Warning: End of Civilization!

 I lost a significant amount of productivity over the last couple of days, thanks to an impulsive decision to reinstall Civilisation V. What a terrible mistake. That game is such a driver of the "one more round" compulsion in me. I completed two full playthroughs and two games that were discarded or lost.

Some game time...

Best game so far!

I have somehow managed to play this game for many years with only a minimal understanding of the mechanics. This last game introduced me to elements such as deal-making with the city-states and the finer art of military conflict.

I was set upon by my imperialistic neighbours, Napoleon and Catherine the Great. I managed to hold out on their expansion and refused to sign any peace treaty. This appears to disrupt their strategy, as they ended up fighting each other instead of advancing their attack. Perhaps a kink in the AI was introduced to make the game less challenging? I concentrated on economic and technological growth until I had artillery, at which point you could sweep through any nation that was less developed. I ended up turning them both into rump states, taking possession of Paris, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. A long and drawn-out conflict that makes me realise that war is shit. In fact, I think I only won the game by not pursuing a maximal military victory and instead shifting my huge empire towards technological progress, allowing me to secure the space-race victory with a perhaps 20-round lead over the Ottomans.  

Mini-Project

Always respect the time-box. This probe (the lander element) was supposed to be a single-day/couple-of-sessions project. It wasn't to be. Note the space probe in the foreground is not my work, it's from the Big/Medium/Small Astronova collection. That stuff is absolutely mind-blowingly good, but too expensive for me to get the whole lot.

Next

I must complete the service road section and submit it, then begin work on the third section, which is quite large.

On the way to a quick Blender project...

 I started an entirely different quick Blender project.

I decided that I needed to finish my "pile of rocks" quick project, but that a chrome ball wasn't enough of a subject to justify the effort. What should go there, instead? A hard-surface model, a space probe!

I was eager to create a hard-surface model, so I began developing the idea of a lander/probe. I didn't bother to do any sketches; I got most of my inspiration from the escape pod that featured in the first Star Wars movie.

Thruster package

Propulsion Unit

Landing Leg. Meh!

I knocked together a set of landing legs. It was functional, but the design quality was poor. None of the components related effectively to any of the other parts. I decided to down tools and have another go this morning.

Much better

I finished off the session by cleaning up the scene, assigning basic materials and arranging the model elements more effectively, such as creating a set of landing legs in both the up and down positions. This lets you stage the probe in both configurations by turning one set off and the other on.

 Next...

Finish the model, adding details such as arms and sensor projections. Might I take inspiration from the probe droid from The Empire Strikes Back? We'll see!

And then...

Optimise the Tunnel section of the Service Road, then begin work on the next section.

A day for Odin

 Progress Report

I invested a considerable amount of time creating "hero" assets with Nature Generator. It's great, and it seems more stable than I first thought. 

Little rocky heroes

The only screaming limitation is the lack of a built-in material-baking tool. These assets are now plain meshes with the Nature Gen Geometry Node trees applied. Ready to share! However, the materials are still using the addon's procedural systems. To make these rocks easy to share, I'd need to turn the procedural results into PBR textures, which would require that the objects be given good UVs. I may run some tests to see if I can create a UV map for an object while maintaining the great texture results, and then use the baking tool I have from the Sanctus Library.

Quick practice scene

Service Road

I haven't forgotten about the tunnel section of the service road. I had put it off, as I thought the scatter step wasn't going to be much fun. Turns out it was okay.

From above - near cave entrance

View from within the cave

Overview

Next

That scene will need to be optimised. I used detailed assets because they give a much better sense of how much the tunnel is obscured, but at the cost of a very big scene -- about 1GB.

More Blender School! I have courses! I have the last section of the environmental design course to complete.

Mensis Septem

 We're here at the golden gates of autumn. Ready for 2025's final slog.

Over the weekend, I created the base meshes for the second stretch of the service road for the film project. I need to get proxy scatters in place. I should get this handed over in the next couple of days, then jump onto the third section, which is a bigger piece of work.

"The Tunnel"

Meet the anti-climax monster.

More time with Nature Generator

I've spent a bit more time learning some of the ins and outs of Nature Generator. I've been getting system hangs on start-up and after baking objects from the Geonode systems. It could be bugs with the addon, or it might be a coincidence. 

We experienced a very brief power cut on Friday, which caused my systems to shut down. I feared that I'd spend many hours getting my older system back up and running, but it only took a couple of minutes... phew!

Nature Generator Stuff

Nature Gen ground scatter on my existing test scene.

The Nature Gen ground scatters come with a ground layer which interferes with the scene's terrain. I think I managed to suppress it by manually tweaking the material's alpha channel.

Still great for baking procedural rock assets

I experienced crashes while creating multiple rocks and then baking them (applying the geonode tree).

Log message

> [NatureGen] Panel build error: too many values to unpack (expected 2)

> WARNING: Context is restricted!

> [NatureGen] Panel build error: too many values to unpack (expected 2)

> [NatureGen] Panel build error: too many values to unpack (expected 2)

> [NatureGen] Panel build error: too many values to unpack (expected 2)

> WARNING: Context is restricted!

> [NatureGen] Panel build error: too many values to unpack (expected 2)

> Info: Deleted 1 object(s)

Later crash log

>🧹 Removed asset library (4.0): Nature Generator Assets

>✅ Registered asset library: C:\Users\mark\AppData\Roaming\Blender
> Foundation\Blender\4.5\scripts\addons\The_Nature_Generator\asset_library

> register_class(...):

> Warning: 'TOT_MatB_UL_items' doesn't have upper case alpha-numeric prefix

> register_class(...):

> Warning: 'TOT_ImageResizer_UL_items' doesn't have upper case alpha-numeric prefix

> addon_utils.disable: ui_translate not loaded

> addon_utils.disable: viewport_vr_preview not loaded

> Error   : EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION

> Address : 0x00007FF6763FA082

> Module  : blender.exe

> Thread  : 00001ef0

> Writing: C:\Users\mark\AppData\Local\Temp\blender.crash.txt

Nature Gen is great for creating quick background terrains. To be fair, True Terrain is a lot more flexible, but I have a well-established workflow where I design my heightmaps and then work from there, rather than using True Terrain's terrain sculpting tools. Still, it's nice to have a set of parameters that are specifically tuned to terrain deformation rather than having to work out how different noise systems can mimic erosion, etc.

Two Nature Gen desert terrains with True Sky (3 minutes work)