Microsoft just published it's second official Expression Newsletter. It contains part 1 of my "Designer Role" article.

http://www.microsoft.com/expression/news-press/newsletter/2007-12/Article02.aspx

deviantArt rocks. I'm kicking myself for not using it sooner.

For my fans I present you this ever changing preview of my most popular "deviations"

And for those who'd like to follow my deviations, here's the RSS Feed.

Aesthetic by *nukeation on deviantART

I've finally found a nice corner on the Internet for my artwork (3D, 2D, traditional) and photography (my flickr is still active though). I'll be posting a lot of art and photo related stuff, as well as keeping an art blog of sorts. Prints of my works are available on deviantArt as well.

This image (see link at the end for the full image) is part of the Troll Twins series I have been creating the past few days (and will continue working on for a few more weeks). I have been posting these images to www.Cornucopia3D.com.

These images were created in e-onsoftware's Vue 6 Infinite (www.e-onsoftware.com). Here's the information on the SSS shader I used for the troll - which IMHO gives a much better result than the standard Poser imported material.

Take a look at the above image - especially the marked areas and you can see the difference in the normal and SSS skin shaders.

And in low-light/backlit scenes, SSS can be much more powerful. However you don't get native support for the "Troll" model in SkinVue. So how do you create it? Simple. First you need SkinVue 6 (http://www.skinvue.net) - an excellent skin shader utility by Dave Burdick.

Here's how I did it. I loaded Victoria 4 from Daz into Vue and swapped materials using SkinVue. I saved the Torso material provided by SkinVue to my personal folder.

I deleted the V4 model and loaded the Troll. I replaced the BODY material (default Poser material) with the V4 Torso material. I opened that material in the Material Editor.

I edited the Color Production function in the Function Editor. While the function (see below) is scary at first, it is quite simple to manipulate. I selected the bitmap source node (highlighted in the capture below) and replaced it with the Troll Body texture that comes with the Troll package.

Hit OK, save the material, and you're done. Almost. You will have to repeat this process for the Head and other materials as needed. Most of the time head and body will be more than enough. But you may wish to edit the other shaders for extra realism.

You can see the full sized render here: TrollHuntBig.jpg (445.51 KB)

Show #227 | 4/9/2007
Dax Pandhi talks WPF and Expression

Graphics guru and WPF wonk Dax Pandhi shares his thoughts on WPF, WPF/e, Expression suite in general, and Blend in particular. You'll hear the story of how Dax came to be the "Pwop graphics guy" as well as his contributions to the WPF community.

Dax Pandhi is the CEO of Nukeation Studios, an award winning UX studio, he is also a very recent MVP, and one of the first people to say that WPF will rock the world! He and his company have been helping clients prepare for and adopt Windows Presentation Foundation for their applications since 2005. Dax is committed to bridging the gap between developers and designers in the new world of User Experience. He spends his time helping UX-impaired developers adopt WPF, writing about WPF, and trying to get a life. http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=227

I am an avid user of e-on software's Vue 6 Infinite. This image entitled "Solace" made it as Picture of the Day on Vue's official site.

You can check out my Vue gallery at Cornucopia3D - Vue's official community.

This thing started catching attention before it was even announced.

It's hot and it's coming soon.

The ultimate WPF resource. The only hint I can give you so far is - it's powered by Pwop.

My original professional roots are in 3D animation. It's been a long time since I've done any 3D work. Recently I couldn't help but get Vue 6 Infinite (even though it's still pre-release!). It is perhaps the best 3D nature design software I've worked with. I intend to write a detailed review/experience of Vue 6. For now I just wanted to share some initial renders I did with SkinVue and the new Spectral Atmosphere model. As you can clearly see, the results are amazing.

"Bareback"

"The Last Dragon"

MetaClouds + Spectral Atmosphere Render 1

Spectral Atmosphere + MetaClouds - Render 2

Spectral Atmosphere Render 3

 

From left to right:

Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman of Microsoft India; Tarun Gulati, MD of Microsoft India; Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft Corp.; Dax Pandhi (Me), CEO of Nukeation Studios.

This week has been amazing! I don't do much public speaking but the guys at Microsoft got me to be a speaker at IndiMIX'06. The central focus of the event was Expression and Live. Designer and developer. Cricket and Bollywood.

The event (my first big event) was fantastic. It started with a keynote from Steve Ballmer. Following that the application MatchCast, a high-end cricket statistic and analysis application, was showcased by Anil Kumble. Nukeation was the UX consultant on the application.

There was more stuff after that (from 1100 to 1300) but I missed it for two reasons. First, as the winner of Microsoft Blogstar, I had to go backstage and meet Steve himself!

>> This blog has been interrupted to announce that you are reading the blog of a Blogstar. We now return to the regularly scheduled post. <<

I got my photo taken with him, but they haven't sent it to me yet. :/ And secondly, after Steve left, my team had to prepare for our session.

The Designer Session Team

This was my first real, big speaking event and I was nervous as hell at first. The main reason I was able to give a good presentation was because of three incredibly cool people - Leon Brown, Pandurang Nayak, and Deepak Gulati. Our session was 75 minutes and covered the three Expression products. We also launched www.1expression.net (more on that later) and the WebRockstars contest at http://www.webrockstars.in/

I couldn't have asked for a better team! These guys are amazing. Thanks so much, guys! We spent two days in a conference room in Microsoft Mumbai preparing for our stuff. It was a first-of-it's-kind experience for me. Of course, the traditional "pizza while debugging" was a familiar entity.

Our session went excellently. It opened up with Leon (who was our session host) and cricket player Murali Kartik (a name Leon still probably can't pronounce - man, he got a lot of torture from me about that - and lots of other stuff!), followed by a walkthrough of Expression Web by Pandurang.

Pandu explains the session to Murali Kartik

I followed that with a brief intro of Expression Graphic Designer and Expression Interactive Designer. After that Deepak and I did a Developer-Designer workflow integration demo. He made a strict "developer looking" application (aka, functional but crappy looking) in Visual Studio 2005 with "Orcas" tools. I opened the solution in ExprID and enhanced it with styles and animations. We got a really great response from the audience. Deepak and I immediately developed this chemistry which allowed us to create a funny little style of working together on-stage. And I think the people really loved it.

We ended our session with three important things: an announcement that great things will be revealed about Expression in the first week of December; the launch of www.1expression.net; and a Q&A session. My fun moment there was representing my fellow designers worldwide - the most audible form of that was during the closing when someone asked "What are the debugging capabilities of Expression Interactive?". Deepak, Leon, and Pandu gave good, real answers. I, of course, said "Designers don't debug". :)

Mandira Bedi, TV personality and the host of the live webcast

I again missed the next session (Developer) as I was asked to be interviewed on the live webcast (75k viewers - made my knees shake!) by Mandira Bedi. I was able to catch Bob Muglia's closing remarks and Q&A. After the event, Leon and I also did a short interview for CNBC.

Bob Muglia answers a question. The four guys in the background are Deepak Gulati, Janakiram MSV, Kevin D'Souza, and Rohit Kapoor.

Praveen Srivatsa, Microsoft Regional Director for Bangalore, takes software construction seriously

 

Over the past 5 days, I got to meet some really great people - Microsfties, MVPs, RDs, simple civilianss, business execs, Cricket stars, movie stars, and who can forget Steve Ballmer! I also got to learn so many cool things that I can't tell without violating a dozen NDAs. That's the price you pay for being close to Microsoft.

All I can say is: hang on - the ride has just begun!

PS. Leon, yes, still MEKNB.

If you don't already know, MIX'06 is coming to India in the form of IndiMIX'06 (http://www.indimix06.com). The keynote will be given by Steve Ballmer.

I've been given the honor of being on the same stage as Steve B. I'm going to be doing a piece on .NET Framework 3.0 - essentially about Windows Presentation Foundation and the Designer / Developer work process. I'll be co-presenting the demo with some really cool people.

IndiMIX'06 will be held at the National Center for Performing Arts (NCPA), Nariman Point, Mumbai. It's a free public event and you can register for it at the official website. If you're not able to come to Mumbai, or if the event is sold out you can watch the live webcast. Register for either at the official site.

My presentation will be from 2:00pm to 3:15pm (local time, +5:30GMT).

For more info, visit http://www.indimix06.com

My article has finally been published on MSDN. Thanks to the nice people at MS for letting me write this!

www.pwopcatcher.com, the official site for Pwop Production's PWOPCATCHER podcast downloader is now live. A barebone alpha is also available.

The look of the site was done by yours truly. It was modelled after the "BORG" skin that will be the default look of PwopCatcher.

I just read Andrew Lucking's blog post about my first video on EID, and it kinda inspired me to give my perspective on Flash vs EID.

Let's recount the basic stuff:

	Flash	EID/WPF
Programming Support	Medium (ActionScript 2.0)	Heavy (.NET 2.0 and XAML)
3D support	Medium (Shockwave 3D or Vectorized 3D output)	Heavy (WPF and DirectX)
Declarative Programming Support	No	Yes
Bitmap Effects Support	Limited	Extensive
Animation Model	Timeline-based: timeline is the ultimate controller; timelines are NOT optional	Trigger-based: timelines control the animation, but the timelines are controlled by triggers; timelines are also OPTIONAL
Cross-Platform support	Extensive	Limited / Currently unavailable (WPF/E details are still sketchy)
Drawing Tools	Heavy	Medium

 

What's EID and WPF potential over Flash? Well, can't say much about WPF/E until I actually use it, but taking WPF as a basic example, here are my thoughts:

NOTE: For the purpose of this post, EID and WPF (or at least the features) are the same. If it is in one, its in the other.

• It all comes back to the timeline. In Flash Timeline is God. In EID, Timeline is just another aspect of an object, and there are more than one timelines and each can be ran parallel to other timelines - even of the same object!! In other words, with Flash we're looking at "time" from a normal layman's perspective; with WPF, it's like looking at "time" from Einstein's perspective.
• In Flash, you have to stop the timeline in order to have a static frame, which makes creating a multi-section Flash website quite difficult. It's not difficult per-se, but difficult when you consider the trigger-only-timelines that EID presents. That would make this much easier.
• Creating 3D content in Flash has always been terribly difficult. Shockwave does add 3D support, but its more like VRML on steroids. If you don't know about VRML, it was a 3D web standard pushed in the late 90s. It was terrible!! With inherent and DirectX support for 3D with shaders and crap is actually fantastic! That alone will land a good blow to Flash.
• There's good DOCUMENT support in WPF. This gives you a document-data presentation component that Flash just can't do! This is one of the chief reasons why the Adobe people are gung-ho on integrating PDF and SWF.
• EID comes from a "component and controls, animate it all" point-of-view, while Flash is "all animation, some component... animate components? uhh, ok, you can try...". The WRAP PANEL and other such controls can seriously kick Flash's ass.

You might say: "Whoa! Hold on. WPF/E does not have all this! It's very puny and limited!"

If you're a Flash or non-Microsoft-stuff user, I'll let you go. If you're a Microsoft-user and you said that give yourself a big kick. Without going into the intricacies of numerology, we all know that this is just version 1. All we have to do is wait 2 more versions. Let me explain:

So I've said all the nice things about WPF and put down Flash. Well, that's not the whole story. WPF is severely limited in many ways that Flash isn't. The user base being not the least of it, of course. Right now, WPF is more close to Macromedia FLEX than Flash.

Branden Hall writes in his post titled "The Flash Killer Cometh":

Well, I can't say I disagree with the first part. For the "mythical Interactive Developer" (I might have to adopt that as my title) comment, well, I disagree there.

Mythical Interactive Developers are not, in fact, mythical. I am one myself, and in the last 7 years have trained 4 such people (10 years and 16 people if you want to count VRML in this). We (ahem) are rare, but not nonexistent. And more shall rise. The gates of Oblivion have opened!! Uhh... sorry, wrong topic.

