It's time for....prod--uct--iv-ity...

 After a weekend of bouncing around inside my own head, I begin the week with more clarity and focus. Let's scoop it all up and put it into this morning's work!

Weekend

I did nearly three hours of "rucking" -- that's walking with a heavy rucksack. I marched forcefully to the city centre and back, swaying occasionally, so I probably looked drunk when hoofing up the steeper hills. It was hard, but it felt good—then. Now, I am still a bit sore. Apparently, I'd packed twice the recommended 10% of my body weight payload -- some 16kg in all. It doesn't seem right to halve the payload for the next session. I'll see how I feel about it next week.

I didn't do much in the creative area. I finished some TV shows: Murderbot (great fun), Season 3 of Slow Horses (silly fun), and some Attack on Titan, with my son, Noah.

Planet "Cobolt"

I'm reasonably happy with the landmass/ocean mask, although there's room for improvement. I've started painting, cloning, and inpainting different biomes and will try to add more dramatic mountain ranges, which I'll need to source large Earth samples from somewhere.  This time, I'll look to make some colour tweaks to make it look a bit different.

This week

For Sparrow/Raptor, I need to deliver the Scene 000 planet scene once I have completed a tidy-up on the planet maps. I then need to sculpt the close-in area of the setting, adding a distinctive arrowhead-shaped lake to make the transition from orbital vp to aerial vp as clear as possible.

Then, apparently, I'm going back to the service road. I think it's all going to need redoing in a mightier and lower-poly mesh.

For personal Project work

Just finish something?!

Shamrayev has chilled to the point where it will take a lot of effort to get it back into production.

The medium rig, which finally received some acceptable progress on Friday. Some of the UVs are typically shonky, although it might not matter, as I'm unlikely to invest the time in learning to do a detailed custom texture using the new Matplus addon.

Scatter tests

It seems like True SKY 3/True-Terrain 5, and Geoscatter now play better together, although I was seeing an apparent bug with one of the scatter modes I use a lot (scatter to a bezier) that didn't seem to work. I need to put together more scenes with more carefully applied scatter systems to ensure everything works when needed.

A first step...floaty-same-tree 

Brave old world

 

I can't show off the main planet-building work I'm doing for Sparrow Films, but here's one I'm working on for my portfolio, possibly for sale on Superhivemarket. "Cobolt" is a background/setting for the fantasy version of Cepheus Traveller. I drew the map a long time ago and it has gathered dust waiting for elaboration. I thought I'd take the place in a different direction--- into Blender.

Landmass/Sea mask

You'll notice things are busier and somewhat warped in the polar regions. This is to account for the need to project a nice tidy 2d map onto a spheriod, where your northern and southern extremes get stretched.

Warp factor 7, Mr Sulu!

 

Polar distortion cancels out the squashing

The masking begins... next come the landforms.

Hello, Creative Funk. I am in you...

Stare at things. Contemplate. Attempt to make a solid design decision. 

<Nothing happens>

Lost in Space

Lost in space above all, drifting
To a place where planets shifting
The moon erased, its features lifting
The glare
But I am the stuff of happy endings
Though mostly bluff, belief-suspending
But close enough for just pretending
To care

Lost in Space - Aimee Mann



Lucky for me, Sparrow Films/Raptor tasks are very process-based, like cleaning up artefacts and reviewing the atmospherics node tree.

Fingers crossed that normal service will resume soon.

That quick personal project

 I just couldn't get my head together over the weekend. The family also wanted me to host Minecraft, which is nice but not a great productivity move, unless you count dig-dig-dig-digging as being productive.

I think I'm happy with the blocking out, but I've struggled with the first round of refinement. I'm okay with the submersible vibe. I'll need to get the small details right to sell the idea that this is an orbital vehicle. It's maybe a tiny bit too smooth. Again, the final step should add suitable surface clutter.

I'll return to the project as a break from the planet painting work I'm scheduled to complete for Sparrow Films/Raptor.

Terrain play

Because there will always be terrain sculpting going on somewhere.

A Quick Personal Project: Medium Rig

 Taking a break from Sparrow Films/Raptor. Partly because I'll benefit from a break, but also because I can't show the work. The NDA will blank out my apparent creative output, so from now on, I need to split my time between film work and my own stuff.

