ANOTHER BIT.

 I didn't get much done yesterday but had an hour or two trying to work out what to pop into a fifteen second video for Christmas. I have decided the hoarding is going on it's own and the skeletal trees likewise. There is no way the two can be made to look sensible together. I then thought of having a minimal tree with the hoarding and started playing.

Blender is getting better all the time. It also causes some head scratching. The input node in the tree above has been around for sometime as has the output node but watch what it's set to. Make sure if you are rendering in EEVEE it knows otherwise you will lose hair discovering what went wrong, it never gave a choice before. You don't need both noise nodes, any noise generator will do will do but 'Wave Noise' seems to work best to give the random effect to the coloured lights ; right click in any of the boxes and keyframe, scale suited me but distort is a little more subtle. I'll probably pop twice as many points on the star and bang that through a similar tree as it looks a bit crap turning on the 'Z' axis.....Not a bit, it looks awful. I'll try keyframing emission strenght and popping noise into the graph editor. (There are far too many ways of skinning the cat). The big shader that does almost everything quickly now has Emission Strength. The old shader nodes are still available for weird things but for video the Principled shader does the job. I'll make the tree taller and thinner but I am pleased with the concept. I'll have to draw it better or find a 3D artist fast. Difficult in an area where skills are limited to mending machinery, digging holes or trimming sheep feet.* I have set Friday aside for sticking two different videos together and Sunday for minor tweaks. Monday at the earliest you will have your Christmas video from me.

Now I know I was drawing the outline of a Christmas tree so that's all I see. I only drew half of it and mirrored the other half but that is normal workflow for we posh 3D folk or perhaps that ought to be lazy 3D folk. I hope you recognise a tree. If not learn to appreciate art. Took me ages to suss Rachel's Ladies stuck arse up under a roller shutter door. Rachel you have something awry I can't link to your post and I never get comment notifications via email. 

Playing is all good fun but I do realise that after this build up I have to come up with something tidy. I'll try I'll be really trying.

Have fun.

* Ages ago I did some work on a tensegrity work station for an artist. She wanted cast iron but it would cost a fortune so I did her a design in wood and suggested she learnt to draw properly, she was not very happy. I bumped into her last week and she is now on a CAD course in Glasgow so she is on the right track. I congratulated her, told her to follow it up with material science and then she could use her art. No good having ideas if you can't work a pencil. She is working part time helping with G-Code that runs a massive laser cutter in a fabrication shop. I suspect she thinks her table will come out of solid plate. I suspect if she plays her cards right it could.