I Didn’t Expect That

Posted on October 28, 2020 by SusanG

I have had my new office setup for just about two weeks now and I’m finding an improvement I really didn’t expect. I’m cautiously optimistic that the improvement will continue. Though I did manage to do something that just about erased all the improvement so maybe I’ll just keep an eye on it and not say anything. It may be silly and superstitious but it is 2020 and that just about says it all.

I mentioned last week, the Adobe Max conference was held online. I found it to be really inspiring and even helpful. I am excited to use some of the new apps they have as well as learning more about the things I can do in the apps I have been using. That will all have to wait a little bit though. Not just because I’m still studying for a test. Also because I have to upgrade either the computer I use the Adobe Creative Cloud suite on, upgrade the operating system on that computer, or move it to the laptop. And I’m not ready to do any of that until after I pass my test.

The first piece

I’m getting as tired of studying for the test as you are reading about me studying for it. I’m finally to the point that I have scheduled the test. I am running out of time slots available so I had to commit. I’m super nervous that I’m not well enough prepared. Though the practice test scores are staying high, the questions are starting to seem easy. That makes me worry that the test is going to be nothing like I have prepared for. So I’ll be doing my best from now until then to cover as much extra as I can so hopefully I won’t get completely blind sided when I sit down. Once it’s passed I hope to take a couple of weeks off before I start studying for whatever the next test will be. I think I have a better plan for it so maybe I won’t be dragging it out for nearly a year.

I do try to get in other activities besides just the studying and whatever day job stuff is going on. Some weeks it’s some analog art, some weeks it’s computer art, some weeks it’s music. It really just varies. This week I started a new pastel piece. I took a picture that struck me and was excited to get started on it, and then had to wait until I got home from the Dentist. That was a little agonizing. I’ve also started a digitized version of it in Illustrator. The pastel piece is much farther along than the Illustrator version.

In addition, I started a new piece in Blender. I was thinking of this aluminum Christmas tree that we had when I was a kid. We put it up as well as a regular tree. I was thinking it would be a fun piece to have in a scene or even build a scene around. Then I started thinking about how to make the branches with the aluminum curls on them. I happened to have a little free time so I sat down to see if what I thought the way to do it was going to work. Oh, did it ever. I’m really super pleased with how it looks.

My Aluminum Christmas Tree

To get the aluminum curls I used something I learned in the donut tutorial. The part for the sprinkles worked just as well for making one curl and putting thousands in the scene. The only thing I couldn’t get to work, and maybe it isn’t supposed to, is I wanted to use a similar method to put the branches on the tree trunk. I suspect, it won’t do it because I’d be using an object that already has a particle node on it to use as an object in another particle node. Sort of nested particle nodes.

Fortunately those trees didn’t have that many branches so I essentially manually placed them. There was some group copy, rotate, paste work that happened so not all of the placement was one at a time. I still need to create a base for it. While I remember what the tree itself looked like, and even the paper sleeves that we kept the branches in when in the box, I don’t remember what the base looked like so I’ll either do some research on that or make something basic.

It’s almost election day. If you are able to vote and have not voted please be sure to do so. It’s important.

It’s almost Halloween. It happens to be a full moon on Halloween. I think I’ll get snacks early and lock myself in my home. That seems like the safest bet this year.

New work on the art desk

The fun bit for this week is that both the Spark Animation Festival, and Bcon online are happening. The Spark Animation Festival is a Canadian Animation Festival. It is another one of the festivals that I have not heard of before. It is also one that even with it being online, it has a fee. It’s a very reasonable fee so I decided it would be worth it to check it out. I need to get into the catalog and see what films I want to see.

I have no idea what to expect for Bcon. I’m just happy to have the day off from the day job so I can watch it. And I get to find out what is in my comfort box. That will be fun.

I have signed up for the Zbrush Summit and the Autodesk University so those conferences will be coming up next week and the week after. It is definitely a busy conference season. Oh, NANOWRIMO starts next week and goes the entire month of November. I know at least one person who is planning on participating. To that person and anyone else planning on participating, have a great time. I’ll talk to you in December.

