Of course, to be a part of Nodevember, it’s probably a good idea to understand what nodes actually are. A lot of digital are familiar with a layer-based approach to work, as you may find in GIMP, Krita, Photoshop, or sheets of acetate. Layers are great and over the years, they’ve gained more and more functionality in digital applications. However, they’re still limited by they’re stacked-style organization. A layer at the top of the stack necessarily affects all of the layers beneath it.

Nodes work differently. Instead of having a block of data that automatically affects blocks below it (like layers), nodes systems can have multiple inputs and each of those inputs can run through a series of logical operations en route to one or more outputs. And the really cool thing is that this way of working is entirely non-destructive and procedural. Not only does it mean you can easily change how your art looks without irreversibly changing your input material. It also means you can more easily change and animate.

Nodes can be used in all manner of artistic applications, from 3D and VFX to audio and game design. To get an idea of what can be done, just have a look at the #nodevember hash tag on Twitter or Instagram. It’s really incredible stuff.

Of course, Nodevember isn’t the only thing we talk about. After all, the whole event was born at the 2019 Blender Conference. Both Jonas and Luca are active Blender users, so we also took some time to talk about Blender, open source development, and how so many developers of creative open source applications started as artists who needed a feature.

I had a lot of fun talking with these two, and I’m excited to where they go with their event in the future. In the meantime, were still in the month of November as I write this, so head on over to Nodevember.io and see if there’s a prompt that you find interesting!

In show-related news, commenting on the site has returned! I finally got everything up and running with Isso. I also managed to migrate all of the old Disqus comments over as well. So hooray for that!

Also, in this rather largish break between episodes, I managed to be a guest on two other podcasts that are much bigger than mine, The Survival Podcast and FLOSS Weekly. So if you’re coming here from either one of those shows, welcome! I hope you enjoy yourself here.

And now… back to the show.

Of particular note, I really appreciate her “actually interact with people” approach to interaction design. It really struck a chord with me because I think it really applies anywhere we discuss design… or even art, for that matter. Regardless of the medium, we produce creative work for an audience. Why wouldn’t we take the time to find out more about that audience? I’m definitely going to look for ways to incorporate that mindset and approach into my own work.

There’s a bit of background noise and rumble in the audio that I couldn’t easily reduce, but even with that, the show’s a great one for your brain bits.

Another big topic we cover is that of communities. Pat launched (and still works on) PIXLS.US, a community website and forum with a focus on photography with Free Software tools. It’s a great resource for anyone interested in photography and image editing in general, serving as both a support channel and a showcase for the great work that can be created with the tools we know and love. And that community continues to expand. They’ve even added sections for compositing with Natron and astronomical image processing with Siril.

On of the highlights of our discussion was Pat going through his workflow when shooting and editing photographs. There’s definitely some fantastic take-aways from that and I’m certainly going to be thinking of this interview the next time I point a camera at anything.

It really is a wide-ranging conversation that’s a lot like sitting down over a cup of coffee and having a great talk with very few filters. Of course, speaking of filters, I have to apologize if you watch the video of this. I’ve recently set myself up with some new gear and I’m still tweaking the best way to set it up. In particular, I’ve migrated from my ancient Logitech C270 webcam to using my phone with DroidCam. The DroidCam mobile application isn’t open source, but the client for connecting to it is and it works really well. The only catch is that I turned off the auto exposure and auto white balance on my phone… and then the sun went behind some clouds while the show was being recorded. So there are some moments where my video looks really dark.

I also got a new audio interface (a Focusrite Scarlet 2i2) and a mic arm. Both work great, but the original mic I’d ordered was back-ordered, so in the meantime, I’m using a very old Audio-Technica stick mic. The sound quality should be acceptable, but it took a bit of post processing to get it to that point.

In any case, I hope you enjoy the show.

We also get into licensing and the value of trying to accomplish “big things” in a very short amount of time, like developer sprints, game jams, the 48 Hour Film Project, and the Extreme Enterprise event that they’re planning on doing next summer (2021).

Other notes/links:

• Visit FOSSdome. She’s doing some really interesting things for planetarium work with open source creative tools. Definitely worth a look.
• I was a guest on another podcast! If you’re interested in people talking about fun Linux-related things, give a listen to mintCast.
• This show is now available in more places:
  • Good ol' RSS
  • gpodder.net
  • Apple Podcasts
  • Google Podcasts
  • Spotify
  • YouTube
• Have a look at my books and merch if you’re interested in supporting the show.

And that should do it! Talk to you next week!

And, as promised at the end of the episode, I’ve published the .blend file and exported STLs for printing under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license over on Thingiverse for you to print and modify yourself. If you do build it yourself, you will need to get a couple additional parts (affliate links):

• Square 3" Lazy Suzan Bearing
• 20-pack of 608-2RS Ball Bearings (you only need two, but there are all kinds of interesting things you can make with ball bearings. At the currently listed price, it doesn’t hurt to have a few extras lying about)

So… what do you think about these show-and-tell shows? More importantly, what kind of projects are you doing with open source tools to help you make things? Flag me down and let me know!

They also give a lot of really cool examples of NPR work in various media. I wasn’t able to get them linked here in the show notes, so you’ll just have to listen to hear them.

What’s your favorite example of NPR art?

EDIT: Bong was courteous enough to compile a list of links to the various works he referenced in the show. Here we go…

3 NPR elements:

• Freestyle Level Up
• Abnormal Vertex Normal editor
• Soul Stirring Digital Color Mastery

NPR IPs:

• Fez
• GNOG
• Hob
• Inside
• Slime Rancher
• Tetris Effects
• Civilization VI
• A Short Hike
• Untitled Goose Game
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
• Fortnite
• Borderland
• Spider man: Into the Spiderverse

Other BlenderNPR and BEER links:

• BNPR Show #17
• Outline node
• BEER repository
• BEER project hub

Other highlights of the show include:

• We share our enjoyment of the art produced by POKEDSTUDIO.
• I totally blanked out on the name of LuxCoreRender. Oops.
• Lee shared Pixelorama, an open source tool for creating pixel art (and it has tools for animation, too!). From what I can tell, it’s built on top of the Godot game engine.
• We nerded off a bit about open source business tools like OpenProject and Invoice Ninja.
• The whole interview was recorded using Jitsi.

Of course, there were a few questions in the interview that we didn’t have the answers to. Next episode, the brains of the BlenderNPR project will fill in some of those gaps and clarify points we may have glanced over. In the meantime, you should definitely head over to the BlenderNPR website to see some excellent NPR artwork and back the BEER Development Campaign.

Also, what do you think of having videos and interviews of the show? As ever, email and social media are the best ways to get in touch with me. I’m definitely interested in hearing your opinions. So share ‘em, if you don’t mind.

Until next time!

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

The fact of the matter is that successful open source development models rely heavily on an actively participating userbase. And when I say “participating” I don’t mean just using the software or mouthing off on a forum or social media. It’s about becoming a material part of the development process, typically with either developer time, or money to fund developer time. Also, when I say “userbase”, I also include commercial companies.

See, in the rest of the world where open source is used, companies join in with the development process. Like individual developers, they “scratch their own itch”, but they do it by hiring programmers on their team to extend and maintain open source code for their needs (and, like good citizens, push general code back upstream to the main project). The world has operated like this for years (I daresay decades), but it seems like only within the last couple of years has the various entertainment industries that use creative software gotten themselves clued in to how this works.

Unfortunately, even if the companies are starting to get it, some of our creative colleagues maintain an inaccurate understanding of the changes that have been happening. With any luck, this episode (rambling as it may be) can help straighten them out.

That’s the idea anyway. Share it around. And certainly give me a shout directly to let me know what you think about this. I’d love to share some listener feedback.

This episode is a catch-up episode. I get a bit rambly, but here’s a quick rundown of what I talk about in this show:

• Blender 2.8 was developed, released, and now the 2.83 release is imminent.
• With furthering usage of Blender in larger studios, they’re piloting a long-term support version of Blender.
• I released the 4th edition of Blender For Dummies, chock full of updates on the new 2.8 series.
• Microsoft Loves Open Source (also, they bought GitHub)
• Epic has been issuing megagrants to help the development of quite a few open source creative tools.
• I started making wooden rings.
• I’ve been de-Googling my various websites, so I’ve started using a self-hosted install of GoatCounter to capture some basic site analytics.
• I’ve migrated mailing list stuff to phpList. You can sign up for the list for this show on the contact page.
• And I made a funny t-shirt and mug.

Also, I talked a little bit about the future of the show and what we can do with it. I’m not recording it while driving any longer. That means there are now things I can do that were either impossible or generally unsafe before. Things like live recording, video, and interviews (I’m definitely doing those). But, to do any of that, I kind of need to know your thoughts on the matter. What would you like to see on the show? Who should I interview? Are there shows were I should be a guest? Give me a shout and let me know your thoughts on the matter.

Also, should I bother with fixing the comments on this site?

Anyhow… the show’s back and I’m having fun. I’m looking forward to talking with you more.

Side note: Something has gone sideways with my site theme so the Disqus commenting that I used to have isn’t quite working at the moment. If you want to send me a note, I’d suggest using the information on the Contact page.

See you around. This is going to be fun!

In fact, here’s a quick list (roughly in the order I mention them in the show… also, I’ve put a star next to my favorites):

• Blender Conference★
• Libre Graphics Meeting
• NAB Show
• Game Developer’s Conference (GDC)
• SIGGRAPH★
• All Things Open★
• CTN animation eXpo
• South by Southwest (SXSW)
• SouthEast LinuxFest (SELF)
• Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE)
• O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON)
• LinuxFest Northwest
• Ohio LinuxFest (OLF)
• Penguicon

Also… I didn’t mention it in the show, but I actually really enjoy giving talks and workshops at conferences. In fact, if you’re reading this and you happen to be involved with organizing a conference, please give me a shout. I’d love to attend and speak at it.

But what about you? What events do you like to attend? Why do you attend them? What do you do when you’re there? Let me know in the comments section. I definitely want to know.

Interestingly enough, most of these tools are right smack in the middle of your creative toolchain. Sure, as a sound designer, your input is often raw PCM audio in WAV format and your output can be anything from WAV (again) to AAC or FLAC or even MP3. But on your active edit, what have you got? Friggin' ProTools… and a daisy-chained nest of dongles to go with it. And it’s not limited to audio. We see the same thing in print design, animation (2D and 3D), visual effects, and video editing.

This is a problem, and not just for open source creatives. Anyone who wants to migrate their workflow from one tool to another is faced with this problem. And worse, there’s not always a clear and viable solution or alternative. Folks get stuck to a tool not just from familiarity with its quirks, but by the fact that it doesn’t play nice with others.

So what do we do about it? To be honest… I’m a little concerned that there’s not much that we can do, outside of using open source tools and evangelizing open formats where ever they exist. Is there something I’m missing? Some other solution that’s just sitting out there, waiting to be noticed?

I’m open to suggestions.

• Freemind - This is what I’ve been using for years and it’s my baseline for features and performance. Whatever tool I choose needs to have roughly the same feature set, the ability to import Freemind’s .mm file format, and be better. In particular, performance in interface are where I’m looking at the most for improvements.
• Freeplane - Freeplane is a fork of Freemind and a natural first choice when looking for a replacement. It ticks all the marks in terms of feature parity with Freemind… however, it has basically the same UI and it’s still got the slow launch behavior that Freemind has. So… no go for me.
• Labyrinth - This one was recommended to me by Farid Abdelnour (@frd@mastodon.social) and it was actually the first alternative mind mapping tool I looked at in my search. It has some really cool features and a really interesting approach to mind maps. Unfortunately, it’s “TomBoy” saving method really doesn’t jive with my project-based workflow. Also, it’s not seeing much in the way of active development, so that was also kind of discouraging. For those reasons, I had to shuffle forth and keep looking.
• XMind - Billing itself as “the most popular mind mapping software on the planet”, XMind has a pretty robust feature set and looks to be a strong contender. Unfortunately, I’m not overly fond of the open core model of open source development and XMind definitely uses that. Plus there are a handful of network/cloud related features that I would actually rather not have at all.
• WiseMapping - Wisemapping is a pretty cool choice as it’s all web-based. I actually really this concept a lot as an idea. Unfortunately that means to use it myself, I would either need to use their web service (by now most of you should know how I feel about trusting my data on other people’s computers) or set up my own server. That’s a bit more overhead and maintenance than I’d like to give myself. Otherwise, I’d probably be all on-board with WiseMapping.
• Vym - I very nearly wrote this program off completely when I visited its website. The site design tries to cleverly use a mind map for navigation. Clever, but not particularly appealing. Also the site doesn’t appear to have been updated all that recently. And furthermore, they’re managing development on SourceForge. All three of these, on their own, would dissuade most people from investigating further. But I think I was getting desperate. So I dug in. And you know what, I’m kind of happy that I did. It turns out that Vym is seeing continued development on their SourceForge page. There’s nice video there that show some of Vym’s basic features. More importantly, when I installed it (it’s in the Arch repos), it appeared to do everything I needed it to. It’s on parity with most of Freemind’s features, it’s got a few nice additions of its own, and it’s nice and snappy in terms of performance (thanks, in part, to being written with the Qt toolkit, I think).

