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Been far too long,
I've been trying to get back into the swing of things, and 2020 just keeps being 2020 with some things dragging out longer than they should and other things just getting worse. (ScienceMag article) (Scott Manley discription vid)
So I missed Nvidia's launch of the RTX3060ti today, and in all honesty, I didn't miss much from someone that mostly uses GPUs for OpenGL 3D editor windows and Iray. In short, if your sitting on a 12GB Titan X, then the downgrade to 8GB just isn't worth it at all. If you're like me with a more peasant budget in the GTX1070 range with 8GB, the memory alone makes it a sidegrade for scene sizes. So really it's only worth it for gaming or things that the 'faster' bit really matters a lot. Gamers Nexus (vid), JaysTwoCents (vid), and others have cool vids on the thing, tho for me it's just a big 'thud', especialy with pricing all over the place compared to the GTX1070non-ti's launchday MSRP. lol. Zen3 looks a hell of a lot more enticing at the moment.
I have so much going on. There are 3 elves I started tossing together into a render only to get dragged away, zen3 happened and I was delinquent in setting my alarm clock for that, and I'm trying to dig up some info for something apparently google doesn't want me to find, lol.
So it's been an interesting few months, to say the least.
with the edit function broken for inseting pics and links, lets try this.
While fussing with Sakura8 and looking at some cat/fox like variants of the VR chat figures, I discovered that the Catgirl Megapack ears and tail have much-appreciated zoning and UV mapping that uses the figure maps in a way that doesn't 'required' it to be used only the maps included in the catgirl set.
That is a pleasant surprise, as my initial thought was I would need to hide a massive squarish blotch on the figure behind cloth's hair with limited camera angles.
the tail is a bit thin for some of the VR chat variations (Ahri, fox, wolf, Artemisblue, etc), however, it is nice the zoning was done the way it was and uses the default genesis UVing for the geograft mesh replacement area. I'm still fussing with the figures, so I'll get back to that. There is a thread over 'yonder' about the Sakura8 geograft eyes, there are options, so that is mostly a footnote here.
As for the Grand Proto Khopesh, I'm still tossing some ideas around in 3D land. For this example, I'll recruit Gypsiangle Shyla, because I feel bad about not getting to her in a former project, and she has some nice fingernail options to have fun with. The outfit is Bliaut (tung-in-knots) outfit with the D-force "self collide" working very well. Thanks to whoever implemented D-force self collide, makes life so much easier.
I am by no means remotely close to even a novice shad with knowledge of medieval weapons, I'll refer to him on just about all that isn't archeological references I dug up myself, and I'll still refer to him on those, lol.
I'm also not looking to become an 'expert' in all things weapon-related in the process, I just don't want to end up with the impossible fantasy weapons like what's in some video games.
as Skallagrim points out (in this YouTube vid), not all swords have a full crossguard due to the style of use not needing it, and there are very effective swords that don't have one. just a nub of sorts to prevent the hand from sliding up onto the blade. as for straight out, pointing up away from the hand, or down, finding Pros and cons versus wielding styles has been difficult, aside from Shad pointing out that a downward-facing point on the crossguard can be detrimental to the arm or wrist of the person holding the sward. in my example, I worked around that by making it a tad more triangle-shaped rather than downward facing points like on the master sword from Zelda (shadiversity vid), I would still refer to the master sword as having an upward-facing 'trap' the way it's shaped, rather than a straight-out 'barricade', or downward-facing 'deflector'. I'm also aware that what I'm making is more like a modified poleax than a sword, so that changes things, and also affects the handle taper or shape that I have found similar lack of information so far.
most of what information is out there for hand grips is very modern-day. I am aware that different handle shapes can drastically affect the usability of something, however, I never looked into it more than a particular screwdriver or pliers is comfortable to use or not, before now. I found a few examples of bronze age Egyptian handles, tho there more King Tut era, and for one-handed items.
for the Proto Kopesh, I need to go about eleven-hundred years before Tutankhamun to a time closer to Pharaoh Narmer (2500bc, not quite Narmer 3150bc). I did find what appears to be an era and region-specific reference (from Facebook), however, it's one-handed.
that particular straight handle with outward tapering ends, I'm not too convinced it would work stretched out to a two-handed grip shape. Also, it's not that this must be 2 handed as much as it's to get the counterweight 25cm down from the crossguard due to the length of the blade. So I have a lot to consider and a few ideas to just try out.
(references so far)
foam swards shadiversity.
historical sword sizes (hoplite handle ref).
