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Updated 12/03/07
These are a set of plug-ins using Xpresso and UI objects. They were made to speed up my workflow and I use them all the time so I thought I would share.
Drop them into your MAXON/Cinema 4D/Library/Objects folder so you can have them inside the app in the "Object Library".
Need at least C4D 10.1 / no modules needed except where noted
SIneNull, MoveNull, VibrateNull(1 and 2), and PathNull I consider a family that act similar to "Behaviors" in Apple's Motion. You can nest them inside each other for very complex animations.
What's new 12/03/07:
CS_Spriticles: Sprite based particle tool.
Table of Contents:
1. CS_Daylight : Light rig for instant daylight lighting or classic 3 light setup.
2. CS_KinoSquare : Light Rig for motion graphics
3. CS_SineNull : Parent objects to this null. Creates cycles with noise options
4. CS_MoveNull: Parent objects to this for constant speed movement or rotations
5. CS_Fog : Instant Fog/Haze with easy control
6. CS_3DStroke : Simulation of Trapcode's 3D Stroke but in true 3D
7. CS_EasyCam : Camera movement system for basic film moves with path bend and vibration options
8. CS_Flicker : For simulating candle light, plasma balls, other random light effects
9. CS_Vibrate : A much easier version of C4D's vibrate tag
10. CS_Amblight : This is to create easy "room tone" lighting from above.
11. CS_AreaLight : This is a regular area light but with some easy falloff, shadow, color, and size settings.
12. CS_WalkCycle (BETA) : Creates procedural walk cycles. Only supports feet and hips for now.
13. CS_Trackspot : Not a useful tool really, but I built it for a project so I threw it in. It simulates an intelligent lighting unit.
14. CS_Flux : This is not the same, but inspired from another plug-in.
15. CS_LineGrow: Growing lines with an attached tip
16. CS_Bloom: Make vectors into geometry and make them bloom
17. CS_PathNull : Keyframeless Alighn to Spline with null.
18. CS_MoCam: 8 Point Camera system for MoGraph.
19. CS_EasyCam2: Like original but using MoCam system and diff noise functions.
20 CS_DocuCam: Used for realistic handheld with snap zooms.
21. CS_ActionCam: Michael Bay algorithm attached to a cam.
22. CS_VibrateNull2: Uses turbulent function instead of noise. Allows channel mixing.
23 CS_Cubes: First tool based on Instance replication. Fun with cubes.
24. CS_Spriticles (NEW): Sprite based particle tool.
1. "CS_Daylight"
What for: I find myself constantly needing the simulation of sky and sun lighting but with a key light as well. Just like on film shoots, it's pretty standard to put the sun to the back of the subject (as a rim light) while using either large 12 x Muslin screen for bounce or blowing HMI's through diffusion as a key light. Well setting up a few infinite lights is easy, but the results are very harsh. The Sky object is nice for BG look and for reflections or some GI, but for non-GI I find the default lighting on objects to be once again harsh. To me the sweetest looking lighting is a Sky dome area light for the blue sky ambiance, And a large partial dome as an area light for the rim light so it's really soft and wraps around objects. Then an even smaller semi-dome as a keylight. Well, this can be built easily using the C4D 9.5's ability to turn any poly object into an area light. However, Once built, the Open GL view isn't remotely accurate to what you get when you render. Everything is blown out with the wrong light direction.
So I wanted an object that I could add to a scene and have an instant build of a sky dome with partial domes for Rim light and key, be able to control their relative intensity mix, have an Master intensity. As well as other controls that make it simple to set up and tweak. But still have the Open GL interface be accurate.
This is why I made this "Daylight' object. In the editor it uses an array of omni lights that are roughly matched to the rendered results of the area lights. So you can set the controls intuitively in the editor display. Then when you render, the omni lights don't play, but the area lights do. The result is a very smooth, natural looking render which roughly matched what you see in the editor. You can in seconds add daylight lighting to the scene and quickly tweak it to match regular daylight or sunset tones.
In the editor most of the objects are hidden. But there are arrows and circles to show how big it is and what direction the rim and key are pointing.
Key Level: Relative mix of the Keylight
Rim Level: Relative mix of the rim light (Sun)
Sky Fill: Relative mix of the bluish sky dome
Key Bias: Rotates the key light around the center of the world to offset the angle of the key for a more modeled look.
Rotation: Rotates the entire rig so you can quicly dial in the angle you need.
Size: Rescales the entire rig from smallish to pretty huge.
Master Intensity: Self Explanatory
Sky Colors: This dials in the amount the lights take on Sky/Sun colors. 0% is all white, 100% is full coloring.
KeyColorMax: This sets the max that the keylight takes on the sky colors. Often the keylight isn't quite as warm as the sun so this is where you can bring it back a bit to a cleaner tone like film set lighting often is.
SunColorBias: The sun defaults to what I think is a daylight sun color, but this slider will swing the hue a bit on both ends. For example for a more sunset tone swing it left to make the sun colors more orange than yellow.
SkyColorBias: Same with the sky dome. For sunsets, swing it to the right to take more of a purple tone than sky blue.
2. "CS_KinoSquare"
What For: I have always liked KinoFlo lighting. Especially when used in reflections. You see it on almost every hip-hop video on MTV. Tubes reflecting in sunglasses, Glow on the face, etc. You can get a decent approximation of this look with area lights in C4D. The look is still there in the way light hits the objects, but Especially with some reflectivity, the look of the tubes in the reflections gives it a really nice touch. I also wanted a set and forget lighting rig that is very flexible and artistic looking. So I made "KinoSquare".
What it is: It's a square of lighting tubes as area lights. Try making a floor object and throw some primitives in there. Make a material with some reflectivity and throw it on the floor and objects. Add KinoSquare to your project and just have fun tweaking the sliders.
Intensity: Overall brightness of the rig
Rim Level: Relative brightness compared to the rest of the rig (usually looks great being a lot brighter than the rest as a backlight)
KeyBias: Shifts the Front tube left or right to offset the angle it hits the subject for a more modeled look.
Fill Level: Relative brightness of the 2 side tubes.
Height: This moves the rig in the Y. Yeah you could do this with your move tool, but I find it much handier to use this slider for quick adjustments.
Rotation: Rotates the entire rig to set the preffered angle
Size: This one slider resizes the whole rig. Obviously you can make it larger for bigger scenes, but even in small scenes changing the size really effects the look of the lighting (especially scenes with a floor)
Seen in Reflections and Seen in Render check boxes: This is just a quick convenient way to set these 2 settings to all 4 lights with one click.
3. "CS_SineNull"
What For: I find that so many things in nature move in sine like cycles with some random motion here and there. In Maya I was always writing expressions that involved sin, cos, and noise functions to do animation for me. In C4D these are in the Trig Xpresso node. So I wanted a null that would move using various combinations of sin, cos, and noise that you can parent objects to to aquire this motion.
This has been completely reworked for the 10.1 version. All rotation channels have been added as well. Also now instead of noise that is added to the sin motion, the noise(randomness) is defined per position or rotation channel and it affects the frequency and amplitude of the sin motion. The 'COS' checkbox has been removed and there is now a 'phase' slider for every channel. This becomes very powerful when more than one channel has the same frequency. For example. If you were doing a fish head swimming back and forth you would set a X amount and a H amount at the same frequency so it turns while it shifts back and forth. But without a phase option it would not move very fishlike. So this is where you can dial around the phase of the parameters so that certain channels lead or follow other channels. This can change the entire 'feel' of the animation making it seem "lazy" or "aggressive". Also play with setting some channels at exact multiples of other channels e.g. 20% on one and 10% or 40% on another.
X_Amplitude: Er..Amplitude of the sine motion
X_Frequency: You guessed it
X_Phase : Shift it 180 degrees out of phase positive or negative to offset the motion from other channels. Only useful if other channels are at the same frequency or at exact multiples.
X_Randomness: Sets the amount of randomness of amp and freq. This is less like vibration and more like how the amp and freq alters over time.
X_Random Frequency: Frequency of the random changes.
Then the same sliders mentioned above are also for Y, Z, H, P, B.
4. "CS_MoveNull" (Updated 7/07)
What For: Those times when you just want to set something in constant motion. Just dial in a direction or rotation speed on any of the six channels and it will do that forever. No need for keys or looping.
Added: Put in the Frame Start/Duration/Timing Curve functions to it. So instead of it being infinite, this adds a ton more usefulness to it by setting a duration and then having it get there through a timing curve. If you still want it to go forever. Make the timing curve linear and set the duration to at least the length of your project.
Frame Start: When the animation begins
Duration(Sec): How long the entire move takes
Timing Curve: Normalized graph you can edit to shape the speed.
X Speed
Y Speed
Z Speed
H Speed
P Speed
B Speed
5. CS_Fog
What For: When I want to add fog I find it always takes too long to futz with the process. So I made this tool to set and forget. When you open it, you'll see 3 rings. Set the big one in the center just bigger than the objects in your scene. Set the 2 outer rings using the height slider to be just above your highest object (or lower if you want a visible fog line). Then that's it if you want an instant atmospheric haze. But the convenient color and thickness sliders are there for you to tweak.
Size: Sets the size of the fog object. Set slightly bigger than your scene
Height: Sets the vertical size of the fog. Set just higher than your highest object
Thickness: How thick you want the fog
Brightness: How bright. 70% is usually a good number
Color: Color of fog
6. CS_3DStroke
What For: If you've ever played with Trapcode's 3D stroke, this is a true 3D version of that. You'll see a spline drop box. Just create a spline and drop it in that. You'll see your tapered stroke appear on it. Tweak the offset slider and you'll see it travel across the spline
Length: How much of the spline does the stroke take up
Thickness: How the thick the Stroke is
TaperFalloff: How thick or sharp the tapering of the ends are.
Offset: This moves or offsets it along the spline
PathSpline: Create a spline for the stroke to travel on and drop it in here
7. CS_EasyCam:
What is it:
This is my favorite tool by far. Most camera moves on film shoots are pretty basic, Some dolly track or a Jib move is the most you often do. For this I wanted a system where I could place a camera at the starting frame, then offset a second camera from this point to frame up the final position. Then a 3rd camera will morph between them. I want it to be keyframeless. So it will have a duration slider and a frame start slider. It will have a normalized motion graph so I can shape the velocity curve right in the AM. That's what EZ Cam does. But there's more.
Merge in EZCam (or better yet keep it in your object library). In the camera pull down list you will see it added 3 cameras: EZCam_S (Start), EZCam_E (End), and EZCAM which is the render out cam that does the motion.
Rename the EZCam object in the OM to something that describes the shot like "Wide shot". You will see that all 3 cams rename themselves.
