Oh, so that’s why I can’t seem to get a compositing job here in Perth (Australia)! I need to learn the art of rendering with my compositor, and compositing with a tga sequence in anything but a compositor.
Thanks guys for setting me straight 
Worst Comments 2
R10k
#964
LOL
That’s hilarious! Please, if you could pm me who that was… I’d like to avoid them if possible 
MCHammond
#965
I need to learn the art of rendering with my compositor, and compositing with a tga sequence in anything but a compositor.
i would recomend Blender LOL.
CaptainObvious
#966
Well, since Blender has a compositer built-in, I suppose it counts as a compositing application.
digitaldamage
#967
Great storys, everyone! Truly excellent stuff in here. Here’s a little one:
One day, in my company I was asked to send an animation I made over to the client. The client wanted one contiguous tga sequence on DVD. As so often, it was a time critical thingy and to save time and to reduce the amount of handling several discs, I compressed the whole stuff together, resulting in two discs instead of nine (or eighteen. I made a copie just in case the other one might get bady scratched or anything like that). After sending them to the client, I went home, late in the evening.
First thing tomorrow morning my boss came, asking me what I had done the other day. Something went wrong. Apparently, the client was unable to access the data at all and everyone over there was either in rage or panicing.
Well, what I did was sending them a self-extracting .exe archive.
Needless to say, they were somehow unable to execute an .exe file.
smuzzler
#968
i can see that some places would not be able to read .exe files. If they are a mac shop they would have problems.
digitaldamage
#969
Yeah, I can see that too.
But they weren’t a Mac shop. We send them files beforehand, so I knew for sure what they were based on.
imashination
#970
The very first freelance job me and my partner ever took on, the one which lured us to leave our jobs and go freelance in the first place.
The brief is for us to work for 4 weeks to make some short animation clips of 3 hospital rooms, about 10 seconds each, to run as part of a presentation for cds they send out and for their sales guy to use on the projector. In short they want a hospital reception, stock room and operating theatre to show some key bits of new technology.
So, based on this request we leave our jobs…
The first problem is that they say they want us to work at their site, even though its entirely doable from our home studio, but they insist, so we get them to book us a hotel room. Then the problems start, the only machines they have are 300MHz 128 meg ram G3 macs, this was just as the G5’s were coming out by the way, so they were a piece of shit even back then.
We tell the boss its impossible to get what they want on these piss poor excuses for computers, theyll have to get us something remotely modern if they want the job doing; so with this, they go out to a pc store and buy two craptastic machines which arent that much better than what they had. ie. it was an onboard intel gfx card.
After telling them these suck too, we basically inform them we’re returning home to finish the project, because otherwise its not going to happen. At this point the boss goes on holiday for 2 weeks but refuses to give any member of his company permission to help us with the project, at this stage we still havent been given the mockups, storyboard etc, we have no idea what they actually want to happen 1 week into the 4 weeks.
This is where the fun begins, we get the storyboards through…
They want half a dozen modelled, rigged, animated surgeons accurately reproducing what happens in a medical video they have… Yes, they just threw character animation into the middle of an internal architecture job with just 1 week left to go.
So, my partner manages to hack some poser models into some surgeons outfits somehow and we make it to the end, having technically given them what they asked for. Naturally they didnt like it and then decided we should give them every single scene file and project file so they can fix everything themselves (on their G3’s naturally)
We tell them if they want project files it’ll cost them a lot extra, they threaten to not pay us. In the end we say screw it, subdivided every scene up to 10 million polys, saved every texture as a 0% quality jpg and slapped it on a cd and sent it off.
Took the money, never spoke to them again, nor would we wish to.
jpiette
#973
The King of Lightwave sounds awesome, we need to all chip in and fly him up to SIGGRAPH. :arteest:
Santucci
#974
This chain has been great. While I knew that I wasn’t alone in dealing with these people, it’s always nice to have confirmation.
From the time I left school till a year ago I worked at an engineering firm as the one and only artist. I did 3d, graphic design, organization, and a great impersonation of a secretary (was sitting at the secretaries desk). Thankfully, as my engineer bosses all used very complex and expensive engineering programs, they fully understood that my programs were very complex and expensive too. Unfortunately they didn’t seem to understand that design and scene direction weren’t something we were all equally qualified for.