Anyways, let me get back to my point.

If you are not a Microsofter or are very new to the Microsoft world - the REAL Microsoft World that only devs see - you don't know the power of number 3. As I said, again ignoring numerology, that this WPF 1.0. Microsoft ALWAYS strikes gold with Version 3.

Windows 3(.1) was the most popular in the first generation. Windows 98SE was WAY better than 95 or 98. Windows ME was a fluke, so let's forget that. In the third generation we had Windows 2000 and then XP, now we have Vista which will undoubtedly hit the mark.

Visual Studio 6.0 (#3 of II generation) was way better than anything else. Visual Studio 2005 (#3 of the III generation) is already doing great things!

So step back a bit. Look from a larger perspective. Microsoft is only laying the foundation. Bill Buxton said:

There is a new revolution coming. It will come in THREE waves. Here's my prediction for it:

• First Big Wave: We shift from WinForms to a more Web+Vector like platform. We learn the ropes for the upcoming waves. The Mythical Interactive Developer is born and many Flashers flock to the Microsoft banner - mostly because working with WPF will pay a LOT more than Flash does. Microsoft silently keeps working on the final stuff.
• Second Bigger Wave: After a year or more of having WPF out there, Microsoft will have perfect grasp on what's needed, what the public wants, what the designers+developers need. A 2.0 release gives you more power. More people flock under the Microsoft flag. More users keep adopting this technology - even just as runtime. Microsoft silently keeps working on the final stuff.
• Tsunami: The work is done. Microsoft has the perfect blend ready. Flash is either killed or is kept limping behind.

Branden Hall also writes:

I recommend reading the posts in this category in old-to-new order. But let explain in short:

Microsoft is right. WPF is not being primed (solely) as a Flash-killer. It will definetely be a Mac-killer tho. But my point is this: If you think WPF is only for making things pretty you are WAAAAAAAY off.

WPF is about getting the presentation layer of a software done quickly and flexibly. Things that required superior subclassing skills and knowledge can be done by an amateur now. The declarative model makes things much easier. WPF will be a boon for developers. It will solve a LOT of problems.

For record let me make it clear:

Windows Presentation Foundation or Expression Interactive Designer will not make anything extra-graphical or extra-interactive unless designer/developer goes to some lengths to actually make it so! When you DON'T skin a control, it will look just like a normal Windows control does. WPF will solve problems such as creating composite controls, creating resolution-independent applications, allowing better and economical usage of graphics hardware and vector to lower CPU usage that GDI+ does not, and more. This is not an animation package (yet).

No. WinFX/WPF/EID is the next generation of development platform. Of course, it won't take long for it become what ASP.net is for the web. But it will be like ASP.net in many ways. WPF/E will co-exist with Flash, just as ASP.net does with PHP and JSP. Of course, it goes without saying that ASP.net is better than PHP or JSP, and so will be WPF/e (eventually).

With that, and the sun shining in my face at 7:20 in the morning, I bid thee good night.

Here's a first look at NukeControls. This is just a small piece of the whole thing - only 3 controls.

nPanel - a special "header" control
nProgress - a super cool Vista-style progressbar for .NET 2.0 with animation!
nNavigator - bi-directional navigation control

All these controls have 6 or more themes, and some like the nPanel, can be customized.

Click the image above to download a ZIP (175kb) with a VB.NET 2005 project. If you don't have VB.NET 2005, you can just run the EXE in the BIN folder.

This is an alpha build only. Expect a public beta in the coming week or two. If you run this in the IDE, do note that only a handful of events and properties have been exposed for this demo. Some themes will not function as well.

Comments are appreciated. We are also looking for people to beta test the controls suite. Beta testers get a free copy of this product! Contact us at beta [at] nukeation [dot] com.

I had an extensive argument with a pro-DotNetNuke (DNN) person, and the only reason we didn't end up giving each other a black eye is that Messenger does not support such actions. He said I didn't mix well with DNN because it was also "nuke" and, I quote, "and you believe that this industry is not big enough for the both of you". That is not the case. After calming him (and myself) down, I promised him a good, lucid explanation instead of just badmouthing his favorite CMS (Content Management System).

I've tried every version of DotNetNuke ever since it was first released. Everytime I install it, I end up uninstalling it in a few days and hope the next version is better.

Carl Franklin had suggested that the .NET ROCKS! site be DNN. But I had such a bad experience with DNN at that time that I ended up creating my own CMS based on Carl's tools he had already created.

For the past few weeks, I've been knee-deep in DNN 4 for a client (will post URL when done). This time there is no other choice than DNN since this site has to be easily editable. And DNN is much better than any other .NET based CMS system I've tried so far. Reminds me of the horrible time I had when creating www.idesign.net for Juval Lowy. I ended up replacing 30% to 50% of the ASP.net Portal Starter Kit (1.1) code with my own, including altering the database structure and sprocs. I half-joked Juval that the code was haunted. So when comparing to that, DNN is quite good.

So what am I ranting about? Well, no offense to Shaun Walker and the others who've worked on DNN - really, I do admire this huge and complex app they've built - but at best, DNN is Kaminoan. That is, it's turning out website clones.

I had told Carl during the aforementioned situation that DNN did NOT give pixel-precision. Carl asked Shaun that same question during the DNR episode about DNN just before 4.0's release. Shaun denied that and said that it is in fact possible. I'm sorry, but I beg to differ. Y'see it's "technically" or "theoretically" possible only. Whether you create your own skin or modify the samples, there will always be that 4-block pattern you won't be able to break. There also spacing and positioning issues that happen when you deal in the "edit" stuff that the modules come with.

I'm not so thick that I'm totally unaware that a lot of times such a solution is more than good enough and is quite helpful for many people. I do appreciate that. Heck, if I hated DNN so much, I'd have said no to the aforementioned client.

If you're a designer who knows how to easily achieve pixel-precision in DNN, not only do I bow to your experise, but I would seriously like to learn how. I can't discount the possibility that maybe it's me who had gotten this all wrong.

I can promise you this: if there's one thing I've learnt in my 8+ years of web design and public-reponse studies, it's that a uniquely designed website will always produce better results than a clone site built on a CMS (not neccessarily DNN - could be any other CMS).

A custom solution also doesn't mean you lose all the editablity and managability you get in a CMS. Check out www.tedneward.com - a good 50% of this site is custom CMS-managed stuff. Ted wanted the site to be editable - but only the stuff that he would update frequently - events, articles, news, etc. I custom designed this CMS in less than 5 hours. Using one of the CMS like DNN would have been overkill, and not to mention I'd have lost control over the design.

And different situations need different CMS solutions (I'm going to punch the person who says "But you can make your own modules in DotNetNuke!"). Back in late December 2004, I took the brilliant SQL back-end that Carl had created for DNR, and I created a special CMS for this particular solution (podcast website). Carl had his own management tool to manipulate the back-end. By mid-January 2005, that site was totally objectified and practically became a Content Engine in its own right. The following sites use the same (or partially modified) version of the engine:

www.dotnetrocks.com, http://mondays.pwop.com, www.hanselminutes.com, www.dnrtv.com ... and others I'm not supposed to mention.

This CMS is so highly specialized for this specific purpose, that to create a new site, all you need to do is script a new copy of the database, copy the .NET 2.0 site, and replace the MasterPage with your new design. DnrTV - the latest offering from this engine, was built in less than 3 hours - including testing and recurring revisions to the design.

Bottom line: after many tries, and the currently ongoing adventure in DNN, I don't consider it practical nor do I think I will soon accept another DNN (or any other prefab CMS) project.

DISCLAIMER: Nukeation Studios consists of more than one person, and any comments I've made here reflect only on me and not on my company. That being said, I still won't personally handle a DNN project ever. I'll just hand it to one of the boys or outsource it completely!

IMO, in my recent experiences, a large number of people still think of a skinned app as something like Windows Media Player, WinAMP, PowerDVD, the OEM apps that come with digital cameras, Bryce or even PwopCatcher. Skinning CAN be like that, and no doubt MANY people will want that (and need it too). However, skinning can also (and in a more widely needed as well as realistic pov) mean enhancing the existing structures of your WPF application controls.

In certain situations "skinning around the control" rather than "skinning the control" also helps. And if you allow me a moment to be painstakingly irritating, with WPF's super flexible design model, skinning is too narrow a term to really describe what can be done. But back to skinning around the control, let me clarify what I mean by building upon an example I (will) present in The Human UX:

Say we have a button that triggers a purge of a nuclear reactor (if you don't know yet, this is a hypothetical situation). From a typical skinning point of view (STC - Skinnin the control) we might have an urge to paint the control red, put a biohazard or radioactive symbol on it, and add those yellow-black warning stripes around it. Now that's all nice and good, but just PAINTING the control is not really helpful aside from making an idiot go "ooooooh, what does THIS button do?".

Let's build a USABILITY ENHANCEMENT on top of this. For a seriously dangerous function trigger like this button, a good accident deterrent is needed. Let's use a reversed version of the "Your computer will restart in 15 seconds" dialog. We make the button nicely big (say 100px wide and 50px tall). When idle, it says "Purge Reactor" and has an exclamation on either side. When clicked, the text says "Confirm?" and the button starts to pulsate its color. A small 95px wide, center-aligned, progressbar appears ON the button, and instead of the exclamation icon, a countdown is shown - which is also reflected in the "emptying" progressbar. If the action is not confirmed within 15 seconds, then it is automaticaly cancelled. To be safe from accidental double-clicks, the countdown starts 3 seconds AFTER the first click.

On cancellation, the button fades back to the normal "idle" mode.

Now this is something I just dreamt up right now. With proper planning and some usability experts (<cough> Nukeation </cough>) these types of "little things" can seriously enhance the usability of any application.

What we just did here was NOT your typical skinning. We actually edited the base template of an existing button, added various timelines to respond to different events, and added sub-controls hosted on its surface. This kind of work was not possible (at least in terms of practicality and ease) unless you knew some heavy C++. We are messing with new "sub-controls" and timelines rather than just slapping on sweet graphics, so this isn't really skinning. While the official terms for this are (as far as I know) "Editing a control template". I call it Avalonizing or Avalonization, of WPFing (pronounced "wip'fing").

But enough of terminology. My main point here is that we now have an affordable, easy to implement, and flexible model for doing such things. And this power should not be wasted on just skinning an application, but rather to create superior usability enhancements to your apps.

Coming soon

Next Part: Using various contains like Grid, Canvas, and Flow to seamlessly present both controls and textual content in a single form.

Tutorial: Simple Template Editing for the Button and Progressbar.

Now that Windows Presentation Foundation is much more stable, and all it's tools are appearing in usable condition, I've started moving some of our projects to WPF.

The first of which is PixelSpread.

PixelSpread is a more-or-less ANTI-ORGANIZER. Don't let the name fool you though, it has superb auto-organization facilities. PixelSpread is made especially for designers (web and graphic). Photographers have recently gotten tools that let them organize their photos on a digital light table and work like they do in the physical world. Now that's all nice and good, but a much more simple (yet complex) solution is required for graphics designers who have literally thousands of small images (icons, graphical widgets, etc.). The thing is, designers often work with pieces of a single image. For example, take a button for example - it is (in web design especially) comprised of three different images: left side, right side, and the middle that can be stretched as wide as need be. You have to be painfully specific to organize these images so that you can see them in order in your image viewer or Windows Explorer. And organizing multiple such things is a pain. Trust me. I manage over 651k+ such images.

So, in comes PixelSpread. NOTE: This screenshot is from the WinForms .NET 2.0 prototype. This has 60% less features.

So, PixelSpread lets designers randomly drop images to keep here in a "spread". You can have more than one spread and share a single image across multiple spreads - like the new Virtual Folders in Vista. You can store a more than one format for each image. You can instantly copy from PixelSpread to your favorite web design or graphic design software.

