A Chinese Calligraphy that almost does a good job ...

I came across a mainland China software called 電腦書法大師 2.0 which creates Chinese Calligraphy based on mapping the Chinese character user entered with a database (among 4CDs) and found all the matched characters. The idea is great with one major problem: the returned characters are in bitmap format with size not big enough for professional usage. Nevertheless, it could be useful for creating a few words for on screen display, like web page for instance.

Since I use Traditional Chinese system, and the software is written in Simplified Chinese, I need to use Microsoft AppLocale to run the software under Simplified Chinese. In addition, I need to keep in mind about the following:

- When searching characters from the Calligraphy database, make sure you use Simplified Chinese. You can first write the sentence in Traditional Chinese, and then translate it in Simplified Chinese using the Chinese Language Tool in Microsoft Word 2003. The search is able to pull out both Traditional and Simplified Chinese from the database.

- Set the scale of all characters to 100% first, and then do your own scaling in Photoshop. The 100% one seems to be the actual image stored in the disk.

- The Traditional Chinese user interface requires serial number; the Simplified Chinese one doesn't. Yet they provide the same capability. Strange indeed.

Pirate checking for freeware download?

Microsoft has a free utility called Chinese Date and Time which shows Chinese Date and Time in the DateTime applet. However, when you try to download the at free utility from the link:

Microsoft Download of Chinese Date and Time

... the system will attempt to download an ActiveX component that checks whether the user is running a pirated Windows XP. I never had seen a requirement to prove that you are running a legal copy of Windows XP in order to download a freeware. :-I

BTW, in case you want to download the utility without being treated as a criminal, you can do a search on Google with the file name "ICalClkSetup.msi", and you should find some web sites that offer the software. The following is one of the examples:

To really download

Download awesome graphic application for free!!

Creature House Expression is a very unique and cool application. It allows you to create vector graphic with a lot of cool stroke and pattern applied on your strokes. You need to try it to believe it. The software company that created Expression was acquired by Microsoft, and now it's FREE for download. Use the following link to download the software. It was named Preview, but so far I don't see any restriction.

Download CreatureHouse Expression 3.3

(Fig 4) I doubled the photo and get rid of some duplicated horses in the middle. That way when this scene scroll in Flash, you won't see the same set of horses on the screen appearing twice. 

(Fig 3) Using Photoshop, I blended the middle part. 

(Fig 2) I divided and swapped side, 

(Fig 1) Here's the original photo. 

Creating seamless background for Flash

I need to create a seamless background for a Flash animation so that the animation can run in an infinitely loop. You can see the end result at:

href="http://acdpcphoto2.netfirms.com/
dance2004photo/5_mongol/.

The animation itself is not that difficult to make. It does require some perpetration, like creating a Mongolian cloth (mentioned in my previous blog), create a mask for the cloth so that a scene of Mongol can scroll over it and yet still let the viewer to see the texture of the cloth. I was a bit disappointed when I found out that the mask of Flash cannot support gradient edge, yet the result was still OK after I changed the alpha level of the scene to about 55%.

The trickiest part is to create the seamless background. Here are my steps:

(1) I started with a photo taken by a friend (Fig 1), and then I cut the photo into two, and swap both sides (Fig 2). The purpose of this is to make sure that when I have two of this photo and I put the left edge next to the right edge, there should be no gap at all.

(2) Now that I have a seamless edge at both sides, I can do my Photoshop trick to blend the middle part of the photo. (Fig 3)

(3) Knowing that the photo is kind of short on width, and the photo will repeat too soon and thus destroy the smooth effect (viewer see the red riding too frequently), I have to double the photo and use Photoshop's Clone feature to remove the horses. (Fig 4)

(4) Now that I have the photo ready, I scale it and export it for use in Flash. I figured out that I SHOULD NOT export the graphic in JPEG because JPEG compression makes the left edge and right edge not matching anymore. I choose GIF instead.

(5) Once I have the GIF file inside Flash, it's just the matter of setting up the animation. Pretty straight forward.

Modo 1.0 works with nVIDIA driver 66.93

Modo 1.0 gave me an error message when I first installed a few weeks ago. It was complaining about my graphic card driver having a known problem with the application. Yesterday I got a chance to upgrade the nVIDIA GeForceFX graphic card driver to version 6.14.10.6693. When I started up Modo this morning, it didn't complain anymore. So I guess the new graphic card driver resolved the problem.

Poser, an evil tool for Character animation?

Thoughtout my reserach on finding the most time efficent way of creating a 3D Mongolian dancer for animation, I stumbled across a lot of Poser sites. I used Poser before. In fact I started playing with it on and offer since the first version. It's really amazing how Poser 5 really the current status, capable of creating stunning 3D human figure.

Yet, during the process of trying to figure out the best way to import Poser model into 3DStudioMax, I found out that majority of the 3D Studio Max realted forum curse Poser as an evil tool, a dirty word, a tool only for 3D animation-designer-wanna-be.

I personally think that Poser is never meant to be the end of 3D animation, that you simply cannot do anything more than a very nice pose of a human, but it's never the less a very good learning tool, and save me time from starting from scratch.

In addition, there is a big advantage to my project using Poser:There are a lot of pretty look Asian model for Poser.
The among of Asian modeDuringl for Poser is fantastic thanks to a lot of Poser fan in Japan who are willing to share their hardwork to the English speaking world. They are the heroes :-D . Here's some of the site that I probably will use for my project:

- www.eurus.dti.ne.jp/~masasi/Service/indexE.html
- digitalbabes2.com/~yamato/CostumeFesta.html
- www.juno.dti.ne.jp/~yamato-k/Penthousecollection.html

Of course, I need to keep reminding myself not drilling too much into Poser. It's just a short-cut modeling tool to me.