Rolando Barry - Tips & Tools
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Rolando Barry - Tips & Tools

This is my shared notion homepage! Make sure to check out my website to see my 3D work, here:

And while you're at it, please follow me on my socials! Feel free to reach out as well about any questions or comments.

Now that that's out of the way, here are some other cool things that I want to share with the community. All of these tools are free unless specified in the tags. You can use the search function on the top right of the list, to find anything more specifically.

Disclaimer: These tips and tools are things I use on a daily basis, and most of them are customizable to enhance your workflow. While the vast majority of these tips are 100% safe to use and modify, some involve moving around, deleting, or modifying folders and files in your computer. Always make sure you're properly backed up and that you understand the risks and consequences or playing around with some of these tools. I don't think it is really necessary to make a disclaimer about this, but I would rather make sure we're on the same page.

Productivity Tools Index & Summary

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All Productivity Tools

NameDescription / SummaryTagsType
Automatic Borders for Images & Videos
This little script uses ffmpeg to add colored borders to any image or video. The border pixel width gets added to the video or image size. There’s a prompt to pick both thickness and color.
ScriptingEasyWindows
Tool
FancyZones: Snap Windows to Custom Layouts
This tool will allow us to set and customize different aspect ratios and areas inside our screen that we can snap our windows to. Especially useful for those of us recording or streaming 16:9 on an Ultrawide monitor.
WindowsEasyProductivity
Tool
Keeping track of your Hard Drive space in a visual way
Windirstat is a utility that will scan your chosen hard drives or folders, and display the files inside as a neat chart divided in sections, where bigger files occupy a bigger space. The colors also signal the file extension. It's a very useful tool to identify files taking a huge space, at a glance.
WindowsProductivityEasy
Tool
PowerToys Color Picker
This is a very simple Color Picker that you can bring up with a keyboard shortcut, at any point in time. It saves a picked color history and can display values in a variety of ways.
Tips & TricksWindowsProductivityFree
Tool
Set any Window to Always on Top
This utility enables you to pin any window to be Always on Top, so that it won’t disappear behind any other active windows. This is especially useful when you’re working with references, moving files around, or you just want to keep a window on top or a maximized application.
WindowsScriptingEasyAutoHotKey
Tool
Simply Darken one (or all) of your Monitors with PangoBright
PangoBright is a very simple utility that allows you to dim your monitors. I find this very useful when I leave a render on, or when it's late at night and I'm just cleaning up files or doing non-color related work. In combination with AutoHotKey, we can make an extremely useful shortcut to dim and undim out monitors with the click of a key.
WindowsEasyAutoHotKey
Tool
Turn MP4’s into GIF in seconds
Learn how to setup a quick way of automatically converting MP4 files to GIF format. You can also adjust the settings with different presets.
WindowsEasyProductivity
Tool
Using HTML code to Embed MP4 files into your Website instead of GIFs
Using a few lines of html code, I will show you how to start using MP4’s instead of GIFs to showcase the animations in your websites and portfolio. And the advantages it brings.
Easy
Tip
Bringing back the green ticks in C4D R25
With the introduction of R25, many interface buttons have changed. The Active/Inactive buttons in the object manager now display in Red for inactive and Grey for active. This can be sometimes hard to glance at, so here I tell you how to change it back.
Easy
Customization
Changing the C4D Splashscreen
The latest Cinema 4D R25 has a cool animated splashscreen! And the best part? You can customize it however you want... kind of. Read up on this neat trick and spice up your splash screen every time you have to restart C4D after a crash.
Easy
Customization
Automatically Creating Project Folders
This tip focuses on setting up a template folder structure, so that with any new project you can automatically create your hierarchy of folders with a custom name, directory and date with just a click.
Tips & TricksWindowsProductivityFreeEasyScripting
Organization
Deleting All Empty folders on a directory
This utility will allow you to create a .bat file that scans a desired location, and deletes every empty folder. Especially useful when you have tons of folders that don't get used at the end of a project, or just want to tidy up.
ScriptingWindowsProductivityEasy
Organization
Using Eagle as my Media & Asset Library
Eagle is an app that lets you create a media and asset library, then organize and browse it easily using filters and categories. I use it daily to store and grab textures, materials, and assets, and bring them into C4D or Houdini with a quick click and drag. It also serves me as a bank for inspiration in and out of 3D
MacOsWindowsProductivityEasyPaid
Organization
Preview .EXR Thumbnails on PC
FastPictureViewer Codec is a utility that helps your PC identify a broader range of codecs and file extensions. Particularly, the reason we’re going to install this is because it will create icon previews for .exr files.
WindowsEasyPaid

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All Productivity Tools