Prim horse's head

I'm currently making assets for my project Philippine history game.  An island environment is set in the 1800s and I would require horses for kalesas. So I started making a sculptie horse and here is a screenshot of my first head with test texture.

 

I used blender with the primstar plugin. Then the sculptie map was uploaded in a local OpenSim server in my PC.  I found working with prims really difficult as I am constrained to work with exactly 1024 faces. I can't add or subtract vertices, so this head took a couple of tries before I found an approach.

 I'll share the sculpt maps when the horse is finished. Next project are body and legs.

Genius G-pen 560 for Ubuntu Lucid

The configuration of the Genius G-pen 560 had changed for Ubuntu Lucid. The G-pen 560 is an aiptek pen tablet and requires the xserver-xorg-input-aiptek driver. Install it with Synaptic. then download my configuration files here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/u9z55zgiz1l9p88/gpen560conf.zip

unzip the file
copy 69-xserver-xorg-input-aiptek.rules to /lib/udev/rules.d directory
copy 10-aiptek.conf to /usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d directory



 You must be root to copy these files. You can use the following commands:

sudo cp 69-xserver-xorg-input-aiptek.rules  /lib/udev/rules.d
sudo cp 10-aiptek.conf  /usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d

 There is NO need to issue xinput set-button-map Aiptek 1 3 2 4 5 unless you want remap buttons, i.e. swap the middle and right mouse buttons equivalent on the side of the pen.

Reference:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AiptekTablet?highlight=%28%28AiptekTablet%29%29

Blender's new uv texture button is a bad interface design.

I really find the uv texture new button badly designed. When you're in object mode it copies an active uv texture but when you're in edit mode it creates a new uv texture. Why not just put a copy uv texture button so we don't have to remember if were in edit mode or object mode before we hit new uv texture?

There should be one function for one button, this has two. Very frustrating at times especially when you're engrossed in the work.

Blender 2.5 animation with shape keys

I'm trying to familiarize myself with the Blender 2.5 beta UI. I think it is better than the older UI, it just needs some getting used to.  Here is an animation of the default cube using shape keys.

How to create a launcher for programs that require a terminal command in Ubuntu

Have you ever encountered a zipped program for Ubuntu that requires a command to be entered in a terminal? And when you create a launcher with that command it never start. Then here's a tutorial for you.

• Right click Applications menu bar ->Edit Menus
• The Main Menu dialog box should open

• In the Menus panel select the folder of the application
• Click on the any item in the Items panel 
• Click the +New Item button
• The Launcher Properties dialog box should appear

• Type the Name of the application
• Then in the Command text box enter the following:

gnome-terminal --working-directory=[directory] -e [command] 

Examples:

OpenSim

gnome-terminal gnome-terminal --working-directory=/home/matangdilis/programs/opensim/opensim-0.6.9-binaries/bin -e 'mono /home/matangdilis/programs/opensim/opensim-0.6.9-binaries/bin/OpenSim.exe'

eAdventure

game editor

gnome-terminal --working-directory=/home/matangdilis/programs/eAdventure-v1.0-RC1-Multiplatform-English/ -e  /home/matangdilis/programs/eAdventure-v1.0-RC1-Multiplatform-English/run-eAdventure-editor.sh

game engine


gnome-terminal --working-directory=/home/matangdilis/programs/eAdventure-v1.0-RC1-Multiplatform-English/ -e '/home/matangdilis/programs/eAdventure-v1.0-RC1-Multiplatform-English/run-eAdventure-engine.sh'

Close the dialog boxes and click on your new menu item to run your application. Enjoy.

Globe Tattoo on Ubuntu Karmic

I retried globe tatoo on Ubuntu today.  One of the things that I was unable to do before was use the SMS to check my balance.  Poisonjin's instructions worked for me, you can read it here http://poisonjin.livejournal.com/37314.html.

