HAPPY NEW YEAR.

 On balance I enjoyed 2021, I remember a couple of friends who died but with those excepted it was a good year.

Here is a video.

All the best for the coming year.

BERTIE.

 Nothing much going on here so I thought I'd post a silly bell.

This is Bertie and he is learning to speak. If you would like to hear him then watch the video.

I have several bits of things animated for a New Year video but as non go with the others I'll pick one and polish it up.

It's warm and damp here, miserable if you let it get to you.

Have fun.

BAUBLES.

 Baubles or balls, take your pick. 

I am away for a couple of days from tomorrow as the dogs and I have been invited to the stables for Christmas. I'll have some cooking to do and if I don't look busy some horse feeding, I'll do the latter anyway as I enjoy the horses. 

The cold snap never materialised, it's just wet, chilly and horrid. Alf is still here and seems a bit brighter, he's very thin but eating well so he'll get to wear his new Christmas jacket with any amount of luck. 

They almost make me wish I had a Christmas tree but as I'm surrounded by them perhaps not.

Have a great day, Tay FM are depressing so they will struggle. It's wall to wall NH(NO)S broadcasts. Let's hope this blows up in the next year and we either see cadavers in the streets or their bluff is called and we can line up the Covid pushers and have them hung.

WINDING DOWN FOR CHRISTMAS.

 I have decided to slow down this week as I don't want to be overtired on Christmas day. I am going over to the stables for dinner which is coincidently appropriate, no donkey, half a dozen horses and a pony but one can't expect miracles. The forecasters can't make their minds up as to whether the weather will be freezio or damp and horrid. No worries I have my winter tyres on so no slip slidey into ditchy for Adrian.

I am just making a vegan vegetable stew with beef in. Whilst it cooks I thought to make a start on the New Year video. The stew is a full pot full so will see me until Christmas Eve. I've not much to show for several hours thinking and an hour making a mess but I'll sort it.

Don't worry I'll make much bigger messes before I restore some semblance of order.

It's Saint Doubting Thomas day today.

Here is Caravaggio's wonderful depiction of him giving Jesus a poke. I suspect his picture was a mess before he got all the colours and light sorted.

This little girl is a prodigy she must be an expert on Italian art.

In other news I had my hair cut for Christmas. She won't do my beard as the bits fly down her shirt and make her tits itch. Not to worry, I did offer to blow them out but I'll do the facial hair myself. She has had new guide lines for 'The Mask Wearing Of.' diktat. She is supposed to wear one as she is standing up but I don't have to as I'm sitting down. Now call me an idiot but who or WHO is making this shit up? I didn't have a mask so just as well I was seated. She took hers off when I explained our noses were at the same elevation and I had doubts that a virus could tell she was supported on her feet and I was on my arse. (I would have preferred things visa versa but age is a terrible thing to bear.).

 A virus is opportunistic but not intelligent, which sums up the health experts beholden to the dollars of Pfizer. Pfizer make billions selling crap so if I were in their shoes I'd be tempted to give folk something that doesn't work and then give them the same again and again and again. All the while they assume they are protected from the consequences. Happen they are but it's going to pop a dent in their profits when they have to keep paying for protection.

Never give in to extortionists. I include governments, they are the worst. Taxes go up to fund their lifestyles but never come down when they fail us. They don't believe this covid crap, they keep on partying like it's 1994.

 

 Whilst I've got my Whitty hat on has anyone looked at this.

This is the level of virtue signalling. If we had, not a balmy day but a cold one then the system would collapse. I can see us going back to the Socialist seventies. Again no worries, it might just freeze a few idiots. We are spending fifty billion a year importing coal, gas and oil when we could be exporting the same and have fuel security. 

Have fun, this is fun.

IT'S BEEN ANOTHER FUNNY WEEK.

