How to make seperate puzzle pieces to piece together

FONSECAFONSECA Posts: 469
edited April 2018 in Hexagon Discussion

My memory is slowly going stinko, so be patient with me.

My questiion is how do I use a program like Hexagon to make a complete jigsaw puzzle with seperate pieces that can be put together and seperated? I seem to remember that I knew how to do this years ago, with alpha maps, and with some cutting/chopping method but my memory fails me now on this.

There are the "line" options of course, etc. I read some online methods people have posted on doing this (not here) but they sound absurdly complicated and there must be a way to do it quickly and with only a few steps. Tiredness is creeping in too, it appears.

I attached some pictures of puzzle models artists have made in the past.  

Puzzle 3D model - obj-3ds-c4d-dxf 1.jpg
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Puzzle 3D model - obj-3ds-c4d-dxf 4.jpg
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Post edited by FONSECA on
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Comments

  • If I remember correctly Gary Miller used Alpha Maps in the fan tutorial (as you know they're over at geekatplay).

  • FONSECAFONSECA Posts: 469
    edited April 2018

    I found a quick and easy way to make seperate puzzle pieces in Bryce using the terrain editor. I then exported the piece into Hexagon and it loaded up fine.

    I made an easy four piece puzzle pattern using a Photshop plugin as a test and then loaded the pieces into the Bryce terrain editor, saved each piece as a object file, and then loaded them into Hexagon. So what, yeah, yeah, yeah

    Here are the Fan modeling videos of Gary Miller. My only complaint is that I don't like using Vue but the videos are very instructive anyway.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGii4y0edrk

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0ftmT6slCw

    My favorite CG program is still Bryce, and I feel it is very sad that Daz3D is lettiing it die, and even David Brinnen has thrown up his arms in exasperation and moved on.

    I attached some snaps of my masterpiece, hah, ha, and the first pic was a boolean test that I tried but couldn't get working again. The remaining two pics are the Bryce terrain editor puzzle pieces which I feel are better than the boolean method.

     

     

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    hexagon puzzle all 4 pieces.JPG
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    Capture 2.JPG
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  • ShawnDriscollShawnDriscoll Posts: 375
    edited April 2018

    Very cool. I forgot all my Bryce since going over to Vue. Bryce always had that weird '90s X-GUI thing going on, from back in the day. I prefer GUIs that don't need explanation.

    Post edited by ShawnDriscoll on
  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136

    I found a quick and easy way to make seperate puzzle pieces in Bryce using the terrain editor. I then exported the piece into Hexagon and it loaded up fine.

    I made an easy four piece puzzle pattern using a Photshop plugin as a test and then loaded the pieces into the Bryce terrain editor, saved each piece as a object file, and then loaded them into Hexagon. So what, yeah, yeah, yeah

    Here are the Fan modeling videos of Gary Miller. My only complaint is that I don't like using Vue but the videos are very instructive anyway.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGii4y0edrk

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0ftmT6slCw

    My favorite CG program is still Bryce, and I feel it is very sad that Daz3D is lettiing it die, and even David Brinnen has thrown up his arms in exasperation and moved on.

    I attached some snaps of my masterpiece, hah, ha, and the first pic was a boolean test that I tried but couldn't get working again. The remaining two pics are the Bryce terrain editor puzzle pieces which I feel are better than the boolean method.

     

    Not so much exasperation, or indeed moving on, Brycing contines.  Only last week I finished recording another hour's worth of video for a new Bryce project.  Though it is true I have also taken up the use of Modo and UV layout and Substance and World Machine and any number of at least a dozen other bits of software, because when your hobby becomes your job, you need to get your hands on efficient tools.  Some of these tools, like Marvelous Designer or Poser drive me to distraction due to my incompatibility with their interfaces, but still, what they do is save time.  Bryce is fun rather than efficient and has great depth thanks to the forsight and ambition of its creators, but the role of an all in one solution is a difficult one without a continual development cycle to back it up - which is exactly the route that Modo and Substance have gone down incidentally.

    Attached, a Bryce render from last week.

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  • FONSECAFONSECA Posts: 469
    edited April 2018

    David Brinnen

    Glad to read you haven't left Bryce for good, and that you still continue to experiment with it. Did you quit your day job for a fulltime CG career?