One project we received was to show the dangers loss of water pressure can pose in a hospital. The clients were all very nice people and struck me as the type that would think a chrome sphere on a checkerboard floor would just be awesome, ie, exactly like all engineers I’ve ever met. So I storyboard out the 2-3 minute animation which will have voice over following a script the client had for us. For the voice over I’ve recommended a friend of mine that’s trying to get into that and has a good voice. They love it and I get to work.
Now as I’ve said, I’m the only person there so I’m doing everything. I build the hospital, the surrounding city, some vehicles, interior rooms, and so forth. My bosses call me in after 2 or so weeks and ask me how I’m doing. As I’m about 6 months out of school, I’m proud to announce that I’ve got everything modeled and am texturing and lighting the scenes and show them shots. They’re happy and I repeat that my friend is ready to record as soon as they are. Great.
Another 2 weeks go by and I’m still texturing and lighting and tweeking the models cus I still have no voice over and so can’t do any animation and they ask again. So I show them my shots and everything’s gravy and I tell them again that my friend is ready when they are. They say, “As soon as you’ve got the animation we’ll bring him in.”
I pause. “No, I need the voice over first, in order to time it.”
“No you don’t.” And they’re real certain about this.
“Um… Yeah. Other wise I’ll have to time everything to fit the timing of his speech.”
“No,” they tell me. “That’s not how it’s done. You animate and then he speaks while watching it.”
Ah ha, I think. They’ve been watching those horrible making-of shows where they show the voice actors watching the animation. So I explain how things are actually done in the industry and they look completely unconvinced.
“Well, you just animate it and then adjust it later. I want to talk to the client about changing some of the script. It doesn’t sound very good.”
:banghead: So I do as I’m told and animate a dozen or so scenes that, in the end, need to be entirely reanimated to fit the voice over that isn’t even close to what I timed out in my head. And that’s about 4 weeks before the project is due. Of course then 2 weeks before it was due my boss decided that the voice over was too fast and needed to be rerecorded. 
There’s more to this nightmare project, too.
Intervain
#975
OMG SpiderPig - read all your posts and seriously the king definitely won a crown of stupidity here… I think I’d have clubbed him down!
SpiderPig
#977
LOL love the comments.
I don’t think he annoyed me as much as the boss but you seem to Like/Hate “the king of Lightwave” the most.
Its funny you should talk about SIGGRAPH, I was looking at some pics on the web when the “king of Lightwave” looked over my shoulder and said.
“god! thats not one of those Trekkie conventions, is it?”
I like Stargate so i am a Trekkie apparently?
“no its SIGGRAPH, just looking at the presentations this year!”
“Sigg-a-what, looks kinda geeky”
“Its the annual conference on computer graphics, its got all the latest stuff about what we do”
“Looks really nerdy, i bet you’d fit right in, do you have to wear a costume LOL”
“…?”
The “king of Lightwave” was re-hashing the studio show real for a big presentation the boss was doing for a big company.
“What do you think, looks good don’t it”
“It looks ok”
“what do you mean “OK” its the best show reel Ive seen for what we do”
“Uh?”
“you got to remember all the big studios have loads of people who specialize on one thing, we cant do that”
I tried to be very sensitive
“Ive seen work thats been done by one person thats better than what we have done”
“well i haven’t seen any, you have to remember that we work in the real world and we cant get to the quality of a blockbuster!”
At this point i loaded up CGSociety.org and navigated to the finished Animations page.
“Look here there are plenty of decent animations done by one or two people, that blow are stuff out the water”
Like an ancient man who has just walked miles carrying his goods on his back, only to arrive and see the wheel for the first time.
“Wha Wha What…? There all done by people like use?”
“yea good arnt they, look at this one!”
I had seen a cool Arch viz show reel the day before so loaded that up and showed him
“Wow thats amazing it looks like a photo only better its so clear and clean, it cant be real though can it?”
“Real?”
“Yea i cant believe someone did all that on there own, it would take months no one would pay all that for it”
“Some of the animations are done as hobbies and in peoples spare time, and there are ones that are done for clients as well”
“Well thats why then, if its just kids in bedrooms working for free with no time restraints then of course they will look better than ours”
[color=DeepSkyBlue]“This one is all real work it says in the comments that stuff was request for by the client!”
