No complaints tonight, just anticipations.  Tomorrow is my 2nd cataract operation (right eye).  I don't like being put under anesthesia.  Last week it took me a whole day and night to get over it.  I always worry about my wonky heart going wonkyer.  And because I have to stop taking my blood thinners before the operation I worry about blood clots and having a stroke.  Just what I don't need, going to sleep and waking up a semi-vegetable.  Would rather not wake up at all.

Although, I have to say that the left eye operation worked out quite well, I can see so much better despite my left eye viewing things properly and my right eye viewing things like I have a dirty yellow monocle over it by comparison.  That makes me see some things strangely.  Example:  when I fill the sink to do dishes, the stream of water from the faucet head is central to my view and is two toned.  Clear as crystal on the right side, but looks like piss on the left side.   Which is curious because my left eye is fixed and my right eye is not.  Must be the left/right eye/brain cross connections thing.

But if everything turns out OK, then by Thursday I should be seeing relatively normally again in both eyes and no longer have to deal with seeing my sink fill up with piss.

Another way to do an organic shape like this would be to start with say an octagon (for eight arms), add thickness, and then extrude the side faces a few times with scaling down for each one to give the tapered effect (effectively box modelling it).  Make sure in this case that the polygons are not linked so that they extrude separately - you can do all the arms at once like that (see attachment for a quick and dirty example with one level of smoothing applied. I also indented the middle rather than cutting right through).

See, I knew someone would provide a more elegant solution. Nice method Phil!

Well, my next solution builds on that idea, but still degraded back into brute force.

I created a box with about twenty segements, centered it, then went to Deform>Taper. Next, I selected about 8 segments and went to Deform>Bend and Twist and used a Bend Angle of 270 degrees to make that "hook".  Next, I selected the whole object and went ot Edit>Replicate, and selcted the Circle option, 8 copies and checked the Rotate box. Oh, and I  rotated the original object so it was aligned with the 'X' axis because of trial and error with the Replicate command. Maybe I was doing something wrong, but I found this way made a nice circular array.

Next, went and created my central disc/hub. I inserted an Oval with 8 sides, extruded once to create the hole, then deleted it, and added thickness as per Phil's suggestion. I eyeballed the thickness to be about the same as the base of each arm. I then maneuvered each arm to line up with the eight sides of the central hub, leaving a bit of space inbetween, and then went around and selected the base polygon of an arm, its matching face of the hub and used the Bridge tool to connect. I repeated for all arms. See, I told you it was brute forced. 

You could also create a nice curvy polyline to your satisfaction and insert a flat plane and use the Path Sweep tool to create your initial arm. Tapering it could get cumbersome though. Just some more thoughts.

The aesthetic for my graphic novel is more classic Victorian with steampunk gadgets.  So even a classic Victorian style rail carriage would do, and Victorian / Western is a more popular genre.

I've looked at vontage railroad images and very often the engine is this shining brass and red paint machine, but the railcars are railcars ... long wood boxes with wheels.  The major differrence is the interiors, as Amtrak doesn't go in for the fancy lanterns and red velvet that the Victorians did :)

The closest I've seen are the older British style rail cars, and the Dining on the Orient sets.

As it is I think I'm going to make some textures and fixits for the Parkside sets, since I need enough passenger trains to fill out the concourse at Grand Central.  I'll probably post anything I make to my website. I'll also post the poser11 mats for the Spirit of Punk.  I'll keep you guys posted :)

LM

Bit of a Thursday morning update. It looks like Nicole is already on Bermuda, I hope everyone is hunkered down there. I'm already seeing sustained winds of 72km/h (about 50mph) at the airport (as of 12:08utc), so all the prep that was going to be done safely has been done at this point.

Keep your heads down, and Be safe y'all.

(EDIT, sustained winds 107km/h at about 13:40utc. About 66mph.)

EVGA Precision OCX is giving me a bit of grief. The fan curve is NOT being executed by the card at boot-up despite the power and temp levels running at there new settings.

