On the seventh day...

Take a rest from those terrains, already!

Yesterday I scratched that constant itch. I made me some landscape renders using World Creator and Blender with True Terrain 5.

Horrah!!! A giant terrain under True SKY 3, with a large Geo-Scatter-based scatter! In this case, the scatter is "fake" trees. Alpha scatter uses cards (flat planes) that align with the camera to produce the impression of a vast forest. It gives me confidence about ramping up scatters in scenes.

The next test will be with proper scatter objects, probably on a much smaller terrain.

The latest batch consists of 8x8km terrains. That's big enough for a city. It's the terrain size for a moderate mountain range, as you need about 4km for a mountain.

16x16k resolution gives you a 1GB EXR displacement file and a single mask weighing in at 100+ MB. These are unwieldy and probably too large for most users. You do get lovely detailing, though.

Today?

I need to answer the question of the aerial scene, but that will wait until tomorrow. So...

Shamrayev project: I need to pick it up and move it forward. We're still doing detail modelling, fixing and optimising. I am thinking of using MatPlus, which was just updated to 1.1 for the project. 

Blender School

I need to complete some training -- I'm far behind on this! 

 A new course, purchased on sale. It includes a massive amount of build, UV unwrapping and rigging footage. It has to be a bit less instructive and more like a follow-along YouTube video, but the end results speak for themselves - some very impressive elements! I'm sure I'll learn something.

I need to complete this course by Cov Philips. I was making good progress when I purchased it. 

I will need to start this course again as it's been gathering dust since May 2024. I stopped because I kept getting Blender crashes while following the first few lessons. Hopefully, this issue will no longer apply. HardOPs is still considered the "go to" workflow for serious (seriously sci-fi) hard surface modellers.


Cableator 1.6 is out! (Docs)

Cableator is such a good tool, but I've never fully understood its feature set. I need to read and watch a full run-through. I particularly want to see how the simulation aspect works. 

There's a really good tutorial from Blender Bros, although this is now three years old!