I wrote this simple tool for a buddy at work today. In my present employer they have a lot of Apple computers running Windows and most still have the Apple keyboard in front of them.

For those unaware, the Apple keyboard has no PrintScreen key. (On another note, they have F13 to F19 keys where normal PC keyboards stop at F12.) You could download a screenshot program of course, but they’re always convoluted. Too many options when all you truly want is the simple key.

So if you’re in Windows with an Apple keyboard, or know a friend who is, download this and pass it on.

It’s just 2 lines of AHK:

; F15 = PrintScreen tool / http://darkvertex.com
#NoEnv
#NoTrayIcon
#Persistent
#SingleInstance ignore
SendMode Input
 
~F15::
Send {PrintScreen}

There’s no interface, install or anything. You run it and it’ll sit idle in the background. Whenever you hit F15 on your shiny white Apple keyboard it will trigger the PrintScreen key. Simple as that! (To stop it, kill the process manually.)

I wanted to shamelessly plug a non-3D blog/project I started this month titled…

“One Artist A Day”

As the name implies, I intend on mentioning 1 (likely awesome :p) musician or band I genuinely enjoy, every single day for the forthcoming future.

It’s been almost a month so far and it’s been a fun challenge to mention artists while trying to stay away from mainstream names. After all, I want to show you music you haven’t heard before, not what’s pumping on MTV or some lousy Top40s’-like radio show. (I miss when MTV had music in it; don’t you?)

So… check out my new blog! I will of course continue to keep this one and as soon as production slows a little where I’m working at I will be posting a backlog of educational content I have been meaning to submit for a while. (I currently have 9 drafts of coolness in my WordPress waiting for you.)

Last but not least, I welcome any music suggestions if anyone’s reading this and want to leave a comment down below. I promise to give you credit and link to your blog if I use your suggestion.

This post surged from a question at a forum where somebody tried to use the ctr_dist() function — that returns distance between two object centers — in a Softimage script only to realise that actually it only exists for expressions, not scripting.

Here’s my take on said function for both Softimage and Maya…

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Which is the fastest way to do this or that? Why not try them all and benchmark!

All you need to do is lock at the time.clock()…

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Environment variables are no secret and neither is the system-set “TEMP” variable, but what is not really mentioned in the SDK Docs is that Softimage overrides the TEMP and TMP environment variables with a temporary folder made by XSI:

LogMessage( XSIUtils.Environment("TEMP") );

If I run that (JavaScript) I get something like: C:\Users\Alan\AppData\Local\Temp\XSI_Temp_15076

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I’ve put together a new reel. I hope you like watching it as much as I enjoy working in it.

Best enjoyed in fullscreen HD:

I’m looking for a position around Toronto and also available for freelancing.

Click here for my resume and if you’d like a 1080p quicktime download this link.

This was completed and aired recently. It was fun job. I did all the rigging.

Oh, and it features a brand new Excel critter, Garlic!

ps: Check out Donut when he goes into the x-ray machine.

These two new Dairy Farms commercials aired and completed recently. I did the rigging of the characters and props.

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I used to think refmodels were buggy, annoying and out to get me. After some exploration, they exhibit a couple patterns of fixable issues. Let’s bring them to light, shall we?

Here’s some of my observations with them in the context of artists animating a referenced rig in production:

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If you do rigging in Softimage you probably know when trying to Mirror Weights it only pays attention to the last created Symmetry Mapping Template for that model. There’s no interface to append to or join mapping templates. It gets annoying having to recreate them and verify that Soft guessed all the correct symmetrical equivalents, so…

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