So select the _S cam and use your normal cam tools to frame up the beginning of the shot. You'll see there is handy focal length slider in the AM which you can tweak. Once you like your position, you'll need to unlock the _E camera which always rides along with the _S cam until you unmarry them. You'll see the "Lock E to S" tick box is checked, uncheck it. Now select the _E cam. You'll see that it's in the exact same position where you left the _S cam. But now move your _E cam to frame up the end of the shot. Now finally select the third cam and hit play. You'll see it morphs between the 2 positions along with their angles.
It defaults to a 3 second move, but you'll see you can change the duration and delay the frame start. Also you see I have the motion graph defaulted to an easy ease. Tweak the points or add and delete your own to change the cameras velocity.
Now for added features:
You'll see there are path bend options. If you go back to your editor cam and look at the third cam you'll see it has a path it follows (direct line between the _S and _E cams). You can warp that path to create bended track or the arc of a jib. Set the bend strength and you'll see the path bend out. Then the angle spins the bend angle around. Then you'll see the bias weights it to one side or the other.
Vibrations. No cam is complete without real world jitter. There is the vibration section. If you leave the the 'sync to veocity' off, the camera always shakes. If you turn the 'sync to velocity' on it will shake more the faster the cam goes. So if the camera stops, the shaking stops. If the that option is on, then you can set the 'velocity inertia' up so that the camera settles down slightly delayed. So if a cam comes to an abrupt stop it would jostle a little till it stopped.
The Amplitude and Frequency are controls for the noise functions. The POS<->ROT BIAS lets you set the balance between the actual position of the camera shakes or it's rotations. For example if sitting on a ship in the ocean you would set all position. If simulating a handheld look it would be more about rotations.
Side note. If you want a camera to not move but like using the vibration functions, simply keep the "Lock E to S" switch on. So wherever you move the Start cam, the End cam is the same. So it's like having a locked off cam but you can use the vibrations. Rememebr to turn of Velocity though. Because if the cam isn't moving the vibration won't kick in. With velocity off, it will always vibrate.
Have fun. Reading this is harder than using it. It's pretty straight forward.
(checkbox) Lock E to S: As long as this is checked, the _E cam is always in the exact location of the _S cam
Focal Length: Set the focal length here. It applies to all 3 cams
Duration(sec): This is the amount of time the full move takes
Frame Start: Instead of always starting at 0, you can set any frame for your cam to start it's move
Timing Curve: This is a normalized graph showing the timing of your camera move. It defaults to an easy ease
Angle: The angle the bend bends out to
Bias: The bend is a 50/50 bend unless you use this to weight it towards the start or end
Strength: How much of a bend. This at zero leaves the path straight
(checkbox) Sync to Velocity: When this is checked, the cam vibrates into proportion of it's velocity rather than non-stop(checkbox off).
Velocity Inertia: When the Checkbox is on, this is the lag on the vibrate so it appears to have some inertia when the cam comes to a stop
Amplitude: Vibration amount
Frequency: Vibration frequency
Pos<->Rot Bias: Balances the vibration acting on more of the rotations or the position of the cams.
8. CS_Flicker
What For: Somebody on C4D Cafe asked for this. It's to create flicker or plasma ball effects (and I'm sure a bunch of other stuff). It's 3 lights under the control of the sliders as described below:
Intensity (overall intensity)
IntensityAmp (amount of variation of light intensity)
IntensityFreq (Speed of variation)
Size (size of 3 light rig)
SizeAmp (Size variation amount)
SizeFreq (Variation freq)
VibrateAmp (Actual wobble of the lights themselves)
VibrateFreq (Speed of wobble)
Light1 Color
Light2 Color
Light3 Color
9. CS_VibrateNull
What For: This is to parent something to that you want to have vibrations. It's a much easier version of the vibrate tag.
Amplitude: Amount of vibration
Frequency: Speed of vibration
Pos<->Rot Bias: Balances between more vibration of the rotation or position of the null
(Checkboxes) X Y Z H P B: These 6 checkboxes turns on/off each channel so you don't have to vibrate everything
10. CS_AmbLight
What for: The famous DP Conrad Hall used to start lighting a room by bouncing a dim light of the ceiling. He called it "Room tone". It's a nice effect and I use it a lot when lighting a 3D scene. This tool is a quick way to dial it in:
Note: The light defaults to not having an effect in the render window. Render to see the effect or turn on it's visibility in the editor if you wish.
Size: Size of light coverage
Intensity: Brightness. Usually set pretty low.
Height: Quick slider to float it above your scene
Quality: This defaults to a low number so it will look kind of grainy. For final renders crank it up. It affects the shadow accuracy, and min and max samples.
Color: Self explanatory
11. CS_AreaLight
What For: I use area lights a lot. I treat them like large muslin silks on set. I like the falloff set to scale in size to the light. So this tool does this with some other convenient sliders:
Size: Size of light. It always stays square.
Intensity: Brightness
Color: You guessed it.
Falloff (checkbox): Turns on and off falloff (set to inverse square)
Falloff Ratio: The falloff always changes in proportion to the size of the light. This dials it so it always stays between the same size as the light to twice as big as the light.
Shadow (checkbox) : Turns on area shadows.
Quality: Defaults to a low number so it may look grainy. For final render crank it up.
12. CS_Walk Cycle (beta)
Note: Only supports feet and hips for now. The UI is a mess.
Grab a rigged character. Most of the free ones in the content browser work fine with it. Once your character is loaded. merge in Walkcycle.
If you look at the user switches there is one called "ACTIVE". It defaults to off. Leave it that way.
Now twirl down the Walkcycle object and you'll see some nulls. The ones of use are the left and right feet, the hip and the mover.
Usually there are controllers with a rigged character. So just move the controllers out of the hierarchy they are in currently and drop them under the respective null in Walk cycle.
So fine the Left Foot controller and drop it inside the walk cycle left foot controller, etc. Find the root or hip controller and drop it under hip. Finally there is usually a master mover controller that moves the whole rig. Drop that under the walkcycle mover null.
Once you have them under the walk cycle control. Click on the ACTIVE switch. You should see the character "pop" into the walk pose. Hit Play and dork with the sliders to customize the walk. Turn on the move switch to make your character actually travel on screen.
If something doesn't work, then you're not parenting the controllers right. But it's pretty simple.
13. CS_Trackspot:
What for: This is a simulation of the old High End Systems Trackspot. It's your typical intelligent lighting unit you see in clubs and in concerts. I made one with controls so I added it here. The sliders explain themselves.
14. CS_Flux
What For: Inspired by an AE plug-in to create weird flowing shapes. This starts with a simple plane. Use the vector controls to tweak it all to hell. Use the 2 formulas at different settings and offsets to create complex oscillations. Use the bends and warps to create very complex shapes. I didn't describe the sliders here for 2 reasons: One I'm too lazy right now and two, it's really better to just tweak the sliders till you find something you like.
15. CS_LineGrow
What For: Growing lines with some kind of a tip. You supply a spline for the line and a profile of the tip and drop them in the right boxes.
Directions: Create a spline. Make sure of 2 things for consistency: 1. That the coords of the spline are zeroed out. Doesn't matter where you create it in the world as long as it's zeroed out. If the tip doesn't track along near the spline, then your not zeroed. Also on the Spline path, it's better if the intermediate points are set to 'Uniform'. You don't HAVE to, but the timing curve will be far more accurate if you do. For the tip create a closed spline (or primitive) on the XZ plane and drop that into the TipSpline box. Zero out the coords. You may want to uncenter the anchor point. For example if your are making a leaf for the tip, you would want to move the anchor point to the stem area.
Frame Start: When the animation begins
Duration(Sec): How long the entire move takes
Timing Curve: Normalized graph you can edit to shape the speed.
PathSpline (dropbox): Create the path spline as described above and drop in here.
TipShapeSpline(XZ) (dropbox) : Create a tip shape spline on the XZ plane and drop in here.
Length: Percent of the total path the line shape takes up.
Width: Width of the line
Thickness: This effects the line and the tip
Roundness: This effects the line and tip.
Shape: This is the SweepNurbs Scale widget to shape the thickness of the line.
Tip Visible: If you just want a line and no tip, then turn this off.
Tip Offset: Depending on the size, shape, and aspect of the tip, use this to make it connect back to the line.
Tip Rotation: If you didn't orient your tip spline correctly, you can do it here
Tip Twist: Self Explanatory
Tip Scale: This is for changing the aspect ratio of the tip
16. CS_Bloom
What For: We've all seen it a million times. vector like shapes "budding" over a handful of frames. Drop a spline shape into the box and left alone it will make it into geometry, make it grow out of nothing , get a little bigger than normal, then settle into it's final size and shape all while having a subtle twisting motion. But of course you can change it how you wish.
Shape Spline (XZ) (dropbox) : Create a closed spline (or primitive) and drop it in here.
Thickness: How thick the extrude is.
Roundness: The radius of the fillet
Frame Start: When the animation begins
Duration(sec): Length of time of the complete animation
Scale Curve(spline widget): This is the universal scale curve over time
Rotation Curve(Spline Widget): This is the rotation over time
Stretch Curve(Spline Widget): This is the relative scale over time. It defaults to .5 but if you want to make a leaf stretch out for example before going to it's final shape then disrupt the curve 's middle point.
17. CS_PathNull
What for: This widget is really just an align to spline tag doing it's usual work. However, I've added the patented (not really) Framestart/Duration/Timing Curve functions to it as well as connect it to a null. So it's a mild convenience if you want to just drop in a spline and parent something to the null and get on with it.
PathSpline (Dropbox): Create your travel path and drop it in here.
Frame Start: When the animation begins
Duration(Sec): How long the entire move takes
Tangential (Checkbox): Just a link to the tag setting.
Timing Curve: Normalized graph you can edit to shape the speed.
18. CS_MoCam:
What for: The common need in MoGraph where there is one continuous camera move that pops between angles and stays at each stop one for a while.
First Things: After adding Mocam, twirl down the main null and you'll see a group of 8 "Waypoint" cameras. Each of these are for moving in 3D space where you want the start (Waypoint1) and the next 7 stops to be. In the C4D camera list you'll see the 8 Waypoints and the render cam ("MoCam"). The Waypoints can be moved out of the Main null hierarchy if you wish. In fact you can do whatever you want with them. For example, place one under a CS_Vibrate null and that particular stop will vibrate just like the Waypoint cam itself. Maybe attach one of the Waypoints to a CS_Movenull set to rotate around a graphic. When the MoCam gets to that waypoint it will take on the rotations of that waypoint before it moves on.
Use the "Target Distance": A very important part of the camera morphing between Waypoints is utilizing the camera's built in "Target Distance" as an orbiting fulcrum. The "Target Distance" is found in the "Depth" section of each Waypoint. It can be most easily grabbed in the viewpoint as the centered Orange dot sticking out of each camera. As the MoCam morphs between waypoints, it uses the distance of the "Target Distance" to rotate around to create curved flight paths. So as the MoCam transitions from one Waypoint to another , if you aren't liking how it "looks-at" on it's travels, change the "Target Distance" parameters on each Waypoint to change how it travels. A good rule of thumb is to set the Target Distance so it is touching the subject you want to focus on (like if you were setting it for DOF focus).
