The rest is weekend

 I decided to put down my tools over the weekend. I wish it had been for a noble cause, but I ended up playing Civilisation 5 for too many hours. 

 TrueVault

True-VFX have released their very cool asset library system. It's both a repository of your owned assets and a shop window for buying new things from the TrueVFX library.

I took the plunge and bought some credits, picking up a collection of grass assets.

Grassy knoll 

Rocks need a lot more work, but I love how Nature Generator's rock procedural material lets you quickly colour-match to your terrain.

Nature Generator procedurals absolutely rock!

This week

I have received feedback for the next section of the service road, so I will be building that. It's more like two sections, it's twice as big as the previous parts.

Ambush on the service road

Thought for the week: For gawd's sake, finish something!

I need to regain some discipline and not leave part-finished mini-projects in a growing discard pile.

Warning: End of Civilization!

 I lost a significant amount of productivity over the last couple of days, thanks to an impulsive decision to reinstall Civilisation V. What a terrible mistake. That game is such a driver of the "one more round" compulsion in me. I completed two full playthroughs and two games that were discarded or lost.

Some game time...

Best game so far!

I have somehow managed to play this game for many years with only a minimal understanding of the mechanics. This last game introduced me to elements such as deal-making with the city-states and the finer art of military conflict.

I was set upon by my imperialistic neighbours, Napoleon and Catherine the Great. I managed to hold out on their expansion and refused to sign any peace treaty. This appears to disrupt their strategy, as they ended up fighting each other instead of advancing their attack. Perhaps a kink in the AI was introduced to make the game less challenging? I concentrated on economic and technological growth until I had artillery, at which point you could sweep through any nation that was less developed. I ended up turning them both into rump states, taking possession of Paris, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. A long and drawn-out conflict that makes me realise that war is shit. In fact, I think I only won the game by not pursuing a maximal military victory and instead shifting my huge empire towards technological progress, allowing me to secure the space-race victory with a perhaps 20-round lead over the Ottomans.  

Mini-Project

Always respect the time-box. This probe (the lander element) was supposed to be a single-day/couple-of-sessions project. It wasn't to be. Note the space probe in the foreground is not my work, it's from the Big/Medium/Small Astronova collection. That stuff is absolutely mind-blowingly good, but too expensive for me to get the whole lot.

Next

I must complete the service road section and submit it, then begin work on the third section, which is quite large.

On the way to a quick Blender project...

 I started an entirely different quick Blender project.

I decided that I needed to finish my "pile of rocks" quick project, but that a chrome ball wasn't enough of a subject to justify the effort. What should go there, instead? A hard-surface model, a space probe!

I was eager to create a hard-surface model, so I began developing the idea of a lander/probe. I didn't bother to do any sketches; I got most of my inspiration from the escape pod that featured in the first Star Wars movie.

Thruster package

Propulsion Unit

Landing Leg. Meh!

I knocked together a set of landing legs. It was functional, but the design quality was poor. None of the components related effectively to any of the other parts. I decided to down tools and have another go this morning.

Much better

I finished off the session by cleaning up the scene, assigning basic materials and arranging the model elements more effectively, such as creating a set of landing legs in both the up and down positions. This lets you stage the probe in both configurations by turning one set off and the other on.

 Next...

Finish the model, adding details such as arms and sensor projections. Might I take inspiration from the probe droid from The Empire Strikes Back? We'll see!

And then...

Optimise the Tunnel section of the Service Road, then begin work on the next section.

A day for Odin

 Progress Report

I invested a considerable amount of time creating "hero" assets with Nature Generator. It's great, and it seems more stable than I first thought. 

Little rocky heroes

The only screaming limitation is the lack of a built-in material-baking tool. These assets are now plain meshes with the Nature Gen Geometry Node trees applied. Ready to share! However, the materials are still using the addon's procedural systems. To make these rocks easy to share, I'd need to turn the procedural results into PBR textures, which would require that the objects be given good UVs. I may run some tests to see if I can create a UV map for an object while maintaining the great texture results, and then use the baking tool I have from the Sanctus Library.

Quick practice scene

Service Road

I haven't forgotten about the tunnel section of the service road. I had put it off, as I thought the scatter step wasn't going to be much fun. Turns out it was okay.

From above - near cave entrance

View from within the cave

Overview

Next

That scene will need to be optimised. I used detailed assets because they give a much better sense of how much the tunnel is obscured, but at the cost of a very big scene -- about 1GB.

