Today we had a great time with the students of University of Rome “La Sapienza” with a workshop on Projection Mapping. It was only a simple introduction to the topic, but it helped students to get an overview on the subject, so that they can continue to experiment with their own research and learn more.
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Ok, so you got a brand new MacPro. And you want to install Windows on it. But wait.. you have only 250GB on your MacPro Flash drive.. how can you install Windows (and work with all your wonderful, essential, indispensable graphic-designer softwares) on it? External SSD is the answer (and a couple of other things).
Disclaimer: This absolutely does not want to be an exhaustive guide to all the possible problems that may arise during the installation of Windows 10 on a MacPro late 2013. If you have the same configuration as my MacPro, if you have my same external hd, there is a good chance that everything works. Otherwise, there is still a good chance that you will accomplish the mission tweaking everything a bit, in all other cases… complain to Apple, Microsoft, AMD or whoever you want.
What do you need:
- MacPro Late 2013 (graphic card: 2 X D300 FirePro) with OSX 10.11
- External SSD (this is mine)
- WinClone
- At least 35 GB of free space on your MacPro flash drive (it will be erased after the end of this tutorial, but you still need it for the first part).
- Patience
My first attempt to install Windows 10 on an external SSD was to follow this tutorial. The tutorial is very well done, and at the end everything went well, except that Windows showed what I learned to be one of the most common bug in Windows 10: a continuous flashing after the login screen, which does not allow you to do (almost) anything. On youtube there are a few suggested ways to solve the problem, from uninstall iCloud to the elimination of certain system services, but none of them worked for me. It seems that flickering may be due to incompatible storage drivers. Windows will have drivers that communicate with the internal bus but the controller inside the Mac is different from the controller on the external drive. This incompatibility can lead to unstable behavior like flickering, crashing etc.
Let’s start:
- Use DiskUtility to create a partition on your MacPro flash drive (at least 35GB – MS-DOS/FAT).
- Start Bootcamp Assistant and start install Windows (from OSX ElCapitain, you don’t need no more an external USB key for the Bootcamp drivers) on your new partition.
- When MacPro automatically restarts, it begins the first part of the Windows installation. Don’t leave the desk during the installation process: after it will finish to copy all the files, it will restart automatically. You have to go into action as soon as it restarts. Read the next step.
- If you don’t do anything, the system will reboot under Windows, installing all the drivers. Instead, as soon as you listen to the Boot Chime, force the system to boot in OSX mode, selecting the Macintosh HD icon.
- Once in OSX, connect the SSD external drive. Using Disk utility, erase the external SSD (Format: MS-DOS/FAT Scheme: GUID Partition Map).
- Use WinClone to clone From “MacPro BOOTCAMP partition” to “external SSD”.
- At the end of the process, if you got the error: “Expanding file system failed. See the system log for more information”, select the external SSD from the sources column and choose “Expand Windows NTFS Filesystem…” from the gear icon at the bottom left.
- Then select the external SSD from the sources column, option-click the gear icon at the bottom left, and select “Make EFI Bootable”.
- Restart the system, and choose the external SSD as boot device. Now Windows starts and begin to install the drivers.
- When it is finished, Windows is running without flashing issues. The only drawback is that now we don’t have bootcamp drivers installed.
- Download the last Bootcamp drivers from Apple official support website.
- The official bootcamp drivers from Apple doesn’t install the ATI graphic drivers correctly, and it seems that AMD Catalyst drivers for Bootcamp http://support.amd.com/en-us/
download/desktop/bootcamp doesn’t work well. To install correctly the graphic drivers for the dual MacPro AMD Firepro, use the app “Apple Software Update” a couple of times, since it detects the update “Update graphic card for Bootcamp” and “Bootcamp 6 update for Windows 10”. At the end of this update, you can already check under “Manage Devices” that the Display driver correctly says “D300 Firepro”. Wow. - Reboot in OSX and run Bootcamp Assistant to erase MacPro Windows partition.
Congratulations! Now Windows 10 with all MacPro drivers is correctly installed on the external SSD drive.
Some early screenshots of my next project: Noise your world. It will let you to build an audioreactive world based on still photos.
Not sure if it will be a Quartz Composer plugin or a standalone app. For now I’m focusing on prototyping, to build an easy user interface that will let you to Bump your favorites photos.
Work in progress…
You can find the full version of the iniSphere plugin without limitation in the iniSphere page, where you can download it with just a tweet or a facebook post!
0.2.4 (32/64 bit)
- Added texture mapping
- Added vertex / color noise
- Added different lighting techniques
- Added a short pdf plugin description
Feel free to use it in your VJ projects!
We are proud to announce that Virtual Bike will be at Maker Faire Rome – European edition. We are working hard to update the system software of virtual bike with great new features, making it usable by anyone who wants to create a virtual bike at home!
For the occasion, we have created a new website: www.thevirtualbike.com, where we will describe in detail the new features that will be waiting at the maker faire!