So Vym seems to be the winner for me. At least it does so far. I’ve migrated quite a few of my project mind maps to it and aside from cleaning up HTML tags (I don’t think it imported 100% cleanly from the .mm format), it’s been a pleasant and hassle-free experience. I’ll let you all know more if I stumble across anything interesting as I continue to use Vym.

Now… if I could just figure out the proper way to pronounce it.

What about you? Are you using mind maps? Which one is your favorite?

• Freemind - Cross-platform tool for mindmapping. I use this not just for gathering my thoughts and organizing my work, I actually also use the mindmap as a project dashboard for large writing projects. The built-in hyperlinking capabilities of Freemind are fantastic for drilling directly to the work file I want to work on. Of course, the UI is a bit dated and startup performance is a bit sluggish, so I’d love to see someone bring some modernization to this fantastic tool. And yes, I’ve tried the Freeplane fork, but it doesn’t really solve any of the issues I personally have.
• Vim - These days, this is pretty much where I do all of my writing, whether I’m on a desktop, a laptop, or on my phone. I write using Markdown syntax. Of course, if you don’t want to use Vim, there are plent of powerful plaintext editors out there that have more native support for Markdown (e.g. Atom, Remarkable, Haroopad, and yes, Emacs). I didn’t mention it in the show, but there are a handful of plugins that I use for Vim to help make my writing experience a bit more pleasant. He’s a short list (you can actually see my full Vim configuration on my Github page):
  • vim-airline - A lightweight and handy status bar/footer
  • vim-markdown - For nice syntax highlighting in Markdown and a few other conveniences
  • vim-pencil - A plugin for much nicer handling of soft-wrapped and hard-wrapped lines (I prefer to work with soft-wrapped lines, but still let my up/down arrow keys move up and down visible lines rather than along line numbers.
• Mercurial - Of course I version control my writing. My versioning system of choice is Mercurial. You’re welcome to use Git, but I’ve gotten pretty partial to Mercurial’s way of handling things.
• wdiff - A handy little diff tool for comparing individual word changes in lines of text. I use this as an external diff tool for Mercurial when reviewing edits that I’ve made.
• Termux - When I write remote, I most frequently write on my phone with a Bluetooth keyboard in Termux. Termux is basically a very powerful shell for Android that allows you to install many full Linux applications like Vim and Mercurial without rooting your device. I’m a huge fan.
• Pandoc - A totally badass conversion tool. This is what I use to get my Markdown files converted to just about anything else I need to. One day, I’d love to automate the creation of EPUB deliverables using make. One day.
• LibreOffice - If you’re working with other people (especially editors) who aren’t as dialed-in on the open source ecosystem, you’re likely to need to send them DOC files of some sort. While Pandoc does a great job at the initial conversion, I still tend to open files in LibreOffice to put a little spit-shine on them… and to read notes that people give me on my work when I send them these files.
• Sigil - When I convert to EPUB, I often like to do refinements and customizations (and cross-device testing). Sigil gives low-level control for modifying the presentation of your ebook.
• Calibre - Originally developed as an ebook management tool/library, Calibre has become so much more. It can do format conversions and give reasonably accurate previews of your ebook. When doing ebook layout, I tend to bounce back and forth between Calibre and Sigil.
• Scribus - If you’re doing a print book, you’re going to need a good quality print layout tool. Scribus is absolutely up to the task.

Of course, if you’re more aligned to the single-application workflow (like Scrivener in the closed source world) there are some open source writing tools that may be more your speed. Have a look at Bibisco and Plume Creator. Although I’ve never seriously used either of these, I know of some folks that really like them. There’s a nice article about the Bibisco over on Opensource.com.

Whew. That was a lot of writing. It’s almost like I enjoy doing that!

What do you use for your writing? Got any suggestions? Got any questions on what I use? Let me hear it down in the comments.

Also related to Opensource.com, I had the honor of recording last weeks Top 5 video. Just a little thing that highlights the 5 most popular stories of the previous week. It was definitely a lot of fun to produce. I’ll probably do it again.

Speaking of doing things again, I also participated in a 72-hour horror film race over the weekend. It’s been a while since I’ve done a weekend film challenge like that. I was doing some simple visual effects (rotoscoping and paint-over) for this piece and I’ve gotta say that I kind of miss doing these things. Mayhaps I’ll step into doing them again more regularly.

But, this episode is about none of that! This episode is about software naming. We have programs like Blender, Krita, Kdenlive, Natron, and (of course) GIMP. I’ve even seen Mastodon get heat for its naming. The thing is… does naming really matter all that much?

After talking [to myself] through this episode… I’m inclined to think that it doesn’t. And, if you listen to the episode, I may or may not have suggested that I would be OK with using a program called “Kitten Puncher.”

Because, really, if it matters at all, the name of a piece of software only matters at the beginning… that time before people start using it. After that, it’s all about the program’s functionality, how it actually works, and how suitable it is for doing the job at hand.

That’s what I think at least. What about you?

That’s wrong on so many different levels.

But I don’t really want to single out the person who made that reply… he’s not the only person out with that completely misguided perspective. I prefer to think of him as an evidential data point that indicates that we haven’t been doing a good enough job of explaining exactly why thinking like that is wrong and, quite frankly, ignorant. It’s a perspective born from being locked in the bubble of one’s own experience and then making the mistake of extrapolating too far with that anecdotal experience to (something open source folks get accused of all the time).

It’s a very human thing to do. But it’s infuriating that some humans continue to stay steadfast in misguided opinions like these despite being presented with evidence to the contrary. So I rant.

When people refer to “the industry” as it pertains to computer graphics (and specifically 3D computer graphics), they’re generally referring to one of the entertainment sectors (video games, movies, television). But there are so many other exciting and interesting places where computer graphics is used every day… at least as big as the entertainment industries. All of them have different requirements, workflows, and toolchains. More importantly, they don’t have the same track record of taking artists for granted that we’ve seen in entertainment.

But I hope it’s not just a rant. I hope that this week’s show is also a means of sharing and actively helping unseat this mistaken belief that quite a few people still have. With any luck, you can help do it with less profanity than I do.

In most cases, authority is ceded to whomever has the most passion for a given idea. And in scenarios where passion is roughly equivalent between parties, that’s where forks happen.

At least, that’s how I see it. I go into a bit more detail in the episode, but I’m really curious what you think about this notion. Do I have it right? Am I just stating the obvious? Am I way off-base?

Also, if we assume that this is the current state of things, is that the most desirable state? Should we be pushing for something else? I kind of like the idea of a passionocracy. Historically, I’d say it’s tended to yield pretty positive results. What do you think?

Also, at the end of the show I mention that I’ve started trying out Mastodon, a social network that’s a bit like Twitter, except it’s free, open source, and decentralized. I’m still feeling my way around there, but if you want to connect with me, I’m @monsterjavaguns@mastodon.cloud (of course).

That said, I don’t think it’s beneficial to either party to consider open source tools as competition. To borrow a term I’ve heard bandied about in indie writer and self-publishing communities, it’s more of a “coop-etition” thing… or at least, it ought to be. So many open source tools fit a specific need within a larger pipeline… even a “Swiss Army chainsaw” like Blender. Interoperability is of critical importance. Sadly, due to some of the licensing decisions made by closed source companies, that interoperability and collaboration is made much more difficult.

My little April Fools' joke points to one way of trying to solve the issue. What kind of solutions—regardless of how outlandish—do you think could work?

For years and years, it’s been a common refrain that it’s entirely impossible for an individual to influence the development of closed source software like we can in the open source world. It turns out that isn’t entirely true. It is possible to drive the development of proprietary tools. All it takes is money.

Every year around this time we see alarming stories about companies like Autodesk or Adobe “buying” Blender and doing unpleasant things like changing licenses or only offering BaaS (Blender as a Service) by way of their cloud subscription services. Fortunately, that’s not possible.

However, why have we never stopped to consider the reverse scenario?

Autodesk is a publicly traded company. With enough shares of Autodesk stock, anyone can be an influential driver of the decisions that Autodesk makes. It doesn’t take much. Case in point: for the past two years, Autodesk has been struggling—ahem, negotiating—with “activist investors” with just a 5% stake in the company.

So, based on that, I’m launching a 1-day campaign to purchase an influential share of Autodesk stock on behalf of the Blender community! I don’t think we’d need a full 5%. By all accounts, even a 1% stake in the company would be enough to make things interesting. Think of it! We could get a Blender interaction mode in Maya and 3DSMax. Right-click select everywhere! FBX could be relicensed to be GPL-friendly. Hell, maybe we could even get the source code to Softimage (may it rest in peace).

Autodesk’s market capitalization is about USD $18.7 billion. So for our 1% share, all it will take is just $200,000,000. For just two hundred million dollars, Autodesk users can almost have the same kind of benefits that we get for free with Blender. Let’s do this!

Find more details at avoidtheinternet.today.

(Of course, we could also just keep using and developing Blender and enjoy the benefits of open source software like we’ve already been doing for over ten years. I guess that’s also something we could do.)

That’s my thoughts on it at least, I’d love to know yours.

Also, as I mentioned in the intro and outro, this website now has a Resources section. Currently there’s a page for Tools that you can use in your creative projects and a page for Books for learning more about specific programs. I’d love to hear what you think of this addition to the site and what other things you think I should add in there. Just hit me up with a comment!

Likewise, in the case of being users of open source software tools, we are in the role of client. We know that there’s an issue and we know that it’s been solved in other contexts… but we’re not necessarily the best-qualified to express a solution in this particular context.

We should recognize this scenario, but often we don’t. And even more frequently, our colleagues in the closed source creative world fail to recognize it even more frequently. They often mistakenly consider open source software (and its development) as a public service and that their demands are right and good, and that there’s some obligation for developers to follow them. As open source creatives, it’s incumbent upon us to gently explain to them how things really work… without being jerks in the process.

That’s what I try to cover in this week’s show.

Oh… and as I mentioned, I do have a “Python Tricks for Artists” series over on Opensource.com. The latest article is on adding some basic interactivity to scripts that you’ve already written.

Catch you next week!

I’ve migrated all of the old podcast episodes from monsterjavaguns.com/podcast, including all of the comments on episodes there. The older shows are still listed back on that site for now. I’ll probably end up setting up some permanent redirects from those episode pages to the ones here.

And in this episode, I talk about why (and how) I’ve chosen to use a static site generator (Hugo in this case) to manage the site rather than using WordPress, as I have on so many of my other sites in the past. Static site generators offer a number of really nice benefits… and Hugo isn’t the only one out there. You may also want to check out Jekyll and Hexo as other options.

Also, since I’m using Hugo to generate the pages of this site, I can’t use the Blubrry PowerPress plugin that I was using on my WordPress site. Fortunately, I’ve found a nice podcast-oriented theme for Hugo called castanet by Matt Stratton of the Arrested DevOps podcast. I’ve of course made my own minor customizations to it (the repo is on my GitHub page), but it’s got good bones and it’s been a pleasure to work with so far.

Of course, this means that I’ll probably need to update the text of Episode 29: The Making of a Podcast… at least to link to this episode and the details here since the part on distributing to the website has now changed. I’ll get to that shortly.

I also mention in the show that the Open Source Creative now has its own Twitter account over at @osscreative. It had to be the short version of the name. Apparently “opensourcecreative” is too many characters for a username on Twitter. In any case, go ahead and give me a follow there if your the Twittering type.

