Parks Test Render 4

 Martin · 2 years

Here's a fourth update to the most recent version of my Parks project in Blender.

I've added and moved a few elements here and there since the last version. The biggest change is a little more under-the-hood, though it is obvious when you compare the images directly; I've re-worked the core of my water shader/material.

It's still not quite where I want it to be, but the ripples look more water-y to me, and it's now a lot simpler in how the effect gets built. It also plays nicer with the waterfall objects, which were looking a little too much like plastic to me in the last iteration.

Since the last version, I also had an opportunity to explore the scene in VR, using my Oculus Meta Quest 2. The scale of things looked mostly okay, but the "small" hedges, which are meant to be about waist-height, are almost as tall as me! So, I'm sort of entertaining the idea of re-working those. And then back to building out the rest of the scene and adding some more park objects to it.

I also did a test render of a different lighting setup that I thought was cool. Check this out:

This is a night/sunset scene, and I can now make all the windows light up with just one click, controlled by a world variable in Blender!

I'm not sure which I like better, honestly. But it's easy to switch between the two setups, so I'll keep plugging away and experimenting. If I end up going with the latter setup as the final, I'll have to tweak the color corrections a bit - there is a lot of odd pink-ish banding in the highlights.

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Parks Test Render 3

 Martin · 2 years

This render is coming along!

I wasn't happy with how the volumetric material for the waterfall splashes looked, so I re-did those. I also pumped up the red and yellow contrast in the trees, and added some hedges.

I want to make some additional objects, like benches, lights, trash cans, etc. but I'm a bit worried about the can of worms that might open up. I've never done a proper scale test with the parts in this scene - that is, I've never dropped in a 2 meters tall human shape to see how things look in proportion - so I've been reluctant to add objects like that.

Just eyeballing it, things look mostly right. The hedges seem a bit chunky, maybe. Editing the width of them would be a pain, but... now I'm tempted. Maybe something I'll do further down the road.

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Parks Test Render 2

 Martin · 2 years

Here's an update to the test render I posted last night!

I've made some changes to the way the park is laid out, mostly on the lower canal level, changed the camera to be isometric, and adjusted a few other things.

One of the bigger changes is the atmospheric effect and coloring, which is all currently being done in Blender's compositor, with color correction, and glare. I don't usually do it that way - I usually do color corrections in Photoshop - so this is sort of an experiment.

More updates to come, as I have time to work on this more!

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Parks Test Render

 Martin · 2 years

I've been playing around with the pieces I made for the Modular Park renders back in 2016, adding some stuff, editing some others, and trying to just build up a collection of parts to make more pleasant places with. I made this test render today just to see how things are shaping up.

Still some work to do, but I do enjoy making cozy little outdoor spaces with these parts. 🙂

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U+1F92A

 Martin · 2 years

A while ago I tried making a post here with an emoji in it, because WordPress supports that now, and the characters always came up blank after I submitted the form.

Investigating why this was happening sent me down a WordPress rabbit hole. The cause I arrived at is that, because my WordPress install has some long roots, the underlying database didn't support the character set required by emojis. The solution was to update the database, which isn't something WordPress can do by itself.

Being a DIY guy (when it comes to tech, anyway) I read a little more about what was involved, backed everything up, and dove headfirst into the database. Not long after, I resurfaced from my edits, made a post with an emoji, and basked in its glory. I checked a few other posts to make sure the rest of my database was still intact, and satisfied with the results, left things at that.

You can guess where this is going: unseen problems were afoot. Technically, they still are, I suppose.

Not long after the update, I noticed that one of my main pages was almost entirely blank. WordPress couldn't recover it, so I loaded up my backup and dug through the SQL code to find the post and restore it. It took some time to sort everything out (this particular page had a lot of formatting), but it was fixed.

Curious, I started looking through other posts/pages. Most were okay, but the further back into my blog's history, the more missing pages I encountered. Many of these posts contained characters that didn't survive the database edits, and they got cut off at random points.

So now I'm aware of this problem, and I've been slowly combing through the dusty, cobwebbed corners of the site, cleaning things up and restoring lost posts when necessary. Most of it isn't really worth preserving, honestly. But I feel bad leaving it in such a rough state - and I've been mildly enjoying following my own path as I read things I wrote 15 years ago.

