justinschrader

For those of you that are still wondering where I've gone off to work, it's here:

Lux Animals is about 7mo old, perched on the 11th floor of an office building 4 blocks from Times Square. I've been around since day 1. The work is very challenging, but it's great to be able to switch hats from week to week. So far I've done just about everything - 3d dynamics using xPresso, design, animation, as3, game design, conceptualizing, etc. I hope to update my portfolio and this page soon with some work we've sexed up, and a demoreel should be out soon. Check out our site.

Edit: still been keeping very busy with the company. Probably wont be able to update this site for a while, but I eventually want to switch the site to AS3 and make a few cosmetic, optimization, and content additions while I'm at it. Now if I could just find that illusive free time...

Today, all I wanted to do was make an animated cloth with a little thickness (for realism) with 1 texture for the front and another for the back.

This is impossible.

With thickness set to 0 in the cloth nurb the textures map correctly, but the second I add a thickness greater than 0 it maps 1 texture for both sides. Why? To get around this I've even tried a thin rectangle to simulate thickness. It kind of works, but even with self collision on the back of the cube goes through the front resulting in a weird morphing texture jumble. I also found another workaround using a proximal shader, but this is less than ideal and the level of control with this method is not even worth it.

I guess Maxon didn't think anyone would ever want an animated cloth with a front and back texture -_-

EDIT: If anyone found this post while looking for the solution, someone told me about a work-around using negative thickness and it works! I had no idea you could even give a cloth a negative thickness, but hey, as long as it works I don't care.

Plane in Cloth Nurb with thickness at 0

Plane in Cloth Nurb with thickness at 1

Thin cube with cloth tag and self collision

Another simple class that can save some time.

Class:

package {
public class Random {
public static function range(minNum:Number, maxNum:Number, round:Boolean = true) {
if(minNum < 0) {
var posMin = (minNum*-1);
var range = posMin+maxNum;
if(round) { return Math.floor(Math.random() * (range - 1))-posMin; }
else { return Math.random() * (range - 1)-posMin; }
} else {
if(round) { return Math.floor(Math.random() * (maxNum - minNum + 1)) + minNum; }
else { return Math.random() * (maxNum - minNum + 1) + minNum; }
}
}
}
}


Implementation:

import Random;

// range(low:Number, high:Number, round:Boolean = true)
trace(Random.range(10, 15)); // 11
trace(Random.range(-100, 20)); // -56
trace(Random.range(-100, 20, false)); // -32.13413403


Just a quick class that might be helpful to some. This class uses a regular expression to accurately check the validity of an email address. I use this with all my "send to a friend" scripts.

The class:

package {
public class EmailValidation {
public static function check(email:String):Boolean {
var emailExpression:RegExp = /^[a-z][\w.-]+@\w[\w.-]+\.[\w.-]*[a-z][a-z]$/i;
return emailExpression.test(email);
}
}
}


Implementation:

import EmailValidation;

trace(EmailValidation.check("icd2k3@gmail.com")); // true
trace(EmailValidation.check("icd2k3gmail.com")); // false
trace(EmailValidation.check("icd2k3@gmail.c")); // false


It's been almost 2 weeks without cable or internet in my apartment. Doesn't sound like much, but try it sometime, it sucks. I was able to steal a wifi signal from across the street for a while, but they must have got wise to my doings. I'm writing this at a Starbucks.

Which leads us to the reason I don't have internet or cable in the first place: Time Warner. I think I've been on the phone with them more than all of my family and friends combined this week. Because my apartment building is actually 3 buildings joined together, my service address and mailing address are separate. After 3 phone calls a couple weeks ago to Time Warner a phone tech finally told me that they can't verify my address and that they needed to send someone out to confirm. Something which he added could take over a month.

Now, for reasons beyond my understanding, he said I could expedite the process by taking a copy of my lease to the Time Warner office. No matter how unnecessary I thought it was, I really wanted service and I was getting tired of being transfered countless times. So I went down to the office.

The lady at the office was very nice and helpful and said getting service hooked up should be no problem so she scheduled a tech to come out on Tuesday between 12-4. Meaning that they actually want you to sit around your apartment for 4 hrs waiting.

MINI-RANT (woo) -> For some reason, the tech couldn't make the huge 4hr window he was given, which is strange considering that Time Warner expects you to be able to be available during the 4hrs on top of your job and whatever else you may be doing that day. However, a technician, who's job entails making that 4 hr window is "running a little late" and it's no biggie. For a company as big as Time Warner they should really get their shit together.

He was over an hour late *facepalm*

And now for the climax, after waiting around my apartment for 5 hrs, he tells me there's no way he can hook up my service and that he has to schedule another tech to come out the next day to survey the area. Great, another 4 hr time window. I tried to call and make a complaint, something they must really not want you to do because I was put on hold and transfered 3 times.

At least this next technician made the time window and figured out what needed to be done.

So I asked "well can you do it?"

"Oh no, I'll schedule my supervisor to come out 12-4 on Friday, he'll look it over and schedule a crew to come out, but that could take months"

>_< AHHHHHHH

Maybe someday I'll have connection, I can always dream.