And last of all, the commenting system on this new site is served using the Disqus service. Most people (I think) already have a Disqus account. That being the case, you should be able to make a comment on this episode right below this text right here. Go ahead and do it so I know it actually works. :)

Alright… that’s that. See you next week!

Here’s a quick run-down of stuff covered in this episode:

• RetroPie’s call for help with trademark law
• Cloudflare:
  • A detailed explanation of the parser bug that they had
  • Full list of sites that may be affected by the bug
• Crashplan - a back-up solution that you can host yourself, if you want
• rsnapshot - an rsync-based back-up solution that I use in-house
• Let’s Encypt - a means of providing secure encrypted traffic to websites (for free)
• LastPass - an online password vault service
• KeePassX - the password manager I use (coupled with owncloud. But you could use nextcloud or even Dropbox if you want to)
• Archwiki’s description of using LUKS for full disk encryption

And, as promised, here’s a link to see the rings I’ve been making out of wood for the last month or so.

That should do it. See you next week!

We’re on this week, though, and this week we’re talking about social media networks and the kind of love/hate relationship we have with them. We’re often at odds with the privacy policies of a lot of social media platforms. Furthermore, the level of discourse that people have on these sites isn’t always all that great. But at the same time, as people working in the creative fields, we have a need to get our work in front of an audience. Social media has the largest audiences.

What I hope to do with this show is try to ameliorate your concerns with social media and provide some tips and techniques for “juicing the algorithms” to make these platforms more tolerable to use… both in terms of personal privacy as well as in terms of social interactions.

As always, lemme know what you think!

Recording is done in my car using a Zoom H1 field recorder and a Røde lavaliere microphone. The specific lav mic that I got was designed to work with phones, but since Android phones have such horrid gain control, I got an adapter for it to work with the H1. Couldn’t be happier. (OK, so every now and again I catch myself eyeballing some of the higher-end field recorders, but the H1 really is a nice recorder, especially for the price). I record to PCM WAV at 44.1 kHz. I have the levels set so my audio barely ever peaks over -4 dB.

Editing of the show is done in Audacity. Aside from just doing clean-up cuts on the audio track, I use the Normalize and Compressor effects. I didn’t have the settings for those effects on-hand as I recorded, but I have them now. So here you go:

• Normalize
  • Enable “Remove DC offset (center on 0.0 vertically)
  • Enable “Normalize maximum amplitude” and set it to -1.0 dB
  • Disable “Normalize stereo channels independently”
• Compressor
  • Threshold: -16 dB
  • Noise Floor: -40 dB
  • Ratio: 5:1
  • Attack Time: 0.20 secs
  • Release Time: 1.0 secs

The intro and outro are recorded right into Audacity using a Plantronics USB headset (I don’t think they make my particular model any more). After the edit is finalized, I export the episode audio to a 128 kb/s MP3 file.

Metadata tagging is done using EasyTag. Be sure to include the cover image as part of the tag data, otherwise the image won’t show up when the MP3 is played in a modern media player.

Hosting for podcast episodes is done on Amazon S3, but you could just as easily use services like libsyn, podHoster, Blubrry, or even archive.org. I personally would not recommend that you use your regular shared web hosting for these files as I’ve run into trouble in the past with flaky downloading or streaming speeds when taking that route.

Incidentally, I gather analytics on the files hosted on S3 by pulling log files using s3cmd and then parsing those logs using GoAccess to generate an HTML file with pretty graphs and tables of the data. It’s what lets me know roughly how many times an episode has been downloaded.

Distribution of the podcast is currently done on WordPress using the Blubrry PowerPress plugin. It does the job of providing an in-line player and a properly structured RSS feed. In the future, I might move to using a static site generator like Hugo or Jekyll, but not yet.

Update (15 March 2017): The podcast has moved to its own domain now and is not using WordPress as a backend any longer. That, of course, means that the Blubrry PowerPress plugin is also not used. Now, I’m using a static site generator called Hugo and a podcast-oriented theme (that I’ve modified) called castanet. Check out Episode 32: The Website Lives! for more information.

And that about covers it. Yeah, I know it’s a lot of links, but hopefully you find at least some portion of this useful. If not… there’s always next episode!

Talkatcha then.

2 Archived Comments

David Mcsween, Feb 16, 2017

I wish there was a way to conveniently return to older episodes… like on youtube for example ;)

Jason, Feb 16, 2017

I see what you did there. :)

I’ll look into it.

What about you? Do you ever get a sense of comparisonitis? What kinds of things do you do to beat that beast?

So yeah… this is a rant about that, and perhaps a solution (or at least a suggestion) or two about how to avoid doing it.

2 Archived Comments

caetano, Feb 24, 2017

I found the thread and didn’t find the courage to read through it. How can you do that ? It gets bad so quickly. Inkscape 0.92 has such good new things to talk about. The new object manager is not even mentioned once in this thread.

Anyway to give my answers to some of your questions or remarks :

– Is it specific to open source applications or does this “comparing and discrediting” also happen when proprietary applications make new releases ?

I think the problem doesn’t lie in open source or proprietary. Blenderartists.org is one of those rare forums where we talk about programs that are not in the name of the forum (Blender artists > Inkscape). As a consequence, many people who don’t use this program seriously (or use it at all) will still stumble upon the thread and feel like talking about it, and of course their posts can hardly be pertinent. You won’t find this behavior on dedicated forums (http://forum.inkscapecommunity.com/index.php?topic=347.0 http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=31053) or in a general forum like CG Society because it’s big enough so people will only go in the subforums for their software.

“modeling in maya feels like modeling with socks on my hands” : Something you already said but I wanted to reply to it. I think most Blender users find Blender faster for modeling but in the recent years, maya got some quite powerful modeling tools (modeling toolkit, topology based symmetry and much more) and has always had some cool features like visualizing in real time your “proportional editing” selection, editing multiple objects at the same time (allowing proportional editing on multiple objects) and many other cool things. And all the good shortcuts are there too, just not in the same place. So I think (although you don’t claim it to be) it’s not an objective statement and it’s mostly due to a lack of experience with Maya, since experienced Maya modelers are really efficient.

Jason, Feb 25, 2017

It may be a thing that specific to the BA forum, but I’ve seen it in general discussions as well when interacting with folks in meatspace. Maybe BA is a more accurate reflection of general behavior… or maybe I have a knack for finding that type of person to talk to. I can’t say for sure… neither one of those things sounds all that favorable or pleasant. :)

As for Maya… Modeling in Maya has indeed gotten better over the years (many a feature pulled from Max from years ago, but I digress), but it’s less about tools and more about approach. I’m super-comfortable rigging in Maya and animating in it is pretty nice as well. However, I personally abhor the channelbox approach that most Maya riggers seem to favor. I want my controls on the model, in the scene. Maya caters itself to a particular workflow and that workflow simply doesn’t jive with me as well as Blender does. From a proprietary tool standpoint, I was much more comfortable in Softimage than I ever have been in Maya.

I’m sure that there is some personal bias in there. I am, afterall, a Blender “old fart” and have been using it as my primary 3D tool for almost two decades now (Yow!). Short version: as I said in this episode, one is not better than the other, just different. And that’s OK. :)

Thanks to everyone who participated. Keep an eye out here (or even better, subscribe to my newsletter) for word on when the site goes live.

Now, this week’s show is really a nuts-and-bolts kind of thing. As the title says, it’s how a person would go about making his or her living as an open source creative… a person whose primary creative software tools are open source. I still run into people who swear it can’t be done. In a way, this is my rebuttal. This episode stays largely generic, but i do make reference to the Blender Market, the open movie projects from the Blender Institute, and a very excellent (and timely) article about David Revoy, an illustrator and comic artist who uses open source tools and produces open content.

And as a program note, there’s a chance that there won’t be an episode next week. Hopefully that’s not true… I’m on a pretty good streak here. But things are what they are. In any case, the show will definitely have an episode after that. So keep your ears peeled.

1 Archived Comment

Jay, Jan 18, 2017

Awesome and thank you, downloading now!

References in the show also include the Blender Cloud, Blender Market, and WordPress plugins and themes.

Also, I want to thank everyone who’s participated so far in the poll I posted last week regarding the domain name to where the Open Source Creative will be moving. The poll is still open, and will be until the 14th of January. So if you haven’t responded to it yet, I’d certainly appreciate it if you would. The link to the poll is right here:

• Open Source Creative Domain poll

And that about covers it. See you next week!

Part of my goals include continuing to do creative work each day and [try to] post it on the Daily Creative group we’ve created on Facebook. If you have a Facebook account, come on by and join in. It’s a great little collection of artists that we’ve got there.

Most importantly, I also mention in the show [spoiler alert] that I’ll be moving this podcast to its own site some time this year. That site, of course, will require a domain name. Problem is, I can’t decide on which one. So I made a little survey of the possible choices I have in mind. In the show, I give a bit more detail about the thought process I’ve got behind each of the choices. In any case, if you wouldn’t mind answering this little poll for me, I’d be most appreciative.

Thanks!

1 Archived Comment

Light BWK, Jan 8 2017

Creative goal: Finish the base design for my game, get it playable before December 31th 2017.

Oh, and Krita 3.1 has been released, go update!

After that digression, though, my main focus this episode has been on productivity… making the time to work on your projects. I break it down thusly:

• Figure out your personal create/consume ratio
• Make the necessary sacrifices of consume time to make room for creating
• Optimize that time so you’re as productive as possible in it
• Squeeze out extra minutes in seconds where you didn’t think you had time

Of course, even though I’ve listed out the rough basis here, you should still listen to the show because I go into each bit with more detail (and digressions, of course. Wouldn’t be me otherwise, right?)

My question for you this week: what kind of things have you done to make time for creating? I’m always looking for new things to try out.

And as a small second, what do you think about these show notes? Do you prefer the list-style that I’ve used on previous shows, or is this in-line format more to your taste?

See you next week!

6 Archived Comments

dave hingley, Dec 15, 2016

I started thinking about finding time back in uni. at the time my university day was 7.30am to 6pm with an hour for lunch. I worked out if i worked on extra projects durring my lucnhbreak, I could spend 5 hours a week on somehting else.

when i got home at 6pm, I would be tired, I would sleep for an hour, then eat, then from 8pm till midnight my time was pretty much my own. I could prep work for the next day

in a week (monday to friday) I would get a days work for free

these days I do something similar- I sacrifice my lunch times to give me 5 h ours a week to spend on various art projects. I used to draw the line at not working in the eveneing to spend time with my fiance, but recently I have gotten a tablet to work on, so we can both be watching TV and i can be drawing/animating on the tablet.

Every other weekend My Fiance works, So i am able to do either DIY jobs around the house or work on projects.

eventually, though, the number of extra hours I will be able to commit to personal projects if/when I become a parent will reduce rapidly, but I think then its time to really start smaller short projects, make a drawing, do a comic strip etc I wont be ablet to keep the pace forever, maybe we should think about working in bursts? would that make for a better work/life balance?

Jason, Dec 16, 2016

That’s a good approach… really big on squeezing out those moments when you can find them. Do you have trouble getting yourself “into the zone” on your work? Some folks take a half hour to an hour to warm up before they can really put their nose down and get it done. Are you in that camp, or have you found a way to simply sit down and get right to work?

And yes, the addition of having kids has certainly forced me to think harder about how I manage my time for creative projects. Fortunately, as kids get older (and if they have an interest), they can start doing their own creative stuff when you do your own. It’s a great feeling.

Light BWK, Dec 15, 2016

I’m not always productive. If I’m experimenting with new stuff I am mostly certain that I will stumble for days.

As for making time for creating, I cut off a lot of time wasting activity. 2 years ago, I stopped watching TV, unsubscribed to a lot of Youtube channels, don’t listen to not important podcasts (this means your codpass is important XD ). Only read the 1st or 2nd paragraph to a news article or post, if interesting and important then I read further. Plus I have been using text to speech (reason why I’m on windows most of the time, TTS in Linux sucks) to consume more important articles while I do my things.

Jason, Dec 16, 2016

Ooooh… the text to speech thing is something I hadn’t thought of (probably because I’m exclusively on Linux ;)). That sounds like a really helpful way to go. I think that the Mycroft project was doing some stuff on that front. Maybe I should devote a little bit of time to investigate that a little further and see if I can make it useful.

(Also, thank you for the kind words about my codpast. It means quite a lot and I really appreciate that you consider this show valuable to listen to.)

