ABOUT ME

I live in a camper van with a West Highland Terrier for company.
My passion is creating images but it is a work in progress.
I am always willing to share what knowledge I have and can be contacted through the comments on this post or e-mail ADRIAN
ALL IMAGES WILL ENLARGE WITH A LEFT CLICK

Monday 4 January 2016

HORIZON. (04/01/16)

Ever since I started with a world sky and clouds I have had endless frustration locating the horizon where I wanted it. I woke this morning at 0430h and the solution had occurred to me whilst I slept. This is both exciting and a little depressing, I can remember a time when my dreams were full of salacious scenarios involving Uma Thurman. Every cloud is silver lined.
This is the Node Tree that generates and controls the clouds and also applies the sky or atmosphere. All I had to do was add the bits in red highlighter. This  job is now perfect and I can clean up the Tree. The bits lit up yellow are supposed to be there, they are keyframes.
There is still an awful lot wrong with this but I am reasonably happy. The water is now much better as I used Bump and Noise instead of the Wave Texture. You will see in the second scene that the flag is a bit droopy. I use a wind force and it has to be at about 400 thingies to make a flag blow whereas the reeds only need 1 or 2 thingies, they just get blown under the water at higher forces as they flatten against the disc they are modelled on. In the last scene I popped the flag on a different layer and now I can have two wind speeds; it transpires that I can't parent forces to objects on the same layer, the virtual fan affects everything. The reeds are not very good I'll have another go at them. I am pleased with the land but still not happy with the texture. The grass and rock are supposed to be tileable but you can see banding. I'll see if I can dream a solution to the problem.
I have several things to do/learn and the other day noticed something called Boids. I looked it up and it is a particle control system that mimics flocking, targeting and other things. I don't understand all it can do, to be honest I don't understand half the words. I am considering having two or three flocks of a thousand birds or maybe fish and making them swirl about by animating a target for them.
It's still raining hard so after I have walked the dogs, I'll try and make my bird flap properly and if I can't I'll make a fish as they only have to wriggle a bit.
Have fun.
PS. I forgot to mention that scenes 1 and 3 are test renders at 50% resolution so a bit blurry. The little fireflies in scenes 1&2 are caused by my forgetting to add some clamp. Please pretend they are midges.

18 comments:

  1. Brilliant Adrian. The whole process looks like a complicated and steep learning curve.
    I did like the flags shown previously and the UFO, or was it Dithery's brain, flew very smoothly.

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    1. John, it is brilliant software and only limited as far as I can tell by ones ability to use it. One thing against it is that there seems to be little uniformity as regards control strength units. I guess developers just pick what they fancy. I suspect 3DsMax may be easier in this respect but it does cost about £3K.
      The UFO was supposed to be my brain in a hat glowing with the effort. The smooth flight was luck as I didn't modify the curves in the graph editor.

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  2. Looks like you're coming on in leaps and bounds Adrian? I don't know about dreaming the solution, I think if it were me trying this I'd be suffering from one king sized headache!!
    I guess the rain has a lot to answer for?...[;o)
    Happy New Year btw.

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    1. Trevor, I have found that the best way is to just keep pressing things till something happens. It's rarely what I'm expecting.
      This rain is never ending and it's turned a bit cooler now just to add to the joys of life.

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  3. "to be honest I don't understand half the words"

    My problem exactly. I do understand Uma Thurmann....

    I can tell you're having great fun, but show us more of Alf and Molly.

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    1. Bob, I'll try and get a picture but the weather is not conducive to photography.

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  4. While I don't understand any of the technical stuff, I am still drawn to your blog posts. There's always a laugh and it is interesting to see the progress you have made.

    We are having a lot of gray days but snow every day instead of rain. Such is winter!

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    1. Marie, I would enjoy some snow. This constant rain is depressing.

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  5. Oh dear. I'm right out of my depth again with all this, Adrian. But I'm all for people cleaning up trees. If they need it (the trees, that is). Now, some nice simple pictures, please. For the non-technical. Mushrooms, views, dogs all welcome.

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    1. Frances, it is ages since I took a photograph. I could sneak out with a strobe or two and will if the rain stops.

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  6. Huge improvement over the previous version which was still bloody good. The water looks more realistic

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    1. Douglas, I have not had a good day but should be able to show further progress soon. The bird is still proving a challenge but once I have one then the others will be easy.

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  7. ALL of this reminds me of when I was first learning to do anything with Photoshop... Hey, Pinewood Studios will be calling soon.

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    1. Bill, it does bring back memories for me as well. I suspect this is a bit arder but then everything is hard till you find out how to do it.

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  8. Tienes un buen entretenimiento Adrian, así no te aburres ;)
    La bandera se mueve mejor al final.
    Un abrazo.

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    1. Laura, todavía llueve por lo que hay tiempo de sobra para seguir jugando y nunca es aburrido.

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  9. That versus Uma Thurman? You've flipped at last.

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    1. I agree Graham. It's been on the cards for most of my life. I'm not sure it's nice to achieve this goal.

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