After nearly three years living here on the Elbe, we have finally found a new place back in town. Living out here has been a mixed bag of country calm, noisy garden machinery, and day tripper motorcycle madness. Post COVID has seen the later go from manageable to really annoying at times. The Elbe is not far from us, about 150m behind our house with the main shipping lane to Hamburg about 1....
A lot of stuff going on this month and almost none of it productive. February has been a month of waiting and hoping, details still under wraps as I don’t wish to jinx anything. The first half of the month was reasonably productive I managed to add a more features to the addon I am working on. It is almost complete and I will post when it is finished. I am still not sure if I will release it or just keep it for personal use....
Twenty Five days into the new year and I realised, I hadn’t posted on here yet. To remedy that, here is a short update post: Last year I was working on an Addon for Blender, more details when it is finished. Suffice to say I had the addon working and I’ve been using it for a while. I wanted to add some additional features and tidy up the UI and then perhaps release it....
It has been an interesting year, I have rekindled my interest in photography, which I had let slide for a long time. I even bought back into the Adobe software by renewing my Photography plan. I have been using Affinity apps for a few years now and thought they were all I needed, and for my renders etc. the tools were more than enough. However for RAW images and photo organising Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw are far superior....
In a previous post, one full of hopeless optimism and naive enthusiasm, I talked about re-launching my BlenderBits domain, see the About link above it you are interested in seeing the domain, for as long as it exists. Unfortunately reality has kicked in and I find, that in all honesty, I have neither the time, nor the interest in maintaining two discrete blogs, especially as they intersect on topics, Blender, so as this is the more generalised one, I have decided to use this one only....
This isn’t intended as a doctrine, just some food for thought For a while now, I have been using the gamma node in Blender as an alternative to the color ramp and the map range node. There are a few reasons why I like the node: It is light weight. It is a simple one slider does all node. The node inputs are easily exposed in a Group. I can use one Image texture easily to drive more than one input - see below....
We are now in the early stages of October, thank-fully, and I realised I hadn’t posted at all in the previous month. I put this down to the weather, the depressing news cycle, and the general distraction of work. Recently I started posting pictures on Unsplash, as a way of giving back to the site, which I have used for textures a few times over the year, and here is one I posted recently:...
The month is nearly at an end and I am not feeling like this month has been very productive. The reason is probably the weather and the amount of people visiting this area in August. The weather has also been pretty horrid. Extreme humidity has left everything feeling muggy and damp. We have had so much rain in the last couple of months, I am expecting next years crop to be rice not wheat....
This is a demonstration of how to create a Node Graph in Blender to make and Edge Wear node for use in Cycles. Step one: Create the node graph as shown above in Blender’s shader editor. Note the samples input this will be added next. Step two: Add a Samples input slot, so you can drive the Bevel node samples from outside the group. Step three: TAB out of the node group and then right click on the Samples input and Copy as Driver....
I have recently been watching a YouTube channel from a Japanese machine tool maker, which I find interesting and relaxing. It is also a great source of reference material for 3D modelling. For ideas and materials, I have been making screenshots like crazy as I watch through his demonstrations. If you are interested in checking the channel out it is here: @SwapLampJapan I hadn’t thought of using YouTube as a source of reference but as the quality of the video cameras improve I am able to get some really nice shots for reference....