Creating trees and generators...

The big daddy in tree generators probably has to be Speedtree by Powered Games. For big budgets, it's not a bad choice in that it goes for around $10K a license, but it's a little much for smaller indies. It does do the job, but issues with it, it can be a bit difficult to put into your engine, the backend is a bit clunky and at the end of the day, the trees are pretty much billboard based so relies on the quality of the alpha channel work on the textures and it can put out a lot of polys.

Easy Tree Generator - This is a bit of a no thrills option, but at $20 it really isn't bad money for value, but with that, it is a little limited in the output, well you can and will spend a lot of time playing around with the slider settings before getting good looking trees that look varied. This also is pretty much a billboard style to the foliage, but at this price range not bad.

Ivy Generator - Okay, this isn't a tree gen, but it's cool all the same, creating ivy that grows around your mesh and looks awesome. There's also a similar max plugin.

Dryad - This is another university option that came about from Standford university and is worth having a look at.

A Siggragh 2007 Paper - "Approximate Image-Based Tree-Modeling using Particle Flows" This is just very cool and also worth a read.

Wireless Router - Netgear

Having tried many and having a functional, but rubbish speeds from a Belkin, which was replaced by a D-Link, which worked pretty well until it died, just after the warranty expired.

With lots of research into various routers out there, and of the various firmware hacks available that offer more features, such as the DD-WRT firmware hack, good instructions here.

In the end, I got the Netgear WRN2000 because Netgear came highly recommended, also it was at a good price and had loads of features.

So far it has worked a treat and was really easy to set up and keep up to date. The only cons to it, you can't change the user name for the settings, the password and all other fields are easy though. There's no wall mount which is a shame and there's no 1000gigabit feature which comes on other models. The blue glow can be a bit over powering too if it's in your bedroom, but the power button is a nice touch in the event you want to turn it off or have to do a reset, which I've not had to use so far.

Baby Nappy Tip

Now it's the winter...keep the wipes inside rather than in the car, they freeze in the cold...not fun...

Daylight Simulation White Papers

Autodesk has released a series of white papers about daylight simulation in 3DSM which are well worth a read.

4D Artists has a pretty good write up on the use with Mental Ray as well.

Getting your own Business Cards

Pretty pretentious I know, but when networking, it's pretty handy to have, especially in this economic climate where job security isn't all that stable and you might not want to be using your work cards for personal use whilst job hunting.

There are loads of places that offer the service, but I recently used VistaPrint and I was impressed with the service, the standard slow service where they say would take 21 days took less than a week. The quality of the cards were nice and they offer good deals. To get the best deal though, sign up an account as you'll an email with a better deal, then when you create your card, it'll keep the design. You can use your own logo and design, or use a template or create your own with their own creator.

Imagine Cup for Students

The Imagine Cup is a global student technology competition focused on finding
solutions to real-world issues.

You can win some fantastic prizes and travel to the finals in Egypt. And it gets
even better you can win prizes just for registering!

Make new friends.

Great addition to your CV and portfolio!

Join to keep up with latest news, information and promote your projects!

Enter Competition in following categories:

• Software Design
• Embedded Development
• Game Development
• Robotics and Algorithm
• IT Challenge
• MashUp
• Photography
• Short Film
• Design

Registration.

Some good opportunity for students to get something potentially impressive on their CV over just having some school project.

Baby Portrait Photos

Well it's that time of year to get the family photo's done, even though a little early, we've got presents to get ready to send out if we don't want to pay stupidly expensive shipping costs.

All I can say, good job too, because there's a two week wait from when you get the photo's to when you can pick them up, with JC Penny's photo service at least.

There are many places that offer the service, the price seems to be pretty much the same, Sears, Babies R Us, Target etc.

The best advice, look for a coupon in the weekly papers or coupon mail spam because it's the one coupon that is so worth it.

Without the coupon, there's a $20 sitting fee per person which is waived, you also get a 8x10 print free. The handful of different print sizes and amounts we wanted with the coupon came to $36. Without the coupon this basic service would have come to $85 and had we wanted the "premium" service, which just adds a vignette filter to the image and you can centre or zoom into the photos, the price would have been $145. The holiday style borders or collages of photos' and cards etc would all have been additional prices.

Looking into the prices, pretty much all the major players offer a similar deal and price range, it just comes down to which ever place you have a coupon for and which is more convenient for you to use.