 Last Tuesday I was just about to upload another scintillating post when my EE mobile, Wi-Fi whatsit decided it didn't want to play. It's been iffy for a while but unless I have my wits about me it's difficult to tell whether it's EE arseing about with the aerial, snow, fog or my receiver. It was definitely my end, I couldn't even switch the Mini Wi-Fi hub off.

Wednesday morning I thought the easiest option would be to drive down to Halbeath and visit PCWorld. Just get a new unit, swap the SIM card and I'd be all singing and dancing by lunchtime. I was standing at the service desk bit, where there was little evidence of any service when the manager chap strolled up. Put your mask on, I haven't got one as I had a bit of a whoopsie some years ago and I'm not allowed to wear one. What do you want? I want a new one of these. I said whilst holding out the knackered technology. I'll get someone to sort you out. Ten minutes later the someone rolled up. Did you buy it from us? I can't recall, I think so but it's years out of any guarantee, I just want to buy new one. I don't know anything about these, I'll get the expert. Another ten minutes and the expert arrived, I explained the problem and off he trotted, he came back clutching a new one. I can't sell you this if you already have one. With a stuff it up your arse then. I departed.

I had to go to the stables with my laptop. I got a new one Thursday evening.

The new one came direct from EE. In fact, as I failed the security questions on a borrowed phone the first time, the lassie said well I can't send one so instead of messing, I just went online and ordered another. The another's questions I passed with flying colours. I assumed having buggered up my first attempt that that order was cancelled. No, another arrived yesterday. I'm thinking of ordering some more. I can fail security questions in my sleep. I bet I could get enough to start a shop.

It turned out well in the end as replacements from EE are free and my charge has dropped from £36 and a bit to £20.00p/month. They dropped my 50GB allowance by 20% but as I never use more than half of it, no worries. The moral is never buy from a third party. The only reason I did was because I just don't understand the computer malarkey.

Blender Three is great and I've been playing with camera tracking.

This model is not mine but I found her more interesting than a Primative for experimentation. She is free from Mixamo which is an Adobe offshoot. The creator must deal with horsey ladies, they are all a bit pear shaped. Here is the video.

I focussed the camera on her neck bone. It works and by crafty parenting I can make it look as if it's shot through a Selfie Stick. That's no good like most selfies. 

Have a great week.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

I have been playing about with a ghost. Charles Dickens had four ghosts visit Ebenezer Scrooge in his short novel A Christmas Carol. I suspect what he had was an excess of the falling down water but whatever it makes for a good story.

I'm still not very good at sculpting but I'll keep practising. This is my latest ghost.

Now, now. Control your mirth. I recognise it needs a tad more work but considering it starts with a single vertex, a dot like a period or full stop it's come a fair way in ten minutes. This is 'The Ghost of Christmas Future.' Seems appropriate to the times we are living in where a significant number of folk are fixated with death. Posh people call it thanatophobia, it causes irrational behaviour and is caused by watching too much television and listening to politicians.

Now I want a semi transparent ghost, I think that once it is moving it will do, the outline is a bit sharp but I suspect when it is animated no one will notice.

Probably wouldn't notice anyway for worrying if they have a clean mask to wear or if their jags are up to date. Pharma profits aren't generated by accident you know.

Have a good week.

PS. This I have just noticed.

Andrew Lawrence is banned from most venues in the UK.

 I have also just seen a live Facebook post from the stunning Jacinda in New Zealand. It didn't go well for the poor pony. I wish I could share it but Preachers FaceBrook seems to have taken it down. Poor wee filly burst into tears live and not for anything serious. Teach her to get in the real world and out of her lefty bubble now and again. Get a skin Dobbin or forget Marxism. 
 

A FUNNY OLD WEEK.

 I've had very little time for the Bs, Blender and Blogger, this week. No real reason apart from apathy, a touch of Man Flu and lots of annoying bitty jobs which all required getting frozen fingers and hot aches.

I'm trying to learn to sculpt in Blender and it isn't going well. I have an idea for an animated Casper type character.

Something on the lines of this but with a shorter tail.

I have got something and even got it rigged with an armature so that it can be animated. 

