Hi Gudeta,
I have the same core2duo 1.8Ghz here on mine, and it does the job perfectly.

According to this site (It's a good site, I always look there when checking for a graphic board) the Quadro NVS 110M is not the best you can buy (it appears in class 4, I always try to find one at least in class 3), but honestly you don't absolutely NEED the most powerful graphic card. The only thing really important is the processor. A good graphic card simply gives you more "comfort" because the display of the 3D views goes faster and smoother.

When working with blender or archicad, what you really need is good processing power, because when you render with blender it's 100% processor work, no graphic card involved, and when working with archicad you need to process complex data much more than displaying it faster on screen. For 2D image work I think it doesn't matter at all, all GPUs can do that perfectly. So I wouldn't give it too much importance. This one should be more than sufficient.

The only thing that will not be too good with that notebook will be playing recent heavy 3D games

And in any case, any Nvidia chip is way better than the built-in intel gpus that come on todays cheap notebooks, specially if you use linux. The only bad point is indeed the RAM. Check that you can indeed upgrade it before buying (I have 4Gb here and it's very comfortable).

So I would say yes, go for it. The price is good, and you'll have a very good computer. Ah, and my first notebook was a toshiba and it lasted for 7 years!

Hi Yorik

I've been after your guestbook and I liked it too much. and am feeling home to write here.
If you dont mind i've a question.
Here in Ethiopia its hard to find a laptop with a nice graphic card.

I saw an old laptop and I'am asking you if its nice for
blender, sketchup and archicad stuff.
and of coure image processing

The specs are the following

Toshiba tecra m5
1.83 centrino core 2 duo
1 GB ram and 60 GB hdd
with Nvidia Quadro NVS 110M graphics
for about $ 480

i'm planning to grow the ram to 4 G
I hear that Tecras are very good. please say sth.

Thank you.

Hi Peter,
Looking at your diagram I think you understood perfectly. About blender, really blender is my platform of choice, and I think it fits more than perfectly in an architecture composition process. Probably, the final opinion depends much on your own feeling about conception. I like blender because it is one of the few pieces of software who gives me such freedom, geometrically and graphically. I almost feel I'm using no software...

On the contrary, blender is not so good at keeping track of perfect, constant, ruled curved surfaces and stuff like that. Which is something I don't like and don't use (perfect, constant, rules curved surfaces ). I imagine that for that kind of things apps like rhino are better.

Anyway, the key is probably to discover what fits you best, along with what you want to do with architecture. One thing is certain, it is much more important to invent and form your proper rules (and decide what software you use and how) than to follow a preestablished rule. Sum to that the fact that blender is opensource and won't cost you any fortune when you get out of school, there is matter for thinking.

Maybe the most delicate point when working with blender is when passing your 3D work to 2D... You'll need to experiment a bit to see how that can best be done, but it's possible. Probably about the same way, maybe passing through rhino?

Anyway, feel free to come back if you have any issue with that, or use my email adress if you prefer: yorik (at) uncreated (dot) net

Commenting post 301: Thanks for the hints....if you have time in the future, a little tutorial would be great. Using your description, I made a little diagram to see if I understand: http://www.petesuen.com/arch/casting_shadows_diagram.pdf. I hope it's about accurate.

On a different note, I wanted to get your opinion on how Blender can fit in an architecture student's development process. Here at Berkeley in the option 3 M.Arch. program (for students without an architecture undergraduate degree), they push Rhino pretty hard. The process is usually going from 2D to 3D with Rhino (or straight into 3D with rhino), then making 2D drawings using make2d, and finally adjusting lineweights with Illustrator.

But I read your post on using Blender for quick and iterative architecture compositions, and that process seems useful but completely different from what we've been taught. What are the pros and cons? Can Blender be incorporated here effectively?

Thanks!

Hi Peter,
Thanks for the comments.
Shadows in 2D drawings I indeed usually draw by hand. It's not hard to draw accurate shadows, the rule is pretty simple, you have to imagine your sun is 45° left, 45° towards yourself. So it projects shadows that run 45° right, 45° "deep"... Using 45° has the big advantages that distances in X = distances in Y = distances in Z, so let's say a 1 meter-deep volume will project a 1 meter-wide shadow. This way you can draw shadows pretty fast and intuitively. I should make a small tutorial on the subject one of these days.

Commenting post 239: Great drawings - I love simple 2D sections. I'm actually a new architecture student - can you explain how you get the simple shading in the section cuts? Is that rendered or just drawn by hand by guessing where the shadows would be? Thanks!

2 more hand drawings. Projects by Adriana Furst.

Check Integrity script for blender 2.5

This is my first script adapted for blender 2.5. It was a bit of work to understand all the differences but I think the next ones will go faster now. I'll wait for the new blender project tracker to be up then I'll submit it there.

Download it here: http://yorik.uncreated.net/scripts/blender25/object_check_integrity.py

The script checks a mesh object and selects all edges that are not manifold (that is, that don't have exactly 2 faces connected to them). In other words, a manifold mesh is a mesh that can be converted to a perfect solid (no holes, and no face that has no inside/outside). After running the script on the active object, enter editmode and the bad edges will be selected so it's easy to find and fix them.

Install the script via the addon manager, it will then be available in the "Object" menu.

Considering the image of the tree, I suggest an Acacia.
Leaves are quite recognizable (see left part of the image).

Two renderings of a project by Luc Nelles in Belgium...

Hi Thomas,
Thanks!!
I could do that tree I think, but I'd need to know more, specially its exact name so I can get more images. If you happen to find out, let me know!
Thanks for notifying the missing blend, I fixed it already.
Cheers
Yorik

Very nice Page, nice design too. I can't tell you what trees i'd like to see as i don't know what they're called. (Here's the image if you're interested: www.flickr.com/photos/26002300@N02/2653993461/in/photostream ,and yes, thats my comment!)

BTW: "Howea" .blend is missing.

Great job, th.

A simple backup script

I use this script at home to create a mirror effect between 2 machines, every hour the contents of a given folder on machine A get synced to a same folder on machine B. For our little 2-machine workplace, this is a pretty handy backup system. You must first setup your fstab so that you can mount a remote folder as normal user, adding something like this (changing "credential-file" by the path to your credentials file):

//192.168.0.2/backup/ /media/backup \
cifs credentials=credentials-file,uid=1000,gid=1002,rw,user,noauto 0 0

Then, save this in your exec path and make it executable:

#!/bin/sh
umount /media/backup
if mount /media/backup; then
    echo "network drive mounted, performing backup... "
    rsync -rtvx --delete /path/to/my/Worksfolder /media/backup
    umount /media/backup
    logger works backup done
    echo "unmounting... done"
else
    echo "backup failed"
    logger works backup failed
fi

The logger line inserts the text that follows into the syslog, which is useful so you can check later if something went wrong and when. Then, add this to your crontab (using "crontab -e"):

00 * * * * /home/yorik/bin/backup

Which means "run each minute 00" which means run every hour.

Hi,
Thanks for the feedback,
Sure! I'd be glad to be added!

Hi I am a Chilean architect and I think that you are doing a great work with freeCAD. I would like to put your name in a list of my forum about FreeSoftware for Architects, if you agree, of course.
Here the list: foroarqsl.creatuforo.com/grupos-de-arquitectos-que-apoyan-el-software-libre-tema24.html

Kind Regards

Outputting 2D dxf through FreeCAD itself

Last couple of days Dan Falck and I were chatting about how convenient it would be to be able to output flat, 2D dxf files from any 3D-to-2D process like FreeCAD's drawing module. I've been since then experimenting with that, mainly using Inkscape as a convertor, since FreeCAD outputs 2D drawings in svg format. Inkscape is capable of outputting dxf files, but the quality is not very good.

The other day a much better idea stroke me: The Draft module of FreeCAD is itself capable of reading svg and writing dxf! So I did some new experiments (and a lot of bugfixing) and the result is definitely not that bad.

This is the base file I used for testing:



I then produced a 2D Drawing from the objects in the scene:



This is the scene objects, without passing through the Drawing module, simply exported as svg directly from the 3D scene, then reimported into freecad:



This is the 2D Drawing module output, reimported into FreeCAD:



And this is the same one, exported as dxf (and opened in Caduntu):



Of course the result is stil far from perfect (although much better than last time). The main problem is with the dimensions, which get converted to dummy wires (and have some artifacts too, some bug I must solve). SVG format doesn't support dimension objects. So the thing is, how to do that? Create a new svg tag? I'll have a look around, if other people already thought about that problem...

Hi,
Several terminals do that, mainly aterm and urxvt (which is the one I use), which is also called rxvt-unicode. But nowadays the gnome-terminal also has pseudo-transparency...

Commenting post 10=: Which termianal do you use? it looks like it offers mentioned pseodu transperancy and anti-aliased fonts, but i am not sure, cuz the screens are resized.

Execution drawings of a small building

We've been doing these execution documents these days for a project by Mario Francisco Arquitetura...

Maintenant ça commence à bien faire, j'essaie de trouver un moyen d'arrêter ça mais c'est pas facile, ils arrivent à détecter le honeypot... Ce que je ne comprends toujours pas c'est pourquoi ils postent ce genre de message, comme ça sans pub, sans link ni rien???

Si j'avais su que la Libération des machines (façon Terminator) allait commencer par l'émancipation de la critique littéraire chez les bots publicitaires à caractère spammique, je ne l'aurais point crû !

A simple online backup app

http://yorik.uncreated.net/scripts/onlinebackup.py
This little python app makes a zip file from a given directory, then either sends it with a given gmail account, or uploads it to a given ftp location. You must configure a couple of options in the script, though.

Thank you, thank you my dear bots!