Mad Props: I want to send a couple of shout outs for this. First is Basilisk for talking me into making this and helping with ideas. And second a huge thanks to Lennart(TCA Studios) for not only helping me with a Rotation problem but also being cool that this cam system is very close in concept to his "SteadyGlide" where I got the idea for using the "Target Distance" as the orbiting point. If you want the fully krunkest Camera system, get his "SteadyCam Pro" package.
Waypoints Visibilty (checkbox): This globally turns on/off the visibility of the 8 Waypoint cams
Per Waypoint:
FrameStart: This is only on Waypoint1. Set this to delay when the animation begins.
Hold Frames: This is on Waypoint 2 onwards. At each stop this can be set positive so that the cam stalls at each waypoint for a while. But this can also be set in negative values for the MoCam to never really settle in. It will become a soft move passing by the waypoint the way a spline softly moves between B-Spline points. It's easier to just do than to explain.
Duration(sec): Set in seconds. Length of time of each cam move. All the Waypoints shift in time per each of the other's setting. So if you change the duration or hold frames of anyone of them the others shift in relation.
EaseOut: zero is linear. 100% is extremely eased. This is the curve leaving the current waypoint.
EaseIn: This is the ease of the camera arriving at the next waypoint.
Focal Length: Each Waypoint has it's own Focal length set here.
Active(Check box): The first 2 cams are always active but from Waypoint 3 on, this makes them part of the whole move. If you want less than 7 moves between 8 points then shut of the
Waypoints you don't need. The Active switch also effects the visibility of it's respective Waypoint. If it's not being used, it won't be visible.
Match Prev Waypoint(Check box): This is the same as the "Lock E to S" in CS_EasyCam. It's mostly used so that when you want to move to setting the next waypoint it's easier to do it where you just dropped the last waypoint rather than from zero. When this checkbox is on, the current cam has the same rot and pos as it's previous waypoint (although does not share focal length or target distance
Target Distance: This is not in the UI, this is in each Waypoint cam itself. Drag the Target Distance widget in the viewport or set it in the "Depth" tab of each Waypoint cam. This is used for camera rotations as the MoCam travels from point to point.
19. CS_EasyCam2
What for: Basic film moves from point A to Point B. Or in this case Start to End. However this version doesn't use the Path bend function like the original. This uses the Target Distances on the _S and _E cam to create a bent path. Read the details in MoCam to know how this is done. Also The Cam shake section is now based on Turbulence instead of Noise. So there is now a 'complexity' slider which is the Octaves of the turbulence. Setting the frequency-to-complexity ratio just right will yield some very natural movements.
Focal Length: Both cams share one setting
FrameStart: WHen the move begins
Duration(sec): How long in seconds the move lasts
EaseOut/In: Instead of a graph, this uses sliders like MoCam. The higher the number the more ease.
Lock E to S (Checkbox): When this is on, the End Cam is locked to the Start Cam. Set the start cam first, uncheck this box then set the End cam.
S&E Cam visibility(Checkbox): This makes the _S and _E cams visible in the viewport
Position/Rot Turbulence: Instead of ratio slider, there is now a mix slider for how much the turbulence affects the Positions and rotaions.
Frequency: Speed of turbulence
Complexity: Octaves of turbulence
Camera Banking: If you think about it, a hand held or shaking effect is mostly pan and tilt with little to no camera roll or dutching. This slider allows you to limit camera banking so the net result is more pan and tilt.
20. CS_DocuCam
What for: This one is fun. Just drop the object of interest into the Target Box and position this tool a ways away from the object. The camera targets it. No big deal, except this has a snap zoom "engine" as well as offsets and turbulence options. With a little tweaking this will make it seem like there is a handheld Documentary camera man capturing your target object. The snap zoom function decides to do a snap zoom based on your probability setting. When it decides to zoom, it picks a direction at random either tighter or wider. This is cumulative so the zoom may drift over time depending on the seed value. There is a reset frame so it can be set back to base when the animation begins again.
Target Object(Drop Box): Drop the subject in here:
Offset Pan/Tilt/Target Depth: This will offset your camera from the target. So you can still target something but offset your frame a bit. The Offset Target Depth is for when using DOF, you can change the focus point.
Seed: All the random and turbulence functions are based on this number. So by switching the seed just one number, it's like switching out the cameraman with a whole new performance. Once you get all your sliders right, shop through different seeds and see which moves you like best.
Base Zoom: This is not in "Focal Lengths" because it's not that exact. This is the starting zoom amount, and know that the snap zooms will take it from there.
Actual Zoom: This isn't meant to be touched by the user. This is so you know how much the zoom has drifted from your base.
Actual Foc Len: Not meant to be touched. This is for your reference so you know what the actual Focal length the camera is at.
Reset Frame: Very important. The snap zoom is cumulative. So when you restart the animation there needs to be a frame where the zoom is brought back to match the base setting. If there is no reset frame, the zoom will snap forever eventually drifting to it's min or max values.
So if you start from 0 each time, then set it to zero, but if you're looping at say 100 - 150, you'll want to set the reset to 100.
Snap Zoom Section
Probability: This is how often the camera "Chooses" to do a snap zoom.
Amount: This is how much zoom the camera man snaps.
Duration: How fast the snap is.
Organic Motion Section
Amplitude: Amount of turbulence
Freq: Speed
Complexity: Octaves of the turbulence
Camera Banking: Limits the rotations on the Z so the camera doesn't dutch as much as pan and tilt.
21. CS_ActionCam
What for: Should be called the Michael Bay tool. It's CS_DocuCam, but attached to the object of interest itself. So in addition to DocuCam functions it adds settings for how much it orbits around the subject both vertically and horizontally as well its variance in distance from the subject.
Check DocuCam for all the common parameters. Added parameters here:
Cam Orbit:
Orbit Set: Center point of orbit
Orbit Deviation: How much it uses turbulence to deviate from that point
Deviation Freq: Speed of deviation
Deviation Complexity: Octaves of the turbulent function
Cam Distance and Cam height sections use the same sliders as the orbit section. The only notable difference is a min Clamp function on each. For distance this min clamp function sets the minimum distance the cam can get to the subject. So if it's following a person it won't get so close as to go inside the person. The height min clamp is made for protecting the cam from going through the floor if your subject is on a surface.
22. CS_VibrateNull2
What For: Like the original Vibrate null this is a alternate to the built in C4D vibrate tag. WHat's different about this version is that it has channel mixing between the XYZHPB. Also the vibration is now based on turbulence instead of normal noised. So there is a Complexity (Octaves) function now for more realistic movement.
Amplitude: Amount of turbulence
Freq: Speed of turbulence
Complexity: Octaves of turbulence
Seed: Sets the seed for all 6 turbulent functions. Change this to get different results.
Then there are six sliders that mix in how much amplitude per XYZHPB you want.
23. CS_Cubes
What for: This is for creating various mograph elements using cubes. Really it's something better played with than explained.
Props: This is tool is based around the Xpresso node called "InstanceMaker" that was conceived by Base80 and programmed by Majoul. So thanks for that.
PolyBaseObject(DropBox): Drop a polygon object in here to grow cubes from.
Grow On Section
Grow(Checkbox): When checked, the cubes appear over time
Grow Speed: How fast they appear in order
Noise Section:
Static(Checkbox): When checked there is no animation of the cubes.
Amplitude: Amount of cube movement
Frequency: Speed of movement. Also note that the cubes move faster the higher their index is. So the first cubes to appear will move the slowest.
Seed: Set this to different numbers for different noise outcomes.
Cube Settings:
Bidirectional(Checkbox): When checked, cubes can move forward and backwards. Unchecked, only in positive directions.
Offset: This has huge results when moved. This not only moves the cubes, but also changes the axis upon which they are scaled.
CubeSize: How big the cubes are
X/Y/Z/ scale (Checkboxes): These turn on scaling on those Axis. Defaults to just Y.
Aspect(Vectorbox): Changes the aspect ratio of the cubes
24. CS_Spriticles (Needs Thinking Particles installed)
What is it: It's basically a greatest hits of TP nodes blended in one simple tool particle sprite tool. It also auto detects the active camera for the sprites to always look at. I often want to use sprite particle systems but was always too lazy to build what I needed so I made this for an easy to grab and use tool.
General directions: You'll see I put a temporary circle material on it. Just replace that with the material of your choice then dial in the user sliders to get the result you want. For the 'Copy Motion' part of the user sliders, the tool itself (master null) should be in motion or the particles will have no motion to copy.
Props: HUGE thanks once again to Lennart(TCA Studios). He helped me with the Coffee code to auto-detect the active camera so the user wouldn't have to keep dropping the camera of choice into a linkbox. Also thanks to PerAnders, Srek, and JoelD, for unknowingly helping me by posting in old CGTalk threads about particles. Thanks to The Monkey for his 10 minute beta test.
Particle Group: This defaults to 'ALL'. But if you want separate groups in your scene then check the C4D docs on creating new particle groups. Then drop them in this box for individual control over multiple groups.
Birth Rate: How often particles are created
Emit Radius: This expands a circle in which particles emit from.
Spread: How much the particles spread out from the origin.
Speed: Speed at which particles travel away from the emitter
Speed variation: Self explanatory
Scale: Master scale
Scale over life (Grad bar): This defaults to zero->max->zero for a smooth growth and decay. But mess with it for interesting results. At minimum you can drag the white point back and forth to bias where the particles hit their growth peak.
Rotation: Since the particles always look at the cam this is just a pos and neg slider for Clockwise or counter clockwise rate.
Rotate from Velocity(Checkbox): When unchecked the particles have a constant rotation. When checked the speed of rotation is multiplied by the velocity. So the faster the particel, the faster it spins.
Gravity: Negative to make them lighter than air, positive to make them heavier than air.
Turbulence: The amplitude of the turbulence
Turbulent Freq: The complexity of the turbulence.
Copy Amount: Once again, the master null needs to be in motion to see any effect. This is how much the particles copy the master null's motion.
Copy Variation: How much the particles vary in the amount of motion copy
Direction Var: This will make some particles find new directions. So they copy the motion but in new paths.
CSTools Full Docs
Updated 12/03/07
Labels: CSTools
6 comments:
- Stephen said...
- This comment has been removed by the author.
- July 19, 2009 at 6:26 PM
- Einar Bragi said...
I'm using LineGrow and I have a animation that exceeds 500 frames, but it only has a maximum Frame starting value of 500 is there any way to go beyond that?
- October 14, 2010 at 3:59 PM
- Simon said...
Thanks man. These are fantastic.
- October 20, 2010 at 5:41 AM
- H Moni said...
Thank You So Much For Help Me... am Always Remember Your Help...
- July 15, 2014 at 5:22 PM
- Mina Tawau said...
- January 14, 2016 at 10:25 PM
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- October 25, 2016 at 2:03 PM