    If I sent your attached render to a cousin of mine and told her it was a photo I took over the weekend she would probably believe it. I sent her a CG render I found on the web of a grungy trailer home and she thought it was a photograph. It's amazing how far CG graphics has advanced since I started with it in the late 1990s, just amazing. Can you believe any "photograph" is real these days; rather scary.

    Post edited by FONSECA on
  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136

    More like my day job quit me.  I was repairing household appliances, white goods, but falling build quality and cost of such items means that they have essentially become disposable and not worth repairing (even if you can get the parts).  That and the availablility of cheap credit.  More than once, I offered a £20 repair on a £250 item and was told that the money wasn't available and they'd have to get a new one instead (because while they had no cash, they could get credit).  And people like new stuff.  A repair is only restoring the status-quo, which is less than thrilling.  On the plus side, my current washing machine, for example, only cost me £20.  But my business was just evapourtating before my eyes.  So that's the story.

     

  • FONSECAFONSECA Posts: 469
    edited April 2018

    David Brinnen,

    Thanks for being so open about what happened with your day job.

    How are you doing financially bringing in "living" money from your CG related work? By "living" I mean enough money to pay all the utility bills, and buy food, and pay rent?

    There was a post a while ago in one of these Forums about making enough money from selling artwork and CG models and so forth, to live by, but how difficult that is. So far, I have only sold CG images and the most I have recieved from selling one image is on the average 250 dollars. That is "chicken feed" money when you consider how many days, and hours I spent making the image. So making a decent living by selling only CG images is not promising, unless one is like Duo (maybe).

    For a long time I have been very curious about the amount of money CG artists make, on a monthly basis,  from selling their models here at Daz3D and Renderosity, but the info seems to be "top secret". Can a CG artist who sells models continously, and is reasonably popular, make a living from that; pay the utility bills, buy food, and pay rent?

    In short, how does a CG artist survive financially from his/her artwork and lead a decent lifestyle and not have to be resigned to live in slum conditions in a bad part of town?

    Post edited by FONSECA on
  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136

    Well, let's see.  I think you are asking the right questions here, since many things are relitave just putting a baseling figure on it is missleading.  OK I live in a pretty run down place, there is high unemployment, a lack of jobs, drug problems and people do get stabbed, drowned and beaten to death (but again this all revolves around the drug problems and I guess that would be the same anywhere to a degree).  The up side is that it is not an expensive life as it would be in some of the nicer places in the UK.  And it is a rural area, which partially explains the problems, so at least I can get out and cycle if it is not too windy - it does tend to be a windy place.

    For me at least, such image work as I've been commissioned to do has not been as cost effective use of my time as making models.  So far... and bear in mind this experiment is not exhaustive or even complete.  I've been able to pay my bills and make a little headway in fixing things up.  This is how I organised it.  I got Wings3D for free and with the kind help and guidence of Jack Tomalin, set about making my first model.  Which took about 5 weeks in total time.  Getting good geometry, UV mapping, posing... that initial learning curve is pretty steep.  If you can get through that, then things get easier.  As soon as I could afford to do so, I got UV Layout to make UV mapping easier.  Wings3D I found hard work UV mapping.  Then when I could see that this was something I might like to do.  I got Modo.  Adapting to Modo from Wings was relitively easy, but bear in mind, I'd been watching Modo tutorials of an evening for several months waiting for a sale.  I found Peter Stammbach's tutorials partcularly helpful in this reguard.

    And so, that is how I have proceeded.  I look for software to solve particular problems, or as I did a few years ago, upgrade my PC - to speed up the overall process and make at least some of the tasks less ounerous.  And every three or four projects I take a break from work and spend a few days seeking out tutorials to try and improve my skill and understanding of the processess I'm involved in - because I recognise it is easy to become blinkered and develop bad habits and I want to always be getting a little bit better if I can.  And continue to do this as a job.  That's about the size of it.

     

  • FONSECAFONSECA Posts: 469
    edited April 2018

    Confession time for me, now. I hope it's not too boring. I will just describe some chapters of my life with CG.

    When I first starting using Bryce, in the late 1990s, I lived in a mediocre part of North Hollywood next door to a house of illegal-coyote-aliens who were extremely noisy. I called the cops on them but the cops could do nothing because of certain laws protecting illegals. Can you beat that. I ended up getting slugged by one of the illegals for telling him to be quit and that finally got the cops to do something about the situation. It also made my brother decide to help me move out of there.