You certainly deserve a round of applause for your post and more specifically, your blog in general. Very high quality material

On pourrait faire ça manuellement, aller sur les blogs des gens et mettre des messages de "viagradiscount50%" ou "perdez10kgenunmois: "Félicitations pour votre beau blog! Je reviendrai le visiter!" "Bravo, quelle qualité dans cet article!"

Ils pourraient faire une version française, tiens.

If noone likes my blog, at least the bots do!
Is this a worldwide operation to raise webmasters self-esteem? They don't try to insert any link... What's the point of doing this???

You certainly deserve a round of applause for your post and more specifically, your blog in general. Very high quality material

I just sent this post to a bunch of my friends as I agree with most of what you’re saying here and the way you’ve presented it is awesome.

You certainly have some agreeable opinions and views. Your blog provides a fresh look at the subject.

Hi,

I have a message for the webmaster/admin here at yorik.uncreated.net.

Can I use part of the information from this post above if I provide a link back to your website?

Thanks,
Peter

Hello there,

This is a inquiry for the webmaster/admin here at yorik.uncreated.net.

May I use some of the information from this post right above if I provide a backlink back to your site?

Thanks,
Mark

Very informative post. Thanks for taking the time to share your view with us.

IT's the very first time I see literary critisims bots
I suspect a coup from the French Academy !

Commenting post 203: Very, very beautiful! The crisp design fits blends right into the soft greenery. Very impressing.

Very informative post. Thanks for taking the time to share your view with us.

Great Post. I add this Post to my bookmarks.

Awesome Post. I add this Post to my bookmarks.

Lots of bots seem to like my site As long as they don't post viagra links, why not...

Some more hand drawings

A couple of drawings we've been doing...

These 2 are for a house project by Adriana Furst.





And the following 2 for a housing lot project by MS arquitetura.

Keep posting stuff like this i really like it

nice post. thanks.

Good job. I'm definitely going to bookmark you!

Another example of FreeCAD 2D drawing

I was showcasing FreeCAD to a friend the other day and we came to mount this nice little drawing. Don't look too close at the project itself since it is more the result of divagations and tests than proper architectural research, but it is a good showcase of what is currently possible:

The FreeCAD 3D view (file available here):


And the resulting svg drawing (file available here):

Very nice solution, it should be built certanly...

Interlagos project - our proposal

We recently made an animation for a project in Interlagos. The project was made together with other architects, and it turned out quite different than our first idea, but neverthless some of the concepts went through until the final form. Here goes our own proposal, with the first sketches and a model.

The main idea was to build something light but high. Light because it has to be on top of an existing structure and the anchor points must be spread where it can, sometimes on the existing elements sometimes not, and also because all the project needs to achieve is shading and rain protection, high because it must serve as a beacon, clearly indicating the circuit's entrance point to who comes by train, bus, car, foot or even helicopter, and also because we want to be able to see under it, from the seats and paddocks spread along the circuit.

The new structure itself is obviously still very sketchy in these images, but the main idea is to use the three staircases as big columns, making large arms on top of them, that support the main part of the weight. The rest spreads over thin columns, that fall where they can on the existing building.















And here goes a 3D model view. The file is a bit incomplete due to the changes of directions the project took later but it can still give you an idea:


Use left and right keyboard arrows to rotate. You need to install the burster plugin to view this

Interlagos animation

This is an animation we did recently for a project proposal made with HVC Arquitetura for the Interlagos formula 1 circuit in Brazil. Everything was made from scratch in Blender. Below I put a couple of intermediary images which are not all in the final version but that I found nice.



























The first proposal we made for this project can be found here.

It might be a good idea actually, that when you add an image, the rectangle gets resized to match the image dimsions. Thanks for the idea!

Would not it be better to create a, let's say, raster object when introducing an image? Or at least the rectangle automaticaly adjust the proportion to that of the image; and maybe the dimensions to have a precise scale of representation.
Sorry for my english

Using background images for tracing in FreeCAD

I just implemented this little feature:

Rectangle objects now have a "Texture image" property, where you can choose an image file. That image then gets mapped on the rectangle. You must of course take care of making the rectangle the same proportion as the image. But this way, specially combined with the transparency property, you get a great way of tracing CAD objects over a scanned paper drawing.

Oh, sorry, I forgot that I had a protection against links here...
Send to my email: yorik (at) uncreated (dot) net...

actually, correction: i think the animated gif works, but it does not loop. so the first time, it is animated, but after that it is static. can we loop this perhaps?

best wishes,
aarem

hi yorik,

how do i include links in my post? this blog does not allow it. can you please send me your e-mail address?

thanks again and best wishes!

Hi aarem,
Hm I don't know how do animated gifs work, but I'll have a look... What is the url of your gif image?

Hi Yorik,

Thanks again for your new version. I noticed that you now use animation. I was wondering if there is a way to also include animated gif's in your script. The weather map I am pointing to is an animated gif, but it is static when viewed on fluxweather.py.

Thanks very much!
Best wishes

Hi aarem,
Sometimes for some reason (the internet connection fails, the server gets temporarily unreachable, etc...), the image cannot be retrieved and the automatic process that updates every X seconds stops, I still couldn't find out how to prevent this. But I had never seen it not updating even if you force updating withthe right-cick menu. Can you give me the image URL you are trying to display, so I can test?

BTW I just uploaded a new version: http://yorik.uncreated.net/scripts/fluxweather.py Maybe it'll work better...

hi,

i have been using your fluxweather.py. it works great, however, it appears that the image map does not update even after i update. killing the python process and restarting, however does update the map. could you please let me know what changes need to be made in order to have the image map update with the updating. many thanks!

FreeCAD 2D dxf export

FreeCAD can now export a 2D drawing page to dxf. It is preliminar and still buggy but it works:

This is the normal svg output


This is the dxf output. FreeCAD uses inkscape to generate it, so inkscape must be installed on your system. All you need to do is select a Page object and hit the File->Export menu item.

3 cool linux game demos I'm playing these days

I'm currently playing these 3 demos, all run natively on linux, the full games have a fair price too, I still don't know which one I'll buy first, but I like all 3 games a lot...

1. revenge of the titans
Website: http://www.puppygames.net/revenge-of-the-titans/

This is a pretty cool kind of mix between a guard tower and a realtime strategy game. It has a retro old pixel games look, but don't be fooled, the graphics are extremely polished. And the gameplay is just excellent, it is really, really addictive... It is a java webstart application, so you just head to the site, click the "download and run" button and it runs, no need to install anything. The demo is quite big, gives you a good amount of play hours, and the full version costs US$ 21.

Amnesia: the dark descent
Website: http://www.amnesiagame.com/

I had never seen this kind of game before (although the same company made another one of the same type before). It's a first-person horror game. The atmosphere is really fantastic. If you put yourself in the right mood, play alone in the house, turn off all lights and use a good sound system for the game audio, it gets really scary! You basically hang around in some strange, dark, haunted places, try to understand, solve enigmas, and try not to get mad... No guns, ennemies to shoot (well, not in the classical sense let's say). The demo comes as a self-installable archive, just download and run it and it installs where you indicate. The full version costs US$ 20.

Doom 3
Website: http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/doom/

Doom 3 is a pretty old game already (2004) and there are a lot of similar first-person shooters that are free and open-source for linux, but really this one is very well polished, the graphics are still more than decent compared to recent games and the single player game is just excellent, which is not always the case in other games. The action occurs on Mars in a cool eighties-style techno-metal base... The id website doesn't sell the full version anymore, but it is on steam and costs US$ 19.

Thanks a lot,

I'll try it and let you know...

Sincerely yours,
LT

Hi Luis,
Okay, it is easy, basically, you need to do the following. Make sure you know how to disable/remove a buggy plugin before doing this, because you could do typing errors (easy to occur with php) that could stop your wordpress from working (just remove the faultly plugin if needed, and all should be OK again)

1) locate the image-feed-widget.php file inside your plugins folder
2) save it somewhere, make a copy for safety, and edit it
3) locate, from line 52 to 80, the php loop that creates list elements ( <li> ) for each rss item
4) that loop adds an image, inside a <a> tag, inside a <div>, for each item
5) after that <a>, we'll add a <div> containing our description (we could add it inside the <a> too if wanted, or even outside the div)
6) after line 78 (after the </a> ending tag), add this line:

<?php echo "<div class='rssdescr'>".$item->get_content()."</div>"; ?>

7) save the file and replace the original file in your wordpress installation. You can also give the file another name (and place it outside the image-feed-widget folder) so wordpress won't update it when I do updates to the plugin
8) We now have a rssdescr class name that you can use to format the description text the way you want.

Thats it. Hope it works!
Yorik

go into:
www.missingkids.com then look for "Get involved" on the upper left hand side menu. then look down for the option "RSS FEEDS". Then click on New york (which is the state that I live in) and it should display the Feed.

Thanks again for your patience.
LT

I get a 404 not found error

OK , Sorry about the link. here is the rss feed:

" www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/XmlServlet?act=rss&LanguageCountry=en_US&orgPrefix=NCMC&state=NY "

Can you explain the code for me (i'm not to good with coding) so that I can also display the rest of the rss information. Like
the name, age, date missing and the rest of the feed. I would like to place the information inside the widget aligned next to the image (left , right or center).

Thanks

Hi Luis,
I can't find any rss feed on the missing kids website? Can you pass me the feed url? Also, note that my plugin is very simple, it's made just to display an image gallery... If you want something more complex, maybe you can find a better plugin than this one... But if you are ready to tweak a bit into the php code, I can explain how to display more stuff than just the image, it is not too difficult either.

Hello:
I was wondering if you can help me with your " WP image RSS plugin" my website is:
"punkilitosdotcom"

I wish to put this plugin on my website on one of the bottom widgets.

The feed comes from:
missingkidsdotcom"

I want the plugin to show the Child's picture and the information like name, last seen on, etc.. Maybe our website can help find one of these children.

So how can I make your plugin be able to pull down the RSS Feed information alongside with the image?

