Synaptic Misfirings

It's always a added bonus to go and see a movie with no expectations or previous knowledge and come away having been completely entertained. Such it was with 'My Winnipeg' this Friday. I had absolutely no idea what I was getting involved with and within five minutes I  was completely captivated. Somehow the writing and dream like logic that runs through this imaginary documentary reminds me of some of H. P. Lovecraft's dream-scape stories and poems - in particular the lighter ones which only flirt briefly with Lovecraft's more common darker themes. 'My Winnipeg' is a quietly funny, frequently in slightly melancholy way, and extremely imaginative piece. It's the perfect antidote to the summer block busters that are currently running and I totally recommend it - somehow movie has this ability to leave ghost like after images in your imagination.

   http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/mywinnipeg/trailer/

   http://www.cbc.ca/arts/tiff/features/tiffmaddin.html

Bit of a downer this week at my work as it's officially announced that we're losing another (all too rare) great developer. Not only is this guy a damn fine chap but he's also one of those, apparently increasingly rare, developers who really has a passion for his craft. The dude in question has I think a great career ahead of him, I have to remind myself regularly that he used C# in his final year project at University (now that makes me feel old). Personally speaking I think he's extremely fortunate to have started his programming career just as COM ceased to be Microsoft's primary component technology, no one in their right minds misses C++ and COM. Being selfish for a moment, his departure effectively reduces to zero the number of local devs I can really geek out with about compilers, language and OS design and good programming practice. So here's to you mate (you know who you are), don't ever lose that passion for technology!

I am very happily shocked by just how dramatic and bold the changes in Softimage|XSI 7 are, the new ICE engine is absolutely mind blowing. Do check out the demo videos of the various particle effects that ICE can generate... wow. While Softimage have discontinued the Foundation version of XSI they have to their credit offered an insanely attractive upgrade for folks like me to jump from Foundation to Essentials. As someone who dabbles in software engineering I'm hugely impressed by the extent to which Softimage have continued to enhance and re-engineer XSI, it's clearly a extremely healthy code base even at v7. Can't wait to get my paws on it come September when they actually ship it!

For the longest time, almost 10 years truth be told, I've not gone anywhere near analog / traditional art preferring instead to get familiar with 3D digital art. This Saturday however found Tom in a art store buying blank paper, sketching pencils and a kneaded putty rubber. Now I'm learning to get over the lack of perfect undo-redo and commit to putting stuff down on paper. Not sure why I currently find traditional art materials so intimidating - this wasn't the case back in the days when I was practically drawing on the walls when I didn't have paper to hand. I think perhaps its because I now equate some small ability to write software with general mastery of all things computery. I have a feeling its going to be an interesting journey getting back to those 'zero inhibitions with pencil and paper' days.

For a little while now I've been looking for a simple digital sketching package to compliment my Wacom tablet. PhotoShop is too heavy for what I want but more to the point I was really looking for something more pen centric. To date I've been using ArtRage 2 which for the price is pretty damn good but then I came across Autodesk's 'SketchBook Pro 2009' (SBP). SBP was originally created by Alias who where then of course acquired by The Empire, I mean Autodesk. OK, childish jibes at monolithic software giants is rich coming from a geek who thinks that Microsoft does create the best operating systems and software development tools tools on the planet so I'll let it go... :-) Rants about monolithic companies is not the point of this blog posting, no the point is to call out that SBP is a stunning and agile package if you want to work with sketches and rapid concept design. I absolutely love this package, yes it does cost four times as much as ArtRage 2, but it's so much faster to use (ArtRage is a CPU hog every time you lay down a stroke) and you want a really fluid package that works as fast as you do. The tools and palette design in SBP are elegant and behave exactly as you'd expect them to. I'm very happy to see that Autodesk are doing something with SBP rather than just focusing on Maya, it looks like the '2009 edition is really a re-branding release of the Alias original and I hope with the next release they add things like rulers and grids. That said these are minor detractions from what is one of those rare bits of creative software that is as artist friendly and elegant as it is powerful (Softimage XSI being another example). I totally recommend SBP if you already have a Wacom (or similar pressure sensitive tablet). In fact I'd advise not evaluating SBP unless you do have a tablet of some kind since it really makes you appreciate how trying to paint / draw with a mouse is very much like trying to achieve the same with a house brick. So a tip of the old hat to Autodesk and I'm really looking forward to seeing what they do with SketchBook Pro 2010.

If you're interested here's a direct link to the SketchBook Pro 2009 features PDF.

It's a sad day as Stan Winston creator of some of the best physical effects in the industry passes away:

   http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2008/06/stan-winston-de.html

I've grown so used to seeing Stan Winston Studio as a contributing FX house in closing credits to many a beloved movie - let's hope the studio keeps Stan's name and standards going.