And it is NOT starting up on windows boot despite the setting for it ticked. Grrrrr.   Also the program is slower then the creative volume control to fire up when I manually click on it (in excess of a minute), so the card is just baking away that entire time till the program gets its GUI out of it's back-end.

The Turbo-fan mod is progressing. I initially measured the diameter of the central vain structure before I trimmed the Easter egg height down to match the diameter of the Noctua motors, now it dose not fit, oops.

I may just find a spice bottle of the correct diameter to put there as a spacer, as the egg plastic is rather explosive when being cut any way. It's one of a few options I'm considering as the computer case has yet to arrive to start work on the bell-mouth intakes.  So that is where I am at this point, time for some morning coffee, and to look at some stuff.

Next, I put a spotlight inside the building facing the G2F character.  I used the modifier "point at" and selected the upper part of G2F as the central point at focus.  I also placed Slosh's lamp that goes with the As You Wish outfit in the G2F hand.

...I used to do RC flying nearly 50 years ago before everything went digital.  Had a lovely scale RC 185 Cessna Skylane (balsa, pine, and fabric) that I built from a kit, even included cockpit details.  Back then CB radios bled into the same frequency channels modellers used. I watched as hours and hours of work want out of my control (even though it was still in the range of my tranciever) and nosedived into the ground as a pickup with a couple of those big whip areals went by, most lilekly the driver tallking to some "good buddy".  After that hung it up as I coudln't afford to build another.

That's definitely the advantage of the 2.4GHz radios these days.  Solid performance.  I understand the appeal of wood builds, but the new foam planes really are quite good, and very easy and cheap to repair.  The micros (my favourites) and really good flying planes, and Horizon Hobby just released a Cessna 182.  I'll definitely be picking that up!
http://www.horizonhobby.com/product/storefronts/bind-n-fly/all-new-releases/umx-cessna-182-bnf-basic-eflu5650

 

...yikes 129$! The kit I built cost 8.95$ and had a 48" wingspan. Even adjusted for inflation it would be slightly less than half the price of the E-Flight model (though true, the scarcity of balsa wood today would most likely move the price a lot closer to the micro foam model).  Yeah, there was a lot of assembly required, but the detail was stunning and seeing it sitting there in classic 1960s Cessna livery when finished and ready to fly was very rewarding. My second RC project was a DC-3 I bought (was going to paint it in North Central livery as I lived in the Midwest), but after the Skylane crash, the potential to lose it to the rising popularity of CB radios at the time caused me to sell the partially completed kit, along with the controller, salvaged reciever, and servos from the Cessna. Also sold a 72" wingspan RC sailplane I had.

Went to "circle" flying and rockets after that.

Rawb, the store is not working right. I stopped shopping because several of the stores were empty. I KNOW I don't have all of the products. Then when I refreshed, some came back but then others were gone. Saiyaness is now up, but I couldn't shop that one before I HAD to check out as is getting close to store turnover time. IH Kang was down, it came back up. At the moment, all stores are back that I have checked. But thought I should let you know. That was a few minutes ago, 12:45ish-12:47 central time.

" Still, over-reliance on external power tools + under-education of beginner prosumers may lead to decline of competitiveness of DS as a CG tool."

Gaming revenues were $104 BILLION at the end of 2015
Eclipsing movies& music sales combined.

What does one see in games??

Articulated 3D Characters Moving,Speaking
and following a Game narrative or story.

The parent company that owns Daz inc. is franticly trying to enter into the Unity based game content market because, as of now ,they have little presence there.
The hobbiest  still render market here is not truly going to be the central focus of the corporation that owns Daz going forward.
Spend some time over at the Morph3D Site and look for some of their presentation videos on youtube to see what I mean.
Making their content& licensing fees competitive in the game content market is their biggest challenge going forward.

For us non gamers looking to use Daz content in other non game platforms
DAZ, IMHO peaked with Genesis 2 and FBX,MDD .obj export
Genesis 3 offers nothing new to us and is even a step backward for us animators.