Please note that I'm not too good with CSS so please be patient with me.

Thanks for your quick response

Sincerely yours,
LT

Hi,
Thanks for the comments...

I'm using debian now, but I've been using ubuntu for a long time. If this will be your first linux, I strongly recommend ubuntu, which is one of the most user-friendly distributions available today.

But 99.9% of the linux software runs exactly the same on any distribution, so actually the choice of a distribution is more a matter of taste than anything else.

Anyway, almost all distributions provide a "live CD" that allows you to run the OS entirely from the CD, so you can have a good look without installing anything. You can then install it side-by-side with your previous operating system and discover the linux world at your own pace.

HI, I'm trying convince myself for Linux and found your desktop very interesting.
Also software you are working on.
Please advice what Linux distribution do you have?

gimp, blender, inkscape - I use them all - all the time. I have turned to your pages often for insight and instruction. Thanks for all you make available!

3D Images of the latest animation

Here are a couple of still images from our latest animation. These have the correct light setup that should have been used there...

Shopping mall animation

This is a new animation we just finished for a shopping mall in Brazil. The project is by HVC Arquitetura. 3 weeks work, I tried to better the editing a bit, but I really need to work more on the storyboard before beginning... The lighting is not so cool but the client made us change the whole setup the day before the rendering (I want the white really white, I'm sure you heard that already)... Renderflow has been a big help, it reduced our rendering time to 2 days, comparing to the each time larger amount of time respower needs nowadays it's a very big change. Enjoy!
Still images available here.

Just downloaded your Wordpress plugin "Last Video Widget." It's close to what I was looking for. However, I don't really want to put the entire post into the widget, I only need the widget to strip out the YouTube link and display the video only.

Is there a way to prevent the widget from showing the post text? All of my video posts are in a category called Videos. However, there is frequently text introducing the video along with the Youtube link.

Knowing how to do this would make this widget PERFECT!

Thanks in advance.

Lol, it's not serbian.

But it is close enough. It is croatian. (in croatian we have only latin)
While we (serbian, croatian and others) lived in one country, our languages was serbo-croatian.
Now we have two "different" languages. Which are probably less different than British and American English.

Now, after short history lesson, that in fact doesn't belong to this blogspot, we shall continue with stuff that is more fun than ethnicity and such.

Pardon my weird english language

Yeah, I got confused... Google suggested writing cyrilic, felt weird
Just read this wikimedia page about serbian language, learned pretty interesting stuff... Didn't know serbian could be written indifferently in both alphabets.
Thanks for bringing the matter, the precision and the compliments!

I like your blogspot VERY VERY much. So much info on one spot, one cannot ask for more.
I think i'll use one of your fluxbox themes these days. Also, i hope i'll start to use blender from now on.

And, you mixed a bit latin and cyrilic for "apcolytno"... just a little correction, it should be "apsolutno" which is pure latin letter as it should be for my language.

Thanks again for the great blogspot, i'll be lurking around, apsolutno

Da, apcolytno!

"All languages are highly welcome, especially the most exotic ones"

Nadam se da je ovo dovoljno egzoticno

2 images of a house designed by Claudia Bassichetto and others for the NGO India2Care of our friend Alexandre.

A rendering of a house designed by our friends at Angelo & Zechetti...

Hi,

Using Image Feed Widget on www.beert.nl and it's great.
I am trying to have the shown photo's linked to the original photo ['url' or thumb] instead towards the permalink but althought I've tried very hard I have no success.


Could someone set me on the right path?

3 more textures on the textures page...

Controlling the HeeksCAD interface from python

It is actually pretty simple, it works almost exactly like using PyQT in FreeCAD. You must have the heekspython plugin installed and activated in heekscad, and the wxPython package installed, of course. Inside HeeksCAD's python console:

import wx
mw = wx.GetTopLevelWindows()[0]
mw.SetStatusText("hello!")
menu = mw.GetMenuBar()
mymenu = wx.wxMenu()
mymenu.Append(wx.wxID_ABOUT,"My &Menu","A sample menu item")
menu.Append(mymenu,"Test")
dia = wx.Dialog(None,-1)
pan = wx.Panel(dia,-1)
box = wx.BoxSizer(wx.VERTICAL)
box.Add(wx.StaticText(pan,-1,"Hello World!"))
box.Add(wx.Button(pan,-1,"Press me!"))
pan.SetSizer(box)
dia.Show()

More about wxpython here...

Favor fornecer nome, telefone, e e-mail do arquiteto ou engenheiro respónsavel por projetos residenciais.

Ca fleure bon l'pays d'Tcharlerwé tout ça!

looks like a lot of russian cites... very same pictures...

Paranapiacaba

Paranapiacaba is a small strange and beautiful old railway city near São Paulo, built to home english railway workers at the end of 19th century on a line linking the coffee-producing areas to the port of Santos. Today the line is still partially used but the wide complex Paranapiacaba was built around is disaffected, leaving the city cut in 2 by this surreal "rail valley"...

My name is Raymond St. Paul I am new to Blender 2.53 Beta version of the software does anyone know where I can get a printed manual on how to use this software becoming extremely frustrated! I know there are tutorials out there yet most are of videos that assume the viewer already knows the basics of the software or often refer to the older versions which doesn't help me since they are not even the same software anymore totally different and based on what I've seen it was as total mess which version 2.53 was supposed to fix! Anyone know also how I can download a model from the net and use it in Blender? Also background images? My email is nospam@gmail.com and my address is nospam please let me know soonest becoming extremely frustrated!

Very useful textures!
Thanks!

PAL c'est le normal, SECAM c'est le système français...

Mais... Tu convertis tes mp4 en PAL? C'est pour envoyer en France?

Hi Mark,
I think you need to make the items of the list float too, like this:
image-feed-list li { float: left; }
but making HTML lists horizontal is a recurrent problem in webdesign, so you should also find plenty of information on that topic on the net. Don't hestitate to come back here if it doesn't work...

Thank you for making a great plugin
I've been testing your Image feed widget, but cant get the pictures show horizontally?
with this: image-feed-list { display: inline; }
Or what code should I use to line them and give enough space?

Write a video dvd from a video file in 4 commands

This is more a reminder for myself as I need to do it quite often and always forget how to do it:

ffmpeg -i mymovie.mp4 -target pal-dvd dvd.mpg
dvdauthor -o dvd/ -t dvd.mpg
(repeat if adding more movies)
dvdauthor -o dvd/ -T
growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -dvd-compat dvd/

É, também já pensei nisso:

Na Europa várias pessoas já encaram o preço de uma instalação solar como investimento para gerar renda. Se considera geralmente, com as ajudas do governo na França e na Alemanha (eles te compram o kwh 4 x o preço que tu paga), que uma instalação de 20000 euros fica paga em 7 a 10 anos. A vida útil é dos painéis é atualmente em torno de 20, 25 anos.

Na verdade o problema é que o máximo de intensidade que os 10m² de painel conseguem produzir é muito fraca... Dizem que conseguiria ligar no máximo um aparelho tipo secador de cabelos (o que na verdade não é nada mal, acredito que um secador de cabelo consome mais de 500W). Mas planejando bem, com 500W dá para ligar bastante coisa, veja aqui:

http://www.aeseletropaulo.com.br/estimativa.htm

Ainda tenho que pesquisar o rendimento de painéis térmicos (aqueles que só esquentam água), que resolveria o problema do chuveiro, responsável para quase 50% do gasto, e custam uma fração do preço dos fotovoltaicos, e também a energia eólica. Mas francamente não achava que era já tão rentável assim...

Bem já que a conta está tão na ponta do lápis outras coisas teriam de entrar na equação: o custo energético para se produzir o painel solar, para sua manutenção e quantos anos ele tem que funcionar para inverter o gasto inicial na compra e na produção.

Uma idéia bacana poderia ser "rotear" o painel, ou ter um painel só para o grande vilão chuveiro elétrico ou ainda um aquecedor a gás coletivo do prédio.

A gente deveria fuçar o que está sendo feito com arduínos e painéis solares... Talvez a gente pudesse "programar" a rede elétrica sei lá, ter um dispositivo que informasse que vc não está conseguindo ligar a luz da sala porque a luz do quarto está acesa e não tem ninguém lá, algo do tipo

Auto-analise de consumo elétrico

Outro dia tentei "dissecar" o nosso consumo elétrico aqui em casa, e ver o que isso representa comparado à média nacional e de outros países, e qual quantidade de painéis solares seria necessária para suprir esse consumo. As fontes de consumo listadas abaixo são todas tiradas da internet, tentei achar os dados mais precisos possíveis, mas deve ter obviamente vários dados errados ou desatualizados. Mesmo assim, tirei várias conclusões interessantes:

1) Até somos bastante eficientes, consumimos metade da média de São Paulo, um quarto da média da França, ou um décimo da média dos USA! Somando todos os aparelhos da casa, chego a 115 kwh/mês, a nossa conta da mais ou menos 110/mês, portanto a estimação deve ser mais ou menos correta.

2) Os nossos computadores realmente não consomem muita energia. O maior culpado, obviamente, é o chuveiro elétrico. Já li que botar o computador em modo "sleep" ou desliga-lo quase não faz diferencia, acho que é verdade. Note que desktops consomem muito mais que notebooks.

3) Precisariamos, no Brasil, apenas 10m² de painéis solares para produzir o que consumimos. O custo dessa instalação, infelizmente, gira em torno de R$ 50 000

4) Uma instalação solar não é interessante sozinha (produz pontualmente pouca energia demais, e não tem como armazenar eficientemente). O interessante é vender tudo que produz para a rede, e comprar o que usa. Na maioria dos países europeus (que é o modelo que se planeja seguir no Brasil), a lei obriga as companhias de energias a comprar o kwh de você mais caro do que vende. Nos USA é o inverso... Não consegui achar se já existe uma tarifa de compra no Brasil.