Light BWK, Dec 17, 2016

Ohh so it is codpast and not codpass. I will remember that. :D

Here’s a few links to things I reference in the show:

• Blender Artists (.org)
• Right-Click Select
• My little lightning talk at Blender Conference 2016, talking about Blender Artists and Right-Click Select Also, thanks again to everyone who commented on the last episode. I really appreciate it. What other tips do you have for making good feature requests?

5 Archived Comments

caetano, Dec 13, 2016

Do you have some examples of features that were added thanks to rightclickselect.com ? (I say “thanks to” to exclude any happy coincidence of a feature that was added and also happened to have had a rightclickselect proposal)

Much more importantly : have you really had all these beards and haircuts at some point in time ?

Jason, Dec 13, 2016

Good question! I would need to look into that (the Right-Click Select thing). Part of the vision for the site is to have tighter integration with developer.blender.org, specifically so people can see when an idea on RCS migrates to a design issue on developer.blender.org. I just need to make the time (and perhaps get a bit better at web development… or find someone who already has those skills) to add that feature in.

As for the hair/beards question… yes. I’ve worn all of those… plus a few additional ones. I should probably update that GIF. The whole history of them can actually be seen on my Facebook page. I tend to update the drawing when I make a change. :)

caetano, Dec 13, 2016

That’s a great plan. I wish you to become a badass web developer and considering how active you are on the web, I feel like it would be the best solution in the long term, although I don’t know your plans for the future.

Too bad I can’t access the photos since I don’t have a facebook account, I’ll have to use my visual imagination.

Jason, Dec 13, 2016

Ha! It’s unfortunate that, although I’m interested in web development in general, it’s not a core focus of mine. I tend to hack on things until they work. In the long run, I’ll probably need some help to give that site all of the love that it deserves.

Huh… I thought those images were publicly visible. Guess I’ll have to make a page/gallery here that’s dedicated to them.

*caetano**, Dec 13, 2016

yeah, facebook won’t let you see some things anyway when you don’t have an account.

I think I have an answer to this… at least for myself. However, I’m really interested in you. Do you have a medium that you think of as your medium, or do you split your focus across more than one creative outlet? How do you keep focus? How do you maintain balance? Do you actively do any of that at all, or do you just let the chips fall where they may?

7 Archived Comments

dave hingley, Nov 30, 2016

Hey Jason,

I think of my self as an artist. I trained as an animator and we were encouraged to think of ourselves as such but the idea that an artist is married to a specific media is not really valid. Some painters also made sculpture ( degas carved ballerinas. Dali made one of his elephants, magrite had his readymades, Warhol made sculptures and films) musicians like David Bowie also painted as well as actors like Sylvester Stalone who have also written screen plays and directed. I think as artists we should be open to opportunity to try new ways of making things, in many ways we love the process of creating, rather than the product that’s created

If I only animated, and made animation the way I should make animation either with flash or toonboom or 3d in maya, I don’t think I would be able to make that much work, maybe a short film every year?

My Fiance is heavily into amateur theatre and as a result I have been asked to help on a number of projects. This has resulted in me being in demand by other groups

that has in turn lead to some paid illustration work. In the past year I did animation work for a production of ‘signing’ in the rain’, a series of backdrops and posters for a Pantothat sold out at the Edinburgh Festival, a 10 page comic and half a dozen illustrations for a book of folk takes for children, logo design for a production of ‘Steel Magnolias’, a poster for a play about King Knut, the illustrations for a book about Saxons and Viking Kings ( will probably be out next year), a set of promotional Top trump cards for a story telling event, designed the poster for this years Panto, produced a little webcomic and I have also written my own Panto which I hope will be put on next year. Some of these projects were fun and challenging and some where tedious slog fest where deadlines where ridiculously short and as a result, I didn’t sleep much.

All those projects where done in my spare time so on top of it all I was still doing a day job. These extra projects came about because I was happy to say yes to the opportunities offered they gave me an insight into other ways of working,I created all these things and I think as a result, my initial definition of myself as an artist still stands

If I had defined my self as an animator, and only judged my worth on what I had animated this last year then my output would be terrible a couple of 15 second clips and a few bits and bobs here and there, hardly seem worthy.

It could be that in 1017, I may decide to concentrate more on making animation, and so there will be less graphic design work, and then I could justify calling myself an animator, but really, I would still be an artist, just favouring animation, and my output of work would be different, as well, I might make just a minute or so of animation the whole year – as an animator would that be good? Or bad?

Its like Albert Einstein said:

everybody is a Genius. But If You Judge a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a Tree, It Will Live Its Whole Life Believing that It is Stupid.’

I think anyone can be an artist, but if as an artist that favours painting, you judge your output on the number of sculptures you create then you’re going to be disappointed, but if as an artist, you judge yourself on the total artwork you create then I think you will be surprised at the sheer amount of art you can actually create.

Jason, Nov 30, 2016

Wise words, Dave. Thanks for sharing them.

Klaatu, Nov 30, 2016

Totally off the cuff here, and not well thought-out: but what if an ‘artist’ inherently has different media while a ‘craftsman’ inherently has only the media required for the craft.

I don’t think of myself as either of those two labels, probably because those terms have such weight now, and when I think of “an artist”, I think of all those flakes I knew in NYC and LA, and when I think of “craftsman” I think of somebody who gets paid to make chairs. These are not accurate or fair, but they are my own special linguistic biases, and I cherish them.

I just Do What I Do, and the medium I use depends on how adventurous I’m feeling on any given day. Mostly I think of myself as somebody whose media is digital.

Jason, Nov 30, 2016

Heh… personal linguistic biases are fantastic. Those terms actually conjure similar images for me as well. I’m not sure if it shows in the podcast, but I have real difficulty using the term artist, especially in a self-referential way. It’s why I end up using the gratingly nebulous term “creative” as a noun as much as I do.

Either my vocabulary is failing me or there simply isn’t a term for “person who makes stuff for self-amusement”… correction: there’s not a non-pejorative term for that as far as I know. There should be.

Light BWK, Nov 30, 2016

My medium is storytelling, which is a huge area. It can be written stories, still images like comic, moving pictures like a movie or interactive like games. I can be designing the location, tweaking lighting mood as well as giving context to why the location is as such in the form of narrative and plots. Day one I can 3D model, another day I can paint the scene, another day I can make the characters move. Since I am an engineer, all these can come from either my logical or artistic brain. Plus I have developed methods to engineer stories beat to beat that works in any medium. It might sound crazy but storytelling is the ultimate medium, without it you will lack inspiration or motivation to 3D model, paint a landscape, device tools and set processes. If I were to pick 1 thing to do the rest of my life, I will and am confidently say “Storytelling.”

Jason, Nov 30, 2016

That’s fantastic. I feel like I used to have that level of assured mindset in defining “my medium.” Somewhere along the line, though, it feels like either my interests fractured or (more kindly put) diversified. I’m still not sure if the result is more desirable than having the sureness of resolve that you do. From my perspective, you’re in a pretty enviable position… but then again, the grass is always greener.

You’ve given me more to think on. Thank you.

Light BWK, Dec 1, 2016

“interests fractured or (more kindly put) diversified”

We all have that problem, just how much one can handle it.

Fractured interest is easy to solve though. Motivation, interest and inspiration can be stored. It does sound like a load of BS at first encounter. The key is to capture those tiny sparks of brilliance when they happen. Store them in any media you like, sometimes chat streams or FB post can store those catalyst . When you are lost, go back and seek them. It’s like counting your blessings but this time you are counting stuff you have done that you love. They will realign you and often times provide new insights and direction.

Doing new things will also help you not feel demotivated. Start small, very small goals, those you can finish under few hour or a day. This is me talking to myself: “I’m going to rise this pole and make it the best pole I have ever done in my life.” Sounds like a tall order (forgive me for the pun), but if you think about it more, it is just one thing done with perfect score. :D

• The Daily Creative group that got launched on Facebook as a result of my attempt to do a “Creative TriMonthalon”. As an extra bonus, here are some links to some of the work I made during that TriMonthalon:

  • Sculptember 2015
  • Inktober 2015
  • (the finished writing from that year’s NaNoWriMo is still coming)

• Jungle Book, my little coding distraction to analyze book covers on Amazon

• Word Pacer, another coding distraction where I wrote a little web app for visualizing the pacing of a chunk of text

• Opensource.com, where I’ve been writing articles on open source and creativity

• Book Widget, I forgot to mention this one, but this was another little coding distraction… it’s a WordPress widget that adds a book to your sidebar with links to the retailers where it’s available. I’m actually using it on this site. There’s kind of a fun story about that. Maybe I’ll talk about it a bit in the next episode.

And, most importantly, I asked what you’ve been up to in the last year or so. Let me know. Share links. It’ll be a hoot!

1 Archived Comment

Iain McGregor, Nov 24, 2016

Hi Jason

Thanks for the podcast. It’s good to hear what others have been doing. I’ve produced two animations using Blender during the last year. Here are the links:

https://youtu.be/2PSjARmmL7M

https://youtu.be/zJs27xNdKOM

When we met at the Blender conference a few weeks ago I explained that I learned Blender by studying your “Blender for Dummies” book. That was in Blender 2.49 so it was your first edition. The book gave me a great foundation to build on.

Regards

Iain McGregor

The gist of the episode revolves around online advertising, otherwise known as paid traffic. A lot of creatives, both in the open source community and outside of it, are interested in getting their work in front of an audience that would appreciate it. Advertising online, particularly on social media (specifically Facebook), seems like it might be the best avenue for getting that kind of proper exposure. However, as someone with a high interest in privacy, security, and non-douchy ethics, I have a few misgivings about how some parts of online advertising are handled. That’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about in this episode.

There’s a question in there for you, too. Even though the recording is over a year and a half old, I’m still curious about this topic and interested in your thoughts on the matter. So please do share.

2 Archived Comments

Klaatu, Nov 16, 2016

Ads are a clunky and lazy mimicry of human interaction. I love an ad when it leads me to something cool, but that mostly happens when that “ad” is a friend who mentions something to me because they think I might like it. The more human an ad, the better, and try as Facebook and Google might, they cannot divine my interests by scanning my web history or emails, nor anticipate when I’m in the mood to be sold to. Internet advertising is a numbers ame, and that’s de-humanizing.

Your advice to be genuine is the correct answer, and opt-in is the correct model.

Jason, Nov 16, 2016

Agreed. The anticipating mood thing is a big factor in this. And yeah, ads have always been a numbers game… a thing where single digit ROI is actually good because you’re throwing your mess out there in front of an audience of millions. That changed a little bit for a while there with better analytics and niche marketing… but the big data thing seems to be dragging that industry back in the direction of giant numbers again.

Thing is, I’m predisposed trust your opinion over that of a thousand people I don’t know… and I think (I hope) most other people are of a similar mindset. Granted, the cynic in me knows that can also be gamed and manipulated, but the optimist in me thinks that most people have pretty adequately-tuned bullshit detectors. I’m rooting for the optimist.

• Opening Keynote
• Viewport 2.8: Oh the Possibilities
• Nimble Collective: Pipeline in the Cloud
• MAD Animation Studio: The Blender Takeover
• Tangent Animation: Making Ozzy with Blender
• Open Stage (Blender Lightning Talks) - Look for my goofy face right around the 30-minute mark

And that will about do it. In the next episode, I’ll record from my car again. Perhaps I’ll even bring you up to speed with all the crazy things I’ve been up to in the last year and a half.

On a general note, I’m really interested to hear what you think about the walking format for the show. It’s not likely that walking shows will be the norm, but if you like it, perhaps it’s something I’ll throw into the rotation periodically. In any case, I’d love feedback on that.

Also, for those of you unfamiliar with this podcast, I have a tendency to casually curse throughout it. If that’s something that bothers you, you have been warned.

Wheeeeee!

2 Archived Comments

quollism, Nov 9, 2016

Great to have you back!

Jason, Nov 9, 2016

Thanks! Let’s see how well I can keep this up. I’ll need constant pestering. :)

But first… a few personal news linkage bits:

• Blender For Dummies, 3rd edition was released. Woohoo!
• As a result, I re-launched BlenderBasics.com as the official Blender For Dummies website with a bunch of written tutorials there
• And, thanks to the generous backers of my Kickstarter campaign, I was able to purchase a block of 100 ISBNs and I’ve started the publishing process for my first indie book, Definitely True: Year One, under my M. J. Guns pen name. The ebook is currently available for pre-order on Amazon and Kobo… and both the print version and the ebook will be available on all the other book selling sites shortly. Wheeeee!