(Note that the "MCS female" Unity content package over at Morph3D is Genesis 2

....very telling)

At this point in time Daz Studio is only actually "Competitive " compared
to poser.
Smith Micro made their attempt to enter the game content market
with the poorly received "poser pro game dev" version.

The plopped a $300+ USD white elephant in the Unity store where the upper end of the price scale for content packages was $40 USD tops 

They did not seem to understand that game developers are NOT looking for a  Bloated "figure posing application" with a 1990's kai Kraus interface and Flash based library system.

Result= EPIC FAIL

 
"Even iClone suffers from post-sugar-high sluggishness typical of prosumer tools..."

After some initial missteps with the bridge to the horribly engineered "indigo" render engine,Reallusion has made some wise decisions not only with the advent  of their ever improving Character creator application but with their reasonable Game content export fees.
To say Nothing of their world class  realtime Charcter motion creation tools
that are second only to the Mighty Autodesk MotionBuilder at this point.

We seem to have weathered the hurricane well.  It is mostly tracking north of us now.  We are still getting some rain and wind from the bottom of the hurricane as it moves further north, but nothing like earlier today.  We still have power in my area and I don't think our town sustained any heavy damage.  So, we are good at my house.

Good to hear! 340,000 without power by 4am central. Will be about 2 million once it goes by Jax. The cone has shifted more out to sea. It's what it does when it loops around that is interesting. It does a loop, comes back to the coast around Canaveral, then goes east out to sea. Edit: as of 5am, Daytona Beach just lost power so you can add a LOT to that total.

I do not understand the reliance on start phones, cars, fridges, thermostats and TV’s. How hard is it to look in the cabinets, fridge and pantry to make a list BEFORE you go shopping? Why do I need to connect a coffee maker to the internet? All this does is make people more and more dependent on a technology that is becoming easier to interrupt. How many people know how to change the oil on their cars anymore? Or change a shock or alternator? How many people can go out and hunt and fish to put food on their families table in the event of an economic or social collapse due to a failure of the internet everyone has becomes so dependent on? Thanks to smart phones there is a decline in human interaction in my opinion. Yes the internet has given us instant news, which is not always correct at times. To me an increased reliance on a service is unhealthy and will lead to serious repercussions if/when it fails on a global scale. My personal opinion is that people have become so wrapped up with the internet, they no longer see the danger it can pose. 

+10!!  And I can do all of the above and then some.  How many people know how to read a map anymore?  I know people who absolutely panic if they have no internet for a couple of hours.  To me, that's way too much reliance on something you don't really have any control over. Wouldn't take much to wipe technology on a country wide scale.

So much this.  

Basic skills aren't even being taught anymore.  Cursive writing?  Too difficult and most stuff is typed now.  Map reading?  Why bother since we have GPS.  Slaughtering and dressing wild game?  Why, when we have grocery stores and butcher shops to do it for us?  Building a cistern?  We have running water and plumbing.  Building a fire?  How quaint, since we have central heat and air conditioning.

If society collapsed tomorrow, 90% of the population (in the USA, not sure about other countries) would simply have NO idea what to do or how to survive.  Basic (and simple) construction, mechanics, tool-making, and food gathering/preparation are things they have NEVER been taught.  Most can't cook (aside from just heating something up, or microwaving it.)

It's really sad.  Just because you don't HAVE to do something doesn't mean you shouldn't know HOW to, just in case.

People are RELYING on technology, rather than simply USING it.  If any of it, for any reason, stops working, they have no idea what to do as an alternative.  And unfortunately, a lot of the alternatives that DID exist are being removed.  Remember Pay-Phones here in the US?  Virutally gone.  The reason?  "Well, everyone has cell-phones now.  And if theirs isn't working, they can borrow someone elses..."

Truly sad.....

 

Agreed. I couldnt believe it when my nieces school decided to end cursive writing.

My wife and I have been trying to get on the path of self sustainability. We have plans for chickens and ducks, possibly some other livestock. Solar upgrades to the house would be great but wind would be more practical out here. My niece and nephew are going to spend some time out here over their summer vacations as soon as they are old enough. I cant wait to teach them how to make fire.

