ODD THINGS.

I got a little bored yesterday evening so modelled my own microscopic virus. These are proper little devils, much worse than Bat Flu.

The pictures on the media looked far from threatening so I went to town with the colouring in. This idea would make good Jellyfish when the current disaster is over.
Stay safe.

MORE NODES.

I really struggle with this noding malarkey but working through the CHRIS PENNINGER series from basics and onward I am getting a feel for the job.
This is of no practical use to man nor beast but I find it interesting.
I created four mesh objects, well I pulled them from extra meshes in Blender, coloured them in and then asked Animation Nodes to count and print the number of vertices on each one. 

From the left we have a Honeycomb, Stepped Pyramid, Menger Sponge and a Cube with the top and bottom vertices merged.

At a glance and after ten minutes work Blender creates the purple/pink whatever colour number of vertices for each object. Something, I think you will agree, is indispensable knowledge in these troubled times.

Here is the animation node tree.

I guess there is logic to this stuff but for all it's simplicity the Loop here caused me a bit of a problem despite the tutorial I have linked above.

I made the mistake of listening to Radio 4 this morning. They won't be happy until bodies are piled knee deep in the streets. They are ridiculous, the medical folk are getting new face masks but one halfwit suggested that retraining may be required to use them. Fills me full of confidence if the cretins can't work out how to pop a face mask on.

Some folk are passing their enforced isolation in a constructive manner.

Have fun.

STRANGE GOINGS ON.

It looks as if I will be unable to wander about as I think fit. Not to worry my wandering days are over.
I get my news from GOING POSTAL nowadays as the MSM are a complete shower. They have been shite for years but are now unwatchable. 

I've been playing again and tomorrow when I go to do the horses I will get some hedgehog pictures. I took some the other day but they were rubbish.

See, all blurry.

Today's video is on the same stamp as the last one but a little more complicated.

Blender are heading fast towards total node image generation. How the script writers manage I don't know as keeping up with them is a full time job. It's mind boggling how fast the developers are working. Good though.

Have fun. 

A LAZY DAY.

The weather has been rather pleasant these last few days. A bit of a frost first thing but dry and really quite wonderful. The car windscreen was icy but the new driving licence is more than a match for a bit of frost, much better than the old one. Knew it would come in for something sensible.

I called into town for some of shopping. The CO-OP still had what it usually has so no bother there.
A good day.

WHAT A TO DO.

It's been a busy week so far and it's only Tuesday. Yesterday I got a load more timelapse of the bungalow building. This morning I set the camera and intervalometer up and left it running whilst I went to see the horses. My new driving licence arrived, I didn't bother with C1 as it requires a medical. I don't go near doctors, I know I am not one hundred percent and they'll do bugger all anyway except hand me a bill. I'm a smoker. In the past some have been reasonable and offered help with smoking but not the cost of it so not much help at all.
On the way home I called at the skip place to dump a load of bale wrap and other assorted crap, it is on the left a few hundred yards passed Sainsbury's so I popped in for bread, tobacco and a bottle of full fat Coke. The shelves were empty or almost. They had cheese, veg, bacon and Scotch Eggs but very little meaty stuff. I wandered over to the freezer section and that was bare bar a couple of tatty pizzas, loads of Quorn, lots of boxes of things called meatless chicken nuggets and a few similarly named poofy items. On a brighter note the booze shelves were full to overflowing. I then decided to drop in at the butchers, he was just sorting a lamb carcass and had cut it's neck off, I'll have that please and it's kidneys if they are still in there. They were but cut into. The EU say offal has to be inspected, If you get a mushy kidney then you send it to China; only an idiot would eat it, the sort of idiots that eat bats. That's me sorted for at least four days, lamb hotpot. Not many shekels either. Cheaper than Sainsbury, not that they sell such stuff anyway. 
I am getting a little bemused by this Bat Flu business. All sorts of things cancelled but surprisingly not the London Underground which is a cesspit at the best of times. The bigger danger seems to be the collapse of infrastructure and businesses, this will please the lefties initially until they realise who pays for their inflated remunerations but long term screw them and do far more damage to their income than the death of a few of us oldies. I preferred the good old days when all I had to worry about was nuclear attack, the Irish blowing me up and latterly the gretinous Doom Goblin banging on about climate.

I am still playing with the moving things about nodes in Blender. I was hoping to make a video title out of this but I don't like it enough to bother playing further. I am still trying to learn to use Python and can get text to appear one character at a time and did get it add a line break but not where I want one, it does it after so many characters. I need to find a nubile programmer for a little Python guidance.

Here is today's video.

