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Jul
02
2021

July ProgBlog #1: tattoo artistry

I've always had a great respect for tattoo artists.  I may or may not have mentioned the first time I did these tattoos that that respect increased by roughly an order of magnitude because unlike me they don't have undo buttons.  And somehow can make things look good from most angles.  I'm really feeling that again.

Also despite having had to do it for this version I still don't understand how people paint from colour blocks.

Perhaps because I finally have a vague idea what I'm doing, I managed to finish the dragon a lot quicker.

Zara's dragon tattoo v2

Jun
25
2021

June Progblog #3: scars and scripts

I did the scars as a bump map using bpainter.  Then figured out how to string normal and bump nodes so that everything would go in nicely.

Zara's skin nodetree in Blender 2.93

Normal map texture colour out plugs in to colour in of normal map node.  Normal socket out of normal map node plugs into normal in of bump map node.

Scar image texture colour out plugs in to height in of bump map node and alpha out plugs into strength in.  Normal out of bump node goes into normal in of another bump node if chaining more on or into normal in of the principled bsdf shader.

Jun
18
2021

June ProgBlog #2: Blender 2.92 notes - udim tiles

Alternate title: udim bulb.

That's my poor attempt at a play on words, not mapping a bulb using udims x_x

I definitely feel like a dim bulb at the moment.

I borked something severely while messing around with multiple single tile 8k maps, udim tiles with and without 8k tiles, and an add-on that bakes to udim tiles in preparation for this very progblog and ended up doing fun things to the ram

system monitor when I'm doing texturing or sculpting stuff in Blender

Jun
06
2021

June ProgBlog #1: always look on the bright side

The rework continues.

I finished sculpting (it was the digits that took the longest again, all 10 of them because I was working in mirror mode so the other 10 on the other side were getting done simultaneously) and baked the normal map.

The first time it was yellow apparently because I didn't use a cage.  I don't know why one was needed but apparently it was a thing that was needed so I checked that box but got it to extrapolate 1mm or 1cm (can't remember which) rather than making a cage mesh like I did with Red.  That one came out blue/purple/pinkish like it was supposed to.

Now I'm painting out the seams

May
28
2021

May ProgBlog #5: reeeeeeeeeeeee 2 the sequel

I'd finished the reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetopo by the end of the last progblog and was working on transferring the texture maps.

Only something went kind of horribly wrong and things were getting transferred oddly (I could see the shapes but they weren't where they were meant to be).  I eventually decided to just redo the sculpt and after a moment of confused panic as it's backwards to how I was starting to normally do things (sculpt, retopo, bake) and I was trying to be careful of the shape of the original mesh, when it entered my thick skull that I can just shrinkwrap the base mesh, and nuts I went.

May
14
2021

May ProgBlog #3: meh

There's been a few sucky days and it's basically not going to improve until I can get one specific task out of the way and I'm getting seriously annoyed with the blocker.

Once done I'm not dealing with it again.

On the bright side, there has been a number of great days (if busy) because my parents are up, so everything is generally going to be great once this mess is over and done with.

And then with some luck I'll start making appreciable progress again x_x

I'm finally onto the feet of the reeeeeeeeeeeeeetopo.

not too far off done with Zara retopo in Retopoflow in Blender 2.92

Apr
16
2021

April ProgBlog #2: Blender 2.92 notes - library overrides

I spent what I could of the week and the weekend just gone (including staying up way too late which I want to get out of the habit of but I'm really feeling an insane amount of time pressure at the moment) trying to figure out how I was going to set up linked library overrides through files to have the characters set up how I want.

Because of course it wasn't straight up just linking things in and having them work, that would be too easy (and also some incredible magic under the hood but you know I had to try).

Currently my plan (to some value of "plan" is:

idea for how to set up asset library thing for Blender 2.92

Apr
04
2021

April ProgBlog #1: Blender 2.92 notes - slightly updated particle hair rig

Finally fought through the painful lag and got rid of all those stupid spikies.

Blender 2.92 particle hair unconvincing ponytail

This is the most unconvincingly tied ponytail in the history of the known universe and my brain is spazzing between not caring anymore and freaking out because it doesn't look how I want. It's driving me to drink.

Not really, I just happened to have Midori and lemonade on my desk at the time.

I am seriously tossing up between investigating something like Hair Tool and just waiting longer for the new hair system to drop.

Then I forgot how to rig hair -_-

Mar
26
2021

March ProgBlog #3: do you really wanna live forever

Title just because I was listening to Youth Group: Forever Young.  I don't know about forever (that's a pretty bloody long time) but I definitely want to live long enough to get all these stories out (also a pretty bloody long time, probably longer than I've got, which is why I'm constantly semi-joking about cures for aging).

Today was a coding day and I started off strong (and a bit late) and then the outlaws came round to hang out (and cleaned because they can't help themselves, not that I'm complaining XD).  Got back into coding (for slightly too long) but made some good progress (for me, learning, so a lot of the stuff is mindlessly, laughably easy for people who know what they're doing) like figuring out how vue-router works.

Feb
27
2021

February ProgBlog #4: I see colours!

Still trying to get used to the schedule I set for myself.  I'd love to say I'm getting there but I'm really not, quite the opposite in fact.  I still want to kill problems and I still want to just finish whatever I'm working on at the time (which is always stuff that is going to take a long time because it's the nature of the beast, and less common but still more common than I like, because I've completely misjudged how long something will take) or also infrequent but still too frequent, something goes wrong somewhere like a computer crash or Blender acting up and I'll lose a pile of work that I then just want to get back to where I was before I stop.

Today was a js day (scheduled days are Monday and Friday apparently) and exactly nothing exciting happened, there was just a lot of me trying and failing to figure out how to save a resorted order (I have some ideas, and am also trying to get J to help).