SEASIDE AND GEARS.

I think that I'm getting topside of Blender 2.80. I downloaded an update last week and it was a little fragile which could have accounted for some of the results. The problem is I'm never quite sure what is down to Blender and what is me being thick. The latest version seems fine.
On Sunday I was watching a live stream from the F1 GP when I saw an advert for live TV not just text updates. Stupidly I clicked on it and got lots of pop up adverts for some very attractive ladies. Dozens of them, all wanting to get to know me. It gave new meaning to rigid body physics and was quite entertaining for a while. One can have too much of a good thing so I blocked them. 
Yesterday I took the dogs to the beach at St. Andrew's, it was freezing and I wasn't dressed for the weather.

There were few folk about so we had a good, if cool, wander.

I'm going to do a few tutorials of about three minutes duration showing how to model and activate gears in Blender 2.80 Beta. I don't know how much interest there will be but it will get things straight in my mind.

That's all for today.

GEARS AND SHEEP.

Today started off wet and cold and it was a sheep checking day. I set off to count them in a lull in the rain. It didn't last long, I was soon soaked, these are good sheep, they come to greet one and hence are quickly counted. Twenty one there were and that is the number there are supposed to be. All sound of hoof and not one caught in the fencing. Great.

Very friendly and well behaved sheep which is more than can be said for the gears.
I must be missing a trick somewhere but I have tried dozens of things to make Blenders rigid body physics behave. I'll give it a rest for a day. I do like the look of the gear profiles from OTVINTA. They look like proper gears. 
Here is a short video showing the extent of the foul up.

Not to worry. Have a good weekend.

CLOCK.

I have been busy. A few weeks ago the machine had a major fit and though it is back to better than normal now I seem to have lost half of MS Office. The only bits I use are Word and Xcell or whatever the spread sheet bit is called. I only use the latter infrequently as a posh calculator if I have the same job to run with differing input values. Usually it's more trouble to set up than it is to use a calculator. I have uninstalled MS Office installed LibreOffice, had a quick look, it seems fine, probably of more use to me as it has a dedicated mathematics page.
I have made or modelled my first proper gear with no overlapping faces, like a dog with two tails I am.

This mesh is awful but it is clean and clear of double vertices. I must apologise to Mark for the derogatory observation I made when confronted with his peat wagon mesh. This is far worse but it is an accurate spur gear. It isn't going to get any better as I can see me having to loop cut the teeth to get it to animate in Rigid Body Physics. Blender 2.80 is accepting Functions now so with a lot of help from OTVINTA I have got this far.
I'm away for a walk as my head is about to explode. Only three more gears to go and I'll have the makings of a clock final drive.

PATTERNS.

A bit of a change for today.
The Barley is looking good, plenty of CO² now that the eco-loons have gone back to the classroom.

The weather is wonderful, more like high summer than spring.

I am still having endless entertainment in Blender and have made a short video to celebrate St. George's day.

I apologise for having gone a little overboard with the pattern and also for the music. The latter was all I could find that was suitable and free.
Enjoy your day.

ARCHIMEDES SCREW AND BALLS.

After a few false starts and several cuckoos along the way I have the screw working fine.
I am going to be busy this next week as I have some sheep to look after. On top of that I have now seen that 2.80 accepts trig functions so will try and learn to make some more spur gears.
Here is a short video, you will see that the small red cylinder is visible in the final render. If I don't render it the job goes pear shaped so in future I will have to make sure it is out of the camera frame.

Have a good week.

WORK IN PROGRESS.

I am giving the blasted Starlings a rest. I had another go and even introducing several targets the damn things kept reverting to a swarm of Bees. I could still move the targets about and alter the Boid hierarchy but everything I do makes for a similar result.
The Barley has sprouted but we have a Mole infestation which is not good news. What we could do with is a couple of breeding pairs of Mole eating raptors but all we have is Sparrow Hawks and Buzzards. Useless, especially the latter as they are quite content living on worms and carrion. Lazy devils they are.
Blender 2.80 is due for final release in July. I don't download the daily updates but just renew it every few weeks. It is very stable now but some script is missing or not yet updated. They now have an incomplete manual for it but the bit I wanted was not completed. Today's video is just something that evolved whilst I was playing with coloured balls to pop into an Archimedes Screw, climb up it and change colour on the way. It's a decorative effect. I've used a particle system here just to demonstrate the possibilities and the limitations. This works fineish. The screw was a pain as there seems to be a lot of the script missing in 2.80. I had to do it all manually which takes some figuring out. Not to worry. Rigid body Physics is wonderful entertainment. Doing these unpopular videos helps get things straight in my mind. If anyone would like an in depth explanation of any of the component parts of this then feel free to ask. I have a love hate relationship with 2.80 Beta, it is so much more intuitive than previous versions. I spend at least two hours a day playing and would like to thank all the developers involved for their hard work. I live in hope of understanding twenty percent of it one day.