Do not miss the opportunity to visit us and have fun together with your friends!
See you at the maker faire exhibition area, the first weekend of October!
Siamo orgogliosi di annunciare che Virtual Bike sarà esposta alla Maker Faire Rome – European edition. Stiamo lavorando duro per rinnovare il software di virtual bike con grandi novità, rendendolo utilizzabile da chiunque voglia creare una virtual bike a casa propria!
Per l’occasione abbiamo creato un nuovo sito: www.thevirtualbike.com, dove descriveremo in dettaglio le novità che vi aspetteranno alla maker faire!
Non mancate l’occasione per venirci a trovare e divertirvi insieme ai vostri amici!
Ci vediamo alla maker faire al palazzo delle esposizioni, il primo weekend di ottobre!
I recently update the old version of iniTree (with many limitations) to 0.2.0 version, with a lot of new features and improved performances.
For those who looked at the older versions:
- iniTree 0.1.0
- iniTree structure (it doesn’t draw, but outputs a QC structure of points coordinates)
iniTree 0.2.0 in action
Our Virtual Bike installation will be @ IL PAGLIAIO on 31th may and 1st june in Rome, a two-days festival of new Media Arts. Come and enjoy our Virtual bike! 🙂
Info:
Here it is my first scientific publication.
I made it in collaboration with: Laura Gigli, Stefano Levialdi, Anna Labella on 2010. It was a collaboration with the computer science department of University of Rome La Sapienza. I was doing some experiments on realtime graphic involving bump mapping/offset mapping/cone step-mapping techniques, and we discussed on how to apply these techniques to cultural heritage photos.
This applied research project is based on the dialectics existing between thecoming to light of a newborn artistic creation and its returning to light throughits restoration. The main idea is to build a bridge between the metaphysics ofthe creative thought of the artist and today’s vision of the architect/historian ofart who performs the restoration. It seems therefore natural to look at the lightas the key to enable the interpretation of the work of art and use such light tounderstand and restore it.
Here it is a link to the google books version of this paper:
On 29/30 September there will be an Arduino workshop in Rome, organized with the help of diScienza and CATTID.
On 28th September there will be a free introduction day to Arduino and open source community @ Nuovo Cinema Palazzo in Rome: our Virtual bike installation will be there for you! Come to meet the Arduino community! See you there! 🙂
Here it is a brief description of the workflow we followed to build up the installation.
STEP ONE – Shoot the path.
Use a good camera (we used a GOPRO cam that allows a beautiful wide angle video), a steadycam if you want your videos to be more stable, and bring with you a lot of patience. 🙂 Once you have one or more videos with your path you have to stabilize them (we used After Effects CS6 warp stabilizer) and create a single long video.
For a good video you must take into account:
- The speed must be constant throughout the path.
- The vanishing point of the street must be at the center of the frame.
- The horizon must be at the same level.
STEP TWO – Build up the bike
Ok, let’s start the fun! We used:
- a bike (really? 🙂 )
- an Arduino Ethernet (or a Arduino + Ethernet shield)
- a bike speedometer
- an IR sensor (we used one from Sharp IR sensors family)
- cables
- a Mac (with Quartz Composer)
The bike speedometer is actually a simple button: usually there are two wires, one for power and the other one attached to the other end of the switch. You would use them with the Arduino in the same way “simple button tutorial” shows.
We need the IR sensor to know if you are steering left/right: just put it on a distance of about 60 cm on the side of the bike, parallel to the ground, pointing the wheel: it’ll return the distance from the sensor to the wheel (be careful to fill-in the gaps between the rays of the wheel, otherwise the IR will pass the wheel!). Here you can find a tutorial on how to do that.
STEP THREE – Turn your bike into a virtual bike
The Arduino program will:
- receive the speedometer signal every time the wheel will make a whole turn.
- calculate the instant speed.
- process the IR signal.
- send an OSC message with speed and turn infos trough Ethernet to the Mac. We used ArdOSC library to send OSC messages from Arduino, and qcOSC receiver to process them in Quartz Composer.
The OSC message will be processed in Quartz Composer in this way:
- the speed will be the increment of the timeline associated with the path-video (the faster you run, the faster the video will play).
- the turn info will offset the video on the left or the right (the video was recorded with a wide angle: we show only a portion of that to simulate a steering).
STEP FOUR – Enjoy the fun!
We start to think about this project considering a funny way to approach people to the story of the neighborhood Saint Lowrence in Rome. It is only one of hundreds of project you can discover on internet about Arduino and Quartz Composer programming.
We choose Arduino for the hardware side because of its huge opensource community: you can search for every kind of tutorial, even the strangest one.. you’ll always find someone crazy like you, and you’ll find a lot of help to start with Arduino everywhere! 🙂
From the software side, we choose Quartz Composer mainly because of its immediate use. It is mainly a software for VJ artists, but it allow to do a lot of funny things with little effort: if you have a Mac, give it a try! 🙂