The TRUTH about the KATANA, part 1: Introduction
Wiki.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khopesh
morning computer, can I edit posts today? ... NOPE, Sorry Fred and sabby, I'd link stuff but daz won't let me today. well, in short, whoever made the Promos for Nora is "an absolute expert". The hair used has no adjustments for ears at all listed on the page, making wisps over the ears combined with elf ears without adjustments out there in blender Z-brush Hexagon D-former territory. Also, I'm having some difficulties figuring out how the makeup options are supposed to work as the maps appear to be MIA/wrong-type and the 'Markings' path presets appear to do nothing at all (in Daz Studio 4.14). If the makeup presets are supposed to be loading a geo-shell, it's not doing that, it's not even kicking an error, it's just not doing anything.
Now the ear shape is nice, and the 2 shape options for the head and body (2 for each) are very FWSA Wachiwi pleasant surprise reminiscent. The regular no-makeup maps appear to be ok in 3delight, just not sure about the Iray only makeup stuff (including the hair) that tends to be very iffy if you use anything other than Iray (3delight, Arnold, RenderMan, reality/octain/lux, etc). I'm guessing I'm supposed to figure out where the makeup maps went, pile them into Photoshop/Gimp on top of the face and arm maps, just to make them work, guessing. I do see some mascara/blush/shadow/whatever-its-called-around-the-eyes maps, those look like fun to play with. I need to dig around more, I'm sure I'm missing something (Dezzi's makeup does work???). As for the hair, I may have something kicking around that does work with elf ears (and 3delight).
(edit) Me can edit, hmm, maybe it was a glitch.
morning computer, can I edit posts today? slight update, looks like the blank pics in the map folder, are actually translucent PNGs that I guess are supposed to somehow outline where the face and arm tats belong. I just made the mistake of not selecting one when I looked at the folder so they just looked blank. I 'may' be able to do something in Gimp with that, I'm just not sure how to extract the RGB values from the color presets that don't work. As pointed out in the former post, Dezzi's makeup options do work, so I'm not sure what broke with Nora.
something a bit fun and sort of simple. I needed a simple holographic-like earth to have hovering over some one's hand, and I just didn't feel like spending over a hundred dollars for something overcomplicated that wasn't meant for use in daz, lol.
So I then looked for and found a simple map that goes on a sphere, which worked better than I thought it would. the sight has some good info, and the ocean mask map was all I used.
https://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/earth-cycles
I made a sphere 1 meter in size, duplicated it as 99% scale at Y of +0.5 to center it, and a 3rd at 98% size at a Y of +1.0 again to center it. Outer being the outward-facing land, middle as the backing of the land as viewed through the other side of the hologram, and the innermost sphere as just a blue-ish ocean. I didn't need it that complex, and due to it being a small prop the opacity map trick looks good enough. Colors settings was a personal whim, and super easy to set up with the land-masks.
so, overall looks kind of cool.
the render came from thinking about a lot of SFIA vids I had clicked through the last few months. with the sheer amount of stars in the Milkyway galaxy, and then the incredible number of other galaxies we can see, it's almost like counting the number of sand grains on a beach, many. Even if the percentage was so small that I couldn't fit all the zeros after the decimal point in a post here, that's still thousands of other worlds at the minimum. so I can only guess to them the earth is in two categories, one they don't even know Earth exists, the earth could vanish tomorrow and they wouldn't even notice earth is that insignificant to them, or the aria areound sol is like a nature preserve in a way, like an ant farm on a bookshelf that exists at their discretion. The simple fact earth hasn't been stepped on by accident so far by another civilization that could easily be billions of years older than earth, implies that if they know the earth exists, they have been tiptoeing around sol to avoid stepping on it by accident. if there was an international trade route right past sol, I think it would have been detected by now, especially with the kinds of active-sensors that would glow like stars needed to detect interstellar dust that would need to be dealt with by the ships traveling that trade wrought. There is also the chance that like an ant looking at a locomotive or semi-truck, earth just doesn't comprehend what a trade route looks like when ships are traveling down it, lol. it's an interesting thought with interesting implications, especially that human vs ant farm parallel, lol.
I did have another thought about Dyson swarms, and maybe the heat output from that much energy collection just isn't feasible to cool longterm with thermal radiation alone, and venting gas to cool just isn't that efficient quantity of materials wise for the long run, so maybe swarms of habitats just don't get to the point of blotting out stars the way some think it would, maybe, it's a thought. always a joy to watch the sims4 over at GSP's channel (YT vid), and today there is a new SFIA vid (low tech type 2 civilizations, looks good).