Having bemoaned some of the digital content in the latest Indy movie I was very happy to have my socks blown completely off by the new 'The Hulk' movie. This is comic to screen adaptation done right, never once violating the rules of its own universe (unlike say: a certain nuke-able fridge...). All the performances are fantastic indeed the casting as a whole is spot on but special credit I think has to go to the animators behind the digital performances. The brawls between Hulk and Abomination are visually stunning and really impart a sense of mass and energy. The actual design of the Hulk is down to one of my favourite digital artists, Aaron Sim's. XSI Base has a great interview with Aaron in addition to some fantastic early concept work for the movie:

   http://www.xsibase.com/articles.php?detail=147

Aaron's creature designs really have a life of their own and I highly recommend checking out Aaron's portfolio over at The Aaron Sims Company site. In the mean time, forget any disappointment you may have had with the previous attempt to bring The Hulk to the big screen and go see this latest imagining. Save for the upcoming Batman movie I'd all but given up on the super hero genre when it comes to film (a reaction to the dreadful and hopefully final Spiderman and X-Men movies), The Hulk however has convinced me that you can create great screen entertainment with these properties.

'C# In Depth' is one of those very rare programming language books what really communicates not only the what but the why when discussing its particular language (in much the same way as the equally excellent 'Powershell In Action' - also from Manning). I've been reading 'C# In Depth' since it was first made available in rough form via Manning's excellent MEAP program - yesterday I got my paper copy and spent a happy evening re-reading various sections. Assuming you already know a little C# then this is without a shadow of a doubt the best next book you should read. I don't know of any other C# book that takes offers the unique and deep insight that 'C# In Depth' gives. It's a tribute to Jon Skeet's writing that he manages to cut to the chase and deliver his insights in such a effortless and economical form. Physically this is actually quite a short book (in terms of page count) compared to other door-stop C# tomes. However don't be mislead by page count == value for money, 'C# In Depth' distills C# 2 and C# 3 down and delivers them to the reader in such a way that you'll really appreciate how this wonderful and pragmatic language has really undergone a remarkably rapid evolution and now elegantly supports programming idioms that where positively painful in earlier versions. If you think C# 2 is just about type safe containers then you are missing out big time. The bottom line is if you love programming for programming's sake then buy and read this book as soon as possible. Heck, if you're a development lead then I would seriously suggest getting your boss to buy a copy of this book for every developer on your team and mandate that it is read - it truly is that good.

You should also check out Jon's excellent programming blog: http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon.skeet/default.aspx

I'm currently reading and very much enjoying Jeremy Cantor and Pepe Valencia's 'Inspired 3D Short Film Production'. I was fortunate as a kid to not only be growing up at a time when 3D short films first started appearing but to have a family whose members worked in the TV, film and software industries. My love for CG as a medium was a big motivating factor in my decision to really try and learn programming way back then (we're talking ZX81 and later an ATARI ST era computing here) and many of my early code doodles where well intentioned attempts to recreate (in a small way) CG tools I'd seen the 'pros' use in making-of documentaries. Of course now I realise that (a) my programming skills back then couldn't possibly support my vision and (b) said tools and techniques are by today's standards incredibly simplistic.

Now that programming is what I do to pay the rent and that the feature bar for any 3D app is so very high I find that I'd much rather exercise those dormant artistic neurons (the ones I ignored when I decided to forgo the art degree and do a computer science degree instead) by using other peoples 3D packages than try and create my own. Currently I've settled on Softimage|XSI, which is a beautiful (in every sense of the word) piece of software, as my one-stop-shop 3D package. A quick detour: if you're looking to get into 3D then XSI is by far the best value for money package out there. For circa £300 (for the Foundation edition, which is the version I own) you get one of the best sub-d modelling packages with unsurpassed character and nonlinear animation tools not to mention fully integrated Mental Ray based rendering. Back to my childhood dreams of 3D film creation... over the past few years I've had many enjoyable conversations with my uncle about film and have I've grown more and more interested in the process of film production (on both the technical and artistic side) and to this end have been hunting around for a book which addressed these, which brings me to 'Inspired 3D Short Film Production'. First I have to say something about the the production values of this book, every page is in full colour and has unsurpassed layout which makes cross referencing between the text and supporting images and diagrams totally painless! Too many computer graphics books limit their use of full colour to a few central pages - it shouldn't need pointing out what when you're trying to explain the nuances of a visual medium using half tone gray scale images doesn't cut it. Most important of course is the writing and I'm happy to say the writing here is first class. The book really breaks down the process of conceptualising, pre-production (story, character and art development), production and post-production so that you really understand the workflow's between each stage. I'm slowly developing (admittedly its very early days yet) a real feel for how much things cost in budget terms on a shot by shot basis. It's easy to draw parallels with software here, fixing problems early costs much less. Whilst reading the book with my own pet project in mind I find myself already thinking "OK I need to rethink this. How can I deliver this story beat in a more economical way". It is a fabulous book and whilst a large part of it is by definition 3D centric I do think it would be of interest to anyone wanting to learn more about story boarding, character / art development and cinematography in general. With all these references to workflow's and production costs I wouldn't want anyone to think the book was a dry read, a huge part of its value is found in the tools and techniques it suggests to kick start or inform the artistic creative side of things. The book isn't cheap but at 470 pages it contains a huge amount of explanation and industry knowledge and deserves to be read and thought about carefully. Something else I should mention, the book is almost entirely software package agnostic and all the better for it - this really is a book about the process of technical and artistic film production rather than a guide to which buttons to click. As such it's a perfect accompanying text for any software specific books or training videos you might be working through.

