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ThomasGoddard.comMy programming, 3d, and what's kewl... November 07 Maya to XAML Goes Open Source!!Maya To XAML is now available to developers at large to help build its integration into Maya. If you're a 3D graphics developer or just looking to learn more about Maya or XAML, the project is now accepting requests to join so get on over to CodePlex and sign-up!! Download Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer to easily view and edit the XAML exported from Maya. August 09 Maya to XAML Updated for Maya 8An update for Maya to XAML is now available on Highend3D.com. It has basic support for animation and should work fine with .NET Framework 3.0 July CTP. See the ReadMe.htm file for detailed changes and specifics on animation. Hope you enjoy and please let me know if you have any feature requests or issues. July 17 The .Brain FrameworkA pioneer in mobile computing, co-founder of Palm (Graffiti), and intellectual conduit of the human brain for technology, Jeff Hawkins explains how memory works in the neocortex. He founded the company Numenta, and developed a memory model that works like the neocortex. The software architecture looks very solid and after reading the whitepaper and hearing his interview on NPR, I was compelled to share this with everyone.
About a year ago, after sharing the book about this technology (OnIntelligence) at a dinner conversation with family friends, one of the people at the table unbenkownst to me Dr. Harry Saal, explained that he was a member on the board of directors for the company Numenta.
The entire idea, that having a computer as good as a human brain, is a bit overwhelming and having made the connection with Haary, I feel like there has to be a future in this design. Take a look at the links and post your comments about it here. I am very interested in hearing what other people have to say about this new architecture. June 10 WinFX gets a new name, .NET 3.0!!!It’s refreshing to know that I've been working on .NET 3.0 for the last year! It's amazing and I love the new name, which is now much easier to explain. If you think about it, the switch makes perfect sense because the CLR is solid and does not require much in terms of core language feature development anymore. By naming new extended libraries the ".NET Framework 3.0", developers and users get a clear picture on where we are in terms of the core API and the adoption rate goes through the roof. This is going to make life much simpler.
If you havn't seen many of the cool features in WPF yet and would like to take an in depth look at a WPF application, check out this presentation from my colleague Darren David.
March 03 Maya to XAML February UpdateIt's finally here! I got around to creating a release build of Maya to XAML for the February WPF CTP. It's not quite feature complete but it's getting there. I added some helpful grouping features so that Maya groups are converted to a <ModelVisual3D> node and the Maya group's content is nested within the <ModelVisual3D.Content> tag. Transforms are also applied to ModelVisual3D, as well as individual objects, so you get the inherited transform behavior with each transform in it's original state.
The export options are updated so that you can specify export, or not, for normals, meshes, lights, cameras, etc... I added lights and cameras to the exportable objects. Animation is getting close to completion but I am swamped with higher priority features, like optimized mesh data.
Keep a look out for a future release that includes animation, XAML formatting, and a few other helpful features. Please let me know how I can improve on this plugin so that it's more useful as a tool for professional developers and designers. Enjoy!
February 06 Starbucks Howard Shultz and the Hear Music Media Bar
On the left is Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz. I'm on the right. The store to the right is the store that just opened in San Antonio.
A man came in to the Starbucks on the Promenade in Santa Monica, CA, where I was working on the HP Media Bar. He was dressed in a pink oxford shirt and looked like a swanky business man. It was brought to my attention that it was The Man himself. I walked up to him and introduced myself as the Lead Solutions Architect from his partner company, HP, and explained that I had helped to get this store operating smoothly.To my surprise, he grabbed my hand in a hearty handshake and introduced himself as Howard Schultz, the CEO and Founder of Starbucks Coffee Company. He was interested to continue our conversation, get my thoughts on the project and ideas about the solution. He bought me a coffee and we began our conversation down the Promenade.
In turn, he answered some of my questions, like how he got his start in creating one of the largest and most profitable Global corporations. He has written a book on the story and says that he had been able to gather capital for the first Starbucks from money he raised at the JCC and his basketball chums. Although his idea was a success, he continues to in turn lend funds and be a Philanthropist and friend to the Jewish Community. Being entrepreneurial myself, I see the value in the lessons he shared that day.
The Hear Music Media Bar is a great vision that brings something new to retail. The Miami store opens next week, according to sources at Starbucks ;-). Look for more stores in places like New York. I think solutions like this which use vector based UI with a web services backend will continue to be the trend in kiosk solutions. January 11 Theeey're heeere... Mac & IntelI received an email from the apple Developer Connection today with some links on how to transition existing Mac OS X binaries to Intel based binaries. This means a bit more work for developers to support Mac OS X non-Intel based platforms and intel based platform.
This also brings up a point, even though Mac is releasing a very large update to Mac OS X, they are not branding it as entirely new operating system. This is a smart move from Apple, keeping the point clear that customers get the same look and feel in their applications, now with a faster and cheaper chipset. Here is the resource center from Apple, with some interesting links on the new Intel Core Duo Processor and developing for the new Intel platform.
http://developer.apple.com/transition/index.html I found this link to be pretty interesting: http://www.intel.com/cd/ids/developer/asmo-na/eng/255716.htm Note: The biggest difference in the core architecture is Endianess. December 29 WinFX December CTP ChangesA great article on changes in the December CTP.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnlong/html/introdecctp.asp And a first look at Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" CTP WinFX Development - Code Name "Orcas" BTW... I will post an updated version of Maya To XAML soon. I am just wrapping up some new features so stay tuned! Thanks Karsten Januszewski and Michael Swanson! December 19 Visual Studio 2005 - Customer Excellence AwardThis makes it all worth while and it feels good to be recognized for working late nights to help improvide the product for everyone. I look forward to working with the Visual Studio Team on future product releases.
"You have been nominated to receive the Award for Customer Excellence. This award recognizes your extraordinary contribution to the Visual Studio 2005 product. All the best, S. Somasegar November 21 Maya to XAML November CTPThis update fixes some syntax in the XAML and has a couple minor changes to work with November CTP. Keep a look out for an update that comes with animation export and more! I havn't had a ton of time lately so I've had to work on it during my days off. Let me know if you have any other features that you would like to see and I will try to push them into the final build. - Updated for the November CTP WinFX Runtime
- New lines used for mesh data - Added named meshes and groups |
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