As you can see it's proving a bit of a challenge.  Not to worry if I can't make it look better I'll have it whizzing around on a very foggy night.

Have a good weekend.

TIME TO SPARE.

 It's a funny day. early doors I was greeted by a beautiful starry sky, I came in for breakfast and it was sleeting hard, by the time I'd finished my toast it had turned to heavy rain and now it's sunny and icing over in the shade. I would say it's normal for December but I'm no expert. I'm a long way short of being an expert as I have neither a private plane nor Aston Martin.

I've not had too much Blendering  but have been sculpting a head. Blender 3.0 seems fine it's much faster but I keep having trouble with the workspace shifting and swapping about unexpectedly. It's annoying but it could be I keep my finger on the buttons too long, what with the new fast interface and all that.

Blender is not an easy bit of software to learn and it can do far more than I'm capable of making it do.

Here is Bust MKII.

Good for a laugh if for little else. I am not expecting to be called to the Royal Academy just yet but I bet were I a Black, Lesbian, Vegan, with one eye and one leg I'd be considered. I think the colouring in could be better. Come to think I might be a Lesbian, there are not many women I don't fancy.

I was driving back from the horses yesterday and had Forth Radio playing Christmas songs interspersed with adverts from the SNHS asking that I don't bother them, a couple of months ago they were advising me to go and get checked for stuff I haven't got. I may of course have them but I'll guarantee if they find something they'll make it worse. Then Fairy Tale of New York came on, Whay Hay, volume up and I'm singing along to my favourite Christmas song, banging the steering wheel with one hand and the side window with the other while Shane gives it What Ho. It got to Kirsty's bit and I thought I'd been wrong for years, She sings. " You cheap lousy Hogget." Now Shane is many weird things but a sheep he isn't. Never suspected him of being a Faggot either but I heard it again this morning and the bastards have changed the words, he is now a young sheep. I bet some faggot deemed it hate speech and the words had to be changed. What did strike me as inconsistent was that the song is still called Fairy Tale and not Hogget Tale. I have been wrong about song lyrics before, it wasn't until a year ago that I thought K. T. Tunstall was singing Southend-on-Sea. I think I can be excused as a Black Horse and a Cherry Tree are not things one would normally associate. If you haven't heard K.T. Tunstall then have a listen she is a one person band and uses sampling and looping, great looking and I can't even begin to work out how she does it without cocking up..... Perhaps she's a lesbian. Whatever she is she's brilliant.

That's it for today.   

Not quite, here is K.T. Tunstall

Nearly on par with Uma Thurman. 

AN EARLY PRESENT.

 After several delays Blender have released version 3.0. As talking heads are occupying my little grey cells at the moment I decided to model a different head, if I can't make it's mouth move I'll pretend it's suffering from Covid psychosis and pop a mask on it.

This is Blender 3.0, it looks much the same as always but has lots of new things and dozens of improvements to old things.

This looks a little strange but it's just half the character.

Here it is in it's entirety, it still looks a little odd. I'm away horsing about soon but will try and make it speak later, I'll also colour it in. 

My internet is slow at the moment but Blogger is slower still, I suspect that Google will ditch it before much longer. They have never really seemed to give it the benefit of their expertise. Not to worry YouTube gets better every day and will do the job equally well for me.

Have a great week.

SNOWMAN CAN SPEAK.

 It was Lidl day today, not a bad shop, they had plenty of £1.50p veg boxes. Not bad value and a reasonable selection if one ignores the fact they snuck a pomegranate in.

Earlier I spent an hour or so attempting to make a snowman talk. I really do wonder about myself.

As you can probably tell I didn't waste to much time modelling.

I used Shape Keys and a driver to animate the mouth. I think I'll try using a proper armature next time and model a better head.

Here is the movie,

I won't have time to play tomorrow so enjoy the weekend.

MERRY CHRISTMAS.

