I haven't an artistic bone in my body so would appreciate some advice.
Ignore the reflection, I'm thinking that a few ripples will do the job with that or possibly lose it as the fire will not reflect. I am unsure about the text.........BONFIRE NIGHT?......GUY FAWKES? At the moment the fire is being emitted by the text but I'll try emitting it from a flat plane under the text and use the letters as an obstacle with the fire flowing round it. This is low resolution for playing with, it requires very high resolution to get the flames to cling to the type face. Probably not worth the hassle what with the machine crashing every few minutes. Whatever is decided this will have to go in front of the rocket bits as it will have to be masked in the compositor and masking the fireworks will be a hopeless task.
I have sorted the rocket, no sparks going the wrong way now. I'll probably make it wriggle on the way up for no other reason than I can. It is also possible to make the sparks change colour from white to yellow to red then black over time but I suspect that may be going a bit far.
Here are the flames flaming, the sound needs cleaning up but I can pop the track through Audacity for a bit of a polish. I haven't used any smoke but I could have a bit or a lot if the fireworks look iffy . Rendering this with an Alpha channel is a pain and I've not tried it with EEVEE. Cycles render engine will take for ever so is best avoided if at all possible.
The world gets dafter. These are Covid toes...Really they are.
Looks more like Gout or the result of getting you foot under a horses hoof to me but then I'm not a doctor.
Do they hurt? No.
Does it make your toes fall off? No.
Does it go away after a while? Yes.
In which case feel free to fuck off and stop printing rubbish.
It wants a lot of work yet, the rocket sparks are coming out of the top of the rocket, it needs some motion blur and a few friends to keep it company. The sound also needs attention but it is better than yesterdays.
I have to nip out this morning but heavy rain is forecast for this afternoon so I'll potter on with the job then.
I haven't been a happy Blogger for the best part of a month. Years and years ago I got squashed and from time to time suffer the consequences. A few weeks ago I must have trapped a nerve in my shoulder and it's been giving me real gyp, I've taken Ibuprofen and Naproxen by the handful but what I really need is Dihydrocodeine but that means seeing a quack and I don't really want it's opinion on smoking when I have a trapped nerve.
Yesterday the dogs had a haircut, I take them to Kinross Services as the dog lady has a posh shed in the carpark. On the way back I called for a load of cement and whilst unloading it must have mended my shoulder. It's not half as bad today.
This is Alf looking very smart, Moll looks similarly well groomed but she has gone walk about.
The following video really ought to be chucked in the bin but I will post it as it shows what happens when I'm playing with various ideas. I have nothing better to post today.
I'll get a video out for Bonfire Night which I doubt will include any of this. Many artists have RA (Royal Academy) after their name but I have PA (Piss Artist) after mine.
Bless my soul, send me to the foot of grandma's stairs...........Just practising. The battery in my Kindle has died and it is a bugger to replace. Not expensive at around ten pounds but all the little screws are a pain and require dozens of special words to remove and replace. At least the little devil isn't bonded together, you just need a bit of stiff plastic to prise the front off. The back is fixed to the screen with lots and lots of tiny screws, once that is off a few more release the old battery. I must remember to do the job on a tray or pound to a penny I'll lose half of them.
I usually have a fry up on a Sunday but had run out of sausages and eggs so I had to pop down to the Co-Op. The light was beautiful so I took a couple of snaps.
HIGH STREET.
MADRAS ROAD. The place at the end is the haircutters.
This is exactly what it says. This sky looks as if it will rain again but it feels cold enough to snow.
I'll leave you with this, I think it is the Isle of Lewis.
Do you remember the ring of smoke climbing the pine tree? Well I thought to use an image with an Alpha channel maybe a star or something UV mapped onto an identical ring, posh folk call them toruses, toruie, torae, bugger it I want two torus. I combine the two by parenting and then I could have a cloud with animated sparkles climbing a tree. Needless to say it is not going well but I think it only fair to show you the lack of progress. It may make folk feel better seeing an ignorant nutter at play. I have used an autumn leaf but the image could be anything. It could be a snap of the gorgeous Hannah who does the Post Office bit in the Co-Op. You will have to be content with a dead maple leaf as Hannah wouldn't let me take a snap. Called me a dirty old fucker which on reflection I suspect may be ageist.
