PEASANTS. (31/01/15)

Yesterday was sunny and showery with a top temperature of 3.5^o C. It was cold and wet and I was sure that the Wild Goats, Red deer and all manner of wonderful mammals would be wandering around at low level looking for easy food. I saw some Deer tracks and a few Rabbits but nothing of the wee beasts themselves.

I did meet Vicky, sister to my current lust Alex. She said. If you dare take my photo dressed like this you are dead. She had come to sort out the drain on the thermal recovery unit. That’s what she does when she isn’t being an artichoke or whatever she said she was on Burn’s Night. I hid behind the camera and took a shot. I showed her later and she wants a copy. She says it makes her look connected. Connected to what other than muck and the ground I’m not sure.    Vicky on her way to sort a drain or two. She was actually on her way to supervise the men who had been sorting it for a couple of days. She got there, banged on their van roof, causing them to spill their coffee and ripped into them in a most unladylike way. I loved it but blame the internet for making her aware of so much language, even if some of the things she threatened were going to be difficult without committing murder. I’m not sure about pressure gauges but shovels would not fit where she suggested they were going if they hadn’t got their fat arses away to the job in two seconds.

I did get a thump but not for the photo. I said I have always liked Ugg boots but yours are wonderful, more durable. She called me a peasant. She’s kind.

I have got the latest version of Blender 3D. I didn’t realize but I was using a year old beta version of 2.72. It was okay but when I wanted to extrude selected vertices on the ‘Y’ axis I had to tell it to do it on the ‘Z’ axis. I now have a stable release of 2.73. The fluid simulation is now almost an automatic thing. It needs a twiddle here and there, there again, here again but it is brilliant compared to 2.68. It even provides a Node editor half filled in. I just wanted to add fire to smoke. Blender like Adobe is perverse. Fire and smoke doesn’t do it. I just went to Fire and bingo the fire is at the bottom and the smoke is at the topish. I moved the emitter down. The emitter is just a wee circle and you have to fill it in. I think you have to make it a Ngon. Then give it a clouds texture and piss about with that until You get random flames and smoke. Had I more monitors or bigger ones I’d show you. No I wouldn’t cos it looks a bit naff.

The reason I couldn’t get a trail of smoke and sparks on my New Year GIFF was because I’d messed up and had also not Baked them first. My little sparks were still meshes and if one gets a thousand of them or so and an explosion of another five hundred then it buggers the job up. Baking is just Rendering but you can do little bits, select which bits and work on them after. A full render would take hours if not days. My first 3D Render took all night and still wasn’t done. Now I do it in little bits. Mostly the wrong little bits but if I’m still here in a year I’ll be quicker. Blender Guru and some others. The words just roll off their tongues. Brilliant they are but I know I have to learn the words. I’m a peasant.

   Chinese New Year is nineteen days away. I am going to have a roaring campfire and the mortar bomb type fire works streaking into the sky in the background. Fat Chance but I will try. I’ve modelled the logs and will have some burning, some glowing and some just emitting smoke. I have a 200^o panorama all UV mapped to a bumpy little landscape.  My use of the Node editor whilst not instinctive is coming on, it has to be learnt as it is the only way to use cycles render and not the internal Blender Render. There is so much that is good in 2.73. Variable Boundary box is great, it cuts Bake times by three quarters, I know I should but I don’t; this is the first time I have had read release notes. I had to look up half of what they were banging on about in Wikiblender or whatever. I learnt a lot. Should have read Adobes years ago. The downside is that it will still only process fluids through the CPU and not through the Graphic processor. Come on you Blender developers get your fingers out. Come on Adrian; shut up you know nowt  and you know none of your readers are interested.

I was gobsmacked with the praise for yesterdays Peasant. She is beautiful.

    Here she is again or most of her. The bits of her I got are fine. She is almost there but I’ll call her a Peasant.

    For those that couldn’t find the bird here is the answer. Tree Creepers are the devil to spot until they move. I’ve enlarged it a bit and popped a red ring round it. Pity the damn bird can’t do the same. The wonders of computers and digital. I spend half my waking hours manipulating digital images and the other half inventing them. What I do in the four hours I sleep is my own affair but a pound to a penny and a bit of luck young Vicky will feature.

Have fun. Enjoy Sunday. Back to Blundering in Blender for me.