Finally found a way to move Pivot point on Lightwave Modeler 8.5

Damn it. Most of the tutorials on the web are catered to the pre-LW 8.5 era. But on Lightwave Modeler 8.5, to move the Pivot point of an object:

Select [View], click on the Pivot button under "Layers"

That's it.

Ebook for dowload but ,....

Here's a site called The Last Fantasy -to download eBook and Magazines, but I really don't know for sure how it works ....

Lightwave 8 and Mask

I created a green version of Lightwave 7 and 8 on my removable hard disk and it worked pretty OK so far. However last night I was working on rendering a shot in the office, I notice that the File save option only provides me 4 options like .tga and a few proprietary file format. However, when I open the same green version of Lightwave 8 from my removable hard disk at home, I saw the full list with all the .JPG and Photoshop file formats in it (several dozens of them). I remembered that I previously installed and then uninstalled Lightwave 8 from my home machine. So I think my green version is not really completed, as some of the setting and some of the files may had been installed at the system level.

However, this doesn't make my portable version of Lightwave 8 particularly not useful. In fact, I found that the Targa format (.tga) contains the masking alpha channel, while the .psd version DOES NOT. What a shock.

To create a masked image after rendered and saved as .tga from Lightwave, I did the following:

- Open the .tga file in Photoshop.
- Click on Channel's tab on layer window, you will see a "Alpha 1" channel.
- Drag and Drop the alpha channel to the "Load Channel as selection icon" (at the bottom of the layer window).
- Click layer tab to switch back to regular layer view.
- If the layer name is in italic, double click on it to turn it into a regular layer.
- Click on add layer mask button at the bottom of layer screen.
- Done. Now the objects are masked.

However, I find that somehow the masked objects has a border which doesn't look too good. So usually before the "Click add layer mask button" step (which the selection is still on), I select Photoshop manual [Select]->[Modify...]->[Contract...] I usually choose 2 pixel to shrink.

Also, you can take advantage of the "History tab" and undo your error in case you need to.

OpenOffice better than Adobe Acrobat on converting Powerpoint to PDF

I found out yesterday that the online conversion (I used the free trial for the paid service) provided by Adobe web site to convert a PowerPoint to PDF is inferior comparing with the feature provide by the free office suite OpenOffice. The one created by OpenOffice was much smaller in file size, provides more options on customization. And the best part is that it's free.

No more Adobe online PDF conversion for me ever.

Not impressed by SteayMove plug-in

I installed SteadyMove plugin for Adobe Premiere 2.0 and I was not impressed. It doesn't really seem to be doing much correction. Then again, maybe it's because it's not the Pro version. In fact, I cannot even find the NON-PRO version of SteadyMove mentioning in web site.

Another reason could be that the video source I provided was pretty crappy. I was taking some video with my Nikon 3200 digital camera, which only yields 15 fps. The lack of frame rate could contribute a lot to the lack of material to make the perfect calculation.

Lightwave 8.5 and Y'z shadow

Y'z shadow (part of FlyakiteOSX, a set of app to make your Windows XP machine looks like a MacOSX box) can cause the window rendering on Lightwave 8.5 mess up. So make sure you turn Y'z shadow off before you run Lightwave.

No green version for Adobe Premiere 6.5

I was trying to make Adobe Premiere 6.5 a green version (removable harddisk friendly) and it failed. :-<