OpenVDB by Dreamworks Animation is an incredibly powerful library along with some extremely useful toolkits. Since its release, OpenVDB has become the industry standard in DCC applications and rendering engines for representing volumetric data and even used for procedural modeling. SideFX has adopted the library, making it a core component of Houdini and every major rendering engine have added support. Unfortunately, Autodesk has yet to implement core support for the library in Maya which is widely used as a core pipeline application.
Autodesk Maya Dependency Script for CentOS 7
3D ApplicationsAbout a month ago I wiped my workstation and started fresh with a CentOS 7 minimal install. In the process of getting up and running, I needed to reinstall Autodesk Maya and all of the dependencies that go along with it. In order to expedite this process for myself in the future and for others, I whipped up a quick shell script that takes care of all of Maya’s dependencies.
Installing Discord Canary on CentOS 7
General LinuxOne of the latest in text and communication apps, Discord has quickly become among the most popular apps since its release in 2013. It provides a whole slew of features utilized by casual users and gamers, and even for office work. It has a thriving community, and it’s public API actively supports multiple languages for those who wish to extend it’s capabilities through web app integration and custom server bots. To top it off in April of 2016 Hammer and Chisel, the company behind the app, released what they are calling Discord Canary to the world of Linux. This was fantastic news as now Linux users can take advantage of all the app has to offer without being forced to use the web browser version. This does come with a catch, however.
Using Multiple Versions of Python with Sublime Text 3
Programming
Note: This post is strictly about setting up Sublime Text 3 to build and run Python scripts with multiple versions of Python installed. IDE’s such as PyCharm are outside the scope of this topic.
One of the most irritating things about coding Python or other interpreted languages in a text editor is the lack of ability to build or run the program. Programming in a text editor like Notepad or similar requires the use of multiple applications to create and test your code. For instance, you need to have your editor open to write your code and a console of your choice to run and test the code. This can be a bit of a pain to a programmer’s workflow, constantly switching back and forth and entering commands to see a result.
Maya 2016 for Linux Users and Students
3D ApplicationsOver the past few months I’ve been seeing a bunch of posts in the Autodesk AREA forums and other sites asking about the Linux version of Maya for students and installing Ext 1. I’m hoping that through this post you will begin to understand what is required to accomplish these things and why you should wait for Maya 2017. I should emphasize that this post is geared towards students and not subscription members.
Michael Rochefort 