 I got it done and I'll have you know uploading to Blogger is a pain. It's worse than Keith at Redsumit could imagine. It's worse than the Pudding swapping his template without saving the original first. I notice the latter won't swap again in a hurry.

 To everybody else here is a Merry Christmas. You may get another greeting as I'm trying to make a talking snowman. The talking snowman is a real bugger to do I can tell you. This I didn't find easy peasy, had to use special words.

This is a still from the movie. It looks a bit ghoulish but I like dark. I don't work well with bright light. Here is your Christmas video.

Have a great time. Ignore the idiots that spout doom and gloom. We have managed so far.

KARROT AND STIK.

 I am well on my way with the Christmas video. I have had to ditch the umbrella as it was too processor intensive and I've still got some fancy lights and particles to add. 

I have made another stick with a nicer curve on it's 'andle and a carrot. 

I realise the handle is a bit choppy, this could be sortedby the simple expedient of clicking Ctrll2 but it won't be seen anything like as close as this. Pauline will be happy as it's been a good few days in New Zealand, a walking stick handle and Jacinda says she can go for a piss in someone else's house or in Jacinda's case stable.

What planet are politicians on? Can you remember when there weren't any bottles for the vaccine? When it had to be stored at minus 900°C or some such nonsense. I wonder where all the doses are coming from, I hear there are folk on the fourth shot, I would have expected to see a shortage of shot bottlers but it seems they have sufficient.

It's a funny world.

HOW DEEP?

 We have the first snow of the winter, not quite half an inch of it but it has brightened the place up.

Nothing to worry about but there will be ice underneath it. 

It's beautifully calm after the wind and I decided it was safe to venture up to the forest. 

At least two big trees are blocking the road. They'll have to be shifted as we use it if we are heading Perth way. Well we do if the forestry key is handy, you need a key for the gates.

I'll keep a low profile today and with a bit of luck someone else will clear them, I can guarantee that it won't be the Forestry as I suspect most of the foresters are still working from home.

Enjoy the coming week.

SNOWSCAPE.

 

I think this will do, it's a snowy scene and I'm not going to mess with it unless somebody doesn't recognise it is snowy. This is a PBR, (Physically Based Render) image that allows the scene to reflect, excuse the pun, changes in light. I can play with these for hours but as long as I don't see a repetitive pattern this will do for me just as long as it will do for you. The only light in this scene is from an HDRi image. (High Dynamic Range, the 'i' stands for intelligence.)

These are both Node based and fortunately I started messing with node editing years ago and am now reasonably confident with it.

This is what it looks like in Blender.

This is easy but I can remember thinking it very complicated. The image is 360° on the 'Z' axis but not as much on the 'X' and the 'Y' axis just tilts things. In this case I only wanted the sky so I can tilt the image on the 'X' so that only the sky appears in the camera view then animate the 'Z' to get moving clouds.

The snow is a real bundle of fun.

This does get a tad more complex, but is both logical and effective. If anyone is interested in creating images then there are dozens of tutorials on YouTube and when you get stuck or fed bullshit then ask and I'll help. I can put depth of field in but haven't yet as I have loads of stuff to add to this scene. This is sharp front to back which isn't very realistic it's the sort of result you got from a Box Brownie or now get from a cheap point and shoot camera, a phone or a not so cheap camera set on full auto.

Last night was a bit wild, Orkney, Lewis wild. A bit of an Elder tree fell on the van dislodging my air extractor cover. I had a hole in my roof about the back of ten, I ran out in my tracky bottoms to recover the cover. It was bloody freezio no snow so I came back in, checked the forecast for precipitation, there was non on the radar map so I said to myself and the dogs. Sod it, that's a job for tomorrow. All mended now, a fallen tree shifted from the glen road, ten minutes with a chainsaw and tele-loader and all is back to normal. It was a council tree but the devil drives etc. Couldn't face reporting it, waiting a week for half a dozen folk to wander out to measure it then waiting god knows how long for ten tree surgeons to shift it. Could see us having to buy second cars and make laybys either side of the tree.