Good grief, I'm feeling old! 👴

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It’s good to be back

 Martin · 2 years

About a week ago, I had to tear down my office and put my computer in the corner of my bedroom while we had some work done on our house.

It wasn't a bad week using my iPad Pro as my sole connection to work/games, but I'm happy to finally have the desktop set up again. That was a long week!

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Fenced Alley

 Martin · 2 years

I was looking through my photos the other day, searching for some paint color images, and I found a picture I took of an alley that I thought might be fun to do as an illustration. So I made this!

This is partly just some general illustration practice, and partly practice for an acrylic painting I want to do later this year. That painting won't be the same subject, but it's good to practice colors and form.

As with other recent illustrations, I used Procreate to make this. Sketched with the Procreate Pencil brush and painted with the Inka brush.

Here's a time-lapse, if you'd like to see how it all came together:

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Overwatch 2 tech beta

 Martin · 3 years

A little late to get this out, but I played the Overwatch 2 tech beta while it was available and it's surprising how similar and different it feels all at once.

Obviously these are early days, and I'm sure we'll see a lot more changes come before the game officially launches, but it does seem like it could've just been an update to the original game.

I get why they're doing it that way - Overwatch has been out for year now, and patches don't bring new players in like a launch does. And despite how hasn't changed, the game does feel quite different with the various balance changes and new 5v5 format.

If Overwatch 2's launch isn't a great one though, I wonder how many players will stick around once it's out, since that will signal the coming end of support for the original game.

We shall see how it goes!

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So long, Twitter

 Martin · 3 years

Yesterday, Twitter was bought out by a private investor - or at least, it's in the process of being bought out right now - and I'm outta there so fast I'm leaving a Marty-shaped hole in the wall.

I've never really liked Twitter, honestly. It's not a bad platform, from a feature perspective, but I have never liked the short-form text format for expressing thoughts.

I can't have been the only one because over the years, Twitter expanded its Tweet size from the original 140 characters (designed for texting in a pre-smartphone era) to 280. Eventually, they added the ability to link together/post multiple Tweets at once, so you could more easily write something much longer. But the platform still encouraged you to distill your thoughts down to something bite-sized, and I just don't think that's good for having real, interesting interactions with people. I never have.

Ads became a more prevalent part of the experience over time as well, with every Nth Tweet a promotional message. Then a bunch of grifting losers flooded the platform trying to hawk bad products, bad people, etc. The scourge of NFT clowns and lying, political hacks twisted Twitter from a sometimes interesting and intimate experience to something rotten and awful.

I had a few fun moments connecting with people I already knew in person and from other platforms, and I saw (and shared!) lots of cool art there. But engagement with people I care about really fell off a cliff over the last few years, and watching the company be acquired by someone who doesn't seem to have any interest in the things that made old Twitter fun and useful is enough for me.

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Tunic is a good, hard game

 Martin · 3 years

I played through Tunic, which came to Xbox Game Pass recently, and it's a pretty neat game - marred a bit, unfortunately, by its difficulty.

The game is gorgeous, and I had a great time exploring the game's world, discovering secrets, and leveling up my hero. I beat a few bosses, and collected a good deal of the key items. There always seems to be a hidden prize around the next corner or a secret passage nearby. I really like the way you uncover pages of the game's "manual" - which looks something like an old NES game's instruction book mixed a strategy guide - and the cryptic way it helps you get to know the game's world.

But after a few boss fights that started tough, and got tougher as I went on, I got to one that I just couldn't beat. My reflexes aren't great, and I'm not very good at anticipating boss movements in games, but even with a ton of extra items on hand, I just couldn't power through it. I must have tried 30 times.

Tunic has a "no fail" mode that keeps your health from depleting (and still lets you earn achievements), and I reluctantly turned it on to continue. But it felt bad to do this after spending so much time without it, and I just wish the game wasn't so difficult. I turned this feature off again after that fight, but had to use it again later for another boss fight that was just outrageously, impossibly difficult.

Maybe games like this aren't for me, and I appreciate "no fail" mode, but I feel like this game in particular would be so much better if the difficulty were just scaled down a bit. It didn't need to be this brutally difficult.

It's a shame because otherwise I really love this game. It's excellent in so many ways, but it will always be somewhat inaccessible to many players because of its difficulty (and many peoples' reluctance to use helper modes to bypass tough fights).

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