5) Nos países que mais incentivam o uso de energia solar (Alemanha), a proporção de energia disponível na rede elétrica que é produzida por casas particulares está começando a ficar consequente. O modelo está se comprovando. Tem vários projetos similares na mesa no Brasil, mas como no momento a produção de energia é mais que suficiente para atender o país, suponho que ninguém vê muita urgência nisso...

Aqui vai minha análise detalhada:

aparelho                 w           Kwh       horas/dia       Kwh

geladeira      1                                               27.3
chuveiro       1        5000                      0.5           75
lampadas       4         15                        4           7.2
notebook       2                     2.4                       4.8
Lava-roupas    1        250                       0.15         1.25

                                                              115.55

consumo                           Kwh / mês                 Kwh / ano
comparado

nossa casa                           110                       1320
média SP                             200                       2400
média Brasil                         150                       1800
média França                                                   4000
média UK                                                       3300
média USA                                                     14000

Insolação                         Kwh / ano                 kwh/ano/m²
média
Brasil                               1900                      190
São Paulo                            1700                      170
França                               1300                      130
Alemanha                             1100                      110

painéis              dimensões    Kwh / mês     preço R$   necessários
solares

Genérico              100x100        15.8                       7
Kyocera                140x60        25.2         3000          4
KC120

preço do kwh                       comprar                    vender
em R$
Brasil                               0.31
França                               0.25                      1.29
Portugal                             0.25                      1.45
USA                                  0.15                      0.03

Vou tentar o Stoemp hoje a noite. Sou fã do "hutsepot" então vamos ver se é bom mesmo

Belgian cuisine

For who doesn't know, I maintain with a couple of friends a food blog. We meet quite often to cook, eat, and put the results on the blog if the receipe was successful. The blog has been a bit abandonned recently, mainly because one of us, Mariel, is now passing her whole year travelling and our little community has lost its captain, but I decided to initiate a big comeback.

Below is a small selection of a couple of typical belgian dishes that are illustrated on the blog. The blog is written in portuguese, but there is a button on the right sidebar that allow you to googletranslate in other languages, which is normally more than sufficient to understand the receipes correctly. Smaakelijk eten, or bon appétit!


Waterzooi


Stoemp


Salade liégeoise


Chicons au gratin


Brown sugar tart


Carbonnades à la Liégeoise


Vlaams stoofvlees

so huge shopping moll is a good opportunity for architect but apartment houses from first sketches I like more than from last...

Multi-use occupation

A small (not so small actually, it's more or less half a million m²) project I've been working on these days... Unfortunately, as usual, my idea didn't interest people much, and the final drawings ended up as you can see below. Anyway, here they are for your viewing pleasure...

Multiuse complex renderings

Project by ArquiteturaMix.

Muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuito boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom! Parabéns a vocês!

5 new alpha textures

Get them on the textures page...

Comparativo de tarifas VOIP no Brasil

Recebemos de presente um telefone SIP de um amigo, dai fizemos uma pesquisa de tarifas das operadoras VOIP no Brasil que oferecem planos para particulares (e algumas fora, porque na verdade você não é mais obrigado a ter um provedor nacional, só se quiser vincular a um número de telefone brasileiro). Os tarifas abaixo são em reais por minuto.

	Brasil (fixo)	Brasil (celular)	Bélgica (fixo)	Bélgica (celular)
Brastel	0.48	0.964	0.20	2.76
NetJet	0.32	0.99	0.25	4.34
RealCall	0.19	0.85	0.35	0.79
Tesa	0.18	0.69	?	?
TMais	0.31	0.95	0.28	?
Uol VOIP *	0.15	0.69	0.13	1.60
Vono	0.25	0.98	0.25	2.30
Skype	0.072	0.597	0.059	0.728
Nonoh	0.050	0.271	0.037	0.259
Gizmo5	0.040	0.190	0.030	0.240
Google	0.070	0.260	0.050	0.442
Telefone fixo**	0.20	0.55	1.08	1.08

* a Uol cobra um adicional de 0.09 para cada ligação sucedida
** Telefone clássico, para comparar...

O Gizmo5 é de longe o mais barato, unfelizmente o cadastro de novos usuários está suspendido desde que foram comprados pela google. Mas o http://www.nonoh.net é bem interessante... Por sorte já tinha uma conta do gizmo antes, então para quem quiser, nosso novo número VOIP aqui de casa é yorikvanhavre@gizmo5.com (747 432 7314)

FreeCAD and SVG output

Putting your drawing on a SVG sheet in FreeCAD is beginning to work well. Here is a recent example:

In FreeCAD:


And the outputted SVG:


It is almost perfect, I still have a small problem regarding texts location (there is a shift between both), and the svg hatches which are not too good and for which I still didn't find a solution.

Download the .fcstd file here and the .svg file here.

Hi,
as we spoke about sharing workflows, - I did really start a little similar thing. It`s a wiki of experiences converting between different file formats.
Have a look: fileconversionwiki.appspot.com/

#idsampa 5 : Reocupar construções paradas

Este prédio fica na rua Augusta, do lado do studio SP (e em frente a um restaurante bem legalzinho chamado Guta). É um dos vários prédios em construção cuja obra foi parada por não se sabe qual razão jurídico-administrativo-financeira que se encontram semi-abandonados no meio de São Paulo (já vi vários outros para os quais vou tentar fazer outros desenhos mais tarde).

O problema é obviamente que mais tempo a obra fica naquele estado, mais difícil fica de terminar, mesmo se resolvem os problemas citados acima. A estrutura em si não sofre de ser deixada exposta, não perde praticamente nada de estabilidade, mas o grande problema é o acabamento. Num prédio que ficou tomando chuva assim, as alvenarias ficam irremediavelmente úmidas e incrustadas de fungos, poluição, sujeira que tornam o acabamento quase impossível. Você coloca gesso nas paredes, e daqui um ano elas ficam cheias de infiltração e mofo.

Uma solução a esse problema seria assumir a estrutura existente como um mero suporte externo, no qual se encaixam "gavetas", que são os apartamentos. Nenhuma parede interna toca nas paredes externas. Na imagem acima, imaginei gavetas feitas com suportes metálicos e revestidas de madeira. Como trabalhamos com coisas leves, não tem real necessidade do que as coisas estejam exatamente uma acima da outra, e podemos fazer todos os apartamentos diferentes.

Outra vantagem é que deixando a estrutura exposta, ela pode servir para um monte de coisas interessantes, como jardins, passarelas suspensas, etc. A cobertura também viraria um grande jardim comum.

More on FreeCAD, or Generative Components-like workflow on Linux

I did this interesting little chain yesterday, you might find it interesting. With a bit of trickery, you can really do some interesting parametric-generated architecture design on linux, only with open-source tools. And when I say architecture design, I mean the whole production chain, from conception to paper prints.

If you don't know Generative Components, it's a piece of software made to design architecture compositions based on sets of parameters that you can make evolve to create "beautiful" parametric-looking structures... I recently discovered an amazing application called StructureSynth which does exactly that: create geometry based on parameters and rules.

You design simple rules in a very simple language, such as: "Rule n°1: move 2 units in x, rotate 15° in y, then create a box, then reapply Rule n°1". Then, all the magic is here: You can specify another, different Rule n°1. The program will interpolate both randomly, and create randomic variations:



The version of StructureSynth in the Debian repositories comes with a set of exporters for different renderers such as Sunflow, and Blender, (with the help of a blender import script) which I used here to import the geometry:



The blender import script imported all the geometry as one single object, so I first separated it in original parts (Edit mode, select all, P -> separate all loose parts), then exported it as an .obj file, that < href=http://free-cad.sf.net>FreeCAD can read. Of course the blender import script could easily be adapted to FreeCAD so we could skip the Blender step, but I found it interesting to show how the geometry passes from one to another without any data loss.



FreeCAD can work with several types of geometry. Our .obj file was imported as Meshes, but much more interesting is to work with bRep objects, which are FreeCAD's "native" object type, and permit much more complex functionality (they have the notion of "solid", so boolean ops work perfectly, they can have real curved surfaces, etc). So I converted my meshes to brep parts with a macro, and added a couple of lines just to show you how 3D and 2D begin to mix well in FreeCAD.

The Draft module in FreeCAD can already give you nice results when putting your scene geometry on a sheet. Of course the Draft module is made for 2D, so you'll notice the 3D parts are not displaying very correctly (face inversions, mostly), but that problem will be addressed soon.



To show you better the possibilities of the Geometry-to-paper process, I did another example. It suffers the same problems as the one above, but the control over display (colors, line width, texts, etc...) begins to be good.



This is a quick structure I did just to play with the process, and here is the SVG output:



SVG files already carry informations such as paper size, and it is as reliable as pdf (you can easily turn them as pdf with apps that support svg such as Inkscape or directly from FreeCAD). At the moment the informations in the template (Project author, etc...) cannot be edited directly from within FreeCAD, so you need to edit your sheet in another app, but that also will probably be addressed one of these days.

Great article! Big Kudos for what you did for and with FreeCAD!

What's new on the FreeCAD front

There are several cool new things coming to FreeCAD so I decided to show you a bit of what's going on. Most of this stuff will be in the 0.11 release (no release date prevision, it's done when it's done). There is a 0.11 preview installer for windows on the FreeCAD website, otherwise you'll have to wait a bit (or compile FreeCAD yourself if you are brave enough). I'll focus more on the 2D part, since it's what I'm mostly doing there...

