modelling
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.
April ProgBlog 2: headway
During my manual migration I have been cringing at all my old artwork and rediscovering a few gems such as part of a conversation I had with one of my friends about 3d back in 2013. They said: Lol shame there is not one 3d app to rule them all that does ALL the things and is moddable to suit the individual’s work flow I replied i would like One App that had a workflow and was split like Lightwave (though there’s thought of unifying Lightwave, i was really pissed about it when i first heard about it, then more recently now that i’m better at this stuff i realised i don’t care if they unify it as long as the workflow doesn’t change too much and i can still box model) with a scupt mode as awesome as Sculptris that also integrated animatable sculpting/morphs like ChronoSculpt and had cool retopo tools like ZRemesher from ZBrush or BSurfaces from Blender and a dynamic paint mode like Blender or Sculptris but probably easy like Sculptris but that can update UVs on the fly and a rigging toolset that’s easy as either Genoma in Lightwave or whatever Blender has (haven’t tried but apparently good) and definitely less crashy than Genoma deep breath in
April ProgBlog #1
I would have really, really, really liked to have had this thing done and dusted and been moving on to the next bit by now but it persists in being relentlessly annoying. But I got onto a roll over the last couple of nights (which as my rolls usually do resulted in me forgetting to go to sleep) and made some headway. Most of my problem was having two direction changes very close to each other.