More Blender School! I have courses! I have the last section of the environmental design course to complete.

Mensis Septem

 We're here at the golden gates of autumn. Ready for 2025's final slog.

Over the weekend, I created the base meshes for the second stretch of the service road for the film project. I need to get proxy scatters in place. I should get this handed over in the next couple of days, then jump onto the third section, which is a bigger piece of work.

"The Tunnel"

Meet the anti-climax monster.

More time with Nature Generator

I've spent a bit more time learning some of the ins and outs of Nature Generator. I've been getting system hangs on start-up and after baking objects from the Geonode systems. It could be bugs with the addon, or it might be a coincidence. 

We experienced a very brief power cut on Friday, which caused my systems to shut down. I feared that I'd spend many hours getting my older system back up and running, but it only took a couple of minutes... phew!

Nature Generator Stuff

Nature Gen ground scatter on my existing test scene.

The Nature Gen ground scatters come with a ground layer which interferes with the scene's terrain. I think I managed to suppress it by manually tweaking the material's alpha channel.

Still great for baking procedural rock assets

I experienced crashes while creating multiple rocks and then baking them (applying the geonode tree).

Log message

> [NatureGen] Panel build error: too many values to unpack (expected 2)

> WARNING: Context is restricted!

> [NatureGen] Panel build error: too many values to unpack (expected 2)

> [NatureGen] Panel build error: too many values to unpack (expected 2)

> [NatureGen] Panel build error: too many values to unpack (expected 2)

> WARNING: Context is restricted!

> [NatureGen] Panel build error: too many values to unpack (expected 2)

> Info: Deleted 1 object(s)

Later crash log

>🧹 Removed asset library (4.0): Nature Generator Assets

>✅ Registered asset library: C:\Users\mark\AppData\Roaming\Blender
> Foundation\Blender\4.5\scripts\addons\The_Nature_Generator\asset_library

> register_class(...):

> Warning: 'TOT_MatB_UL_items' doesn't have upper case alpha-numeric prefix

> register_class(...):

> Warning: 'TOT_ImageResizer_UL_items' doesn't have upper case alpha-numeric prefix

> addon_utils.disable: ui_translate not loaded

> addon_utils.disable: viewport_vr_preview not loaded

> Error   : EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION

> Address : 0x00007FF6763FA082

> Module  : blender.exe

> Thread  : 00001ef0

> Writing: C:\Users\mark\AppData\Local\Temp\blender.crash.txt

Nature Gen is great for creating quick background terrains. To be fair, True Terrain is a lot more flexible, but I have a well-established workflow where I design my heightmaps and then work from there, rather than using True Terrain's terrain sculpting tools. Still, it's nice to have a set of parameters that are specifically tuned to terrain deformation rather than having to work out how different noise systems can mimic erosion, etc.

Two Nature Gen desert terrains with True Sky (3 minutes work)

Blender School: Nature Generator

Last night, just before going to sleep, I watched a YouTube video about the latest releases of Blender Addons. The first one covered was The Nature Generator, which provides a library of customisable procedural terrains and terrain-related objects -- mostly different rock structures. Oh my! This is what I've been failing to deliver for about three days. It wasn't super-cheap; about £50 for the personal edition, but it looked great. 



I was hesitant due to the high cost and the number of times I've purchased an add-on, only to quickly find a show-stopping deficiency. I watched the release video and read all the comments on SuperHive. Despite any limitations that appear during testing, this looked like a handy landscape toolbox, so I bought it this morning.  If only a couple of the components work well, I'll make use of them and the addon will pay for itself in the long run.

The Nature Generator

Let's jump in and learn the basics before I move on and forget how it works.

Installation

There are two files to download:

Note: The Nature Generator requires Blender 4.1 or later

1. Drag and drop The_Nature_GeneratorX.x zip file into the Blender desktop. The addon will then be installed and appear on the N-panel.

2. The Optional NatureGenerator_Texture_Options.zip file needs to be extracted and placed on your file system, preferably on a local SSD drive, so as not to cause stuttering.

Using The Nature Generator

When installed, you pick from the available assets in the Asset Browser. Once an asset is dropped into the viewport and selected, the N-Panel shows the available parameters. While there are many standard parameters, most assets have some unique properties. Lots of options for customisation!