Orbital Elements

I'm trying to turn my attention back to the Orbital Elements roleplaying game, the notes and drafting for which have been gathering nearly two years of dust. As part of that effort, I wanted to produce a T-shirt/Promotional image showing a small-ish space vehicle. Something like the following:
 

Here's one I did in 2024

A little sub-like, but that's okay

This has to be a quick project. Not too detailed, not too overblown. That said, it's not at the fine-detail stage, and I'm not really feeling it. Maybe I'll restart next week, maybe I'll just see what happens.

First Blockout

That really annoying issue has reappeared: parameter inputs are being rejected, so I can't make adjustments to the scene. I think it's likely an interplay between add-ons. I tested out removing True SKY 3.

HDRI lighting. More stable, it seems.

Square one, again

 

World Mapping

I made a fair start on the new planet maps. I didn't spend as much time on it as I'd hoped. Too tedious? Not really, drawing thousands of miles of coastline is quite therapeutic, although I wasn't getting a very satisfying result with the default brushes, but switching to other brushes went too far.

Close-up of the region of interest with the arrowhead lake

Test render....displacement map is a leftover and is putting mountains in the sea

I won't be able to show off the finished result because of the NDA. I am still playing with the idea of creating a set of planet maps to sell on Superhivemarket.

Next step: I'll give the coastline a once-over. I think I need some more rivers branching from some of the bays. Some more broken coastline. If there's to be a polar cap, I might break up some of the northern and southern coasts to represent ice-age-related damage. 

By the end of today, I need to be making progress on the terrain painting, as I need this completed for Monday and don't want to work on it during the weekend.

Terrains

Just a terrain doodle I created last night. Trying not to get overwrought with the filters and to keep the scale realistic. The bumpy foreground is likely showing artefacts from some of the filtering...like tiny mounds.

16km terrain with a properly scaled mountain.

Mitte de Woche!

New social media portrait, since I had a haircut. I had to crop the Blender t-shirt because...Well, I hate how people use profile photos where they are small in the frame, as if the plants in the background are the essential element. I double hate when people crowd themselves out of their own profile picture by showing their loved ones. Honestly, I'd rather see a good photo of a houseplant.

Meep

Today's work

 So yesterday's assertion that I'd walk straight into the UDIM workflow proved to be false. I just couldn't get the Geo-Sim planet node tree to accept my UDIM files. I had to build a planet from scratch and ended up back at the day before's finishing point.

A 21k plate that covers about 30% of the planet's surface area...but it seems a bit distorted.

I had a stab at a procedural approach, which gives you seemingly unlimited detail by using smaller noise scales as you zoom in, but it never looks very convincing.

To avoid the faff of falling down a UDIMs rabbit hole, I may just get my original planet and start by upscaling the map and recreating it at 21k or higher. I can then cut down the planet and edit the texture map to include only what's in frame. Doing it this way gives me the flexibility to finalise the shot before cutting away unused material.

I have until Friday to deliver the 21k+ planet texture. Let's make it good!

Hard Ops

Very basic practice. Simple workflow callouts. It is starting to feel natural.

My plastic stackable chair won't win any design awards, but I might actually design one next time. Actually consider design elements rather than just flying through Hard Ops workflow to revise its essential steps.

Storm Chandra

 My pre-dawn hours of undisturbed work were interrupted by the early appearance of the rest of the family. Apparently, the weather woke them. They need louder music and better headphones! The weather is seriously rough this morning. Rough enough to earn a name: Storm Chandra. Wild winds and raucous rain. 

Today

Sparrow Films/Raptor

I'll use yesterday's learnings about UDIMs to set up a new planet scene and see if I can incorporate a set of UDIM texture sets into the procedural planet setup I've been using. I'll assign two hours to this task. If that's done sooner, I'll make a start on the new high-resolution texture maps.

Hard Ops

An hour or so of practice, as I'm losing the memories of some of the functions. I searched yesterday for a "recut" function, which isn't called that. I was thinking of 

Terrains

"Why of course, please continue your obsession with creating terrain meshes." In my defence, there's a new version of World Creator out. I tested it last night and possibly found a bug in its 2D Stamp implementation: high-bit-depth height maps get squished on load, producing ugly stepping. I tested my scene in the previous version, and the problem doesn't occur.

2026.1 has stepped terrain from a 2D Stamp

2025.6 with the same file loaded

Let's see if the team at Bite the Bytes agree with me.

Here's the terrain in Blender, without those steps.