I wish I could find a way to encourage folk to play with this stuff but I guess not. Isolation may help but I doubt it the #MeToo folk self isolate and the rest of us will just carry on, feel a bit rough or die but we are all going to die so what the hell.
HAVE FUN. SWITCH THE RADIO AND TV OFF.

VERY CROSSWORDS.

As is my want on a Saturday I popped across to say hello to the horses and on the way stopped for a copy of the Telegraph. I leave the paper minus the crossword for the horses to read.
I then thought I'd have a go animating it or one clue of it using animation nodes. What a tangle I got in but however cross my words get the more I bumble about the more familiar I get with what does what. I couldn't find a way of getting a line break in the text animation nodes so faked it in Blenders video editor. 
Here is the result of about six hours of cuckoos.

The crossword is all done now. Plenty of time to work clues out whilst stuff is rendering. Much more time than I needed as I forgot to render the bits with an Alpha channel, I restrained my language to a quiet 'Bless my soul.' Alpha allows one to stack clips and it was a hefty stack by the time I'd finished. I must remember to swap the green ribbon for a black one before typing again. No knowing what weirdos green writing might attract. I suspect vegans and other strange folk I'd rather avoid.

Have fun. 

A FEW PRETTY PATTERNS.

The video in this post is just me babbling on and a pattern or two.
 It is corrected audio babbling. I just love playing with digital things. I enjoy removing dog noises though this time they were very good. The number of times I've had to re-record a voice over because I said " Hello what's this." are incalculable. This time was a straight forward noise removal, normalise and equalise job in Audacity. Blender can't do that bit but it has a non linear video editor which I have grown to love.

It may not look like it but I am feeling slightly more confident using animation nodes. I decided in my idiocy to investigate Group sub-programming. I was bamboozled so went on line and found a chap who explained it or demonstrated it. He is called BLUEFOX Creations. He is brighter than I am but not by much. Good stuff he does. I tried and tried with some of his node trees and failed. It could well be that animation nodes are a work in progress with only a few developers interested it does take time to sort the unexpected from the intended result. (See McDonalds or the NHS for touch screen problems). This job gets more like Houdini every day. Houdini is aptly named it is very clever but ties me in knots I can't unravel. This idea came from a Cinema4D effect called Step Effector, they are a German software company called Maxon, they are also bloody expensive at US$100/month. It is a very user friendly programme, they are generous and let one have a look for free for a month. They are also competent as they only accept US$s and not Euros.

Anyway the video should be about rendered now, I'll have a quick look. Yes it's done.

Have a good weekend.

SPIKEY THE TEASER.

According to spill chucker the title ought to read SPIKY. Doesn't look or sound right to me but I have always been a bit Special Needs. Anorexic, Muzziephobic, a Gretard denier or something similar. I'll stick with spikey. 

I have to pop over to the stables tomorrow and will get some snaps of the Hedgehog Hotel and it's guests. 

This situation started with a juvenile hedgehog being found wandering about last September in daylight hours. Three more were found, fed and watered with a wee dropper thing I got out of the bottle that I do my earwax with. I washed it before. I washed it after as I didn't fancy Hedgehog dribble or flees in my ear. The inexpert experts then took them to a Hedgehog lady in Perth who told them how to go about Hedgehog husbandry. Came back newly educated experts. For the Townies out there they are nothing like a horse. Horses aren't spikey, horses are bigger. Much, much bigger though amazingly the dogs don't seem to consider the Hedgehogs size.

The Perth lady took the first one and it will come back as soon as winter is over to be released. She was full so the others went to a Hedgehog lady down near the new Forth bridge. She was almost full so the stables built a hedgehog facility. Apparently they are not very sociable so have to have a little run of their own. I haven't had much to do with the job but have given them a look. They are cleaned, fed and watered every day and then weighed, flees counted other technical matters noted and new posh cat food popped in Hedgehog sized bowls etc. etc. It's all entered in a ledger so that if and when some government tosser takes credit they can spout nonsense. I'm surprised government funding isn't available. The SNP here are barking mad. Like Labour south of the border. I doubt Hedgehog preservation would appeal but one can never tell. Fox preservation did until one of the lefties admitted to killing one whilst wearing women's clothing. To be fair he was so proud. Proud to bursting. The idiot told the world of his dastardly deed. Is he related to Somerset Maugham, I very much doubt it. I hazard a guess that Jolyon is a bit tinged with the Irish branch of the Mooroms. 

I ought to know how many there are but being Special Needs don't always pay attention. It's a self preservation thing. I don't need to spend two hours making horses happy to then start on bloody Hedgehogs. Prickly wee mites they are and to be honest not very entertaining.

This is a teaser. I'll get some snaps tomorrow. They are all slightly different but all now have spikes. One is blind but fat as an Abbot so it could have a future rearing a rock ape Dindu.