    So all the Bryce artwork I created during those years was frustrating work, having to wear earplugs or listen to music with headphones turned loud, and living in that crummy area. I had a used car and could get away from the "hell hole" for periods of time and I was fortunate enough, in a way, to live very modestly off my dead mother's trust money which arrived in monthly checks, and handouts from my brother. My father left me absolutely nothing in his will because I hadn't become a scientist, or engineer; anything but an artist and especially not a musician which my father had failed at.

    The idea was that I would eventually start making big money selling my CG renders. HA, HA and HAH, that didn't pan out. The most I ever made was 1000 dollars for a series of images and I had to threaten the company to send  me the 1000 dollar check which they took 7 months to do. Most of the commisioners were a pain in the ass.

    My brother bought a retirement home in the Mojave desert and let me live there until he retired, while he lived in the the big city in a condominium. Peace and quiet for me at last with only the pleasant sounds of Quail calls, and yipping yapping packs of coyotes, to keep me company. But lonliness became a problem and I felt like that guy isolated on an asteroid in the 1960s Twilight Zone episode titled "The Lonely".

    Two years ago, or so, my brother lost the Mojave house to foreclosure, and his lawyer turned out to be a crook, and there is lawsuit in process and I ended up being kicked out, and I lost a bunch of stuff, and now I am living in a borderline "low-life" area north of Palm Springs. Luckily there is a Military Base close by that helps lower the crime level.

    30 years ago a young woman, who gave me the eye, needed a ride home one Sunday afternoon at an AA barbecue (yes I am an alcoholic too) and I turned her down. I have regrets about that, and now in my senoir years I fantasize about "what if I had taken her home and it led to something and we got married and my life would have taken a different direction....."   well she married another guy a few months later.

    Well it goes on from there ......

    For the last 6 months, or so, I have been doing the kind of things you are doing, with different programs though, and your descriptions of what you are trying to accomplish is an inspiration to me not to give up.

    Thanks!

    Post edited by FONSECA on
  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136

    Well that is quite a story!  I really don't know quite what to make of it, particularly the part that you are still thinking about something that happened 30 years ago.  So, the opportunities of the past, I've thought about this quite a lot with respect to things I've observed in my own life.  By chance I got in on the ground floor of a social media project, including share options which would have been worth... well... the competitor of the company I was working for was Face Book.  So... that's how it goes.  In social media there can be only one.  But the thing is, I believe we are all too quick to pave "the road not taken" with gold.  To take my own example, perhaps instead I had become unimaginably wealthy, and got myself the motorcycle of my dreams, and due to a manufacturing fault, the throttle stuck open and that lead to an accident and a life (a rich life) of incapacity and perpetual pain.  Then I would be looking back and wondering what if... from the other direction.  So I reckon, you have to just let that kind of thinking go, because it just takes up too much mental real-estate and contributes nothing to the challenges at hand.

    I'm pleased to hear that I've inspired you not to give up.  If you want to hit the ground running, I would suggest trying to team up with another PA who already knows the ropes and preferably one with a skillset in a complimentary area.  Part of the reason for choosing modelling over anything else is that it fits in at the very beginning of the development cycle meaning once I've passed on my stuff to the texture artist I am free to begin something new.  I'm not a multi-tasker.  I really only want to be thinking about one thing at once.  Another reason not to become lost in reveries over the past, because I just don't have the computational space in my head to do that and be effective at this job.  I would say that it is not enough to model, but to model effective is to model with UV mapping in mind - but to do that you have to go through the entire proccess, to appreaciate how your models can either make your UV mapping easy or horrendusly challenging.  Part of the reason for dedicating the effort to model mostly in quads is that it allows the surface to be more easily sliced up for mapping.  However, take that advice with a pinch of salt, since that is only my approach I don't know how other modellers go about the process - since it is, by its very nature, a soliatry activity.

     

  • Persona Non GrataPersona Non Grata Posts: 1,365
    edited March 2021

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  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 37,711

    I was going to say anything that generates a jigsaw puzzle image like a Gimp filter and a greyscale terrain editor be it Bryce as suggested, Carrara, Terragon whatever.

    or alternatively an illustrator file in Carrara's spline room, alpha to mesh in Zbrush and I am sure Blender has a way too!

