Free-Trader Coasting

 

I moved into materials work a little early. There are some important elements, such as the vernier-style thruster ports on the nose and a few more surface details here and there. So I'll declare this Not Finished. An advancing work-in-progress.

Free Trader - Midpoint Burn

 I'm making great progress. There's a problem with everything moving fast, and your design steps feel fluid. You may not stop and check things enough. In my case, there's a serious issue with lateral symmetry. It's not obvious from most angles and at a distance, but I may need to do some serious rebuilding later.

Progress shots:

Roof cabin windows

Engineering details and Air/Raft Garage Door

Tail Mast and Turret

At a distance. Looks fine.

Next.. I'll move back to the front. I'll get the main airlock done. They get the main elements of the belly sorted. Hatch and landing leg doors.

Free Trader Start

 

Okay, this sort of worked out.

Second attempt on the nose section

Bridge incut, Roof cabin and engine cowlings

The first attempt at the rear section. Still need to tuck this in.

Free Trader - new project

 I was delighted that my recent Traveller illustration was selected for the Traveller Facebook art group's cover. I am encouraged to do another Traveller scene. I realised that while I'd built the Scout about four times over the years, I'd always given up on the Free Trader. Not this time...probably.

I took Rob Caswell's excellent technical illustration from the book as the reference. It has a modern look while keeping true to the original look of the ship.

Reference from the Digest Groups MegaTraveller Starship Operator's manual 

We'll see how this goes...

Bits and pieces of weekend

Nothing much cooking in the Blender oven. I spend some time playing and experimenting. Here are some of the things. 

Old transporter with Sanctus materials makeover

Pluto-like terrain sketch

Sand and rock test material

Big terrain sketch

Noise and noise makes land and water

Long walk and a bit of Blender

 Today, Clara and I walked up Winn Hill, near Edale. About 22,000 steps when all done.

Winn Hill

A quick terrain I made before going on the walk

The walk left me with some time but almost no energy for Blender. I took inspiration from a fellow member of True-VFX's Discord community, playing with a noise system he demonstrated.

Magic Noise from Berglmir

Giant land ripples!

Not much, today

 I played with True-Terrain 5 in the morning. I got crashes. A few! I think that I may have experienced the old instability problem. I found that my CPU power adjustments were no longer being applied so I put those back. Otherwise, this could actually be a TT5 issue concerning its zero-border modifier. We'll see.

A  "producty" thing type render

Shiny things on a shiny table

I had instability problems with terrains but not in all cases. Artefacts on some trees here, though.

That deeply sh!t thing happened again

 On Saturday night, we had a brief power cut. It only lasted a few seconds, resulting in a hard shutdown of my workstation. This is the workstation that I've not actually fully shut down in over a month. I experienced a problem where the machine wouldn't start up. I managed to get it running, but it took many hours of hair-pulling.

It may be a power issue. I'm not sure.

Just like last time, I spent about five hours working to get the machine back on. I'd reset the CMOS to blank the machine's BIOS settings, which would automatically start the machine up. I could recover BIOS settings, but the machine would default to the built-in display instead of the RTX 4090 GPU. I'd go into the BIOS and switch back to the GPU, but the machine would then fail to start back up.

I updated the BIOS firmware, which hopefully is a long-term fix for the stability problems since it's now known that the Intel Raptorlake processors don't have stable defaults for their power draw.

Eventually, as if the machine was resigned to being reset to death, it decided to come back on.

That's a big relief, but I have no faith that the machine will be fit for purpose. I will send it back to SCAN for investigation, but I don't want to be without a machine. I also don't have the box required for safely shipping back to base. I'm thinking about getting a new machine with the same type of case and then using the new machine's box to ship this machine back. We'll see. That's a lot of cash, and it's about a year earlier than it should be upgraded. I'd want a faster GPU for any "next" machine.

