Turn up the volumes

Practicing Volumetric Cloud Generator 

I'd use clouds everywhere, if they weren't so computationally expensive. As I don't like waiting for renders, I've held off using them. Which has lead to me forgetting how to use them. I've been using the scale transform to change volume sizes, when I should have used the add-on's own parameters.

Puffy Cumulus 

Whispy formation. A bit wishy washy

Amped up moring glow clouds -- stopped after 30 minutes/1000 samples

I generated the landscape map by stealing the terrain texture from Google Earth using Google Map Customizer. Capturing close-up screens then stitching them together in Affinity Photo.

2k, shrunk down from 9000x7000 source

More play, again

A shiny pod case, made with Fluent 2 Power Tools. It's too perfect right?

 

Erm, okay too much. Need a way to limit the dents to logical places.

World Creator - bigger terrain because it's actually four seamless plates locked together

More play

Base unit

Base unit with top panel

 

Today's playtime

 Just playing around tonight:

Fluent 2 practice. Love this tool

BagaPie 8 practice.

I'm planning on getting a new PC when the Nvidia 40-series GPUs are released, next month. BagaPie should work a little more smoothly on a new machine. It's not that the add-on performs poorly, it's just at its best when its putting a massively number of scatter instances into a scene.

BagaPie Scatter Notes

 1. Apply the scale of your surface. Because that parameter is a critical note imput, I guess.

Apply Scale: Ctrl + A

2. Apply assets, but mind you're not applying them to a massive World Creator terrain asset. Putting a modest grass scatter could end up with tens of millions of elements which will crush your machine, even if you have a lot of resources.

BagaPie Assets!

 I bought a thing. Turns out its actually lots and lots of things:

BagaPie assets! Quite expensive, but pretty excellent value for money.

The BagaPie add-on provides a geometry node-based scattering system, which supports the integration of an asset library that contains a lot of nature assets like grasses, plants, trees, rocks, and more.

I am seeing a quirk. The render window doesn't perfectly match the render output. I am wondering if scaling of the target plane is causing some slight displacement issues. I don't know. I'll watch the tutorials and look through the documentation.

New Add-on versions!

Starting with some beef! Blender is amazing. Blender's ever-growing add-on ecosystem is brilliant. Lots of great stuff, lots of it is constantly being improved. However. How to keep up-to-date?! Maybe Blender Marketplace needs a feature that alerts you when a new version of an add-on that you've downloaded has been updated.

Just a thought!

So, I caught news on Facebook that BagaPie modifier has received an update. Yay! It looks like the key improvement is the extensive rewrite and improvement of the Ivy system. 

I installed the new version, then checked out Sanctus Library of super procedural materials - low and behold, it also had a new version, which includes some great new materials. They can get computationally very expensive -- because look at the details! 

In fact, I'm going to contact Blender Market to suggest the feature, after I check the other 20 or so add-ons that I regularly use, to see if they have updates.


Other stuff

Messing with Human Generator

Playing with Depth of Field. Not quite getting the level of control that I'd like. Maybe I'll read the user manual...

Forgotten Tools - Episode 2

 Rantools:

Shift+Alt+Q

For P-tools, select Draw



Menu appears.

Select a shape (Box,Circle, polygon) Select a strip cutter. Have a play, it works well.

Tip: Ctrl+Alt+Q = quad view (on/off)

Forgotten Tools - Episode 1

 Months ago I bought the Blender add-on Rantools. (https://blendermarket.com/products/rantools)



This generous set of tools provides lots of clever scripting to handle odd-but-cool functions (instant lighting rigs!), as well as some geniune why-is-this-not-in-Blender-already tools --- advanced boolean cutting tools, called P-tools, here.

I completely forgot about it. Mostly because I didn't set time aside to learn the vast array of new things.

I'm going to blog my way through those tools that I feel that I need to start using.

Add a light setup:

Select a focus mesh. 
Select "L"

Scroll Wheel: Cycle through pre-set lighting rigs.
A: Change alignment
Hold CTRL + mouse: Change the light intensity
T: Track to object (Off by default)

Different lighting rigs:

Truss ship

 

A big realistic looking ship, using trussed beams. I'm going to play with the idea some more before pushing into proper production.

A case for Fluent practice

 Today I had a play with the Fluent power tools Add-on. It's amazing, but its also easy to get into trouble.

Here's some trouble:

A cargo box.

There's boolean confusion and some weirdness. The textures are at a rough stage, they're from the Sanctum toolset. Another nice add-on.

Still here

 

I'm still blendering but the work on that space refuge took most of my free time for a while.

Blender for the model, Affinity Designer for the deck plans

Next up:

Acid Mine

Lowland

Orginal idea - smaller, higher.