I have started a new 3D project at work, and as part of the concept I am attempting to learn a new software package in Max. It’s called FumeFX by a company called Sitni Sati. It’s way more than an average fire or smoke plug-in, it’s a complete physics solving system. From some of the tests and examples I’ve seen, it is highly realistic when used correctly.

Last night I started my first attempt at using the UI through the basic tutorial it comes with. This was my first stab. Not too bad for a couple of hours. Naturally I’m not satisfied with the color or anything of that nature, I’m still learning. But it was nice to see it working, and it looks very fluent as well.

There comes a time in a mans life when he acquires that one precious part of his soul that was missing for as long as he could remember… This lustrous, voluptuous, surgically assembled, technological deity has arrived! I finally got myself an iPhone!

Naturally, I’ve begun tearing the device to pieces to modify it. I suppose that modifying something that is nearly “perfect” is contradictory to my above ramblings but as any designer will attest to, you can’t have exactly what everyone else has. It has to be personal, reflect the style of the wielder.

First thing was to get some Metal Gear Solid sounds loaded. I used to have a nice set of the codec sounds recorded off Metal Gear Solid 2 on the PS2, but for some reason they got deleted somewhere along the way. I decided to play through the game again and start getting some recordings but they were not up to my standards for quality this time. I turned to the uncompressed dat files on the PC version. Using various methods, I was able to extract every sound in the game. This includes the reverb as well, which I was happy to find. I used to use the codec sounds for AIM for years, so I’m pretty sick of them. I decided to mix it up a bit.

Here’s a little video of my progress so far. Nothing too fancy.