If I did need to send this machine back, I do still have a backup - the previous machine runs an i7 with the RTX 2080 Ti. I wanted a reminder of the performance difference between machines:

Athena - i9, 64GB RTX4090 - 18 seconds

ISAC - i7, 32GB, RTX 2080Ti - 2 minutes 25 seconds.

Gulp! This might be a sample render where the new machine's advantages create an unusually big performance boost. I was under the impression that the machine was giving me twice the render speed.

MPU27

The latest version of Fluent Power Tools seems much less prone to going wrong. This is a quick sketch thing that took about twenty minutes to build.  

Fluenit MPU27

Mayday! Mayday!

 Traveller is a science fiction roleplaying game that is very dear to me. May 1st is the unofficial Traveller day of celebration, in part because of the blurb on the game's box:

This is Free Trader Beowulf, calling anyone... Mayday, Mayday... we are under attack... main drive is gone... turret number one not responding. Mayday... losing cabin pressure fast… calling anyone... please help... This is Free Trader Beowulf... Mayday...

This sets the tone for the game's gritty, harder-than-you-expect science fiction that often plays like a blend of Alien and Dune. Last year I whipped up a quick Blender scene to share with the Traveller community. I thought I'd do the same this year. A landing site!

True-Terrain 5, True-Sky and some desert scatter using Geo-Scatter

This made me think of a scene I created a few years ago. This is a cheeky composite as I didn't manage to get the model into the terrain scene, which was from World Creator 2. I did like the Scoutship which I built in 2014-15 but never managed to finish.

Test render from 2022

Scoutship with new materials

Various procedural materials from the Sanctus library

I was quite proud of the back.

Version 1. Wideview, but It needed a bit more...

Mushrooms and an extra.. 

 

Wellness

 I've spent a few days feeling poorly. My digestive system shut down, resulting in noxious emissions from my mouth. Not pleasant! Low energy and brain fog held me for a couple of days. This morning, I'm tired but not feeling unwell. Hurrah!

Yesterday, I got my HbH1C blood test. I hope the results indicate that my haemoglobin is no longer sugar-coated. It's not likely that I'd recover into the prediabetic stage so quickly, not in just three months, but I still have hopes for that eventually.

Blender activity has been a bit slack, understandably. I've been dabbling, but I've not been able to maintain a focus on a worthwhile project.

A dry place -TT5 and True-Sky

Two terrains, ready for some scatter action

Scatters and TT4 water added!

Space Foil test 

It's almost May Day, which, along with a worldwide celebration for various forms of socialism and positive social programs, is also a Traveller science fiction roleplaying game celebration day. Last year, I cooked up a quick scene. I'll do one this year. Watch. This. Spaaace!

More house

This morning I showed Clara the "dream" house. She had some constructive criticisms of the design, including a wish to have direct windows into the bedrooms and maybe a skylight option. It was fun to argue it all out. The project is dragging a bit. I'll maybe put it on hold for a bit as I think the furnishings and trimmings are a lot of work. 

Lightfall

The flooring tile scale is not consistent, but I  love the Herringbone pattern

Dreamhouse

 I sketched out a big modern house. The type that is cut into hills and made of a million tons of concrete. Bond-villain postcode!

I decided to make more time with the details, so I restarted.

Fluent sketches embellished a bit

 

I finished the first bit of Fluent-based street furniture -- a camera thingy. Being quite satisfied with the result, I decided to build a slightly more elaborate "armed" monitor.

Armed Monitor

Camera unit

I'll do another one. Maybe a park bench... Something that's simple but also useful in a street/urban scene.

More Fluent sketching

 I love Fluent. Since the release of the latest version it feels more...well..fluent. That said, I still need to better understand the fixing regime. Like Hard Ops, this is a tool for people who understand the importance of righteous topology and flow. If your bevels intersect, it's going to be ugly and potentially crashy.

Street Furniture  base

Appliance Front

Appliance Back

Not Fluent. A big building.