PixelSpread maintains 32-bit transparency and supports Vector objects as well. You can zoom in/out an entire spread. Featuring state-of-the-art image compression (storage only), the PixelSpread data storage layer compressed a 291MB Corel PhotoPaint (CPT) file to 10.3MB, and a 325MB PhotoShop (PSD) file to 19MB.

With the move to WPF, the UI is more more flexible and customizable. The memory footprint is smaller, and the application is now seriously much more fun to use! Even with the move to WPF, PixelSpread still uses the Nukeation XCOPY™ Engine written entirely in Visual Basic 8.0 and sporting a custom back-end.

For more information about PixelSpread, subscribe to the RSS feed at http://labs.nukeation.net or see the PixelSpread page there.

PixelSpread is intended for a Q3 2006 release. There will be a free "Express" version of it as well. Expect a beta in the coming months.

http://labs.nukeation.net is now active. Do note, this is a pretty bare bones version. I will beef it up over the next couple of weeks. I have about a dozen downloads to add - as soon as I get time to debug them

Many new projects we are making for our retail division (for developers and graphics designers) are now shown on Nukeation Labs.

I've had plans for a long time to create a special bridge website where me and the boys (and girl) at Nukeation Studios get to show off code, tools, and other cool stuff to our peers (and give it away for free). I started doing that on a miniscule level on this blog, but I'm not your traditional blogger. I can't keep my normal slapstick out of this blog, nor do I have time to manage two blogs (and frankly, I don't think anyone would read my slapstick-only blog anymore).

Eventually, the idea of Nukeation Labs (did you know Nukeation Studios was known as Nukeation Labs before it was legally made into a business entity?) became a bit more. Nukeation will be soon be making a new full fledged dive into Professional Tools development. We will be focusing on two audiences: graphics designers and software developers. With our new tools being planned for WinFX, both these will overlap at some point.

So, my goals (yes, I'll be managing the site singlehandedly at the moment) with Nukeation Labs are:

• Provide technical insight into tools and other projects we are doing
• Provide free source code samples for .NET, Web developement, and Windows Presentation Foundation (and WPF/E whenever that gets here)
• Provide free (and commercial) tools for software and graphics professionals
• Publicly discuss alpha projects that often never see the light of day, but might make for fun discussions.
• And more ... once I find someone to start managing the site. :)

Nukeation Labs will be available in a couple of weeks as soon as I move this blog to a new server. Nukeation Labs will be available at http://labs.nukeation.net/ - that is, once I move this on to a new server.

For the past few days, I have been battling a mega-crisis on my main production PC. I still don't know the cause, but at the end, my beautiful 80GB SATA harddrive will be sent for replacement by Seagate. I bought a new 200GB one, transferred all the data without problem (for a change) and am now reinstalling everything to get back to work-ready status.

While I was off staring at a blank blue chkdsk screen for 12 hours in a row, two companies on which my livelihood depends on - Microsoft and Corel - pulled a fast one on me. Microsoft released Expression Interactive Designer (EID or MEID or "Sparkle"). If you don't know, Sparkle will be the heart of WPF based applications.

First of all, I must congratulate Microsoft for pulling off one hell of a job on this app! It seriously kicks Flash's ass. And its 6.8MB if you can believe it. Yup. Amazing!! The completely non-Microsoft-like UI (Black!!!) looks so sweet! The different work panels are a cross between Flash and Visual Studio - very cool.

I have a lot of work pending due to the hardware problems and all, but I will surely post a bigger review (from a dev and designer pov) over the weekend.

Corel Graphics Suite X3 (v13) is downloading as I write this. I blindly bought the upgrade, of course. PhotoPaint is a million times better than Photoshop. At least for me. I create all my websites in it. I can't wait to see what they've put in this release!! Again, more on that this weekend.

Lastly, this blog seems too confining to share snippets of code and .net (and xaml) stuff I want to give away freely. Some of my cohorts at Nukeation agree. So we're starting up (or rather, RE-starting) NUKEATION LABS. It will be 100% free, 100% managed, and on a seperate domain, of course. I'm almost finished with Nukeation Mapee 1.0, nukeControls 1.0, and more. All will be put up for public download very soon. The site will be up by the end of the week. The url is yet to be decided.

It is entirely possible to get lost at the Microsoft site. If you know how to find information, you can see how truly immense the site is. It could surely use a better navigation system, because often some great resources are hidden from plain sight and just might miss the mark.

I accidentally stumbled on this page that I had visited long ago. It's the Microsoft Design Resource site. At first glance you can see how the design is atypical of Microsofts normal trends (barring the 30th anniversary, Research, and Innovation presentations in the Corporate site).

This site is an excellent read and has some really nice, chic even, designs. The PEOPLE section is very interesting to people who are interested in design.

Here's an example of a cool thing - the "Office of the Future" design that won Microsoft an IDEA (Industrial Design Excellence Award).

This is a UI targeted at a very wide (and curved) prototype computer Microsoft has made. It's like have three monitors, but without the breaks in between.

How developers will embrace WPF and the new vector design methods is yet to be seen. If the reactions I've seen so far are a sign of the future, I think it might take some time. While developers love the cold logic of code, computers are merging more and more into human life, and as such will need to be approached with a psychological view as well. Right now, only few software companies (most of which are giants) do such research and apply it to their products.

The role of the designer in the software industry will be a very powerful catalyst for the entire industry and how we work. The factors of psychology in relation to human-computer interaction (psychophysics I believe applies here) are very important as I've started to learn in the last few months. I only had shallow knowledge of such, but after reading a few essays and the book Emotional Design by Dr. Don Norman (www.jnd.org) I started developing a much deeper interest. My personal ideas and views conflict a bit with Dr. Norman's, but I have come to greatly appreciate his insight.

Usability might seem like a trivial thing - especially when worrying about the code you still have to write - but it is far more important than it seems. When dealing with a non-technical (or even technical) software product - a good aesthetic+psycholical influence can help you increase sales, make the product more usable, FUN, and increase productivity at the same time.

My thoughts will be continued in "The Human UX" and some other posts. I had hoped to have it published on MSDN sooner, but I will post a preview copy here as the MSDN schedule seems a bit delayed.

This week is gonna be great. We have so many sites being launched in this week and possibly the next as well. Here's a partial list:

.NET Rocks - version 3 (2nd version after Pwop hired Nukeation)

Franklins.net - Carl Franklin's training company and the creator/sponsor of DNR

dnrTV (premiere show is with Miguel Castro about WebControls)

HanselMinutes (too "large" to explain, just wait and see)

Mondays - version 3 (same as DNR)

ThatIndigoGirl - Michele Leroux Bustamante's new blog about Windows Communication Foundation - a sister site to www.DasBlonde.net

MattStawicki.com (may be delayed to next week or so)

DigitalExile.net - I finally get to update my painting and photo galleries.

And last but not least, NUKEATION.com - yes, the big update I've been threatening to upload!

I leave you with some marketing (but still true) text in relation to tomorrow's update:

Our marketing is centered on our big milestone - the 78 billion pixels. Here's some extra info to awe you into giving us a new project or two...

Calculating at 96dpi, the average resolution of a monitor - 78,000,000,000 pixels (rounded off for convenience) equals 67,708,333.33 feet (excluding socks) which equals to 20,637.49 kilometers - which is MORE than THREE TIMES THE RADIUS OF THE EARTH! FYI, that's 19,134.405km at the equator according to Wikipedia. The base calculation is of a "strip" that has 96 pixels in one inch of.

Being responsible for a big (79%) piece of that pixel pie, I am suddenly feeling tired looking at those numbers. Excuse me, I need a nap.

PS. Big shout out to Jessica Pletcher. She may not have her own website for me to link to :P but she is responsible for almost 12% of these pixels!

I saw a wonderful quote on Nathan Dunlap's blog:

Here is a great quote from Bill Buxton:

"My sense is that Microsoft is in transition from an engineering-led company to...a design-led company," he said. "There are more designers at Microsoft on any single team as there were, not too long ago, in the entire company. It's a wonderful change."

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6001234.html

I for one couldn't be happier. It's the design revolution!! The streets will be colored in Window.Resource and often ignored lowly designers will make the face of the software industry. Go pixel pushers!

My blog has always been reflective of nukeation.com, and nukeation.com has always been reflective of my current "mood". With Vista and Aero and Avalon taking up most of my mental bandwidth, I crafted Digital Exile to look like the upcoming Nukeation.com "skin" which is reflective of Vista and the new "glass" stuff I've been experimenting with.

I also wanted to remove the clutter of the previous design. I finally added a slideshow in this upgrade. It's Flash based, and runs on XML, so I'll be updating it often.

Another addition is the ANNOUNCEMENTS panel where upcoming projects in which I'm involved are listed (and linked, if possible).

As always, please feel free to send comments about how you love or hate the new design.

Since Beta 1, I've been trying out the cool custom control features of Visual Studio 2005. And along the way, I've made some controls for in-house applications and some other projects. Now, you know me - I'm graphical to the core. These are super sweet looking eye-candy controls, and with solid functionality (as far as I know!).

Take a look at some of the controls:

Nukeation Navigator was inspired by VISTA and Microsoft's corporate site design. It has back-next navigation in a single control with 6 different themes ("Aero Glass", "Pure Liquid", "Jungle", "Nuke" [of course], "Lava", and "Rainbow").

Nukeation Progressbar is a chunk from the upcoming software NukeBall. We use this heavily for simple progress display. Very cool looking.

Nukeation Panel is a subclassed version of the standard Panel control. But this one has a gradient background, dropshadow, and a TITLE and DESCRIPTION property - ideal for wizards or dialog headers! Supports custom colors, 6 in-built color schemes, or OS-theme.

nProgress is old (from 1.1), but was ported to 2.0 and had some new functionality added to it. This is a fixed-size progress control with some seriously cool graphics! The "downloader" of PwopCatcher created by Carl Franklin uses this very progress bar.

I'm trying to fix some problems in nRange a range meter that shows 3 different ranges (ex: blue 5-10, green 8-23). If that is done, I'll pack it in.

Uhh... pack it in to what? Well, NukeControls! A freeware pack of cool aforementioned controls for .NET 2.0!

 

These controls will be released under the "I don't give a damn what you do with it, but some credit would be appreciated" license. More on this later.

Or just plain go see a psychiatrist?

Today, I desiged the 234th design of Nukeation.com. Yes, 2-3-4! While we have published only 14 or 15 (I lost count) versions, I have created (and scrapped) so many other designs. No one from my team is allowed to touch the nukeation website without my supervision, and I always make the site myself.

Are these early signs of OCD? Maybe. Should I be proud that I've made over 200 designs in roughly 400 days in total? Or should I check in to the nearest psychiatric clinic?

Sigh. Well, in any case, Nukeation Studios is updating all of its network sites this 23rd - including nukeation.com and nukeball.com. Perhaps digitalExile.net too (the 3 people who see the site will be very happy).

I might even start documenting how I make these websites - might be fun to let others into the depths of my weird imagination and totally bleak mind.

Take a look at this baby! My first "real" animation with Vue 5 Infinite. The wind feature of Vue is kriffin' fantastic!

Check out the whole WMV file at: http://shrinkster.com/9ey 

As technologies converge and new frontiers are born, so are new roles. WPF (fka Avalon) is creating a new role for the designer in world of software development. Previously, the closest a designer would get to programming was if he or she was a Flash artist (or "Flasher").

The couple of weeks ago, I was helping a buddy of mine learn Flash (remotely via MSN!). Now, this guy is a pure designer. You give him a piece of paper and a pencil, or maybe even tablet and Photoshop, and he's the best. Now he finds himself in a new environment that requires him to script. No GUI tasks in that. And if you have done Flash you know its pure coding that makes it work. Not to make fun of him, but he found having to write stuff like...

stop();

on(rollOver){gotoAndPlay("Over");}

on(rollOut){gotoAndPlay("Out");}

... difficult. He almost gave up Flash because of it! He's now getting better at it of course.