I do not understand the reliance on start phones, cars, fridges, thermostats and TV’s. How hard is it to look in the cabinets, fridge and pantry to make a list BEFORE you go shopping? Why do I need to connect a coffee maker to the internet? All this does is make people more and more dependent on a technology that is becoming easier to interrupt. How many people know how to change the oil on their cars anymore? Or change a shock or alternator? How many people can go out and hunt and fish to put food on their families table in the event of an economic or social collapse due to a failure of the internet everyone has becomes so dependent on? Thanks to smart phones there is a decline in human interaction in my opinion. Yes the internet has given us instant news, which is not always correct at times. To me an increased reliance on a service is unhealthy and will lead to serious repercussions if/when it fails on a global scale. My personal opinion is that people have become so wrapped up with the internet, they no longer see the danger it can pose. 

+10!!  And I can do all of the above and then some.  How many people know how to read a map anymore?  I know people who absolutely panic if they have no internet for a couple of hours.  To me, that's way too much reliance on something you don't really have any control over. Wouldn't take much to wipe technology on a country wide scale.

So much this.  

Basic skills aren't even being taught anymore.  Cursive writing?  Too difficult and most stuff is typed now.  Map reading?  Why bother since we have GPS.  Slaughtering and dressing wild game?  Why, when we have grocery stores and butcher shops to do it for us?  Building a cistern?  We have running water and plumbing.  Building a fire?  How quaint, since we have central heat and air conditioning.

If society collapsed tomorrow, 90% of the population (in the USA, not sure about other countries) would simply have NO idea what to do or how to survive.  Basic (and simple) construction, mechanics, tool-making, and food gathering/preparation are things they have NEVER been taught.  Most can't cook (aside from just heating something up, or microwaving it.)

It's really sad.  Just because you don't HAVE to do something doesn't mean you shouldn't know HOW to, just in case.

People are RELYING on technology, rather than simply USING it.  If any of it, for any reason, stops working, they have no idea what to do as an alternative.  And unfortunately, a lot of the alternatives that DID exist are being removed.  Remember Pay-Phones here in the US?  Virutally gone.  The reason?  "Well, everyone has cell-phones now.  And if theirs isn't working, they can borrow someone elses..."

Truly sad.....

 

A kid in a Home Ec class asked "How do you boil water?"  He was serious.

I weep for the future....

I do not understand the reliance on start phones, cars, fridges, thermostats and TV’s. How hard is it to look in the cabinets, fridge and pantry to make a list BEFORE you go shopping? Why do I need to connect a coffee maker to the internet? All this does is make people more and more dependent on a technology that is becoming easier to interrupt. How many people know how to change the oil on their cars anymore? Or change a shock or alternator? How many people can go out and hunt and fish to put food on their families table in the event of an economic or social collapse due to a failure of the internet everyone has becomes so dependent on? Thanks to smart phones there is a decline in human interaction in my opinion. Yes the internet has given us instant news, which is not always correct at times. To me an increased reliance on a service is unhealthy and will lead to serious repercussions if/when it fails on a global scale. My personal opinion is that people have become so wrapped up with the internet, they no longer see the danger it can pose. 

+10!!  And I can do all of the above and then some.  How many people know how to read a map anymore?  I know people who absolutely panic if they have no internet for a couple of hours.  To me, that's way too much reliance on something you don't really have any control over. Wouldn't take much to wipe technology on a country wide scale.

So much this.  

Basic skills aren't even being taught anymore.  Cursive writing?  Too difficult and most stuff is typed now.  Map reading?  Why bother since we have GPS.  Slaughtering and dressing wild game?  Why, when we have grocery stores and butcher shops to do it for us?  Building a cistern?  We have running water and plumbing.  Building a fire?  How quaint, since we have central heat and air conditioning.