This is a 4D white noise texture. The whole business is getting out of hand. Even five axis machine tools only produce 3D stuff.
I'll be totally out of my tree shortly, wearing ladies clothes, eating Jackfruit and taking what politicians say as gospel.
I was playing about yesterday afternoon trying to animate lights up the fir tree. I can do it the old fashioned way but wanted to use nodes. Whilst looking for a neater solution I came across this by a magician. 3DSINGHVFX. I have worked my way through a few of his offerings and though they are daunting they do work. Nothing to do with popping flashing lights on a wobbly tapered helix but it just grabbed my attention. Wish it hadn't. I barely got an hours kip last night and still don't understand it enough to replicate it. I hope I don't lose a hard drive it will make the Biden's paedophilia pale into insignificance, all my weird stuff like little curls unfolding round text and clouds floating up trees is very strange but I hope not criminal. To think that not so long ago I was content with a crossword.
Here's what grabbed my attention.
Doesn't look very complex. No problem to a numpty I thought. It is a minefield that I still haven't sussed. I have, after a few hours got it to write my name.
A few more hours and I'll be able to fade the little curly whirlies in at the beginning without cheating and pop bigger torus knots (Curly Whirlies for normal folk) on the letters with long straight bits. I quite like this effect so may try and give it a bit of a seeing to. I guess that proper VFX folk would do the letters one at a time. They employ dozens of folk to do boring jobs. I hate boring. I like editing video but only the mechanics of it. Once I have learnt how it's done I lose interest. I suspect I'm more director than camera man. Know a bit about stuff order folk about then give Uma Thurman one and die happy. I would have killed bill for a chance to help her across the road.
This morning I went to see the horses, the road is shut as it is being planed off and resurfaced. I wiggled my way through the trucks, planers and diggers and sent the owners down to tell the truck drivers to dump the planeings in the car park. Load after load and for a fiver a tonne. Mouse an eight hand horse with not a nasty bone in his body thought an eight legger wagon tipping hot planeings fascinating. Couldn't get close enough, If some plonker leaves a biscuit wrapper on his route he takes off like a rocket and leaves me needing the non existent medical care. Horses take some fathoming, worse than node programming but they are but are far easier to work out than politicians.
We've had Lockdown, Circuit Breaker, Fire Breaker. Time to have a few Neck Breakers pour encourager les autres. The NHS have had long enough. Obviously totally unfit for purpose.
This weather is enough to give one the heebie geebies. It's warm enough for the time of year but the damp is striking right into my bones. I took the camera for a walk about tenish, the leaves are falling fast and they are unlikely to put on a stunning display this year.
These photos have been given a bit of a push but I have done my best not to go too extreme. I love editing images and usually go far too far. That reminds me that I haven't calibrated my monitors for months, not much point really as I do very little editing for other folk these days. No point at all if Blogger folk don't calibrate their screens. I was considering an HD monitor, the aforementioned applies. I did a snapping job a couple of months ago and found that the publicity folk were quite happy to edit the three dozen snaps supplied on a thumb drive in either camera RAW or TIFF. Same money for 60% of the work. Sometimes it pays to be shite at editing but I would have preferred the customer not to put it quite so bluntly. Bloody Scot, racist he was being. He wouldn't have dared say that to a Towel Head or Dindu. Got his head chopped off he would.
As good as it's going to get.
A very bright Sycamore.
A damp Highland pony. I like these little beasts, there are about a score of them in the glen.
I love this place. I just wish I could get a good snap of the waterfall to the right of this image but it's in a big hole and my days of holing are over. Perhaps I could send the new improver down there but he has not had a good week. He dropped a big rock from the dumper which didn't improve the looks of the Merc van it was arrested by. Fair enough, we all need to be given a good slap from time to time, it concentrates the mind. Then he said I know how to service a diesel, he changed the oils and filters on a vibro roller and the mini-digger and filled both to the brim with oil. The roller tried to consume itself when started. Fortunately he had left his jacket on the roller and I smothered the air intake with it whilst shouting get away. The mini digger we checked. I don't think letting him loose with several grands worth of camera stuff is worth a snap.
