Mac Pro forgets mouse tracking speed and desktop icons on Mountain Lion: fix! 26 Jul 2013 11:52 PM (12 years ago)
Can’t really remember how long I had this issue with my Mac Pro: I use the fastest possible mouse speed and need function keys to work as function keys.
Simple, set this in the preferences, right? I don’t know why, but the settings were not saved properly. Every time I cold booted the Mac Pro I would get the default time freeze mouse speed, natural scrolling (which is simply evil, yet I suspect someday will become the only option) and of course Mac function keys — something that kills functionality in just about every 3D program I know of.
I tried zapping the pram, as this usually fixes glitches, but to no avail. After a quick Google search I found several similar issues reported in mac rumors and at Apple’s discussion forums but no solution.
So I kinda accepted the issue, and reset manually the mouse speed. There were some other minor issues, such as icons not staying put on the desktop or finder telling me that it was the first time I was opening an application… that I use every day.
But I could live with all this, it was the mouse speed that really was annoying.
The fix? Repairing permissions. From the terminal, I ran: diskutil repairPermissions /
It took a while to scan the disk, and found several incorrect permissions, especially on Java VM files and folders. I wasn’t expecting much when I tried out this, and did so only because I stumbled upon this tip while looking for possible compatibility issues with a new Nvidia graphic card I was interested into.
Lo and behold, it worked. It’s a month now that every morning icons stay nailed on their spot, applications are remembered and the mouse speed is what I expect it to be.
So give it a try, it should do no harm and maybe will fix the issue for you as well.
Just another hack: backup everything, my friends 30 Dec 2012 1:35 PM (12 years ago)
What was this? The fourth, maybe the fifth time this blog went down.
First time, the low cost hosting company decided to pull a disappearing act, and away it went. With all cyber’s files.
Second time, someone defaced the homepage.
Third, fourth and maybe fifth, “malware” was detected. No, not that kind of malware, the one that messes up your UV maps, it’s a specific breed of useless, malicious scripts that get installed into blogs and websites.
Lucky me I keep a backup of everything now (an habit that goes hand in hand with doing 3D work, but I wasn’t smart enough to apply The Rule to this blog the first time). So I packed my things, and looked for another hosting provider, hoping that it will be more secure.
ZDNet Clock works in Lion (Overclocking Mac Pro) 29 Jun 2012 4:28 AM (13 years ago)
Okay, I finally did it. Upgraded to Lion all my Macs.
Why now, with Mountain Lion coming in a few weeks? Don’t know, just felt that way. I usually switch to another OS when it’s stable, but work and other commitments prevented me to switch to Lion until now.
When I upgraded my “inherited” 2008 Mac Pro (once at the office, now acting as a render slave at home), I wanted to try the good old ZDNet Clock tool.
For those unfamiliar with ZDNet Clock, it’s a simple app that overclocks 3,1 Mac Pros… by increasing the system clock!
This is not the best way to overclock anything, but I always found ZDNet surprisingly stable and reliable. If you go on an overclock spree and move the frequency slider all the way to the right, the Mac Pro won’t boot anymore, but once you find the sweet spot for your system it can bring a 10-15% speed increase without hassles.
For my 2008 8 core Mac Pro, clocked at 2.8Ghz, the sweet spot is around 450Mhz, a 12% speedup. Not too shabby.
However, ZDNet clock does not work under Lion and there are a lot of posts around about this, with update requests, and some people advocating to keep a Leopard partition just to run it.
Fact is, it does work just fine with Lion. It does not work when the 64bit Mac Os kernel is loaded, but it does work under Lion if it’s run under the 32 bit Kernel.
The issue seems to arise because Lion is the first Mac OS to boot with 64bit kernel. Snow Leopard required to switch to the 64bit kernel for testing purposes.
So if you get the “unsupported” error, and yet you have a 2008 Mac Pro (it won’t work on 2009 and 2010 models), the most likely reason is that the 64 bit kernel is on.
Just reboot, keeping the keys 3 and 2 pressed during the startup (from the chime until the apple logo shows up).
Start the overclock app, set the frequency, then reboot again to fix the system time issue. And here it is, a faster Mac Pro under Lion.
Have ten percent more fun!
Lost and Found: The 3D robot rendering that my memory did not get right 16 Jan 2012 8:46 AM (13 years ago)
The long lost robot is here
A long time ago, I wrote:
Does anybody remember a Lightwave page with a faked radiosity render of an awesome Grendizer robot? It was somehow connected to a rendering hack. If you know about it, please send me the link!
Well, today I found it. Only, it wasnt’ a Grendizer, it was a Wanzer.
That’s why no one told me about it, I guess. Anyway today I found the page and the image while browsing for totally unrelated stuff. Rendered by Jim May (Court Jester Creations) it demonstrated an hair-tearing technique to generate GI like illumination and glossy reflections without raytracing. Still cool!