I did notice a bit after the fact, skyline hall was used in a scene from one of them cool SFIA vids. looks good.
I hope this isn't to embracing for the PA's, however it did spur a lot of random thoughts, and I think I should also attempt to clarify what is and isn't. At first, I wasn't sure if the top of the ear was an artifact of two different elf ear dials puling out different mesh lines to the point, or if it was some kind of 'composite' mistake.
neither Jingle or Belle's ears by themselves have that double top ridge-thing. I do like what is there for shaping dials, however, I can also assure you that mixing belle and jingle's ears do not result in that fish fin spine effect.
so, all good, even mixed the actual result looks good, it's just not quite the fish fin-like thing that gen7 G3F Indago has, and even that is more a shape of the back edge than fish fin ridges.
in all honesty, I don't think the mesh density exists on G3F or G8F for a good set of fish fin ears, so that probably won't happen without them being a geograft (and good luck using maps not made for the geograft with that, lol).
so, as odd as it may sound with a G8F outfit and G8F hair, on a G8F figure, I honestly think that was just an oops of 2 figures superimposed to make the promo (one the outfit was fitted to, the other being Belle in the promo the outfit was cut and pasted over the top of), and the ears didn't line up perfectly, creating that false edge. it would have been cool if that was the shape as it does look cool in the promo, I just don't think the mesh density is there for it, yet now I'm tempted to try in hexagon. a mistake, that had me thinking about all kinds of stuff not specific to that PA's figure.
So in closing, I'll leave y'all with that impromptu render as I go back to look at other Christmas stuff that's been lingering in DIM download limbo.
other cool Sharkims stuff, I do like the watergun one, it's cool. reminds me of the days of chasing toys-r-us employees around with nurf guns in the store, lol
enjoying that 32oz GeneriCorp cup. nothing like a huge cup of coffee to accelerate productivity, increase the stick-to-it-ivness, and even grow hair on your back (got hair on your back, it will move it to your shoulders), lol. And the other usual AvE like stuff.
There were a lot of nice gifts floating around, and I do appreciate them. As for the render, well, something I'm working on that I have to make a few diagrams to help illustrate the limitations of a proposal I had just read. anyone that understands the illumination of limited sized surfaces from a distant point of light should be able to follow the thought I have.
I guess "array" has become the 'HD' or '3D' or 'GAMER' of the science community of late. Don't get me wrong, arrays are incredibly good for the directionality of strong signals. the problem is with weak signals like what you get back from a space rock when you attempt to send a pulse out to it to measure the distance. rocks are not that big compared to planets, and the distances make matters even worse for radar. Green bank and that other dish in china is cool, they just lack a transmitter to do radar function, and I doubt they were even designed to do so (adding a transmitter would probably have detrimental tradeoffs for the other uses of those facilities). Putting radio dishes on the moon, will NOT "replace" Arecibo.
The greater the distance to the rock, the more your radar pulse spreads out resulting in less of your signal even hitting the rock to be reflected off in all directions. coincidentally, out of the tiny portion of the radar pulse that hits the rock, an even smaller portion actually gets reflected back in the direction of the earth.
now, make matters worse, the sensitivity of an array is actually limited by the size of each dish that's collecting signal for its heterodyne/detector circuit. that circuit is kind of like a solar panel, there is a minimum amount of signal it needs to even start to kick out a voltage to be measured (sil 0.7v, ger 0.3v, Schottky 0.135v about, depending on the current going through the diode), even if the noise floor is reduced to zero kelvin, there is a minimum it will respond to before your just measuring random space noise and contamination from the rest of the equipment. on the moon, that noise is even worse by the way (less magnetic field to deflect ionizing radiation), and even burring the equipment requires a space-radiation shielded waveguide up to each dish (AK, more stuff to launch to the moon). say arbitrarily, a 1-meter solar panel needs 0.1 lumens hitting the surface to 'start' to kick out a voltage. It doesn't matter how many panels you put on the far side of the moon to detect starlight hitting the moon at less than 0.1 lumens per meter from a particular star, adding more panels does nothing for you. ok, so like some solar farms on earth, ye set up a dish to collect that light and focus it on each solar panel to increase the number of lumens from that star hitting each panel, you need a dish big enough to get more than 0.1 lumens on the solar panel. radio dishes do work in the same way, however, I doubt anything larger than a 10-meter dish would be reasonable today for a moon launch.
with a 10 meter dish, there is still that noise floor and weak signal problem. now you could use waveguides to gather that signal at a central location to excite a single detector. However, those waveguides will have to be variable length to tune the wave propagation timing with the direction the dishes are pointing so all the signals hit the detector at the same time. also to compound that, the waveguides will need to be heavily shielded from space radiation to prevent noise from wiping out whatever scraps of radar return you got from the space rock.