It is scorchio here. I thank the Germans for pumping out greenhouse gases and warming me up.
Have fun.

HAPPY EASTER.

I have re-done the starlings but have decided to start again. 

This ornamental bridge is in Falkland. I went there for lunch on Tuesday but it wasn't a photography day.

Have a very good Easter.

GETTING THERE.

Disappointing as the result is this has been a marathon effort for me. I did try this once before but that was years ago in an older version of Blender. It was a total failure as I recall, much like this but I am wiser now. Betterer.
This is, despite appearances, not too far away. As you can see I spent only a little time on the sky and landscape but did spend ages trying to get all the settings something like for the murmuration bit. I failed but did promise this for yesterday or tomorrow. It has always struck me as a little odd that in industry a penalty clause is what it says. If one is a bit dilatory or just plain stupid it costs you financially. It never seems to apply to politicians or public sector workers.
I have always been a hopeless birder, in real life I blame the dogs but in this virtual world I can only blame myself. My brother-in-law is poorly but I can't blame him for being a bit under the weather.
Once I have got the birds to perform I'll try and recreate the starlings coming home to roost at Leighton Moss, I have dozens of reference images for the place and also some interesting shots of raptors grabbing supper from the starling flock. That causes absolute chaos as you can imagine. A boid can be introduced to hunt a flock, perhaps a little too ambitious. Where are the images of Leighton Moss and what did I file them under? Could be quicker to nip down and shoot some more. I have two Transcend Drives but then one should keep a little book to say what is where.
 This is created from three identical flocks but in reality they fly into the roost from all directions so I will model a bit better bird, vary the flock size and start location. I think this bird despite looking more like a Corvus works okay. At least it flies forwards, crap into a computer crap out, took me a while to get them going forwards. Same applies to Westminster but crap in stays in and is immovable for five years . Pity Notre Dame caught fire and not Westminster during PMQ's.
The great beauty of Blender 2.80 is that you can get away with very quick renders for video. I purposefully didn't bake or cache this and it is still only taking about 4 to 5s a frame and not, as I type this crashing or running the fans constantly. I whip the processor out and give it a quick clean a spray of arctic whatsit once a year, works a dream. Nothing wrong with the software but I do have to experiment a lot. Sometimes a minor adjustment in settings has the birds or boids dispersing to all four corners of the globe. I'll have another go for next Thursday. I find it very complicated but fun. I'll try to model a proper reed bed for them to land in.

When I get near to realistic 3D I find that I could do with splitting the work a bit. Not to worry, it takes weeks to educate anybody these days to sweep a road. 

DINI'S SURFACE.

A short video today playing with maths functions in Blender. Despite visual evidence to the contrary I haven't been smoking wacky baccy. I have a birthday video to do and was looking for an attractive element for it. The murmuration has stalled but I think I have it sorted in my mind. Tomorrow I am away all day but should have it ready for Thursday. 

Have fun.

A SMALL DIGRESSION.

I'm still doing the murmuration but yesterday whilst trying to create a Bezier curve for a target to follow so that in turn the Starling flocks can follow the target I stumbled upon Animation Nodes. Having had a quick and baffling look they seem an excellent sub programme. So far I can only find them, load them and make a mess with them, anyone who would like to know more then look for tutorials, there are a few on Youtube. If I can help I will. It doesn't only produce mathematical curves but seems to do lots of other arcane stuff as well. Few folk can remember trig functions but Wolfram Math have a good selection. I have had an unsuccessful play at creating a Celtic Knot. I get so far but the knot won't close at 2π this causes a problem as 2π is the limit in trig functions. Pi is also a problem as Alt 227 doesn't work anymore and using the character map takes ages. Bloody computers.
Here is a quick video.

Have a good weekend.

SIX WHEELS ON THE TRACTOR.

I've been busy doing lots of different tasks. I tested the Boolean modifier in Blender 2.80 and unless I hear to the contrary I think it works a treat.

 This is  MARK'S Peat wagon. I am trying to persuade him to switch to the Beta version of Blender as I find it a joy to use. Nothing wrong with this hole as long as it is not meant to do anything. I just had a bolt handy and it is quite a complex object for a Boolean difference test.

The farmers picked an old set of Cambridge rolls up the other day. They do require a little polish up but are doing a good job as are the twin rear wheels. Good job we popped tyres on them before I had a haircut.

A full restoration would improve them but for three days work a year it's probably best to keep patching them up.

After the haircut I felt like Samson it has sapped my strength. I suspect it would be a waste of time persuading the haircutter to come and view my Blendering.

This is how far I've got with my virtual murmaration. I got a bit further but the little sturnidae were flying backwards.

