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Still Alive
Posted 13 years agoNot that anyone really cares, but I'm still devoting virtually all my spare time to this little project of mine despite the lack of any apparent progress in version updates.
You see, I think I'm pretty much done with the core modelling and am quite happy with how I'm looking.
So I wanted to try experimenting with Blender's hair and fur system – again to allow rapid iteration and wild experimentation which would be prohibitive to do with real faux fur (did I really just type that? Real fake fur? Whatever...you know what I mean).
Except: OH man, these strand counts are really pushing my poor computer past its comfort zone, and as a result render times are way beyond what I'm patient enough to just sit around and wait for in-person.
Therefore, I will defur these to overnight rendering (which is really going to slow down my iterative turnaround time) and in the meantime start a second 'thread' of work going: getting the structural mesh ready for 3D production.
This has presented quite its own set of challenges, namely judiciously deleting all those lovely polygon faces that I just spent all that time carefully crafting, in an effort to whittle down the model's volume and therefore final printing costs to something I can at least tolerate without my jaw hitting the floor.
Let's just say... I'm not there yet. But I'm not giving up!
You see, I think I'm pretty much done with the core modelling and am quite happy with how I'm looking.
So I wanted to try experimenting with Blender's hair and fur system – again to allow rapid iteration and wild experimentation which would be prohibitive to do with real faux fur (did I really just type that? Real fake fur? Whatever...you know what I mean).
Except: OH man, these strand counts are really pushing my poor computer past its comfort zone, and as a result render times are way beyond what I'm patient enough to just sit around and wait for in-person.
Therefore, I will defur these to overnight rendering (which is really going to slow down my iterative turnaround time) and in the meantime start a second 'thread' of work going: getting the structural mesh ready for 3D production.
This has presented quite its own set of challenges, namely judiciously deleting all those lovely polygon faces that I just spent all that time carefully crafting, in an effort to whittle down the model's volume and therefore final printing costs to something I can at least tolerate without my jaw hitting the floor.
Let's just say... I'm not there yet. But I'm not giving up!
Rescued from the Recycle Bin...
Posted 13 years agoWell, actually Trash on the Mac (I liked the alliteration) – which cannot easily be bypassed or disabled unlike Windows, where I not only deleted files immediately but also disabled the warning dialog.
Even though I switched to the Mac quite some years ago, I've only begrudgingly gotten used to the necessity of periodically emptying the Trash – but today and forevermore I shall be very grateful for it, because I have not been paying any attention to the incremental improvements in my 3D model.
On a whim, just before emptying it this time, I looked back at my discarded render output – the only evidence remaining of the previous states of my project file since I have been Cmd-S saving frequently (not that I've really needed to do far - Blender has been totally stable)
Bear in mind here that I'm using subdivided vertex modelling, so I'm intimately familiar with every kink, curve and join on this guy, having painstakingly put them there axis-by-axis (not that I want to suggest that other modelling methods are somehow careless or incapable of detail, but you can't get much more atomic than per-vertex!).
Being yanked back to the very earliest iterations confronted me with something that was, quite frankly, terrifyingly ugly!
This is heartening when I consider that the datestamp on the earliest files was less than a week ago!
Time flies when you're having fun (and/or being mercilessly driven to 2am nights by the creative bug).
Even though I switched to the Mac quite some years ago, I've only begrudgingly gotten used to the necessity of periodically emptying the Trash – but today and forevermore I shall be very grateful for it, because I have not been paying any attention to the incremental improvements in my 3D model.
On a whim, just before emptying it this time, I looked back at my discarded render output – the only evidence remaining of the previous states of my project file since I have been Cmd-S saving frequently (not that I've really needed to do far - Blender has been totally stable)
Bear in mind here that I'm using subdivided vertex modelling, so I'm intimately familiar with every kink, curve and join on this guy, having painstakingly put them there axis-by-axis (not that I want to suggest that other modelling methods are somehow careless or incapable of detail, but you can't get much more atomic than per-vertex!).
Being yanked back to the very earliest iterations confronted me with something that was, quite frankly, terrifyingly ugly!
This is heartening when I consider that the datestamp on the earliest files was less than a week ago!
Time flies when you're having fun (and/or being mercilessly driven to 2am nights by the creative bug).
