Lucky Disasters » Graphics

Take your 3D graphics to the next level, trueSpace 7.6 released, for FREE!

Kris — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:43:39 +0000

I’ve been a fan of trueSpace for years (I’ve been using it since version 2 hit the shelves!), the software from Caligari Corp is a medium to low end (cost wise) 3D modeling and rendering package that has an excellent feature set, is compatible with most industry standard file formats and is extensible through addons. I’ve used it both personally and professionally for various purposes. I just got an email from Caligari this morning stating that the latest version, tureSpace7.6, has been released to everyone for free! Not only that, but the training videos and manual are included as well! AWESOME!!

trueSpace may be daunting for those who are not familiar with it’s user interface, but once you get used to how tools and tool bars are arranged, it becomes much more intuitive than you may originally think. Since I haven’t used a new version since trueSpace 5.5, looks like I’ve got some catching up to do. They’ve added tabbed interfaces for views so that you can switch between workspaces and multi-angled model views and a panel with library browser and settings tabs. One of the reasons I’ve stuck with version 5.5 for so long has been that it can import stl, igs and other industrial modeling files. I use these at work to render products that are in concept phases of production or that we can’t get samples of in time for photos we may need. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be supported under the new version. Guess I’ll have to keep digging to see if I can find out anything more about this.

Five Opensource/Freeware Graphics Applications You Shouldn’t Be Without

Kris — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 20:36:46 +0000

By now, everybody’s heard of the GIMP and Paint.net, but there are a lot of other great graphics programs out there for special situations which are lightweight and easy to use. And like the saying goes, the right tool for the right job…

Xara Xtreme

A while back, Xara released their vector graphics program Xara Xtreme into the wilds of the WWW as open source software. While the Windows version is still payware, the Linux version is completely free (as in speech!) and makes a great addition to any Linux graphics suite. While Xara Xtreme is comparable to InkScape, they don’t share all of the same functions, and they are a good complement to one another. GNU/Linux only.
Link

Artweaver

Artweaver is a freeware program for use with tablet PCs and pen tablets. It can simulate paint brushes of various types, includes layering, standard image formats and plug-in support, and has standard editing features like croping, area selecting and some built-in image effects. Not bad for around 8 Mb. Windows only.
Link

ArtRage 2

Along the same lines as Artweaver, but more focused on the painting aspects of pen input, ArtRage 2 is a free, limited feature download with a payware, full feature version available. The main advantage of ArtRage 2 is that it really does feel like an honest to goodness drawing pad right there on your PC. The free version, includes pencil, paint brush and a few other tools that allow you to really have a lot of fun with your tablet. Windows only.
Link

FastStone MaxView

FastStone offers several freeware and shareware programs for manipulating and viewing images. FastStone MaxView is a great freeware replacement for Windows XP’s Photo and Fax Viewer. MaxView is faster and has more options and features than Photo and Fax Viewer, and has a borderless window as well as auto-hiding controls and hotkey support. Windows only.
Link

Photoscape

Photoscape is a freeware photo editing program which includes features that allow you to do general photo editing and enhancements. You can also use it as a batch editing tool and it also allows you to make animated GIFs. Windows only.
Link

BONUS!! Imageditor

I’ve recently come across a handy tool for editing the Windows registry to change which programs open image files by default. Windows automatically associates certain right-click actions (chiefly open and edit) with built-in programs. I’ve been using Paint.net as a replacement for MS Paint for a while, but I wanted to associate it with all the same image formats that Paint was. This way, Paint.net would use the built-in “Edit” context menu item.

Imageditor allows you to do just that, with no manual editing of the registry or going through the hassle of changing multiple items in the Folder Settings dialog. There are instructions on the Imageditor page on how to use it. Windows only.
Link

Thee More NASA Images

Kris — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 19:31:10 +0000

I’ve been meaning to post these, just that time of year I guess, everything happening at once. Anywho – these are from the most recent (STS-123) shuttle mission, enjoy!

2010 or NASA photo?

Kris — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:09:08 +0000

Looking unnervingly similar to a scene from 2010: The Year We Make Contact, this photo of the ISS at night looks less like NASA Image of the Day material and more like material from a science fiction movie! All-in-all, an incredible photo of the present meeting the future…

Links:
the NASA Image of the Day Gallery
The above photo

Another Great Image on NIotD

Kris — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:45:03 +0000

NASA had another really neat image of the day the other day, here’s a crop:

{click it to go to the images page}

UPDATE – 080312!!
Updated the link so that it pointed to the right photo on the NASA image gallery site and not the thumbnail on this site. Sorry for the mix up!

Background Images for your Desktop (Wallpaper!!)

Kris — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 19:04:04 +0000

Here are six of the better images I’ve taken over the last year. Use them in good health. They’re licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. In other words, feel free to use them as you see fit, with the exceptions that you must attribute the original works to me (and other contributors – sell below), you cannot use them for commercial purposes (money making – unless you ask – I can be flexible for the right price :) and you must license any derivative works under the same license. Clear as mud? Just follow the link to the Creative Commons license at the bottom for a full explanation.