[/color]“Not a chance thats real, it cant be done!”
He went down the list looking at the rest of the animations, a few minutes later.
“Dude i told you, there fake!”
“What!”
“Yea look at this one they have just ripped bits out of harry potter!”
I looked on his screen to see a VFX show reel that had a scene from harry potter just like he said.
“Yea so what?”
As i looked at him you could tell that it slowly dawned on him that there was a scene from a movie in the show reel because the guy who made the show reel had worked on the film.
In many ways this was a defining moment for the studio, up until then i had got the impression that they where some type of easter island civilization that had not had contact with the real world, only for a fleet of man-of-wars to pull up one day and open there eyes. Thank you CGSociety 
We got talking about CGSociety and working in you’re own time when king of Lightwave said
Im not bothered, it dose not interest me
What you don’t like animation?
No all this site its pointless, who wants to spend there free time doing CG
You have to spend some of you’re free time learning stuff and keeping up to date with changes in the field as well as practicing new skill
Thats the last thing i want t do when i get home
So you don’t do anything to improve you’re self when you get home?
No i have a life unlike you!
I have a life you just have to make time to learn new skills, otherwise you stagnate!
If i need to learn something then i will do it at work, why waste my time doing it at home when your not getting paid.
To learn things you don’t get a chance to learn at work, that will help!
like what?
Like character animation
the boss gave you plenty of time to learn, Lightwave just cant do it!
It can, thats exactly my point you need to spend more than a few days on something to learn it and you cant do that in the time frame of a work project.
You’re weird you know that!
?..
I showed king of Lightwave the WIP area and said thats where you can post you’re work before its finished to get feedback.
“So you post your work there then?”
“Yea, i have a portfolio as well that people can look at”
“What on line! why do you do that!”
I had just updated my portfolio and show reel with all my latest stuff as i was planning to leave at the end of the next month but had not told them yet so i tried get off the subject.
“Its just to show it off really you know”
“can i see it?”
“ok then?” *Huff
Loaded it up and showed him, it had some stuff in it that i had been doing in my spare time, as well as some of the work i had done while i was there but from before the boss made changes :P.
“Wow thats awesome the boss will love this!”
exactly what i didn’t want to happen, the boss walked over to see my new show reel! He looked through it, his face getting more and more annoyed!
“So you’ve been doing work on the side then have you!”
“…?”
“If you have any contacts you should share them, we haven’t got much work due to you starting early”
I hadn’t been doing any freelance it was all self improvement stuff, but i was so annoyed at what he had implied that i said.
“So I am not allowed to do any freelance in my spare time if i want?”
“You can if you want, but all i ask is that you share the contacts with us”
“Well its not freelance work so you need not worry!”
“So when did you do all that work then?”
“In my spare time!”
“What in the office?”
“No at home on my computer”
“I don’t condone illegal software, its kids like you that make it harder for us PROFESINALS to find work”
“Its not illegal software I use Open source and 3DSMax”
“3DSMax how can you afford that, i must be paying you to much”
“i got it off the DLA when i was at uni”
I got a full Professional copy of 3DSMax off the DLA for being dyslexic while at uni, because “I find it hard to concentrate in class when there are people around me talking and I can only access the computer lab when there are classes on”. They tried to get me 4 hours a week in there on my own but it was cheaper to buy me a copy. I’m a jamy git but thats another story, although it is nice to be on the other end of labors silly stick for once. I got a PC, ready pen and a talky dictionary as well, that blind people use, totally awesome it does swear words and lets me talk like Steven Hawkins LOL!
“DLA you’re not disabled, What are they giving you stuff for?”
i hadn’t told him in my interview that i was dyslexic because it dose not effect my job, but he was annoyed when i told him.
“You should have told me!”
“would it have made any difference?”
“it dose not matter you should have told me!”
he started to come out with all these convoluted scenarios where I could pertinently cause a problem, and that someone needed to check my work for spelling mistakes! I pointed out that i hadn’t righten anything of importance since i started and anything i do is spell checked and double checked by me for that very reason .
“Well we just don’t know, thats the problem!”
anyway after trying to get of the subject, and stop everyone looking at me like a freak i said:
“So what do you think of the show real then?”