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subset: commoncrawl


text:
DANVILLE, Ky.--After tying it up with a run in the top of the ninth, the No. 22 Birmingham-Southern baseball team scored twice in the top of the 10th to down Centre, 7-5, Friday evening at Gary Wright Field in Danville, Ky.
The Panthers move to 18-8 overall and 9-1 in the conference, leading the Southern Athletic Association standings. The Colonels fall to 10-11 overall and 4-6 in the SAA.
Junior Jeremy Hatley opened the scoring in the top of the first with a three-run home run, plating sophomore Jacob Mayfield and junior Evan Grovenstein, who both singled to reach base.
Centre tied it up in the bottom of the first, and the Panthers went up 4-2 in the top of the fourth on an RBI single by senior Stephen Denton.
The Colonels cut the lead back to 4-3 in the bottom of the sixth, and then took their first lead of the game in the bottom of the seventh, going up 5-4 with two runs scored on a single.
In their final chance to score, the Panthers led off the top of the ninth with a Denton single. He then went to second on a passed ball, and freshman Taylor McCracken singled to put runners on first and third. Grovenstein hit into a double play after that, but the play allowed Denton to score from third and tie it up 5-5.
BSC held Centre scoreless in the bottom of the ninth to send the game to extra innings.
The Panthers produced two runs in the top of the 10th, the first on an RBI single from sophomore Jake Campbell to plate sophomore Brandon Marino, who pinch ran for Hatley after he walked to reach base and reached second on a sacrifice bunt by sophomore Tanner McGill. Zach Wagner laid down another sacrifice bunt to send Campbell to second, and a single by senior Brandon Perry allowed Campbell to score to put BSC up 7-5.
Senior Blake Yance took the mound for the bottom of the 10th, and Centre ended the game on a ground-out and two swinging strikeouts for Yance's seventh save of the season.
BSC recorded 13 hits to Centre's eight. Sophomore Blake Stevens started on the mound and threw seven innings, giving up four earned runs with nine strikeouts. Sophomore David Bourbonnais came in for the eighth and ninth innings and got the win, moving to 5-1 on the year. He allowed no hits and one walk with two strikeouts.
The series wraps up tomorrow with a noon doubleheader.


text:
Sunlight Mountain Resortall reviews | post a review
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About Sunlight Mountain Resort
|Sunlight's intimate, unpretentious atmosphere can be attributed to its small-town roots. Named after a once-thriving coal mining town in the area that disappeared in the early 1900's, Sunlight serves up authentic western hospitality. With its summit situated on Compass Mountain, Sunlight offers beautiful vistas of majestic Mount Sopris and the surrounding Elk Mountain Range, as well as hundreds of acres of mild greens, intermediate slopes and black diamond extremes to satisfy all levels of abilities. The affordability and laid back attitude makes Sunlight a favorite for all who visit. Sunlight - So Much to Smile About.
Skiing and Snowboarding at Sunlight Mountain Resort
|Get more information about skiing and snowboarding at Sunlight Mountain Resort, including lifts, trails, and terrain
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Customer Service with a tail
Just wanted to mention the great service at the Denver West Store; I stopped into the "always friendly" store to purchase a ski pass and new ski bindings and found "SCOOBY DOO" running the store and plenty of pizza for the n...More
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|Sunlight has new terrain park features that will continue to expand throughout the 2012-2013 season. Also don't miss the Demo Days with a parade led by Santa and Ski Spree in February. Check out our Web site for dates, times and many more events!
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Sunlight Mountain Resort Website
Sunlight Mountain Resort Address10901 County Road 117
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Sunlight Mountain Resort Phone Numbers(970) 945-7491 / (800) 445-7931


