AEfter Ragnarok
July Progblog #3: passing go
I am fighting an epic battle for my life against my overwhelming desire to scrap this and try again because the topology isn’t quite right and I’m getting lumps when sculpting. I did actually have a very quick go at redoing it earlier with edge modelling rather than extrusion and ended up with a similar-but-different thing with a different problem that I couldn’t resolve so I came back to this one because while the topology of the other one was better this one was quicker and I couldn’t figure out how to resolve the problem that cropped up with the other one It looks and sculpts/adjusts fine with multires so it will work fine.
July Progblog #2: at least this repeat work is mostly fun
I finally finished the Dragonkin models (there was some jiggery pokery with the uv maps after I’d finished the claws) and restarted Red. It was supposed to be a simple case of append the male Dragonkin model, append all the materials I’d already done, do the horns, do the multires sculpt. It was not a simple case. I redid the shaders, backported some of the modifications made (knocking out some extraneous colour nodes and adding in some forgotten bump nodes, good thing I can run multiple Blenders) and then started working on the horns.
July ProgBlog #1: when you're not as far as you think you are
I was so happy when I made the female Dragonkin model as I thought I was finally done. I went to make a new file to start (re)making Red when I suddenly realised…forgot the retractable claws. Ergh. And then I realised I’d put the tail too high up the back and that the base was too thin. More ergh. I spent a few good hours sulking. Then got back into it.
June ProgBlog #5: almost there
Remembering things is quicker than learning things from scratch, but I still hate uv mapping. I’m also so very tired and so very glad that I made a very early decision to never pitch this thing given the amount of hate 3d gets. If I’d been doing it for anyone other than myself I would have probably given up long ago. I read/hear “the computer is doing it all for you” in relation to digital art anywhere in my vicinity and take it personally The uvs are now nicely laid out (manually because I didn’t buy the version of the thing that would automate it, not hard, just tedious) and I have a horn crest and gem which is hopefully enough to shape into whatever it needs to be.
June Progblog #4: finishing things is weird
Another late start today as I had a bit of laundry to do (though I did get eldest to get it off the line for me in the evening as I found outside too cold) and also spent a bit too much time catching random episodes of Demon Slayer (article contains spoilers) with 17yo who was recovering from a head cold. But at least the hands are done. Connecting the wings to the body was a bit tricky but got there eventually and didn’t take as long as I thought it would.
June ProgBlog #3: closing
Closing meshes is on the long list of things I hate. Okay I don’t actually feel strongly enough to hate it, but it is annoying when things don’t just close nicely. The last membrane and finger went pretty quickly and smoothly, which somewhat made up for the super late start caused by house discussions. At least I was able to get some work done, we had been going to turn the power out so that some cabling could safely go into the roof.
June ProgBlog #2: The Great Blogsite Migration Part 2
Part 1 happened over the course of weeks or months a couple of decades ago when I migrated to Drupal from livejournal (I didn’t really note how long it took partly because I wasn’t interested at the time and mostly because I was trying to get through that cringey era as quickly as possible). though it has been interesting watching my tone change from when I was blogging every little thing and basically talking to my friends on livejournal, to still kind of doing that but realising that people I didn’t know were also reading my blog at some point shortly after migrating to Drupal, to kind of just talking to a void/audience that may or may not be there, to mostly talking to myself and occasionally addressing the potential audience or specific people Part 2 started a few months ago after I finally (after way too long because I am nothing if not unreasonably stubborn) accepted the fact that I’ve been really, really struggling to keep on top of Drupal updates alongside everything else.
June ProgBlog #1: there is actually some for a change
The last week of May saw a bunch of random and mostly unrelated setbacks and I’ve been trying to frantically catch up ever since. This morning was icing as a dead tree fell onto the neighbour’s house. We heard the crack of the trunk breaking as it fell, thought it was thunder, and then knew something was up when we heard the impact and scurried out to investigate. Nobody was injured but their roof is going to need some repairs.
May ProgBlog #2: chasms
Tha gap isn’t even that big but that’s what it feels like right now. The wing membrane is being a pain in the system. And I thought I was going so well too. I attempted combining with a previous version where I’d tried bordering with triangles and eventually got this monstrosity which I hated but less than the other ones. I punched the bit with the triangle and the surrounding polys out and kind of inched along reconnecting things and eventually ended up with this which is only slightly less bad.