(source article post)
That's going to be a lot of rocket launches for that much stuff. Bigger dishes would also be more rocket launches. To truly do the job, the dishes would need to be way larger than tens of meters (more like, hundreds of meters across each). Do the array thing, yes, but the dishes need to be huge.
I don't think the observatory on the far side of the moon is completely a bad idea. I just think it would be better to set up a regolith refinery first, so your not shipping tons of materials dedicated to a single thing, that won't help you make other things on the moon or sustain your crew there, to reduce the number of rocket launches required, and time it takes to get something working.
There is also the small issue of power for the radar transmitter. it may surprise many, those spacecraft flight computers are nothing like the 300 or 400 or 500 watt graphics cards, thousand-watt processors, with computers having 1200 or 1600 watt power supplies being the norm today, Space Flight Computers on spacecraft, run on scraps.
with a decent solar array for inner solar system craft, and an RTG for outer solar system craft, you're looking at maybe 200 or 400 watts, for EVERYTHING, gyros, science platforms, data recorders, system controls, and including the transmitter to send signals back to earth. I don't think batteries would quite cut it for the length of time the far side of the moon is facing away from the sun, and I don't think a ring of solar panels around the entire moon would be considered sightly by many on earth, so RTGs is probably the way to go. now you could probably cram a 200 watt RTG in with a 10-meter dish in a single rocket launch, to eventually get 16 dishes or so on the moon, plus a few more launches for the control system and support facility for all the dishes. That is a far cry from the two-Mega-watt transmitter that is now smeared across the rockface at Arecibo. launching a 2-megawatt generator to the moon, I don't think that's possible with any rocket available today or from history. not to say, most of the weight ye send to the moon, will be fuel for the descent to the surface so your craft doesn't become a skidmark on the lunar terrain. A 2megawatt power plant is something you will have to mine, refine, and build "In Situ". Doable, just not this year, and mind y'all, with that 2MW transmitter decorating the rocks of Arecibo, earth is blind to space rocks right now. Also, that B612 thing that's been in my signature since the dawn of time, well, the Sentinel Mission is not ready, so earth is truly blind.
I think rebuilding Arecibo must be on the table, it will be quicker and cheaper, and we can make it better. Sympathies to the SETI crowd for the loss, however considering that earth won't see it coming (YT vid), Mr. and or Miss SETI may be the ones doing the archaeological excavations to find out what humans were, lets just make sure that doesn't happen, ok.
folding space antenna ref.
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Deep-Space-Network-Telecommunication-CubeSat-Chahat-Hodges/8cd1acef54715d2048fae27e02fde7d57874300b
AKA, 50cm is 0.5 meters, for those out there like me that sometimes the mind just doesn't connect with just how big or small given numbers are for some things. yes, ye can fit a lot of those 50cm dishes into something that weighs as much as a Tesla, however, that total weight includes the landing rockets, fuel for landing, transmitter to talk to home, power source, and the electronics to run the thing. Also, how are you going to land these things next to each other without destroying the dishes ye already sent up there. are the dishes going to be strong enough to handle the rocket exhaust from the one landing right next to it? how are you going to link them once up there, humans running cables, rovers, or plugs at the ends of robotic arms? the moon has less gravity than the earth, it isn't devoid of gravity, so the things will need some structural integrity once deployed. I do have a million small point curiosities with such an endeavor. things I'm sure any space colony will also need to sort out for building the colony.
for around 2 years and change, I have been passively looking around for a particular ship model, knowing full well what was described in the interstellar travel compendium (YT vid) was something very different from what was shown as an artist's visual reference for events being described.
I'm still going to attempt to make what was described as my mind has been working out the particulars of what was described, as Isaac said, "it is the original ship, for a given value of original" lol. having been overhauled, modified, changed, and upgraded the entire time it traveled from solar system to solar system to the edge of the galaxy, then looking out through the galactic void at the next galaxy over and saying "Why not", lol.
