Happy Chocolate

 I'm officially out of time for my personal project. It was fun. There's a lot more I should be doing, but I need to get back to the "job".

Tall renders are so rare

The ring structure was a rare bit of kitbashing, using a ringed space station I built in March 2023.

I keep replicating the sections. This is about 500m deep. Blender crashes if I try to delete one of the instance collections.                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Good Friday, fallow Friday

 Happy Easter, peeps!

Test lamp down at the base...just not enough light down there.

Weird holiday that requires some serious mental gymnastics to transmute into a "celebration". Chocolate does so much heavy lifting!

I still feel very rough, maybe not quite as rough. It's now nearly a week since I did my regular resistance training and walking. I feel a bit "fallow", but I need to start pushing myself, even if I don't feel good.

Clara is on a late shift, so I need to get some groceries to feed the boys tonight.

Blender

I made a bit of progress on the apartment complex yesterday. Working mostly to improve the materials and UVs in key places. Not a lot of work, but some nice tweaks here and there. I'm particularly pleased with the single plane that I textured with a high-contrast noise map, which is placed behind the window panes of each apartment block. This provides a random element that breaks up the unrealistic unity of the many windows.

Much of the remaining work will be about breaking up regularity and adding more detail in the right places.

So, what's next?

Firstly, the version of the scene where I had created two more tunnel instances crashed when I tried to delete them. I've reverted to the single instance-version of the scene. If I want the apartments to rise higher, I need to let more light in. When there are apartments that rise into the sky, they block most of the light, and it just gets too dark.



I will do an animation for this scene, to be completed by Monday. I need to create a storyboard and use that to work out where I need more details. There's a good foundation for some scenes, but I need to break up the regularity. For example:

• Something to break up the regularity of the railings.
• Signs, notices and decals
• Street lights
• Street furniture
• Rubbish and clutter
• Crowds? 
• Something in the central pool? 
• Cables and wiring
• More pipes

That water is looking good. It's from the Sanctus Library

Incredible things

 

In this hellish, wartorn timeline, it's very gratifying to have a brief moment where we remember that there is competence, dedication and a striving for something bigger. Manned space exploration no longer lands the same way as it did when I was Leo's age. This isn't a battle of ideology because is the Trump administration really any different from the CCP? Granted, they have replaced the huge bureaucratic party system with a gold-plated ballroom, but it's not East vs West, Totalitarianism vs Freedom. Watching NASA people sweat details was the competence porn I so very much needed. I hope their missions succeed, and watching this stuff together might pull some people out of the Trump stupor.

Blender

Lurgi and gum pain diminished, but not gone. What a waste of a week. Well, almost. My dystopian apartment block continues to rise.

Shell game

working on improving the materials a but

A giant pool of water at the bottom.

Apartments

I think we wrap this up for creating a short animation over the weekend evenings. Nothing dramatic, maybe some pans across, up, and down from different locations. 

First, we need to find a way to add some variations. The light from the apartment windows needs to be broken up. I think I might be able to put a giant plane behind each "bank" of apartment windows to adjust the amount of light emitted. I need to break up the walkways, maybe add some low-poly denizens. Some more pipes, clutter, and lamps. Maybe I'll put some boats/barrels/trash in the central pool. 

I need a bit more light in the depths. The aim was to have this tower three instances high, but at that point, the bottom is truly a gloomy place.

Forbidden porridge

 It seems like I wasn't supposed to have porridge this morning, but I really fancied some. I have it about once a week. It takes a lot longer to prepare than my usual breakfast of Greek yoghurt with blueberries and nuts. I still feel very low, and a nice warm bowl of porridge would just hit the spot. My gum pain has subsided, possibly to make room for a very sore back. My cold has got to my chest, causing me to rasp. My unwellness has worsened. Bleh! So, I wanted my porridge.

First, the digital scales are mysteriously broken. Delving into the mystery, I might have recently set a heavy pan on top of it, which could have caused the LCD to break. I can be breathtakingly clumsy. Mr Bean without the laughs.

So, how do you measure 50g of rolled oats? I managed to find a conversion for measuring in cups. Then, after not finding any measuring cups, I found a conversion for tablespoons. So far, so good. Except I think I messed up the measure of milk, which I modified to include some of my yoghurt, for its fat content. I needed more fluid as the oats were getting too hot. I gave the pan a quick nudge to move the contents around, but nothing was stuck together, so globs of milk and porridge went onto the hob. Some must have worked its way into a dial's recess, which causes the sparker for lighting the hob to  continuously fire...on...and..on...and...on

So now, twenty minutes after finishing my porridge — which was perfect, at least I got that — there is a clicking sound coming from the kitchen, with a one-second interval. Why did I get out of bed? That was actually the back pain! If it wasn't for my sore lower back, I would have just stayed in bed all day. Meh.

Yesterday

While some might spend their sick time watching comforting TV shows or YouTube cat videos, I elected to start building a dystopic prison-style apartment complex.

It's the framework. It needs more material touches and detailing, but not bad for a few hours' work. Odd, odd thought. The old British slang for prison/prison-time is porridge. *Stares into the void*