The most interesting thing that has been added recently by Werner is python-driven Part objects. Unlike the older python Document objects, where you had to do everything, compute the geometry, and define how that geometry gets displayed in the 3D scene, the new Part python objects automatically display their geometry the "standard FreeCAD way". That allows for extremely simple python objects such as this:

class Line:
    def __init__(self, obj):
        ''' App two point properties '''
        obj.addProperty("App::PropertyVector","p1","myCategory","Start point")
        obj.addProperty("App::PropertyVector","p2","myCategory","End point").p2=FreeCAD.Vector(1,0,0)
        obj.Proxy = self
 
    def execute(self, obj):
        ''' Print a short message when doing a recomputation, this method is mandatory '''
        obj.Shape = Part.makeLine(obj.p1,obj.p2)
 
ml=FreeCAD.ActiveDocument.addObject("Part::FeaturePython","myLine")
Line(ml)

As a result, the 2D drafting module has been completely upgraded to take advantage of this. One of the most useful consequences is that it now has an editmode. But it also allows for several other goodies, such as enter FreeCAD's parametric chain (for example, an object made of the union of two other objects retains the original objects, etc):



Because of this, the use of the Drawing module is now much easier, and you can already output much better sheets:





Another area that is being currently worked on by Jürgen is the Sketcher, which allows you to draw constrained 2D shapes. There is still not much new stuff visible, but it has been almost rewritten from scratch, and is now much more stable and works on all platforms. Now really the sketcher can be used to build geometry.



Of course all this is pretty new and lots of bugs are expected to appear, but we come everyday closer to the day we can start to do serious productive work with FreeCAD. As a sidenote, one of the things we lack badly is bug reporting. If you happen to find a bug, if you make FreeCAD crash and can reproduce the cause of the crash, don't hesitate and add a report to the bug tracker. This is a very important for FreeCAD to reach some stability...

Added lots of CSS3 effects to this site! Make sure you use a recent browser (firefox, google chrome or opera) to see all the goodies...

Hi everybody,
Thanks for the kind comments!

This info is amazing, many of us struggle with de win/Linux migration because of the lack of proper tools ( as architects ) but the pont of view presented here shows a valid and usefull aproach.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I specially liked the parametric objects thing, I used to work with architectural desktop, and it was a nightmare to switch from that to Qcad or something, but nowadays I do much simpler works so your multiple programs for multiple tasks aproach seems usefull y also have a dual boot, just in case.

Thanks again!

I never thought to use FreeCAD in my workflow like this before. Thanks for the tips.

Glad you liked!

Hey Yorik

Very cool tutorial on: yorik.uncreated.net/tutorials/treemaking.html
Now I can create trees for usage in Blender xD

Project by Adriana Furst.

Hi Cloo,
Well, there were a couple of attempts already... For example this one: http://www.openarchitect.org/
But on any modern distribution most of the good tools are one click away to install, so there is not really a big need for a specific distribution I think. Besides, seeing the tremendous efforts needed to make a new distribution, I think the linux architecture community would be (at the moment, at least) better served with efforts aimed at bettering architecture-specific tools (CAD, BIM, etc...) or, as you well said, share workflow knowledge. That, yes, would be pretty interesting...

Gathering a community is not very easy, someone needs to have much energy dedicated to that. If you are willing to start something, though, I believe "linux architects" would form quite a big group...

hi yorik,
don`t you think it`s about time to package a special linux distro for architects?
Not just for a „convenient collection of tools“, but for building a community and sharing workflow knowledge.
I`m no geek, but if a team gathers, I could do documenting/communitycare.

3 hand-drawn images of a shopping mall project

3 new renderings of a shopping mall

Another cgtalk daily sketch, called "alien landscape". Not very sure what I tried to do, but here it is:

My latest dailysketch at cgtalk...

I wish it was also faster..

Ola Gabriel,
Lo que debe hacer es:
1) Tu placa gráfica debe soportar openGL 2.0 (porque todo es hecho con GLSL)
2) En Blender 2.49: En el menu "Game", active "Blender GLSL Materials" y todas las opciones en "GLSL Material settings"
3) En Blender 2.50, escoja "Blender Game" como render engine (Menu arriba). Las mismas opciones están en el panel "Render" del panel lateral.
4) Después, solamente necesita colocar la vista 3D en modo "textured" y todos los materiales aparecen, y las luces "spot" hacen sombra cuando están en "buffer shadow". Las normales de los objectos deben estar para fuera (como en sketchup)

Hey Uriel,
It's really NOT easy to find You must do like this:

1) Switch the outliner to show preferences
2) In Themes, expand the Default theme, and change its name. This will immediately add a new Default theme
3) The theme with your new name is now editable...
4) Then it works as usual, you can change the colors.

Cheers
Y

Hi Ejnar,
Thanks!
There were already several attempts at doing a CAD plugin for Blender like ProCAD , and there is now Migius's new attempt called CADTools here: http://www.cad4arch.com/cadtools/ which looks super interesting...

Nunca trabajé en Blender viendo las texturas ¿podrías indicar algún tutorial donde indique como proceder? Gracias.

Hey Yorik.
Nice work on the freeCAD project.
It really has some potential and I like the possibility for a good 3d cad in the floss environment (especially from a guy with a little humor)...
Good luck with it. I will check in sporadically...
Cheers Ejnar...

Ps. You might know... wasnt ther suppose to be a blender cad plugin thing...?
or maybe thats on hold with the 2.5 / bmesh plans going on...?

looks very nice on 2.5, but, can you say that you can have themes ? how ?
best regards
uriel

Working with blender looks cooler than sketchup

One image is worth thousand words

Cara! Muito bom mesmo!
Parabéns!

Hi Eric, thanks for the crits! You are right, this one was made a bit too quickly, lots of details lack polishing. About the one big fly-through, I totally agree... In this case the client wanted it that way, but probably I should train editing better so I can convince them

Overall very impressive. Congrats!

You can still make some improvements on textures (roads). I don't think that a rapid and constant fly-thought is the best way to show off your work.

Yet, it's very good!

Yet another shopping mall animation!

Project by HVC Arquitetura

Yorik, sensacional !!!
Ou melhor: show de bola

amazing work guys!

World cup stadiums in the blender game engine

This is a job we've recently made with Chico Ortiz for an exhibition currently running at the SESC Pompéia in São Paulo, until 30th of June.

The idea was to show a couple of stadiums interactively, so you can see their shape and surroundings, then enter them and experiment how it feels to play football there... Maíra and me made the modeling, while Chico made the game logic, python scripting, the menus and all the game system. Everything runs in the blender game engine, and is displayed in 2 consoles in the expo (on first floor, next to the spiral stair):











Here is a video of the in-game feel...

And last but not least, here are the files! Here are the 4 stadiums (74Mb zip file). In short we'll put the complete game files...

Open Mall shopping project - the files

This is a shopping mall project we made recently. All the composition was made by hand sketching and directly in 3D. We received from the client a basic layout with the gross areas of shops, offices and parking, and mounted the project on top of it. Since it is a first idea that the client wanted in order to "win" the project, we then focued on producing images that would convey the general "feel" of the project, instead of solving each and every detail, but that's hopefully for a next phase.











The final images are in the next post, and for who is even more interested, the blend file is available here...

Open Mall shopping project

Here are a couple of renderings of a project we recently made. This time, we not only made the 3D but the whole architecture project!





















In a next post I'll show the project composition phase and post the 3D file...

I also made a fluxbox theme with that image...

saving previous website theme...

Tes murs ne sont pas droits, comme l'architecte Numérobis dans Astérix et Cléopâtre!

One more hand-drawn image...



project by Adriana Furst

Hi Timo,
It shoud be easy to do, but since the whole blender python API is being reformatted for version 2.50, it's wiser not to modify scripts before it is ready. Then, I'll port all my scripts to 2.50, and I can also do that modification.
Cheers
Yorik

Automounting usb devices with udev only

Fiddling a little bit with udev rules to automount usb drives. Udev is just amazing, can do about whatever you want!
The following rules must be added to one of the .rule files in /etc/udev/rules.d (for example: 98usb-storage.rule):

#Custom USB Mounting
ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="sdb[1-9]", DRIVERS=="usb-storage", NAME="%k"
ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="sdb[1-9]", DRIVERS=="usb-storage", SYMLINK+="usbdisk-%k", GROUP="plugdev"
ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="sdb[1-9]", DRIVERS=="usb-storage", RUN+="/bin/mkdir -p /media/%k"
ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="sdb[1-9]", DRIVERS=="usb-storage", RUN+="/bin/chown root:plugdev /media/%k"
ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="sdb[1-9]", DRIVERS=="usb-storage", RUN+="/bin/chmod 775 /media/%k"
ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="sdb[1-9]", DRIVERS=="usb-storage", RUN+="/bin/mount -t vfat -o 
noauto,rw,user,uid=1000,gid=1/dev/%k /media/%k"

ACTION=="remove", KERNEL=="sdb[1-9]", RUN+="/bin/umount -l /media/%k"
ACTION=="remove", KERNEL=="sdb[1-9]", RUN+="/bin/rmdir /media/%k"

Info comes from here:
http://reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Udev

Hi,
I'm using your Cross Section Script. It's very useful when designing paper models. Thank you very much for sharing it with the world!

The only thing that's a little bit annoying: The new object is always created in layer 1. Is there a way to make it appear in the layer you are currently working in/in the layer the "cutted" object resides in?

Greetings

Timo

A idéia é ótima. Mas o desenho está fora da escala real. Apenas, no máximo, pouco mais do que quatro automóveis de largura tem a via. Não caberia tudo nessa largura como está, ainda que fossem anões ou crianças acima representados.

Grazie per la risposta !!!
per quanto possibile mi impegno a divulgare l'utilizzo di blender in campo architettonico, anche attraverso eventuali tutorial da mettere in rete.
Ciao a presto

Grazie Nicola,
Sono molte cose che si puó fare senza essere un programmatore: Scrivere documentazione o articoli, parlare del software intorno a te, etc..
Per blender: http://www.blender.org/community/get-involved/
Per freecad: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=FAQ

a quick image we did for a school extension proposal:

in che modo posso contribuire se non sono un programmatore ?