Seeing the new Indiana Jones movie last night was ultimately a frustrating experience. The Crystal Skull is I think just better than The Last Crusade but it could have been so much more. I wasn't expecting it to eclipse Raiders but they've had so long to come up with a decent script it was rather disappointing. Kudos to Ford and La Beouf who do manage to deliver their roles but Karen Allen's performance didn't really manage to capture the Marion of the first movie. Cate Blanchett's accent seemed to go on various geographical trips from scene to scene and I'm not sure why Ray Winstone was in the movie at all (I'm guessing it was an attempt parallel John Rhys-Davies's Sallah character from the first movie).

All in all if you're an Indy fan then this isn't the kick in the teeth that the hateful new Star Wars movies are but it still feels like lazy film making on the part of Mr Spielburg and Lucas. These two film makers in my opinion still have huge potential and can deliver (I know it's fashionable to knock both of them) but typically when someone else is doing the writing. I'm left feeling that (1) I would watch the Crystal Skull again and (2) I was kind of saddened by the degree of closure at the end, I think Ford may well be hanging up The Hat at this point - still he at least goes out on a solid performance.

There's no doubt that GTA IV in its execution and scope deserves the 10's that EDGE et al have been giving it. I'm hugely impressed by the city simulation, and somewhat less impressed by the highly derivative story. So far GTA IV has not delivered one of those shiver down the spine moments that accompanied my personal seminal moments in gaming. GTA IV is for me a small increment over the state of the art. It is without a doubt a extremely well crafted experience and yet there are things that pull it back all the time. The frequently puerile humour I guess is included to appease the < 18 year old members of its fan base. I can understand why R* do this, they do it for economic reasons, apparently most GTA players don't play for the story (I guess we'll have to see if that follows for IV) and yet GTA IV has a OK story (not BioShock level writing but better than most) one that apparently wants to be taken seriously. Which is a shame because with every narrative step forward it then precedes to take two back with endless titty or dick jokes.

Hopefully one day R* or more likely Bethesda etc will really acknowledge that a substantial and increasing percentage of their audience are growing up and really want more from their virtual worlds. The 18 cert on GTA is there because the content is adult, but sadly most of what constitutes 'adult' for GTA is 'porn shop' humour rather than adult in the sense of really really exploring ideas or having anything more than cheap-shot social commentary jokes. So I'll be burning through GTA IV's story to clear the decks for "Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots" in June, at least that title by all accounts has some real depth to it.

I have a passion for left of field 3D packages and tools and was very happy to be introduced to TopMod in the latest issue of '3D World' magazine. This is well worth checking out, you really can make some beautiful and intricate images very easily. Much like Blender, TopMod is a classic example of how Open Source occasionally turns up real gems. I just wish the content creation software genre was better represented in the Open Source movement. Still do check out TopMod...

I'm probably horribly late to the party with this but I figured I'd share it anyway. It's one of those things that with hindsight falls into the "Doh. Obviously!" category: System.Linq.Enumerable.Aggregate use is not just limited to numeric style operations.