text:
|Naruto: Rise of a Ninja
|Video game info
|Playable on
|Xbox 360
|Naruto: The Broken Bond
|Release Date
|October 30, 2007
Naruto: Rise of a Ninja is an Xbox 360-exclusive video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal, making it the first Naruto game to be developed by a non-Japanese company.
The game itself consists of two major game play modes: one-on-one fighting and RPG, where Konoha serves as a main hub to access various missions players can go on. The main story mode alternates between these two modes, and takes place from the beginning of the series to the end of the Konoha Crush (episodes 01-80 of the anime), with included side quests . It features game play similar to that of a 3D platformer, like jumping acrobatically from rooftop to rooftop or racing through checkpoints, as well as having one-on-one brawls much like the Naruto: Clash of Ninja series. Like with most Naruto games, it features cel-shaded graphics.The game also allows online versus multiplayer via Xbox Live, titled "The Forest of Death", enabling you to play with your friends. You start off choosing a character, and defeating other opponents to rank up and eventually gain points to complete the exam. If the player is defeated, they must begin from the bottom of the table all over again, but the points are still kept. Offline play, and two-player versus mode are also available.
The game supports downloadable content. Chōji, Temari, the Third Hokage and Jiraiya come bundled in packs of two: Chōji and Temari, Third Hokage and Jiraiya. Each bundle also comes with two new maps/arenas. Each pack is 500 Microsoft Points which is $6.25. Shikamaru is free, but you must be registered to Ubisoft and you link your Xbox Live to Ubisoft account. Downloadable content also adds an additional achievement for each character played in the Forest of Death. Currently, the game has 37 achievements with a maximum of 1075 gamer points.
Based almost directly on the first three arcs of the anime, the story follows the trials and tribulations of a young boy, Naruto Uzumaki, from his time at the Academy to his big blow-out battle with Gaara.
Playable Characters
- Naruto Uzumaki (Nine-Tailed Fox Mode)
- Sasuke Uchiha (Curse Mark Mode)
- Kakashi Hatake (Sharingan Mode)
- Sakura Haruno (Maiden's Anger Mode)
- Gaara (Brutal Sand Mode)
- Haku (Ice Mode)
- Zabuza Momochi (Demon Mode)
- Orochimaru (White Snake Mode)
- Kiba Inuzuka (Food Pills Mode)
- Rock Lee (Eight Gates Mode)
- Neji Hyūga (Byakugan Mode)
Downloadable Characters
- Shikamaru Nara (Strategy Mode)
- Chōji Akimichi (Berserker Rage Mode)
- Temari (Heavenly Fan Dance Mode)
- Third Hokage (Hokage Mode)
- Jiraiya (Sannin Mode)
- Naruto vs. Mizuki
- Naruto vs. Sakura
- Naruto vs. Sasuke
- Naruto vs. Kakashi
- Naruto vs. Zabuza
- Naruto vs. Haku
- Naruto vs Kidnapper (Iruka in disguise)
- Naruto vs. Orochimaru
- Naruto (Five Pronged Seal) vs. Kiba
- Naruto vs. Neji
- Naruto vs. Gaara
The game has met generally good reviews from critics. Its Metacritic aggregate score is 78, indicating "generally favourable reviews".[1] One main example of praise is from IGN, awarding the game 8.4/10 and stating 'the first great Naruto game' (despite giving praise to past games in the Naruto franchise). In addition to winning the best fighting game award at E3 2007, it was also praised for having a simple but fun and fast fighting engine. The game though was slightly criticised for giving players an abridged story, and many characters not being in the story as well.
Exclusive Shikamaru download (which was free) caused games to freeze when hitting a trip wire or log, while also rendering the Japanese voicepack non-functional. These have been solved through a patch in the Third Hokage and Jiraiya download (both trial and full version).[2]
According to sources, Rock Lee's finishing move (Primary Lotus) was removed due to unequal results in both online and offline play, but Ubisoft has said it will restore this in a free firmware patch.
In addition, there are bugs within the achievements for the two new downloadable characters packs, meaning players cannot achieve the 60G promised when completing the exam with these four characters.
- For some unknown reason, many characters such as the Third Hokage, Jiraiya, Konohamaru, Moegi and Iruka's voice actors were replaced in this game. On the other hand, Jiraiya and the Third Hokage received their original voice actors in the sequel, Naruto: The Broken Bond.
- In story mode, Mizuki has a character model but he is not a playable character.
- In story mode, Iruka has a character model and you can fight him in fighting challenge mode, but is not a playable character.
- In story mode, numerous characters from the original Naruto anime appeared in the anime cutscenes of the game.
External links


text:
It's a rise for the Huskies, a great fall for the Beavers
CORVALLIS -- Turns out Washington didn't need Keith Price after all.
The injured starting quarterback wasn't missed as the Huskies used Oregon State as a punching bag from start to finish of a 69-27 drubbing Saturday night at the Reser Stadium.
Bishop Sankey led an offense that amassed 692 yards total offense -- 530 of it on the ground -- with 179 yards and three touchdowns rushing as the Huskies (7-4 overall, 4-4 in Pac-12 play) fortified their bowl position with an emphatic victory.
It was a humiliating defeat for Oregon State (6-5, 4-4), which trailed 48-0 after three quarters before the Beavers finally lit up the scoreboard, long after the issue had been decided.
"Everything about it was really disappointing," said OSU coach Mike Riley, whose team suffered its fourth straight loss after a 6-1 start. "We weren't prepared to play. We didn't play from the very outset of the game.
"The special-teams part, our offense, our defense -- we got outplayed in all those areas right from the very first play."
That was a 62-yard kickoff return by Washington's John Ross, who slashed through a gaping hole and gave the Huskies the ball at the OSU 38 to open the game.
It was a portent of things to come. With redshirt freshman Cyler Miles efficient if unspectacular in his first career start at quarterback, the Washington offense was a well-oiled machine for 60 minutes.
It was the most points ever scored and the highest rushing offense total achieved by an Oregon State opponent in the 121 years of the program.
Washington's defense stoned the Oregon State offense, too, holding the Beavers scoreless through three quarters and to 414 yards total offense -- 181 of it in the final period.
"We never did anything offensively ever in the game," Riley told the media afterward. "There was nothing we could really do to respond. There wasn't any part of it that was good."
Not unless you were on the Washington side of things.
"I'm really proud of our guys responding again," UW coach Steve Sarkisian said. "I really challenged them to come out tonight with great energy and be excited to have the opportunity in a good environment against a good team.
"We took care of the ball offensively, we created turnovers on defense and we ran the ball extremely well. When you're able to run it like that, it makes life much easier."
What did Riley tell the Beaver players in his post-game talk?
"That's not how we play football around here," he said, "and that's not how we're ever going to play again."
The Huskies were dancing together on the sidelines even before the opening kickoff. They kept it up throughout the game. They had plenty to celebrate.
"I don't know that jumping or dancing around is the key part of it," Riley said. "They played way better than we did tonight. Maybe that made them jump around more."
The Beavers seemed flat and ill-prepared. Riley said that caught him by surprise.
"That's how crazy this is to me," he said. "I thought we had a good week (of practice). Washington was really sharp, but we didn't do our part at all in any phase to make it a good game.
"This one really came out of the blue to me. I'm not anxious to, but I'm anxious to look at it on (video) and see what the heck. "
The Huskies were surprised, too.
"I was expecting a dogfight," said Miles, who completed 15 of 24 passes for 162 yards and a TD and ran seven times for 26 yards. "But we're out there playing to the best of our ability, and it happened to be somewhat of a blowout."
It matched the most one-sided loss during Riley's 13 years as OSU's coach, a 49-7 dousing by 10th-ranked California in 2004. It was the most decisive OSU defeat against an unranked opponent since a 51-6 rout against Washington State in 1993. The last time the Beavers had been beaten so badly by an unranked foe at home? A 63-9 shellacking by Stanford in 1981.
It was the most points scored by a Washington team since a 77-0 beatdown of Whitman in 1931.
The Huskies "outcompeted us, for sure," Riley said. "All the issues, they beat us -- the competition, the emotion, the execution. they won them all."
For the first time in the Riley era, the coach chose to not allow his players to speak with the media following the game.
"I told (sports information representatives), 'Just let me talk to them. Leave these guys out of it,' " Riley explained. "There are probably tons of emotions going on (in the OSU locker room).
"We have good kids here. They care. They're probably really hurting, taken aback. It's good for them probably not to have to respond to that."
So Riley was left to try to explain how his team could come out so lacking in a game that was equally important to both sides. He wound up doing a mea culpa on behalf of the OSU coaching staff.
"A lot of parts were missing," he said. "Whether it was the emotion of playing the game but we missed them all. We weren't on the right edge of any of that stuff.
"Us coaches are all responsible for having them ready to play. That's a failure, too. All the parts of that deal were bad."
Tailbacks Sankley, Deontae Cooper (11 carries, 166 yards, two TDs) and Dwayne Washington (11 carries, 141 yards, two scores) combined for 486 yards and seven touchdowns on the ground.
"Crazy numbers," Riley said. "It's not a secret (the Huskies) are a very good running team, but that is wild."
OSU quarterback Sean Mannion had his worst game of the season, completing 20 of 41 passes for 229 yards and one TD with three interceptions. Brandin Cooks hauled in 10 passes for 117 yards and a score, but they weren't much of a factor in a one-of-a-kind mismatch.
Washington couldn't have dominated much more in roaring to a 27-0 halftime lead. The Huskies held a huge advantage in first downs (14-6), total offense (319-122) and rushing offense (182 to minus-1). Sankey had 158 yards and a pair of touchdowns on 19 carries through intermission. Mannion was 11 for 22 passing for only 123 yards with two interceptions before the break.
Little more than four minutes into the game, Washington held a 14-0 lead.
After Ross' 62-yard kickoff return to start the game, it took the Huskies seven plays to find the end zone, Sankey scoring from three yards for a 7-0 lead just 2:31 into the game.
After an OSU three-and-out and a punt, Washington took over at its 40. It took the Huskies three plays to go 60 yards. There was 19-yard run by Sankey, a 36-yard pass from Miles to Kevin Smith and a 5-yard TD run by Sankey. With 10:56 left in the first quarter, the Huskies had a two-touchdown lead.
After another Beaver three-and-out and punt, the Huskies got the ball at their 31 and advanced to the OSU 27. Travis Coons' 44-yard field goal gave the visitors a 17-0 advantage with 6:36 left in the quarter.
Oregon State got its initial first down when Storm Woods raced 46 yards with a screen pass to the Washington 35, but the UW defense stiffened and forced a punt.
Early in the second quarter, Mannion's pass under pressure was intercepted by Marcus Peters, who returned it 14 yards to the OSU 21. The Huskies settled for a 24-yard Coons field goal to hike the lead to 20-0 with 10:36 remaining in the second quarter.
After another OSU three-and-out and punt, Washington got on the board again, Miles connecting with Smith on a 28-yard TD strike to make it 27-0 with 6:36 left before halftime.
By the time Sankey scored from eight yards to push UW's lead to 34-0 with 8:36 to go in the third quarter, half of the crowd had headed for the exits. Shaq Thompson's 80-yard romp on a pick-six made it 48-0, and there were still two minutes to play in the third quarter.
Riley was asked how hard it will be to get his players ready for next Friday's Civil War game at Eugene.
"At least we have an opportunity," he said. "The best thing is, (the OSU players) have been good responders all year. Good guys to practice. They'll come to work on Monday and get ready to play. It's a tough week to have a short week, but that's exactly what it is."
NOTES: The highest previous total by an OSU opponent came in Oregon's 65-38 Civil War win in 2008. True freshman Victor Bolden supplied some late electricity for the Beavers with a 98-yard kickoff return for a score in the fourth quarter. Redshirt freshman Chris Brown rushed seven times for 73 yards and a TD but also had a fumble. Oregon State had four turnovers, Washington none. Cooks became Oregon State's single-season record-holder for receiving yardage with 1,560, passing Mike Hass (1,532). Cooks trails only USC's Marqise Lee (1,721 in 2012) on the Pac-12 list. It could have been more. On the first play from scrimmage in the third quarter, Cooks broke loose for an apparent 86-yard touchdown reception. After review, it was ruled he stepped out of bounds at the OSU 28-yard line for a 14-yard gain. Cooks also moved up to third on the OSU career receiving yardage list with 3,102. Mannion moved ahead of Jonathan Smith on the OSU career passing yardage list with 9,909. Mannion trails only Derek Anderson (11,249).
Washington 17 10 21 21 -- 69
Oregon State 0 0 0 27 -- 27
UW -- Bishop Sankey 3 run (Travis Coons kick) 12:29
UW -- Sankey 5 run (Coons kick) 10:56
UW -- Coons 44 FG 6:36
UW -- Coons 24 FG 10:36
UW -- Kevin Smith 28 pass from Cyler Miles (Coons kick) 6:36.
UW -- Sankey 8 run (Coons kick) 8:36.
UW -- Deontae Cooper 2 run (Coons kick) 3:55
UW -- Shaq Thompson 80 interception return (Coons kick) 2:01
OSU -- Brandin Cooks 29 pass from Sean Mannion (kick failed) 14:40
UW -- Cooper 1 run (Coons kick) 13:56
UW -- Dwayne Washington 32 run (Coons kick) 12:56
OSU -- Victor Bolden 98 kickoff return (Trevor Romaine kick) 12:40
OSU -- Chris Brown 3 run (Romaine kick) 5:33
UW -- Washington 71 run (Coons kick) 4:38
OSU -- Micah Hatfield 33 pass from Cody Vaz (Romaine kick) 2:25
Twitter: @kerryeggers