Jvc GS TD-1 Review – How good is this 3D camcorder? 5 Apr 2011 4:28 AM (14 years ago)
Just got my shiny new GS TD1 and will post a review as soon as possible. Heck, the battery has to be charged!
First impression: it’s not as small as it looked like in the videos, and the auto stereoscopic display works well. Not exceptional, but good enough.
Modo 501 SP1 – No more broken tooltips on OSX 64bit! 26 Feb 2011 12:56 AM (14 years ago)
Well, this service pack does a lot more but the tooltip thing was really annoying in 501.
I’m glad it has been fixed quickly, as I find 501 a pleasure to work with.
Now all I have to do is to convince someone to buy me a 12 core Mac Pro.
Dare to Share Project Messiah – Pro 3D for $10? You betcha! 9 Feb 2011 11:31 AM (14 years ago)
Okay, so here’s the deal: Project Messiah is pro grade 3D software. I own it -version 3- and used to use it along with Lightwave.
Nice, cool, fast, character animation tool.
I probably am not the only one that thinks a match made in heaven would have been Modo+Project Messiah+Lightwave 9.6.
Could have been some sort of a 3D terminator, unleashed over a starving 3D market. And I still think they all should rejoin forces – 3D animation in 2002 was so cool.
But let’s skip this for now, it’s not gonna happen, ever.
And get back to Messiah. It’s a cool 3D character animation tool. It evolved, as solution-driven software often does, and is now a complete rendering solution, but I can’t comment about this since I only used it for animating and baking out MDDs to be rendered elsewhere.
Yet, it’s a fantastic opportunity to spend $10 and get a full featured character animation toolset. With rendering thrown in as a bonus.
The scheme is pretty simple: you fork out $10 for the basic version, or $40 for the pro one. If they reach an unspecified amount of purchasers, the deal is over: you get the license, and price goes back to original one ($499 or $1195, hey it’s a lot of money!).
If they don’t reach the expected amount of sales, no license is given, and your money is refunded.
Given that PGM has been in business for so many years, this seems a no-risk propositing, and for what is worth I did jump on this offer. I don’t think I’ll have the time to explore Messiah in the near future, but it’s a slick tool that ought to be upgraded anyway. And $40 is a decent price. I just wonder if they are going to send a dongle as well.
I hope this cash flow -albeit small, it’s still a cash flow- allows the fine guys and gals at pmG to keep developing Messiah as it deserves. And maybe release a 64bit Mac version as well.
Anyway here’s the deal-url: http://projectmessiah.com/x6/shop.html and have fun with armatures: they’r so cool I am thinking about restoring that old XP backup with Messiah on it.
Maya 2012 – Will Autodesk release it despite the bad omen? 12 Oct 2010 1:12 PM (15 years ago)
I know, I know. I shouldn’t blog when I’m drunk and for sure many other will have blogged about this. But it struck me as a (digital) lightning bolt: what will Autodesk do with its naming convention when the whole world is waiting, well, for an end?
Will it go ahead an release Autodesk’s Maya 2012 despite the bad omen relating to the world’s end?
Will it skip an year, just like a thirteenth floor? No, wait, that would make it Maya 2013. Bad luck again.
Or maybe it will go for a 12/12/2012 release date, and bundle it with a tutorial DVD to recreate the impressive hard body dynamics in Emmerich’s movie?
Modo 501 Previewed in Paris – SDK and more 5 Oct 2010 11:44 PM (15 years ago)
According to a post on Luxology’s user forum, Modo 501 is coming along nicely. Brad previewed it in Paris on October 2nd, showcasing improvements in modeling (Pixar’s patented Catmull-Clarke subds? don’t know), sculpting, rigging (no character animation yet, but who needs it in 2010?*) and -big wow- dynamics.
The report does mention that now Modo has an SDK. Yeah! This is something I want to look at.
Looks like there are no particles, but having an SDK…
*
Humor.
Cyber Demon in Resident Evil style – a forum wip 16 Aug 2010 11:47 AM (15 years ago)
I kinda like the cyber demon in this wip at 3D buzz, posted by Rich Mason. It reminds me of a monster from Resident Evil, because it has no face, just a mouth. But I may be wrong as I only played Resident Evil on the Playstation I (yes, I am that old). However it’s bio-mechanically engineered, and intentionally looks like the demon found in the original Doom as played on a Pentium I (yes, I am that old) so it has to be featured here.
Speaking of bio mechanical monsters, does anybody remember an old tutorial, maybe for 3DS Max, that linked a human mask to a few pistons linking them to the facial animation? If so, please leave a comment and link to it. It seems I can’t find anymore most of my favorite links online. (Another being a closeup animation of a Mantis done in Lightwave and featured somewhere as the demo for a plugin -please drop me a link for that as well if you can remember it).