Half-term break: Real-life stuff to do

 Yesterday was the start of our half-term break. A week to take stock? Maybe for some. I'm decorating Leo's bedroom. I have slowly grown to hate decorating. Over time, as you ply some skill-based activity, your standards and expectations grow. In an ideal world, the development of your skills and competence grows to match. When that doesn't happen, I find myself less satisfied by my efforts, until I just can't shake the sense that everything that you do is complete shit. Lucky for me that Leo doesn't have any standards and won't call me out on anything that turns out wonky. Clara, on the other hand... 

Sparrow Films/Raptor

I can show some developmental elements here. The next scene has changed from an aerial shot to a ground-based one. We storyboard so that this kind of shift doesn't happen, but directors are directors.

No work was wasted this time, and the change in point of view might make the shot much easier. So, where does the shot happen?

How big is the lake?

Given that the Calantica map was superimposed over Earth's, I could just do a quick comparison with somewhere on Earth at the same(ish) longitude. Cornwall!! The lake has a maximum span of about 20km.

At an altitude of 1000m, your maximum viewing distance is just over 70km. So if this isn't an aerial shot, it's one taken by a mountain climber. You need some height to capture the distant elements, such as the island city and smoke plumes.

My initial plan was to create a single, giant terrain plate in World Creator. One thing is easier to coordinate than various elements, but there's a problem...

World Creator's sculpt tool has a limit of 1024x1024 resolution, so over the stretch of 65,000m this resolution limit makes the lake far too pixelated and grainy. Time for plan B! I'll build the terrain from plates. Really, for most people, this would have been plan A.

I need to create a sketch of the scene for sign-off. Ideally, today.

T-Shirts

I've been playing with some Orbital Elements t-shirt designs. Last night, I created a silly part-time job-related design.

I know Kung Mop-Fu!

I will do my own Blender t-shirt design for the next one.

Weekend recharge

 I downed tools (for serious work) and enjoyed the weekend by getting out and about. Another rucking session, once again lugging far too much into the city and back.

I have a request from a friend to build a model vehicle inspired by the Kia PV5 WKNDR, an ultra-modern camper van that will no doubt be turned into an explorer for Alien worlds.  The concept sketch work is due next weekend.

Sparrow Films/Raptor, the next shot has changed. It's going to be lower altitude. That makes it a lot easier to stage, but harder to show all the elements in the frame. I need to send the director a sketch for sign-off as soon as possible.

Today I walked into the city without extra weights and came back with new underwear and stuff. 

Tomorrow, I will clean and repaint Leo's bedroom, ready for guests (my sister and her youngest) who are staying next weekend. It's going to be a busy week!

Terrain therapy

Some land forms. Also, a quick scatter test.

Preset grassland materials

Rock and flows

Quick scatter test.

It never rains but it ....snow forecast

 We're heading towards Winter's end, but we might not have seen the last of the ice and snow. In the world of Blender, I got a sudden blast of cold last night, as I realised that my Scene000 needed addon components. I thought it was all node-based and included within the scene. That was the other planet-making solution I used: Cosmo, which was great but has not been maintained by the author and has been removed from Superhivemarket, unless you already bought it.

I'm hoping that we can just absorb the cost of a couple of copies. Hell, I'd buy them myself. However, the director might instead want me to recreate the scene using True SKY3. This is probably achievable, but it's uncertain that it can look as good and finding out might take me a few days of investigation. A bigger investment than the 15 dollars for Geosim...

So my current Raptor project task list:

• Read the latest version of the True SKY 3 Documentation.
• Watch the tutorial videos.
• Do some testing.
• Make a beautiful planet.
  

We will see!

True SKY 3 testing

Minimum

Maximum

Three cloud layers (@ maximum)

Scene 000 Submitted!

 This morning, I shipped the planet scene for Raptor. I can't post finished images, but I can report that I spent about three hours cleaning artefacts from the maps. These mostly appeared in the height map. As a result of my tweaking the colour levels, grid lines from the source images appeared.

Tiny grid lines from satellite source imagery

It feels good to finally submit something! Let's see if changes are required...

Medium Rig progress

Slow progress is still progress. I added a support frame for the fuel tanks. It was too weedy, so I added a stronger-looking one. More on the engine-end of things, tomorrow.

I need to do practice on environment/terrain scenes. That could be something for the weekend. 

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.