StarGlass Studios

Addition of new pages required auditing for HTML 4 standard. Also, the ad banners introduced by Netfirms and Beplaced don't conform to the standard. *sigh* Of course, the sgsa IPv6 mirror (when updated) and starglassstudios.homelinux.com mirror both are compliant.

BTW, Mirror page is also reliant on my computer at the moment. Man, do I have a heck of a lot of fixing up to do on the website... TT

Now you can view the News Archives and the News in Single-Story mode. However, both of these are only available when my computer is on. ^^ (They currently reference the starglassstudios.homelinux.com mirror only.)

In the future, it will be possible to view these on the Netfirms mirror. Sorry for any inconvienence.

With the first day of school just around the corner, it seems like a good time to finish off as many loose ends as possible, and introduce some recent changes.

In a stroke of midnight genius (at least I think so), "Perfection" (working title) will be our first (or second, depending on whether the SFX test known as I-ABLE for October counts as a mini-plot) short, and entertainment production as a whole. We hope to have the release sometime in March, or at least whenver Thornlea has it's "film festival" (that's what Asad said -- don't ask me, I think he's got it all wrong, I believe he's talking about the week with a bunch of live plays). Details will be made available as soon as they are finalized.

This is the last change that will be propiaged to the old server at chessmasteronline.netfirms.com; please use http://starglassstudios.netfirms.com or another alternate mirror.

Also to note, is that the Beplaced mirror, or at least it's page counter, appears to have died. Should there be renewed interest in the content that was available on the server, we may recreate the account. The mirror is still available and updated, to a certain extent.

Also, you'll note at the right there is a "Projects" main page; as well, our "About Us" page is up. The contents of neither pages have been approved by the other members of SGS -- so PLEASE, PLEASE let me know ASAP if there's anything there that looks wrong or you want added/removed. Thanks!

While the website has remained mostly static (sadly), we have gone to great lengths working in the meantime. One day, the website will be up-to-date again. Until then, I'd like to note we have 10 in-made ships, and our GNAPS (Generator for Napalms and other Projectiles Script) is now functional. So is the glob-rotoscope-by-color script (although the numerics one isn't at the moment, and may never be).

Progress is also being made on the DRS.

As a side note, the Ganglia monitor is now online, so to speak, when the systems are online. The link at the side is usually functional. If not, the IPv6 links http://thenewme91.broker.freenet6.net/ganglia/ and http://sgsa.broker.freenet6.net/ganglia/ also contain the Ganglia interface (the first being the same server as the server to the left, except over IPv6, the latter being on a different host in the cluster).

The host http://sgsa.broker.freenet6.net/ (IPv6 Only) is usually out of date, although we are hoping to have it being automatically updated (like our other mirrors) sometime in the near future.

If you don't have IPv6 Support, get it for free in three steps, at http://freenet6.net .

Enjoy!

Title says it all.

We haven't dissapeared off the face of the earth... yet.

Plans are for a mini-plot/short targeted for October.

Apologies to all, but there have been delays in uploading the latest versions of POV-Ships to the website, as well as the transformation of the three latest ship models into POV-Ray SDL.

The reason is that I've resumed work on the SGS POV-Ray DRS (Distributed Rendering System) due to the sudden surge in POV-Ray rendering, and recent conversion of major pages to the HTML 4.0 Transitional standard [all internal scripts, such as internal update scripts, and the POV DRS Job Manager, and the Storywriter) are not compatable at the moment with the standard.

BTW, the storywriter is available at http://starglassstudios.homelinux.com:7999/ when the server is online. ^^

Geez, that was hard work, updating the News Publisher for freaking W3C HTML 4.0 Transitional compatability. What a pain in the ass!

Not that anyone cares, but the index and download pages (at least) are proper W3C HTML 4.0 Transitional... will check the other pages as time permits (probably including internal ones).

All Ship downloads have been updated to [v2], containing various updates to improve the quality of the AVIs.

Richard's Ship 1 is now updated to use the 5-pass view, and Asad's ship now has a spinning turret (although the spinning speed, and scales of the various components, need to be updated).

Unfortunately, as a side effect, the AVIs are larger and longer, but they're still pretty small. If all else fails, I can convert to WMV later. ^^

See the updated Downloads page.

Richard's original POV-Ship 1 is now also online in the Downloads section!

