HAPPY NEW YEAR.

A peal of bell. I would have liked to create something a little more uplifting and complex for the New year and may still have time to do so. This sounds funereal but is not intended to be. I am going round in circles or changes with this.
All the very best for 2019.

DING DONG.

Unless anything spectacular happens during the next five days this will be my last post before Christmas.
I have an idea for a New Year animation. The modelling I am confident with, texturing less so and using rigid body physics is all new to me and it is causing me to suffer brain fade. It is starting to encroach into Game Engine territory which I suspect will be way beyond me.

This is the first bell I modelled but I applied a sub-surface modifier prior to getting the model finished. I textured it with a rusty iron displacement map and added a bronzeish colour which shows promise, I could do with an antique bronze set of textures but they can be expensive and I don't know how to make my own. I am enamoured with this volumetric lighting which is what Blender calls it; I call it foggy. Why they have a default density of 1 when this is 0.015 beggars belief I guess it's just Blenders way of keeping me on my toes. If I test render at the default value then it's all black and it takes me a while to realise that it wasn't me being thick.

This is bell number two. I much prefer it. The materials are simple but you get the idea. I used the Screw modifier to generate the bell bit and for once I have experienced few issues with normals. It's perfect inside and out which has to be a first for me using a double skinned profile.
Now on to the animation malarkey, I expect a few naughty words and much perusal of the instructions at Blenderwiki.
See you after Christmas.

MERRY CHRISTMAS.

This is a subtle card for me. Possibly a little too subtle. I lost the tree lights and couldn't find where they had gone. I'll have another look and if I find them repost.

Have a great Christmas whatever you are up to.

A LETTER TO MY SISTER.

Dear Liz,

We went to bed at about sixish last night as it was freezio. Then the rain and hail started and I read most of a Whodunnit whilst it hailed and sleeted. It went quiet. I fell into slumber then Moll started yipping. Alf joined in. I used my special words but with little success. Moll had seen the snow and wanted out. It was three O'Bloody clock. I gave in and let them out to roll and frolic in it. I shut them out but had just got back in bed when they were yipping to come back in. They do look very white but were more than damp and thought the duvet the best place to dry off. Your duvet is still in it's bag till spring. If politicians had either children or animals they would not piss about with trivialities like Brexit.

Love A.

The dogs love snow. 

Moll thinking this is funny snow I don't sink in.

Alf has found his ball. Try and get it I dare you.

Just to add to my good humour I have plowed through a Peter May book called I'll keep you Safe his previous efforts kept me reading. Well written but a frustrating read. He's gone a bit PC but his heart wasn't in it. Lesbos and pooftas are a minority and not something I can relate to. Good job it was only £1.99p. I was tempted to pay about six quid for it. He would have heard if I had. Terrible book and rubbish compared to the Chessmen or Chesspeople or worse still chesspersons.

Have a good week. Sorry about the compositing but I've about had it with Blogger.

VERPISS DICH DRUNKER.

I thought for two seconds before using this title, it's a little rude and so is the attitude of the Fourth Reich to our un-esteemed Prime Minister. They never learn. I recognise she is a complete waste of space with the negotiating skill of a lug worm but have a little respect for the title if not the incumbent of it. It's the little people who suffer and bear the brunt of globalist ambitions. Westminster Bridge has ugly concrete and dead folk, children die**in Manchester and on it goes. We now have an EU army, as the French have found out it is to quell civil insurrection not to fight the naughty muzzies and Russians. The latter only have to turn of the gas to cripple western Europe.
I could go on and on.
 It is forecast to snow, I love cold and snow, -7°C this morning, sunny was about to happen on our first wander.  We walked and walked up to the Dragonfly swamp. No dragonflies but I did find an interesting lump of rock.

This isn't a cup stone or at least I don't think it is. Locally these are known as the staines. It was a drovers stop on the road between Perth and Auchtermuchty. Why they chiseled a cup only they know. There are other stones but they are just lumps of rock lying about. Can't have been an early incarnation of snooker played with a caber as the others don't have a cup. I guess early 17th century golf.

The dogs on the old coach road. It's in good fettle as the timber trucks use it.