And… in open source creative software news:

• Blender transparency blog - The first blog post for this isn’t up yet, but there’s a [mostly] healthy discussion about it over on BlenderArtists.org
• Blender Animation Studios developing Agent 327
• Krita 3.1 Kickstarter campaign - They’re trying to raise loot for faster painting and [my personal favorite] animation features. Donate!
• Blender Conference call for participation - The conference is at the end of October. See if you can get accepted for a talk.

Open source creative software releases:

• Ardour 4
• Synfig Studio 1.0
• Shotcut 15.05

And one last thing that I forgot to mention… I’m speaking SELF, the SouthEast LinuxFest, in Charlotte, North Carolina. SELF is in June, from the 12th to the 14th. I’ll be talking about producing cool creative things with open source software. I’ve never been to a Linux conference before so it should be a lot of fun. If you’re going to be there, come track me down.

And that’s about it. See you next episode.

1 Archived Comment

Dave Hingley, May 20, 2015

Hi Jason,

sorry this episode was a little too rambley and the point didnt really make a lot of sense

but if I understand you correctly, the intent to create is selfish and the relase of the creation of selfless. so not a slong a post this time- sorry.

first up, lets abandon those terms, they are too culturally loaded. it doesn’t matter if you try and contextuallise it, selfishness still registers as a negative concept.

so instead let’s redefine the first concept that intent to create is self gratifying:

only that doesn’t work, for example, yesterday I had to solve a small problem in the office, in order to fix it i wrote a small program in processing. Do I like writing code in Processing? no. I don’t like writing it, buts its fast and gives quick feedback and i could write it quickly. so there was nothing in the process of creating it that was self gratifying. I neede a piece of software to solve a problem.

you could argue that the need for the software was self gratifying. Indeed, I could have lived without the software tool, but things would have taken longer. is it self gratifying to want to work more efficiently? or to reduce unnecesary work?

when I get home, I cook dinner for my partner and me. the intent to create dinner is driven by the nescesity to eat. otherwise we starve to death. yes we enjoy the food, you could argue that is self gratifying, although I used a different brand of tuna and it was shredded instead of flaked, and I didnt like it. I still are the whole thing, because it was a choice between that or nothing. is that still self gratifying?

so maybe we should simply say that the intent to create is driven by nescesity – after all, necesity is the mother of invention.

ok, so thats the first concept looked at lets look at sharing.

sharing is selfless.

only it isn’t, in your episode you mention that selling is a form of sharing (it isn’t, selling is selling, sharing is sharing- its part of the reason why Hollywood is so pissed with people sharing fiilms) After all, you arent giving away any of your books right? so you do gain from every copy sold. thsi can be seen to be not selfless.

In my spare time, over the last couple of years, I have been working on a pece of short animation. I am using open source software, as part of this, I have written some software tools to help me make th animation. It is my desire, when the film is finsihed to release the software tools and the source models into the creative commons.In this example, my act of sharing the source files can probably be thought of as selfless

so maybe the act of of sharing could be considered as selflessly neutral, you can share exclusively – using a shop or money to limit who can actually consume your work, or you can share inclusively, by throwing it open to the community und Creative Commons

your analogy of mugging a guy for his watch, is kind of a different discussion between intent and result, any that might be worth talking about on a nother episode

cheers Dave

Of course, when there’s a month gap between episodes, there’s a lot of news that transpires. First (because, well, it’s my podcast), the me-related news:

• Be a responsible open source user - I wrote an article that was posted on opensource.com!
• I had a Kickstarter project - If you’re on my mailing list or follow me here or on social media, you probably already know this. I learned a lot from this… definitely interested in sharing
• Calendar flipbook animation - For my Kickstarter project, I designed a daily tear-off calendar. Not only could I not resist making it also a flipbook, I was compelled to make an animation of that flipbook in action. Eventually, I’ll write a little tutorial on how it’s done.
• Blender For Dummies 3rd edition is coming out! - You can pre-order it now, but the official release is 27 April 2015. Wheeeee!

Yeah… but enough about me. There was also a bunch of real news in the open source creative world:

• Unreal Engine 4 is free (as in beer, but with source) - This happened at GDC. Also free as in beer announcements (but no source) were made for the Source 2 engine, Unity, and PhysX. We ended up having a full discussion on the topic on the LinuxLUGcast.
• Blender was not accepted to the GSOC15 - These things happen
• MyPaint closed their wiki and moved support to GitHub
• Shotcut 15.03 was released - While you’re there, check out the release video
• blender.today was launched - A reddit-style site specifically for Blender news. Well worth checking out.
• Krita 2.9.1 was released
• Google Code is shutting down - They, too are migrating to GitHub (and recommend that you do, too)
• Pixar’s PRMan renderer is free for non-commercial use
• AMD patches Cycles - Hopefully this makes it to master; it enables GPU rendering on AMD video cards
• Chuck Wendig vs Clean Reads - This was kind of a tempest in a teacup, but it did get me to write my own blog post about it
• Virtual noses and VR sickness - Quite possibly one of the cooler stories that I stumbled across during the month

Calls for content:

• Blenderart Magazine
• Libre Graphics Magazine And that should about do it. Wow.

Talkatcha next week!

5 Archived Comments

Regus Martin, Apr 23, 2015

One great example in defense of Spec work is Andrew Kramer and his work with J. J. Abrams. He did his first project for him without any expected pay. (he did get paid for it awhile later, but that’s beside the point) That let to him working on many more paid projects such as Star Trek and lots of other major productions.

Jason, Apr 23, 2015

Good point. And a lot of [lesser known] people get their start similarly, with strategically considered spec work. Of course, the counter argument is these individuals are outliers and don’t represent what typically happens among the majority of creatives. There’s some truth there; good fortune does play its role. However, it’s not the only role; you’ll get no where without developing your skill and continued dedication to your craft. I would also say that being the outlier is, in part, an implicit goal when you choose to do creative work. How many creatives want to make work that’s just like everyone else?

TL;DR: Some people might think you’ve made an unfair example. I’m not one of those people. :P

Bassam, May 13, 2015

Finally listened to your podcast while grooming some hair (cg not real). Great delivery, fun way to make your commute more useful!

I’d argue a little that you are against spec work – since a lot of the stuff you describe: Marketing work, fun work that could later pay, Free/Open work, work for contract are not spec.

Spec is more driven by the client, and comes with no guarantees – i.e. if you do a ‘fan’ video for a project and post it online, and later the company hires you, I’d say that’s not quite the traditional definition of spec work. On the otherhand, if an agency or client asks you to make some small part of their project in order to bid on it, that is more like traditional spec work.

Jason, May 15, 2015

I see where you’re coming from, but spec work can be artist-driven. There are spec scripts and spec commercials that people produce on the hope that someone will purchase/distribute it from them. It does bear the name. But maybe that’s part of the issue… perhaps the term has been overloaded with a few multiple meanings and I’m unintentionally conflating them.

Dave Hingley, May 14, 2015

Hi Jason,

Finally got round to listening to your podcast – you got my surname spot on – well done sir! Again I have spent a couple of days cogitating your general gist of the podcast and I think we should try break up spec work into a number of different categories:

portfolio / promotion pieces

These are pieces you have made for yourself to demonstrate your artistic range. You can’t really call them speculative as you didn’t pitch them to anyone -If you sell them later, that’s an added bonus. But wasn’t the original intention of the artwork

Competitions/promotions:

here’s a more calculated risk. You are banking on your work being judged by a competition and winning the prize. An example of this would be the current conception over on Doug walker’s site – this actually looks like a fun competition with a decent cash prize. Here, I guess the challenge is to produce something of decent quality in the shortest period of time, that adheres to the rules of the contest.

True Spec work:

thie is either you sending off art to potential clients or anticipating a clients needs and getting off a piece of art to them before they realise they need it or pitching a piece from them. Here the challenge is to get your art used so you could be paid for it.

There is really no problem with portfolio pieces, its your art, your IP, you can do what the hell you like with it. Things start getting murky when we move into the territory of competitions. I remember a few years ago seeing posts on various animation message boards asking for animators to make a low budget music video – there’s the usual things in the request

“We can’t pay much but it will give you great exposure”

the band was actually a very well known band who had a number of hits in the 70’s. Needless to say the forums I was on let them know in no uncertain terms what they could do with their offer.

Here’s some things things to consider about contests:

1. if you enter the contest and you dont win. who owns the IP? If part of the conditions of the contest is that the contest organiser owns the IP, and you dont win, and later they decide to use your art in a different way – what recourse do you have?

2. what does great exposure actually mean? say you make this music video for a band and it gets viewed 10 Billion times ( congratulations! you beat Gangnam style!) How many of those views will result in new commisions? seriously ask your self, next time you get a commision, ask them how they heard about you. was it your online portfolio? your facebook page? the music video? I think it would be intersting to see exactly how much extra work ‘exposure’ gets you.

3. do the rules of the competinion, not constitute a contract? should you be protected if competition organisers try and do something counter to the rules?

Things get even more tricky for true spec work. as it can be potentially dangerous. I work in games and most companies will not accept any kind of speculative pitch for a game or character because if we are already working on something that they pitch they could argue the company stole their design. so with that information, I would think it’s safe to assume that any company asking for spec work or putting feelers out for spec work do not have in house departments they are commisioning for. So if they want a logo, they probably dont have an Art Director, graphic designer, or artists in the place. The Person who will be evaluating your logo design, has no idea about composition, colour theory or general design principles, has no idea how long it takes to produce the logo, or the best format to have the file in and no idea how much it is worth. should your design be deemed good enough, then you submit an invoice, they then decide if its worth the price you invoiced them. they will either pay it ( well done!) or they will try and negotiate it down. if you prove too beligerant, then they will just decide to not have a logo, no one gets paid – except another designer commisioned a few days later to make a logo that looks like your design but significantly different.

I disagree that all work is spec work. if you are contracted with a regular salary then how can that be speculative? By definition, speculative is a gamble you submit the work on the hope that you get something out of it. your point that if you have a contract and the client reneges means that they have breached their contract- you could therefore have grounds to pursue them through your countries legal system.

the examples of the game engines is a little different. as commercial piece of software, the licence fees will have generated enough income for the company op open them out to consumers, this will have 2 outcomes:

1. the home user makes some kickass games and distributes them free (as in beer)

2. the home user makes the next flappy bird. suddenly it becomes popular and a vialble commercial proposition, Engine company now says to user ‘Well done your game is a hit, plase licence your copy of the engine’ yes theres a fee but as the game is making money it should pay for itself.

two final thoughts:

Spec work is a gamble, you are competing against an unknown number of competitors to match a brief that may or may not exist for a client who is only concerned with final product. they don’t care about process they wont see the hours spent on the design or the drafts that weren’t finalised.

finally, I think commisioners need to understand that creating art is difficult, we make it look easy because we have spent our entire lives doing it. You wouldn’t ask a plumber to fix your central heating by telling them ‘ it will be great exposure’ or to do it ‘for the love’. You recognise he has specialist skills that you dont have and pay the rate set down by the plumber. I used to be quite offended by this sort of reasoning, like we are easily distracted mororns. Tell us how good you think our art is, pat is on the head and we’ll draw all your logos .

• If you think that reselling “used” digital media makes any sense, you’re an idiot.
• If you have a problem with used digital content (dumb as that idea is), but don’t have the same problem with used content in physical media, you’re a hypocrite.
• And, if you’re releasing some of your content for free (as in beer) as a marketing tactic, but you don’t see used resales or even piracy as additional marketing venues, you’re also a hypocrite.

So yeah… that’s my piece. I’m looking forward to see what everyone else thinks.

In me-related news, here are a couple links:

• Afterwriting - This is a fantastic little web-based (javascript, from the looks of it) open source tool for converting screenplays written in the fountain syntax to properly formatted PDFs. It also gives some interesting stats about your screenplays as well. Definitely worth a look.
• LinuxLUGcast - I recently started participating in this Mumble chat LUG. Meetings happen every 1st and 3rd Friday, they’re recorded, and shared as a podcast. Pretty cool.