Let's go over to the other side. A client of mine likes to dabble with Flash now and then. We were talking and he told me how dull and unproductive the Flash IDE (imho, it's hardly a DE, let alone IDE) was. He was asking me if it was worth it to upgrade to Flash 8. I doubt any "true" programmer (or !=0 programmer ) would be comfortable in a IDE that has only 600x200 pixels worth of coding area.

If you're familiar with the fantasy genre (no I don't play D&D) there are mages and there are warriors. Warriors fight with their senses and the "physical" world. Mages work with the abstract and create wonderous as well as horrible things. Warriors = logic, and Mages = abstract or intuitive. And thus, software developers are like warriors, while designers are like mages.

And as we know the both don't get along too well.

This is a topic in which I'm quite well-versed. For you see, not to brag, but I'm one of the rare Warrior Mages. I've been programming since the age of 3 or 4. I've been designing/drawing since 3 or 4 - maybe earlier. There are others like Nathan Dunlap (www.designerslove.net) who used to be a designer only and is now getting quite good with .NET thanks to XAML and WPF.

I don't know if WPF (and /E) will be able to kill Flash or not, but it will certainly require all of us to learn how to better work with Designers. I suppose people who work in web development teams have a headstart on this.

As it will soon be announced on the official site, this month Nukeation passed the figure of 78 billion (that's 78,000,000,000+) pixels published. That is the count of pixels in the images we have used in projects. And it gives me great pride to say that more than 12 billion of those have been for software-based graphics. A few million from that figure belongs exclusively to Borg.

Software with great graphics are really more successful (provided they have actual functionality too). If you haven't tried XAML and WPF yet, go do it now. If you're a developer, start learning how to work with a designer. If you're a designer, start learning about logic.

In the game industry (which has the most active designer-developer interactions) there is a liason role - a person who knows about programming logic and design tactics. They help bridge the gap and help both parties work nicely with each other.

Unfortunately, this will not be probable or possible in the normal software development community, I think. Not at the budgets we (the "average" devs) work with - in terms of both time and money. Maybe Microsoft can afford it, but I think more than 90% of the industry would not be able to.

So the best thing for everyone is if they learned the "physics" of the other's work. If nothing else, just learn the limits of the technologies involved and what's possible and what's not. It migth save everyone a lot of time.

If you have any designer/developer stories, I'd love to hear 'em!

Happy cod(esign)ing.

I'm still trying to get the hang of this software. It's still better than Terragen at any rate. The EcoSystem and plants are the best! I might make a small animated video (2 minute max) around the holidays in my free time.

 

I got a copy of Vue-5 from E-On Software. This thing boggles the mind. If you're into 3D you have heard of either Bryce or Terragen - or both. I have used both and am fond of them, but I didn't know about Vue about until a few hours ago.

This thing has a powerful renderer as well as a feature-rich set of tools. Bryce becomes too "plasticy" at a point, and Terragen is too technical-sounding and not really that much fun to use - not to mention it is still not a full release yet!

If you are not into 3D, you don't know what a pain it is to create natural terrains and scenes in normal 3D apps like 3D Studio MAX, Maya, or Softimage. Paramount used Terragen 2 (TGD) for the Romulus opening scene in Star Trek X: Nemesis.

Vue has a more standard interface (with a fantastic skin!) that is found in most 3D apps. It has the best of Bryce and Terragen, and not to mention some seriously cool stuff of its own. I'll be blogging more about Vue as I go through the trees and other cool animation stuff. In the meantime, check out this link for a visual feast.

My first render on Vue:

I've been wanting to make my own hand-crafted lightsaber for a long time. That time is coming near. After successfully defeating Tavion and the spirit of Marka Ragnos on Korriban, I think I am finally ready for my own ligthsaber. This blue-bladed "adept" lightsaber will complete my training as a Knight.

All I need now is a Sith lord to chop up!

See the world's most sophistacted skin design.

As you may or may not know, the .NET Rocks crew is hitting the road on the VS 2005 Roadtrip and doing a show almost everyday. I was in charge of the graphics and all, and as usual, went overboard with the branding while Carl and I were brainstorming. While the eccentric graphics won't show up anywhere near the show or the RV, I'm leaking the best one here for your pleasure. This shows the secret plan that Carl Franklin, a seemingly innocent person in the developer community, is really undertaking. After all, they did say that VS2005 is all about VB.

Thanks in advance for the hate mail that Mac, Linux, and C# fans will be sending me.

Select resolution: 1024x768  |  1280x1024  |  1600x1200

PS. The thumbnail does not show all the 'good stuff'.

This is a cool tool for Web Developers from Microsoft! Couple this with IE7's tabs and you have yourself an extra arsenal.

Overview (from the link above)

The IE Developer Toolbar provides several features for deeply exploring and understanding Web pages.

-- Explore and modify the document object model (DOM) of a web page.
-- Locate and select specific elements on a web page through a variety of techniques.
-- Selectively disable Internet Explorer settings.
-- View HTML object class names, ID's, and details such as link paths, tab index values, and access keys.
-- Outline tables, table cells, images, or selected tags.
-- Validate HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS web feed links.
-- Display image dimensions, file sizes, path information, and alternate (ALT) text.
-- Immediately resize the browser window to 800x600 or a custom size.
-- Selectively clear the browser cache and saved cookies. Choose from all objects or those associated with a given domain.
-- Choose direct links to W3C specification references, the Internet Explorer team weblog (blog), and other resources.
-- Display a fully featured design ruler to help accurately align objects on your pages.

I'm still too excited and my imagination is running overtime with the possibilties. I am just not able to put it into words ... not yet. I need time to heal.

But I will say this: UX - User Experience - is gonna be the new freakin' thing everyone wants to get their hands into. I am quite confident Microsoft WFP/E (or Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere) will replace Macromedia Flash in quite a large percentage (like ASP.net did PHP), and Flashers (not the lewd kind, but the people who make stuff in Flash) should start learning about XAML and WFP if they want to earn better. Flashers don't earn as much as programmers. This is where that gap can be closed.

I know, I'm inviting competition. UX is the very core of Nukeation Studios. That's how I made it. That's what I'm passionate about. We are already providing consulting services for those who want to get a head start. We did the same for ASP.net 2.0, and Windows Forms 1.0 before the days of .NET 1.0's rise. My team and I are quite confident that we will be enriching many a applications with WPF very soon. If you'd like to know more, just drop us a line at wfp [ at ] nukeation [ dot ] com.

For a limited time we are ready to provide up to 2 hours of free consulting about WFP and how to plan it in for your upcoming software or the next version of that software.

We will also be announcing new WFP services in the Developer Services portion of our website.

And lastly, better UX means more work, and more work means I need fresh blood.

Jobs @ NUKEATION

For WFP development we need people with basic knowledge of XAML, Flash, 3D Design, 2D Vector Design. Any single talent out of these (with a willingness to learn more), and an intense amount of creativity & imagination is what we're looking for. Take a look at our portfolio. If you think you can match our work, we would be glad to have you on board.

3 paid internships with the same specification are also available. Drop us a line at hr [ at ] nukeation [ dot ] com

Microsoft's Expression product line seems very impressive. When you take into consideration the cross-platform (WPF/E) power and the extreme flexibility of WPF/XAML, and not to mention the solid power of programmability (something Flash lacks in boatloads) WPF/E will most probably revamp the Internet itself!

If you don't know anything about all this, think power of the world's best programming language, mixed with futuristic Final Fantasy like software interfaces. The future is finally here. Where do I want to go today? I wanna go to the place where they store the bits of Sparkle in Microsoft!

If you've worked in Flash and if you've worked in .NET, you just KNOW that the possibilities are mind-boggling. I have half a mind to create a time machine and go to the release date!!

WPF/E supports portable devices, Mac OS X, and possibly Linux as well! This is one of those few (if not the only one) things Microsoft made that is cross-browser compatible to such extremes. Check out Sparkle's features.

Windows Vista will finally be that massive graphical step in a visually better computing world. Not to mention all the other stuff - but I'm a graphic guy so I don't see nothin' else! :-P

Also, check out the ATLAS page. I'm gonna get my hands dirty with all this this weekend!

I'm still shaking from excitement over Expression. I better stop trying to write my thoughts about it before I go completely nuts!

EXPRESSION ROCKS!!!

People often wonder why I keep re-inventing the blog and my company's site, and practically every site I've personally owned.

Each site has a different reason, governed by the same philosophy. The philosophy borders on trade secret, so I won't go into it too deeply. Essentially, it's to show our ability.

What only people who work for me or are close to Nukeation know is that till date while only 14 versions (in 7 years) of Nukeation.com have been published, we have made over 120 versions of it. Not all turn out to be that good. Some don't fit our needs. Sometimes we just come up with an even better idea and scrap the old one.

But none of the talent, energy, or pixels are wasted. We put 'em on ice, and reuse it for clients or other projects.

This new "heaven" colored look of the blog is 80% the same as the upcoming version of www.Nukeation.com. It derives from the codename "Regen" look of Nukeation.com that was scrapped before it's current version was published. Now, we're reusing Regen, and merging it with the current look to create a splice that is better in every way - navigation, look and feel, readability, searchabilit, and general structure.

I also must confess that I went overboard with the Vista look of my blog. I was too mesmerized by the Vista look. It messed up readability and was CRAP when you look at the HTML. It was a mistake. That's why I adopted a modified version of RegenX look.

Let's see how long this one lasts. Vista/Aero had a full 40 days (since 5th August). I suspect RegenX might last longer.

Web design tip - alternate to ImageMaps.

The irony of it all is that a web designer doesn't have time to update his own website! Well, I spent about an hour or two every week for the past month or so, and FINALLY www.DigitalExile.net is now gone v2.0!!

I added the complete Art Collection! I used to work with Corel PhotoPaint to make paintings, but I recently got Painter IX - it's a wonderful software - and I've made the "Exile" collection in Painter IX mostly. Also added a TON of new photos - including the all new LIGHTNING collection.

So check it out - http://www.digitalexile.net and feel free to drop by any comments.

This becomes more of a project now wavering between an animated short or a novella with a frickin' cool cover and a few visuals.

In any case, it's supposed to be set in a world somewhere between Neo-Tokyo and Cyrodiil. Let's see where this goes.

For now I leave you with a three cool wallpapers. 3M+ renders.

1280x1024 1024x819	1280x1024 1024x819	1280x1024 1024x819

So it took less time than I thought. Here is the first clip. Might do more over the weekend or the next.

Click this image to view the video clip - Windows Media Player 9 or later required.

This video clip is © 2005 Dax Pandhi / Nukeation Studios. All rights reserved. The file cannot be distributed in any form without the author's explicit written permission.

Sickness, Alient Artifacts, and the Past - all three things hurt (often).

Ever since this morning, I've been feeling quite down. Nothing serious. Mostly stress, fatigue, and lack of a social life. After sleeping from 10am to 8pm, I was still not feeling too good. To battle these things, I started working on some alien artifacts. I've been wanting to do some cool, totally profitless, creative work. I have a bad habit of being focused on good, practical, and profitable goals. Unfortunately, that doesn't include too much fun. Don't get me wrong, I love my work. But you do need some fun. As my Uncle says "All work and no play, makes you hippy and gay". Trying desperately to avoid these things (no offence to anyone who is either or both), I say down, did a quick sketch with Alias SketchBook Pro on my Tablet and opened 3D Studio MAX after so long.

I might follow up on this "project" later this weekend if I can squeeze it into my schedule. For now, I leave you with a test shot.