That covers the events for me. I’ve included some pictures, as I usually try to do. Even one of the aluminum Christmas tree.

Oh how my salad grows.
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Conference Season

Posted on October 21, 2020 by SusanG

It is conference season for creatives. It seems that this time of year is when all the different creative industries, particularly in the visual arts, have their conferences. I have noticed this before and this year it really stands out for me as so many of them have moved online. Some are available for reduced access cost, some for free, and some for a hybrid of free to watch live but pay to watch later. Some of the conferences are ones that I’ve wanted to go to in the past and yet couldn’t justify the time off or the expense.

My original desk setup.

This year, because some of the conferences are online, and free in some capacity, I’ve actually signed up for a few and there are two more I’m considering. One of the conferences I signed up for, that I’ve not heard of before is the View Conference. It’s got some great presentations and discussions. Not knowing about it, I would never have thought of going to it. It’s an international VFX and computer graphics conference in Italy. Because the live presentations are free if you sign up, I have had a chance to see some of the presentations.

I, of course, signed up for BCon20, this is Blender’s user conference. I had wanted to go to their first ever US conference that they were holding this year. Unfortunately, due to circumstances, that got canceled as did their regular conference that they hold in Amsterdam. So Blender is holding an abbreviated version online this year. I’m quite excited to get to be a part of it. I even ordered the Comfort Box, not to be opened until October 30, the day of the conference so we can all feel like we’re really connected. And no, I haven’t opened the box.

I signed up for Adobe Max. I wasn’t sure I was going to bother because of when all the sessions are. It’s a middle of the week event and I have the day job. I decided to go ahead and sign up because maybe I’d find something I could watch at lunch or in the evening. Even with my mother’s enthusiasm over some of the sessions that were scheduled, I didn’t expect to really watch much of it. Then the email for the schedule came and I decided I might watch more than I expected.

Office/Art room takes of the living room

The keynote for Adobe Max happened to be at my lunch time, and a little after, just right in a break in my meetings. Which is fairly miraculous given how packed with meetings my Tuesday is. I have to say, I’m pretty stunned. I have the Creative Cloud suite. I’ve had it for several years and pay the subscription. I had been considering whether or not to continue with it and recently found that though the application I was using to do what I have been doing in Photoshop does work, it has some quirks that I don’t enjoy. So with that in mind I had decided, I would stick with the Adobe stuff, for now. And then I saw the keynote with a lot of the features, new and improved, and even maybe some that are already there and I was blown away. I know I don’t use the Adobe suite near to what it is capable of and now I think maybe I use two percent of what it can do on a really ambitious day. I will say the presentation has helped to solidify my intention to maintain my subscription.

The other two conferences I am thinking of signing up for are the Zbrush Summit which in the past was held the end of September first of October. I wasn’t sure if they were going to have it this year and then I saw the post announcing it. They have moved it to the first weekend in November and it will be all online. I’m also considering Autodesk University which is the Autodesk user conference. They make AutoCAD, 3DS Max, Maya, and Mudbox. Even though I no longer use their software I may still watch some of it, many of the concepts will be the same for other software and I can still learn something. That one is also in November.

I looked at the Sigraph conference because that is a big deal and that one turns out to not be free, even the online version. And it’s a little pricier than I am willing to pay. Especially since I would just be watching for curiosity and vague interest sake. A lot of what gets presented are technical break-throughs that I am not in any position to take advantage of so…

Office/Art room spills into dining room

There are book and publishing conferences happening or have happened, in the last few weeks to the upcoming few weeks as well. And I don’t doubt there are a lot of other conferences happening. It feels near impossible to get to participate in half of what there is available. If you are looking for a bonus from the pandemic, the conference season might just be it.

So, yes, I missed last week’s post. I had a big project that took much of the week and then some time to recover. Though I managed a little relaxation. I took about an hour and finished up a pastel drawing I’ve been working at all year. It is from a picture I took while I was in Australia last year.