Away in the distance is Dragonfly territory. I'm hoping to snap a few more next year, there are also lots of Grass Spiders so I'll hike my body out to try and catch an image or two.
 It was a dullish cool day for snapping but Photoshop can pull detail, thank the pixel manipulator programmers and Canon for a superb manual lens.
Have a good weekend.
* The children are just lost according to the gurning May. They are lost because a thick towel head blew them to smithereens. I guess they are down a drain after the pressure washing so perhaps she is right for once. 
Happen she thinks they will be found. Only an idiot could think that, a barren idiot bred from a man without moral fibre and the mate of a mass murdering doctor. How did we end up with it?

CHOICE.

The other day I offered the dogs two sticks. Wisely they ignored both and found an interesting smell to sniff.

I am sick and tired of living in a country run by self serving, greedy idiots. The politicians of whatever major party barring the LibDems all stood on an a manifesto saying they would honour the referendum result. They haven't as on the referendum there was no mention of a deal. 
I would leave then consider deals very carefully with the Fourth Reich. 
I worked in an industry where contracts were struck on a job and finish basis. I took the job after negotiating a price for it. If I was desperate for money I went in cheap. If I was flush then upped my price and asked for it to be paid into an offshore account. If through circumstance it ran over time then so be it. I took the hit. If I got injured as I did then that's life as long as I made sure I did my best and saved my crew I can live with myself.
I haven't voted for over twenty years, I used to go and see my prospective candidates at meetings. They day they stopped having those hustings. I stopped voting.
This is going to be fun.

CONTRE JOUR.

After a couple of damp foggy days the sun came out to play so after breakfast I buried a dead hen and off we went for a wander. Burying the hen is a waste of time as a fox will dig it up as soon as it smells it but it warmed me up and will make the fox work for it's dinner.

Loch Leven. 

Contre Jour.

This is French for against the day but means in English to shoot into the sun or light. I have seen a little of the revolting French on RT and I wonder is this the start of something more positive. The Belgians failed to storm the European Parliament which is a set back but not to worry. At least they had a go.

BARELY A CLOUD.

Monday dawned cold and clear which was a welcome change from the wet and windy weather of late. We had a quick trip to St Andrews and a walk on the beach. The tide was about half ebb so plenty of firm sand to wander on. I couldn't find the seals which as I had forgotten the dogs lead was probably a good thing nor did I try and reenact the scene from Chariots of Fire.
Tuesday my brother-in law and I went to Dundee. Dundee is a place I avoid whenever possible but a trip round the new V&A was overdue. It's an impressive airy building and the exhibition of ocean liners was most informative. Well worth the visit.
Here are a few snaps of the dogs on the beach.

It looks as if the weather is going to change back to wet and windy but it was good to have some sunshine.

EYEBALLS.

It's been a vile week, I have been wet more than dry and the only job I have managed to complete is a new tow hitch on a quad. I purchased the ball and Swan Engineering cut a beautiful pin hitch attachment on their laser cutter. It's a good job I measured correctly.
I have been messing again and started out making an alien to look at my alien plant then I got distracted with modeling eyes. It's more complicated than I imagined but I have spent a few hours playing. Here is the progress. 

I know these aren't snowman eyes but I have made a snowman for a Christmas card, I won't use these eyes you'll be happy to hear.
Have a good week.

GREY FERGIE.

These tractors were built for around ten years from 1946. They made about six hundred thousand in the UK and another few hundreds of thousands under licence at a Ford plant in America.

This one is a TED 20. It runs on petrol or TVO but has to start and warm up on petrol.
The forerunner of most modern tractors, I believe it was the first production machine with a three point hitch. This one is going to have another rebuild as it's away to a wedding.

ALIEN PLANTS.

John at MIDMARSH JOTTINGS occasionally posts alien plants. I kill plants so decided to make a timelapse video of an alien plant of my own. I have got bogged down. The plant pot is middling and the glowing compost is okay. I then used a tapered curve for the plant stem as they are easy to animate and hence show growing. The problem is that I end up not being able to have an alien flower growing on top as when I convert the curve to a mesh it won't animate. I'll sleep on the problem.
Here is a still from the movie. 

Pretty weird even by my standards.
Have fun.

A BIT MORE.

After this I am going to find something else to blather about.

I am playing with some timelapse but time will tell if it materialises.

JUST ONE SUN.

This is a ten minute Blender video which I think will show a slightly different workflow. It is part one of a series of three or two if I can squeeze the next bit into ten minutes. After that I am working on a five minute film. 