  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    Selina said:

    Crumbs Boys !

    @Flash you really shouldn't wonder what if as there are too many permutations to consider. You could have ended up the husband she regularly cheated on, the battered husband, the one night stand, etc, etc. No, your life is now and each day is the fresh beginning of tomorrow's adventure so make it a good one !

    @David I recently bought your Bryce Mentoring DVD from Daz3D at full price so hopefully there's commission there for you.

    ..now what was it I came in here to look for (I'm at that age you know...)

    All the best you two,


    Selina

    Thank you Selina,

    I hope you enjoy the DVD content!  That was some undertaking.

    "Crumbs"... intersting, choice of words.  Makes me wonder if you were ever a fan of Danger Mouse?  More specifically his sidekick Penfold... voice by Terry Scott in the 1980's

     

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  • Persona Non GrataPersona Non Grata Posts: 1,365
    edited March 2021

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  • FONSECAFONSECA Posts: 469
    edited April 2018

    Selina and David,

    Another "windbag manifesto", and vulgar "exhibitionism" as someone called my posts years ago. lol

    If you find my personal history a bore, and roll your eyes, then scroll down to the Techie section below.

    Question: where is Flash coming from ... as the slang woud have it .....

    I have always had a "story- making" mind, and I was even considering a writing career with an emphasis on "screenwriting" in my late teens and early 20s. One of my teenage friends Mark Horowitz went on to write at least one successful low budget filmed screenplay. I don't know what became of Mark follwing that minor success.

    I was exceptional in my teen years with making a few silent Super 8 films and if my family conditions had been different I would probably have attended Film School at USC, or UCLA, and who knows, maybe you would be watching films directed by "Tim Fonseca" (my real name). Then again, as Selina would probably say, "You may have become another Ed Wood."

    My comment about that woman from 30 years ago is just one of many "what ifs", and I enjoy "what ifs" even if some are a bit emotionally painful. There is serious talk by reputable scientists that we are living in a "virtual reality universe" programed and constructed by ........???    If that is true I would call the designer a sadist and mad. That insane programmer could reprogram the lives of any one of us, anytime, and we wouldn't know it. Very Creepy, and there was a great episode from the 1960s Twilight Zone TV series that played with that idea, titled I believe, "And When the Sky was Opened" written by Richard Matheson. It is one of my top 5 favorite Twilight Zone episodes. By the way, the Gnostics played with this idea too, 2000 years ago.

    Mark and I were always dreaming up stories and I have continued to dream up stories and even sequels and story additions to films and books that I have enjoyed. How about  the Krell machine in "Fordidden Planet" actually being a "transcendence machine" and the Krell transcended themselves to another "realm" instead of destroying themselves. Food for the sequel. I could never completely buy the idea that the Krell, with their super intellects would be dumb enough not to know the basic discoveries of Freud and Jung about a Mr Hyde creeping about in all of us. So, I say the Krell, "Transcended" instead. (off with his head)

    Our course the artwork we create has the stamp of our character on it, and my CG images have to tell a kind of a story, or a hint of a story. I am not particularly interested in "realism" but in alternate possibilities, which is why I am a fan of the "Surrealists". It has got to be weird, or odd, or uncanny.

    In short, I don't sit about just "brooding" about the past; I play with my past and have fun re-writing it, and I also play with re-writing history and with what might have been. For instance, what if my country the USA had continued to send astronauts to the Moon in the 1970s and beyond, and now in the 2000s we had cities on the Moon, and people vacationing there. It could have happened.

    Enough, enough, of your blasted personal life, you "windbag" you .....  yeah, yeah

    Now for the techie stuff.

    It has been tough for me to get really, really, interested in CG modeling because, because ... well because it is so techie. When I do techie stuff my dreamy story mind wanders, but maybe once I can master techie modeling techniques then my story making mind could help with the originality of my model creations, hopefully.

    I haven't had much money for many years, so one of my David-like "strategy" plans for working effectively was to concentrate on mastering some "free" programs such as Blender for modeling, Gimp for art painting, etc. They are free, so I don't have to worry about expensive upgrades.

