iPain .....(3Gs)

Forget the endless dropped calls......

So, I just upgraded to the new 4.3 iOS from iTunes on my iPain (3GS, I'll be DAMNED if I am gonna upgrade to 4) and it brick'ed the unit. I upgrade the thing due to the last upgrades improved service sooo much. Dum, Dum, Dum,......

I did a restore and all my stuff came back (except my music as it's tied to my home iTunes and you can only have your music tied to one iTunes client - Suppose S'apple even knows what a client-server application does??? As they can't grasp the client/server concept and make all things available from all clients - STUPID, even STUPID'er if it is due to some restrictive agreement with MPAA.

HOWEVER, now the iPain will not connect to 3G, just stays on E (edge) all the time now.... There are a lot of things I like about my iPoop, but there are just too many things wrong and add the lack .....

Ah.... as I write this 3G just popped on.... SO must have been a ATT thing... I'll save comments on them for another rant.

Sad, but my contract is out on this thing in June and I am so NOT a S'apple iPain (iPoop) user any longer.

OK ....... If your a cool BIM'er, you must go to this

Great Scan to BIM conference = SPAR2011 in Houston, TX on March 21-24, 2011
http://sparllc.com/spar2011.php
It is well worth the visit if you need to see the latest and greatest in 3D LIDAR SCANNING and BIM conversions....

Below are some images of our recently BIMMIT scan to BIM process collected and created on the roughly 1.5 million sq. ft., mile long Terminal E facility of both the public and airside (three levels) at DFW airport here in Dallas and Fort Worth, TX

Awesomeness!!!

Test from my iPhone....

OK, enough with the Vray / MentalRay battle.....

OK, enough with the Vray / MentalRay battle.....

As far as Real-time goes Mental Ray wins.... because in the Unreal world it provides the most compatible texture in MAX for import into the game engine and as for our production team typically importing more than 20,000 static meshes, that ends the debate. 

Personally, Mental Ray wins in every other aspect of rendering as well.  We have had several shootouts between the V and the M renderers several times and it is always a draw, even when one side or the other has a more experienced render jockey. In the end when juried by the people that are clueless as to even what a renderer is; THEY CANNOT TELL THE DIFFERENCE.  (....that is especially true to the one person that counts, our client.)

Now if your creating what I call "Cheaters" 3D by rendering several stupid long images and then photshopping them together... then Vray your little hearts out. BUT if you create "Real" comprehensive 3D environments that can be directly imported into a 3D engine, then Mental ray is your tool.

Some new images.....

For my buddies over at cgArchitect.com ....

3d real-time model in Unreal 3 ARCHengine(tm) of Dallas Cowboys Stadium for HKS, Inc. architects

Model Specifics
   -38+ million polys
   -(secret) GB of textures
   -all dynamically lit
   -over 500 speedtrees(tm)

A trillion dollar deficit.....

A triilion dollar deficit is:

   - A stack of $100 bills 1,578 miles high
   - A bit more than $3,000 for every man woman and child in the USA
   - wow! 573,921 square miles of paper the bills are printed on (Texas is 268,601 sq. miles)


ok.... enough! (of this post and the deficit)

Kewl!!! Unreal 3 on the iPhone....

OK, this is really neet and we are playing with this right now. It's just a matter of getting our models down in size to be playable on the iOS system....

Also, coming up with the scenarios on how this applys to the designer/marketer in conversations/pitches or such. Definately a tool for the inpromptu marketing opportunity on the ole' DART bus or commuter train or airplane, restaurant, hotel bar, etc. when someone asks what do you do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzts8tsKuHs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3NwYj-zgJk


....Hi! what do you do?? Well, it's hard to explain, I develop architectural 3D presentations using a game engine..... huh, a game engine? OK, look here on my L33T iPhone ....see, that's what I do.

Oh!! That is way Kewl!!!

Lacie Drives = BAD

Just a heads up.... over the last several years we have been using various Lacie hard drives, RAID drives, etc.... Every one of them has failed within 24 months or so.

One word.

Revit.

Use it. Live it. Be it. ......or die.

I have lived from the drafting board, to mainframe CAD, to PC CAD; BIM is what was talked about 33 years ago.

You change one thing on the 3D model and all the pages are updated.

'nuf said.

Autodesk University.... musings.

Well another year has gone by and another Autodesk University has come and gone ('course I remember when it was called "Cad Camp" - sigh).

Revit is ruling the roost. MAX is a changin', and Autodesk is still buying every company I have been familiar with over the last 20 years and some very new ones as well. I think this may be a good thing as Adesk is finally getting a bit looser in opening their file formats; by letting other companies write file exchange with Autodesk cooperating with them (aka Sketchup and others) THIS IS A GOOD THING (if they keep this up I'll stop referring top them as Automess)

So it's back to work tomorrow..... Cheers!

New!!! Unreal Developer Kit released....

Epic Game UDK (Unreal Development Kit)
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/udk.html

All you architect/engineer real-time wannabee's
It's a good place to start ....

You can use MAX modelsYou can use it for all the things you think you can use it for:

It's a design communication tool - the best available.
Show the comprehensive design to the client..(the good and the bad )
Show the city the building in context...
Show the bank all the varied uses the building will have...... and on and on...


Good luck !