January ProgBlog #1: super-LATE-ive somewhat new

Oof I haven’t done a progblog since the beginning of December and that wasn’t even a progblog, it was a noprogblog x_x

So surprise surprise, the MacBook Air struggles with the kind of work I do. I had to keep toggling the particle hair on and off in Blender because adjusting things on my big rig was making that thing complain (it’s an i7 something or other with 32Gb of ram), the small rig was unusably laggy with the particles on.

NoProgBlog: bleh

Stuff is a mess right now. Don’t really want to talk about it as it involves other people (spoiler alert: nobody is dead yet and J and I are still together seeing as those are the things people seem to be jumping to). End result of that is my head went into interesting places that are hard to come back from and while I really tried hard to do some art to stabilise, well basically it didn’t work out, so buggerall got done.

November ProgBlog #2: splitting hairs

October ProgBlog 3 is technically November ProgBlog 1 and just isn’t called as such because I was a seriously sleep deprived idiot at the time.

Where I left off, I’d started on the hairs by doing the reasonably easy eyelashes and eyebrows first. Okay eyebrows are pretty easy, just make a density map and then comb. Eyelashes I always have to keep painting hairs on carefully and then combing equally carefully.

October ProgBlog #2: contains an attempt at Blender 2.9 bake notes

A bit of unexpected chaos happened on Friday and it kind of wiped me out.

And then it was followed by a kind of busy weekend.

Which of course means being up kind of late Sunday night (right now) trying to bang out a progblog like people actually care about or even understand my delirious blender rambling XD

This week’s shenanigans involved trying to get the perfect bake once I figured out how to bake. I could not get the perfect bake and I suspect it’s either something to do with my cage mesh or blender is super aggressively caching something or some combination thereof. So in the interests of getting the hell on with it I managed to blunder my way to a good enough bake and hopefully I’ll figure it out down the line.

October ProgBlog #1: rig testing

Missed a week again, oops :S I was supposed to post on the weekend I posted the last songpic but stuff happened, just not that.

Over the last week I finally managed to finish the retopo and apparently it has 8k odd faces with the mirror modifier, more once the subd modifier gets turned on, and probably more again when I get around to applying the mirror modifier which will probably be pretty soon (after I version save XD). I then chucked a rig in it and tried it out.

September ProgBlog #3: retopo home stretch 2 the sequel

In the spirit of failing to do more in the same amount of time, I ended up having to clean out the art cupboard (a job I’ve been studiously avoiding for the last 5 years, I also bought a cube shelf for it that fits a bit more perfectly than I thought it would) and will over the next week or so probably have to sort out the rest of the crap that I’ve been putting off and should have probably done during covid except that I took the opportunity to go hard on this thing instead.

September progblog 2 retopo home stretch

The last week has been more about trying to fit more stuff in, so work hours keep getting cut more and more and more (because apparently I shouldn’t be cutting sleep for some reason).

And then on Friday my problem shoulder exploded (either pinched a nerve or it decided to become a frozen shoulder, I will find out which presently I guess) because I had the audacity to…stretch (literally all I did was stretch upwards). By evening I was popping painkillers (I don’t take painkillers because I have an irrational aversion to them) so I could run kids to places they needed to be, yesterday it was less bad and today it’s less bad again but still there and still occasionally annoying.

September ProgBlog #1: playing with retopo addons

Those twisty horns from hell are so-called because they gave me a hard time when I was sculpting, a hard time the first time I was retopologising and a hard time this time round too but I got there eventually.

I started off using speedretopo.

I initially had some confusion about how to use bsurfaces with it but got there eventually (something about being in edit mode on existing meshes otherwise it helpfully starts a new one). I loved the space and bridge tools (wasn’t smart enough to figure out the gridfill and gstretch tools, think I did work out when to use relax eventually).

August ProgBlog #5: insane in the membrane

It’s the little things.

I keep getting told not to worry about the tiny little details, because no one will ever notice them. I do sometimes (depending on how long I’m staring at something that I didn’t make). I’m reasonably certain that people might not notice the little details when they’re there, but will definitely notice them or at least pick up something “wrong” when they’re not.

Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself when I’m obsessing about all those little details.

August ProgBlog #4: more fingers

Finally got done with the hands (or at least as done as I can be/am prepared to do).

This is actually the right hand. I usually work on the left side because I manage to get in my own way less on that side. I am showing off the right hand because I had to hide the right arm so I could start working on the wings.