Have a good week.

HDRI.

HDRIs are full 360° light emitting high dynamic range panoramas that allow one to illuminate scenes in Blender. I have used them but never understood how to make them work properly. I have the job sorted now so decided to make a video. This was shot just as I did it so maybe it's a little slow. I usually edit out the bits where I get muddled up but thought it worth leaving them in this time.

At the end are two bits of video I'd put in the skip as they are slightly out of focus. I decided to have a play with them.

Have fun.

ARMISTICE DAY.

Tommy




I went into a public 'ouse to get a pint o'beer,

The publican 'e up an' sez, ``We serve no red-coats here.''

The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,

I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:

O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' ``Tommy, go away'';

But it's ``Thank you, Mister Atkins,'' when the band begins to play,

The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,

O it's ``Thank you, Mr. Atkins,'' when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,

They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;

They sent me to the gallery or round the music 'alls,

But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' ``Tommy, wait outside'';

But it's ``Special train for Atkins'' when the trooper's on the tide,

The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,

O it's ``Special train for Atkins'' when the trooper's on the tide.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep

Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;

An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit

Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.

Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' ``Tommy how's yer soul?''

But it's ``Thin red line of 'eroes'' when the drums begin to roll,

The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,

O it's ``Thin red line of 'eroes'' when the drums begin to roll.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,

But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;

An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints:

Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;

While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an ``Tommy, fall be'ind,''

But it's ``Please to walk in front, sir,'' when there's trouble in the wind,

There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,

O it's ``Please to walk in front, sir,'' when there's trouble in the wind.

You talk o' better food for us, an'schools, an' fires an' all:

We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.

Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face

The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' ``Chuck him out, the brute!''

But it's ``Saviour of 'is country,'' when the guns begin to shoot;

Yes it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;

But Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool--you bet that Tommy sees!




Rudyard Kipling




LEST WE FORGET

AWAY.

I have been away for a week doing all things horsey. Well not the complicated things, filling hay nets, fetching horses in and taking them out. I enjoy being around animals so it's been a good week. One naughty horse has decided that chasing the dogs is a good game, a pastime which I do my best to discourage. The dogs think it's fun but I can see it ending in tears if not nipped in the bud.
These pictures are not of the best as I used a strainer to rest the camera on. 

 MIST LOOKING TOWARDS BURNTISLAND.

A FROSTY PADDOCK AND LOCH LEVEN.

I'm back to Auchtermuchty this morning, have a good weekend.

HALLOWEEN.

I have never had anything to do with Halloween other than giving children a boiled sweet and threatening to rip their heads off if my bin isn't exactly as I left it. 
I'm have doubts wishing folk a Happy Halloween, it's not an expression I have heard before but there's a first for everything.

Have a good day tomorrow.

DISLECKCIA

It's been a funny few days. Thursday I had a run down to St. Andrews and the seaside. I wanted to get some video of waves but they were fiddling and small, no shipwrecks, nobody drownded, in fact nothing to laugh at, at all. I  took the tripod and camera; even remembered a spare battery but forgot the lens mounting plate. The dogs met a King Charles Spaniel who was on an extending lead and it wanted a play but was tying it's mum in knots. She was a delightful Polish or maybe Lithuanian lass who wanted to know why I was taking pictures of the empty sea. We chattered away and I explained I had forgotten the mounting plate. She explained why she kept her dog on it's lead.
"It want to play with every dog we see which is excellent but she only play for five minutes and then she fuck off and jump in sea, then she try and bite me when I scrub her with towel".
I couldn't help laughing at the unexpected profanity and even she found it funny when I explained why I was amused.

Friday. Jen popped up from Edinburgh on her way to Darlington so I was very appreciative. It adds a good three hours to her journey. We had a grand chat and catch up. She came laden with presents, fruit cake, cheese, dog treats and whisky. My sort of lass if I wanted another wife I'd beg her to marry me. Muchty pub is open again but not yet doing food so another disappointment. Jen left full of the apple turnover she had brought with her.

I have been really trying to make Alcove part Two but am having big problems. To put it in a nutshell I am struggling to drop the alcove model into a wall. If I'm honest I have been in a right tangle with Blender all week.

Here are a few images of my messing.