    But Blender, for me, is like learning the controls to fly the Starship Enterprise, forget it. So I have decided to "master" Hexagon instead which is another Freebie. Hexagon has a UV section so I can study that and move on from there for texturing models.Years ago, I bought Painter, Poser, Carrara, Bryce and even an older version of Vue. So I have those to work with still.

    I don't own Modo, and I tried Cinema 4, or whatever it is called, and didn't like it. Using it felt like flying a jet, and the only way that would be interesting is if a flying saucer flew past.

    The "multi-task" thing can be good sometimes, but the problem with it is that one can spread one's resources and energy to thinly and become as the old saying goes, "a Jack of all trades, but a Master of none." I have been through that too many times. Kind of like being a half-dummy, if that makes sense.

    Some of the programs that David mentioned  I have never heard of, so I am going to check them out.

    I posted two images by my favorite modern Surrealist Rob Gonsalves and they are ideas and images that could be replicated as a Bryce, or Daz Studio, or Carrara CG image without using much memory. I like ideas, and images, like this.

    The sun has set and the werewolves are roaming about. Talk to you all later

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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  • Persona Non GrataPersona Non Grata Posts: 1,365
    edited March 2021

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  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136
    edited April 2018

    Selina, an alternative rather than a euphemism, and perhaps the idea relates to the interdict against speaking the name of God or taking it in vain?  Unlike in some laws I could mentoin (see the case of Count Dankula going through the Scottish legal system), in this case, I think the "intent" is what really matters rather than the "interpretation".

    Flash, well, trying to deduce from the creation what was in the mind of the creator is a challenge enough.  If you then over lay that with the possiblity that the creation we experiance is a simulation in a creation beyond our experiance.  Then all bets are off!  And while these are interesting thought experiments in and of themselves, from a practical perspective, I'm not really that sure they can take us anywhere.  By that I mean, it is difficult to turn an abstract thought experiment into a tool to expose something about the nature of reality.  Which is where philosophy has some way to catch up with science, since science is very good at comming up with tools to pick the physical world apart into ever smaller bits and bobs.  For example, I'll put forwards the following questions for consideration.

    "Why is there something rather than nothing?

    Clearly there is "something".  Does the obvious existence of "something" exclude the possibility, past or future, of nothing?

    Is eternal "something" the only possible state because nothing cannot manifest itself?"

    And you could examine them for internal inconsistences of logic.  But the framing lanuage, might be faulty?  So lets say we go a step further down the rabbit hole and codify the questions and examine them Mathematically for consistency - but then you run into Goedels Incompleteness problem - which brings us around to one of my favourite quotes.

    Donald Rumsfeld stated:

    Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.

    And finishing off Douglas Adam's wisdom from the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.

    Slartibartfast: Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what's actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, "Hang the sense of it, and keep yourself busy. I'd much rather be happy than right any day."

    * * *

    Technical advice is much easier to give.  Find the software that you like best, rather than the one with the fanciest features - because if you are going to do this, you are going to be spending a lot of time with that software.  Modo I like because so much can be done with a dozen simple commands used in combination.  True Modo has fancy features, but I rarely use them.  I like it because I find the interface intuitive.

    Post edited by David Brinnen on
  • FONSECAFONSECA Posts: 469

    David,

    From your posts and comments, in various places, I sensed an "atheist" behind it all. Would you call yourself an "atheist" or an "agnostic"? Be frank please, no "word- squirming" in the manner of  "maybe I am, maybe I am not." Hah, ha      These Forums are not for posts concerning political, or religious, or philosophical debates, and they get "yanked away" quickly by  the axe of Cohole so I will not reply to your comments except to say that I am not an atheist.

    I decided to make an arrempt to learn how to pilot the Startship Enterprise, so I am downloading a 41 youtube video instruction collection titled "Blender Fundamentals". I am interested in learning how to "rig" because as a kid I used to draw goofy characters for fun and the thought struck me that maybe in my "dotage" I could model some goofy characters. rig them, and possibly sell them. I have always had a bias against the "stores" which began way back in the 2004, or so, but they are here to stay and I need the doe.

     

     

  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136

    Think... Carl Jung.

     

  • FONSECAFONSECA Posts: 469
    edited April 2018

    David,

    Hmmm, so you are a Jungian? There has been, and stiil is, "soccer match" hooligan hysteria about whether or not Jung was a Gnostic. I  am in the camp who say he was. That axe approaches .......