The big project was the office/art room. All my pieces for setting up the new desks arrived on a Sunday and though I told myself I needed to let it wait until after my test, I also knew that the difference it would make in my comfort, and productivity for the day job were significant enough that it really would be worth it to get the desk swap done. And that’s what I did. It was not a small feat. It took two and half hours just to unload the two big bookcases. Everything ended up in my living room and dining room while I made space to assemble the desks, one at a time, and move the furniture around. Once the desks were in their places and the other pieces where they were going, then it took a day or two to move everything back into place. The nice thing about working from home is I was able to do a little bit at a time during the day during breaks. Get up for water, move a stack of books, go to the bathroom, put the books on the shelf.

The new desk setup. More space!

I’m glad to have the office re-do done. As much work as it was, I think this is really going to work better. While my desk for the day job and my desk for my personal stuff are right next to each other, they function much more autonomously from each other. I turn one way to do my day job, and then at the end of the day, I slide the keyboard under the desk and turn the other way for my personal work. Even with the major furniture change done, I still have a lot to do in the office. So much still needs to be gone through and sorted for what to keep and what not to keep as well as where to put some things that don’t really have a proper home. That part will wait until after the test.

The test. The study is going well. I am progressing as I had hoped which is good. I would like to put a stake in the ground or dart on the calendar and say absolutely this is when the test is. I prefer the average of my practice test scores to be a bit higher before I schedule the test. That means, I probably won’t be sitting for it in the next week. Maybe in two?

With that in mind, you can guess what most of my time will be taken up with for the next couple of weeks. I’m still trying to squeeze in some Blender time and some guitar time. I purchased a course for Christmas music on guitar because it sounded fun and I like Christmas music so I may try to get started on that when I take a break from studying for my test. I’ll have to let you know how that goes. In the mean time, I’ve included some photos of the office rework, or mess I made, and the pastel picture that I finished. Enjoy.

My reward for finishing moving the office around.
I also finished this piece of art.
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Sometimes Simple

Posted on October 7, 2020 by SusanG

As you might guess, from reading about the variety of guitars I have, I also have more than one amplifier. I primarily use an Orange amp that I picked up not long after I moved to Charlotte. It has a few bells and whistles like, a built in tuner and over-drive that can be engaged by a foot switch. It also has some built in reverb effects which is nice. And then it has the standard knobs for adjusting the low, mid, and high tones to color the sound how you like as well as the gain and master volumes. It is also the amp that has a half a dozen pedals connected to it, at least two of which are engaged most of the time.

The Orange Amp and its pedals

In addition to the Orange, I have a smaller practice amp that its only effect is the over-drive or boost as it’s called. It has the gain and the master volume and the controls for low, mid, and high and that’s it. It doesn’t have any pedals hooked up to it so there is nothing extra to color the sound and it’s really easy to neutralize it. Make the sound neutral by setting all the knobs at noon. I recently found this to be a blessing.

Much like I love my Squire Bullet for its simplicity, I just found a new appreciation for my practice amp for much the same reason. The Bullet has one humbucker pickup and a volume knob. It makes it great for testing amps and pedals and it’s great for learning how new pedals sound and how they sound with other pedals. It’s also great for just playing and not worrying about do I have the right pickup selected or do I need to adjust the tone. Nope. There’s nothing to do with it, you have the sound that you have until you add all the other things.

It turns out that the practice amp has the same beauty in simplicity. And I found it really helpful in beginning to identify what it is about my Gretsch that has been bothering me. Sometime last year or earlier, I started fiddling with a couple of things on my Gretsch to try to get more volume out of it. A problem, I have finally concluded, will best be fixed by either, or a combination of much heavier gauge strings, or new pickups. In the midst of all the fiddling, something strange seemed to happen to the sound of the strings and they started sounding really harsh and scrapey. And I thought I was having other trouble with the pickup selector or a pickup.

All the knobs on the Orange amp

I happened to plug the Gretsch into the practice amp. I turned off the boost, I lowered the gain and increased the master volume and then set all the other knobs at attention. And you know what, I was able to tell that the switch has the same problem it does on the Gibson. It gets something in it, probably from humidity or dust, that can cause it not to make contact when you first use it. That’s an easy fix. Before I start playing if I just flip the switch back and forth a few times and that cleans it out. That solved me thinking there was a pickup problem. I have some buzzing around the fifth fret on the low E and A strings, and that might require a tune up to get fixed. But with no extra effects it was easier to hear and identify. That just leaves finding strings that go with it. Or getting used to the sound.