He's a nice lad but having never been called a thick, stupid fucker before he gets sulky. I suspect he either won't last long or he will learn. I am not a patient person but I said to him don't say you can do something if you can't. Nobody expects you to know the stuff we know but it costs thousands of pounds if you say you can and you can't. You have multiple career choices where it matters not a jot. Prime Minister, MP, Civil Servant, consultant to a Quango, boss of a quango. Even a health expert. He laughed, thought I was joking. Doesn't he watch the news?
This is how our betters make millions now. The 'now' is superfluous.
Never ever let a good manufactured disaster go to to waste, they are useless, crooked but far from stupid.
It's been a dismal day and I didn't have horses or sheep to do, just as well as my shoulder blade and one floating rib are giving me some serious gyp. Took a handful of Ibroprufen and the dogs for a wander, returned with both which is a rare occurrence then settled down and read some Lee Child it's easy reading and pure escapism. I then decided to have tea at lunchtime; belly pork baked in hoisin sauce, rice and sprout tops, I boiled the sprout tops first and sliced them up. Overdid it a bit, I could barely discern the rice. Not too shabby and there is enough for tomorrow.
I have been playing in Blender and have got a smoke ring climbing a tree.
The tree looks a bit sparse but the needles are particles and too many slow the machine down, which is a pain when I'm playing. It is just coloured in and not textured, it's good enough to get the gist of things. The mesh volumetrics are getting better but I can't animate the density of the ring without it crashing, I could do with less density as the ring gets smaller, like a fade out. The observant will see a bit of a glowing box round the smoke. That's just the emission reacting with the volumetric domain. It looked better with a bit of emission but I settled for a bit too much. Not to worry I have a couple of months to sort it. I want to add sparkly bits but it seems that I'll have to make a thin rope around and in and out of the tree to pop them on and stick it all together in the compositor, that will mean masking and I really hate masking. I'll try and think of an easy solution.
I popped a moon thingy in just to have a look. This is rendered in EEVEE and took about three seconds. Please disregard the tree shadow...I forgot to alter the light source, also try and ignore the stupid moon reflection, The ground plane is simply that and if I add some noise to it it would look reasonable.
This is rendered in Cycles and took the thick end of three minutes, that's 3'/frame. Fifteen hours of rendering for a ten second clip. Shadows are the winner here, you can see the smoke shadow. There may be a way of faking it in EEVEE. The smoke is a little more polished but the quick EEVEE is most likely good enough. It's the thought that counts and I can assure you plenty of head scratching goes into a job like this.
The world does seem to be going to hell in a hand cart but It's not too bad. History was much worse. Recent history was far worse, even at the start of the last war the Kennedy's were against us, along with the Germans, seventy percent of the French an indeterminate number of Italians who apart from building gorgeous cars and bikes can be ignored. It must have seemed hopeless, even the Royal family were in favour of Adolf. The Muzzies have always detested us as have the Chinese. The BBC are scum and want booting into oblivion, fancy having the bare faced cheek to demand payment for shit. I do consider that we are at war. All foreigners and lefties are suspect until proven friendly but remember they disseminate till you fetch them a slap. Folk will come round, the teacher losing his head has caused a fair degree of liberal head scratching. The consequences of their snow flakiness is coming closer to home.
It would be nice to concentrate a few minds. I suggest that for every thousand jobs lost in the private sector the public sector pensions and wages are reduced by one percent. No chance, it seems that despite a near universal condemnation of our government they are worth a ten grand one off payment for doing bugger all plus a £3.3k rise. The government employees don't benefit that much at the moment but their pensions do.
Just in after a relatively quiet day. Last night I found some video editing software that I thought may be worth a look. It's free but they do beg quite a bit, I'll see if it's any good before parting with monies. I do give Blender a few pounds a month as it seems only fair as I play so much.
