

Update

I’ve been out of the loop for the past month.  I was diagnosed with a stomach acid problem, given medication, and told to do nothing for a month.  Unfortunately, I’ve been told to take another month off (apparently the problem was worse than they thought).  I should be fine afterwards, I just can’t do much of anything (including coding) until then.

Mercifully, Geoffry Bantle, Campbell Barton, and two or three others whose names escape me have really taken up the slack, for which I am very grateful.  Anyway, I’ll be back coding as soon as I can.  I also have a character modelling video tutorial coming from a friend of mine (I promised to do a video tutorial at Siggraph, but that didn’t happen; I decided to have someone with better modeling skills do it), so watch out for that.

Siggraph Fundraising Drive

I’m launching a last-minute fundraising drive for attending Siggraph.  My parents were going to contribute, but my grandmother had a heart attack, and we need to put her into an assisted living facility.  Money is going to be tighter, and donations or e-shop purchases would help a lot.

I’m setting a $1000 USD target.  If we reach half of that, I’ll commit to doing a talk at Siggraph.   At two-thirds I’ll commit to a video-taped ngon modelling demonstration, and at 1000% I’ll commit to daily bmesh demos.  Any other suggestions for ways I can “pay back” would be appreciated.

The donation deadline for fulfilling the commitments would be the start of siggraph (late donations are still helpful), but I’m going to need at least the first half fairly soon if I’m to go at all.

I’m still alive

I just wanted to say I’m still alive.  I’ve been sick for the past little while, but I’m still working on bmesh when I can.  Campbell Barton and Geoffry Bantle are helping too.  Trunk integration is closer then ever, just a matter of one or two big pushes when I get better.

Bevel

I’ve implemented bevel!

It’s not completely perfect–the rules for recursion are too simple, and vert/edge customdata interpolation (e.g. vgroups, edge creases) doesn’t work correctly (though uvs and vertex colors do).  It also doesn’t always get normals right.  Still, I had no idea bevel was such an awesome tool or I would have coded it ages ago.  I ended up not using Levi’s code (the old bevel), which was written in a prior version of bmesh.  It’s not bad code, but it since it was coded for 2.4x its a bit overcomplicated.

In addition, I rigged my Sakura character,  and fixed bunches of little issues in the modifier stack (though a problem with mirror at high merge limits remains).  Thank God for Nathan Vaghdal, Campbell Barton, and rigify.  It makes rigging easy.

 

Status Update

After much real-life drama, BMesh is now solidly moving forward.  I’ve fixes bunches of bugs, synced the branch with latest trunk updates, and I’ve even started a modeling project to further identify and fix issues:

She’s a character from Naruto Shippuden.  It’s a real challenge; reference images are completely useless, I found it vital to watch the anime itself, and pay attention to the underlying volumes  as she moves.  It’s fun, since anime characters do have a consistent form, but you have to watch them move to see what that form is.

Anyway, things are much more stable/usable now, although there are probably a ton of bugs I’ve not found yet.

Update

Things have been a bit hectic lately.  I’ve been living with my parents lately; the winter here makes me extremely sick, and I wasn’t able to move to where I spend winters before the weather changes (I’ll be heading over there in three days).  This happened last year,  and after the move I got much more work done.  I expect to bounce back relatively quickly this time as well.  I apologize for the delay and not answering comments/emails.

In other news, I have all the tools I need to fully stabilize BMesh–it required writing some a (extremely hackish) unit testing framework (it’ll work for me, but is not a competitor with Leaf’s SoC project)–and I expect to move much more rapidly.

 

Blender Conference: Need Donations!

I’ve decided to go to BlenConf this year, so I’m starting a donation drive to help pay for it.  At BlenConf, I’ll have access to key developers to finalize trunk integration plans, and a great many artists for testing.  I should be able to resolve a great many issues, and work with other developers to best plan out trunk integration.

Any donations are much appreciated!  As an incentive, whoever donates first (at least $35) gets a free BMesh t-shirt!

Status Update And Possible Sprint

BMesh is nearing completion.  I’m currently doing another merge, and I’m aiming to do an intense testing sprint in the near future.  My life is rather hectic at the moment, but hopefully I will get bmesh production-ready as soon as possible.

I’m currently in northern Utah for health tests.   I’m planning to head back to northern California (Sacramento) in a few weeks.  If anyone knows of competent blender modelers  in travel distance of Sacramento, I’d appreciate very much if they could leaves comments or email me so I can start making contacts (don’t post email addresses though).

I’m not sure of an exact time frame for completion (some unpredictable things came up) but hopefully bmesh can be merged into trunk sooner rather then later.