I am kind of ecstatic to fumble across the ship model, oh and mars looks incredible using Pluto's skybox (daz is hiding Alvin Bemar's mars one, sorry if I forget to add the link if it ever returns to the store). As for the ship, well, I can't complain too much about something that was intended to be a low-poly game model. that said, there are a few things that I find just a bit of a meh, considering what it was intended to represent by someone that didn't make the thing, it was probably the closest thing they could find that was "close enough" (from "Colonizing Alpha Centauri" YT vid).
there is also the hovering ring not connected to the rest of the ship trope as well, however maybe it's held there by magnetism and that fixed-mount radar thing is just a data link to the rest of the ship, lol. in fairness I do think it's a bit inside out compared to how an actual rotating habitat would be done, with the habitat drum inside a non-rotating hull frame covered in supplies as a RAD shield, and a vacuum sleeve to reduce the friction of the rotating drum held in place by magnets that double as an ionizing radiation shield generator. That all said, it is nice there is a purchase option as all too often when I do find models I want they tell me to go pound sand, or the spaghetti-mesh turns into something resembling an exploding potato in 3delight, when the thing loads at all.
so in any case, I am ecstatic to have fumbled across one of the models used to depict SFIA Unity.
I'm also ecstatic it's not a hundred dollar mess that needs to be rebuilt from scratch to be usable in 3delight. Thanks much CGPitbull (from Sketchfab), I do like the work a lot and I feel 35usd is a fair price.
so, looks like it's been an interesting few weeks while I've been consumed with sorting out beams and stuff in 3D land for something. we can ignore the fear-mongering of the anti-right-to-repair lobbyists trying to scare people away from using a pocket compass. That's why the 'magtrometer' on the pioneer craft was on a longer boom than the RTGs, had nothing to do with getting the magnetic field sensor away from the spacecraft's electronics so it could measure the magnetic field of the planets it was flying past, lol.
ok, I'll try to stop the Robert Sumwalt like ranting now. If I could get him a cup of coffee or beverage of choice as a token of thanks for the incredible work, I would, much respects. 
so, the past month I have been consumed with playing in 3D land, one project I am not ready to share or discuss just yet.
I can assure you that it is incredibly unlikely a normal pocket compass would 'explode' under normal use, and even under extraordinary circumstances (The C4 is the dangerus part of that equation, not the normal pocket compass it's strapped to), I doubt you could get a pocket compass to disintegrate in a dangerous way, even if you lob it at a planet at a significant fraction of light speed, it would be cheaper to just use rouge Kyper belt space rocks instead for such uses (they also have more mass, lol). don't click the Louis Rossmann 'magtrometer' reference YouTube vid link just yet, there is a real issue that I found out about while enjoying a plainly difficult vid (yes I did like it, I just don't click like till after watching vids as I'm not a shill-bot, lol)
so, there is a particular make/model of PCIe riser cable, that has a power trace unprotected and close to one of the mount holes for the cable end. after a few mounting-cycles, the mounting screw wears off what little PCB material is separating the trace from the screw, allowing the +12VDC to be shorted through the screw to the grounded chassis of whatever computer case it is in (it need not be the particular NZXT case in question). so them cables are a fire hazard to anyone that gets one and is not aware of the risks and falls victim to the very danger they pose. akin to some unfortunate firewood gatherers that fumbled across a discarded RTG and thought its core was just a benign heat source, or the many cases of unfortunate metal scrapers that are unaware that some medical radiation therapy cancer treatment equipment has radiation sources in them. as for the PCIe riser cable, Gamers Nexus and crew verified with spectacular results (YT vid) that the cable is very much a fire hazard, and JayzTwoCents dove into the source of the cable some (YT vid). That cable is a problem so long as they are in the wild to be exchanged secondhand to people that do not know of the risks it poses. Due to EC and UL/NEC electrical laws (that are written in electric shock-induced heart attack deaths), any electric/electronic equipment with a metal housing MUST have that housing grounded, requirement, not negotiable, so a PCB that shorts +12VDC to the grounded chassis should NEVER end up in normal consumer use.
I've decided for once, I would like to finish something rather than being distracted and never getting back to finishing it. and yes, I sorted that small bit of framing out and have moved on a few hundred parts past that, that was just a funny moment I thought. I went with a longer bolt and moved the frame ends down so the forces are moe in a flat plane without that kink in the middle of it. CES was a bit meh, AMD wasted some time talking about ILM's render farm and couldn't even be bothered to sneak in a pic of the machine post-vid-editing, just a major waste of my time. Some other things of meh were announced, and meh.