And links related to open source creative news stuff:

• Autodesk goes full rental - Come 2016, perpetual licenses will end for any Autodesk product that isn’t a suite.
• Follow-up on the Krita in Paris 8 story - Libre Graphics World has a really in-depth article that has a lot more detail on how that happened and what the next steps are.
• Libre Graphics Meeting submission deadline extended - unfortunately, it’s well past even that extension date now… but the meeting is still worth attending. It’s in Toronto this year.
• Bassam Kurdali interview on Renderstreet - Bassam’s mind words in exciting ways. This interview gives a lot of insight into how he thinks.
• Dependency graph article on the Blender development blog - This one is actually written by Bassam. Lots of nice goodies coming in Blender’s dependency graph.

New software releases:

• Luxrender 1.4
• Natron 1.2.0
• LibreOffice for Android
• Krita 2.9

Whew… that’s a lot of stuff.

2 Archived Comments

**Dave Hingley, Mar 4, 2015

Hi Jason.

listened to your latest podcast. and initially, I thought we were going to have disagreements, but I totally see where you are coming from. Originators don’t get a cut in profits from second hand/nearly new/preloved content. and if they did, Our society would become radically different.

Our consumer culture would become even more pronounced and things would be thrown away with being reused,recycled or repurposed, because if you are going to get into legal trouble using that old hair straightener to iron collars or turn it into some kind of DIY laminator, then ingenuity and creativity would suffer. indeed pcs would only ever be mac or Windows. the concept of open source would just not be there

however the rest of your points prompted a series of questions- not necessarily disagreeing with you but here’s some ‘what -ifs’ :

• the main problem with selling pre owned digital content is that it doesn’t degrade. thats true to a certain extent but on my blog I have examined a couple of cases where digital data had to be carefully restored in this case 30 year old amiga drawings by Andy Warhol (http://titaniumbunker.com/?p=3508) (about half way through the post) its possible and i am sure some bibliophiles do buy multiple first editions of books and lock them away to sell them many years later. The same happens with cars so why not books? would it be better if say over time the pages of a digital document became degraded – not un readable but more blurred or faded? what if an mp3 had more hiss and clicks in tracks? or color faded from video. that way the user isn’t getting quite the same experience of buying the content new?

• if you buy a licence to run a piece of software then does the provider of the software have any obligations? I have a copy of flash 4 i bought years ago ( i use inkscape these days), but as someone who still has a licence to use this software, should adobe have an obligation to port my copy of flash4 to my current platform (linux)? if an operating system is updated, should they provide me with an update for free? after all while companies release newer versions of their software you dont have to upgrade to it, and when i have bought software before no one has ever told me when the licence expires . indeed If companies are moving over to a subscription type model, then shouldn’t the software be available to me on any platform i want? so If i am signing up to Adobe Creative cloud, I should be able to run after effects from linux. because otherwise the licence is actually quite restrictive, not only do you have to make sure you have a machine that meets their requirements but you also have to use th eoperating system they decide to release on – seems like the user is doing all the work, and paying to use the software…

• There is a line of demarcation between selling pre used digital content and piracy, if you make a copy then sell it on , it’s piracy, pure and simple. If you are selling it on,then like you say, you are charging for a transfer of the licence to own the content. And I do think its important to recognise the difference between the two

• Working for free: you say that a valid way of earning an income from digital art is to give away some free art in order to build a following. in what way is this different to those emails we all get that say ‘we can’t pay you but it will be great for your profile’ Maybe I am just cynical but surely if you got some free content and theres the option to pay to get some more you might just think ‘i’m good right here’ and not get any. after all the other business that fits this model is free to play games for tablets, and i make it a point to never pay for extra in game features.

Finally, thanks for a great podcast I look forward to the next episode

Regards

Dave Hingley

Jason, Mar 4, 2015

Wow… what an incredibly thorough and well thought-out comment. Thank you, Dave.

Let’s see if I can adequately address some of your points/questions:

• Degrading digital content over time: I can see the appeal that this may have (at first) for a digital distributor. However, it kind of undermines the benefits of digital media for that distributor as well. Remember that there’s negligible cost to distribute a digital file… forever. If the file degrades for consumers, it would also degrade for the distributor.

• Obligating software vendors: While this certainly sounds nice from a customer perspective, I think it’s pretty untenable from a business perspective. Of course, it’s also part of the reason why I prefer to exclusively use free and open source software.

• Distinguishing between used sales and piracy: Legally and ethically, I agree with you. There is a difference. Of course, it could also be argued that the digital copying used in piracy is a closer match to the natural use of digital media. Regardless, the point I was making here is that a lot of indies use free distribution of some of their content as an exposure play in marketing. Used digital sales (ludicrous though they are) are also free (as in zero money to the artist) distribution channels that provide exposure. My opinion is that if an artist is using free releases as part of a marketing strategy, but disparaging used sales and piracy, that’s a bit hypocritical.

• Working for free: What you’re talking about here is spec work… and it’s a big topic that I don’t think I can give adequate justice to in a blog comment. That said, I think that my rant in this episode has helped me solidify my thoughts on where I stand regarding spec work… and I think I’ll make that discussion the topic of my next episode. :)

Again, thanks so much for the in-depth comment and a huge thank you for listening to the show. I’m glad you enjoy it. I look forward to reading your thoughts on the next one.

Also, I devote a good chunk of time to discussing my hunt for a version control system for my writing work, as also detailed in my last blog post. Short version: it should work without a central server and it needs to have a full-featured Android client. Suggestions welcome.

The format for the show got shuffled around a bit, too. I’ve started doing the news bits as part of the intro and I have a little closing bit at the end. Let me know how you like it.

Speaking of news… this is what I cover:

• Krita 2.9 beta 2 - A new beta of Krita is out. Go test it!
• Krita replaces Photoshop at University Paris 8 - Hooray! This is just a giant bucket of good news. Let’s hope it catches on.
• Gorilla and Gibbon - Boudewijn Rempt (Krita maintainer) talks about how Krita isn’t Photoshop and gives a roadmap for Krita’s development
• Interview with Tupi dev, Gustav Gonzalez - Tupi doesn’t get enough recognition. It’s a neat little 2D vector animation program. This interview is long and thorough… definitely worth the read.
• Oneplus One release - OK… so this only marginally on-topic. But there ya go.
• Video editor round-up on opensource.com - I’m not entirely in line with the methodology, but this a very real and reasonably complete run-down on the video editors available in Linux.
• Dreamworks drops 500 people, closes PDI campus - A giant blast of unfortunate news. The situation sucks… let’s hope it doesn’t catch on.
• Inkscape 0.91 is released - New Inkscape! Yay!
• Darktable 1.6.2 is released - New Darktable! Yay!

And that should about do it. Lemme know what you think!

And… since it’s been so long since the last episode, there’s quite a bit of news. Here’s the quick rundown:

• Darktable 1.6 is released - Lots of new features. If you’re doing photography, and you’re not using Darktable, you’re missing out.
• Natron 1.0 is released - The first “stable” release for Natron, a node-based compositing program that tastes quite a bit like Nuke
• Blender 2.73 is released - The latest and greatest Blender is out. Go get it!
• Exocortex open sources Crate - Crate is their product suite for managing alembic files… now it’s Free Software. Woohoo!
• Grease Pencil animation in Blender - Aligorith highlights some cool examples and breakdowns on his blog
• User Lib breakdown - Urchn shares details (and files) on their promo animation for the FSF
• Anticipated Blender development for 2015 - Ton Roosendaal outlines what he’s most excited about on Blender’s roadmap for the coming year (also, a little Grey Justice cameo in there)
• The Pirate Bay got raided - It’ll be back, if it isn’t already
• The Foundry is for sale - Some folks are worried about who might buy it… we’ll have to just wait and see.

Whew… that was a lot. See you next week!

• Darktable liquify - Someone’s developed a liquify tool for Darktable. Maybe one day it will make it into the stable development branch.
• Synfig gets improved bone deformations - Drawings in Synfig get distorted more cleanly now. I wonder if/when they’ll get IK solvers.
• Sony Pictures got hacked - Not exactly open source specific, but they do run a lot of open source tools on their backend, and they’re a creative company. For the information that got yoinked, it’s kind of scary for people who work there.
• Hacker Public Radio New Years Show - They’re doing a 26-hour live show thing around New Years. Definitely worth checkin' out.
• Twine - I stumbled across this open source (though Windows and Mac only… boo!) tool for non-linear story development.
• Ormr on Linux - Closed-source 2D image editor, Ormr, now has a beta version that works (for the most part) on Linux.
• 2D animation in Blender and Krita post mortem
• And… I’m on Pinterest - Fairly new there… but I do have a board for all the podcasts I listen to (there are a lot).

I also have a pretty serious question for you about the kind of content you’d like to see in the next edition of Blender For Dummies. I’m working on the 3rd edition of the book and have come to a point where I need to decide on whether I cover more of Blender’s features or if I include some basic tutorial material. Let me know what you think in the comments.

And in the meat of the episode, I spend a fair amount of time discussing where I think open source creative tools best fit… what kind of artists and environments they’re best suited for. I think I came up with some answers, but feel free to let me know if you think otherwise.

Have fun listening!

2 Archived Comments

Bassam, May 13, 2015

looks like twine is wx and pthon, and can be run from linux https://github.com/tweecode/twine , just they don’t distribute a linux binary (YMMV of course)

Jason, May 15, 2015

Ooooh! Good catch. Now I can try it out. :P

Thanks!

News bits:

• Libre Calendar 2015 - The project is still on-going. However, if you want to have a calendar in-hand for the new year, they’re planning on shipping at the beginning of December, so now’s the time to send them 15€.
• QCAD 3.7.2 - QCAD has new release… some UI enhancements and performance fixes. If you’re a CAD person, it’s worth checking out.

Short and sweet on the news this week. Enjoy the show!

2 Archived Comments

Mauricio, Nov 23, 2014

If you can, show us your hand draw animation using the grease pencil. I’m curious to see the result.

Great episode!

Jason, Nov 24, 2014

Thanks for listening! I’ll absolutely be linking to that animation and sharing some background on it.

News stuff:

• The Groupon/GNOME Foundation Trademark issue - There’s a couple articles on it but it’s best from the horse’s mouth:
  • GNOME’s announcement
  • Groupon’s retraction press release
• GIMP Magazine, Issue 6 - The latest release and relaunch for GIMP Magazine
• Saver - Akkana Peck’s new Save/Export plug-in for GIMP

And that’s that. Enjoy the show.

9 Archived Comments

Paweł Łyczkowski, Nov 15, 2014

As a person who wrote a lot about the Blender interface I feel I need to defend my work a bit against statements like “If you don’t like the interface, go use a different program”.

“Interfaces are somewhat like art and if you like an interface is a subjective matter.”

Unlike art, an interface is functional, and as every functional thing, it can perform it’s function better or worse. Example: placing vital shortcuts on the keyboard with hard to execute key combinations makes the interface worse than if it would use easy to execute key combinations.

It’s also not subjective like art. You can make the interface easier to use by exploiting how our memory, perceiving of the world, and learning works. For instance by respecting the already learned reflexes, providing discoverability, and exploiting our intuitive perceiving of objects and their relations (for instance making buttons seem related to each other by placing them next to each other). These principles are objective because they result from mind systems that are objective – they are too complicated to have variations in functionality – they either work as intended, and as in every other person, or they are broken. And so they are always worth pursuing and respecting when designing an interface.

“The problem with FOSS is that the users feel entitled, and demand that the interface would be tailored to their particular needs.”

Well, you already diagnosed this one. FOSS feels more intimate, because you have more direct access to the developers, and you can contribute, so more people feel like their feedback has a chance of getting in there. So the users of FOSS do not have bigger difficulties learning a UI or feel more entitled – they are just more vocal about it’s problems.

And, since Blender is a bit of a 3d gateway program (used often by people who touch 3d for the first time), and a side-program (used alongside some other packages), the accessibility of it’s interface is crucial.

Please do talk about it more next week.

Jason, Nov 15, 2014

First of all, thanks a ton for listening. I really appreciate you taking the time to listen to my rambling and provide such a thoughtful response.

I mentioned this on Twitter… generally speaking, we don’t disagree. We just have a bit of a miscommunication. I was using art as a metaphor, but I was talking primarily about design. As I mentioned in the episode, in design (all design, not just interface design), there are objective principles. However, there are many different ways in which those principles can be successfully and effectively applied. The resulting design can still be effective and functional but not necessarily suitable for everyone. That’s the subjective bit.

