How to subscribe to RSS feeds using TheOldReader.com and Google Chrome

Why I Switched to TheOldReader.com

When Google announced that they would be phasing out Google Reader, I was more than a little disappointed. I loved the Google Reader experience - it's how I keep abreast of the latest animation techniques and also how I stay up-to-date with job postings without having to manually search for updates. After about a month of denial where I continued to use Google Reader, I am now making the transition to my new RSS Reader TheOldReader.com. I selected TheOldReader.com because they offer the closest experience to what I was used to in Google Reader: a clean but bare-bones reader that minimizes distraction.

Subscribing to Feeds in Google Chrome

1. Install the GoogleChrome RSS Subscription Extension (By Google)
2. Add TheOldReader.com as your default RSS Reader
1. Go into your extension settings (file pull down (looks like three horizontal bars) -> Tools -> Extensions
2. Open the RSS Subscription Extension Options (Scroll to RSS Subscription Extension and click on the small blue options link)
3. Click on the "Add..." button to add a new feed reader
4. In the "Description" field enter: The Old Reader
5. In the url field enter: http://theoldreader.com/feeds/subscribe?url=%s
6. Choose save
7. Select The Old Reader, and choose "Make Default"
8. Turn on "Always use my default reader when subscribing to feeds."
3. Browse to a page with an RSS
4. Click on the orange RSS icon that shows up in your URL bar to subscribe

WTF: No, seriously, What The Font?!

If you want to know what font a client is using in their project, consider: What The Font.

Just upload an image and using their crazy robots and powers of typographic delight, they will tell you what font is in that image. The world amazes me. Special thanks to sender-inner R. Blaik.

Syncing Multiple Copies of Cinema 4D (Windows)

If you're an animator working in the modern era, you're probably running Cinema 4D in at least three places.

1. Your desktop at work.
2. Your desktop at home.
3. Your laptop.

Add to this that on any of these machines you may be running the current version of Cinema and the version or two before that (for legacy projects/clients), and you've pretty much guaranteed that any time-saving scripts, plugins, layouts, or libraries won't be where you need them when you need them.

Thankfully, there's a solution, that would probably have been obvious to any hardcore unix hacker (which I'm not, nor I assume are you): symbolic links.

A symbolic link is basically a shortcut from one folder or file to another, except that your file browser and any programs you're running can treat them like real files.

The basic solution works like this.

The three lower arrows each represent a symbolic link to a "C4DLibrary" folder in your DropBox (or GoogleDrive, or iCloud, etc) account. Dropbox will handle the work of keeping your files synced across computers, and whenever you add a new plugin/layout, etc, it will get saved to the C4DLibrary folder in your dropbox.

Instructions

Note: the following instructions apply only to a Windows machine. These instructions also should only be used with the same version number of C4D, cross-version linking can lead to strange results - you'll need to manually link sub-folders.

1. In Dropbox create a folder called "C4DSync" (This is the "C4D Library" folder from the above illustration)
2. Download "Directory Linker" from: http://dirlinker.codeplex.com/
3. Open Cinema 4D on the most readily accessible computer.
4. Click on Edit->Preferences
5. From the preferences window click on the "Open Preferences Folder" button. This will open a windows explorer dialog.
6. In the path bar at the top (the one that looks like Username->AppData->Roaming->MAXON->...), click to the far right. This will convert the path to a file path that should look something like:
   C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\MAXON\CINEMA 4D R13
7. Copy this text.
8. Run the "Directory Linker" application you downloaded earlier.
9. In the "Link Location:" field paste the filepath you copied in step 6.
10. In the "Link To:" field browse to the "C4DSync" directory you created in dropbox. It'll probably look something like "C:\Users\Username\Dropbox\Library\C4DSync"
11. Ensure that "Copy contents to target then delete it" is active.
12. Click on the Go! button.

Congratulations, your primary installation of Cinema 4D is now saving all preferences and plugins to your dropbox folder. Now just repeat steps 2-12 for all other C4D installations.

WARNING: Please make backups of your preferences folders before doing this, especially if you have any important projects in there. I've yet to test this with C4D running simultaneously in multiple locations, but I can imagine that leading to some bad juju, so please test (and report back) before using this in production. Also, if your plugins are serial-linked this will lead to some issues as well unless all versions of C4D are sharing the same serial number.

References

Thanks go to the following resources for getting me to a place where I was able to write this post:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-954644.html

http://lifehacker.com/5530931/link-shell-extension-creates-windows-symlinks-with-ease

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/

http://dirlinker.codeplex.com/

C4D Architectural Visualization Resources

With any luck, I'll be doing some more architectural visualization work soon. Here's a list of resources I came up with while doing research for a project. If I've missed anything, please leave a comment.