The final result, tentatively titled "From Oblivion" (personal tribute to Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion), will be a 20 to 30 second clip - or even more than one 15 second clips - I will post 'em here over the weekend.

Special Credit to Jessica Pletcher for some 3D design advice. You rock, Jess!

If you are good at math, you are wondering where did the third hurting part go - The Past. Right. Well, in my sleep, someone in my neighborhood started playing "Walk Like An Egyption" - mostly because I hate The Bangles (like anyone with more than 2 brain cells). I think he or she must've been pissed off by yours truly during some point in time and wanted revenge. Well, it worked! The madhre mucking (to use a curse created by Tim Zahn in STAR WARS: VISION OF THE FUTURE) tune is stuck in my head. I am currently listening to Dargaard to get it out of my head (and for that nice gothic/ethnic inspiration for the Alien Artifact).

Here is an excerpt from "BIG NUMBERS: Ep III Animation" story from the StarWars.com official newsletter.

"The shots of Episode III resulted in a total rendering time of 6,598,928 hours, spread across the rendering farms of multiple processors. To do it on a single system running continuously, it would take over 750 years to produce."

I will *NEVER* complain again when it takes 2 hours to render some complex scenes.

I bet they were putting out at least 5 terabytes a day with their files!

We've been meaning to announce this for some time now, but are waiting for when we update www.nukeation.com properly. We've started a new service for Blogs. We make 'em for you. We prefer using dasBlog - which is what this blog uses - but we cater to just about any blog out there. For dasBlog based blogs, we've even created extensions such as the "I am..." tile you see on the top left, a photo blog/gallery, super cool skins/themes, and much more. We hope to make the typical blog into a more comprehensive media hub. Of course, all these extensions are totally free. We just charge (mostly peanuts) for the work we put into your blog. Standard blog design rates start at $100. Contact us today!

Tell you what - mention the following code phrase "Nukeation Rocks!" in your subject line and we'll give you a nice little 15% discount.

My desktop was lonely so I made a nice little Delta-62 "Scorch" (Republic Commando) wallpaper. It's 1280x1024 - "Center" with Black backdrop works best for both 1280x1024 and 1024x768. Enjoy. Feel free to pass on to friends.

RC01.jpg (53.92 KB)

I said it first, I said it again, and I confirmed it too. And now it's officiall announced. Acrlyic will be the Visual Designer for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF, formerly codename "Avalon"). Check out the August CTP.

I've said it before and I'll say it again AVALO-- eh, Windows Presentation Foundation ROCKS!

That's right - NukeBall, the Ultimate RUID Tool for Visual Studio 2005 is now nearing it's release. We're putting out a public beta of the Express Edition (analogous to non-alchoholic bear, but a bit better) near the end of the month. We have officially announced the contents and features of the software, the Express Edition, IDE Integration and more. Check out the website at http://www.nukeball.com

We still have a few slots left for beta testers. We give amazing rewards. For info contact beta [ at ] nukeball [ dot ] com.

 

In a desperate attempt to release the build up of excessive creative energy in me, I spent the last few hours creating this Vista/Aero look for my blog. Would love to hear some feedback.

This is all Vista. This is also an experiment for me. I have various assets on the internet - my business website, my upcoming software's website, my personal website with art & photography, and of course, my blog (all links at the top of the page). I'm trying to establish this blog as a hub between all this.

What I would love to know is whether this blog is just the private/public form of therapy for myself, or is it actually informative or at least entertaining. Does anyone even read it regularly? If you do read my blog - or even if this is your first time, please drop me a line and tell me what you think. It'd make very happy.

Oh, and thanks for reading my blog!!

I'm very happy to report that I've found Vista Beta 1 to be so stable and reliable that I'm moving a few projects onto the Vista platform. I'm also thinking of installing it on my Tablet PC over the weekend.

To move work on to Vista, first I had to see if all my work applications worked properly or not. Office 2003 has worked nicely, and so has Corel Graphics Suite 12. Next came VS2005.

Visual Studio 2005 Setup runs in all it's aero-enabled glory.

Somehow, the setup failed when it started to install the only missing prerequisite - MSXML (3 or 6, I can't remember at this moment). I had to go the WCU folder on the DVD and manually run that install. After that, VS2005 installed very quickly - faster than XP - or is that just my imagination? In any case, after the uneventful install, I launched VS2005 and it didn't give a single error or warning. You can see the IDE in the shot below.

The Aero "Express" version Form shown here is the same theme I encountered when installing Longhorn on my VPC. The cool thing (tho maybe it might appear annoying later on) is that the animations run while you're designing the form. The default button's blue tone fades in and out; the progress bar's "filled" are has a shine pass over it (marquee mode makes the bar show up as 100% and the shine keeps passing over it to show somethign is, in fact, happening). The only problem I saw so far in VS2005 on Vista, is that some parts of the UI - mainly the toolstrips - fail to draw, and end up as black blocks. Forcing a redraw (minimize and restore) solves it tho. Dragging / stretching tool windows causes it again. Not much of a problem tho.

I made this quick sample to see how things look. This was a two-fold test. I installed our untested build of NukeBall, the upcoming Rapid User Interface Development tool we are making here at Nukeation Studios, in Visual Studio 2005. I saw that the endless hours of coding paid of. It worked. If you look at the top left corner of the image above, you can see the NukeForms command sitting next to your standard Add Item button. While we don't officially support Vista 1, each and every piece of content in NukeBall does, in fact, work on Vista.

I quickly made this sample below with NukeWads and NukeForms. The lower progressbar is in marquee mode (infinite progress).

I tried over 27 different applications I've made (including some made long ago in VB6) and they all ran nicely on Vista, except for a couple of those VB6 apps that relied on some obsolete code. All in all, I give Vista as many thumbs-ups as can. Very cool. Can't stop saying that. I fear I might scream VISTA in the middle of the nigh- day (I work at night, sleep at day).

Coming up next: Adding Aero to my blog, and more.

Now that I have Vista running on dual-boot on the best machine I have, I'll be doing a long series of posts about my experience with Vista.

Being more of a graphics guy, I delved deep into the UI first off - it's hard not to with Vista - it's so slick. It's so slick, that my cursor often slipped.

Contrary to what has been said, the Windows Vista UI - at least in Beta 1 - is not 100% Avalon/Vector based. Parts of the Window Frame certainly seem to be using VisualBrush from Avalon, but the buttons, progress bars, even icons, are all bitmaps. This is expected, since this UI will be replaced (possibly) by a super secret project called "Project M" that most people in Microsoft refuse to speak of. While bitmap handling may very well be done by Avalon, as it is strongly suggested with the smooth scaling, we still have to wait a while before a full Avalon UI comes along. Avalon - even in Beta 1 - is less than half complete. They don't have merge modes which are desperately needed. Avalon doesn't have a visual designer (yet). And so, there still is time.

I think ClearType doesn't blur nicely. Like I said, Avalon still needs a lot of work.

The "AERO" theme is built right on top of the Lune template. If you go to <root>\Windows\resources\themes\ you will see the Aero theme file. The .msstyles file in the subfolder is actually a disguised DLL. I don't know if this violates the EULA, but in theory, if you make a copy of this file and rename it to something.dll, and drag it into Visual Studio or any Resource explorer/extractor, you can see the bitmaps with which windows is built on. But thee theme system is much different from XP. For one thing, it overlays these bitmaps on Windows with Aero - while I don't have solid proof, I feel it when anything is drawn on the screen. Trust me. This is my domain (www.nukeation.net :P). But bad jokes aside, I love the UI - not the eye candy, but the layouts, new widgets, the whole new design paradigm. But more on that in an upcoming post.

UPDATED - August 6 2005: I was actually slightly askew in saying that the Aero theme is built right on top of Luna. While such a thing does exist, it used in the non-dedicated graphics card (or Aero Express) environment. When you have a solid AGP or PCI-E card, it will use Avalon to theme everything - but it will also use parts from the Luna-based theme template. It could also be that it has seperated resources (similar graphics but in different places, or perhaps drawn/rendered in real-time) for AERO. So, I was not wrong in what I said, but I wasn't totally right either.

I tried out some of my .NET 2.0 and .NET 1.1 apps on Vista. They ran perfectly. Non-.NET applications such as Corel PhotoPaint 12 also ran nicely. ACDSee 7 failed miserably. Thankfully, the Add/Remove Programs applet is now much nicer and easier. I intend to install Office 2003 and Visual Studio 2005 on it next.

The first thing that impressed me with Vista (after the UI, of course) is the so obvious speed. I know it's running on a 2gig machine on a 3GHz HT Processor, but still it works faster than my XP installation. It's true I don't have much installed on it (yet). The shutdown is still impressive. 3 seconds flat. Without fail. The startup is just as fast (relative to XP).

I haven't gotten a chance to actually USE the Virtual Folders outside of a small test. I expect them to be quite helpful. The instant search/filter capabilities are GREAT. But the search box in Start Menu is a pure nuisance. I am a super-Power-User. I need my keyboard more than my mouse. I don't CLICK "Run". I hit "START", "R". Now when I do that, I get a bad assed "r" in the search box. Microsoft, REMOVE IT! At least make it OPTIONAL, dammit. This and the extra space after the close button in the titlebar are the two strong negative points I have found in Vista.

More soon in Part 2. I gotta go boot into Vista. And I just realized as I type this - Vista is much easier to type than Longhorn.

At 23:29 on Wednesday night my long running download of Windows Vista Beta 1 (formerly Windows codename "Longhorn") was finally completed.

With a shudder, I tested the ISO image for the possible corrupt data and as I held my breath, I saw the progress bar reach 100% without a single error. There is a God! And he writes managed code!!

I fire up Virtual PC 2004. I start the installation. Very smooth. A bit dull, and took too long even on a 1064MB RAM VPC. The installation takes over an hour but it WORKS. It's installed. It's rebooting. It starts up... in 16 colors.

No problem. Let's install the drivers and VM Additions. There. 32-bit color. Wow. Looks coo- hey, wait a goddamn minute - I thought Aero was TRANSPARENT. Everything on the screen is shiny, but opaque. What the...? I google up some stuff, and find out (should've known) VPC doesn't support direct host hardware utilization. Damn.

I don't have any machine powerful enough that is also available for taking risks. Damn. No. Risking it on my Tablet - which doesn't have a CD or DVD Drive - would be foolish. So, I scour a stand-by PC, and rip out the 72 gig drive (PATA, yuk) and plug it into my main production PC - a big 3GHz HT PC with 2 gigs of RAM, 2 monitors, and a 128MB nVidia GeForce FX series graphics card. Dual boot will be fine. If anything goes wrong, I can just rip out the extra disk and be done with it. But BIOS doesn't detect the damned disk. I check the cables and mess with the jumper settings. Master, slave, primary, secondary. Crap. Okay, so I finally have it running now. I log into Windows XP, and see the 2 new partitions in My Computer. Phew! I run the setup file, enter the long product key, click next, and BOOM - the setup stub crashes. I try again. It crashes. And again. And again. So, I say "<bleep> it". I write the ISO onto a blank DVD. 7 minutes later, the disc is burnt. I say, hey what the heck, let's try it once more from the disc. Setup runs successfully!! It's a Disc-run only thing, I guess.

Setup runs nice and quite (faster than the VPC install, of course) while I watch Cartoon Network at 4:30am. I spent the time between the download's completion and now to mess with drives, old PCs, new PCs, and Virtual PC! 39 minutes later, it's installed. I gingerly touch the mouse as the setup finishes up. A new window pops up...

... I stop squinting long enough to peek out of the corner of my eye and - OH NO, OH MY GOD...

it's TRANSLUCENT.  Longhorn's Aero UI in all it's glory. Blurring the background and casting a drop shadow. I had a little tear in my eye.

