Unplugged

Everything about that night was just magical. I hadn't been on stage since a while now, and had honestly forgotten even the mouth to microphone distance which I was so familiar with during school days. But it took only a few hundred people cheering in the crowd to set the mood right! I wouldn't call my 'Piya Re' performance at the USC AIS Diwali function even close to good, but it definitely was something that made me feel a lot better after a very long time! Cheers to everyone who cheered for us and I can't stop thanking Nakul, Arun, Rishi and Priyanka for making the whole performance - all the four songs - so very memorable! Looking forward to more such Unplugged sessions! [Watch the video here !]

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Across The Universe

There are so many things that make our childhood days memorable – it could be something that you shared with your friends, a game that you played the most during summers, a hike, a silly insignificant incident that makes no sense to most except a few or it could just be you troubling the night watchman by making him believe he saw a ghost; for me and a few of my friends, besides all this, it was mostly all about the stars!

The Universe always had intrigued us friends. Every late evening, we would rush to the terrace with a telescope which a kind physicist living nearby was more than happy to lend. We would look through the skies identifying constellations, naming stars for future lookup. Most of us hadn’t yet been exposed to the internet, and books were still objects that a young mind could easily recognize and appreciate. So, we would spend hours studying star maps taken from various books and magazines and try to map the stars at various times during the year. The urge to understand more about the Universe was so gripping that we made it a point to view every astronomical event that would take place. We truly thought that the stars were ours for the taking.

Over the next year or so, things changed. We were slowly growing up and were also growing out of celestial objects and their myths. Our stargazing meets started fading away into the horizon. A few of us took to music, a few took to dance, a few took art and almost all of us gave up on the stars. I guess for most of us it was a time when we were looking for our calling, and clearly, the heavens weren’t anywhere in our sight. Stargazing was, after all, just another “activity”.

But something very important had happened during those times we all had spent together. We had learnt at a young age what it was like to look for something in the dark for hours and not finding anything. We could be patient when there was moonlight blocking the skies and the stars weren’t visible. We didn’t know what existed out there, but always believed we’d find something new and interesting. We knew it pained a lot to focus and get a target in sight on the telescope. We had known it was not easy finding stars in the sky and to keep looking for them throughout the night was an altogether different task - a task which was difficult but definitely not impossible.

I guess stargazing taught us more about staying grounded than anything else. I guess it made us gaze across our little universe with a different outlook and see things in a tad bit different a light. I can only hope and wish that we keep being reminded of how it is not always easy to achieve things. That may probably make us appreciate and understand the endeavors of others too.

And though out of practice since some time now, I’m sure we can still recognize many of the stars we spent hours looking for – and, oh yeah, where to find that ridiculously and treacherously hidden Andromeda Galaxy! ;)

Maya Texturing Blues

Have you ever toiled badly for getting that texture placed properly onto your imported model in Maya? It happens a lot when you are using foreign Object files which you need to use for your animation. The main reason why this would happen is, that the model does not always import with its UV sets. In other words, you need to build a new UV set to work with.

Now, do the following:

1. Open the Maya ( 2008, in my case) file you wish to work on.
2. Make sure you have the "Polygons" menu selected and go to "Create UVs" from the menu at the top.
3. Based on the kind of model you have, you should select the apt mapping technique. I am using a simple cube in this example and am leaving things to Maya by selecting "Automatic Mapping"
   


4. Assign an appropriate material for you to work with by right clicking on the object and going to "Assign New Material" or "Assign Existing Material" based on your requirements.
5. After doing so, as shown, select the texture to be used by going to the "Common Material Attributes" section and clicking on the Checkered Box besides "Color" as shown in the snapshot. I will use "Checker" in this example. (Hint: If you don't get the menu as seen in the image, keep hitting Ctrl+a till you do. Its a way to toggle views)
   


6. In the perspective view of Maya, you should now get something similar to what is shown in the picture below. if you don't see a texture, hit the number 6 key on the keyboard to turn on the textured view.
   
   
   
7. All this is quite trivial, but it becomes really hard when you have many UV sets in the scene. What do you do to toggle between UV sets? Typically, the default UV set would be called something like "map1". You need to BIND your texture to the UV set you have selected.
8. One of the ways to do this is the use UV Linking. Right click on the object and select UV sets > UV Linking from the menu.
9. Now in the "Relationship Editor" shown, select the apt UV set from the left hand side and the Texture you wish to use from the right hand side.
   


10. Once done, you can be sure that the right texture will be mapped using the UV set you wish to use!

A view of how the UV editor would now look:

Another situation where people almost invariably lose their cool : OBJ file exports.

Maya does boast of a cool OBJ file export plugin that ships with the product, but in most cases it DOES NOT preserve texture maps. So what do you do? A good way would be to use a product like Deep Exploration by Right Hemisphere. You can very easily open a Maya model in Deep Exploration and then export it as easily as an Wavefront OBJ (and the corresponding mtl file) - with the textures preserved!

Happy texturing!

Making memories of us

There is this thing about the rains. The lack of a productive atmosphere can make you probe deep into your thoughts and search for memories which are either hidden by effort or simply cast away, branded as unworthy or unimportant.

People – the ones that make our memories are so accessible these days. Keeping in touch is no more a pain, seeing someone far..far away is a piece of cake and knowing “What’s on your mind?” is usually just a few clicks away..

And yet, we long for that one offline meeting, that one long drive with pals, that long jamming night with only the chilly air and a thousand beautiful notes to fill the void of the darkness, the smile on your friend’s face when you gather for his surprise party which hardly ever is a surprise, the smell of the grass in the college garden when you walk towards your classes, the long talks which hardly mean much, a stop on a bridge overlooking a river which is probably the most beautiful in this world – made beautiful by the company of people you are with.

It is good to find such rainy day moments when you can savor what you had, and what you did – for we might just get pointers on building the way we’d like this day to be remembered, and probably be successful in making a few good memories of us friends. Again!