    I checked out some of the CG programs that you mentioned and at this stage I will have to put them on hold, such as Substance, Marvelous Design, UV Mapper, etc. Years ago when I bought Painter I was planning on using just that program for creating CG images, but I am not a great traditional paper/canvas drawer, or painter, so that idea flopped. I am good with a camera, and cinematograohy setups, compostion, though.

    Animation is another techinique I would like to learn, but it still requires the fastest and best computer equipment to do it adequately so that is out until I win the lottery.

    Post edited by FONSECA on
  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136

    Yes, I feel that the transendental mystics, Levi, Blavatsky, Crowley for example, are explorers within Jungian archetypical spaces.  So in that respect, even if he was not himself a Gnostic, Jung provides a framework within which it is possible to talk about the Gnostic experience, even if only as an epiphenomenon, devorced from the contraints of any specific doctrine.  Jung's ideas certainly do not deny a Gnostic interpretation - more of a Darwin than a Dawkins - I could easily see him in the role of Gnostic, but it might just be that he was just posessed of an incandescent intellect so far above the norm that to the rest of us it would appear transendent anyway?

    Aye, well I would not suggest you bothered with any new program, irrispective of cost, until you have had a chance to trial a demo.  And besides, it would not be wise to take on too much new stuff at once.  My first expansion was UV Mapper, because it was relitively inexpensive for the version I needed and because I was struggling with Wings's UV tools.  If however you find you are happy to get alone with Hexagon and it has tools that suit your needs, then there is no requirement to change until you find yourself running into problems.  My move to Modo was as a result in the rising complexity of my models eventually bringing Wings3D to a grinding halt.  I try to make my purchases pay for themselves where ever possible by (hopefully) improving my efficiency.

  • FONSECAFONSECA Posts: 469
    edited April 2018

    David,

    Good answer, and I am relieved that you display an open mind on these issues. I have had very horrible experiences in the past on non CG Forums debating "dogmatists" of one sort or another and that is why I no longer debate on Forums. You know how it goes, they call me a dogmatist or fundamentalist, and I call them the same thing, and the flames rise to the stratosphere. A waste of time.

    So if you had stayed with that "social media" prroject you may have become a billionaire? That reminds me of that musician who broke away from the Beattles band before they became multi-millionaires, and some guy who could have become as rich as William Gates if he had stayed with Gates budding company when it began.

     

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  • FONSECAFONSECA Posts: 469
    edited April 2018

    Selina,

    You wrote, "Thanks for sharing" 

    Your Welcome, and I always find it inspiring to read what fellow artists have struggled through, and are struggling through. It is a confirmation that Fate isn't just signaling me out for persecution, and that we are all in the same sinking boat paddling out water as fast as we can.

    Anyone want to share what bugs the hell out of them when they are trying to work on their computers. One of my small torments are pigeons cooing too much on telephone wires outside while I am trying to concentrate. I like Quail calls, and song birds, but pigeons I find annoying; "rats of the air" someone called them. 


     

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  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136

    There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
    Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. 
    Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio

    What do I know?

    As so the "social media" project.  No, I did stick with it, but FB became "the one" not this one.  I usually stick with things, perhaps longer than is exactly wise.

  • FONSECAFONSECA Posts: 469

    David,

    When I was an older teenager, or very young adult, one of my cousins who was very good at starting things but terrible at following through with them, managed to get us a small empty office room in NBC studio headquarters nearby to Universal Studios.  He would have made a great producer like Irwin Allen who was great at starting projects but then letting them go to the dogs. The "Time Tunnel" could have been a great long lasting series if Irwin Allen had followed through with it, but he let it die with cheap writers, and so forth.

    While standing at the door of the empty office I saw Tom Snyder, who was a bigtime television host at the time, striding by. Whatever happened to him?

    Well, my cousin did nothing with the empty office and we lost it. Typical of him, but we did get behind the stage of the Johnny Carson Show when Joey Bishop was standing in for him, and I got to see the famous Green Room where the celebrities waited and the place was like a liquor store with bottles of expensive booze all over the place.

    I read somwhere that Steven Speilberg used to sneak into Universal Studios, when he was very young, with a phony badge and that he found an empty office and illegally made it into his headquarters. He would creep about the studio lot watching how the directors made their films, and so forth.