text:
Astronaut Don Pettit (previously: 1, 2, 3) loves performing intriguing experiments using the microgravity of the International Space Station. For his most recent video, Pettit visualized the sound waves of ZZ Top's "TV Dinners" using several blobs of water and a speaker. Now I sort of want a television series in which ZZ Top are shot into the depths of the Solar System and must navigate their way home by riding the solar wind with their beards.
This is what ZZ Top looks like in space


text:
I write this post with a heavy heart: there was once a time when I had a valid claim to be among Richard Dawkins' greatest fans. There was a time when I would have treasured a tweet from the great man; but when my moment arrived (last Saturday), I was long past getting excited by it.
I had decided I was an atheist around the age of twelve, but on reaching my twenties, I realised I couldn't fill all the gaps in my detailed understanding of evolution, and decided I needed to remedy that situation. The remedy was Dawkins' book, The Blind Watchmaker, which I tore through in days, enjoying every page. A little later, I read Dawkins' first book, and true masterpiece, The Selfish Gene, which blows away the idea that evolution necessarily favours the most violent, selfish individuals, and thus gives a little hope for mankind in a godless universe.
And then, in 2006, came The God Delusion, a highly ambitious project. This time, instead of using biology alone to undermine religious ideas, Dawkins travels across a wide range of philosophical arguments in order to destroy the basis of religious belief. Again, I bought the book almost as soon as it was available (OK, perhaps I waited for the paperback) and read it fast. Again, many of the arguments were fascinating and compelling. In his usual razor-sharp way, the author shredded any possible religious response. The God Delusion is a devastating blow to religious thinking.
But there was something a little different and disturbing about this book. For the first time (at least, the first time I had noticed), the mask of scientific impartiality slipped. Dawkins' hatred of religion became more pronounced, most blatantly in Chapter 8: "What's Wrong With Religion? Why be So Hostile?" On its own, this was no problem to me: I've never been a fan of religion either. But Dawkins was now attacking the basis of religious freedom, arguing that to teach a child irrational belief was effectively child abuse. The subtext was clear: child abuse cannot be tolerated in a civilised society, and so – if society accepts his argument that religion is indeed abusive – then religion cannot be tolerated either. It's a position that any fascist would be proud of: "we are too tolerant to tolerate you!"
The intolerance of ideas is a deeply unscientific position, and thus an odd one to be coming from someone who has spent so much of his life promoting science. The Enlightenment – which laid the foundations of modern democracies – was based on the twin ideas of reason and freedom of thought. The fathers of the Enlightenment advocated a free marketplace of ideas as the only model for human advancement. Dawkins himself invented the word meme to model how ideas spread and mutate within such a marketplace. Either Dawkins has no faith that his own ideas could thrive against religious ones in a free marketplace, or his hatred of religion is driven by just that: hatred.
There seems to be a particular type of Twitter atheist that revels in attacking, and trying to upset, religious people. Many of these atheists were raised with religion before becoming atheists, and tend to blame their earlier intolerance on their religion rather than on their own innate wankishness. They seem not to notice that they're just as intolerant as they used to be: they've just converted from being religious wankers into atheist wankers. Dawkins, since taking to Twitter himself, has attracted a large following of such people (and simultaneously lost many of his earlier admirers).
Dawkins' Twitter rants have become infamous, and he has often been denounced as a bigot. Until recently, I haven't subscribed to the idea that he is bigoted against any one religion or group; he clearly has a hatred for religion (and religious people) in general. But it has been hard to ignore that he, like so many "enlightened" people, has a special hatred for Muslims (although he would no doubt characterise it as a hatred of Islam rather than the religion's followers). To my eyes, his crime has been far worse than just irrationally hating people: he has shown himself quite willing to abandon scientific principle in order to demonstrate his dogmatic view that religion is evil. Thus, he will happily tweet about the flogging of a woman for adultery (because the abuse has a religious justification) while ignoring mass slaughter in Congo or Sri Lanka (because he has no interest in rapes or murders that can't be blamed on religion). This, from a man who was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science for over a decade. Cherry-picking data to suit your dogma is the very crime for which he has correctly castigated purveyors of creationism and Intelligent Design.
Dawkins is also happy to spread anti-Islamic mythology when it serves his purpose. His site purports to be dedicated to removing the influence of religion, and yet carries several articles about female genital mutilation; this is clearly done to perpetuate the myth that FGM is an Islamic practise. But it isn't: it's primarily an African cultural one, largely perpetrated by women against their daughters and granddaughters. What do articles about FGM have to do with Dawkins' war on religion? In reality, nothing, but they help him demonise religion as evil, and stir up intolerance. Clearly, accuracy and truth – things that are at the core of science – matter less than creating hatred against religious people. In trying to destroy religion, Dawkins has adopted the methods of religion.
Is he just naively amplifying far-right propaganda against Muslims, or does he have a far-right agenda of his own? I have long supported the former view, but evidence is increasing for the latter. One of many generic far-right Muslim-baiting Twitter accounts is @JihadistJoe. Although Joe claims to be a running a JIHADIST PARODY, COMEDY & SATIRE account, he seems to have forgotten he's supposed to be a PARODY. Besides forgetting to tweet in character, Joe also forgets he's supposed to be tweeting COMEDY. Joe does retweet a lot of bigoted comedy, and yes I admit, some of it is even funny if you can get past the small-minded hatefulness of it all. But Joe's own material is as funny as you'd expect from someone who's too stupid to know what "parody" means (i.e. not funny at all).
Dickie's view differs from mine, however, and on Saturday he tweeted:
I don't know who Joseph Al-Qaeda (@JihadistJoe) is, and I can't RT all his tweets, but he's very funny and DEADLY accurate. Follow him.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 5, 2014
As a result of which, Joe acquired several thousand new followers. So Richard Dawkins, man of science, thinks that tweets such as the following are "very funny and DEADLY accurate"?
If Islam is for all humanity & Ramadan fasting is essential, what happens to those living in polar regions where the sun doesn't go down? — Joseph Al-Qaeda (@JihadistJoe) July 8, 2014
If Islam was truly the Religion of Peace then surely the peaceful Ahmadiyya Muslims wouldn't be not considered apostates worthy of death?
— Joseph Al-Qaeda (@JihadistJoe) July 8, 2014
Anti rape scarf: Islamophobic infidel women can now wrap themselves in a bacon scarf to keep away rapey Muslims. pic.twitter.com/wzfHsiiAtU
— Joseph Al-Qaeda (@JihadistJoe) July 7, 2014
Laugh-a-minute stuff, and oh! such wonderful parody! At least, Dickie thinks so:
When a parody is so close to the real thing that they are indistinguishable, why waste time and effort trying to decide? — Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 8, 2014
In response to Dawkins' praise for Joe, I tweeted:
.@RichardDawkins Which goes to show you know nothing about humour. Stick to evolution – you were good at that @JihadistJoe
— MoronWatch (@moronwatch) July 5, 2014
To which he replied:
.@moronwatch @JihadistJoe Humour is a matter of taste. As is my judgment that you lack both. — Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 5, 2014
Being attacked by Dawkins for being shit at biology would be hurtful, but being abused by one of the world's most humourless men for my lack of humour? I can handle that. Note the "." to make his tweet public – I was then, of course, bombarded with tweets from moronic Dawkins fans for a while; I make no protest, as I've frequently employed the same tactic.
So Dawkins has proven a huge disappointment to me, and many others who admired him as a man of science. Is he really stupid enough to fall for the anti-Muslim propaganda that's become so prevalent? That seems unlikely; but he seems guilty of the anti-science crime of not questioning data if it backs his own bigoted views. And for that reason, however high his IQ might be, I think it's fair to say that Richard Dawkins is a moron.