 There are some big gaps in the surrounding forest. I'll go up tomorrow and get a snap or two of the desolation. Best have another meeting, COP27, how to stop wind or get trees to grow longer roots. Not that pine trees have a tap root anyway so I guess we'll have to ban them.

I hear we have a new variant. I miss heard and thought the French president had gone all Irish. O'Micron. It's  really named Omicron, deadly it is but a vaccine won't be available for a month. That should please politicians and the Stazi...Lock down for Christmas here it comes in 3...2...1. Big Pharma will be laughing. New boosters required, bet they have one sitting in the wings. Do they hell as like, they just have to print new labels.

THE POINTED STICK.

 This is the last post featuring video props as I've done as many as I can without spoiling the Christmas video surprise. I still have a good weeks entertainment in front of me and possibly a fortnight's as this year I will endeavour to break the habit of a lifetime and instead of just sticking it together I'll animate everything and come back for an edit or two. If I am getting on fine I'll pop a bit of VFX stuff in using the  Compositor. That should bugger things up and make it look normal for Adrian.

I am aware that nobody reading this is remotely interested in 3D modelling but that won't stop me. It's my winter pastime. Now modelling a stick with a pointed end and a curled handle is easy using a mesh cylinder. I decided to push my limits and use a Bezier curve. I have always liked the idea of them but find them a challenge to put it mildly. At the risk of sounding a smart arse I'm slowly getting to grips with some of their foibles. They have been around for all but ten years of my life, they were invented by Monsieur Bezier in the early 60s for creating the curved panels on Renault cars. Don't let that put you off. They can produce pointed sticks as well.

It is okay and recognisable as a pointed stick with a hand hold bit. I used to meet a chap who made walking sticks. He would find a hazel sapling and bend the top over, tie it with string and pop a lump of wood in to flatten the handgrip bit as it grew. A few years later he came back and harvested his stick. He had dozens of them growing here and there but never near footpaths as Townies and kids used to cut the string. He could tie one then wait a bit and tie it again to make a shepherds crook. Now only Bishops use them, presumably for catching little children, shepherds use aluminium ones.

I see we are getting blamed for the drownings in the channel. I can't see why. The French let them go, they got run over in French waters, how can it be our fault. 

What I find interesting is that because of Brexit all the riffraff seem desperate to get out of the EU. I wonder if the EU has become a total shithole (France must be terrible for a Somali to want to risk death and pay for the privilege). I did end up in Djibouti once, never again, it was far too near Somalia for me and French. I have always thought Europeans a bit odd. Whoops! I ought to have said different, a nice Israeli girl taught me that. I forgot, naughty boy. No humptey tumptey for me. Funny girl she was, used to correct me nonstop and there I was living with an Israeli Arab Jewess. She was good fun when she wasn't in a prickly mood.

 Having worked in France, Spain and (Italy a bit) I never had out of normal bother. Mind you I worked in Aden and Port Said and I thought them acceptable making allowances for they being run by Arabs. Aden is a real dump but the locals have a certain charm. I went back three times and only got shot at once and that was by an Italian loon.

Have fun, if I don't post tomorrow then enjoy the weekend.(French. Weekend). I may go Jogging. (French. Jogging).

BROLLY BOTHER.

I am brolly making today. Bad brolly making would be more accurate. I have got the brolly bit but it is misbehaving. The stick bit is easy for a man of my limited skills, I bet anyone could model a stick. Even Sub-Saharan Africans could manage to pop a point on a stick, I suspect the curved handle at the other end would cause a bit of head scratching but in the interests of diversity I'll not go there.

Here it is.

As you can see it looks more than a little umbrella like sans stick. One of the many problems is that the Union Flag I used for the texture is far too low resolution. I can try to bang that up in Photoshop or look for a 300dpi one for free. I suspect the former is the way to go as it would take another hour to scale and get a different image symmetrical. 

Here is a short video of the Umbrella being a pain in the arse. (American, fanny). I'm a little worried that this bit of patronisation is a retrograde step.

