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.

Corrective release day

 Blender 4.1 gets its bugfix follow-up. See the release notes.

It's not a landscape!

Fluent Power Trip contains so many new features that I've never used. I thought I'd do something more systematic and learn something new. Alas, I ended up creating some containers using the same old workflow. Next time, eh?!

More terrains...while I find a new motivated idea

 

I can't explain

Women of Steel in a rocky valley

The valley without scatters or materials

Another tiny terrain with grass scatters

True Terrain kinda mood

 

Greevian - a set of three terrains

Scatter and True-Sky lighting

Various scatters

Earlier!

Sunday rest

 It's Sunday. Not much going on.

New WC24 terrain with ice lake and rocks

Before the ice lake idea. Rocks aplenty

The naked terrain

A concession cart idea

World Creator 2024

 

After more than 5 months, World Creator 2023 is finally completed in 2024. So, say hello to World Creator 2024. It has rivers! Very impressed with many of the changes. Worth the wait, I'd say.

World Creator 

Same terrain in Blender 4.1

Just add scatter. Did it crash? No? Just add scatter...

Add some True-Sky 

Blender 4.1's Autosmoothing changes

 A change made in Blender 4.2 has caused a lot of annoyance. While the change makes sense on a technical level, it has thrown a curveball at many users' tried-and-tested workflows. Autosmooth was a quick fix for shading issues when you created a mesh with edges that wanted to be shaded smooth or sharp, depending on the angle of the normals on the bordering faces. Using it was super simple. You just right-clicked and selected Autosmooth. Easy peasy!

So what changed?

The operation to smooth was being handled at the mesh level, making it destructive. So, normals were taken out of the mesh system and now live as a modifier that is applied to the mesh in a non-destructive manner. That's good in many cases, especially if you are building with geometry nodes.

However, if you try to use the new "Shade smooth by angle" option on the right-click menu, the operation works completely differently. It applies sharp parameters to edges, which gives you different results.

See how the top edges have been automatically marked sharp.

There is a solution! You can apply Smooth By Angle as a modifier using the following steps:

1. Create your mesh
2. Apply smooth
3. Add the modifier Smooth by Angle from the Normals modifier
4. If you make changes, such as applying a Subdivision Surface modifier, make sure that you drag the Smooth by Angle modifier to the bottom of the stack, or the geometry changes applied lower down won't have the smoothing applied.

Note: You can ignore any applied Sharp edges using the "Ignore Sharpness" checkbox.

Playtime

Default Cube Machine in some water

Rockify assets in a big scatter

Original attempt at a rockify scatter