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The 40mm pyrotechnic grenade (flare) pouch is intended to be equipped with the grenadier LBV (Load Bearing Vest) configuration. This dual pouch will hold two 40mm grenades, secured in with snap dome fastening. Manufactured by Specialty Defense Systems for the US Army.
Constructed from tough Cordura nylon in classic woodland camouflage. As part of the MOLLE (Modular Lightweight Load-bearing Equipment) system, the pouch can be attached in a variety of ways to combat gear. This may be on a MOLLE compatible vest or belt. A good choice for paintball and airsoft as there is a vast amount of readily available USGI woodland equipment to work with. Alternatively, re-purpose it to carry torch or multi-tool.
NSN: 8465-01-F01-0319Dimensions: Each Pouch: 5.5cm L x 13cm H x 2.5cm W Overall Dimensions: 14cm L x 13.5cm H x 2.5cm WColour: WoodlandContent: Cordura nylon with metal snap domesWeight: 100gCondition: New/Unissued
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Scotland's scrum will have to produce their best performance of the Six Nations if they are to upset France in their match at Murrayfield on Saturday, former Scotland lock Nathan Hines said.
The Scotland pack have proved the Achilles heel of the team this season, providing little ball for their backs to do something with, especially against England, where they were humiliated 20-0 at Murrayfield.
However, Australia-born Hines, who was capped 77 times by his adopted country, said that based on the resolute performance in their last outing — a nailbiting 21-20 win over Italy in Rome — there was some hope for Scotland and not just because of France's woeful away form, which has seen them fail to win in two years since winning in Edinburgh.
"The win over Italy confirmed the impression Scotland made in their first game against Ireland [a 28-6 defeat]," said Hines, who is in his final season with French giants Clermont before moving to English club Sale.
"They did well initially and held their own, but then cracked in the face of the Irish pack," he said.
"The Scottish team have a young three-quarter line, still gaining in experience and therefore liable to be exposed. The biggest problems, though, are in the scrum which does not make any yardage and loses one in two lineouts," Hines added.
"Scotland needs the ball so it can express itself. It will be the scrum that decides the match against France. If we correct this area then we can pose the French all sorts of problems," he said.
Hines, who has previously played in France for Perpignan before joining Irish province Leinster, with whom he won the 2011 European Cup, said he felt Scotland are in about the same position as France as they prepare for next year's World Cup: Still searching for the best formula and mix of players.
However, he said while the arrival of his present club coach Vern Cotter as head coach of Scotland, replacing Scott Johnson at the end of the season, would have a positive impact, the World Cup might come too soon in terms of seeing an upturn in results.
"When you are a player, this transitional period is always complicated," Hines said. "Certain players will have their eye on the future, when the priority is to focus on what happens now."
"The arrival of Vern [Cotter] risks turning things upside down. He will bring with him a rigorous approach and ask a lot more of the players. He will force them to pose questions about themselves and what they have been doing before," Hines said.
"When something is working he will tell you it is, but he will also do so when it isn't, but it is important to have a coach that talks to you frankly. The federation did not make a mistake in hiring him," he added.
"Maybe the World Cup will come too early for the results to be seen, but I think that by the 2016 Six Nations, Scotland will be a force to be reckoned with," Hines said.


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Aug. 1, 1927 – June 26, 2013
Henry J. "Hank" Bokman, a longtime Western New York auto dealer, died June 26 in his Freehold, N.J., home after a long illness. He was 85.
Born in Albion, Mr. Bokman graduated from Albion High School and earned a bachelor's degree from Cornell University in 1950.
In 1963, Mr. Bokman started a small Dodge dealership in Medina with his brother, Joseph. He bought an Oldsmobile dealership on South Park Avenue in 1967, and a short time later, moved it to West Seneca. He sold that dealership in 1982.
In 1985, Mr. Bokman opened Bokman Chevrolet in Fredonia, which he operated until his retirement in 2005.
Mr. Bokman was a member of Rotary clubs in West Seneca and Fredonia.
A sports fan, he enjoyed golfing, boating and snow and water skiing.
Mr. Bokman left the Buffalo area in 2012.
He is survived by two sons, Thomas and Stephen; two daughters, Maureen MacNamara and Jean; two brothers, Michael and Butch; and two sisters, Veronica Cameron and Rita Lewis.
A memorial service will be held in Buffalo at a later date.


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Twitter is, if nothing else, the perfect blog platform for athletes. No sitting down at a computer. No formatting blog software. No designing (or paying someone to design) a fancy, flash-based Web site. Just the athlete, their mobile phone, their love of texting, and your eager eyeballs.
This formula has given way to Charlie Villanueva (who famously tweeted at halftime of an NBA game), Kenny Smith (less an athlete now than a broadcaster, but still) and the king of all athlete streams, THE_REAL_SHAQ. Shaquille O'Neal has taken the medium to new heights, actually, hosting contests and impromptu tweet-ups with his now-plus-one-million followers. Fans connecting with players through the power of the Internet? It actually, finally happened.
And now it's going to end. Danica Patrick just launched a Twitter feed at the behest of one of her sponsors, watch company Tissot, who will receive, as the Sports Business Journal writes, "extension exposure on [Patrick's] feed, including visual branding on her Twitter Web page." Tsk, tsk. Didn't Patrick get the memo? Twitter is supposed to be about blatantly promoting yourself. Not a company that's paying you!
O'Neal, the king of the medium, is also going commercial, including energy drink maker Enlyten in his "self-made" viral videos.
Much as we hate it, this seems like a way forward for athletes interested in getting paid for nearly everything they do. From their viewpoint, it makes perfect business sense, and we don't begrudge them for making that paper. But as sports fans, the idea of getting unfiltered access and communication with athletes via Twitter was exhilarating. The idea that those transmissions will now be exactly as authentic as a Go Daddy commercial makes more than a little bit sad.
Eamonn Brennan is a Chicago-based writer, editor and blogger. You can also read him at Yahoo! Sports, Mouthpiece Sports Blog, and Inside The Hall, or at his personal site, eamonnbrennan.com. Follow him on Twitter.


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I'm trying to build a debian package for a program that uses mono. My
make install target currently puts all of my binaries
/usr/local/lib/mypackage, then creates a tiny executable script in
/usr/local/bin that invokes the actual binaries with mono. I use a one-liner to replace the placeholder
PREFIX with the actual install path:
install: DESTDIR=/usr/local
install: LIBDIR=$(DESTDIR)/lib
install: BINDIR=$(DESTDIR)/bin
install: $(PHONIX) $(ANTLR) doc
install -m 0755 -d $(LIBDIR)/phonix
install -m 0755 -t $(LIBDIR)/phonix $(PHONIX) $(ANTLER)
install -m 0755 -D phonix.sh $(BINDIR)/phonix
sed -i "s!PREFIX!$(LIBDIR)!" $(BINDIR)/phonix
When I'm running under
$(LIBDIR) and
$(BINDIR) point to the packaging directory as desired. Everything gets installed into the right place for the packager, but the
sed call puts the path of my local packaging directory into the script, which then gets placed verbatim in the package. This obviously doesn't work once I actually install the package on the target system.
I think that I need to move the
sed call into the post-install script, but I'm not sure how to get the local install directory (the moral equivalent of my
$(LIBDIR) and
$(BINDIR)) in the post-install step. Or is there a better way altogether to do this?
Edit: Here's my actual
phonix.sh file, before sed is called:
exec mono PREFIX/phonix.exe
As you can see, the only purpose of this file is to provide an executable wrapper for the mono-based .exe. The sed call just replaces
PREFIX with the value of
$(LIBDIR). So all I really need to know is how can I get the actual installed location of my .exe on the target system so that the wrapper script works?