I gave them a user name, email, and used their suggested password, Chrome remembers it. I downloaded and installed the software but couldn't activate it as it wanted my log in details again. I knew the relevant bits but not the password so gave up after a couple of goes as Chrome couldn't auto fill it so forgot it. I then applied for a new password and started again but it told me the email was already accounted for. Thought bugger it, if their code writers can't even give me easy access I wondered how good the programme is.
VFX for those that don't know is posh for computer generated stuff. It's a non linear editor but so are all the entertaining ones. It may be worth a look but they seem a bit pushy. Lot's of arm waving, grinning, fist bumping, funny young lads with beards. You know the sort of thing, it's generally a substitute for substance. It maybe worth a look as it seems to have lots of pre-sets effects. Da Vinci is free and very powerful it's owned by Blackmagic now and is superb value, cant be anything else as it's for nothing but pre the buyout was up there with Adobe in the account draining business. Black Magic cameras are a fortune. Bloody Aussies could have given away the cameras and charged for the software. They are very strict with their staff as my nephew works for them as a coder and I still haven't got one, even on loan. Possibly he doesn't like me or maybe they are really funny when it comes to things falling out of the back door.
Talking of Apps the track and trace app is conspicuous by the lack of attention it's getting in the MSM. Pound to a penny it was useless. It didn't really stand a chance as at any given time I suspect 10% of folk have a cold and if they were unfortunate enough to be suffering a bit of a sniffle they turned their phone off. Not to worry I suspect that a few folk have made a fortune from it. Most likely are cabinet ministers family who can write a bit of HTML or Python. We are already aware they can't use Excel.
I used to like Excel, one could enter maths stuff in the little boxes then calculate alternatives in a second, less, as fast as one could tap the variables in. It seemed like magic after the trials and tribulations of the old Psion. Psion, I thought wonderful, it was cheap. I can remember spending months getting the little thing to reduce star sights and it coming out with gibberish as I'd forgotten to tell it an easy bit and spending days going backwards to find the bit I'd missed. Before I sorted it properly GPS arrived. Sextant in the bin and an immediate position. No more almanac, no more tables, brilliant. What has become of innovative coders?
Rather a sad post today but do your best to enjoy the weekend.
PS. Boris is an idiot but he isn't a traitor like May. It seems we are another step nearer to Brexit. I'm not holding my breath but I am a little more cheerful.
I haven't had much time to play but I find an hour or two last thing messing with CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) helps me relax. Today I have a rather scruffy render of a new feature in Blender 2.91a. It crashes non stop and at the slightest excuse, the patience of a saint is required but it has possibilities; It's main attribute being to drive one mad and exercise all your special words. I am a numpty when it comes to this stuff, I am getting better as I have started to accept it's them and not the computer or me being a dumb cluck. I wish I knew enough to help the intelligent folk that script this stuff.
This is rendered in Blender EEVEE and took about 40 seconds a frame on my machine. The Cycles ray tracing renderer takes at least sixty times as long possibly six hundred times but the result is not noticeably better at sixty times. Not for YouTube anyway. Volumetrics are a sod to render.
The reason I used a torus for the mesh is that I thought a ring of misty cloud climbing a sparkly Christmas tree would be fun to create, add a bit of something interesting to my Christmas video. I animated the torus on the X axis and after a few goes it didn't crash. It won't when it is released properly. I used to be normal before I discovered 3D but now I'm a loony. You can in theory animate the cloud colours but as things stand the computer says no you can't. It doesn't actually speak it just shuts down. Silly machine.
I was having a look on GitHub as is my want, it's a wonderful place, not to be confused with PornHub. It serves a totally different niche and need. Github has all sorts of things from models, PornHub has them but GitHub has pages of code which can be copied and pinched, it has compiled software, Pornhub doesn't have this feature. I found this Blackpool tower model. Stole it, ran it through Blender and Photoshop.