The Nature Generator is ready to spring into action.

Onwards through work town

 I'm back at the day job, which I can do early while we're not in term time. I was intent on completing the next previs section, but I fell down another rabbit hole.

Quick project

I wanted to conduct a quick animation/post-production test, as I have a bunch of tools in this area that I'm unfamiliar with.

I'm happy with the post-work, but the horizon is too abrupt.

Added landscape meshes to fill out the background.

I had some difficulties with getting the scene to move forward, so I decided to restart and use a True Terrain landscape instead of a flat plain. Expensive!!

The overall vibe of the scene is better, but it needs a lot of work.

The cloud colour is a bit distracting, but I like how the rolling fog softens the horizon.

It's fun, but I really need to do better on the rocks and the scatter. I didn't want to use photogrammetry assets, such as Megascans; instead, I wanted to create my own rocks using RockIt V2. The real test will be completing a 360-degree animation that slowly turns around the globe.

Work was a thing...

 I'm now back at work, but off on Monday -- bless you Bank Holiday. In the meantime, I've reworked the first service road previs.

The rocks are still a mess, but this is about placement, so that the characters are not animated to walk through rocks. I'm still concerned that it might be better to have the production version in play rather than trying to "build up" this previs version.

Better scatters coming soon.

Terrains

I had a quick play with the latest versions of True Terrain and World Creator..

I tinkered more with True-VFX's new asset browser. Pretty cool!

Yikes!

 I've been rambling along the tail-end of Summer in a state of ignorant bliss. On Monday, the penny dropped: I'm back at work on Thursday (tomorrow). It's an odd time to return to work. I guess we'll be using the days before the teaching staff return to do deep cleaning or disruptive work.

Yesterday

I missed making a post because it all got jolly busy. I got feedback on the project work. I need to make some tweaks, which I'll have completed for end of tomorrow.

I progressed the Texas Tower 4 model.

Texas Tower awaits the final elements. Mostly the radar dishes on the back face.

True-VFX

The True-VFX team released a cool new utility, which I had the opportunity to test. It works well!

Updates

True Terrain 5.1.2 arrived, delivering several bug fixes and official Blender 4.5 support.

Photographer 5.6.1 returned, after being pulled by its creator because of some serious compatibility issues with scenes created with earlier versions. The add-on now does a conversion step.

To-do list:

* More work on the previs terrains (priority)
* Complete tutorials for Photographer and Render Raw. These tools look to be stepping on each other's toes with crossover/super-imposed parameters. I still haven't reached the bottom of the over-exposure issue on start-up. 
* Texas Tower 4 work. Complete the deck crane, do some tidy-up, then textures.

Timeout

 I've had a couple of days where I didn't get much done. I played with World Creator and found myself going through the old flow of sculpting a terrain, exporting maps and playing with them in Blender. Not very useful or productive, it's a therapy thing.

The colour map is "banded". Commented as a bug

Today, I found what appears to be a serious bug in the latest World Creator beta that corrupts exported material maps. As good a reason as any to go away and do something more productive. I'm supposed to be doing a final clean-up on the service road, but I wanted a weekend break.

Dark Tower

Last night I watched a YouTube video about the Texas Towers. Built by the U.S. Air Force in the late 1950s, these oil rig-like structures provided extended radar coverage of America's eastern seaboard. The final tower (Tower-4) was notorious because it was sunk in a storm, dooming its crew to a watery grave.

Texas Tower

The story touched a nerve. I love these structures, so I decided to create a quick model. Time limited to be completed tomorrow.

Work-in-progress

More project work progress

 I spent most of today tweaking the previs terrain for the service road. It's now reasonably close to the ARMA 3 storyboard. Matching a 3d model up with the output of a game engine is a weird way to do this. Artistically constraining for questionable reasons, but a great exercise in the technical side of environmental design. Is this close enough? We'll see!

Stand-in character placement

I created each canyon wall with a cube that I extruded along the undulating path. I then stripped away all the geometry except for the inward faces, which then served as a geo-scatter target for various test assets. I ended up with a chunky piece of wall that I created using Rockify.

Manual placement to (mostly) match the storyboard

Lens sim FTW

Bushes

Overview of the key area

Character placement might be tricky with the current small boulder implementation. Looks quite nice, but I might need to push them back into the wall to avoid limiting the animators.

Downing tools for now