St Andrew's Beach. Very subtle posterisation. I then tried to do the same to the video of which the above is a still and it collected all these artifacts. I wasn't best pleased.

In fact I was boiling cross. I will leave this malarkey as a pastime. It is making me really angry. I must be really thick. I must have re-connected a node I had discarded but can I find it can I hell. I must learn some new words or work much more tidily.

Alcove Part two is done after a fashion. It is stuck in a wall which I found the very devil of a job. I have never had much luck with Blenders Boolean whatsits so I went into the face menu and used knife, I then had to rebuild faces and muck about with normals for ten minutes,

 Here it is stuck in a wall....Great.

Not so great the little black shadow thingy shouldn't be there. I can't work out what is causing it. Bother, Bother Blow. I bet it is all down to Brexit or Trump. I wish I could be a Leftard and blame someone or something else for everything.

Both the wall mesh and the alcove mesh are reasonable. I must be dislexsic.

Don't forget to put Your Cock Black tonight. 

A PASTIME.

This is very similar to the posterizing I did but it is a tractor and not an attractive lady.

The first segment is the node tree I used and then the original video followed by a pencil sketch interpretation and finally some colouring in. The singing isn't me it's a wonderful lady called Amy Sayer and the song is from the Wild Tape.
John at MIDMARSHJOTTINGS inspired me as he did a similar thing and he did his whilst driving so much more complicated and better.
Have fun.

THE REVEREND WILLIAM SPOONER.

Ever since I got my mew nouse on Saturday I have been trying to get a good simple alcove. The mouse is a fit bast but the following HowIDunit is in real time. I have always speeded up previous Howtus. I still do the voice over afterwards as the audio input driver on my laptop has been acting the fool. So has my GPU but after two goes at reinstalling the driver for it it seems to be behaving itself. I ought to offer my services to folk with driver trouble. I'd prefer to offer my services to nubile young ladies that aren't in trouble but those days are long gone.
This is supposed to be a tutorial and I healy rope I haven't forgotten anything. I know it isn't up to the standard of most on YouTube but the more of them I do the better I get.
Whilst waiting for YouTube I noticed this little splash of theirs.

I think they are packing the tiss. My premier would be very intimate with all three viewers.

Here is the Alcove video it is about 8.5 minutes long. I hope someone learns something from it. It's a cunning stunt.

It is 2K and is best watched at the best resolution your broadband will tolerate. I did compress it in Handbrake but only from 110MB to sixty odd. It should be fine at 1K or 720 I think they call it.
Have fun and ask when you need clarification.

MAN AND MOUSE.

A couple of weeks ago the scroll wheel on my mouse started acting the fool. It is an old mouse and the rubber covering had worn through.  I gave it a clean, I treated it to a squirt of brake cleaner but alas it was all to no avail. I started looking at mice on PCWorld and Amazon. Hundreds of the wretched things so I decided to choose on size and price. Big and cheap.

Here it is and it works fine. The instructions are written on a sheet of A4 and a bit paper which is folded up to fag packet size; they are in about half a dozen languages and I wouldn't normally bother deciphering such things. I stuffed the USB bit into the laptop, loaded a couple of batteries and then noticed it has a couple of buttons on the side and one on the top behind the scroll wheel. I tried to read the instructions but the writing was far too small. I found my magnifying glass and learnt that the one on the top is for adjusting CPI. What in the name of all rodents has the consumer price index got to do with my mouse? As it turns out absolutely nothing, It means Counts per Inch and is a measure of sensitivity. I can now set it very high and click on the wrong thing faster than ever before. Well not worth the £13.40p delivered for that feature alone. I will have to take a macro shot of the words and music to make sense of the other two buttons. Maybe I'll just forget them. If I'm really lucky one will do Ctrl Z and the other something else useful like disabling Caps Lock. The latter is a button I regularly hit in error and then spend five minutes wondering why shortcuts don't work as expected, if at all.
I am still interested in the alcove but have started again as I can't get the render time down to less than a couple of minutes a frame, That's without a bit of Halloween mist swirling about. I have now devised a much cleaner mesh and will learn how to bake materials. If you are really lucky I'll do a bit of video showing howIdunit.
Have a good week.
PS. The forward button seems to lock the scroll wheel for fast scanning and the aft one is a perv button; it gets rid of the porn screen quick sticks and pops things back to the browser screen. Wonderful. I suspect it works on screens other than porn. I'll experiment if enough folk are interested.

