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.

Hard Ops Tutorial

 I've now moved on to the section of the course that runs through a modelling exercise. I watched keenly, but I didn't like the model they were building. I thought that instead, I would watch the videos, then build something else using the same Hard Ops functions.

I'll build a space vehicle's crew console, based on modern jet fighter ejector seats. Starting with this:

I'll concede that the Blender Bros ship will look a lot better when completed, but in the early stages, it's a bit "Silly-Sci-Fi."

Sketch from this morning:

Geo-Scatter on the cards (Alpha Tree only has flat planes (cards), not real geometry trees.

Ops Hardest: The last of the Hard Ops lessons

 Let's get the lessons completed, so we can zip through the build tutorial.

Josh confirms that at this point, we've covered the main functions of Hard Ops, and what's left are supportive tools.

S Mark

In edit-mode.

Edit-mode context menu

The S Mark tool lets you do localised sharpening. 

Check out the Sharpen/Csharp tools with Tild+Cntrl menu

Tild+Cntrl for HOps Helper menu

Reverse Bevel

This is cool!

1. Create a cut, such as a circular cut into a face.

2. Once created, use Ever-Scroll to select the circle cutter and go into edit mode - Tab/select faces. 

3. Select the top face. Press Q then Ctrl + (s) Mark to add a bevel. In this case, the bevel is reversed because you are adding it to the cutter, not the target object.

Making nice bevels without needing to apply the boolean and tackle the resulting mesh.

Adjust Bevel Weight

You normally can adjust Bevel Weight in the item N-Menu

Instead, you can use the (s) Mark.

Q, (s) Mark + Alt

Add Modifier

This does exactly what it says. It's just a convenient way of accessing the modifiers without using the Modifiers side-panel.

Vert-to-Circle

This is very useful. Select vertices, then Q, Circle (E). This converts vertices to circles.

Select Shift+Circle (E) to use a more powerful method that lets you use more options, such as adding more segments to the circle.

Scroll for more!

EM Macro

This is another vital supporting tool. 

After selecting faces, Q, EM_Macro

Standard (LMB) creates a grate
LMB+CTRL creates knurls
LMB+Shift creates a panel along the edges
LMB+Alt creates panels along face normals.

Mesh tools

Referred to in the course as ST3 Mesh Tools which provide a suite of functions for cleaning up mesh geometry.

Flatten to Face

This has its uses. If you have selected faces that don't share alignment but you want them to be aligned (flattened) to a single face. Use this tool!

Faces in a mound are flattened to the selected face.

Selection to Boolean

Select a face and turn it into a Boolean cutter. Then LMB to move to the depth.

Edit Mode

This is a quick edit menu for fixing/altering an object's mesh.

Snap Cursor

Snap and rotate cursor along selected item.

Display Marks

Enable/Disable Marks from the viewport

Demote

The Demote tool removes all markings from selected edges

Mirror

Another useful mirror tool that speeds up the mirroring of an object. I've tended to use the one built into Random Flow (Shift+Q), but this one might be quicker to invoke.

With Mirror Menu enabled

Spin

The spin will spin a selected face based on the viewport orientation. The menu lets you fine-tune settings.

To Floor

Select a face and use To Floor to place the face on the 0,0 "floor".

To Shape

Convert the selected face into a shape, based on the following list:

Decap creates a visual copy but removes the cap.
Convex Hull is a simplified object that surrounds your selected mesh (like a low-poly shrink-wrap), like a collision detection box in a game engine.

To Rope

Shift+To Rope for an alternate mode, which adds a central thread in the rope.


I missed a few of the smaller steps out due to time.
Look up Uniquify, Late Parent, Quickly join Verts and Recut.