Terrains!!! <in the voice of a zombie groaning "brains">

My drop-in figures are looking into True SKY 3's atmospherics

Testing Geo-Scatter. Great, no problems, yet

Happy Back To Work Day!

 It's Monday, it's work-o'clock!

My productivity ground to a halt a few days ago. Today is the day that I get my s*it together and return to productivity city.

Sparrow Films/Raptor (SF/Raptor) 

Established that there's no zoom in the establishing shots. I only need the camera positions for the top-level and mid-level shots. The outstanding work is to generate a much larger planet map that incorporates realistic terrain texturing that works at close range. But how big? I tested 21k (21,000 pixels along the horizontal axis), which is enormous and also inadequate.

The fix?

Two options:

A separate model that doesn't need the entire planet's texture file, leaving more pixels for smaller areas.

UDIMs that support areas of a model having higher texture resolution. This technique is used for character models where you want the face to be super-detailed but are less bothered about the character's feet and toenails.

Let's explore UDIMs, which I've never used.

UDIMs

UDIMS (U Dimensions) are a texture-mapping technique that increases efficiency and supports different texture resolutions on the same model. 

When a 3D model uses texture mapping, it usually projects texture files onto its surfaces using UV space, which you can think of as a flat-packed version of the model's 3D surfaces. Usually, all the textures in a single UV must fit into the UV's grid space, which can be very limiting.

UDIMS tiles the UV space, so that you can use different textures for different UV islands, which are moved to different UDIM tiles.

Setting up in Blender

There's no special setup for UDIMS workflow. 

Create a new image and make it Tiled.

Under the image's N-panel, you can add additional UDIM tiles

The first UDIM tile has the ID 1001. The next tile along is 1002, through to 1010. Then a new row of tiles is started, beginning with 1011.

So, in theory, my planet UDIMs will look like this:

Main tile 1001: 4k; 1002 is the cutout area in a separate 16k tile.

Running on rails??

<A few hours later>

Well, that was a lot of faffing about in trial and error. It looks like my fine idea of imposing UDIM on the existing setup was never going to work because the UDIMs are instantiated through the non-standard filenames.

I had to go back to basics and create from scratch.

scratch-built UDIM files with flat colours in place.

Test UDIM success!

Now here's the extra faff; If I want to show some actual texture maps, I'm going to need to create my own, otherwise I breach my NDA. I could go back to the Aurore map I started creating.

More in the week

This is going to be my main effort, and while I have conquered the basics of UDIMs, I suspect that getting actual texture maps into place will pose its own challenges, as there will be a seam/visible split between the maps, which might look obvious. That's the next test, I guess.

Modelling

More HardOPs practice, possibly continuing with the space ship crew chair.

More on the Shamrayev. I'm not sure it's a ship that would find a market place, but a ship model might be a future commercial endeavour.

Commerical

I want to start selling more stuff on Superhive. I will need to consider what I can do well, which will also attract a market. I think a really good set of planet maps or a Blender planet could be a good option.

NDAd

 

If you wonder why I now stop showing some stuff

I just signed a contract and NDA with Sparrow Films. One requirement is that I must seek permission before showing or sharing any project-related work. I guess I won't be showing much here from now on.

That said, now that there is a clear agreement that my contributions are owned by Sparrow, I need to be a bit more hard-nosed about work output. I need ot split my time effectively between the film project and my own portfolio, otherwise most of my Blender work will disappear into a black hole, at least until the episodes are complete and are released.

UV Crash

I encountered a pretty chunky crash situation while sorting out the UV maps on the Shamrayev. I will tinker and complete the model for a short animation, but it will be a case of juggling between this, Raptor and various other side projects.

UV time!

I'll post crash logs if it happens again. My guess is this is just an unexpected interaction between various add-ons that I've wired into my Blender installation.

Chair progress

 

I really needed a tighter concept from which to Hard Ops-noodle. There's nothing yet that I'd describe as a faux pas because I repeated some steps two or three times. I guess the problems arrive when I stop rebuilding shonky elements.

We'll see. It's back to Sparrow Films' work.

Aerial Shot Previs

Frame from the pre-vis version of the storyboard that I created. The challenge is getting a smooth transition from this orbital view down to a view at 10,000m in a few seconds, without it feeling too fast.

Orbital

The lake! The lake!

Honestly, I was so rusty doing animation that I worry I need to interrupt my HardOPs training to complete an animation refresher course.