Had it not been for being able to narrow down the sound and get with the most simple of setups, I might still be somewhat frustrated with a guitar that I really loved when I got it and then got exasperated with. Now, I know what’s what with it and I can get back to enjoying it and the sound of it and playing it more.

I am full steam ahead now on the test prep and study. I am taking practice tests frequently and I’m starting to get passing scores. I want to get to where I consistently get a high passing score before I register for the test. I did look up when I can take the test at my preferred testing facility and I have set a target date for myself. I’m really staying focused on that right now so that I can get that test passed.

Unfortunately that means I don’t take a lot of time for other things that might suck me in or take too long to really get into to make some head way. So I can spend some time practicing guitar because I can set a timer and do that for 10 or 15 minutes. I’m not as inclined to try to get into a Blender project because sometimes in can take me 10 minutes just to figure out where I am and what I want to do next. I have an idea or two of how I might be able to make it work, I’ll have to try it at the weekend, in between testing sessions, and patching at the day job, to see if I can make it work.

Practice amp. Nothing to it.

A few weeks ago, I had the realization that I needed to get an under desk keyboard tray for my workstation for the day job and for my personal workstation. As I am currently setup, I use a single surface ‘L’ shaped desk. I have my personal workstation setup on the long side and my day job workstation setup on the short side, and a total of four monitors on the desk top. If I work at my personal workstation, one arm is sitting on top of the short side of the desk and if I work at my day job workstation that same arm is hanging off the keyboard and desk at an odd angle. And, you guessed it, this is the same arm I have had trouble with off and on all year.

I looked at adding one keyboard tray to the desk as it is and that just doesn’t make sense. So the conclusion I came to involves getting two desks, each with a keyboard tray that I can mount under the desk top. Not so bad right? There is one catch. The desks have to be short. I’m not talking a little short, I’m talking really short. The desk I am currently using has adjustable legs that I can get as short as about 24 inches. Yes. Short. I identified a solution and was going to order it except I couldn’t get all the pieces delivered at that time. I took it as a sign that I should just skip the whole idea and stick with what I have.

However, I was doing some work at my personal workstation this weekend that caused me to revisit the idea. So I looked at my solution again and found that now, I can get everything delivered. So, I went ahead and ordered everything. It is all expected to be here within a week. It will all probably sit in my dining room for several weeks. This is not a minor project, changing out my desk for two separate desks. Given the layout of the office/art room, and the size of the various desks and other things in the room, it will pretty much involve a complete reorganization of the space. I’m not expecting to get started on in until after I pass my test. In the mean time, I’ll have the stuff sitting here taunting me, and motivating me to get the material mastered, even more, and to keep up with my practice tests and get it passed.

Another new garden started.

I did do some things this week that weren’t studying or chores. I got the soil I needed to pot and re-pot some of the plants I’ve been growing. Of course, that also involved starting a new batch in the Aerogarden. I also watched more of the rhythm guitar course I’ve been working on. I need to go back and re-watch a couple of the last videos I watched so I can practice the particular rhythms with it. I thought I would remember them better than I did. By the time I sat down to try them and practice them, I forgot how they went. Ugh.

I’ve got plenty of test prep to do this week. And as I mentioned we have server patching at the day job. I’ll be working on those rhythms that I forgot from the lesson and I will either give the short session with Blender a try or I’ll be doing short sessions to start gutting my office in preparation for the new desks. It should be an interesting week and weekend coming up.

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Not A Lot To Share

Posted on September 30, 2020 by SusanG

This is probably going to be shorter than usual. I don’t have a lot of interesting to share. I spent most of my week working and trying to get studying done, mostly to no avail. And I was mostly unfocused for the weekend so while I got things done, and even had some time to visit with people, I don’t have a lot to share.