It is a fine model but I didn't like the platforms. I thought about the job whilst asleep and came to realise how it was constructed. Any horizontal beams will leave a platform. It uses a very clever Boolean. It is simpleish to do, one models the front elevation. Extrudes it, copies it, wizzes the copy through 90° and shuffle it over a bit and do a Boolean difference. Everything will then bugger off. Take the copy and shift it on the vertical axis a tiny, tiny, tiny bit and then the computer can make it perfect but for the little, tiny bit that no one can see. Good enough is near enough.
I did a couple of simple pyramids to prove the concept and then got bogged down and bored with this.
This is half of it or a quarter to be pedantic. It is lacking the cross bracing and needs mirroring. Too much arseing about for me. Happen I'll come back to it if I really need a Blackpool tower. The observant will notice that the bottom arch is just a quadrant of a circle. He has a wonderful sweeping sort of parabola. Easy peasy, he just scaled his model on the vertical axis. A dirty rotten cheat but an very bright one. I'll remember this trick.
I see the BBC have deigned to acknowledge 'Q'. It's driving the snowflakes madder than ever. 'Q' is after Hillary and by association Obama, 'Q' has been around for years. Lefties really are a bit slow. Live in a BBC/ITV/ Guardian bubble. They are also very nasty, want to stab and hang folk in their dreams. Captain Hindsight AKA Queer Stoma is better than the Magic Grandpa or possibly not. He refused to prosecute Jimmy Savile and loads of Muzzy paedos and rapists.
The left hate Trump, don't know why but he lives in their heads. I'm surprised as I have never thought there was that much space to spare, what with walking, drinking, eating fondling little children and such like. Most that I have met are one trick ponies. I don't know Trump but he seems fair enough, wants the best as he sees it for America, doesn't seem fond of nonces and soy boys. Wish we had one here. I don't agree with grabbing random women by their privates but every normal male does it with ladies that they gel with. Biden seems to think it acceptable to sniff little girls and paw them. I can only assume his supporters do likewise. In my experience, politicians, the clergy, the police, teachers and social workers are all a little noncie until proven otherwise.
I am running on the spot if not sliding backwards. I really will have to get some of the projects finished but I have an awful lot of other stuff on. I took these snaps on the last walk with the dogs today, nothing special but not too shabby either.
I went to the horses this morning and forgot to get my shopping so stopped at the Co-Op on the way back only to find they have started making us queue outside again. Bastards! I'm beginning to think our politicians have a death wish, mind you they are pretty safe as excepting election time one never hears or sees anything of them. I had a bit of a row in the line as three of us were having a chat and the chief whipper in came out and told us to stand on the chalked lines. I told her very politely to fuck off. Poor lass it's not her fault so I apologised when I had purchased my stuff and offered her an M&M by way of reparation, cheeky bugger took two. I didn't have to wear a mask and the staff were similarly unadorned so that must be the diktat for today. Masks, I just can't understand the need for them, expecting a mask to catch a virus is like expecting a cargo net to catch a midge. If some folk are fearful I suggest they either stop at home or turn the television off.
I'll shut up now and get back to the big book "Troubled Blood." I'm enjoying it but haven't much left to read. Despite the high initial cost it has worked out about average in entertainment per hour.
First thing this morning I was playing with one of the many projects I have on the go, I decided to try and create some animated sparkly, tinselly stuff to add to my Christmas tree. I had everything set up and in hand and then realised I hadn't used Animation Nodes for a good while and an update and re-install was probably in order. This is not a simple matter as one has to delete them from Blender, close Blender and then delete them from the Blender Script directory, pain in the bum. It's because they are still at the experimental/development stage but they don't need compiling these days. Thank God. I tried doing the compiling malarkey once and found it near impossible, never again. Clever folk do it everyday but not those working for the Government recording the data on the Chynavirus in an Excel spread sheet. They get top dollar are thick as mince and are worth pence.