    The Hexagon fans must be wondering by now what the heck this post is doing here, with all this personal stuff and  no "geek" talk.

  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136

    You could have all the software and knowledge of how to use it in the world, but at some point, you've got to want to do something with it.  In digital art, the balance (or maybe tension would be a better word) between creativity and practical application is quite striking.  The medium places a lot more limitations on expression in the initial stages of development.  If you were painting you might go in with broad strokes (and maybe in that there would be a happy accident to act as a catalyst - that is how it worked for me using traditional tools), in CG, you drop in a cubeboid - pretty strile, nothing much for the imagination to get a grip on there.  Maybe CG requires the artists that are drawn to it to be a bit more open in their view of the world because they have to look deeper into their minds eyes to see what they are going to create?  And then sit alone in a darkened room pushing buttons.

  • FONSECAFONSECA Posts: 469

    What started me down the yellow brick road of computer graphics was the program Painter with it's amazing abilty to realistically simulate traditional art media, and not having to maintain an art studio and supply it with expensive art materials which was beyond my financial situation anyway. Painter was an Art Studio in a box.

    So I came to computer graphics from a different direction, and for different reasons, than say a person who wants to do modeling and I don't want to exagerate my painting and drawing skills which are slightly above average but require a great deal of practice; frankly I would rather read a book.

    I still prefer Painter to Photoshop and have used it mainly for texturing image experiments. I did some basic modeling for some elements in my older images but nothing that  would qualify in the "gee-whiz" geek category. I was mainly interested in an image story.

    I have seen some great unbelievably detailed paintings artists have made just using the paint brushes of Painter, or Photshop, on the CG Society galleries.

    So I have my doubts about "modelers" having deeper insight. There are all kinds of CG artists and some are deep and some are shallow, and I have seen a lot of boring shallow medicore CG artwork at the CG Society galleries from both modelers and traditional CG brush artists.

    Some of my older artwork is crap too, and none of you are going to see it, hah, hah

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • David BrinnenDavid Brinnen Posts: 3,136

    Judging by your response I don't think I've managed to convey what I was getting at very well.  "Insight" is not the word I would have chosen.  The 3D canvas is a very blank canvas indeed and what goes into it is tightly controlled by the user.  There are few opperations that allow the same kind of free expression of "drawing, painting, waving a mouse or pushing a stylus... kinetic movement" - most often it is slicing, bevelling, scaling - no broad sweeps.  So the modelling process is far more pedestrian, which is why I suggested the modellers had to make more use of their minds-eye, because you don't get to so much of that free inspiration that comes with an initial sketch.  Unless I suppose you start with a sketch...

  • Persona Non GrataPersona Non Grata Posts: 1,365
    edited March 2021

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    Post edited by Persona Non Grata on
  • FONSECAFONSECA Posts: 469
    edited April 2018

    David,

    My approach, style, method, or whatever one calls it, is to first come up with an image idea, and hopefully an original idea. The biggest hurdle for me with CG imagery, or anything creative, is to come up with an original idea or an original variation on an old idea. It's very hard to come up with an original idea. I see a lot of great workmanship in many CG images, say at the CG Society Art Galleries, but very few really original ideas.

    It's always been that way in the art world, so maybe I am shooting myself in the foot, and fartin about too much, struggling for those original ideas, or styles. In the past when I couldn't come up with an original idea I would make, or try to make, homages to my favorite movies and books of the past. I stoped doing that, but could start again.

    The modeling for me is just an extension of the image idea, just a small section, or parts of a kind of puzzle. So you could say I start from some kind of "sketch".

    Hmm, reading this makes me realize that maybe I should have worked at using a program like Painter, exclusively, to digitally paint my ideas, and stayed away entirely from the 3D graphics approach.

    I attached another image I constructed in Bryce from 16 or 17 years ago. It was a kind of homage to my favorite Science Fiction space opera of all time, "Forbidden Planet". It was my feeble attempt at creating a scene within the gigantic Krell Machine.

    The second image is a variation on the first, this time turning it into a scene from the "Wizard of Oz"

     

    krell2.jpg
    640 x 480 - 108K
    kreloz1.jpg
    640 x 480 - 133K
    Post edited by FONSECA on
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