Paweł Łyczkowski, Nov 15, 2014

Good to know we don’t disagree.

I actually quite like interface discussions, so I couldn’t miss this episode : )

Light, Nov 15, 2014

It is OK to think about UI and complain about it. Android is one. See what come out from it. You just have to be pro enough in the respond. See the problem and solve it.

Nuke Studio has timeline like AE too. It has widgets on the video, like in AE.

Natron uses the same OpenFX open-source framework as nuke. Thus they will converge at the same UI. “The OpenFX specification is really driven to a node graph model such as the Nuke’s one (in fact, its very own inventor is co-founder at The Foundry), so no wonder why this specification seems very close to how Nuke works. When you have the same features of an application and follow the same specifications you end up with very little room for user interface differences.”

There are too many low hanging fruits in fixing UI in FOSS. The problem, most of the time is communication (no or hidden channel) and coding resource (limitation not mentioned or no roadmap). Most coders (more than 50% that I know) do do very bad UI. :D

reference: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/11/android-5-0-lollipop-thoroughly-reviewed/ http://vimeo.com/91378850 http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/natron-0-92-released-with-new-roto-and-keying-nodes

Jason, Nov 16, 2014

I think you’re splitting hairs on Nuke and AE. Their workflows are very different. Yes, Nuke has a timeline, but the primary way you do compositing in Nuke is with nodes whereas in in AE it’s done with layers. They’re fundamentally different ways of approaching the same task. That’s the point I was getting at. Similarly with Natron, it isn’t the specification that makes the interface similar to Nuke’s (unless you have an overly broad definition of “specification”). I simply disagree with Natron’s developer on that point.

Light, Nov 16, 2014

Nuke Studio has both node and layer timeline editing. Most AE users want to use the new Nuke workflow. That was the hype earlier this year.

Q: How would you make Natron better? UI wise.

Jason, Nov 16, 2014

You’re still missing the point of the example (that is, there are often multiple solutions, equally viable, to a given design problem). I tried to be clear at the start of the episode (though perhaps I wasn’t). It was never about making any specific program better or passing any kind of judgment on the creators of a tool for trying something different or for being the same.

Guss, Nov 16, 2014

Haven’t listened the podcast yet, but judging from the comments I’m sure it will be tremendously interesting. thanks!

personally I find interfaces quite a subjective type of thing. but if I have an app that I absolutely NEED even if the UI is bad (imo), I simply see it as a challenge to be conquered. its not that hard to ge -used-to/work-around the quirky or even downright bad stuff. its just a mindset. and its subjective to a lot of things

caetano, Dec 28, 2016

I’d say the reason why open source program UIs are more expected to please everyone has more to do with the fact that in proprietary software, you have a wider choice for powerful programs. For 3D animation, you have Maya, 3DSMax, C4D, Houdini, Modo and the list goes on. In free software, you have 1 choice : Blender, which has a UI that works almost the same in every environment (modeling, animating, video editing, etc) although 2.8’s workflow release is going to improve environment adaptability (if I can call it that way). The same “choice problem” goes for other creative jobs (2D painting, 2D animation), although not as much as for Blender which is really lonely as a free 3D animation program.

About the “freedom of open source developers to innovate and experiment compared to proprietary software developers who are beholden to the market”, are you sure of that ? Seeing how many people begged for the Alembic support while Sergey said Alembic’s code is quite messy and outdated but still worked on it because everyone wanted it, or how the complaints of Bl. Internal users against setting Cycles as the default have made the change hold until this day (at least I think that’s what happened), I feel like the Blender foundation has to comply with a huge community and can’t evolve too quick in each new release. More generally, at the beginning of any software project (open source or not), you can explore and experiment as much as you want, as you have nobody to comply with yet. But as your audience grows, wether it’s the big market or the freelance artists and hobbyists community, your allowance to go in a more unconventional path decreases. Houdini was super innovative at its start, I bet its evolution will slow down over time as more of its users will get used to it and complain about strange new things that mess with their workflow.

News things covered in the episode:

• Synfig Studio 0.64.2 is officially released
• Midoki Studios uses Blender for parts of their Plunder Pirates game
• Mozilla Creative blog - They’re designing a new logo and trying to conduct their rebranding initiative out in the open. You may also want to check out the blog of Sean Martell, Mozilla’s Art Director.
• Asimov essay on creativity - Very much well worth the read. It was previously unpublished, but even after 50 years or so, it’s still relevant
• Poppy - The open source 3D printed robot in Europe. A great application of open hardware and software.
• Libre Calendar 2015 - A very cool printing project featuring 6 artists who use open source tools
• Remarkable - If I switch to a Markdown-based writing pipeline, this is likely to be my primary editor

And my little bit of personal news:

• I’ve relaunched the Lie of the Day (posted everyday to this very blog and on my social media pages)
• Farming Simulator Modding For Dummies - A little book I wrote earlier this year is being released on the 10th of November (the cover graphic on Amazon is in German, but I’ve been assured that’s the English version of the book)

Alright… enough with the shameless self-promotion.

1 Archived Comment

caetano, Dec 25, 2016

I don’t really agree. Tutorials fall down in different categories and aim at different audiences and different situations in which the viewer is while looking for one. Here are the 3 situations I would think of :

– in the middle of a project, feeling stuck because I don’t know how something works (like a modifier). In that case, please explain me what each button means (Bartek Scorupa is a very good teacher for this) > – in the middle of a project, looking for a good approach to achieve a specific effect. In that case, please get to the point, as I most likely already know the features themselves, it’s the approach I’m looking for. “click this button, push this button, do this, do that” is all I want in that situation.

– Not in the middle of a project, learning in some new area of the program for me (i.e. rigging). In that case, please explain the features deeply and do an overview at the beginning, so that I have a clear Idea of what I’m about to learn.

My classification is certainly not extensive, but I don’t think tutorials should always explain everything, it can be a waste of time for the viewer.

In any case, I did get some people to allow me to record them. One of the most striking things about the Blender Conference is how many fantastically unconventional ways that Blender is used… and I notice every time I’m there. I hope that these 16 people who were willing to be recorded show a fairly accurate cross-section of that experience:

• Simon Bennett - @quollism and morequollism on tumblr
• Chuck Ian Gordon - GordonsArca.de
• Jan - (I couldn’t catch your last name, sorry… if anyone knows Jan, please let me know his last name or username on blendpolis)
• Wesley Blijlevens - I Will the game
• Wybren van Keulen - F12 Visuals and @f12visuals
• Olivier Amrein - olivieramrein.com and @oenvoyage
• Richard van der Oost - BlenderGrid and @blendergrid
• Sam Cape - @capedsam
• Dalai Felinto - dalaifelinto.com and @dfelinto
• Govert Combée - catnipgames.nl
• Henri Hebeisen - henri-hebeisen.com and @henrihebeisen
• Daniel Hinnerkopf - Blender Community Austria
• Daniël Groothuysen - TheBlenderer on deviantArt
• Duncan McKean - sparklewoodand21.com, duncanmckean.com, and @dncnmckn
• Joey Ferwerda - thorworks.org, @thorworks, and @joeyferwerda
• Paul McManus - nothinghereisreal.com and @Rubicon_Paul

And a huge, huge thank you to everyone who agreed to be recorded. I can’t express how much I appreciate it.

3 Archived Comments

frobenius, Nov 2, 2014

Inspired depressions, that’s a very good way to put it. I think many can relate. I’m not done with listening to the interviews yet, but so far they’re great. Thanks for sharing.

frobenius, Nov 2, 2014

as a followup, looking up some of these people while they’re interviewing…you talked with some talented people. great stuff. Instead of inspired depression….I think hesitant inspiration is more appropriate. It’s good to see you’re sticking with this podcast. Looking forward to more.

Jason, Nov 2, 2014

I definitely agree that these are incredibly talented people. With any luck, I’ll be able to see them again at next year’s Blender Conference and get an update. Any other Blenderhead should try to make it out, too. It’s always been well worth my time.

1. Be awesome
2. Be involved
3. Pick a feasible project
4. Don’t skimp on infrastructure
5. Establish clear roles
6. Approach individuals directly

I also have a question about how you, the audience would most prefer that I cover the Blender Conference. I could really either make a podcast like I always do and just talk about it… or I could try to conduct a few interviews while I’m at the conference and share those with you. What would you prefer?

Links related to this podcast:

• Panda3D 1.9 gets OpenGL updates - Panda3D is a relatively simple open source game engine that has historically played nice with Blender assets. Now it has more advanced realtime rendering capabilities.
• Haroopad - In the previous episode, I mentioned wanting a tool for doing narrative writing using the Markdown sytnax. This basically does exactly that.
• Lightworks 12 has some updates - Unfortunately none of the updates include a code release as originally promised. Still worth checking out.
• Inkscape agrees to accept paid development - This is a big step for them and I’m glad it’s happened.
• BlenderArt Magazine #45 is out - It’s a great magazine. Go get it! It’s free.
• Synfig Studio 0.64.2 RC2 - They’re getting closer to release. This is Synfig’s second release candidate for the latest version of that program.
• GitHub gets SVG Diffs - It’s really quite cool. You can slide a split bar and see the difference between revisions on an SVG file.

Also, I did start a newsletter. It’s a plain text, ow traffic thing where you can get about a day’s heads up on any events that I’m going to or any books or animations I’m releasing. You can subscribe by using the little form on the sidebar (it’s on the right if you’re using the desktop layout for this site).

And that’s that. See you next week!

6 Archived Comments

Guss, Oct 19, 2014

Great podcast as always. Thanks! I personally would really love a few “mini-interviews” while you’re at the BC… I’m thinking that’s a really cool idea. :)

Jason, Oct 20, 2014

Thanks! Yeah, I’m thinking that the mini-interview thing is a pretty good way to go. Of course, that means I’ll need to make it a point to talk to people, but I can get over that. ;)

Of course, the conference starts after this week’s episode is supposed to drop, so I think I’ll still need to record a short one for this week’s release and then put the interviews together for next week’s episode.

d., Oct 29, 2014

Interesting, but please lower your intro music. It’s way louder than your talk, giving me a heart attack every time.

Jason, Oct 29, 2014

Thanks for this. I wasn’t sure if the intro music was still too hot after adjusting it. Will tweak on the next episode.

Dread Knight, Nov 3, 2014

This is the first episode I’ve listened to and I really enjoyed it, gonna check out the rest given time. You sure have quite a bit of driving to do to get to work xD

Dread Knight, Nov 3, 2014

Oh yeah, I really agree that individual messages are way way more effective when trying to find people to work with on your projects, no doubt about it. Also, it’s nice to catch up with updates in awesome projects that I get to use almost on daily basis :)

In personal news:

• I wrote a patch for Blender - Just a little spelling fix for Add-ons
• I’m teaching a workshop next week - It’s a class on social media for authors and creatives. If you’re going to be in the Atlanta area on the 16th of October (2014), come on out!

And of course, I give a rundown of some the latest news as it pertains to open source and creative tools:

• Summer development updates to Pitivi - Nothing from that development cycle released has been released yet (as far as I know), but it’s still exciting to see that the project is still alive and moving forward.
• Synfig Studio 0.64.2 Release Candidate - If you’re into 2D vector animation, this one’s worth having a look at.
• An opensource.com article on tools for preparing ebooks - Mostly this relates to finalization tools, but still worth a read.
• A Hacker Public Radio podcast episode on using Sigil for preparing ebooks - In the same vein as the bit above, this is a pretty interesting podcast episode that goes into how one guy (lostnbronx) preps his ebooks. It’s a bit convoluted, but it does work.
• Fountain - I briefly mention this simple markup language for screenwriting… it’s worth at least a link in the show notes.
• Adobe Digital Editions 4 dials home with your data… in plain text - There are some boneheaded security and privacy violations being committed by the latest version of Adobe’s ereader software.
• MotionTool - A very cool add-on that’s provides a node-based animation system for Blender. It’s well worth watching the demo.
• Microvellum Fluid Designer - Andrew Peel’s very cool Blender fork that provides additional functionality tailored for quickly putting together interiors for architectural visualization.

Whew… I wrote a lot. On toward next week!

4 Archived Comments

Matt, Oct 14, 2014

Thank you very much for the podcast!