If society collapsed tomorrow, 90% of the population (in the USA, not sure about other countries) would simply have NO idea what to do or how to survive.  Basic (and simple) construction, mechanics, tool-making, and food gathering/preparation are things they have NEVER been taught.  Most can't cook (aside from just heating something up, or microwaving it.)

It's really sad.  Just because you don't HAVE to do something doesn't mean you shouldn't know HOW to, just in case.

People are RELYING on technology, rather than simply USING it.  If any of it, for any reason, stops working, they have no idea what to do as an alternative.  And unfortunately, a lot of the alternatives that DID exist are being removed.  Remember Pay-Phones here in the US?  Virutally gone.  The reason?  "Well, everyone has cell-phones now.  And if theirs isn't working, they can borrow someone elses..."

Truly sad.....

DIM is still down at 1:20 am Central time. Won't connect, does a "unable to connect." 

 Oh, COME ON. Magento errors AGAIN. I can't go to the products in the cart, they're throwing the error.  11:35pm Central time.

There's a really nice aspect to 'learning to format' our screenplays and - hence - using the formatting software that we find that we enjoy using:

The formatting process requires that we use Courier 12pt or Courier New 12pt font - because each character takes the same space - unlike most other fonts, which scale their footprint to the size needed by the character, to conserve space on the page.

With Courier or Courier New 12pt, 10 characters = 1" (imperial "Inch")

Following the formatting rules - only deviating from the rules in 'accepted' ways, each pages ends up being roughly one minute of screen time. At least this goes for Spec Scripts.

Spec Scripts are written under "Speculation" that they will be sold. Shooting Scripts are then created by the Production Secretary from the Spec Script, which includes all of the director's notes, camera actions and scene numbering (and perhaps other necessary nomenclature) to set the script ready for production.

Anyways, this means that we never submit a project of more than 120 pages - more often 100 - 110 pages.

====================================================

In all of this I do realize that I'm a one-man-show and that I may not need all of this extra detail.

It may be worth the extra effort in going through the process, however, because it helps us to make sure that the pacing and structure are correct - at least according to our own vision.

Book 2 of The Screenwriter's Bible is a wonderful Workbook, aiding us in every step of the process: Getting our creative juices flowing, writing from the appropriate side of our brain to capture our deep dreams of the story, taking our down-time to analyze and structure what we've written - making it easier to determine what is overwritten, what is missing, etc., it introduces many questions to ask oursleves along the way about our central characters, about the content of the story, about how the story is written, and many other very helpful methods to help us get our story to take the shape of something that someone 'else' might enjoy besides our own selves. 

It even has steps which take place after using the instructions from Books 3 and 4, which (at this point) we haven't read yet. So why put Book 2 where it is? 

You'll understand if you ever read the book. It's the perfect spot. Most of it is necessary during the processes of Book 1 - and we are often directed (from Book 1) to head to the first several steps within this part. So, yes... it's in its proper spot.

Warning!!!! Magento page errors again, the site is shutting down pages again as of 11:05pm Central time.

NOOOOOOOOO!  Magento errors on pages again!!!! Watch it if you are checking out!!!!!! (started exactly 11:05pm Central)   Can't get on some of the product pages!!!!

 (Edit- lol, they didn't want me to take things out of the cart....) 

http://www.daz3d.com/michael-4-business-suit has a similar looking collar to the three guys either side of the centre figure, although the bottom of the jacket is different. You will also need to create your own texture to make it look more similar to the ones in the photo.

The central figure with the double buttoned jacket, is likely to need something different.

Thanks but  overall it is different enough that it wouldn't work very well unless the figure was in the far background.

http://www.daz3d.com/michael-4-business-suit has a similar looking collar to the three guys either side of the centre figure, although the bottom of the jacket is different. You will also need to create your own texture to make it look more similar to the ones in the photo.

The central figure with the double buttoned jacket, is likely to need something different.

It was working (12:32am central time) but then suddenly my cart page went to that script and errors. IF YOU ARE BUYING right now be sure and make screenshots of your cart in case the price goes wonky. It will help both Support AND you so you will know the price of each item and what it should be!