"Looks good, send us a copy and “king of Lightwave” can use it in our show reel"
I was a bit a gasped that he wanted to use MY show reel and I didn’t even think that he would. In hindsight i should have just never shown them but the cat was out of the bag now as they say. Anyway the “king of Lightwave” butchered my well timed animations into the studios show reel with slim shadeys f_cking in heaven “don’t ask!”,about two thirds of the show real was my stuff. Anyway a few days later the “king of Lightwave” was showing a collage friend of his the show real, the guy pointed out he liked one of my clips then “king of Lightwave” said.
“Yea thats one of mine, I still got it!”
I looked at him so annoyed, he could have easily said “Yea WE are doing some good work here at the moment” but he didn’t. Later on after the guy left he could have come over and apologized “Sorry about that, just wanted to impress a school mate you know how it is” but he just looked at me as if i was the one in the wrong.
I think i might have started ranting! god dam it.
I remembered more while righting this but you will have to wait.
SpiderPig
#978
LOL love the comments.
I don’t think he annoyed me as much as the boss but you seem to Like/Hate “the king of Lightwave” the most.
Its funny you should talk about SIGGRAPH, I was looking at some pics on the web when the “king of Lightwave” looked over my shoulder and said.
“god! thats not one of those Trekkie conventions, is it?”
I like Stargate so i am a Trekkie apparently?
“no its SIGGRAPH, just looking at the presentations this year!”
“Sigg-a-what, looks kinda geeky”
“Its the annual conference on computer graphics, its got all the latest stuff about what we do”
“Looks really nerdy, i bet you’d fit right in, do you have to wear a costume LOL”
“…?”
The “king of Lightwave” was re-hashing the studio show real for a big presentation the boss was doing for a big company.
“What do you think, looks good don’t it”
“It looks ok”
“what do you mean “OK” its the best show reel Ive seen for what we do”
“Uh?”
“you got to remember all the big studios have loads of people who specialize on one thing, we cant do that”
I tried to be very sensitive
“Ive seen work thats been done by one person thats better than what we have done”
“well i haven’t seen any, you have to remember that we work in the real world and we cant get to the quality of a blockbuster!”
At this point i loaded up CGSociety.org and navigated to the finished Animations page.
“Look here there are plenty of decent animations done by one or two people, that blow are stuff out the water”
Like an ancient man who has just walked miles carrying his goods on his back, only to arrive and see the wheel for the first time.
“Wha Wha What…? There all done by people like use?”
“yea good arnt they, look at this one!”
I had seen a cool Arch viz show reel the day before so loaded that up and showed him
“Wow thats amazing it looks like a photo only better its so clear and clean, it cant be real though can it?”
“Real?”
“Yea i cant believe someone did all that on there own, it would take months no one would pay all that for it”
“Some of the animations are done as hobbies and in peoples spare time, and there are ones that are done for clients as well”
“Well thats why then, if its just kids in bedrooms working for free with no time restraints then of course they will look better than ours”
“This one is all real work it says in the comments that stuff was request for by the client!”
“Not a chance thats real, it cant be done!”
He went down the list looking at the rest of the animations, a few minutes later.
“Dude i told you, there fake!”
“What!”
“Yea look at this one they have just ripped bits out of harry potter!”
I looked on his screen to see a VFX show reel that had a scene from harry potter just like he said.
“Yea so what?”
As i looked at him you could tell that it slowly dawned on him that there was a scene from a movie in the show reel because the guy who made the show reel had worked on the film.
In many ways this was a defining moment for the studio, up until then i had got the impression that they where some type of easter island civilization that had not had contact with the real world, only for a fleet of man-of-wars to pull up one day and open there eyes. Thank you CGSociety
We got talking about CGSociety and working in you’re own time when king of Lightwave said
Im not bothered, it dose not interest me
What you don’t like animation?
No all this site its pointless, who wants to spend there free time doing CG
You have to spend some of you’re free time learning stuff and keeping up to date with changes in the field as well as practicing new skill
Thats the last thing i want t do when i get home
So you don’t do anything to improve you’re self when you get home?
No i have a life unlike you!
I have a life you just have to make time to learn new skills, otherwise you stagnate!
