I happen to have this gem laying around in a disk, and what better than a rainy afternoon to try out what it used to be the main tool in my work again. Except this time I've been messing around with its scripting tools.

Blender has it as image-references or image-as-plane iirc. In my time they were called blueprints so... 😋

(maxscript is messy to say the least)

#maxscript #3dsmax

Chromebook | From ChromeOS to FreeBSD

Chromebooks are mobile devices aimed to school students or light office work. They are small, lightweight, portable, and usually have a touchscreen built in. But in terms of OS freedom they are a bit limited. I wrote a quick post once I figured out how to remove ChromeOS from a Chromebook I was given, and install FreeBSD on it.

Following the R&D development of a Node Editor using XLib, the idea has become somehow involved in an experiment I call code-lab, which is a repo where I'm trying to implement almost all the code required to achieve certain ideas, mostly related to graphics and ui development.
The code itself is unstable, untested (for now, the Node Editor seems a good candidate to start tesing it), and most probably it's full of non-perfect implementation content. But as I become more and more experienced in the content creation field, seems like the best way to get things moving is just start putting pieces together.
That doesn't mean to avoid using some good practices overall, but to not take too much care about perfection at this stage.

The Node Editor now has an endless canvas grid, and it can handle the placement of lots of dummy nodes on top (no removal action yet). It'd be cool to also have the ability to pan the camera around de canvas... we'll see how it ends up working (:

#cprogramming #graphics #gui

Nodes now can be connected between the in/out points with an attempt of Bezier curves.
As you can notice in the console, there is still a lot of debugging going on. After polishing this system, the next step is to start making some data flow between the nodes (:

#cprogramming #graphics #gui

Going through the experiments' lab I've realized that I didn't have a container where to store image results (it will become relevant soon I hope), so I decided to take a look back at the TGA file format. Really love how it works under the hood. So far I've managed to catch a mice while writing a TGA file loader for the code-lab (:

#cprogramming #graphics #tga

Modern OpenGL context in Xlib

When developing a graphics oriented program using OpenGL, the initial OpenGL context boilerplate is nowadays almost a thing that we take for granted. There are several choices out there in the form of libraries and frameworks from which we can choose, load and use. But what happens under the hood?

Not a professional drawing program (nor any close) but it's fun to develop a custom whiteboard, sketcher app to capture notes on the fly. It'll be more useful if one could load a pic (or take one) to draw on top (: but so far so good in this snip & sketch clone tool

#cprogramming #xlib #gui

It turns out that capturing the screen in a user defined selection using Xlib is (sort of) achieved. Not without the help of the Xlib Programmers Manual and some inspiration from programs like scrot of course (:

#cprogramming #xlib #gui

After the recent increased interest in the GreasePencil XR project-thing I'm adding here some of the last builds I happen to have.
It's a WIP that got stopped and has changed hands through the time, but you should be able to run Grease Pencil in Windows 10 with a Meta Quest 2/3 VR headset without much trouble.
Basic functionality is working: you can paint, undo, redo, add and remove key frames but not much more, plus you have to expect random crashes every now and then.

- 3.6a runs against Grease Pencil legacy and no Geometry nodes can be applied to it. This version is able to display onionskin in the VR headset and it also has a working UI mirror plane that allows the user to interact with Blender's UI without removing the headset up to a point.
- 4.3a runs against the new Grease Pencil module that supports Geometry nodes on top, but the UI mirror is not finished, thus not working at all, and the parts for onionskin and such are missing.

the addon attached is required to be activated in the addons tab

This one's recorded back in August, I wanted to add lighting before showcasing some progress but nevermind. I/O scene viewport control is now implemented in the OpenGL sandbox, a-la 3D content creation suites standard with panning, zooming and rotation controlled with the mouse. I also added some damping to the rotation as an experiment. So far I feel happy with the results

#cprogramming #opengl

last week I made a custom Xlib program to screen-cast pressed keys into a floating window.

I'm aware of similar tools existing but I wanted to try on my own, and for my needs. I ended up discovering the X Record extension that seems to be the key part to catch up KeyPress events from other active windows into the one I want.

#cprogramming #xlib

It's been a long year. Little progress or completed projects have seen the light this last 365 days (becoming a dad has been awesome yet exhausting at the same time) but anyway let's keep pushing the next one. There is a lot to unveil, we'll see you around (:

Happy new year!! 🌲⛄️🎁

A Glimpse of what's about to come (:

3D Viewports | The Grid

If someone asks you what's the first thing you think about when opening a word processor, what do you say? A blank paper-sized sheet, perhaps. And when you open a CSV editor? Some cells forming rows and columns, maybe. What about when opening a 3D editor?

Seems like we are on that time of the month, again (:

Each time the Codeberg's service goes down (or partially down) I make myself the same question about switching to other platform that receives "less hits" or to go fully autonomous and host everything, set up cgit and such... but I never seem to care enough. Maybe it's about time, just maybe