I don't want to raise your hopes. Unless you are a connoisseur of spikey things they all look much the same. 

Have fun.

THANK HEAVEN FOR LITTLE GIRLS.

I went over to the stables this morning and there were three apprentice grooms working and the proper groom. More than enough for me to call it quits. I did offer to hang one hay net for Bramble, he is newish and must have been deprived of his breakfast in the past as if one enters his loose box before he has finished his starter bowl of mysterious supplements and chaff back go his ears and lips. He doesn't bite or kick so is fine after a special word or two, ignoring his nonsense helps. It is a wonderful and impressive display. I like animals but can never understand young girls adoration of horses but thank heaven for it. Saves me a job.
I posted this morning and was trying to be subtle. I succeeded, the video was subtle to the point of being undecipherable. The beauty of Animation Nodes is their procedural nature I can swap stuff about and they do the heavy lifting. All you have to do is rename stuff in the node tree. It's brilliant.
See.

Takes no time at all if one ignores the rendering malarkey and that is quick and generally good enough for video using EEVEE.

I forgot to post this, it's another birthday video using the Shortest Path Node. I think it worked out top side of middling. Not too shabby for an old man pissing about on a laptop. The text bit is done the old fashioned way. Nothing wrong with it but it means starting from scratch if you want to change the text or anything else. I missed out a 'P' in happy and can assure you I wasn't. 

My next project is to recreate the multiple clam shell effect that is shown in the Cinema 4D Demo reel for Rolex in the previous post. I didn't like the dusting text result for some TV programme but it is what I would have liked to have achieved in the Philip video. I failed as my machine keeps crashing when I up the particle numbers. Looking at the demo reel I suspect theirs did too as it looks a bit scratchy and sparce to me. Not to worry Blender is free and Maya and Cinema 4D cost a fortune. Houdini is half free but I wasted far too much time trying to get my head around the bloody interface. I failed but some folk can work it, possibly the same folk who built it. It's a pity as it looks good. 

That's all for today.

BIRTHDAYS.

Here are a couple of birthday videos. I am having the devil of a job using Animation Nodes. I got involved with recreating a Cinema 4D tool called Mograph. Here is a demo reel showing it.

Needless to say ninety nine percent of this is way beyond me.

After innumerable foul ups I did get something to work. 

The only thing here that is Key framed is the lighting the rest is all animation nodes. For those interested here is the node tree.

 Have a good weekend.

DECOMPOSING.

This is another poser of a project I've had on the go for a week or more. I must learn to use the stuff that is already available in Blender. This node is under development and Animation Nodes are still experimental though generally stable as long as I get the correct ones in the right order. Maya already has a Decompose Text node , I'm not sure whether After Effects has but both are expensive. I have a  house build timelapse going on but it will unfortunately have to remain private. It's a long time since I've done timelapses, I'll try and find a suitable subject. 
Decompose Text will not accept the native Blender text but it will accept any of the true type fonts. You can pause the video to see the node tree, it is quick and easy and will do far more than this simple demo. No scripting is required and I'll pop a longer video together when I can get it to work or when Omar can. This is almost impossible to achieve in under a day using key frames and then copying the data from one letter to the next and staggering the curve in the graph editor. Not something I would relish.

This node malarkey takes some getting used to but it produces quick and very good results once one starts to grasp it's foibles and complexity. It is visual programming for idiots. 

In other news it seems that apart from the Corona Virus and Tommy Robinson slapping a paedophile, there isn't much going on. I don't drink Corona and I detest little children.

 I once went to a primary school to explain basic trigonometry empirically. I got them to use a length of chalky string to draw a circle on the floor, we then snapped a radius, then the lad in the middle got bored and wanted to draw the tangent. They all wanted to draw the bloody tangent. I forgot where I was and used my special words. It went awfully quiet then Mrs Tangy the Headperson and Miss Hill the Teacherperson with the lovely legs started laughing. The children thought this approval. They were dancing around tugging at my trousers, shouting "Jim behave you little bastard, this is serious stuff."  We never did get to the sine, cosine, tangent business. I was too traumatised to continue. Like being in a barrel full of rats in the dark without a gun it was. One member of staff did think we could make it into a sort of dance routine, a good idea as it involves all the kids. As long as it didn't involve me I was happy.

In other news Priti Patel is getting some grief from the serpents. She must be over the target as Jeremy and Diane have joined in. Not that anyone with more than a couple of brain cells gives a toss what they think. I do care what Corbyn does and laying wreathes for dead terrorists is a bit naughty. He is old now but it amazes me that nobody thought to give him a good slapping when he was young. Same with that Biden bloke sniffing little children and pawing them. He is another that needed a good clout. 

If anyone is excited by moving letters then you can always let me know. 
Have fun.