The instructions which I modified is as follows:

1. Install the linux-backports-modules-generic package and gnome-phone-manager (for sending and receiving SMS).
2. Plug in your Tattoo Huawai USB modem.
3. Right click NetworkManage, select Edit Connections.
4. At the "Mobile Broadband" tab, select Add. The wizard to set up a mobile broadband connection appears.

An alternative to 3 and 4 is left click on the network icon and select new gsm broadband etc (assuming you have no previous globe telecom internet listed ).  A wizard will appear allowing you to select Philippines then Globe.  You will still need to follow 3 and 4 to change the following things two things: change the APN from "internet.globe.com.ph" to "http.globe.com.ph". And I would have to add to poisonjin's instructions is to check the box that says make the available to all users or something.  I was not able to connect to the Internet when that was disabled, eventhough I was connected to globe.

The Phone Manager can be found in Applications-->System Tools.  Don't expect a dialog box to appear.  Instead an icon in the menu bar should appear.  It would probably have a red zero with slash, which means it is unable to connect to the phone. Right click on the icon and select Preferences. A dialogue box will appear, Click on the "Connection" tab. Select "Other port" and cycle through any one of the following that will work:

/dev/ttyUSB0
/dev/ttyUSB1
/dev/ttyUSB2

If everything is set up correctly you should see a phone icon near the globe network connection icon in your menu bar.

To send SMS click on the phone icon, ex. type 222 in Recipient and BAL in the Message text box to query your balance.

A problem with Phone Manager is that it does not seem to have any access to the phone address.


A more serious problem that I have noticed is that when you have an existing  mobile broadband setting (e.g. Globe Telecome Internet) and the usb modem is unplugged, xserver seems to become unstable.  There are random artifacts of black rectangles appearing on my screen (usually on top of the menu bar) and I am randomly logged out of the xserver.  I'm using Ubuntu amd64, gnome, and an nvidia graphics card. Deleting the mobile broadband connection setting restabilize the system.  I'm still studying this but I have not reported a bug yet, if you've experienced the same please confirm and report it.

Direct rendering for NVidia binary driver in Ubuntu Karmic

My desktop's display was sluggish like opening dialogue boxes (as in ctrl-s (control save) in firefox).  It was very slow playing 3D games and Celestia in my Ubuntu Karmic AMD64 box.

I have a GeForce 7300 video card and it should not be that slow.  I am using the Nvidia accelerated graphics driver version 185.  It was only while I was fiddling with OpenSim that I discovered what the problem was.  Initially I though it was the OpenSim server, then I suspected the Hippo OpenSim Viewer, so I installed the Open Metaverse Viewer.  I was really disappointed that the OpenSim + Hippo was running fast in WinXP but was slow in Ubuntu.  I was thinking that the developers didn't care for Ubuntu AMD64 users but later I realized I spoke too soon.

The problem was actually simpler than I thought.  My video driver is not using direct rendering.  When I opened a terminal box and ran glxinfo it says "direct rendering: No", also in the System Menu->Administration->NVIDIA X Server Settings->OpenGL/GLX Information.  But when I opened a root terminal and ran glxinfo direct rendering is enabled.  I also checked the xserver log and confirmed that DRI and DRI2 modules are loaded.  What happening here?

The problem is that my (NOT-root) user account does not have permission to the video group.

1. So I simply opened System Menu->Administration->Users and Groups.  
2. I selected my account and clicked the key button to make changes.
3. Clicked on Properties. Then Use Priveleges tab
4. Then I checked "Use video devices"
5. I logged out and logged in back again.  Or restarted the system.
   

Sure enough when I looked at /etc/group I was listed in the video group i.e.

video:x:44:username

I rechecked glxinfo and the NVIDIA X Server Settings and both says:

"direct rendering: Yes"

Now my 3D applications are running way faster.  Including OpenSim on Hippo and the Open Metaverse viewers.

This is just one of those things that no one tells us ordinary Ubuntu users, I hope this helps others experiencing this problem.