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What's new - May 2001
|A new entry today, the Doomsday machine from the TOS episode of the same name. Working out the details of this ship has been a fascinating exercise, and the comments page should make interesting reading!
Another oops moment today... I got the class names of the Negh'Var variants mixed up. The Voodieh is actually the All Good Things version, while the mirror universe version doesn't have a class name. Since the ship seen in Shattered Mirror is apparently called Regency 1, I've decided to call it the Regency class.
|Episode Guide
|Six new episodes of Voyager go up today, taking us up to "The Void".
|Various species have been added to the "others" sections of the species list. Also, the parasites from "Conspiracy" have got a full entry of their own. The "Parasite" menu buttoin previously linked to the Tarchannen parasites; these have been moved to a "Tarchannen" button to allow the new entry to take over the old one. If you have a weak stomach, beware that one of the images on the Parasite entry is a rather gory view of the mother alien sitting inside Remmick's phaser-blasted chest cavity.
|The TNG "All Good Things" and DS9 "Shattered Mirror" variations of the Negh'Var have gained full entries, including entries in the size comparison charts, and the text of the Prometheus entry has been largely re-worked after a long series of conversations with Robert Brandt. Many thanks to Robert for his insights on this fascinating vessel.
|Due to popular demand, I've put a page up for the Dauntless as seen in Voyager's "Hope and Fear". As you might expect, the comments page on this one is bigger than usual.
|The Klingon fleet page had a few wrong figures on it, and these have now been fixed. Thanks to Roel Hodzelmans for this one. Sometimes I don't think I'll EVER get those darned pages bug free...
|I've put all the dedication plaques I could find up on this section today. There are a dozen altogether; I've written the mottos under most of them because the images are a bit small to see them clearly.
|Copyright Graham Kennedy
|Page views : 8,588
|Last updated : 30 May 2001


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You've been told over the past 20 years that this would be the golden age for financial advisors. The largest generation in U.S. history, the Baby Boomers, would be nearing retirement and everyone would need advisors to help them manage their large pool of investable assets. Advisors who were lucky enough to be around for this era would be thriving off a prospect base of more than 77 million people.
Things turned out drastically different than we all had anticipated. Today, only 11% of boomers say they are very confident they will be able to retire comfortably, according to a recent Associated Press survey, and 44% have little or no faith that they can retire at all. Boomers are in fact so unprepared that we're facing a massive, looming retirement crisis that will affect our entire economy. The sad part is that most Boomers aren't seeking services from financial advisors because they are skeptical. When you consider the other 89% of boomers are not on track to retire and aren't seeking advisors' services, it becomes clear that the actual market available for business is extremely small compared to the overall boomer population.
Economic turmoil and shifting trends in employer-sponsored retirement benefits have been partially responsible for the boomers' retirement crisis and for generations to come, the road to retirement is only getting foggier. Today, only 31% of employees have a traditional pension plan and for those that work in the private sector, pension payouts typically fund only a portion of their income needs in retirement. Moreover, 66% are not confident their own investments are allocated properlyand many don't know that the life expectancy for those that reach full retirement age is 85 years. This means that employees, even beyond the boomer generation, are at a huge disadvantage when it comes to having adequate retirement savings.
Why Financial Education Is the Solution
It's obvious that a solution is needed to bridge the gap. But the problem isn't how boomers are investing their assets—it's how much they are saving in the first place. The solution has to effectively change boomers' and other future clients' behavior. Currently, the national average savings rate is just above 5%, so just imagine the impact it would have on your business if all your clients, or potential clients, saved twice that amount. With financial education, advisors could literally be doubling or tripling their revenue without doing anything more themselves. Workplace financial education programs have increased the average employee deferral rates into their retirement accounts to 11%. In fact, the more times an employee receives retirement education, the higher their average deferral rate:
Someone earning $75,000 and who's been saving for 20 years, putting away 5% of their income—and earning an average 8% annual return—would bring to an advisor about $184,000 in investable assets. A client in the same situation who has been saving 11% would bring to you nearly $405,000 to manage. Which client would you prefer to work with?
Financial education provides a huge benefit to advisors because it also
teaches people the fundamentals that advisors don't have the time or would rather not exhaust resources to provide.
Yes, I believe in the value of educating retirement plan participants, and my firm, Financial Finesse, in the workplace education business. That's why I know how important it is to provide education to employees for that worker's benefit and her family's. Better education that increases deferral rates and retirement readiness is also of great benefit to the advisor community, I'd argue, in addition to being good for the country itself.
After all, employees who participate in financial education have less debt, manage their finances better and are more proactive about their finances, realizing when they need a financial advisor rather than playing guessing games with their investments. This opens up an entirely new market that advisors are currently unable to reach. Here's why financial education can be the solution advisors need:
Educated Clients Are Better Clients
They invest more. Financial education increases employees' participation in retirement plans. Financial Finesse's research, gleaned from actual participants in retirement plans where we provide education, shows that 92% of employees who participate in retirement education make a major change to their retirement plans within 30 days of receiving the education. The most common changes are to increase retirement savings, reallocate their assets to be more appropriate to their time horizon and goals, and open a Roth or traditional IRA to supplement their company-sponsored plan.
They're less likely to jump ship when the market swings. There are a whole host of obvious reasons why this is true but, in short, informed clients are less likely to overreact. They generally tend to stick to their long-term strategies better and not make mistakes based on fear and emotion. This means less risk for advisors to lose clients due to uncontrollable markets or worse, end up with a complaint from a disgruntled client. Even clients who are satisfied with their advisors are potentially waiting to jump ship. A recent survey by Northstar/Sullivan on rebuilding client trust
found that 36% of clients working with an advisor or firm said they will consider moving their assets despite feeling a sense of satisfaction with them. Financial education can help increase loyalty and retain valuable clients by showing a commitment to growing their knowledge.
Education Bridges the Trust Divide
Ten years ago, over 10% of calls to our financial helpline were related to how to find a financial advisor. Today, that number has dropped to 2%. With the recession uncovering a multitude of investment and mortgage fraud, and the stock market fluctuations depleting boomers' portfolios by in some cases around 40%, boomers are understandably feeling fear and skepticism. It's even more important for advisors to bridge the trust divide. Boomers often share a perception that advisors have an agenda to sell them something, but with financial education, advisors can change this perception to the reality that they are on the same side of the table as their clients.
Showing clients you are objective is not just good virtue, it's where the financial planning industry is headed. Advisors can support organizations such as the Personal Finance Employee Education Foundation(PFEEF) or the JumpStart coalitionor even promote financial literacy in their communities to brand themselves long-term as professional advice-givers who put their clients first.
In the upcoming months in this recurring commentary on AdvisorOne, I'll be sharing best practices in financial education for advisors, as well as a toolkit of resources you can use to help educate your clients and prospective clients to grow their knowledge. In turn, I'll show how you taking these steps can help grow your client base and help build a financially healthy group of consumers. Imagine when the remaining 89% of people are in a position to work with an advisor because they will have the assets and wealth needed to retire; there may be more work involved for advisors today, but I have a feeling it will be worth it.
For more information on this topic, see some additional writing we've done at Financial Finesse on this topic:
- Applying Murphy's Law to Retirement
- Four Myths About Investment Risk that Could Lose you Money
- Calculator: Your Retirement Nest Egg: How Long Will It last?
(We ask that you respect all copyright laws and do not alter any resources from Financial Finesse in any way.)


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Jennifer Lawrence gave a beautiful acceptance speech at Sunday's Screen Actors Guild Awards, but it was what she did on her way to the podium that really had everyone talking.
As the Silver Linings Playbook star walked up the stairs to accept her award, viewers got a big but brief flash of Lawrence's upper legs. Although it may have appeared that Lawrence,22, pulled a Julianne Hough — aka ripped her couture dress — she just actually revealed a bottom layer of chiffon material that was part of her navy blue Dior dress. Lawrence picked up the hem of her dress to avoid tripping on it or, worse, having it get caught on a chair on the way to the stage, according to The Hollywood Reporter. However, in her shock at winning the best actress trophy, Lawrence forgot her dress was not all one piece and she simply only lifted one layer of the dress. First world problems, eh?
Photos: See all the hits and misses from the Screen Actors Guild Awards
See Lawrence's wardrobe malfunction replayed here:


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The tea saucer of Dressed series is ideal for making every moment of the day special. The scalloped edge and embossed decoration on the entire surface of the saucer transform it into a precious object, capable of making every table unique. It is suitable as a complement to tea time and it can also be used to serve sweets or appetizers. The saucer is made of white porcelain like the other objects of the Dressed tableware.
Dressed, created by the designer Marcel Wanders, is a collection of dishes characterised by a delicate decoration, hidden in the less visible parts of the objects. Look at it carefully and you will see, at the least expected place, a decoration that enhances its design, giving the products a unique and discreet elegance. Dressed, a collection of simple lines, knows how to surprise thanks to its hidden decorations. It is a complete table service for a perfect mise en place.VIEW THE COMPLETE RANGE
Marcel Wanders grew up in Boxtel, the Netherlands, and graduated cum laude from the School of the Arts Arnhem in 1988. Marcel Wanders' fame started with his iconic Knotted Chair, which he produced for Droog Design in 1996. He is now ubiquitous, designing for the biggest European contemporary design manufacturers like B&B Italia, Bisazza, Poliform, Moroso, Flos, Boffi, Cappellini, Droog Design and Moooi of which he is also art director and co-owner. Founded in 2000, Moooi has grown into an internationally renowned design label. Additionally, Marcel Wanders works on architectural and interior design projects and recently turned his attention to consumer home appliances. Marcel was the editor of the International Design Yearbook 2005. In the same year, together with Chef Peter Lute, he established the extraordinary LUTE SUITES hospitality-concept, the first "all over city suites" hotel in the world. He also designed the interior of Blits, a new restaurant in Rotterdam and the interior of the restaurant 'Thor' at the Hotel on Rivington in New York including bar, lounge and private club. Marcel is the first and among the most important designers of Droog design. He was a juror for various prizes like the Rotterdam Design Prize (for which his own products were nominated several times) and the Kho Liang Ie prize. He lectured at SFMoMA, Limn, the Design Academy, Nike, IDFA, FutureDesignDays and has taught at various design academies in the Netherlands and abroad. Various designs of Marcel Wanders have been selected for the most important design collections and exhibitions in the world, like the Museum of Modern Art in New York and San Francisco, the V&A Museum in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Central Museum in Utrecht, Museum of Decorative Arts Copenhagen and various Droog Design exhibitions. Coverage on Marcel has been published in all leading design magazines and newspapers such as Domus, Interni, Blueprint, Design Report, Frame, I.D. magazine, Abitare, Wallpaper, Nylon, Elle decoration, Icon, Esquire, the International Herald Tribune, Washington Post, the Financial Times, the New York Times and Business Week.