MUSHROOM.

It's getting to guessing time of year again. The harvest here is in full swing and the fungi are starting to appear.

I am going to guess these are Shaggy Scalycaps but have a niggling feeling that the stalk should also be scaly and these are smooth. I can't find my fungi book and don't remember lending it to anyone.
Not to worry, have a good week.

SLICING.

I am still having trouble navigating my way round Houdini so have decided to get this simple procedure sorted in Blender then try and emulate it in Houdini. There are at least three ways of slicing objects in Blender; One can use Dynamic Paint, Boolean difference and this mathematical solution. 

I will keep plugging away.

INFINITE LOOP.

This effect is created in Blender 2.80 using animation nodes. It isn't finished or properly sorted however I will be away again from mid afternoon tomorrow so thought I'd show how far I've got. I am giving Houdini a rest as I am not doing very well with it. More accurately everything I do turns to crap.

This looks horrendous but is logical and only a little difficult to construct following a tutorial by Chris Penninger. The link is in the following video.

I still have a few hours work to polish it and play with animated colours.
Not sure when I will have internet again so enjoy your weekend.

A HARD WEEK.

I have achieved the sum total of zero this week.
I was advised by Microsoft to accept the big Windows 10 update and stupidly went ahead. I usually leave it a month or so to give them time to patch it and make it fit for purpose. This update is about average. I have to reload the drivers for the graphics card and also for the sound card. It's a pain as it will have to be done every time I start the machine until the dumb clucks get around to sorting it.
I have been trying to find my way around Houdini, I am still lost but will get there eventually. It is a beautifully slick bit of software though very expensive. I have the free Apprentice licence. As far as I can tell the only thing I will have to put up with is a watermark on the render and a maximum render size of 1K or 720 pixels. I think I can export .obj, collada and alembic file formats which Blender will accept. 
The reason for wanting to try it is mainly to use scripted maths functions as many of the posh fractals have been produced in it. It is also professional level VFX software.

Stuff like this.

This is the default workspace. Next time I post I will hopefully have had some work through it. I am at the everything going tits up stage.......Very frustrating it is.
Enjoy the coming week.

PIXELATED.

I have had a few days away. Pretty wet days they were but it was still an excellent weekend.
Blender 2.80 is now released and seems perfect. It has an installer so this saves all the messing with Beta versions. 
Here is a quick video to celebrate.

Enjoy the rest of the week.
PS. I forgot to say that I've started to play in Houdini, it's a node driven procedural VFX software package and is mind blowing. As if Blender isn't complex enough. The 'Apprentice' version is free. 
If anyone is interested in how to do the video here then I can do a five minute HOWTO. For once it is pretty simple.