Late 2013 MacBook Pro Battery

Recently I have been having some issues with my late 2013 MacBook Pro 15″ (the model without dedicated graphics).

The trackpad mainly stopped registering a click. Sometimes it only recognized a click when pressed on either left or right side and so on. It did still click though. Also there was a feel on the top case like it’s slightly bulging.

A quick Google search made it clear, it’s got to be a bulging battery that is preventing the trackpad of functioning properly. Self replacing the battery would be out of question for me as I wasn’t willing to start to mess around with disassembly required to do so, and the battery is glued to the top case. And also I wasn’t be able to be exactly sure whether the trackpad problems originate from the bulge or whether the trackpad itself had a some kind of damage.

So it was obvious that I needed this to be looked at, so I made a reservation in Omotesando Applestore and  took it in. The man quickly diagnosed the problem to be indeed a battery starting to bulge. So he offered the repair which would mean replacement of the entire top case with keyboard, trackpad, battery and so forth. It cost about 21000 yen including the repair cost. Now this is OOW; out of warranty type affair. I accepted the offer.

I took my  machine there on Friday and got it back today Monday. They sent me mail around noon yesterday (Sunday). That’s three days. So this morning I picked up the machine.

Indeed, the top case is brand new and trackpad has it’s original feel and perfect operation. I am quite happy with this service. I don’t think 21000 yen is too bad for this. At least it wasn’t logic board.

However, I do notice that the keyboard feels different, a little a bit more spongy. This could be just me gotten used to the old, worn one. It might be that this is how new MacBook Pro keyboards used to feel, at least before the new butterfly mechanism that so many have had issues with.

If I had bought replacement battery and tried to fix that by myself, I well, might have botched the job and ruined the computer. What I understood from poking around a bit in the internet, removing glued batteries require use of some kind of heat-gun or solvent that would dissolve the glue. I wouldn’t be comfortable working with either of them near my computer. And even of this was successful operation, I wouldn’t still have gotten new keyboard and trackpad. Those things do suffer from wear and tear.

So yes, I am satisfied with the service I got from Apple. This computer has been very reliable tool for me. The first one I got suffered from loose Thunderbolt ports and got warranty repair once. The machine suffers from very brief small flicker sometimes in the screen; I believe this is due to wifi interference as mentioned by other people in the internet. I have not used this machine with wifi turned off; I might indeed try that just to see if it makes any difference.

When I was returning from the Apple Store I checked some of the current gen MacBook Pros. I cannot possibly see myself buying one just because of the dreaded keyboard issues so many people are talking about, and also I quite frankly don’t need one at the moment.

I really like Mac OS experience and I can’t see myself moving away from it; no matter how I am tempted to due to the high cost of maintaining Mac. For 3D graphics and heavy video editing I use PC, but for music and pretty much everything else I prefer staying in the Mac platform.

The iMac Pro maintenance thing (as witnessed by Linus Tech Tips and Snazzy Labs) does raise questions about how interested Apple is maintaining their computer line up. I am happy to so far report that my experience was quite good.

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Featured in 80.lv and CG Channel

My free rock height generator got featured in 80.lv and CG Channel. I try to be worthy of the sudden fame.

The generator is available in my Gumroad page for free forever.

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My Gumroad site

Some of my most requested Substance projects and models are now available in Gumroad.

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Game Asset in Substance Painter Project File

Substance Painter covered barrels source file

 

The Substance Painter project file (.spp) for my Covered Barrels game asset is now available at Gumroad. This is great asset for learning.

https://gumroad.com/l/euZn

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Rusty Steel Substance with inputs

Creating Substance with Exposed Parameters

You can download this substance at Gumroad.

In this video tutorial I take a look on creating a substance with exposed parameters and input nodes.

Creating materials like these can be extremely useful and time saving because it allows serialized asset texturing with weathering effects or basically any kind of effects that will respect mesh-specific maps such as curvature, normal or AO maps. This is crazy efficient way to create PBR materials for environmental game models, for example.

Substance graph with Exposed Parameters
This is the graph in Substance Designer with exposed parameters

The graph I created could use some rearranging to make it look more clean, but it works and it’s the most important thing. I have defined the input maps in the left area. The reason why I have basically unnecessary blend node sitting there is just that I can switch some baked maps into the graph if I want to tweak it, because when the input is empty I can’t see anything in the graph. Anyway having nodes like that shouldn’t affect the performance of .sbsar because the algorithm will understand stuff like that, it won’t calculate anything unnecessary like disconnected nodes or so.

Barrel textured with rusty steel substance with exposed parameters
Barrel textured with the rusty metal substance with exposed parameters. Single material, no hand painting in Substance Painter

So I have defined inputs for Position, World Space Normal, Curvature and AO, and then I apply these to few of the weathering effects, such as mg_metal_edge_wear, a Substance Designer node which I just use as it is, and also the Tri-planar node which I forgot to mention in the video. Basically I just connected Position and World Space Normal maps to the triplanar_grayscale node and used the Rust Level Control node output as the input. This will project the material to the mesh seamlessly, almost no matter how your UVs are laid out. It is possible to do this in Substance Painter but it’s absolutely fantastic to have the control in Designer as well.