Silverstone was so far behind on trends in 2016, that they ended up with just about the only consumer computer cases with actual cooling performance. looks like Supermicro has finally figured out how to make a solder reflow convection oven as well, RIP workstations.
Supermiocro, look, the ONLY reason supercomputers get away with not having visible cooling vents on some of them, is because that is on the roof of the building with a massive water cooling plumbing system down to the computer in the building. unles your consumer does what Linus tech tips did, you can not get away with not having masive heatsinks or cooling vents on the outside of workstations. it has nothing to do with style or feelings, it's raw thermodynamics, a computer consumes power and turns it into heat, that heat must be allowed to dissipate or the temps will run away on you.
(examples scavanged from sandia press briefings and articals above) in any case. My brother hinted to me that ASUS was doing something a bit tacky if not a complete gimmick, lol.
I don't think it will be as bad as a particular SSD that was overheating due to the RGB lighting that was tacked onto it, however, I don't see how a cooling device will perform better by tacking extra heat sources to it, lol. I suspect at best it will just be overpriced due to the extra electronics, if not marginally miserably warmer internal computer case temps due to the extra heat from the TV screen electronics in the computer. At least GIMP isn't turning out to be as useless with add-ons, lol.
before getting consumed with the current project, I fussed a tad with trying to replicate some native American face painting on G8F maps and discovered that I need more than the mouse on/off functionality for the taper off at the end of the makeup strokes.
my experiments with the airbrush tool with hover timing, resulted in a meh thing that was more paint spray spatter than stroke effect. so I broke down and got a tablet, nothing expensive, just something that would fit on my desk without flipping off into my lap when I try to use it. I found 2 units smaller than the 7 inches of desk space in front of my keyboard, with windows7 and GIMP listed as compatibility, oddly Wacom does NOT list GIMP for Compatability despite their 300+usd price tags, so I obviously didn't go for one of them. I'm not doing this for a living, so the price tag just didn't justify a Wacom anyway. the two units I did find had some conflicting listings for me as I have no clue if I even need shortcut buttons for GIMP. one explicitly listed a Type-A plug for the PC however had no shortcut buttons, the other one that has shortcut buttons, only listed the type-C and cellphone plug 'adaptors' included with it. after a quick Q&A with the manufacturer that confirmed the more fancy one lacks a type-A plug, I got the no-frills no shortcut buttons one, that has the type-A USB cable that should work with my computer. Oh well (shrugs). it arrived sooner than expected, is in a box behind me with some replacement/upgrade hard drives. I plan on finishing the current project before opening that box and looking at the thing. and of course, all that happened before something else that is giving me some doubts about future map UVing/shader compatibility with why I got the thing, to begin with. if I had ten grand in my back pocket, I would just Pay Fred and Sabby to convert Wachiwi and Aiyana to G8F, I don't so oh well. (sobbing with lacking tools and experience with such things, lol) at least it's fun to try, even knowing I will ultimately fail due to that not being my area of expertise. so in closing...
good to see YouTube's ad algorithms are on point, lol.
P.S. the Spleens plushie is cute, really happy with it. The raised eyebrow alien is from "theCDK" I just can't resist using it when appropret.
but a k't'inga IS a D-7. They're the same ship in two different languages.
eh, sort of kind of. maybe in whatever is going on after the 2009 Trek movie, prior to that, they were very different ships. the D7 (left) is larger and older to start with.
tho I'm a nobody, so perhaps Rob Bonchune should describe it, the visual effect supervisor shows up at around 12:04 here (timestamped link).
https://youtu.be/RU9HY4zTvvc?t=724
been one of them few months, lol.
so, oh, and grammarly is still busticated, nice.
the universe has been incredibly disagreeable the past few months. every time I sit down to work on the pivot cover, the universe decides I must divert my attention elsewhere. I did manage to get one 3D asset idea made, tho more on that in a bit. the distractions have been many.
I am not speculating or trying to draw conclusions, only identify what is what on photos and vid. some things are a bit hazy as to one of these 4 columns, yet it looks to be about their kind of thing. one thing I will note is the similarity to the construction type and changes of plans that the Sampoong Department Store collapse in 1995 (YT vid), however, it wasn't like the designers back in 1979 could jump into a time machine to get "the latest codes and forms" from the future after lessons learned about "flat slab" concrete construction. in the first 3 frames of the CCTV vid, it looks like the top floors are tilting toward the location of M-9.1 then fall, and further down next to M-9.1 there is a light falling. as for what looks to be I-9.1 and K-9.1 and possibly some of L-9.1, how do you get columns on top of the rubble pile, they were the last things to fall after the floors slid down them. I'm seeing a lack of columns slab connection strength all over the place in the pics. if you here for that, sorry I have no more at this time, again just identifying what is what, the rest is probably not your thing.