There are various ways of mapping a method over an array in either C# 2.0 or C# 3.0, for example:

   string[] data = { "Softimage|XSI", "Blender", "Luxology modo" };
   StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
   foreach (string s in data)
      builder.Append("(").Append(s).Append(")");

   Console.WriteLine(builder.ToString());

or using the static ForEach method on Array:

   string[] data = { "Softimage|XSI", "Blender", "Luxology modo" };
   StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
   Array.ForEach(data, s => builder.Append("(").Append(s).Append(")"));
   Console.WriteLine(builder.ToString());

However, nicer still if you can use C# 3.0 is System.Linq.Enumerable.Aggregate:

   string[] data = { "Softimage|XSI", "Blender", "Luxology modo" };
   Console.WriteLine(data.Aggregate(new StringBuilder(), (b, s) => b.Append("(").Append(s).Append(")")).ToString());

Not only does Aggregate being a extension method benefit from the whole "extension method pattern matching" mechanism which allows you to swap in different implementations (or specializations <smile>) depending on what names spaces you have open, but (and this is the really cool bit) it allows you to treat the whole loop operation as a value. It may not be immediately obvious if you haven't done much Linq before but the return type of Aggregate as used above is StringBuilder! This is how we can pipeline it right into a call to Console.WriteLine. Note also that Array.ForEach is limited to SysArrays whereas Linq.Enumerable.Aggregate by definition works with the more primitive IEnumerable<T> - in other words it will work just a nicely with Lists or anything else that reduces to a IEnumerable<T>. Of course the other nice advantage to using Aggregate is the lazy (pull) evaluation when walking the collection.

Aside: I've deliberately avoided talking about using the classic "for(int i = 0; i < data.Length; i++)" iteration method because I didn't want the main point to be lost behind the implementation dependent fact that the jitter can translate a classic-for into very efficient native code, safely omitting the bounds checking. This is about abstraction above the micro optimization level...

I have always maintained that Video Games have the potential to be more than just entertainment, the good ones transcend the medium (much like those sublime 16 bit AV demos back on the Atari ST and Amiga...). Video Games as a valid art form? Absolutely. They are true left brain / right brain creations. So I've always made a point of getting those games that score over 80% almost regardless of genre (OK with the exception of sports titles) because I want to experience for myself just how the developer has managed to push the medium. Now I find myself in a tricky situation with GTA IV. I don't dig the whole anti-society thing. I don't dig the car jacking and murder for money thing. I've never bought a GTA title... until now, because damn it, GTA IV is getting stunning reviews from folks who's opinion I trust. Let's be clear about this, I'm not anti violence in video games, I'm a huge first person shooter fan - but even within that genre I prefer a good degree of 'reality separation' preferring the Halo's and Unreal's to the Call of Duty's. Increasingly I get uncomfortable about being given the ability to 'shoot up' the real world - it's the same in movies for me, I just don't go to 'gun p0rn' movies like Rambo etc (although it's probably unfair to compare GTA IV to the utter crap that by all accounts the latest Rambo movie was). By all accounts GTA IV does have an actual plot and does have very good characterization. It'll be interesting to see if the game does differentiate between players who want to create the minimum of havoc vs. those who just want to drive over every pedestrian in sight (because really, if the later is your idea of a Good Time you'll probably be just as well served by Carmageddon... now there's a game for Rambo fans...)

Over the past week I made a real effort to really read 'cover to cover' (so to speak) Bjarne Stroustrup's "Evolving a language in and for the real world: C++ 1991-2006" paper. I'd skimmed it before but never really read it in the way it deserves until now. I'm so glad I did - because it's contributed greatly to my decision to spend a > 0% of home coding time on C++ rather than just exclusively coding C# 3.0 stuff at home. It's very hard to criticise anything in such a paper given the kudos of the author - that said, I do wish he would refrain from being quite so derogatory towards Microsoft and C# / .NET in particular. Then again, it's his paper so I guess he's allowed the odd back stab now and then - and to be honest the occasions when he does flash the blade left me smiling rather than angry.

Stroustrup says something in this paper which is an echo of something I've always held close to my heart and encourage other developers to aspire to, namely developers should Own the call stack. That's not to mean that you have to comprehend the full details of the problem domain at each level of the call stack but you should be able to deal with the syntax and semantics the solution-implementation is presented in. For .NET developers this means you need to know in addition to your favourite managed language some C++ and some native assembler. He goes on to point out just where C++ fits in the tool chain of languages such as Java and C#, namely "My compiler compiled your runtime" - you ignore that at your peril.

Putting aside owning the call stack for a moment, the real thing that caught me in this paper was the multi paradigm stuff. I've written before here about my increasing concern that not everything is a object and it's often a mistake to try and express things in OO terms, well Stroustrup points out again and again that OO is just one of the programming paradigms that C++ supports, he goes further to say that OO is not the reason for C++'s being, nor is it the most important programming paradigm the language supports. I'm predicting that this year I'll be having my code reviewed by someone who protests that my implementation is "Not OO enough!" - to which my answer will be: "Oh really? Let's talk about that..."