This post should have been published yesterday lunch time but I've been suffering Interweb problems. It has been slow for a couple of weeks but eventually came to grinding halt.

The dogs had a haircut yesterday and are very clean and smart.

Here they are doing what they do best. Resting after their ordeal and the effort put into trashing the bed.

MAD AS A HATTER.

I've been millinering this morning. That's making a hat to normal folk. It's only a tiny prop in a video so doesn't have to be anything special but I get carried away with this stuff.

As usual I encountered a bit of a problem. I tried to use the sculpt tools in Blender and think I've got an overlapping vertex or two.

I forgot the base for my hat stand but that isn't a problem in the virtual world. I noticed some diagonal creases on the righthand side of the going up bit.

You can have a hat in any colour you like but I still didn't manage to shift the creases. I did pop a base on the stand. The stand I won't need in the video.

No wonder I couldn't find a mesh problem it's a reflection from the HDRI I used as my main light. I also have a spot light as a backlight. I am a daft bugger at times, too many times for me to be happy with.

That's all for today, I've got an umbrella, a scarf and a briar pipe to do now. Tomorrow the dogs are having a haircut so that's the morning gone.

I'll leave you with this.

Have fun.

WELL I NEVER.

 

I have always thought vegans a touch weird but in the interests of tolerance, whatever rocks your boat.

A cool crisp morning here.

A FEW MORE BORING THINGS.

 I have been playing about for half the night but have got a cunning plan about sorted. I post about such things as I find it helps get things straight or straighter in my mind.

This is mostly about lighting, I've used a virtual studio light set up consisting of a back or rim light which in this case just puts a strong light to the rear. A key light and a fill light to soften the shadows.

This has the back light providing most of the illumination and not enough fill light.

Increasing the fill light softens shadows as you can see, it's a complicated subject and applies equally to both normal photography and Blender virtual images. It's called the Inverse Square Law and means that if you double the distance of a light from a subject the light is four times dimmer unless of course you make the light four times brighter. 

This is a similar displacement image to the first two but has black letters on a white background. There ought to be an invert button to click in Blender but I've not found it so use Photoshop to swap black for white.

For those still here I have done a video of me babbling on and playing. 

It's all good fun and passes the long winter nights.

Enjoy the coming week.

PS. Camera pre-set list.

I mentioned in the video I couldn't find this list. I can now.

STILL SILLY.

 The other week I made a snowman out of squiggly lines. I have been thinking what to pop him on. 

I started with a Plane mesh in Blender and divided it lots and lots of times.

I then toddled across to Photoshop and made myself a displacement image.

This is just what it looks like, a white background with black text on. It's then back into Blender.

This is what it does when used as a displacement map. This font although Cristmassy is too complex, I'll try a few different ones. The beauty of this is that the contrast can be keyframed by varying the contrast the letters are deeper or shallower.

Plenty to play with and polish up here, I'll try using a cloud texture to get bumpy snow and also mess about with the grid subdivisions and the pixels/inch of the text bit. 

I've not seen this done before but it must have been.

PS. This will be the last image as the effect is getting there now and I want there to be a bit of a surprise left.

I will try making the displacement map with white lettering on a black background, The text will then rise up and if I pop a 50% grey border on the letters it will soften the edge. That's it, I hope to get a video done for the week before Christmas.
 

ANOTHER PROBLEM SOLVED.

 I woke up this morning just as the new day started, fired up the machine for coffee and started the computer. It's been annoying me that I couldn't pop holes in a cylinder or a semi-cylinder quickly and easily. In theory the way to do it is to create the cylinder create a solid the size and shape you fancy for one hole, place it so it cuts the cylinder wall then do a polar array followed by an orthogonal array to pop the polar array up the cylinder. Using the old Part workbench in FreeCAD it was like taking candy from a baby. The Part Workbench is a Primitive based modelling system, it's major drawback being that it isn't parametric. This means you can't alter anything without starting again. The Part Design Workbench is sketch based so one can change anything you have drawn and it will update the finished model.