Salad harvested for my sandwich

The first week back to the day job after two weeks off wasn’t too bad. I think it helps that I work from home right now so it wasn’t near the shock to the system that going into an office after two weeks away is. I did have plenty of work to come back to. One system has a problem that I need to find a solution for and it looks like I’ll also be planning for an upgrade to that system. And there are the projects that were already on the plate. At least things didn’t completely blow up.

I still have that studying to do. I had planned to get into that over the weekend since that first week back was not really conducive to trying to study. The amount of brain power left at the end of the day just wasn’t enough for it. At least not the intensive studying I need to do. I managed to do a little bit to start to refresh the brain cells and prime the synapses. From there, I was planning on really digging in and attacking it. That didn’t happen. I suspect it was the side effects of that first week back thing.

These will need their own pots soon.

The things I got done mostly involved moving from one, ‘oh I should do that’ thing to ‘I guess I could do that’ thing, and back again. The problem with that is that there tends to always be one more of those sort of things to do, until you run out of day. That means, I did not get started on the next Blender project. During the week I did manage to update Blender on my desktop and laptop to 2.90.1. It is supposed to have some bug fixes and, given that when I tried to render an image from the last project in 2.90 I managed to break Blender, I figured it would be a good idea to update it. I haven’t tested it out yet. So I don’t know if it fixes my problem.

One of my next donut project ideas.

I think I have settled back into work mode enough that I have finally gotten a little more focused and determined. I’ve started on the more intensive study again. Which is good. I have set a deadline to get that test taken and I find that to be motivating. I have added short bits of guitar playing in the mix. Very short. Just 10 minutes or so. Just enough time to run through some scale exercises and maybe strum through a song. It keeps the fingers limber and the ears tuned. And for now that will have to do. I am going to save the Blender projects for short breaks on the weekend until I take the test. It means that my projects will be probably be slightly out of season. And that’s ok. Right now, I need to work on my Blender skills more than I need to meet seasonal deadlines for projects.

That’s all the excitement for now. I’ll leave this for you and I am going to dive into a bit of study before I run out of day. Enjoy the pictures and check back again. I will try to make the next week more interesting.

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Just The Right Shot

Posted on September 22, 2020 by SusanG

Trying to get just the right shot to show off the latest Donut project turned out to be a bigger challenge than I think it should have been. It would have been helpful if that was the only thing that was going to be a challenge in preparing things for this post. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Getting the rest of the images ready for posting was also a challenge.

I got the donuts on a plate and made some coffee.

I guess, since I spent several days of the last week of my vacation working in Blender and making all kinds of progress and learning and figuring out how to do things, having the last bit of getting the images give me a little trouble is a small price to pay. And at least I got to pay after.

The latest Donut Project is done. I was able to finish up all the details and add a few fun bits as well. I was asked, when I completed the original Blender Donut Tutorial, about adding steam to the coffee. This seemed reasonable to me so I decided with this project I would give it a try. The fun thing about the Donut Tutorial is that in the beginning of the course, at the end of the first video of how to get around, you learn about a feature called ‘Quick Smoke’. He uses it to set Suzanne (the monkey head) on fire. It’s a fun demo and I didn’t really consider it as something I would be needing for the donuts. Until I was asked about steam. It turns out that this works just fine for creating steam. It takes a little fiddling with to get just what you want. And for some reason when I added a second instance of it, it took different fiddling to make that one work.

Now I have steaming coffee.

I’m not sure I really set out to finish up the project last week. It started innocently enough when I decided I wanted to see if I could add a valentine shaped sprinkle to the rest of the sprinkles. I created the valentine sprinkle months ago when I first thought of doing donuts for different holidays so I had it, I just had to get it into the scene. It was fairly easy to append it, then it required some scaling and rotating to get it to not overwhelm the donuts and to lay flat. Then, I had too many so I had to adjust how much of which sprinkles were going to be used.

From there I decided to work on the texture painting of the donuts. And then I did something else. And then I did another thing. Before I realized it I had most of the scene setup and most of the materials applied, and all the modeling done. I had one last thing. Applying the condensation to the inside of the cups. I know, this sounds like no big deal. And it’s getting to be less of a big deal. However, I am still not a fan of doing the UV unwrapping. It seems like it always wants to make me work harder than I think I should have to. Here is where I needed better notes.

