Rod_Kennedy's Page

I recently returned from my first large scale planetarium conference, the SEPA conference in Nahsville (which by the way was a complete BLAST). One thing struck me as interesting. When meeting new people the line of the conversation usually runs along the lines of introductions, where each person is from and then the.."what size is your dome?" and "what system are you running".

I am hoping that now that I know more of these great people and have started some collaborations projects with them (o… Continue

As we learn more about the full dome environment in general and how Blender applies to it in particular, we are finding new ways to convert old slide based shows to full dome productions. And it got me thinking about concerns other planetarians have had about making the leap to full dome, specifically "how hard is it to convert shows?"

The answer to that is probably lame but it is true, "how hard do you want it to be? I guess the real measure of how hard show conversion is, is how you lo… Continue

Don't you just love it when software designers re-tool a program and move features around within them, but don't tell anyone where the are going? So now all your tutorials, hot-key references and shortcuts are obsolete.

I found this exact thing in the new version of Blender. Blender v 2.48a separated physics and particles into two separate areas and buttons that were once used to do things are GONE. For example, looking for a tutorial to give a character hair. In all the old tutorials you are s… Continue

Whenever a planetarium changes from a slide based format to full dome or all digital, the question always arises "what do we do with some of our really cool slide based shows?" The answer, "to convert or not to convert" is seldom as clear cut as the statement. Often there are some aspects of a show that are easier to convert than others. However, in the case of our own planetarium, we discovered that conversion gets easier with time (and skill).

When the Casper Planetarium changed from a Spitz… Continue