If i need to learn something then i will do it at work, why waste my time doing it at home when your not getting paid.
To learn things you don’t get a chance to learn at work, that will help!
like what?
Like character animation
the boss gave you plenty of time to learn, Lightwave just cant do it!
It can, thats exactly my point you need to spend more than a few days on something to learn it and you cant do that in the time frame of a work project.
You’re weird you know that!
?..
I showed king of Lightwave the WIP area and said thats where you can post you’re work before its finished to get feedback.
“So you post your work there then?”
“Yea, i have a portfolio as well that people can look at”
“What on line! why do you do that!”
I had just updated my portfolio and show reel with all my latest stuff as i was planning to leave at the end of the next month but had not told them yet so i tried get off the subject.
“Its just to show it off really you know”
“can i see it?”
“ok then?” *Huff
Loaded it up and showed him, it had some stuff in it that i had been doing in my spare time, as well as some of the work i had done while i was there but from before the boss made changes :P.
“Wow thats awesome the boss will love this!”
exactly what i didn’t want to happen, the boss walked over to see my new show reel! He looked through it, his face getting more and more annoyed!
“So you’ve been doing work on the side then have you!”
“…?”
“If you have any contacts you should share them, we haven’t got much work due to you starting early”
I hadn’t been doing any freelance it was all self improvement stuff, but i was so annoyed at what he had implied that i said.
“So I am not allowed to do any freelance in my spare time if i want?”
“You can if you want, but all i ask is that you share the contacts with us”
“Well its not freelance work so you need not worry!”
“So when did you do all that work then?”
“In my spare time!”
“What in the office?”
“No at home on my computer”
“I don’t condone illegal software, its kids like you that make it harder for us PROFESINALS to find work”
“Its not illegal software I use Open source and 3DSMax”
“3DSMax how can you afford that, i must be paying you to much”
“i got it off the DLA when i was at uni”
I got a full Professional copy of 3DSMax off the DLA for being dyslexic while at uni, because “I find it hard to concentrate in class when there are people around me talking and I can only access the computer lab when there are classes on”. They tried to get me 4 hours a week in there on my own but it was cheaper to buy me a copy. I’m a jamy git but thats another story, although it is nice to be on the other end of labors silly stick for once. I got a PC, ready pen and a talky dictionary as well, that blind people use, totally awesome it does swear words and lets me talk like Steven Hawkins LOL!
“DLA you’re not disabled, What are they giving you stuff for?”
i hadn’t told him in my interview that i was dyslexic because it dose not effect my job, but he was annoyed when i told him.
“You should have told me!”
“would it have made any difference?”
“it dose not matter you should have told me!”
he started to come out with all these convoluted scenarios where I could pertinently cause a problem, and that someone needed to check my work for spelling mistakes! I pointed out that i hadn’t righten anything of importance since i started and anything i do is spell checked and double checked by me for that very reason .
“Well we just don’t know, thats the problem!”
anyway after trying to get of the subject, and stop everyone looking at me like a freak i said:
“So what do you think of the show real then?”
"Looks good, send us a copy and “king of Lightwave” can use it in our show reel"
I was a bit a gasped that he wanted to use MY show reel and I didn’t even think that he would. In hindsight i should have just never shown them but the cat was out of the bag now as they say. Anyway the “king of Lightwave” butchered my well timed animations into the studios show reel with slim shadeys f_cking in heaven “don’t ask!”,about two thirds of the show real was my stuff. Anyway a few days later the “king of Lightwave” was showing a collage friend of his the show real, the guy pointed out he liked one of my clips then “king of Lightwave” said.
“Yea thats one of mine, I still got it!”
I looked at him so annoyed, he could have easily said “Yea WE are doing some good work here at the moment” but he didn’t. Later on after the guy left he could have come over and apologized “Sorry about that, just wanted to impress a school mate you know how it is” but he just looked at me as if i was the one in the wrong.
I think i might have started ranting! god dam it.
I remembered more while righting this but you will have to wait.
JesseGraffam
#979
The reason we love to hate “The King” is because he’s just so goddamn arrogant it’s mind blowing. He’s also suffering from delusions of grandeur, and seems so cut off from the industry you wonder how he is doing this as a profession, and why he still has a job.