Complimenti Yorik's, il sito è molte interessante e soprattutto il workflow con blender.

O que que é isso meu Deus... ficaram maravilhosos!

Two more hand drawings, 100% done in gimp... Project by Adriana Furst

Thanks for the comments guys! I also hope we arrive at something like ArchiCAD one day...

Am an architectural technologist in South Africa. Have tried many CAD/Modelling softwares and I have to thank you for the inspirational work (tutorials and stuff like this) that shows it is possible to do awesome work using tools such as blender, gimp, inkscape and (just found this today) ngPlant

Will be making far more regular visits to soak up your inspirational stuff

I like to get a CAD program in Linux/Ubuntu witch could replace ArchiCAD from the Windows environment and of course if I could get any substitute for Google SketchUp for Secondary Schools it would be a great hit.

Simple python code browser in emacs

On my way through perfect emacs setup...
It's actually much easier than I thought. Just install speedbar from your software repository, then put sr-speedbar.el in your lisp folder, and add this to your .emacs file:

(require 'sr-speedbar)

then, invoke it with M-x sr-speedbar-open. Navigate with arrows, expand with Space and jump to item with Return... Complete info here...

Casas sustentáveis?

Aqui vai o texto de uma entrevista que fiz um tempo atrás, que acabou não sendo publicada. Em vez de jogar fora, achei melhor coloca-lo aqui... Se discordar de algo ou tiver mais explicações, por favor comente!

- Existe um interesse maior do consumidor em utilizar produtos sustentáveis mesmo eles elevando o valor final obra?

Aqui realmente não tenho muita ideia de até que ponto isso vai... Uma coisa está certa, existe um interesse muito grande que não existia antes. É só você entrar em qualquer loja que venda materiais de construção ou abrir qualquer revista sobre construção e decoração, você vai ver que o interesse está bem lá. Tudo virou "eco".
Também tem que ficar consciente que ser sustentável é muito mais uma questão de atitude, quero dizer, escolher tal técnica, material, comportamento sobre tal outro, do que comprar materiais etiquetados como sustentáveis. Para dar um exemplo mais claro, você é muito mais sustentável quando recicla seu lixo do que quando sua casa é feita de tijolo "eco". Não custa necessariamente mais caro de ser sustentável.
Dai não sei como se responde a essa questão. O interesse está ai, com certeza esse interesse incita as pessoas a olhar materiais ditos sustentáveis, mas até onde pagarão é uma questão de estudo de mercado...

- Mesmo levando em conta que o custo de uma construção sustentável é, pelo menos, 30% maior do que uma construção normal o governo pretende construir moradias populares que atendam a padrões de sustentabilidade. O valor cobrado pelas casas será apenas 10% maior do que o cobrado atualmente pelas casas da CDHU. É possível construir moradias sustentáveis populares a baixo custo? Como tornar essa obra mais barata?

É muito variável. Basicamente, sustentabilidade, em arquitetura, quer dizer algo assim: tornar-se, o máximo possível, independente das redes de abastecimento e evacuação, como: água, energia elétrica, esgotos e coleta de lixo. Ser sustentável é tentar consumir menos água, menos eletricidade, e gerar menos água usada no esgoto e menos lixo. Uma parte enorme disso todo pode ser feita simplesmente mudando suas atitudes, sem gastar um real.
Claro que a indústria criou rapidamente toda uma gama de produtos destinados a ajudar você a cumprir essa tarefa, tais como aquecedores solares (que fazem você usar menos energia), materiais mais isolantes (que fazem você usar menos ar condicionado) ou circuitos de reuso de água (que fazem você usar menos água).
Você também pode (e deve) considerar as redes das quais devemos menos depender não só como nossas redes públicas urbanas, mas como o nosso planeta todo. Dai, também, vira importante não consumir recursos ou gerar poluição. Ali entram materiais ditos sustentáveis, como madeiras de reflorestamento, que vem de florestas plantadas e não nativas, ou materiais cujo processo de fabricação gerou menos poluição ou consumiu menos energia.
Mas como você agora já deve entender, de longe o maior ganho de sustentabilidade que você pode conseguir está nessas atitudes simples, e não tanto na compra de materiais eco. Com certeza você pode gastar muito mais que 30% com todos os últimos acessórios, e também com um gasto de 10% amais você já pode fazer uma mudança enorme.

- Que produtos você recomenda para pessoas que queiram deixar sua casa mais sustentável? (algo pratico e simples)

Muito mais importante que comprar produtos é adotar atitudes sustentáveis: gastar menos água, menos energia elétrica, e gerar menos lixo e água no esgoto. Só tentando fazer isso você vai conseguir muito mais resultado que comprando produtos e materiais feitos, afinal, para ajudar você a fazer isso. Tome banhos mais curtos, use menos a máquina de lavar roupas, separe e lave o lixo para coleta específica (ou, se não tiver, para que os catadores possam fazer um trabalho melhor), faça compostagem com lixo orgânico se você tiver um quintal, apague as luzes nos cômodos onde não tem ninguém, etc. Pense que a redução que você vai ver nas sua conta de luz tem um impacto igual no planeta, provavelmente muito maior que se você usa tal ou tal material de construção.
Algo muito importante e muito simples de se fazer, especialmente importante no Brasil, é comprar somente madeira de reflorestamento. Hoje em dia não custa mais caro por isso (começa até a ficar difícil encontrar madeira NÃO sustentável), simplesmente tem que verificar que tudo que você compra de madeira, como madeira de construção ou móveis, seja feito com madeira de reflorestamento. Produtos industriais geralmente tem etiquetas, e marceneiros tem documentos de origem da madeira.

- Nas obras enterradas para uma construção sustentável que medidas “sustentáveis” são utilizadas?

Ai o ponto principal é o esgoto. Em regiões rurais, onde não tem rede de esgotos, o método tradicional é fazer um grande poço. As suas águas usadas vão cair dentro do poço, e, lentamente, se infiltrar no solo. Em regiões urbanas, você simplesmente conecta as suas tubulações de evacuação à rede de esgotos, e joga tudo ali. O resultado é o mesmo, você joga seus dejetos na natureza. Uma técnica relativamente simples de executar é instalar uma fossa séptica entre os tubos de saída da sua casa e a natureza. É, para resumir, um grande caixão de concreto, fechado, enterrado. Dentro da fossa, bactérias digerem as suas impurezas e a água que sai da fossa limpou tanto que dá para usar para coisas como irrigar plantas. Não custa muito caro no orçamento de uma casa e é fácil de instalar.

- Para erguer as paredes são utilizados que tipos de materiais?

Dentro de uma parede, os materiais geralmente utilizados são, em comparação do resto, pouco prejudiciais à natureza. Tijolo é, afinal, um produto natural. No Brasil, também não temos o problema que tem nos paises frios, onde as suas paredes tem que conservar a energia que você gastou para aquecer o ambiente. Existe controversa sobre o cimento, cujo processo de fabricação utilize e gera materiais poluentes, mas não temos hoje muitas alternativas a não ser construir em madeira ou em adobe (barro cru).

A pintura é um ponto onde você pode agir mais facilmente, pinturas são tradicionalmente fabricadas com vários componentes poluentes. Mas existem hoje vários tipos de pinturas mais respeitosas do meio ambiente.

- Quais os principais itens sustentáveis que ajudam na economia de energia elétrica?

Eu diria que o item principal é você mesmo. Quem consome energia é você, muito antes da sua casa. Usando menos seus aparelhos eletrodomésticos, você certamente conseguirá uma diminuição bem mais drástica de consumo do que usando aparelhos que ajudam você com isso.

Mas para dar uma resposta melhor, se você for olhar o consumo em Watts de cada um dos seus aparelhos eletrodomésticos, você vai ver que um dos que mais consomem é o chuveiro. Dai um dos aparelhos mais úteis são aquecedores solares de água. Tem diversos modelos e sistemas, e hoje em dia você encontre em todas as grandes lojas de equipamentos de casa. São sistemas feitos de um panel solar, onde a água circula, o sol esquenta ela, e ela fica armazenada em um tanque isolado. Quando você liga o chuveiro, a água já vem mais ou menos quente (dependendo se teve muito sol), e o chuveiro gasta muito menos para esquentar (você pode deixar ele na posição "verão" no inverno, e desligar ele completamente no verão).

- Na área externa/lazer da casa o que se pode fazer para deixar sustentável?

Ai não sei!

- Como funciona o processo de armazenamento da água da chuva? Como essa água pode ser usada no dia a dia?

É bem fácil armazenar. Basta montar uma cisterna (pode ser construída ou comprada pronta), instalar coletores de água nos beirais do seu telhado, se já não tiver, e enviar com tubos a água dos coletores na cisterna. Os cuidados para ter são simples: evitar que muitas impurezas que caem no telhado (folhas principalmente) caiam na cisterna, colocando grelhas nas saídas dos coletores, evitar que luz solar entra na cisterna (criaria algas), e evitar que insectos entram, colocando tela anti-mosquitos em todas as aberturas possíveis. Se você for colocar essa cisterna o mais alto possível (mas mais baixo que o telhado, claro, para que a água possa cair dentro), será fácil de usar essa água para várias coisas como regar plantas, lavar carros ou mesmo, o que é um pouco mais complexo mas absolutamente possível, descarga de água de vasos sanitários. Resumindo, para tudo que não for beber, comer ou higiene pessoal.

Rodoshopping

An older shopping project we sketched in 2008 that I wanted to repost... It never went further than this very preliminary stage...

The winners

A sketch for cgtalk daily sketch...

Playing with FreeCAD...

I just made this little "thing" while searching for a cool new splash screen. I got very impressed by Form:uLA yesterday (specially this work)... Kind of 3D Lebbeus Woods...







The FreeCAD file is here...