To test the node tree I used a simple cylinder. Then got ambitious, imported a 3D Hand, I looked at my hand and was horrified, after all these years the prophesy of my scripture teaching curate had seemingly manifested itself. Bloody Hell! He warned against Onanism, I should have listened. I needed some medical attention and quick. I'm feeling posh so an Air Ambulance. No fancy panel van with a cot in the back, dayglow paint, flashing lights and an expensive horn for me, thank you very much.
I then realised that my phone doesn't work here and an email was unlikely to be considered inside a week, most likely a month or two. Even if it were I don't think sparkly hands are a symptom of Batflu and the flu is all they are interested in treating. I find it strange that they are currently testing healthy people to declare them poorly whilst being loath to treat folk with sparkly hands or anything else, if they also have a bit of a cold the poor sods are buggered. Daft medics. Maybe not so daft as they get paid regardless of the work they do.
Pound to a penny you would have been alarmed. I got a video of it developing.
I did pop a bit of music on but it has disappeared, such is life. I have found the tune, bloody thing was playing hide and seek. It must have been a GP in a previous incarnation.
That's about it for today I'll leave you with this from Andrew Lawrence.
It has been one of those days. Moll had me up most of the night and I haven't a clue what was wrong with her, seems okay since lunchtime so I guess it was just a dose of Covid either that or Paininthearseitus. I went into Cupar first thing as I needed some bearings for the topper deck, I'll fit them tomorrow as I am going to see the horses anyway. Decided to listen to Radio 4 as I suspected the REEEing over the GEOTUS having a drive out would be spectacular, I wasn't disappointed, The BBC's twat in Washington was almost hysterical, hoping that the God Emperor hadn't murdered any of his security chaps or the driver. Jon Soapy was just being Jon Soapy, he was hoping for the opposite. I was waiting for an updated version of his catch phrase "Fuck the Tories" it went down so well with the children at Glastonbury. "Fuck the Donald." would have been an instant hit with the lefty morons worldwide. I then switched to Classic FM as it's cruel to mock the afflicted and their derangements.
Sunny with heavy showers sums the day up.
I'll stop playing with these EFEX filters, I don't really like the effect, I see in the second image that the Neeps are being eaten by Leatherjackets (It shows in the light green/yellow patches), one can't win, this crop was sown direct and it stops the pigeons eating the seed but ploughing and limeing helps reduce the Leatherjackets and Cockchafers. Acelepryn kills them quick but it's been banned for years now. If it's fine tomorrow afternoon I'll get you a picture of one.
I have made a start on a three lobe blower.
I will pop a twist in the rotors and possibly make the gears as double helical, this will stop axial loading and allow for roller bearings. Spur gears would do the same job but backlash is then an issue. The rotors have to be very close but never touch, I'll see if some kind manufacturer has some drawings I can steal. I have done a quick case for this lot but there isn't room to show it. I think it will make an attractive animation. Keep me busy for several hours regardless.
It's been an eventful night. I couldn't sleep for pondering on the awful mesh render I posted yesterday. Eventually I thought to look at export settings in FreeCAD Preferences, nothing there of any relevance. I went to bed, not for long, I had no sooner dropped off to sleep than there was one hell off a commotion. Alf had his dew claw caught in the keyring thingy on his collar. He's a real wuss and was growling and whimpering, Moll was barking in sympathy, bloody chaos it was. Sorted him out without amputating his leg and all was well again.
I couldn't get back to sleep so got up, gave in and started looking at FreeCAD forums. The settings I needed are in Preferences, Import/Export but to get the one I wanted I had to be in the Mesh Workbench. Silly me. Dropping Angular Deflection from something silly o'clock to 2 and Deviation to 0.01 and the job looked better.
This is yesterday's effort.
Today's.
Not perfect. It's good enough I think. These were imported into Blender as an OBJ. file, they would probably be better as an STP. file but unless I can find an Add-On for Blender it won't accept them.
Frustrating though producing computer generated images can be, it is a never ending voyage of discovery.
I am half inclined to model and assemble a cutaway blower, I'll try and animate it in FreeCAD, If I have any success I'll make a little video of it......Don't hold your breath, I suspect it may be very advanced CAD. First a siesta is in order.
