LIFE IS HARD. (05/11/15)

I am really struggling, I wish I could find unpaid work in a dog friendly games or 3D graphics studio. Preferably the latter as games have never attracted me or not virtual ones. I’m glad they came along though as it made GPUs affordable.

I started out about a month ago drawing up a story line….It went like this.

PART ONE.

A river or lake with a floating barge…Foreground.

A few buildings and street lights…..Mid ground

Sky……Background. Something like this that I borrowed

I made into into this but of course had to model the buildings for 3D. I ended up with a draft version of it. In 2D.

Quick and cheap would probably pass with stuff happening in the foreground but I must remember to mask and erase the gradient. I’ll also do something with the water like putting a bit of a jetty in to act as a base for the display.

PART TWO

Rocket trails. starting from the fireworks launch barge. Which isn't there. I did those last year they were okay to minus middling but in a bit of video as good as the shark in Jaws. A little better I think.

PART THREE.

A Catherine Wheel with just two rockets spinning round on the front of the barge………..I tried getting smoke and particles to follow the rocket as I key famed it rotating. I got the particles to follow the path but I am daft. Not a cat in hells chance. Smoke is regarded as a fluid so I have to pop a wee box round it to bake the particles one rocket at a time. do I? I then duplicated the main emmitter split this from the main emitter and grouped them with a lamp. Near perfect. For only one rocket For those interested, I used 100 somethings but will increase that for the final render. Mac users won’t have to worry as Macs can handle anything as long as it doesn’t require a USB port. I digress.

PART FOUR.

A rocket sending those explosive balls out. I have half worked things out. This is what my 3D screen looks like.

Talk about things being hard. The green bits are a sphere I added inside the emitting sphere , I suspect it could be anywhere like off to oneside but I like things neat and tidy and the green circle is a lamp or spot light to light the little buggers when I render; Picked up this bit off the internet. I selected both and pressed ‘G’ to link them. I must tie my hanky in a knot to remind me to pop the green/ orange . Put one or the other on a new layer or it will render and we don’t want that, do we?  The streaks are the particles emitted from the orange sphere. Which is shown as a 3D mesh. Press ‘Z’ to switch to solid view.  Not here, It won’t do anything. My fingers are raw with this job. It’s great for long dark nights. Better playing with computers than playing with my …..Never mind.

My computer shows tracks when in CPU mode.That’s because it is a screen grab, I hope my poor little laptop is using it’s GPU . I have told it to but I haven’t heard the fans running. It looks nothing like a firework but I know it will.

I can remember going for a coffee whilst I did HDR. I can remember when Adobe gave us posh panorama stitching for twenty pounds and it did the business in Elements before PS CS. I love playing with this stuff. Win or lose you have specific gravity and acceleration at your finger tips. When you sort that you have random and Boolean behaviour. Lots of others. I bet a pound to a shilling there are no teachers teaching this complex stuff. I am really struggling to get to grips with what does what.

My goal is to compile them into a video and make your eyes pop. It’s not going to happen this year, I’m just far too stupid. Nothing to do with Blender though that is getting more obtuse than Photoshop.

It’s much easier to just film a firework display but I am fascinated by visual art and as I will never be a painter so cheat a bit. Cheating is very hard, extremely hard  but requires little in the way of artistic talent. Much like most artisan work. Jackson Pillock and Tracy Emmen. Are to my eye rubbish. I do like the latters drawing but they are little better than mine.

Please feel free to pop by and discuss the problems with Blender, I love it but do find finding the 3D cursor a pain. What the hell it’s free and depending what you have spent on computing power unlimited. Just because I am running a bit behind don’t knock Blender.