Unable to contain the joy, but wary not to cause any damage to the beta installation, I start popping open folders and being amazed by all the eye candy. To quote Michele Leroux Bustamante, "No, please, make it stop, don't make me go back, I don't want to go back...I'll never go back...ok, fine, I'll go back...for now...but I won't like it..." All I could think of was what will I do now? How will I take these eyes back to that old, dry, and boring Legacy OS? XP themes aren't that nice anymore.

Pushing that damning thought to the lower recesses of my so-called mind, I plow on. It's SO cool. The graphics, of course, are. But I'm talking about the organization features. The MUCH needed improvements.

You're probably asking where are the screenshots? well, you will have to wait. I haven't installed Corel Capture on Longhorn, and Paint+PrntScrn is too tiresome. I'll post more tomorro-- uh later today - I see the sun coming out.

Once I was satisfied to experience the glorious interface and the features, I accessed the other hard disk, opened my Visual Studio projects folder, and started running various WinApps built in VS2005/.NET 2.0 - they ran nicely. So did all the 1.1 apps. I tried to hotwire some of them instead of installing them - .NET ROCKS (and that's a show too) - it all worked.

Two negative points which I will elaborate on in my detailed post later, are:

The CLOSE buton on the top-right corner has to be the ALIGNED to the FAR RIGHT - no extra pixels. I have a habit of slamming the cursor into the corner and blindly clicking to close a window. That doesn't work in Vista, as there is some extra space after the red button.

The second point is that the new Common Dialogs (Open/Save) have a new sidebar with common places and common searches for easy navigation. The feature is quite cool, but the layout is all cramped. In some places in Vista, I do feel claustrophobic.

Alright, that ends my experience in Vista-land for the moment. More this evening - with screenshots.

NukeBall - The ultimate RUID Tool

It has been ages since I wrote my last article. I've written some stuff now and then, but not a whole article - let alone a series. Previously, I had said that I would write a series of 101 articles on Avalon. Well, there are many changes in Avalon in Beta 1 and many more to come in subsequent releases. The biggest will be the addition of a visual designer to the IDE.

So, I have decided to create an open ended series of articles that revolve around UI design. I'll start with Windows Forms based UI, then move on to skinning, and later on to Avalon. So far, I have about 4 articles planned, with more to be added as more Avalon's fate is released. As with AVALONfiltered, I hope to have these articles published by MSDN. But if they don't want it (their loss), I'll be posting them here.

I also intend to cover the general theories of 'attractive design', the effectiveness of a good UI, and other design philosophies through out the series. I will be releasing the first article by the end of this month (unless MSDN really wants it, then it is totally up to them).

In my last post, I mentioned Blend Modes and their need in Avalon. To follow up that with an actual sample/simulation, I made this mock-app.

"XRavalon", the hypothetical Avalon application, let's you view X-Rays and CAT scans in 3D and annotate them. This is possible ONLY WITH BLEND MODES.

Here are a few screenshots of XRavalon and movies:

Flash SWF (LoFi) - direct link to 136kb SWF file

QuickTime MOV (HiFi) - 4.09MB ZIP

This was created in 3D Studio MAX with a bunch of simple 'Plane' objects and alpha-channel'd images. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a larger image array of a CAT scan - this has only 9 - while in a real world app, doctors could feed many more images to create a virtually 3D model of the brain.

To implement this in Avalon is child's play. Again, normal transparency channels WOULD NOT DO - as important artifacts in the scans (or any image) would be hidden or diffused, while ADDITIVE transparency/mixing would preserve the contrast/intensity - so the color may not be true, but the artifact can still be seen. A reverse (SUBTRACTIVE or DIVIDE) blend mode would be used to annotate the layer with text or graphics.

NOTE: I know nothing about CAT scans and X-Rays and how doctors use/annotate them right now in the real world. This is just a simple simulation of a real-world possibility.

I've been saying for a long time that Avalon needs blend modes (or Merge-Modes for Corel users like me). I need to back my request with solid evidence. So, here it is.

These are examples of the 2 blend modes used the most (at least by me and a few hundred game developers) - Add (lightens), and Subtract (darkens).

Example 1

Image 1a - a vector based sphere and the Pwop logo with Add (aka Additive) mode applied.

Image 2a - the same graphic without blend modes.

Example 2 & 3

2a/3a: A lightning bolt and a sparkle/lensflare/shine thingy (32-bit transparent raster image) without blend mode on a simple white background.

2b/3b: Same objects on a multicolored/textured background - better but still not that cool.

2c/3c: Additive mode applied to both object - the color values of the underlying pixels is added to the overlaying pixels and the result is a more natural looking glow.

Example 4

Colors often clash - making some parts totally ugly. One such combination is a blurred/transparent-gradient black over a yellow backdrop. (see 4a)

Now, we add a Subtractive blend more to the shadow layer - and voila - subtracts it's own value from the underlying pixel giving you a more natural tone.

Example 5

Okay, so we've seen the visual part of blend modes - now let's see the functional part of it.

We have a hypothetical software called X-Rayvalon. This app can be used by doctors to teach students or show vital info to their patients. A doctor wants to highlight a whole region where a certain ailment is shown in an x-ray. He or she draws a square, as if selecting files in Explorer, on the x-ray. (3 such rectangles shown in 5a)

Under the hood a rectangle object (5b) is created with a fill of R:51/G:51/B:51 and a solid border of R:102/G:102/B:102. The underlying image is not hindered by this rectangular overlay because unlike normal transparency the colors of the image (at least in terms of pixel intensity) is preserved.

In this image below, you can see colored versions of the same - say a visual discussion by a group of doctors - each assigned a color.

It doesn't take much imagination to see the possibilities in a million different applications.

Windows does support blend modes in GDI/GDI+ - that blue selection box in XP/Explorer is a subtract or some other blend mode.

With Avalon, the possibilties are greatly increasing. Blend modes would be a VERY valuable asset to this.

Related post on Channel9 >>

Follow up blog entry >>

It's been a while since I blogged. So here's a roundup of the main events that probably 2 and a half people care about!

DigitalExile.net is live!

My long planned personal site (after the demise of after-images.net) is now finally live. www.digitalexile.net

There are lots of new photographs available (for licensing, too), and my art collection and written works will be added soon. There's also a download section with small apps, wallpapers, and some random stuff available for download. Or will be soon.

My Blog rates #1 in searches

A pleasent surprise - I saw a referer tag in my server log for this blog (hey, that rhymes!) - for someone searching for "Pandhi" (my last name, you dumbass!). I decided to follow that search link on Yahoo and voila - the #1 (and many subsequent links) are for this very blog as well as my corporate site www.nukeation.com! The same is on Google. But there, my corporate site is first, and the blog after that. Needless to say I like Yahoo! better than Google. The blog is at #1 even if you search for Dr. JJ Rawal

Republic Commando still the best!

I play an hour of Republic Commando every night before I go to bed with Gratu'acuun ringing in my ears. This is better than Half-Life (1 or 2) and Doom combined. They're great games, but this just ROCKS MY WORLD!

Radio Acting Debut

A few weeks ago, I made my recording debut as the "Human Resources Executive of IBM" on the comedy online radio show MONDAYS (Episode 25) - download it! No, no. No autographs. You get a free autograph when you sign up for the Dax Pandhi Official Fanclub.

A GIG goes a long way

I finally added a gig of RAM to my 1GB system. Needless to say it works better. Though it generates more heat, I love the tradeoff.

Jungle Coast, Costa Rica

I'm helping out with the branding and e-solutions for a dear, dear friend Cynthia Najim's new real estate business. This is one of those fun projects I rarely get anymore (if you're a client of mine, no I didn't mean it like that - your projects are just important - this is just different coz there's unreal amounts of creative energy tingling it up). If you're looking for nice, affordable, and beautiful villas, cottages, or even farms - these are the people to call. Will post their website URL as soon as I finish it.

Am planning on going to Costa Rica next year, maybe.

Wiping the blood and grime off my helmet, I look towards the bridge. Kachirho's lights shine in the distance. As the smoke clears, and the deafening explosions stop, I can see the blurred forms of my brothers holding off the enemy, giving me cover fire so I can help our fallen brother. I hear Four-Oh's heavy breathing and soft groans under me. I realize I am standing on top of Delta-40, his white and green armor dented and splattered with blood - not his own. I get him up and send him to heal up at the near by bacta dispenser.

Delta-07 - Sev - snipes the onslaught of SBD's - their grey headless bodies seemingly immune to the plasma shots. Scorch - Delta-62, makes a joke, easing the pain as always. Advisor's voice echoes in my helmet - "Delta 38, we need to destroy that bridge now!"

The battle for the Wookies' freedom rests upon us - four lone commandos against an endless supply of Battle Droids, Super Battle Droids, and Trandoshan slavers. I remember a trooper's remarks - "Look! Commandos! If they're as good as I hear they are, they can win the war all by themselves." I hope that's true.

With Four-Oh - Fixer - at 100%, I move to take Six-Two's position. "Scorch, I need some radical restructuring." I can feel his eyes light up even behind his plasteel faceplate. "Roger that, Boss."

I lob a EM grenade hoping to slow down the SBDs. Damn. They're too tough. "Four-Oh, man that turret." Maybe he can take out a few more of them with some heavy fire power. "Turret. Got it, Delta Lead."

Delta-62 fixes a large explosive to the ammo crates lying on the bridge the Seperatists require for their occupation of Kashyyyk. "Boss, we better get off this bridge before we blow it up." But we're surrounded. There is no time to waste. The only way out is to destroy the Droid dispensers.

I relenquish my cover and order some cover fire. Dodging the twig-legged droids, knocking some out with my vibro-blade, I move in. I hear Sev taking some shrapnel. I set up an explosive on the dispenser, and start to set the timer. The large bay door opens. A spider droid. Fifteen tons of pure armor and firepower.

The bridge and dispensers primed for an explosive finish, we prepare for what we've been trained to do: die for the Republic.

"We'll make 'em remember the day they tried to blow up Delta Squad."

---

Never before have I seen such a perfect fusion of action, military tactics, breathtaking graphics, superb AI, and war chants that makes you want to die for your cause. STAR WARS: REPUBLIC COMMANDO is one of the BEST GAMES ever! It certainly knocked DOOM3 from first place on my list. Instead of the "lofty perspective of the Jedi", this games takes you into the trenches as you command 3 elite Clone Commandos - DELTA SQUAD - in 3 dangerous missions - Clone Wars: Zero Hour on Geonosis, repelling an invasion on the Republic Assault Ship PROSECUTOR in space, and a special mission on Kashyyyk that would end the Clone Wars. And while you play, whenever the going gets tough, the music keeps your spirits high. This is THE best game to come out from LucasArts (yes, they made this in-house - no outsourcing) EVER!

Baritone voices sing old Mandalorian war songs: (all songs are available for download at the site. I recommend VODE AN, RAGE OF THE SHADOW WARRIORS, and GRAT'UA CUUN, as well as the ambient tunes THE JUNGLE FLOOR, COMM INTERFERENCE, and KACHIRHO BY NIGHTVISION)

Kandosii sa ka'rta, Vode an.

(One indomitable heart, Brothers all.)

Coruscanta a'den mhi, Vode an.

(We, the wrath of Coruscant, Brothers all.)

Bal kote, darasuum kote, Jorso'ran kando a tome.

(And glory, eternal glory, We shall bear its weight together.)

Sa kyr'am Nau tracyn kad, Vode An.

(Forged like the saber in the fires of death, Brothers all.)

This music can literally set your blood on fire as you play the game and immerses you into the world of the Commando. It's the BEST soundtrack a game ever had. PERIOD!

You fight hand-to-hand as well as with your DC-17 modified blaster. Every close hit is rewarded with a generous splatter of sickly yellow geonosian blood on your face, which your helmet visor wipes with a laser wiper.