A bat sprinkle. Hallowe’en is soon.

In order to get the second material (the condensation) on just part of the cup, you have to unwrap the whole thing and then you can select what you want to apply the material to and adjust its position from there. That’s a really simplistic explanation of the point of the UV unwrapping and my notes on how to do it, weren’t a lot better. I was determined not to go back to the tutorial to figure out how to do the unwrapping. So after trying for a while to get it to work, I gave up and looked it up on the internet and found a different video that explained it. I didn’t watch the whole thing because I really only needed enough to get going.

Pumpkins work for Hallowe’en and Thanksgiving.

The other thing I spent a lot of time figuring out was the steam. I think I spent 5 hours or so trying to figure out how to get it to look just the way I wanted it to. I had to figure out how to keep it from expanding from the whole cup and not just up the top. And I was trying to adjust the color so it was lighter, and also not as thick. I’m still in need of more experimenting for another project and I may figure out even more bits about it. I got what I need for now.

With all the pieces in place and materials applied it was time to do touch ups and set up the animation. My notes here were a little better and I was able to get it all setup. I made it a little longer than the last one but it still moves pretty quick. The render for all the frames didn’t take too long and the compositing was easy. I did go back later and try a different animation with more frames, and some camera moves to try to get a better shot of the donuts. But, it goes just as fast and with the extra camera moves it doesn’t really work as well as I’d like. It made my Mother a little dizzy. Oops. Oh well, look what I learned.

Once the render was done I updated Blender on the laptop to 2.90. I had already updated it on the desktop computer but I hadn’t really played with it. As I was trying to figure out the smoke/steam I tested it on the desktop to see if there was anything different in 2.90 that would make it easier to figure out. There isn’t.

Or are you ready for Christmas?

There are other cool things in 2.90 like the cloth brush. Oh wow. It’s another thing that took a bit of time to figure out how to make it work so I could get an idea of how I could use it. The cloth brush is a really great feature on it’s own but when added to the cloth simulation it is amazing. I think my brain exploded with the possibilities. And yes, I have an idea for a project that it will be perfect for.

I haven’t quite decided which project I want to jump into next. Yes, they all involve donuts, and I have about three that are all jockeying for position in my brain. Since I haven’t decided, and I still wanted to make stuff in Blender, I decided to create some shaped sprinkles like the valentine one. So I did several of those. It was a fun exercise. I tried to keep them fairly simple and yet still look enough like what it was meant to represent.

As always happens with a project, particularly like this, I learned a lot. And I think I learned more by just trying to follow my notes this time. The biggest thing I learned, and it wasn’t specifically from this project, was that I need to spend time just trying out different things and playing around without worrying about making a final product every time. Just open Blender and test something out until I figure it out. And it’st ok to get it partly right and I don’t have to save everything. For instance, I realized that what I learned in creating the coffee cup could be translated to creating a wine glass. So I tested it out. I got a nice solid model of a wine glass, but I forgot to do a step at a certain point that was needed in order to get it to really look like a wine glass once I applied materials to it. Instead of worrying about it. I just deleted the model because, I now know, I can create it any time I want. I have the knowledge.

That pesky final shot I wanted.

Spending time just poking at features and tools and such is a great way to learn. Unfortunately, when we are always thinking we have to be productive and create a “finished product” whatever that is, it’s easy to just keep the head down and do what you know. Poking around and fiddling takes time, that doesn’t look like doing anything more than, wasting time. And yet, without it, we don’t find the cool bits or learn the new thing that suddenly makes something so much easier, or more realistic, or any number of things. This doesn’t just apply to 3D modeling. It applies to art, music, make-up, programming, cooking, gardening, and all sorts of other things.

Vacation is over, and I’m back to the day job. It’s hard to say how that is going to go this week. I have a feeling though, that there won’t be a lot of time for work day study so I’ll be getting back to that in the evenings. I’ll still work some Blender projects in there. I’ve got too many ideas right now to not be working on at least one of them. I’ll work in some guitar time as well. Until next week, which probably won’t have near as much art to share, enjoy the pictures and the final video of the Valentines Donuts.

The final video.
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