The font I’ve used for the site logo on these came from the Sull-A-Day blog, another site you should definitely checkout. Anyway here they are, to download, right-click and do a “Save Target As” (IE) or a “Save Link As” (Firefox):

LD_BG01_1024×76 LD_BG01_1280×960 LD_BG01_2816x2112 LD_BG01.7z	LD_BG02_1024×768 LD_BG02_1280×960 LD_BG02_2816×2112 LD_BG02.7z
LD_BG03_1024×768 LD_BG03_1280×960 LD_BG03_2816×2112 LD_BG03.7z	LD_BG04_1024×768 LD_BG04_1280×960 LD_BG04_2816×2112 LD_BG04.7z
LD_BG05_1024×768 LD_BG05_1280×960 LD_BG05_2816×2112 LD_BG05.7z	LD_BG06_1024×768 LD_BG06_1280×960 LD_BG06_2816×2112 LD_BG06.7z

Download all these in a single file:

backgrounds_luckydisasters.com.7z [080207]

At some point I’ve got to make some 1440×900 versions of these too, that’s my laptop’s screen size after all…

These wallpapers are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Cool View of the Sun

Kris — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:38:25 +0000

Neatorific photo of the sun over on the Astronomy Picture of the Day site:

It’s been photoshopped, but still, neato!

UPDATE – 080312!!
Fixed the link to go to the correct page instead of the Astronomy Picture of the Day home page.

Holy Covert Channels Batman!

Kris — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 00:31:55 +0000

A covert channel is a means of communication that is non-standard. In other words, messages sent by other than normal means (more here). One method (vector) used as a covert channel is steganography. Steganography is a means to hide messages, usually within images like JPEGs, as opposed to cryptography where messages are encrypted. Over at Daily Cup of Tech (great site by the way, worth a good dig through the articles) they’ve posted a video which details how to use a compression tool and a built in Windows command line utility (FINALLY, a real use for cmd and it should work with GNU/Linux tools too) actually embed files into JPEG or other image files. While not strictly speaking steganography (which only deals with messages, not entire files), this is just too cool! Can’t wait to try this one out on my own!!!

link

Yeager, but not Meister

Kris — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 17:17:44 +0000

I heard on NPR this morning on my way to work that today is Chuck Yeager’s birthday. So, in celebration, I decided to go over to NASA’s image gallery and find some images of the Bell X-1. NASA doesn’t lay copyright claim to many of it’s photos as long as you’re not using anything with their logo to promote something. This begs the question “Why isnt’ this stuff licensed under a Creative Commons [insert your favorite Creative Commons license here] license?” Who knows…

If you checkout NASA’s GRIN (Great Image in NASA) you can find many nice high-res images of early computing, flight and so forth. Some of these were used by Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim a few years back for their “bumps”. These image gallery links and more below:

NASA Image of the Day Gallery
Great Images in NASA library of images (GRIN)
Astronomy Picture of the Day
NASA Dryden Flight Research Center Gallery
NASA Image eXchange (NIX)

As always, read the fine print if you’re going to use any of these images. If you have any other good goverment/other image galleries I’d love to hear about them!

Real Security and Lingerie

Kris — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 23:55:29 +0000

Question: What does good security techniques and policies have in common with Lingerie?

Answer:

Caution – this may be NSFW. Consider yourself warned!

This was a bit of fan art for one of my favorite web comics – Sequential Art, by Phillip Jackson (a.k.a. JollyJack). But it got me thinking of lingerie, or the lack thereof, and openness. Openness is good. Openness and security are good. There’s a connection there. So I added the text and posted it here.

No really! Hey, that story’s not so far fetched ! Lingerie can be… secure…

… or something…

Change 3 to Gallery

Kris — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 17:16:01 +0000

Final, final change – promise.

I’ve finalized on using Coppermine Photo Gallery as my gallery software, I found a nice little plug-in for WordPress and everything seems to be up and running quite well. I tried using phpwebgallery and the wp plug-in for it, but there were too many issues with both the gallery permissions and the wp plug-in to make it usable (refering to ease of use AND usability here). At any rate read a little more here and view it here. Look for more images and photos in the future! ^_^

DBP for GIMP – Easier than learning a new Scripting Language!

Kris — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 18:26:02 +0000

Had to do some batch processing in the GIMP today. I looked over the scripting tutorials on the GIMP website, but as a fast and dirty approach this wouldn’t work for me (went right over my head). It took some digging around Google to find an easy to follow, automated way of doing it. What I found was a handy little plug-in from David Hodson [poor fellow, missed out on being a MST3K (here and here) cast away by one letter] .

While not performing every task I needed (I was resizing some images and I wanted to not only re-size but also change DPI), it did speed things up enough to make it worth while having. It also has quite a few built in options for commonly repeated processing; like rotation, color adjustment and cropping.

From DBP’s webpage:

“DBP (David’s Batch Processor) is a simple batch processing plugin for the Gimp – it allows the user to automatically perform operations (such as resize) on a collection of image files. Its main advantage is that the user does not have to learn a scripting language. Like the Gimp itself, DBP relies on a graphical interface. The user creates a list of images, and sets up the processing required for each image. The results of the current settings can be displayed. Once the required sequence of operations has been set up, DBP performs the same processing on each image in turn. The images can be colour corrected, resized, cropped, and sharpened, then renamed and saved to a different file in a specified image format. All the steps (except loading and saving the image!) are optional; so the simplest use of DBP is just to convert a number of image files from one format to another.“

Has anyone out there ever found any easy methods for scripting with the GIMP (outside of actually taking the time to learn yet another script’s syntax)?