SMOKE ON THE TREE.

 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.

Have a great week, fight back and love life.