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Apr
19
2023

April ProgBlog #2

I'm still reasonably happy with how it looks given that they're polygons and I'm still internally screaming.

image 264

This is a great case for geonodes.  Sadly that's beyond my meagre capabilities.  I also had to fix a topology nightmare on the shoulder which I completely forgot to screenshot probably because I was trying to remember if I'd been drunk when I did it (spoiler: highly unlikely as I haven't gotten past tipsy for a very long time).

Apr
06
2023

March Homeschool Miscellany

We accidentally had two excursions this month. I'm not sure whether that makes us "caught up" due to not having one last month or able to chill next month given that the first and second months tend to be organisational and transitional.

The last time we went to the Gravity Discovery Centre was in 2010. Unfortunately stuff just didn't occur to J and I, for whatever reason I thought that we were only going for the night thing even though their night things always include entry into the rest of it, so I didn't cancel roleplaying, and J assumed we'd be roleplaying and didn't mention it. And it was unfortunate as the kids would have made the entire solar system walk now, before we only managed to get up to Uranus before we had to turn back.

Apr
03
2023

April ProgBlog #1: the insidious GAPS!

That's not an acronym, just me screaming in annoyance.

The underside of the wing was the absolute worst thing ever as no matter how I moved the feathers, gaps kept appearing.

image 250

Sunday was a super slow day to begin with as the bigs and I were recovering from doing a show on the Saturday (they were more tired than me as they were the ones actually flipping out and stuff, I was just kind of trying to help direct as I'd been unexpectedly thrust into that role as the coach who had been supposed to be doing that job had unfortunately come down with something the night before).

Mar
27
2023

March ProgBlog #3: just ugh

That feeling when you're the only one that knows that you did stuff because it doesn't look like much changed at all.

That was a big part of why I decided to just let the streak break than try and push a late progblog.  The other reason was that all the other stuff was a huge fight (some of it physically fights, or at least shouting matches, but mostly just the usual struggle trying to keep on top of things).

image 266

Stupidly I missed a whole row in that screenshot, this is what happens when your naming system is descriptive enough but you forgot what you were doing.

I think the layering is somewhat working out better, and I managed to resolve some issues I was having on the hands.

Mar
15
2023

March ProgBlog #2: not enough prog

Another day another not doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

Sunday was just a hard slog of realising that I'd completely munted everything and that the feathers are actually on stalks before going into the skin.  I versioned the model to see if doing that would solve some layering problems I'm having.

image 265

And also making the shafts thicker while I'm about it.

minds out of the gutter @meesterboom and @galenkp

I didn't start over, the other feathers are currently hidden so I can see what I'm doing.

Mar
06
2023

March ProgBlog #1

At some point when I was rethinging my schedules, I decided that first Sundays were going to be mopping and windows days. Then promptly missed February.

The first weekend of March was a bit intense as J was in charge of scheduling the excursions and decided to schedule them both on the same weekend for whatever reason. We went to an Aboriginal Astronomy event at the Gravity Discovery Centre on the Saturday night and then went shooting at Topshot the following morning. I'll write a tiny bit more about them with the metric boatload oh photos in March Homeschool Miscellany.

Mar
05
2023

February Homeschool Miscellany

I had asked J to book the Aboriginal Astronomy thing at the Gravity Discovery Centre for this month's excursion but as he had a lot of work on he kept forgetting/not getting around to it and finally booked it for next month.

Mar
02
2023

February ProgBlog #4: another day another row

And another late blog without much prog.

The wing underside is a pain in the system to work on as the double shoulders and the location means I routinely end up inside the mesh even when I'm aware of where I am and even expecting it to happen and thus trying to avoid it.  I think this is a minor downside to having cursor depth active but then again at least I remain in the area as the other option is ending up somewhere in space and having to press the home key and hope something is selected to home in on (or select something from the outliner if nothing is selected).  I find close in quicker to reorient.

image 251

Feb
22
2023

February ProgBlog #3: feathering

Sibling dearest and I are trying to initiate our project chats again.  The project chats were a video call where we'd talk about what we were working on and it would kind of be like the good old days where we'd actually be sitting next to each other and would chat and occasionally look over to see what the other one was doing.

We've had to replace looking over with screenies (screen sharing would be a complicated setup as while she uses the same machine for the video call and work, I don't, and that would probably cause her connection to drop and people in my house to complain about me nomming all the bandwidth) but it's definitely better than nothing.

We also switched to doing it during the day as I once more designated entire days to working on things and as it's on a weekend it's convenient for her too.

I'm still placing millions upon millions of feathers.

Feb
14
2023

February ProgBlog #2: it'll all be worth it in the end...right? Right?!

At least that's what I keep telling myself as I'm internally screaming my way through laying out polygon feathers and thinking about how the curve/particle feathers were easier (even if I couldn't get them to look nice) and there will be more experienced people than me out there facepalming and headdesking or both like why the bloody hell did you go and overcomplicate it like that for when you could have just done {some technique I don't know about that does the same amount of work in less time with better results}.

This malarky is purely because I wanted to be able to assign materials per feather.

image 244