Small update to fluxtwitter... It now takes a default icon from monsterID if the user avatar cannot be loaded...
http://yorik.uncreated.net/scripts/fluxtwitter.py

Of course, my e-mail: nospam@mail.ru

Hi, Yorik!
I very interesting such architectural servis. I am an arcchitect. I have few drowing for small private house approx. 250 sq.m., and I interecting good visualisation, execution drawings and animation overview. Is it still possible for your group? Which country are you stay? May I understand approx. price for your service?
Best regards,
up_today_arch
uptodayarch.blogspot.com

2 last sketches for the cgtalk daily sketch

More images of a recent 3D work. Project by HVC arquitetura

Very cool!
I have a Bamboo (an older version) and I love it. I'm very curious about the feel of this Pen & Touch.

Playing with the wacom

Following the example of Chico & Cícero, I got myself a new wacom tablet (bamboo pen&touch), what a difference with the (RIP) genius... The touch is completely different, the pentip and the pas surface are much harder and the pen can be tilted very low. The touchpad is a bit annoying (sometimes it detects a hand movement while you are drawing), so I quickly set up a mechanism to disable it. The installation under linux was a bit of pain, but now it works like a charm. And it has an eraser. Here are the first drawings I did with it...











For who is struggling to install the thing under linux, I wrote my method here:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=51279

Your 64bit ubuntu binaries for FreeCAD have been a big help for me! Thanks very much for your efforts and contribution; hopefully it will help me pay it forward!

fluxtwitter upgrade

I made a small upgrade to my little twitter app, you can now have tweets stack up until you read them. When you close the window, the list gets reduced to the normal number of tweets. Get new version here:
http://yorik.uncreated.net/scripts/fluxtwitter.py

Probably an emo hacker.

Lame... lame script kiddie... a "hacker" using Windows and MS Word? hehehe
I almost feel sorry for him

I wanna see the flor plan¡

Site defacement

Yesterday morning my site got hacked by a script kiddie. He just changed the homepage to this nice piece of art:



I found it almost imediately, and it was just a matter of removing the index.htm file the guy put there. No big harm. I changed all the passwords, fearing that the guy had ftp access and read all my php files, and checked again the file permissions of everything to make sure no directory had 777 ( = rwxrwxrwx, writable-by-anyone) permission.

Now to the interesting bits. There is appearently some competition between that kind of hackers, and as soon as they hack a site, they put it online so they can raise their ranking. Our hacker did put our hacked site online. So we already had his nickname: syrianspider. Other people talk about him. I of course downloaded his index file for study. It is made with Microsoft Word (that's a good hacker, isn't it?). Inside, you find this:

<o:documentProperties>
<o:Author>Yousef Alnamli</o:Author>
<o:Template>Normal</o:Template>
<o:LastAuthor>Yousef Alnamli</o:LastAuthor>
<o:Revision>12</o:Revision>
<o:TotalTime>33</o:TotalTime>
<o:Created>2009-12-19T10:56:00Z</o:Created>

A hacker who puts his own name inside his hack files??? I couldn't believe the guy was so idiot. But wait. I have access logs for my site. At the time of the hack, I found several lines of this type:

78.110.96.5 - - [05/Apr/2010:15:54:58 +0000] "GET /test/sp.php?dir=/domains/54193
/web/yorik HTTP/1.0" 200 34926 "http://yorik.uncreated.net/test/sp.php?dir=/domains/54193
/web/yorik/test" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3)
Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3"

It is weird, because I'm sure there is no test/sp.php file on my site. After googling a bit, I found several places mentioning that filename to add a new user to a database. That new user can then use the database to create new files. It is likely a very common site hacking method. So, I have the IP address from where the hacking occured. It is indeed the IP address of a proxy server located in Syria.
My friend Fabio did some more research, and found out the complete identity of the hacker. He has a large identity on the net, and even a facebook page... Indeed the guy seems to have signed his file with his own name!!! I found that entire experience extremely funny. Now I still need to find out how to protect the site against such attacks, but Fabio will surely come up with a good solution...

Renderings of a house in the nowhere. Project by Ferraz & Santa Cruz arquitetos

Couple of quick renderings.

Another harmony drawing...

Hi Richard,
I could but I cannot guarantee you when I can have it done...
Would that suit you?

Hey,

Is there any way you could make a large maple that a treehouse could be placed in?

Thanks a lot!

Hello, Yorik. I'm a relative Blender newcomer (3 months near-daily effort). Your various on-line news and tutorial items have been a major help to me. Many thanks for your fine work! The text/html items are convenient--my access to many on-line video sources is limited here in Tianjin, China.

I am working on Green Building initiatives with the Binhai Planning and Architectural Design Co. Hopefully we can bring some work to you someday, as I enjoy what I see you all doing.

2 more "randomic creations"... First one made with harmony, other one with alchemy...

Drawn in less than 2 minutes with Harmony



http://storage.dangertree.net/harmonyStrokes/harmony.html

Hi Ralph,
Thanks!
It is a real project (not mine, I just did the illustration)... It's pretty refreshing to draw with hand techniques from time to time, and fortunately I have a client that prefers drawings like that to traditional 3D images, so regularly I do some for her...

Congratulations, great work! Is it based on a real project, or just fantasy?

Another house handpainting! Project by Adriana Furst



This time done with myPaint, and a bit of Gimp on top...

Frei Caneca competition project



This is our proposal for the Frei Caneca street reurbanization competition in São Paulo. The project was made with Maíra, Sander and Angelica. Given the extreme diversity of people, uses and social contexts of the Frei Caneca, we choosed not to make a project, which would dictate its rules over very different people and situations, and would make the street "beg" for the project execution to the authorities.
Instead, we designed a bottom-up system where everyone can propose, rate and execute small "micro-projects". No masterplan, no fundraising, no approval, no architect. If everybody does his part, wonderful. If only one does, the street has already gained improvement.

You don't make a street work better because you change the pavement and the trashbins... It has almost no importance at all. A street is made of people who live there and people who use the street, and what makes a street a nice street is the intricate relationship between all of them. for who is interested in the subject, read the fantastic book of Jane Jacobs, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities". She said (in 1961) many, many things that apply perfectly to São Paulo (and many other cities around the world)...

hai v met in dataranpahlawan

A funny appearence in the Diário de Pernambuco newspaper...



http://www.diariodepernambuco.com.br/2010/02/24/urbana6_0.asp#

3D cities

Google Earth now has quite a lot of cities almost fully modeled and textured with their new Building maker tool (which is VERY interesting but unfortunately only runs on windows). I put a couple of examples below for you to play the "which city is this?" game. Just pass your mouse on an image to see the answer...

Thanks!!

I just stopped by to pay you a compliment, I saw your Teatro Magico Buddy press theme on Deviant Art Website, and it is probably one of the most creative, visually stimulating that I have ever seen! Great job, I hope to see more of your work soon!

Blender 2.50 and 2.49 together

A couple of days ago, the 2.49 scripts were removed from the blender trunk version (2.50). This means that when you install the 2.50 version, the 2.49 won't work fully anymore. But it is quite easy to make both work side by side:

- The user settings aready use different files (.B.blend for 2.49 and .B25.blend for 2.50) so nothing to worry about
- The scripts folders can be set to a custom path. What I do is to keep the standard .blender folder for 2.50 so it gets updated when I recompile (actually it is a link to the .blender folder inside my compilation folder), and I created a .blender24 folder, containing the old scripts. Then, in blender 2.49, set the script path to that one in the preferences, and the job is done!
- You can then create two different links (or two different launch icons) to the two blender executables. If you are on linux, you can even create a "blender" link in your /home/user/bin folder pointing to the blender 2.50 executable, so it overrides your system-installed blender...

Hi dove,
I don't really know, but I guess it should be easy, try searching on the net for "blender second life" and you'll surely find much info. For example, this one looks good: http://www.masterprim.com/class/how-to-use-blender-create-second-life-sculpted-prim

Cheers
Yorik

Greetings Yorik. I'm just starting to learn about working in 3d and the tree making tutorial is very appreciated. I was wondering how the trees might be made into sculpties and exported into Second Life.

Note to self: for the record, the last 2 site layouts... I think I'll always keep a copy now, will be funny later.

Hey Yorik !
To change the theme you can also go to Blender User Preferences (Ctrl+Alt+U or change one of the editors to it) and click in the theme tab. I loved how the theme window is organized by the way (using the editor icons).

I'm also trying to migrate to 2.5 whenever possible. Saving constantly is still needed. Nevertheless scripting there is so much better than in 2.49 that I'm loving it.

Thanks for posting your terrific looking work! We've had problems with Sketchup and are looking for an alternative. Your best words were at your conclusion: "since rarely, in the architecture field, your client or even your boss has the smallest idea of the time needed to mount complex scenes, not to talk about rendering times. This added to the marvelous habit of changing the project continuously." Truer words have not been spoken.
James
www.ibigroup.com

Switching to blender 2.5

The new blender version 2.50 is now in sufficient good shape to be fully customized, and to me that was a very important point. So I swapped my main work version to the new one. Of course, since several functions are still not there (and specially almost all the python scripts), it's good to keep a 2.49 version around for a couple of months.

I had a bit of trouble understanding how to change the default theme (You must go into the outliner, set it to display the user preferences, then navigate to the theme and replace the theme name "Blender" by another name, which will create a new - editable - theme.

Other small thing was the middle mouse button that rotates the view instead of panning. Same thing here, you must export the default keymap, then change its name and reimport it, in order to create an editable keymap. Then, swap the view2d.pan and view3d.rotate values.

I still cannot seem to export my new theme, but as soon as it works I'll post it around here...

Hi Derek, in blender you can split and join windows, heve a look at http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Interface/Window_system/Arranging_frames
It's very powerful, you can design your workspace as you like, decide where you want the buttons, etc. Hope it helps!