I just popped the colour on as I like colouring in. The bird is much better as I drew round half a picture, mirrored the result filled in the middle and then extruded it by a bit to give it some thickness. I will use it as a Boid particle. If it looks too thin I'll pop some loop cuts in and fatten it up. This will add a lot of geometry and I want to avoid doing so if possible as there will be a few thousand of them. I am not very good at rigging meshes but this one will do though it's far from perfect. In the final render you will just see a starling coloured bird not the rest of the rig or empties and the control object. I'll do two or three and stagger their key frames so they aren't all flapping together or at the same speed. The human eye is a pain for picking up repeating patterns.

Have a good weekend.
The whited out bit says Sturnidae were flying backwards. Don't know why Blogger has trouble formatting from time to time.

SELFISH TWATS AND SOME MORE BOIDS.

My command of language isn't good but I do know the basics as I loved an almost perfect lass who did languages as a translator. Posh girl she was and had lots of letters after her name. She knew. "I have a headache and you need a shower" in six languages, unfortunately not Arabic as two ladies later I could have done with a bit of Egyptian. She taught me that though the grammar and words differed in Romanic languages just a bit it was all much the same if you got the verb and noun right, folk would know what you meant to say. German is for Germans, Dutch is squeaky German. Russian, Hottentot and Japanese were for experts only. 
We have folk that can't communicate in English, they use 'Sat' when they mean 'Sitting' and other horrors. Say what you mean in any language and be prepared to defend what you say. If you are halfway right folk will do as you desire. You may need cash or a big stick to supplement your language. I rarely did.
I still follow Neil though I regard him as a twat. A principled twat, he has many principles and swaps them to suit, agnostic then not. This is a perfect example of his outlook.

How can a self elected member of the intelligentsia not use English? Sounds like a ten year old saying I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it. He an English teacher to boot. Little wonder folk can't use our language.

On a brighter note I downloaded a new version of Blender 2.80 Beta. I love the new interface and it was a pain swapping back to 2.79b to do slicing last week. It seems to be almost perfect again so far, last week it was fouling up big time. I played with Boids in 2.80 and am well on the way to creating a murmaration of Starlings. My bird doesn't look very Starling like at the moment but then Starlings don't when murmarating.

They look like little black dots. If anyone has an image of a flat starling like road kill then I will copy it. I only need a half of one as I mirror the mesh so half a road kill or window hit will be fine This looks a bit unique but then I don't profess to be an artist, chiropodist, English teacher or ornithologist. It will be grand when I shorten it's neck, pop bigger wings on and animate them to make them flap. I'll have to remember not to get any close to the camera. 3D is all about illusion. Come to think last time I snapped Starling murmarating both camera and I were well dosed in Starling crap. An experienced birder at Leighton Moss had a big umbrella. Didn't give me a share, selfish twat.
This bit of video is a little dismal. I couldn't get the last version of Blender Beta to accept multiple different particles. Now it does it as expected. The warning is there for a reason but don't let it put you off. It's a beautiful bit of software and little more cantankerous than Adobe CS6. It is also £1k cheaper. I would like Fusion for VFX but can't get it to work at all. I think I overdid the glow in this clip. A bit too much of it, I need restraint or restraining Not to worry.

Have fun.

BOIDS

This bit of video started out as something else as is often the case when I play with 3D stuff.  If I don't get bored or baffled then I'm hoping to polish this up and use it in a bit of video. It looks random but in this version the particles are controlled by a sphere which you can't see. You ought to be able to see it as a transparent globular container but Blender 2.80 kept crashing so I just hid it.

Enjoy the coming week and the shenanigans of our traitorous government.

POPPING THE SEED IN.

Today I have a five minute video showing a New Holland 8360 drilling Barley. The light was great to start with but then it went dark and hailed. Such is life. It saved fading the video out to black so this cloud did have a silver lining.

The excuse we have for a government go from bad to worse. They are truly awful. Here is a joke to brighten your day.

One day a florist went to a barber for a haircut. After the cut, he asked about his bill, and the barber replied, 'I cannot accept money from you, I'm doing community service this week.'

The florist was pleased and left the shop.

When the barber went to open his shop the next morning, there was a 'thank you' card and a dozen roses waiting for him at his door.

Later, a cop comes in for a haircut, and when he tries to pay his bill, the barber again replied, 'I cannot accept money from you, I'm doing community service this week.' The cop was happy and left the shop.

The next morning when the barber went to open up, there was a 'thank you ' card and a dozen donuts waiting for him at his door.

Then a MP came in for a haircut, and when he went to pay his bill , the barber again replied, 'I cannot accept money from you. I'm doing community service this week.' The MP was very happy and left the shop

The next morning, when the barber went to open up, there were a dozen MPs lined up waiting for a free haircut.

And that, my friends, illustrates the fundamental difference between the citizens of our country and the politicians who run it.

*As Margaret Thatcher said: Both politicians and nappies need to be changed often and for the same reason!*

That's all. 

LU YU

I think I overdid the production of this chap. Not to worry, it helps improve my editing muscle memory if nothing else. When I uploaded this statue I thought he was having a smoke but upon closer inspection he's drinking tea. 
Enjoy April.