As for the commercialization of open source tools, I do understand why some people fear this trend.

If avid, skilled programmers keep on creating such great tools like the ANIMAT add on, or the Contours add on for the market only, will they ever be integrated into the trunk, or are we going to have some sort of parallel development in the near future?

Many sellers on the market point out that the main advantage compared to openly published add ons is the fact that they keep on updating their products, in order to ensure future compatibility etc…While this is definitely an advantage per se, it probably means that most their add ons will stay on the market for the time being and I find it unlikely that the internal blender development is going to invent/implement features that have already been realized with the help of such commercial plugins.

Of course everyone is free to sell anything under the GPL, but in my opinion it would be sad, if we are going to end up with a “light version” of Blender you can download for free, but in order to get the real deal, you have to purchase numerous, commercial add ons, while Blender should be “3D creation for everyone”. Just my 2 cents :)

Jason, Oct 14, 2014

I understand that concern. But look at it like this: The tools hooks that allow for ANIMAT were put in place by Aligorith (Blender’s primary developer for the animation system). He even mentioned that he’d plan on adding such a feature himself. However, there are a lot of other [arguably more pressing] development concerns in the animation system that he’s had to focus on.

So as users, our choices are either to not have the tools until Aligorith gets more off of his plate, or benefit from some other developer (Matt Heimlich, in this case) adding them. Even if those tools come at a cost, at least they’re available… and Aligorith is free (for the time being) to focus on bigger issues. If he gets time to come back and code his own version of tools like the ones ANIMAT provides and include them in master, there’s still the chance for that. Yes, there may be a bit of toe-stepping should that happen, but I’m confident that it’s something that the community can handle gracefully.

l, Oct 26, 2014

wouldn´t it be nice if there was more structure

like chapters within the stream of the podcast like here:

practical example

http://freakshow.fm/

its a podcast software which allows this kind of feature

http://podlove.org/

it would make it easier to quote / refer to your stuff

like youre stuff

kind regards

l

Jason, Oct 28, 2014

Setting up chapters (and having a web frontend that recognizes them) would certainly be useful. I’d not come across podlove before; it looks interesting. It may be a bit heavy-handed for my uses, but maybe it really is the right fit. I’ll look into it.

Thanks for the heads-up.

Oh… and thanks everyone on Facebook and Google+ who answered my question about email lists. I got a lot of insight out of that and I think I may have made a decision on that… maybe.

And of course, I covered some of the latest news related to things going on in the open source creative world… such as:

• A proposal to make Cycles the default renderer in Blender - I’m still on the fence on this idea. If there’s an effort to fill in some of the integration gaps (I’m looking at you painting and textured view), then I’d be a lot more comfortable with the idea.
• Axiom Beta makes an update - Particularly as it relates to getting Magic Lantern folks on board.
• ANIMAT - A widgetless rigging and animation add-on, coming soon to the Blender Market.

And that should about cover it. This podcast is great fun. Thanks everyone for the feedback. Feel free to give me more (here and elsewhere on the interwebbernets)!

Also, also! I sprayed some WD-40 on my clutch pedal. No more background squeaks!

Some of the specific things covered in this episode:

• GIMP Magazine’s call for submissions - GIMP Magazine is looking for artwork and articles. Make with submitting. Deadline is soon.
• Pat David’s Woodcut/Hedcut tutorial - A nice way of achieving a woodcut look with images using GIMP
• ZebraTrace - A nice little program written in Python that generates guilloche/woodcut images in vector format
• Developer news on modernizing Blender’s 3D View - It’s a bit technical, but it’s a nice peek behind the curtain to see what the plan is for making Blender’s 3D View better (many apologies to Anthony “Psy-fi” Riakiotakis for forgetting his last name)
• BlenderArt Magazine call for content - They’re looking for articles and art related to fanart for Issue 46. Deadline is soon.
• Andrew Price’s podcast episode with a horribly clickbaity title - Despite the title, it’s worth a listen
• @SavedYouAClick - A Twitter account to follow that helps get around clickbait markety headlines

And as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Post a comment below or where ever you think I’ll read it and let’s talk about this stuff.

6 Archived Comments

Nightmareish, Sept 26, 2014

Yay for WD-40. Agree with you on Andrew Price’s Podcast title being too click-bait-ky. No-rike. Audio length being too long too. Essential substance can be easily summed up to less than 10 minutes of audio. Much soup, less meat.

Guss, 26 Sept, 2014

Oooh! downloading it now. thanx!

Greg, Sept 29, 2014

Another great podcast sir :) I’m really enjoying these. Entertaining as hell, and great speaking+language.

Jason, Sept 29, 2014

Thanks! I was actually a bit worried about this one. But I’m glad to know that you’ve been enjoying them. I’m having a great time putting them together.

Let me know if there’s anything specific you’d like me to talk about.

Thanks again!

Greg, Oct 1, 2014

I suppose I’m at least a little curious about what you think of the Blender Market, and the folks who insist that anything made for blender (add-ons, models, etc) should be free and open-source like blender.

Jason, Oct 2, 2014

Ooh! Good topic. I touch on the Blender Market briefly in the episode I recorded yesterday (I’ll be releasing it later this evening), but it’s definitely worth going into more. I’ll be sure to cover it on episode 6.

Some of the things covered in this episode:

• Inktober - 31 ink drawings in 31 days through the month of October. I think I might be doing this one.
• Calibre 2.3 - I mis-stated the release number on this. It’s 2.3. Oops.
• Updated Videos module for Gnome 3.14 - If you use Gnome, this should be a pleasant update
• Elephants Dream on Netflix? - Can anyone confirm this one for me? I haven’t had time to check.
• Gameification on CG Cookie - Gameify your learning
• Mojang/Minecraft bought by Microsoft - Not exactly open source related, but the Minecraft modding community uses a lot of open source software.

Also, as you listen to me rambling on and on about licensing in this episode, it’s worth remembering that I’ve released every episode in this podcast under a Creative Commons license. So… yeah.

Below are a few of the things I cover in the show:

• Inkcape 0.91’s About Screen contest - Deadline is 1 October 2014. Get to work!
• Blendermada - A pretty cool online materials library for Blender, accessible with an add-on
• Urecord - An open source audio recording app for Android (more on this in a bit)
• Axiom Beta’s crowdfunding launch - A crowdfunding effort on Indiegogo for a super-cool open source modular cinema camera
• 30 day modeling challenge on BlenderArtists.org - The 30 day modeling challenge that thusfar has formed the bulk of my content on this site’s blog

Incidentally, I recorded this podcast using Urecord (as mentioned above). Generally speaking, I’m quite pleased with it. The only drawbacks that I’ve seen with it is that the highest sample rate it can record at is 44.1 kHz and there’s no way to adjust the input gain on the mic. The former isn’t a huge deal (it’s still CD quality, after all), but the latter has me a bit concerned. It worked pretty well for picking up my voice in an empty hotel room, but I’m worried that if I use it in my car while driving, it’s not going to fully fit the bill. Maybe it will, though. We’ll see on the next episode.

8 Archived Comments

iKlsR, Sept 13, 2014

Was looking for a new podcast to listen while I commute. I applaud you for something fresh and unique in a sense. Urecord also surprisingly has decent quality. Looking forward to future casts.

Jason, Sept 13, 2014

Thanks! I used RecForge for the earlier episodes, and it’s quite nice. I’d just prefer an open source solution. Hopefully Urecord will hold up well in my car.

Guss, Sept 13, 2014

loved the previous episode… with all the slightly geeky talk about version control…. lol!

this one looks interesting too, I’m downloading it now. great podcast. keep posting more! :D

Jason, *Sept 13, 2014

I will! Thanks for listening.

RavetcoFX, Sept 13, 2014

Great podcast, you have a very professional tone to your voice, it reminded me of a radio show.

Keep up the good work :)

Jason, Sept 13, 2014

Wow! That’s very kind of you. Thanks for listening. Let’s hope I can keep up that quality level (or even improve upon it).

frobenius, Sept 13, 2014

Really enjoyed this. I’m glad to find it. The sound quality is nice as well. Going to check out the other episodes when I have a chance.

Jason, Sept 13, 2014

Fantastic! I’m looking forward to seeing what you think.

Below are some links to some other things I cover in the show (roughly in the chronological order that I talk about them):

• NOX renderer - This raytracing renderer was recently released as open source by EverMotion
• GIMP 2.8.14 - GIMP had two releases in one week, both of them bugfix releases
• PodcastGenerator - A pretty cool comprehensive solution to getting a podcast posted as quickly and efficiently as possible
• Subversion - A centralized version control system that I used to use more extensively
• Bazaar - A distributed version control system that doesn’t get enough love
• Git - The preferred version control system for most coders
• Mercurial - My preferred version control system for creative projects
• TortoiseHg - A nice graphical front end for mercurial
• Handling OpenDocument files with Mercurial and oodiff - Using Mercurial’s extdiff extension with odt2txt for sane diffs of ODT files (I really should do a separate blog post or video dedicated to this)
• Sass - A CSS pre-processor, billed as “CSS with superpowers”
• Bones - A nice barebones Wordpress theme that uses Sass

And, of course, I made a special plea to the developers of LibreOffice: Please provide command line access to the Compare Documents utility. It would make me happy.

(BTW, for you more professional web designers out there, I know that Sass has been around for a good long while. This was just the first time that I’d sat down and forced myself to use it.)

Show notes for this one are a bit sparse (hey, I’m just starting out here). The main thrust of this episode, aside from introductions and what-not, is a rational justification for using free and open source software to produce creative works… and why “because it’s free” isn’t the best reason (or really a good reason at all). I also go on a slightly ranty tangent on why artists would do well to learn a bit about coding.

Intro and outro music was produced by Sam Brubaker. Go check out his stuff.

That should about cover it. Let me know what you think and how I can make this show better.

10 Archived Comments

Dave, Aug 29, 2014

Nice pilot podcast effort. I look forward to more episodes. Will you be posting a RSS feed link or some such to place this in my podcast client?

Jason, Aug 30, 2014

Thanks! The feed should be at http://monsterjavaguns.com/podcast/feed, but that currently returns a 404 page. There’s something wonky going on with category pages in WordPress. Will investigate.

Thanks!

Jason, Aug 30, 2014

Little update: that link to the feed works now. Wahoo!

I’ll add a more convenient link to it on the main podcast page.

Greg, Aug 30, 2014

Great idea to do it during your commute, it’s always such a waste of time. And a really entertaining podcast actually, looking forward to next weeks one!

Jason, 30 Aug, 2014

Thanks! It was a lot of fun to make, too. I figured that since I was talking to myself on the commute, I may as well record it… then at least I can rationalize that I’m not really a crazy person mumbling in his car. :)

fredric, Aug 30, 2014

Jason, nice to see a podcast on creative free software! That’s really where I live (so to speak). I’m into Gimp, Inkscape and Synfig these days, though I did spend a lot of time learning Blender.

I use free software because it frees me from being dependant to a company for versions, file formats and just the complications of installing software on multiple platforms and such.

I find free software simplifies my work environment. I also edit my svg files with python and javascript too. love it.

I’ve been using free graphics software for ten years now. So I’m looking forward to see where you will take this podcast.

Jason, Aug 30, 2014

Absolutely! Being free from vendor lock-in is huge. I’m actually now a bit disappointed that I didn’t bring that point up and talk about it more. Thanks for mentioning it here.

And thanks for listening. I’m curious to see where I take this podcast, too.

cameralibre, Sept 9, 2014

I’m looking forward to hearing more!

You mentioned you would like to find FLOSS recording solutions on Android – try uRecord, it’s quite simple, but records uncompressed wav files – unfortunately for me there’s no 48 kHz option for use with video, but 44.1 should serve your purposes fine.

Jason, Sept 9, 2014

Oooh! Thanks for the heads up. I’ll be sure to check it out.

Jim van Hazendonk, Dec 21, 2015

Cool…

Found my way here somehow when looking for some support on the blenderartists forum. Guess I found another website with very interesting content to listen to :)

Seems procastinating and random clicking can bear fruits after all huh.

I agree with all you said though. Im also a fervent Open source user. I find it funny when I talk about for example blender… that people that don’t even know it want to compare it to some random non-free “comparable” software… and most of the time say that it can’t be that good… since its free. Its only when I show them what I did so far that they try to fond excuses why they said that :)

thank you for this podcast. I really enjoyed it.