Tutorials

C4D Specific

• Digital Tutors
• Learn to Visualize: Architectural Concepts
• Modeling Interiors in Cinema 4D
• Rendering Interiors in Cinema 4D
• C4D Exchange
• Modeling an Office Building in C4D: Alternatively, a lower-quality free version can be downloaded here.
• Modeling a house by Dr. Pavel Zoch
• Envy Studios
• C4D V-Ray Exteriors - From the Ground Up
• C4D V-Ray Interiors - From the Ground Up
• C4D Advanced Render Interiors - From the Ground Up
• Claude Kongs
• Tutorials: 3D architectural visualization – the key elements (3min)
• 3D Arch-renderings Meet The "Film Look" in After Effects CS5: a brief overview of a plugin-free After Effects workflow for creating architectural visualizations.
• How to make a good architectural visualization movie
• Directing CG Architectural Movies: Unfortunately, this is just a teaser trailer for an as yet unreleased tutorial series. But if it ever gets released, it looks like it will be a must-watch.
• Cineversity:
• Vectorworks to Cinema 4D
• 3D Terrain from USGS Data Sets
• Sketch-Style Drawing
• ArchC4D: A 90min introduction to architectural visualization in C4D. Available for free, but if you like what you see, you might want to kick a few bucks to the author.

General Tutorials

• Arch Viz Making of Tutorials: A pinterest board created by Ronen Bekerman. Seems like a pretty good starting place. Not necessarily C4D specific.
• Of particular interest to me was his approach to Modeling a large complex onto a photo of aplot of land.
• CG Architect.com: This looks to be a great resources. They have quite a few making-of articles up that show images of finished works in various states of production.

Recommended Reading

• CG Talk Forums
• Arch Viz Workflow: It seems that most people use some combination of VectorWorks or Sketchup to work with DWG files from the architects, and then bring those into C4D using various plugins. VW seems to be the preffered option because of the quality of its exchange plugin.
• C4D Cafe Forums
• Archviz Workflow / Software Question: A few posts on the subject. It seems that at least some people prefer ArchiCAD over SketchUp for architectural work. Also, for 2D work, you can import a .dwg into illustrator and then export an AI file for use in cinema. For 3D a .dxf file can be used (despite often poor results).

Plugins / Model Packs

• Bridge Maker Preset: Create a (not sure how useful it is) bridge.
• Win4Doors + Stairs 4D: Polygon modeling plugins that allow for the easy generation of stairs and windows.
• Win Gen: A parametric window object.
• Window Rig: A really extensive free window rig.

Tools

• Google SketchUp: A free architectural modeling plugin.
• Sketch 4D: Allows you to download and open Google Warehouse files directly into C4D. Also allows you to open sketchup files in C4D so that you can use SketchUp Free instead of SketchUp Pro.
• Google SketchUp 8 Essential Training by George Maestri for Lynda.com
• VRAY for C4D: A popular third-party renderer for architecture visualization work. While I'm a big proponent of using built-in tools where possible, the renders coming out of VRAY really seem to be a cut above C4D's built-in renderer for this sort of work.
• ArchiCAD: A 3D CAD modeling program tailored to architecture work.
• Tools4D Texture Remapping Kit: A great tool for taking existing photographs and translating them into reusable tiling textures. Great for grasses, building fronts, etc.

Tips

• Adopt a standard scale for all of your models, this way you can easily import all of your files from different projects into the file for your latest gig.

Areas for Further Research

• Model packs
• Texture packs
• Go through the above tutorials and resources and see if any best practices emerge. If so, codify them and write another post.
• Helpful plugins

Give up on being perfect.

On my fourth rewrite of this post, I realized that the title says it all.

Ira Glass on Persistence

This quotation has more than made the rounds by now, but I find it encouraging and a regular point of reflection, so I'm sharing it:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”  --Ira Glass of This American Life

Keep fighting, even if you're a pacifist.

Gmail: Archive and Next

If you find yourself with a Gmail inbox a mile high, and want to power through it, you're probably doing the following:

1. Move cursor to top-most email.
2. Click.
3. Read the email.
4. Move cursor to the Archive button.
5. Click.
6. Repeat.

There is an easier way:

1. Click on the top-most email.
2. Read the email
3. Press the '[' key on your keyboard to use Gmail's "Archive and Previous" command (use ']' to move in the other direction)
4. Repeat steps 2 & 3 until you've cleared your inbox.

The time savings seems minimal, but let's add it up:

Point & click method, time per email: 2 sec (factoring in page load times)

Keyboard shortcut method, time per email: .5 sec

That's a savings of about 1.5 sec per email. Now, lets say we get 20 emails a day.

1.5 sec/email * 20 emails/day * 365 days/year = 10,950 sec/year

= 182.5 minutes/year

= ~3hr/year

Now let's assume that we've all got about 60 more years of emailing left in us, and that a radically faster alternative for archiving messages won't be developed in that time (unlikely, but I want to calculate these numbers so bear with my pointless hypothetical).

3hr/year * 60year/life = 180hr/life

180hr/life / 24hr/day = 7.5days/life

So while reading this blog post has probably taken 2 minutes, over the course of your life you now have an entire week to spend on things other than archiving your emails.

For a full listing of other time-saving Gmail keyboard commands, go here:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6594

Note to Google Apps Users:
You may find that the above shortcuts do not work for you. You need to go into your mail settings and enable keyboard shortcuts, they are turned off by default.