Anyway here is a very smart looking cylinder with some fancy holes in.

Perfect, the reflections on the inner surface are just that, I light these images in Blender using HDRIs and should have paid some heed to it's relative location.

Here it is plonked on the exhaust pipe.

It's not the correct size but I can do it which is what matters. I have one more part that I'm having bother with but I'm not far off modelling the complete engine. 

I'm beginning to feel a bit like Stephan. He's a Polish welder and a great bloke. Last year he was welding a large funnel and I said don't forget to put plenty of tacks in or it'll be all over the place. He says.

"Don't worry, you don't need to instruct, I know what I'm doing in fact I know fuck all. I tell girlfriend just the other day I know fuck all."

Curry for tea tonight, a vegetable curry with chicken in. It should last three days unless I get greedy. Tomorrow is a horse morning so that's something to look forward to.

Have a great weekend.

ONE PROBLEM SOLVED.

 I have solved one problem, not to worry there are plenty more to go. 

I decided to remodel the flywheel for the little engine. It's not a big job in CAD software but I like to have a pretty picture as well as a drawing. Now if I make the spokes in FreeCAD and do a polar array of them to make several spokes it stops the computer. I have struggled on and got a result but it's a pain, worse than trying to get AutoCAD to accept my password. As far as the latter is concerned I wouldn't mind too much if it was my password but it's not it's theirs. Bastards just don't want a poverty stricken OAP having a play with their software. 

Look at this.

This is what I've been having to put up with. 

This is what I now manage, or the computer achieves. A gorgeous rim and the solution with all things computer is all down to the file system one uses. Pop crap in get crap out. Years ago I found that I could swap (obj. files) between FreeCAD and Blender. Happy it happened I carried on doing so with the occasional foray into (.stp) for folk wanting summat for a 3D printer. I've been doing it all wrong. I knew there was something amiss so this morning I tried different file formats. After several failures I happened on one that works and one that both Blender and FreeCAD can accept. It's STANFORD (.ply). I bet there's a downside but it does this job to perfection. I don't know why it works but am desperately trying to resist the temptation to delve deeper and find out.

I now have adapted and model one spoke in FreeCAD which seems very good at the job and fire it into Blender which is drop dead perfect for arrays. I wanted elliptical section spokes which is hard to do in Blender. It's a piece of piss in FreeCAD.

Here we have three sketches, the upper ellipse is offset by the spoke length required the ellipses are on one plane and the green line is sketch 002 on a plane at 90° to it. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Then we go to 'Loft' press the tit with one ellipse selected and bugger all happens again. You have to tell it that you want the green line and it will shoot an ellipse, or any shape up it. Then you have to select 'Multisection' select the sketch remaining and you get a perfect elliptical sectioned tapering spoke to let Blender have a go with, where, as I said it does the array perfect.

A perfect Additive Pipe. I know I said it lofted but when I get the result I want it changes it's name to additive pipe. Not addictive pipe, that's what the Bidens use whilst molesting children.

Going back to the rim FreeAD I like. One quick sketch like this.

A revolve and we have the outer bit in seconds. I just have to remember to export and import as (.ply) files.

I do wish that I'd been born in the computer age but my son was and the computer teachers were next to useless when he was at school. Much like my maths teachers. I had one physics teacher who encouraged us to search out information for ourselves. I blame him for all this malarkey. To be fare the bloke was a star. He taught me most of my maths calculus, boiled it all down to the hard bit is deciding on the upper and lower parameters for integration, daft bat, at our level we were given those in the problem. He was a multilingual man with a Marxist bent. We climbed together for years and as a bonus he had a super fit daughter. The wife wasn't shabby but he only had ten years or so teaching then went climbing full time, financing his climbing by rebuilding Gardners and I got my kicks from cars and bikes. I was about as good a bike racer as I was a mathematician. 

Have fun.