"THE PROJECT TYPE IS NOT SUPPORTED BY THIS INSTALLATION"

"You turn on your computer as every normal day, grab your coffee cup, prepare yourself a nice warm coffee as Windows starts, of course with the usual amount of sugar -please, don't exaggerate- and go back to your nice and comfortable desk, your Kingdom, then start C# Express -or any edition of Visual Studio 2005- and decide to create a .NET Framework 3 project from scratch, so you click on "New Project" and select "Window Application (WPF)"; the hard-drive then emits the normal sounds of "working/busy" while the new project is being created, but suddenly the following message pops up: "The project type is not supported by this installation". You say: "WHAT!!!", and with that your great day has turned into a #$%&$@ nightmare ..."

No, the above is not part of the plot of a movie scene, it's life, real life and it's just happened to me. Fortunately, I found this thread on MS forums which presented a quick and easy fix, which -at least in my case- worked.

The fix:

1. Open a VS 2005 Command Prompt,
2. Enter the following command: regsvr32.exe "%vs80comntools%\..\IDE\projectaggregator.dll", and finally
3. Execute %vs80comntools%\..\IDE\VCSExpress /setup (if you are using c# Express), or instead, execute %vs80comntools%\..\IDE\devenv /setup (if you are using VS 2005).

Take due note that "%vs80comntools% ..." is an environment variable, so the above-mentioned command lines should work "as is". However, if it doesn't because the path is not found -maybe some or all of the environmental variables set by the IDE are currently messed up in your system- just replace the "%vs80comntools%" term with your real path to the files' folder and the command should now execute.

Now, try to re-create the project again and it should all now go ok, as if nothing wrong had happened in the first place.

Cheers!

THAT'S ALL FOLKS!

This is pretty much it for today!

I think I have posted a great bunch of news, some from this last weekend, some from today, but still news.

I gotta rest now, and watch for my daily activities (I need to "live", you know? I mean, out from the XNA ring).

Hope you have found the news' posts useful.

'till tomorrow.

SHAWN HARGREAVES ON THREE-POINT LIGHTING

For those of us who sometime happened the get or still get in touch with 3D animation (or photography, or cinematography, ...), hearing "Three-Point Lighting" technique should ring a bell.

It does, doesn't it? But, have you ever wonder why you had to use this visual technique? If you don't know the answer yet and still wonder why, just browse to Shawn's blog to find out.

From Shawn's post: "... Pretty much every movie ever made and every fashion shot ever photographed have depended on this lighting rig. There are many variations:

• To increase the perception of shape without needing too much contrast between light and shadow, tint the key light yellow and the others blue.
• For a moody drama, make the key light much brighter than the fill.
• For a cheerful sit-com, make all three lights equally bright.
• For a scary effect, position the key light low to the ground.
• For a mysterious or fantastic effect, make the back light unusually bright so the character seems to glow around the edges.

But the underlying principle is always the same. Things simply look better when lit this way ...".

Read on!