Hi there Yorik - I am brand new to Blender and hope to use it in my CNC hobby - thanks for the theme downloads, they look great - a newbie question however, how does one get the lower button pane to display on the left of the screen as seen in your screenshots - many thanks and keep well

It is too good!!! (sorry my bad english)

Lecture at the Campus Party 2010



for who'll be around, I'll be giving a lecture about blender and architecture at the Campus Party in são Paulo , on January 28th, at 16h00...

Thanks guys! fi1222 your work is pretty amazing! I'll keep an eye on it, curious to see what you do with the plants!

Hi Yorik. The amount of material you have made available on this site is truly impressive. Thanks a lot for your efforts for the community.

I am no more than an amateur architect doing blender scenes for personal enjoyment. I have been working on a 1930s style religious building which I published on blender underground and for which I plan to use some of your vegetation resources. If you have time to give it a look, I would be very happy to know you opinion/advice.

Here is the link: [deleted because link forbidden ...] you can find it on blender underground forums, "WIP" section, thread "New Buildings".

Hey! The foliage you've made is amazing, and I am currently in the process of making a Blender-Unity game. I don't know when it will or if it will be completed, but I was wondering if you would let me use your plants in it (Of course I would give you and your site all of the credits for anything I use of yours). You can E-mail me at nospam@hotmail.com, Thanks!

Mountain office park animation

Our latest blender work. Enjoy! Project by HVC arquitetura

Hi Mohammad,
Well animating a car is pretty easy, since you don't need to deform it, so you don't need to use bones. There are two easy ways:

• method 1: put your car somewhere. Press i (record keyframe), then select LocRotScale. Then, go 10 frames further. Move the car to a new position. Press i and LocRotScale again, etc, etc...


• method 2: place your car somewhere. Create a Bezier curve. Edit the bezier curve so it represents the path your car must follow. Move the car to the start point of the curve. Parent the car to the bezier curve like this: select the car, shift-select the curve, then Ctrl+P, and select Follow Path.

After that you can play through your frames and see if the movement is good. If you used method 1, in the NLA editor you can move or delete your keyframes.
Hope it helps!
Cheers
Yorik

Hi;Can you please describe me how to animate car movement in Blender.Thanks.

Hello; am new into this site and am very glad to come across this it co's am new into Modelling and Animation. so am very sure this site will help me alots in achieving what i want to achieve.

dwg to dxf converter for linux

This python application converts a dwg file to a dxf 2007 file with same name. To use it, you must have wine installed, and set the correct path to the EveryDWG utility by editing this script. The EveryDWG utility can be downloaded free of charge from the opendwg website but you must agree to their license terms before downloading.

Instructions and download here.

dxf thumbnailer for linux



This application generates a 128x128px PNG image showing the contents of a DXF file. In order to speed up the image generation process, only a few types of entities are read, so complex files might not get rendered accurately or even fail to render. In order to use this program, you must configure your file manager to use it as a thumbnailer for dxf file type (mime type: image/x-dxf).

Instructions and download here.

Dear Yorik,

Andy Kiki and me would like to wish you all the best for this new year.

Love,

Eric

Good, free games on linux

I decided to write this article to show a couple of games I like, that are free and run on linux. I am not trying to do a "10 best linux games" article (Try searching for "best linux games" on google, you'll find many cool things), but rather to illustrate a couple of games that I like much, that are free and run on linux. The linux gaming scenery is evolving quite well now, aside the traditional open-source games, more and more commercial games are beginning to support the linux platform. But nothing like those good old free ones that are always around...

1. Flightgear: A realistic flight simulator, for a zen & relaxing time



FlightGear is today a gorgeous flight simulator. It exists since a long time already, and always had amazing features like an excellent flight model, many fan-made airplane and the whole world available to fly over. Recently they made a total conversion of the graphics system and, even if the sceneries still don't match more famous professional games, the realism is now quite high. There is also a meteorologic system that takes real-time info from the net, multiplayer connection, a mapping utility, etc. Only for flight sims passionates probably, but I like it much.

Website: http://www.flightgear.org/
In-game video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOgSoeCxXb0
How to install: Directly from the Debian/Ubuntu software repository
Additional downloads: Sceneries,planes

2. OpenArena: A give-me-blood-immediately adrenaline-rich first-person shooter



OpenArena is a first-person shooter, similar to Quake. Actually it is built upon an earlier version of the Quake 3 engine, thanks to the cool attitude of the Quake developers who release older versions of their engine for free. Thanks to that, OpenArena can use the wide amout of Quake 3 maps. OpenArena is a simple, intense, multiplayer adrenaline-pushing game. It is best played on the internet, against other humans, but you can also play alone against bots. Although graphically pretty simple compared to commercial games, it is one of the most widespread 1st-person shooters on linux, so you always find intense battles on the net to merge into.

Website: http://www.openarena.ws/
In-game video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCeGTniBOj8
How to install: Directly from the Debian/Ubuntu software repository.
Additional downloads: maps, more maps.
Try also: Sauerbraten, Nexuiz, Tremulous, Assault-Cube

3. TA Spring: A glorious and gorgeous real-time strategy game



Total Annihilation Spring started as a project to reuse the assets of the famous comercial game Total Annihilation, but in a modern 3D environment. Since then, it has now evolved into something much bigger, a complete Real Time Strategy engine. You can plug in it the original TA game assets, but also many other games, mods, maps, availables on the net. It is a modern, graphically rich, multiplayer RTS game. You can play on the internet, in a local network or alone against bots. The installation is a bit hard, but once you succeed you get your reward...

Website: http://springrts.com/
In-game video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1K6Y9fYY94
How to install: Follow this guide.
Additional downloads: Once Spring is installed, you need to add games and maps.

4. FreeCiv: One of the best games ever...



Everyone knows the famous Civilization, right? I'm surely not the only one to pretend it was the best computer game ever made until today. You must grow your civilization militarily, scientifically, politically and commercially, so you crush the other civilizations and take the control of the world, simple as that. This is a free (and somewhat "bettered") version that allows multiplayer games, several game types, etc...

Website: http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
In-game video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LM0MEyTwH8
How to install: Directly from the Debian/Ubuntu software repository.

5. Warzone 2100: Another classic revived.



Whoever already played Warzone 2100 will never forget the thunder of the howitzer gun on the plains. This is quite an old game, with simple graphics compared to today games, but few real-time strategy games have been able to render the battlefield with so much intensity. It is a typical RTS, harvest for resources, build your base, research new weapons, build units and crush the enemy, but it is one of the best. Warzone 2100 was once a commercial game, but has some time ago been released under a GPL license, and is now maintained by volunteers.

Website: http://wz2100.net/
In-game video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98BoUFS7UZM
How to install: Directly from the Debian/Ubuntu software repository.

6. Regnum Online: A state-of-the-art free MMORPG



Regnum online is there since some time already but has been steadily improved over time and has now quite impressive graphics. It is a classical Massive Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game like World of Warcraft or Archlord. You begin alone, but quickly you need to team up with other players to achieve quests, you begin to form small militias with those people who become your friends, and eventually you enter wars against other player groups... If you never played a MMORPG, have definitely a try. The game is totally free, and they send goodies (special weapons, etc) on the website too, but that are absolutely not necessary.

Website: http://www.regnumonline.com.ar/
In-game video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rl8SDv4ABw
How to install: They have their own installer here. You must create an user on the website too.

7. Privateer: "Die by the fielthy weapon you adore!"



Privateer is an old space fighter game based on the Wing Commander serie. Differently to Wing Commander, where you were a military space fighter pilot in a war, in Privateer you are a free-lancer pilot, taking missions from spaceport to spaceports. You do the missions for money, which you spend in arming and upgrading your spaceship. This version is an excellent remake of the original game.

Website: http://privateer.sourceforge.net/
In-game video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88TPOvBwo3Q
How to install: They have their own installer here
Try also: Vega Strike

8. Beneath a Steel Sky: Where are the adventure games gone today?



I don't know about you, but I'm too sad the times of the good old adventure games, where you had good laughs trying to solve absurd problems in cool 2D landscape are gone... I spent hours on that type of games. Fortunately there is an open-source engine called SCUMM that is able to play several of those games. Beneath a steel sky was one I had never finished at that time, and, besides the old-time low-res graphics, I enjoyed much in retaking.

Website: None
In-game video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm7V-VrlJuo
How to install: Directly from the Debian/Ubuntu software repository.
Try also: The Flight of the Amazon Queen, Day of the Tentacle

9. Shadow of the Comet: Abandonware!



Abandonware designates those old, I mean VERY old games, that are not technically free, but that have been abandoned by the publisher, so nobody cares anymore if you download and play the game. There are thousands of those someties excellent games on sites like Abandonia or Abandonwareme. Usually they were not made directly for linux or any other modern OS, so you must run them inside an emulator such as dosbox. Don't expect good graphics, but expect good games. Shadow of the Comet is a slow-paced, creepy lovercraft-style adventure I liked a lot.

Website: None
In-game video: http://www.viddler.com/explore/coulis/videos/2/.
How to install: Install dosbox first, then download the game from any abandonware site, unzip it and run its executable file like this from the terminal: dosbox /path-to/GAME.EXE
Try also: Eye of the Beholder, Dune 1, Flashback, Wing Commander, Pirates!

10. Urban Terror: A free Counter-strike



This is a first-person shooter, similar to OpenArena, but made only for 2-teams (SWAT vs terrorists) game. You cannot play alone, you need to enter an internet game or create your own with friends. It is based on the Quake3 engine, and is really as good as the original counter-strike game.

Website: http://www.urbanterror.net/
In-game video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjowhAU3mg4
How to install: They have their own installer here

More...

More and more, games on linux are becoming decent. An excellent place to keep in your bookmarks (or add to your repositories!) is playdeb or the ubuntu gamers arena.

Have fun!

Happy 2010 to all the lost souls landing here today!