If like me you've spent some time in "Managed Code Happy Land" I'd totally recommend reading the paper, carefully, fully and giving yourself time to think about what Stroustrup has to say. I'm not u-turning here, since my day job is programming on Window's I'll likely still recommend C# for most things, but, and it's a big but I think I might be using C++/CLI a lot more than I used to. I used to joke to a mate of mine that I'd never go to a job that required me to spend >= 50% of my time doing C++, this paper (amongst other things I've recently read) means I'd probably want to revisit that statement to something >= 75% of my time.

There's a great, but all together too short, interview with Bjarne Stroustrup in the April 2008 issue of MSDN Magazine. Lots of good stuff in there - including a book recommendation I plan to follow up - but one of the things that stood out was Bjarne's comments on the use of Hungarian notation:

   "And no, don't use Hungarian. Hungarian is an awful idea. The source code should reflect the meaning of the program, not simulate a type system. If you really, really feel the need for Hungarian, you are probably using a language that is unsuitable for your application."

I'll admit that when I first started programming professionally, some 15 years ago now, I was a strong advocate and user of Hungarian. These days I limit myself to a few scope notations ("m_" for a instance members and "s_" for static members) and I don't use any type prefix notations including combinations-of or variations-on 'p' prefixes to denote pointers. I don't distinguish between native and managed languages - my position is that Hungarian has no place in either. If you're relying on the presence of Hungarian to alert developers that they've switched from .cs to .cpp files then you've got a bigger problem on your hands. It's my impression that folks who do continue to advocate heavy use of type notations do so because they pretty much live in fear of the code they work on. They neither trust the existing code, or (and this is the damning bit) the new code they add. To be honest I've seen zero indication that Hungarian contributes to a lower defect count, indeed the only thing Hungarian succeeds in lowering is the abstraction level (which is not what we want to strive to do in our code) furthermore it acts as a barrier to refactoring. Of course we're also assuming here that developer has used Hungarian correctly and consistently, which is seldom the case. I'd much rather developers put the effort into choosing decent variables names that are closer to the problem domain than slavishly writing comp.sci type prefixes. Decent variables names reduce (but obviously not eliminate) the need for commenting and make you think about the actual problem more - where as slavishly following some anachronistic type notation convention too frequently seems to accompany a school of programming typified by fear, uncertainty and doubt. Just my 2p worth... :)

First off I'm very aware that I'm about 15 years late with this insight but I still find it amazing just how many developers of the Object Orientated school are so hostile to the idea that functions still remain a equally valid and often preferable means of constructing software rather than their sacred objects. More and more I see code with classes that exist for no other reason than to act as namespaces to what amount to little more than static member functions. Fair enough languages like C# pretty much force one to express things this way, but that's a syntactic deficiency - what concerns me more is that a lot of developers seem to view functions (in the classical sense) as something lower down the programming evolutionary ladder than classes and objects. For some time I've been looking around for mainstream examples I could site to support the counter argument that objects and functions are two different and complimentary tools - and of course a prime example was right under my nose, to whit: STL. Here's a classic interview with Alex Stepanov that puts into words the first class status of functions (frequently in conjunction with and complimentary to, objects) in software construction:

   http://www.sgi.com/tech/stl/drdobbs-interview.html

Over the past 18 months or so I've personally 're-discovered' functions and have found it a liberating experience, I no longer feel the OO guilt of "I should be striving for member functions at all times" as a overriding rule when designing and writing software.

Having traded in all my Xbox 360 games along with the wretched console itself I now find myself with a whole bunch of GAME points to burn through and last Friday picked up a copy of Digital Extreme's new 'Dark Sector' game on PlayStation 3. I recall the early preview coverage in EDGE of this game before the '360 and Playstation 3 where even released, back then 'Dark Sector' was a set in space survival horror game. Some years later and it appears to have returned to Earth, Eastern Europe to be precise, having mutated into a chimeric 'Gears of War' meets 'Resident Evil' mash up. To cut to the chase, it is immense fun to play. Yeah, it's pretty shallow in terms of plot, somewhat formulaic granted, but it does deliver on the entertainment front. I have to mention the games graphics engine too which for once isn't the Unreal 3 engine but a custom in-house engine developed by Digital Extreme's themselves, said engine produces some of the nicest visuals I've seen on the PlayStation 3 to date. I honestly think in visual terms it deserves to be ranked up there alongside Drake's Fortune and Ratchet and Crank: Tools of Destruction. Whilst playing it last night I was thinking "I remember when visuals like this where reserved for the cut scenes and here I am running and gunning interactively inside them... wow." There's also a Softimage XSI connection too by way of Pendulum Studio's work on the cinematics for the game.