FOLK ARE DIFFERENT.

In all the turmoil of the world we live in the seasons remain the same.

Not a good year for autumn colour but half reasonable.

I love thinking of ways to model 3D stuff. This is my state of the art.

A really posh alcove in a wall. I'm hoping to make a movie out of this. Ignore the top bit as that produced this. I'm fighting for a super clean mesh for animation.

Needs more work I think. Put in crap get crap out.

 I am not averse to one click solutions. If one in a thousand folk think; I've used one, I'll delve deeper then the jobs a goodun. If they are satisfied then likewise.

A child who is a right little sod showed me this. He suffers from (INAGS.)* Many children seem to suffer from such things, I did and my son did; it's normal. They have letters after their name before they have left primary school these days. He understands things intuitively Look at this.

On the left is Blenders sphere mesh an on the right is what he came up with it's a cube with a sub division surface modifier. Bloody genius level computing as it makes for clean meshes.

* INAGS stands for:  I Need a Good Slapping.

Have fun.

.

PALLY SOMETHING.

Not much to report I'm afraid.
I have been thinking of going on one of those attention seeking diets. A lass I met is a vegan. I decided to adopt an Iron Age diet of berries, nuts and other stuff lying about; being ecologically sound I have had to pop the Pally whatever she said it's called on hold as despite diligent searching I can't for the life of me find a Woolly Mammoth or even a Sabre Toothed Tiger to tide me through the winter. Air freighting berries seems a bit counter productive. 
Last week one of the hens died peacefully in it's sleep. Here it is alive and well.

It's a shame but both hens are very old and it had a good life here.
I am still in Blender mode and got distracted as usual.

I was messing with ambient lighting and found that if I used a plane emitter with a picture on, it did this. 

You don't have to show the light source as you can simply deselect it from the camera. I've popped a yellow scribble round the bit you uncheck. I can't for the life of me think of a use for it but I found it interesting.
I've got a bit further with the castle gate. Really sharp points on my portcullis, which should impale any slow invaders. Boiling oil should deal with any the spikes don't get.

It wants texturing properly but I'm saving that bit as I enjoy colouring in.
Have a good week.

WHAT A PALAVER.

I have been out revelling in the autumn colours. They aren't at their best yet so I decided to make my own tree. I wish I'd never started. It took me dozens of goes, all bar two being failures. My Muppetry was unsurpassed; yesterday evening I was all for uninstalling the Modular Tree add-on from Blender but decided to give it one more go this morning, I had been selecting the particle system for the leaves using 'A'. It worked when I just right clicked.
Here it is.

The second is a magnified bit of the first. It's not too shabby. I could give the lighting a bit of a shove but these 3D models would be fine as the camera zips past. It is only pretend.

A few more pictures from round and about as winter approaches.

SPRAYING.

HEDGE CUTTING.

 THE FIRTH OF FORTH.

LOOKING FROM MY DOOR.

That's all for now. Have fun.

ADDENDUM:

Looks a bit smarter.

A START.

Looking at the comments on recent posts I noticed that someone wanted a door in the shed and another would like to see a castle. I have made a start. I've actually got a bit further than this but as I'm hopeless at showing how I stumble through creating 3D stuff I decided that there is a limit to what folk would tolerate.
Here is the video, I did this twice as the blasted empty I was using as a manipulator refused to play. I must be buggering something up but I'm blowed if I can work out what.

I will carry on with this job as now I've got a doorway I can scale it and alter it to make windows alcoves and doors..............That's my cunning plan.
Have a good week.

WHEN THERE IS ONLY ONE OPTION LEFT.

This is a carry over from the last post. I have tried to posterise a bit of video. I don't really know why as I have never been impressed by this sort of thing.
I was getting nowhere fast, I loaded an image into Photoshop and had a run through dozens and dozens of the artistic filters residing there. Back into Blender and again I was disappointed with the results. There was only one option left............Read the bloody instructions. The Blender manual is a mine of information but reading and understanding are often poles apart.

Most of this could be written in Hottentot for the sense it makes to me. I got the gist of it as they kindly included a picture.

I have an idea for one more video like this but using Photoshop. I'll then move onto something else. Probably the something else will be equally silly.