No, I’m afraid I just post on CGtalk until I run out of new threads to bother. The only reason I’m posting so little lately is that even though compiling my software takes up to a minute on an unfortionate build, WACOM-drawing, animating bipeds and staring at blank walls thinking about who I’d kill if I could get away with it are completely render-time-free.
That, and I seem to have gained a nasty case of having my life covered in sunlight.
I kinda found the best explanation for “lay people” is to say “I make visual effects for movies”. While this isn’t really technically accurate (As a job, I write shaders which other people use to make visual effects for movies and I only do visual effects myself for my own home movies or silly expermeriments), todays movie-going experience is so full of fantastic visuals so not even Aunt Edna can have missed the spectacle of it all and they kinda grok that doing something that visually complex actually does take some form of intangible… uhm… skill.
Showing people their own hometown being blown up saying “I did that” can help too.
I actually never got an “oh that, did you know they do that with computers nowdays” reply. 
/Z
A quickie:
Recently someone asked me what was my occupation. I answered “I’m a computer programmer trying to switch careers to become artist.”
“Oh, yeah.” the cheery answer. “Artist, like painter and varnisher, right?”
:buttrock:
EDIT:
I hope I got it right by translating the German job title “Maler und Lackierer” into “painter and varnisher”…?
EDIT 2:
Dammit, I meant “painter and VARNISHER” and not “painter and FURNISHER”. No more posting at 4AM for me :rolleyes:.
File -> Save
Open Command prompt
Render -rd /path/to/image -im filename -fnc name.ext -of png scene.ma
Just a rough command to give you a specific path, image name and extension. Of course, this assumes Linux or OS X (with a symbolic link in /usr/bin). Windows may be similar. This will render the last frame you were on when you saved, and doesn’t actually require any additional licenses to do. Default behavior of this command is to use your settings in the render globals. Some options can be changed in the command line.
If you are using Linux or OS X, and are good with Bash (or even csh), you can make a quick script for running test renders using only a scene file as an input argument.
I believe he means the scene isn’t ready to render yet, as the work hasn’t been done
Aye… I was figuring you could use that technique to do test renders, mind you, it may require a slight shift in mindset for your workflow pipeline to efficiently use this technique, but now that I made that last post, I’m thinking I might just do what I wrote… 
A neat little command for the script I came up with would be something along the lines of:
Render -rd pwd -im testrender -fnc name.ext -of png $1
As in it automatically outputs the image to the directory that you ran the script from, so you could put that in a script called “testrender” and run:
./testrender scene.ma
But I guess if you have nothing to test render… 
Ha, Some funny ones on this thread
I’ve got loads, have worked for some really annoying people, but the only ones that get to me are my bloody parents. Here are some examples:
#1: My dad comes to visit me and asks what I’ve been up to and such, So i boot up my Apple G5 (Dual 2.5ghz with 4gb Ram), my dad has an Acer laptop, not sure on the spec but it was £350 (around $600) so not great. I boot up maya, loading a scene packed with hair and cloth to which the only comment I got from him was, “Your computer’s really slow, mines miles faster…” : My reply “dad, this isn’t the same as opening internet explorer”… Took me hours to explain and I got very irate in the end (if you met my dad you’d understand)…
#2: My mother ringing me up while I was at university (studying an arts degree) telling me that one of my cousins was going to art school in Toronto (the bloody Sheridan may I say!) and she was really upset, saying stuff like “Ohhhh, I just thought she’d have more about her than that, you know, a lawyer or accountant…” Me: “hmmm, yeah mum, ermmmm, I’m doing art, I think she’ll do great!”. Mother: “yeah, but I thought she’d have more about her…” *ARGHHH, makes me wannaa!!!
#3: Quick one, won’t go into details, but whilst on holiday this guy (a nice guy who I got on with) started having arguments with me about what a DVD actually is. He wouldn’t believe me that the movie is stored on the disk, he reckoned that the disk contained a code that allowed you to recieve satelite information to your TV so you could watch the movie. This argument went on for hours (literally, like about an hour and a half), we have a video of him yelling “But where’s the signal!!!” HAHA. Fun.
Then there’s always the time you just finish modeling a character and someone goes “can you make him move?” YEAH, LET ME JUST CHECK THE MANUAL TO FIND WHERE THE “MAKE HIM MOVE” BUTTON IS!!!
LOL, I’ll be back with some boss bashing later, I’ve had some funny arguments with people over the years because they wanted results right NOW!!! and didn’t understand the process…
Later…
JellyFire
Not exactly worst - and not really directed towards me…
Being interviewed to work on CG film (about 11 years ago) - the guy in charge thought Toy Story was ‘crap’ and wanted to make film about fairies, and was being instructed by his partner, who had died in a car crash a few months previously.