 Delta-38 "Boss" - Delta Leader

 Delta-07 "Sev" - Sniper / Weapons

 Delta-62 "Scorch" - Demolitions

 Delta-40 "Fixer" - Slicer (Hacker) / Tech

You issue commands to your 3 brothers - Delta 07, Delta 40, and Delta 62. Each has a distinct personality and voice (just coz you're clones don't mean you can't have a different accent - which are picked up from their respective instructors). You have the voice of Jango Fett - which was marvelously voiced by Temeura Morrison himself.

The missions are fast paced, dangerous, and set in breathtaking environments. And when you set NIGHT VISION on, it feels more real than a movie. The visuals look as if it is REAL. Just plain real. Mind boggling.

The game is based on the Unreal II engine (modified, of course). It shames the graphics of Unreal II. Then again, Unreal II was shameful in many ways. But the engine is, in fact, quite cool. Republic Commando shows its power very nicely.

The whole game often doesn't feel like a Star Wars game. The credits music is high-pitched rock music. The soundtrack is Mandalorian war chants. And the only time you see a lightsaber is when you see a deadbody of a Clone trooper who tried to use it. That's when your character says "An elegant weapon for a more civilized time. Well, guess what ... times have changed!"

I wish they would've added a mission from Episode III, where they escort Obi-Wan to Utapal. 3 missions seem a bit "small" once you've played it 6 times in 4 days. But it still rocks. Especially the one-liners. "Baby wookies? Nah, too cute." or "Boss, we gotta place a charge here, and I'm not saying this 'cause I like to blow stuff up."

The end is cool too. Very military-movie like. And you get a special appearance by General Greivous and Master Yoda. George Lucas took interest in the game too. It was his idea to give colored, personalized armor to each Commando - something he was thinking of doing in Episode III.

I recommend you go see the trailer on www.swcommando.com and then listen to the music and download the demo, and then order the game!!

It runs FANTASTIC on a GeForce FX / 128MB. Though a gig of RAM didn't hurt. :) And don't be afraid of this game if you're not so good with games like Rainbow-Six and all - this is more suitable for the Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 players. Just go download the damn, demo! NOW, soldier!

Delta Squad, move out!

KACHIRHO BY NIGHTVISION

There is also a book based on this game by Karen Traviss, called STAR WARS: Republic Commando - HARD CONTACT. Cool book. Worth reading.

In the last .NET ROCKS show on the PDC, the people from Microsoft hinted (and confirmed) my previous hunch that Acrylic will be used (in part or whole) as a designer for Avalon! You heard it here first!

See previous posts in the Avalon category for details.

Last night, I read in Paul Thurrott's WinInfoUpdate Daily that Microsoft acquired a vector-based drawing tool (like CorelDRAW or Illustrator or Freehand) from Creature House called ACRYLIC. The first public beta is now available at: http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression

I think it's a bit too coincidental that Microsoft purchases a Vector-Design tool just around the time when a visual designer for Avalon is to be added in the WinFX SDK. The Avalon people have often said that the final release (or even Beta 1 or 2) will have a visual designer and that vector-import capabilities (like importing EMF, WMF, DXF, AI, or other such vector formats into XAML code) will be added either via plugins for popular apps like Illustrator, or by some other means.

I'm guessing either Acrylic will have a Developer Edition for creating XAML stuff, or portions of Acrylic will be ported into a Visual Studio 2005 designer. As I write this, I have about 20 minutes left in the download of Acrylic Beta. Let's see what it holds.

I downloaded Beta 1 (RC1) of Avalon/Indigo/WinFX SDK a few days ago and have been playing with it.

I did not get the time to dive too deep into the March CTP, but with the Beta 1 RC1, things are smoother and more stable. And, of course, the VS2005 Beta 2 support is very helpful.

I started playing around with Nathan Dunlap's code samples and have been trying to create a sample application in XAML/VB. There is no functioality, just a slick UI. I'm trying to merge my game designer and web designer abilities to create this UI. Let's see what I can come up with. Will post it here.

Perhaps this app will be the base for the AVALONfiltered series. Part 1 is almost finished.

Well, this week was emotional. Jessica Pletcher, who I worked SO hard to get back into the Nukeation team has left us - again - to pursue higher goals (and a more stable income, not to mention a more stable [mentally] boss). As we recover from this tragic, tragic, loss (see Jess, we did appreciate you even if we didn't show it) we need new cannon fodder.

Seriously speaking, we are hiring people with the following skills/qualities:

• Sharp, Creative, Graphics Designers - must be able to create unorthodox ideas and visualize them properly in either Corel PhotoPaint or Adobe PhotoShop
• Visual C# and Visual Basic (.NET 1.1 - .NET 2.0 not required, but is a plus) programmers - must have 2 years+ experience with .NET and should be able to solve problems on their own without relying on the lazy architects. Must be proficient in both Windows and/or Web (ASP.net) development. PHP'ers need not apply. This is a Microsoft-tech-centric company.
• Flash animators - must have EXCELLENT animation skills
• Avalon artists and programmers - contact for details

A good sense of humor is required.

We pay industry standard rates, provide a LOT of freedom and space to work in. You can work from your own home or office. All you need is MSN messenger to talk to the rest of the team. Lots of perks available as well.

Please note: We are looking for freelancers only, for the moment. Freelancers will get opportunities for employment in our network in the future.

Paid and unpaid internships available. Contact us for details.

Send us a resume with a sample of your work. Programmers can point to a website with samples of their work. Artists should include a link (no attachments please) of their graphics work or mail us a CD (e-mail us for our mailing address).

Send your resumes to hr [ no spam at ] nukeation [dot] com.

To find out more about our company, please visit http://www.nukeation.com

DO NOT POST REPLIES HERE

Following the release of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (which I haven't seen yet, thank you, and shut up) the Mondays gang whupped ass with a super funny Star Wars themed episode of Mondays. Your's truly had the honor of being part of it behind-the-scenes with a bunch of photoshopped (or rather PhotoPaint'd) images of ... well ... something of what Star Wars is like after the weekend. Go check out the show and find out more. Here's a sample: http://shrinkster.com/5ev

I was so busy with making these images and juggling projects (as well fencing comments about my not seeing Sith yet) that I even forgot to mention it here!!!! Check out the show here: http://mondays.pwop.com/default.aspx?showID=22 - and NO, I didn't make the Chewie & Leia image. Even *I* have some dignity. Although, I did find it on the net. :-P

I've always been fascinated and frightened of death - any form of "end". Personal death - my own death - would be a fascinating thing - hell, it would be an adventure (uhm, that "hell" was an exclamation, because I don't believe in hell [or heaven]- mostly because if I did that is where I'd be going).

For the past couple of years everything started ending. The sitcoms I always watched started ending one by one, the eternal sagas come to an end. I left the house where I spent the majority of my life until 2003. Frodo had to leave the Shire and go into the West. Will Riker went onto his own command, Data died. Anakin became Vader, Padme died. In the EU, Chewbacca, Anakin Solo, Admiral Ackbar, Ganner Rhysode, Wurth Skidder, Elogos A'kla, even Nom Anor died. Tahiri, Danni and other went away into the Unknown Regions with Zonama Sekot. And good TV (whatever was left of it) is dying with the so-called reality shows.

One big fear of mine has been the underdog I've been supporting and fighting for is now nearing it's end. In the last few years, Corel Corporation (www.corel.com) has been taken over more times than the middle eastern governments. Since v1.0, I've been a die hard CorelDRAW fan. Later on when Corel PhotoPaint was brought on, it became the most used software on my computer(s). For over 14 years, this is one software I've been using.

Now, I hear that there WON'T be a version 13. PhotoPaint has (finally) fallen behind Photoshop. In it's youth, Corel PhotoPaint (CPT) was what Photoshop copied features from! Now, PhotoShop CS2 is coming up with amazing features. For the past 3 years, this fear has been hanging over me like a sword. But I kept on pushing, knowing Corel will bring in one more version with some rocking features that will crush PS. And for the past 3 years, Corel has been disappointing me. Sure, they've added some cool features, but not ENOUGH.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a fiercly loyal to my friends and allies. And now like Anakin Skywalker, I'm being seduced by the Palpatine analog called Corel Painter IX. I've started shifting my painting creation from CPT to PIX. And I'm beginning to become loyal to it. It's no biggie - it's a COREL product (tho not originally). And it does have cool functionality. It still doesn't support ALL the cool things PhotoPaint can do, but... oh well. I'm still going to use both mediums.

But the deeper fear is that if there is no new version Corel PhotoPaint, I will need to switch to Photoshop. Photoshop with its undocked windows, and missing tools (hey, CPT STILL has tools PS doesn't!). I still pray to the Force that Corel has enough sense to create a new version with killer features. But what if it doesn't. Despair! I despair. Even though I know that despair leads to fear, and fear leads to hatred, and hatred leads to anger, and anger leads to the Dark Side! Oh Force, are you with me still? Does the Light Side still hold sway?

I fear the day when I cannot get a new version of PhotoPaint, and I'll have to leave it's beautiful customizable VBA architecture and embrace the Yuuzhan Vong software called Photoshop. Padme will die, hundreds of Padawans will die, and I will be using Photoshop!

I desperately needed a vacation. I was on the verge of nervous breakdown. But there was just too much work that needed my attention. So, I decided to fill in the gaps in my Star Wars reading and read the entire New Jedi Order series from Book 1. Now, this is a series of 21 books, and my total count of Star Wars novels read has been about 75+.

So, I read 10 books in the last week. I intend to finish the rest this week or the next. I even read EPISODE III: Revenge of the Sith - the official novelization. Damn, I can't wait to see the movie. Go see it!

Some time back, I was on a similar Star Wars kick (I'm ALWAYS on a Star Wars kick, this one was a spike in the normal pattern) and I watched all 5 movies back-to-back. After watching the movie I got into a fight with a Penguin-lover (Linux user! This isn't beastiality!) about Microsoft being the Dark Side of the Force. Being a Microsoft-lover, I just couldn't help but kick his ass.

Later, I was inspired to do a vector-sketch. I wonder if Bill Gates' midi-chlorian count is higher than Anakin's. Hmmm.

 

This is my tribute to Genndy Tartakovsky's genius.

If you Penguin-lovers are thinking that Linux's fate shall be that of Luke Skywalker, yes, you may lose a hand (or wing) or whatever, but defeat the Dark Side, you shall not. Size does matter.

Some time back, Carl Franklin and I started an animation project for Microsoft TechEd that would be shown during a keynote or something. The project's initial concept was provided by Rory Blyth - we take Microsofties and put them in a Mortal Kombat like environment, but with a geeky theme. So, we ended up creating KODER KOMBAT. Unfortunately, the project didn't take off as we expected, but we did end up with a cool idea that just might have a future still.

The stars of our animation were none other than Chris Sells and Don Box. Here are the original concept sketches:

 

Introducing CHRIS SHARP. This hash-powered fighting machine runs on Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 and was coded fully in C#. His powers included HyperInheritance (projecting multiple clones of self), and the legendary power called BURNING MAN (below).

 

This particular super power had a side-power. A strongly addictive polka-remixed song that stuck Chris Sharp's opponent between wanting to dance like an idiot and run away screaming - either would work in Chris Sharp's favor.

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Introducing SILENT ANGLE BRACKET. This wild man was trained by Hulk Hogan in his early years, and then by Or'oku Saki (aka Shredder). His super powers include a silent, almost transparent changing of schemas in between fighting. He switches between a Ninjitsu warrior to a yelling wrestler within milliseconds.

Silent Angle Bracket's secret weapon was an inflatable bathtub hidden in his utility belt (not shown in picture). When he would need to overcome his opponent, he would pull it out, and get in it and mesmerize his opponent (either with his nudity or his interesting talk on SOAP). This would lull his opponent into a false sense of serenity and then he would strike with his energy angle brackets and XML transforms.