that looks incredibly nice, I am a tad worried about the Iray only listing, as my experience with Iray only hair is unusable at best, even when applying 3DL shaders and drudging through what opacity map goes on what surface zone confusion. that tail scares me, if head hair faceplants for well over 3 hours.
as soon as the holidays is over and I sort out some things, I will get Kiko however I can't promise any 3DL experiments for some time as the universe has kept me from working on many 3D things I wanted to play with. so with that, after the BCI Isaac Arthur vid week or so back I decided to make the single eye glass I wanted eons ago, just took this long to get it uploaded to dropbox for sharing.
UV (UDIM) mapped and zoned, and modeled around G8F's head shape. a simple D-former on the back should make it easy for fitting hair and head shapes.
for the most part, place and parent on the head should be sufficient for most. the screen should be full map, UDIM, and is 2x3 ratio, yet should be sufficient for most screen pics or easy to replace with a primitive plane if need be.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mozuwxj4c5xgcur/HeadbandTechGlass_UDIM001v000.zip?dl=0
HeadBandTechGlass obj thing is CC0, do with as you pleas.
have fun y'all, I have much to be doing's.
shoutout to Wavy Boats (yt vid) damn I want that song in my playlist, and of course Everyday Astronaut (YT channel).
ok, I will admit I never was a huge "had to watch it" fan of the original show, however sometimes there is a pivotal change so drastic, it makes outsiders ask if it's even the same franchise.
it took a few days to figure out how best to describe what I had seen, and significant credit goes to Voltaic Fire and Rex Lumontad for help in visualizing the entire premises of the show. I guess if you wanted a cross between Palpatine Bane and Vader in masculin female form with contempt for any living being that isn't a She-Ma'am, this show is for you. (Teela and her "friend", victorious stepping on the corps of Prince Adam in a Yamcha's Death Pose)
about the only thing I get from this series is that a majority of Hollywood hates half of the human species and most of the rest. as long as the Homosapien species has survived, this truly can not be how most humans are.
yeah, been quiet, been an interesting few months. Last month I was going to get something, got the figure, whent to top off the coffee cup, and when I came back and clicked the add to cart button for the hair, I was greeted with an error.
The hair lacked elf ear dials, I was still going to buy that. The page has been this ever since.
ok, well, I'll find something I guess. The Briareth hair looks kind of cool, maybe that will work (assuming E&J's content hasn't been yanked out of my purchased items catalog).
looks like the entire EJ store has been YEETed for whatever reason, I hope it isn't anything related to that other site that was having issues.
ok, guess we can just blame my bad timing and all of this on the messed up gravity fields of the Halo World we are on, lol.
EJ is not around here any more I guess.
other fun stuff, Pauls Hardwear has a great vid about getting your computer off the floor. even the RS6000 had kickboards at the bottom that normal PCs don't have. speaking of the RS6000, some computers just won't fit on a desk, so the big guns are a tad exempt from that "get it off the floor" thing.
(FW Sandi converted to G8F, dForce Sweet Summer Outfit with costonme textures. dForce Retro Sweatsuit sneakers. Saffron Hair auto-flopped onto G8F)
ok, Grammarly is a bit clogged up with random thoughts, so I'm going to try to get some of them trimmed down so I can say my two farthings about the Gen 8.1 eye surface zone mess, after fussing with that all day yesterday instead of having fun with Kiko. That and the dawn rocks folder is a bit overflowing with unrelated scribblings from the past many months.
first off, incredible news as GN's lab is progressing nicely and the new fan tester has arrived. NICE!
well, that got lost in the luminiferous aether, I guess the thought was, what would an architecture be called that can do both "massive parallel processing" (MPP) and "massive vector processing" (MVP) at the same time? MVPP or MPVP or something like that I guess. neural networks aren't exactly the same thing as the data sets are a bit limited and the maths tend to be a bit hazy, unlike MPP&MVP that has normal math (Like 1+1=2 instead of "about 2 depending on surrounding iterations and situational training cycles"). I guess it may also look like a PGA (Programmable Gate Array) however I don't think they are quite the same thing. Guess I'll stick with VAPS (Variable Architecture Processing System) for now.
