murphyrandle.com

Intermediate GNU Make tutorial.

Murphy — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 12:47:03 +0000

I searched the internet far and wide when learning to use Make. I seemed to find either very basic tutorials, or very advanced, and nothing in between. This video gives a few hints on how to do some automation in your makefile, without spending reading the manual.

Note, this is not a bullet proof solution. It should work just fine for small – medium sized projects.

Google Voice texting tool.

Murphy — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 16:52:38 +0000

My wife and I sometime volunteer to be leaders for the new students at our university. Since we need to contact 30 students at a time, and they all have cell phones, texting is the way to go. The problem is that it seems like most cell phone carriers (including google voice) don’t allow sending an SMS to more than about five people at once (to reduce spam?). Here’s the script I wrote to get around that:

Google Voice, a marvelous tool:

If you haven’t checked out Google Voice yet, I highly recommend doing so. Google Voice provides Free SMS plus a number of other features. I use SMS most regularly though. I love the ease with which I can view and compose text messages right from the browser. It does require that you sign up for a new free number. I did that a year ago, and I just give people my google number now, which forwards to my cell number.

Google voice in the browser will not let you send an SMS to more than five people at once, so here’s where I had to turn to:

pygooglevoice

pygooglevoice is a python API for google voice. This means that I can use the functions that GV offers without having to use their interface. It means that I can use them from a script, which is MUCH more convenient for mass operations.

To install it on mac os X, i just opened the terminal and run this command:

sudo easy_install -U pygooglevoice

and then I wrote this little script to be able to send texts to a list of people. The cool thing is that if you type “NAME” in all caps in the body of the text, it will be replaced by the name of the person who is being texted.

Logos

Murphy — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 20:29:05 +0000

I was working on the rosewoodrecording.com website, (new edition still under construction) and I re-did the logo to make it a little more web 2.0:

Here’s the original:

And here’s the spiced up version:

Taaa daaaaa!

Walk Cycle, Second installment in the Jimba saga

Murphy — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 08:30:00 +0000

Here’s a walk cycle. Yay!

Box Jumping Animation Test

Murphy — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 21:50:00 +0000

Hey guys! I have to do a character animation for the final in my character animation class… duh.
And here’s my character. This was a simple animation test. I wanted to get some personality into him, and be able to achieve convincing motion. This was really also a test of his rig to make sure it works.
Final to come later…

Btw, his name is Jimba. (In homage to the restaurant where my Dad used to play gigs).

Blast from the past: Pajama Gladiator Interview

Murphy — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 22:29:00 +0000

Hey everyone, I just found this old interview that Glenn and I recorded when we were finishing Pajama Gladiator (BYU Short Animated Film).

It’s about 43 minutes long, but listen to what you like, I put it up for public enjoyment.

http://www.murphyrandle.com/PJG_interview.mp3

Demo Reel:

Murphy — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 23:01:00 +0000

Here’s my new demo reel!
What do you think?

Shot A_12 is DONE!

Murphy — Fri, 16 May 2008 05:38:35 +0000

I’m the acting producer for this year’s senior film in the BYU Animation program. The film is called Kites and it’s about a young boy who misses his grandpa.

I won’t give away any more of the story right now, but I want to show a little clip of the film.

This is shot A_12, and it means a lot to me, because I have spent WEEKS trying to get this shot to render. It’s long, it’s got beautiful animation by Tyler Stott, and gorgeous lighting by Allan Bradshaw.

After errors, waiting, compositing, and rendering many passes, we’ve got something to show.

Farewell A_12!

(This is an almost final version of the shot, there are a few tweaks in the final)

Murphy — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 06:28:00 +0000

Say hello to my cucumber!

This is a cucumber I painted near the beginning of fall semester for my RenderMan class.

I painted it in photoshop using a tablet and pen, and I think it turned out pretty good! I must say though, I kinda cheated. I took reference photos of my real cucumber, then put one into photoshop and painted over it. So it wasn’t just eye-impression stuff.

But I’m still proud!

Shading hard!

Murphy — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 07:04:00 +0000

I've been doing some shading work for Kites.
If you saw the grandpa before, I spend this evening developing his
sub surface shader more.
I (with the text help of shaun) re-wrote the sub-surface shader
essentially from the ground up.
And here's the sweet monkey.
Tuh duh.