That was a pretty strange half an hour or so.
I was working on something for fun one afternoon. I was in a coffee shop in LA switching between Lightwave, Zbrush and Maya. I was in the middle of unwrapping a model in Lightwave when I felt the floorboards behind me shift. Then they made a squeek. I turned around to see this young hipster guy with a soul patch standing behind me. “Is that … uh … like … a video game design?,” he asks. I turn a bit to face him:“No, its a little different from that. Its a 3d modeling program. Its called ‘Lightwave.’” His brow furrows: “I haven’t even heard of that one. Is it like Photoshop?” Oh boy. “No, not really, Photoshop is more of a 2d program.” Then the guy’s friend walks up. He looks a bit like a hip version of a character actor named Eddie Deezen (War Games–played an annoying geek)
“Whats he doing,” he asks his friend. Then he points at my screen, almost touching it: “Whats THAT!!?? Oh, Lighwave. Thats like the Video Toaster. Didn’t they go out of business?” Craning my neck to face these two I said, “No this is a new version. NewTek is quite healthy. But you’re right, they did and still do sell the Video Toaster.” Then the second guy looks at me like he has just figured out the meaning of life: “MAYA. You should learn Maya. If you do 3d, thats what you use.” Before I could hit Alt-Tab to ask this oaf if he meant my copy running in the background, he quickly runs up to the counter and asks for a pen. A moment later he is back with his gaping friend and hands me a post-it note. It reads: M-A-Y-A (yes, he actually put the dashes on the post it!)
They both leave, and the first guy says to his hip cohort “Wow, I didn’t know you knew so much about that stuff.”
M-A-Y-A.
Learn it.
Worse still one of my animation teachers who was an early employee of Disney and amongst other films worked on sleeping beauty as a background painter tried to convince me that widescreen movies were cropped. 
To the topic at hand:
“5 STars!!! AMAZING!!! PERFECT! Wow I could never do that!”
From a compositing class in college with a professor who equated ‘compositing’ with corporate video titling:
I show up with my midterm project. Which was an almost entirely cg shot except for myself which I had shot in my own apartment against a white wall and rotoscoped. I get into class my turn comes up to present. The other students had done varrying degrees of canned AE plugins for the most part.
I show my composite and the teacher’s only comment is “That’s it?”
I start to sweat. Does he know I did almost all of the work in the last 4 days? I had a lot of classes there wasn’t much time. Was he looking for quantity over quality? I mean it’s not perfect, it’s not probably ready for my reel but the 10 seconds or so I got done are pretty close.
As calmly as I can manage “What do you mean?”
Teacher:“Where is the compositing?”
*blink blink
Realization dawns on my mind…
Me: “All of it!”
The best lesson I picked up from that class was just how uncritical the average movie go-er’s eye is to vfx.
Heh, no I turned it down. I didn’t fancy a trip to the afterlife to chase money owed…
I always find that people try to be nice, but they just dont have a clue most of the time. This is how most conversations go:
Them: So what are you studying at university then?
Me: Im studying 3D computer animation and special effects (big grin, very happy with myself and ready to blast out some of my knowledge on the movie industry).
Them: Aww how cute! So your name might be at the end of the next Wallace and Gromit movie one day then!?!
Me:…(using every ounce of effort to stop that smile dropping off my face)…yea… something like that…
I actually dont want to be an animator, I want to be a compositor or matte artist, but by the time you finish explaining what it is that a compositor does for the lay person, the restaurant is generally empty.
Love this thread! Keep it up!
Nick
true story
one of the jobs at the previous architecture viz company i worked for required a scene of a pan through a bathroom with the showerhead on and running water. Given I had spend sometime at home figuring out how to use realflow, I showed the result to an colleague (who is experienced in film VFX and CG) and was asked to help with and implement it in the shot. The head of the company (who’s technical expertise involves help with photoshop to change text color yet writes he “spear headed super computing” on his web bio) sees my screens and was annoyed at how long its taking to solve to fluid simulation. He asks “is this really necessary? we can just buy water?!”
I turned around and looked at him trying to think of a way to educate him about what i am doing but couldn’t come up with a answer. Instead, i just plyaed dumb and said “i’ve never heard of that?”
Here’s one I heard today:
“Do you think it’s possible to make a animated feature with ten animators and a budget of RM 500,000 (roughly 140,000 USD), and finish it in one year?..”
This was a serious question by a film producer who has more than 20 live action films under his belt.
Just for your future reference, this is actually common, to film at full aperture 35mm and crop the top and bottom to widescreen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widescreen (unless I’m misinterpreting you)
How about this story a guy here at work told me:
“That looks good, now can you make it move the same distance at the same speed just make the shot longer?”