well, der8auer did some preliminary testing of power usage of DDR5 (YT vid), and it looks about ok, ignoring the plethora of plastic not-heat-spreaders and RGB heaters, lol. I get the idea of moving the VRM closer to the memory chips to get cleaner power, however, there are things called capacitors, so eh. I have other doubts about this approach of DDR5 vs the ATX12VO craze for more efficient systems supposedly.
if the PC world is supposed to be moving toward ATX12VO, why have 5V going to the memory DIMMs instead of 12V. each VRM has losses, and this appears to be adding more VRMs and VRM losses to the chain. it almost makes ATX12VO look like a Go-Green-Scam, curious that one.
and where would we be without giving Dell the Timov award (YouTube Old Dell vs New Dell vid), lol.
been far too long since posting anything.
well, looks like intel ARC has happened.
not to be confused with the Primeval tv show Anomaly Research Center, altho the drivers do have some 'anomalies'
ok, maybe the drivers have a lot of anomalies that intel is working on.
At least Techgage Rob did manage to get some testing done with Blender on the intel GPUs. (multi-GPU) <https://techgage.com/article/intel-arc-multi-gpu-creator-performance/> including viewport performance testing, not just render testing. (single GPU) <https://techgage.com/article/blender-3-3-performance-deep-dive/>
as for that RTX4090 thing, well, the cable testing continues (GN prelim testing vid <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIKjZ1djp8c>). my interest in the card is nill, way too expensive, and the BTUs are a bit much for my AC unit, not to say it won't fit in any of my computers with the other PCI cards that I use.
as for non-computer stuff, got some interesting geology stuff from mars, thanks to an impact and insight. I'm not sure to what extent the extrapolation was to get that hint of Valles Marineris, yet it is there I guess. would be nice to see a GPR cross-section of Valles Marineris, just saying. (Scott Manely vid <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq5mJdwsmSc>, links to articles in vid discription) Nice work insight team. I have stuff to do, be cool y'all.
been a tad busy, and I have been slacking on a few 3D things. I think I missed out on most of gen 8.1, and I haven't done much other than some napkin sketches at best of random ideas.
the last two generations of graphics cards have been a bit lackluster, between making ship models fit in the video ram on the things or not getting baked out of the room the thing is in from its BTU output. the last gen of CPUs also is a bit eh, between the cost of new memory types or lacking performance of E-cores.
GN's 7800X3D review is ok <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B31PwSpClk8>, I'm just not that impressed with the CPU vs the higher core count offerings for 3D stuff, and even they are a bit eh vs what I have.
I haven't plugged the render box into the internet for around a year, and am not looking forward to Windows updates for a day or longer on that box. And there is some gen 9 thing to look at, I am so behind on things. I skimmed through all of the 8.1 listings in the store and feel a bit meh about it. some ok looking ones yet nothing I want to put up with broken stuff that will never be fixed just to have it, lol. I think I had seen maybe one elf scrolling through store pages, and the Latin one (rosa maria) looked Mediterranean without the day-of-the-dead makeup, I can't even pinpoint why she looks so (nose or eyes or lighting or something), I like the makeup tho. anyway, much to be doings, not much time.
edit: I had another look this morning, and it was more than 3 elves before the 8th page, I just didn't think about it till getting to the last page yesterday and could only remember one at the time. also, kudos to AprilYSH <https://www.daz3d.com/eilis-hair-for-genesis-3--8-females> , I had expected the hair to take hours to do nothing and it didn't, it actually rendered in a reasonably time in 3delight unlike most of the other gen8 hair I had been exposed to. I didn't even make it to the coffee pot to start making coffee, I am impressed, lol. Is it safe to start looking at hair newer than gen3, I hope so.
ye had to make a set of maps for each part of the eyes because the UVing overlapped in odd ways. this feels like a downgrade from G8 which had the moisture on its own template group, I hope it's sorted out on Gen 9 so I don't have to fuss with multiple maps on multiple zones just to have normal-looking eyes. (EDIT) ok, even with the moisture set to transparent, the pupils/irises are NOT lining up with the maps in 8.1 or "Base Female" UV Set settings, this is very messed up from the former Gen8 eye settings. Hmmmm. I give up, this ate up all the time I had to fuss with stuff, maybe (redacted) will refrain from having temper tantrums so I can fuss with it later on.
Oh, speaking of the plug thing, GN and crew along with some others tested "ALL the things" and found the design to be lacking in ways that sets users up for thinking it's pluged in fully when it's not. Follow-up vid here. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig2px7ofKhQ> (P.S., grammarly, thats "Pluged in", not "Plug-in in", lol.)