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Hopefully, this project will one day be restarted. (This is an actual project, NOT a joke!)

If you've visited my blog before (thank you!) you might notice the look has changed. Astute observation.

If you've known me for more than 48 hours, you would probably know that I'm a cipheractive (a hyperactive person who works in mysterious, cryptic ways) and I often end up revamping something or the other to exhaust the build up of excess creativity in my so-called brain.

And yes, that picture above is a painting I recently made on my tablet. And no, that's not me - I'm the sleepy-eyed idiot on the right.

I've decided to let go of AFTER-IMAGES.net. It has been a good ride, but some things must end. I've stopped painting for some time now, and I don't think I want an exclusive art exhibit online anymore. I'll probably fuse the existing collections at Pixelated Focus.

If anyone wants this domain, just mail me and I'll *give* it to you. Well, not free, but at a token price of US$12. That's what I paid for registration a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away... :)

I'm going to have to wait to complete my AVALONfiltered series of articles. According to some stuff I've heard and read from Microsoft, the June 30th Beta release of Longhorn and Avalon will have some rather significant changes since the March CTP. I've personally been trying to get Microsoft to add MERGE MODES / BLEND MODES. I hope they add that in Beta 1 or Beta 2 - or at least when they finally release Longhorn. Nate Dunlap (Designer, Avalon Team) has told me that he also wants merge modes put in the Avalon core, and Pablo Fernicola (Group Program Manager, Avalon Team) has also expressed interest in it. It's really cool that even such big wigs at Microsoft listen to the little people.

So, I'm holding off on writing the articles (although I have written at least 6 pages now) until June. Beta 1 will bring important changes and I really dont want to rewrite anything - nor do I want to be proven wrong if Microsoft decides to take something out!! I vehemently hope they don't pull anything out.

I'm still open to feedback and suggestions for the AVALONfiltered articles.

Update:

I forgot to mention, Microsoft has pulled out Longhorn 4074 (WinHEC 2004 Build) from the MSDN Subscriptions. This means that they might put up Build 5048 from the recent WinHEC (2005). Let's see what info I can get from the people at Microsoft.

Even though it is downplayed on our current website, Nukeation is heavily involved in Developer Graphic Services. That is, in addition to our usual b2b graphics, web, and multimedia services, we also provide graphics-oriented services to the Developer community. This includes everything from creating the toolbar and application icons to designing the UI to physical package design. We do it all.

The cool thing is we've recently been hiring people who are either designers turned developers, or developers turned designers. This discovery was an accident, but those of us who are like that have churned out more successes (for us AND for our clients) than the others.

In our upcoming re-vamp of Nukeation (the company as well as the site), I intend to highlight our new(?) focus on Developer Services. In the meantime, if you would like to know more, just drop us a line to be sent the free Developer Sample Kit. We are putting up a new Sample Kit made with .NET 2.0 this weekend. All of you who have asked for it will be emailed a link to it.

In the coming months as the Avalon/WinFX beta 1 will ship, we intend to provide Avalon design services to companies that want to get a headstart on the Longhorn wave. Despite the somewhat drab presentation at WinHEC, Avalon and WinFX will be a major boon to the developer world. For more information on Avalon services, feel free to drop me a line (click that little envelope icon at the bottom of the page).

Skinning Metal

 

See also: PwopCatcher Skinning Video (new)

 

It all started when Carl Franklin, CEO of PWOP Productions Inc suddenly mailed me saying “I got a chance to change the world.” Carl was starting a software project that would change PodCasting forever (among other things). He wanted me to come up with a few concepts of what it should look like – it had to be skinned.

 

Carl had this abstract idea of something “warped”. After racking my brain for over 9 minutes, I sat down with my Tablet PC, and sketched out a quick metal skin with pencils and markers. Ripped out holes, embossed metal letters, and digital LCD screens found home on this metal object.

 

 

 

The idea got a solid ‘thumbs up’, and the work began.

 

Before I start blabbering about the whole process, I must point out that a good deal of ideas in the project were Carl’s or came from our discussions and my memory may elude me, so I may forget to mention, but that does not mean I forgot … umm, you know what I mean.

 

Metal Bashing

Now, there are some amazing tricks you can pull off in Corel PhotoPaint (or Photoshop, though PhotoPaint does have some tools that kick Photoshop’s ass) to achieve realism and create good looking metal and glass objects. But there are mixed methods that create even better effects – and that’s exactly what I opted for.

 

The first thing to do was create the base or body of the skin. It needed a solid, metallic feel – and what better to use than actual metal. I went down to a junk yard and got an old 3x3 aluminum plate. Aluminum is light, easy to manipulate and had the perfect bluish/galvanized tint. I marked out the rough outline of the body on the aluminum. Using an old rusted (purposefully) heavy pair of scissors, I took out the excess area from the sheet, leaving me with a rough shape of the body. The next step was to make careful incisions along key points of the body’s shape. The old, rusty scissors made jagged cuts. With some heavy duty gloves, I tore out the remaining excess metal with the help of the incisions. The remaining metal sheet was shaped like a ‘random’ shard of a space ship or something.

 

 

 

Now, the body needed depth. It’s a 0.5mm sheet. Very thin! So, I manually bent the edges. And made some noise with a hammer (along with some bumps and dents on the sheet). Now, the skin was looking closer to what I had in mind.

 

Point to be noted: There are limits to what you can do with a metal sheet to match the image in your head – these limits consist of mostly time, budget, and mainly your sanity. Scared of ruining this perfect shard of a spacecraft, I took pictures of it with my digital camera at 2848x2136+ - that’s very hi-res for an 800x600- skin. The brownish shine you see is my shirt. I tried to remove the coloring, but later on, it really helped me with some effects.

 

I decided to make the holes and other effects digitally. Taking samples from various regions of the body, and some hand-painted artwork on the Tablet PC, I ended up with a nice rectangular hole.

 

 

 

 

Depth was still lacking. This would need another round of photography. Taking my trusty camera, I headed off to the junkyard again and found the textures I wanted in an old hood of a car crash, a surgical lamp, and a failed metal sculpture project (I’m guessing it was that). The new photos were cleaned up and merged with some of my ‘proprietary blend effects’.

 

 

Pixel Bashing

Now came the digital part. I had to create LCD panels. Instead of going for “embedded” panels, I created solid, object-like, flat, rounded edge, glass displays. Painted them black, and placed them inside the central hole. The LCD screens would give the ‘status’ of the application. I created two warning-striped tabs, which would act as buttons, ‘behind’ the body on the top and bottom.

 

I won’t go too much into the detail of the process here, as it involves some trade secrets of mine, and the rest is just plain boring. Pixels pushed here, pixels pushed there, and so on. So, let’s skip to the future a bit.

 

And here we have, finally, a metal shard of some space voyaging vehicle with cool shines, metal anomalies, LCD displays, and wires hanging underneath it.

 

 

The PWOPCATCHER title you see in the lower right is homage to the ‘used universe’ / X-Wing paint effect from Star Wars.

 

You’re probably wondering why the makers of this space ship would make a LCD panel facing a metal wall, or why would there be buttons on OUTSIDE of the hull. Y’see this kind of technology and advanced thinking will not be seen in our race for the next 3 millennia. Remember, this is future technology. We haven’t invented it yet.

 

There were numerous changes made in the design process that weren’t in the original concept. There are some changes that will be made still. We keep improving on this, and won’t stop until it’s perfect. I’ll post updates to any major changes here.

 

Here is a screenshot of the skin in action!

http://www.nukeation.net/nukefiles/workinprogress.jpg

 

We have actual 32-bit transparency, full antialiasing, drop shadows that haven’t been seen before in this world (at least to my knowledge), and under the slick looking exterior, is a core that is made with the sole purpose of changing the world.

 

Last but not least, if you want to see an animated timeline of this skin's development, head on over to:

http://www.nukeation.net/nukefiles/NukePWOPSKINBORG.html 

 

Updates on the skins, the actual software and its availability, and much more will be posted as soon as it is available. You can find proper updates about the app at Carl’s blog http://weblogs.asp.net/cfranklin/

 

I’ll be posting another short like this one about our other skin code-named ‘SmokingGlass’. It’s just as fascinating as this one, if not more so.

 

UPDATE: See the step-by-step video of this skin.

 

EQUIPMENT USED:

Hardware - FujiFilm S7000 digital camera, rusty scissors, old hammer, 1 3x3 sheet of used aluminum, grey matter (6 oz.)

Software - Corel PhotoPaint, Pwop SkinMaker (for skin definition)

I've been involved in a project called PWOPCaster with Carl Franklin of PWOP Productions Inc (www.pwop.com) and of .NET ROCKS fame (www.dotnetrocks.com). This is a very cool new podcasting client with a great content delivery system. You can find out more at Carl's blog:

http://weblogs.asp.net/cfranklin/archive/2005/04/19.aspx 

I've been involved in the graphics/UI side of things as well as the designing of Pwop.com. Now, okay, so we're not going to talk about this until it's all done, but I can tell you this - it has been some of my best work - and the functionality these guys have written in is FANTASTIC. Keep listening to .NET ROCKS or MONDAYS (http://mondays.pwop.com) and you'll be the first to get the beta.

If you're into .NET, you will like to know that his one of the best pieces of managed code apps out there! It'll be very interesting.

Avalon is by far the best decision on Microsoft's part since their move to .NET. The designer (and I mean the person, not the IDE component) has always been left out of the Windows app world. With all the mind-boggling web design that you can see out there, there is no telling what designers and developers together can create with the Avalon engine. The intrinsic support for 3D is so cool, you can't put it in words.

I've been working on a really graphics intensive software recently, and it is all being done in a flat 2D environment with PNG alpha channels. There are so many limits to all this. You can easily emulate the things you see in Avalon with proper usage of DirectX, but this is really tough to do for something as "trivial" as a UI. The underlying code layer would be hell, and modifications would be the spawn of satan. But with Avalon, it's all gone! All gone!

The even better thing is, the developer is kicked out. No offense, but developers are not usually the best people to get a UI done from. Sure you can code it all, but they (look at me - speaking as if I were not a developer) don't have the eye for consumer-response oriented design. That is where the designer comes in. That's what they're trained to do. Capture the eye with the coolest designs. And of course these are some of the main services we are offering at www.nukeation.com - avalon based design services to be added BEFORE it is released to the public.

I just jump with boundless joy whenever I see a new feature in Avalon. The impact it will make is totally understated. People still dont comprehend the full spectrum of Avalon. Wow. New UI. No. It's not just new UI - it's your ticket to very high revenues.

I feel old writing this. I really do. I always thought of myself as one of the "young dudes". Guess that's not true anymore. It has now officially been more than 10 whole years of being out in the professional world. I started working on the side when I was in school (6th grade, I think) in 1995 - teaching a class once a week about Autodesk Animator Pro and Autodesk 3D Studio 2.0 (we're talking days of 3D in DOS!). Then went on to freelancing, teaching programming, and eventually in 1998 ended up founding Atomic Diaper Productions which was quickly and thankfully changed to NUKEATION Studios - www.nukeation.com - and is the same place I have been since.

When you do a decade of graphics, there are statistics - impressive statistics - and here they are:

Pixels pushed on official jobs:           2,638,400,000+

Pixels pushed on personal stuff:      38,910,580,000+

Pixels pushed on volunteer work:      1,900,000,000+

And it all comes down to -              43,448,980,000+

And I'm not even counting the 3D stuff I've done - nor the vectors coz they dont HAVE pixels. Anyways, it's times like this when you want to reflect on all you have done, and all you want to do. And you also want to give credit where credit it due. So, Jessica, Michael, Dana - my old animation gang; Heeren (www.fissionvector.com), Aoi, Tim, and everyone else who is working or has worked with Nukeation, thank you for making my pixels more shiny. :)