Name:Unnamed Ship 1 [Richard]
Source:POV SDL
AVI:Straight run, white BG [3s, 208KB]
Prerendered Frames:TAR/BZ2 (90 PNG Frames, 132KB)
Notes:Consider Implementing 5 Shots like UNS2, move Camera to point at middle of ship at <0,0,3> instead of cockpit at <0,0,0>

You should now be able to access the website at our Beplaced mirror -- go to the mirror page (left) to find it.

It should have full downloads, including all the archives. However, due to bandwidth settings, there must be more HTML downloads than file downloads, so please, PLEASE, use that mirror for *ALL* web browsing as the default mirror. Please download files that are available on Netfirms mirrors at those mirrors. Thank you.

In the future, clicking a download link will bring you to a page containing mirrors for that download. Of course, first, the status icon scripts must be offloaded the homelinux mirror, but... *shrugs* one thing at a time.

Unfortunately, Prerendered Downloads are not available at the moment from the Netfirms mirrors. Apparrently, even one of the prerendered archives will bring our account over it's limit.

In the meantime, please use the mirror at starglassstudios.homelinux.com.

Please note that this mirror is not guaranteed 24/7 availability. An alternate mirror for larger downloads will be made available ASAP.

This doesn't affect the POV sources, or the AVIs, at the moment.

Major progress has been made this week -- a first version of the SGS Opening Sequence and a new ship have been released, and the Downloads section is online!

Todo: Put up first ship on the Downloads section, New Logos for the website.

Go ahead and Visit the New Downloads Section.

Up for grabs:

Name	Source/Base	AVI File	Frame Arch.
Unnamed Ship 2	POV SDL	AVI [12.5s, 1285KB]	TAR/BZ2 (1333KB)
Finished SGS Opening Sequence	see below	AVI [12s, 1441KB]	see below
SGS OSeq POV Hourglass	POV SDL	see above	TAR/BZ2 (22335K)
SGS OSeq Logo Fadein/out	Background [XCF/GZ] SGS Studios Text (rotated) [XCF/GZ] URI Sprite [XCF/GZ]	see above	TAR/BZ2 (27261 KB)

Enjoy!

Title says it all.

Plans are to change the name to StarGlass Studios, pending consensus. Older domains will probably expire within 30 days.

Will post new links when they are done; working on new logo and "film opening clip".

One suggestion is to have a clip of:
-shattering glass that turns into stars

Sounds doable, and pretty nice; dontcha think? Dunno how'd we'd get it to look right... but, worth a shot, neh?

Will update with new links when they're ready.

Just in case anyone's wondering:
The distcc and openvpn networks are working (but not connected 24/7). The client for the chessmaster online distributed pov-ray rendering system is under development.

For Debian Linux users: Install distcc and openvpn with "apt-get install distcc openvpn". Allow connections in distcc from 192.168.90.0/24, and then e-mail me with a machinename and an indication that you're running debian linux, and I can send you a config file and keys for your machine. Download povray from www.povray.org, and install it as per the instructions. The POV-client will be distributed as a perl script, which can be downloaded later.

For Windows users: I will later be remastering a Knoppix ISO and packaging it with QEMU so that you can help us out. For the Distributed POV script, install 32-bit POV-Ray in Windows from (www.povray.org) and ActivePerl from (www.perl.com), and the scripts will be available for download later.

For other Linux users: Install distcc, openvpn, and perl as per your distribution. Configure distcc to accept from the subnet 192.168.90.0/24, and request an openvpn config and ssh keys. Download povray from www.povray.org, and install it as per the instructions. Perl script will be available later.

Our local testing site (http://chessmasteronline.homelinux.com/index2.html), available also on our VPN (http://192.168.90.1/index2.html) is now online! Now you can see the site as it develops and see your updates as the updates are propigated into the mirrors. The mirror page (available as a link from the above page) is also online. Unfortunately, our beplaced mirror has grown stale, and therefore has become removed. Also, the testing site does not currently have 24/7 connectivity.

If you wish to join the VPN, apply to the administrator at the_new_me_91@hotmail.com for a SSH key, and we'll generate you one, and send you an openvpn configuration file (which can be modified as required). Please ask for a ssh key for each machine that you wish to use to connect to the vpn.

Guys, we have to choose a name...