Then, basically what I have done in Substance Designer is that I have exposed some of the node parameters, such as the histogram scan which samples (or more appropriately scans) grayscale area from the procedural BW data and some of the mg_metal_edge_wear params, giving me the control. I have also created some of the switches which I have then exposed to turn some effects on and off. Clicking the graph in Substance Designer allows you to further label and organize the sliders and buttons.

Substance with Exposed Parameters
These are the exposed parameters in Substance Designer. You can change their order by dragging the handle in the left side.

What I am especially proud of are the leaks effects. This is simple slope_blur_grayscale which takes gradient map as “Slope”. What this basically defines is which way is up and down in the object. You can feed a simple gradient to this or you can use y channel from position map by using RGBA split node. So again I have connected the Position map input node to this via a switch which allows me to switch to simple gradient if the map is missing.

Rest is pretty much the same thing, blending things together using blend nodes and exposing parameters that I figured I would like to change in future.

Check out this Allegorithmic video on exposing parameters and publishing substances.

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Sci-Fi Console Game Model

Substance Painter Material Breakdown


Here’s a breakdown on some of the techniques I used when creating this Sci-Fi Console asset for Unreal Engine 4 in Substance Painter.

One of the more interesting ones is the ability to use anchor points to reference added height detail in those lovely mask generators. This is technique that was introduced by this good video by Allegorithmic  (that guy is such a guru!)

I also realized it’s often a good idea to create a fill layer and mask that; in that way the workflow stays non-destructive the whole way.

Anyway I hope you like this video on Substance Painter Material Breakdown.

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Sci-Fi Console

I created this  Sci-Fi Console recently for my personal portfolio for UE4. I baked the normal map from high poly using Substance Painter. I’m quite glad about how this turned out with PBR metal-rough workflow.

The model is also available now in Gumroad.

Sci-Fi Console Game Model

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Thousand subsribers

A thousand subscribers in my Youtube channel. Wow. Thank you all.

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Live Boolean in ZBrush 4R8 + Array Mesh

Here is an example how we can use Live Boolean in ZBrush 4R8. The feature is super handy- first time we can have accurate real time preview of boolean operation. We can keep working with the mesh pretty much infinitely by adding substract, union or intersect subtools, and we can also arrange these to boolean groups. When are are finished, we can create boolean mesh. This will create new tool for us, leaving the working tool intact. Pretty nice ZBrushey approach to booleans.

Check out the video below on how to create motorcycle engine kind of shapes using Array Mesh and Live Boolean in ZBrush 4R8.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4L07_9pTt8

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Low Poly Artifacts in Cycles render (Terminator Artifact)

I made a video about this issue as some friendly folks in Turbosquid pointed out to me the reason I had these low poly artifacts in cycles renders of my models.

It turned out that this effect is not only happening in Cycles but also in Renderman and other packages as well. This is what is known as “Terminator artifact”.

Low Poly Artifacts in Cycles render

Here is the jagged edges we get in low poly models in Cycles. This is what is called “Terminator artifact”

This has got to do with just how shadows are rendered in polygonal models and actually this is expected behavior.  Programmers of Blender Cycles knew very well this would happen. It kind of sucks though and at the moment we don’t have a lot of alternatives except stick with Blender internal render, subdivide our models or use softer lights to reduce the jagged shadows.

This is where Eevee will be super useful. I can’t wait get my hands on it.. (and it will even support Filmic Blender which is awesome).

Here is more information about low poly artifacts in cycles:

https://developer.blender.org/T37814

and here is a more technical explanation of it:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7986/ebd7b5427bbe54edb7c0c9cf674fee817933.pdf

I made video about this topic. Please check it in Youtube.

 

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Disable Wacom circle in Photoshop CC (Windows 10)

I found a way to disable Wacom circle in Photoshop CC; you know that annoying clockwise turning circle that pops up in in Photoshop CC.

While it’s handy to have brush settings available when right clicking, with pen this doesn’t really work. It’s rather annoying and destroys usability of Wacom Tablet in Photoshop.

The fix is to go to Control Panel, Ease of Access Center and click Make touch and tablets easier to use.

Go to accessibility settings to disable wacom circle in photoshop cc

Under “See also” there is “Make touch easier to use”. Click that and there is the option for “Press and hold”. Select it and press Settings… There, uncheck “Enable press and hold for right-clicking”. Voila!! A way to disable wacom circle in Photoshop!

Disable wacom circle in photoshop cc

This works in the current version of Windows 10. I have heard reports that sometimes Windows resets this setting so it maybe necessary to get back in there and change it back when OS is updated.

It is also possible to disable “Use Windows Ink” in Wacom Tablet Properties, but this will cause Photoshop CC to stop recognizing Wacom tablet pressure so this really wasn’t a fix.

I am using Wacom Intuos Pro M (2014) model. I am not sure if this fix helps users of other tablets, but it’s certainly worth a try.

Also make sure that you have latest drivers for your Wacom tablet from Wacom site.

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