My Daylight Was Not Saved – Weekly Update March 15, 2016

Posted on March 15, 2016 by SusanG

Yes, daylight saving time as begun in the U.S. I have a few issues with the whole concept, and I could go on and on about them. However, you’re not here to read my complaints and arguments against daylight saving time. Suffice to say I have no idea how one saves
daylight.

BDayCard2016_03102016h_c_sm_wmSince I left off last week realizing the ‘P’ and the ‘Y’ weren’t quite up to snuff and didn’t yet fit with the ‘H’ and ‘A’, that’s where I started. In general working on the ‘P’ wasn’t too bad. Not that it was a quick finish up. It took time. I did remember the trick of viewing the thumbnails of a render of the letter to determine if it was balloony enough and if it fit well with the other letters. This helped quite a bit. It made it easier to identify the areas that had problems and even what needed to be adjusted. Once again, a lot of time was spent moving edges and vertices.

BDayCard2016_03102016i_c_sm_wm

The ‘Y’, though deceptively simple looking, was not as co-operative. It seems like I spent much more time and effort to get the ‘Y’ to be more balloony than with the ‘P’. It was a little tricky where the top v-shape meets the bottom post. I added some edge loops to get better control of the shape and to keep it from losing definition. I also added edge loops to the upper arms and to the post. This allowed me a bit more to work with to get a fuller, rounder look in those areas. I was pretty close to having the ‘Y’ ready so I moved it back in line with the other ballooned letters. That’s when I could see that it wasn’t quite there. It needed more poof. I decided to try a minor scale up in the x and y axes. I scaled up the ‘P’ in the y axis and it was that little extra that finished that off so I hoped it would be the same for the ‘Y’. When I tried to scale the ‘Y’ it only sort of worked. It looked like it was going to scale nicely except it was also getting squished. Some how my scale settings got changed from uniform scale to scale and squash. I switched it back and all is good. And the ‘Y’ now fits in with the other letters.

BDayCard2016_03122016g_c_sm_wm  BDayCard2016_03122016f_c_sm_wmBDayCard2016_03122016e_c_sm_wm

I started on the ‘B’. The ‘B’ requires a little extra work, like the ‘R’ will. The way I createdBDayCard2016_03132016e_c_sm_wm the ‘B’, the bar between the top bump and the bottom bump is not one bar, it is two. They are two separate bumps not a double bump. The first thing I did was to make that a single bar and thus a double bump. To do this I deleted the inside faces, the ones facing each other between the bumps. I also deleted the band of faces that ran around the spine and between the bumps. I then adjusted the vertices so they matched up and welded the corresponding top and bottom vertices to each other. I once again have a single object. Next up, time to start poofing things out. Except the proportions were off. The bar was too thick and the top and bottom bumps were too similar in size. Adjusting that was fairly easy. I just selected a group of edge loops and raised them a bit. Not so bad. As you can see the bar is still not right and there is more work to do to get the ‘B’ looking nice and balloony and fitting in with the other letters. It’s slow going, but it’s progress.

I still have reservations and concerns about this Birthday card design. Not so much the work involved anymore. I think I’m past that. I’m more concerned that it won’t turn out to be of the quality I want. Don’t get me wrong, I will do my best in the modeling and choosing materials and setting up the render. I’m just a little concerned that the idea is too plain and that it won’t be as cool as the Christmas card and won’t have a similar enough feel. But I haven’t been able to come up with a different design that I  would like to do instead.

While I fretted over the state of this Birthday card project I finished up the initial background layer for the Studio Sign project. I decided that since I mentioned it last week, it would be a good idea to at least get that much done. Here’s a picture of it. It is coming along but I really want the background a little darker and denser, less white paper showing through. I think the next layer will be a straight Payne’s Grey instead of a mixed color. It should add some depth as well as darkening the background.

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And now we are at the end of another post. I get to participate in this year’s disaster recovery testing at the day job this week. I’m expecting that to mean that I will have very little work time between the day job and the exercise events so I have a feeling I won’t make much progress until the weekend. Then again, who knows, my part could go much smoother than I’m expecting and I will have lots of time to work on the card and maybe something else. Check back next week to see what happens.

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Still Questioning My Sanity – Weekly Update March 8, 2016

Posted on March 8, 2016 by SusanG

Yes, I am still working on balloon letters. And I am still wondering if this was the best idea. I am probably repeating myself when I say “who knew”. Who knew making letters all balloon looking was going to be so tedious and time consuming. Normally I’m ok with
tedious. And mostly I’m ok with the tedious part of this. However, some things are already getting old.

Again, as I was preparing the pictures for this post I realized that the two additional letters I thought I had finished this week will need more work. It’s the same thing that happened last week with the ‘H’ and the ‘A’. With those letters, I thought I was done until I saw the pictures of them as their thumbnail image. It turns out that the thumbnail can function a bit like the old trick of stepping way back from a painting, or turning it upside down, or squinching your eyes, so you can see if your layout, design, and actual work, is holding up as you expect. I hope to remember that this next week.

I did go back and fix the issue I was seeing in the ‘H’. The inside of the right hand leg was too flat. I went in and pushed and pulled the vertices around to get a nice full, on all sides, right leg for the ‘H’ and I think it came out pretty good. Here is a shot without turbosmooth and a shot with it. Now we’re really looking balloony.

BDayCard2016_02292016a_c_sm_wm  BDayCard2016_02292016b_c_sm_wm

With a nice balloon looking ‘H’, I have a true gauge for the rest of the letters. I also noticed that he ‘A’ needed some work. Especially after getting the ‘H’ right. You can really tell it here.

BDayCard2016_02292016c_sm_wm

So I worked on the ‘A’. There isn’t a lot of cool things to learn or do with this process. Well there might be but I haven’t found them yet. It has all been a lot of transforming vertices and edges. Mostly in the form of moving them as opposed to rotating or scaling. I did finally get the ‘A’ looking better. Here it is without and then with the turbosmooth modifier. I like to use it because it smooths out the faceting and makes it easier to see if I’ve got the shape balloony enough.

BDayCard2016_03052016c_c_sm_wm    BDayCard2016_03052016d_c_sm_wm

BDayCard2016_03062016c_c_sm_wm

 

Next up the ‘P’. Again, I thought it was done but I now see that it needs a little more work. It shows up particularly with the turbosmooth on don’t you think?

With the ‘P’ I didn’t have enough edge loops originally to make the bump look very rounded. Especially on the inside. It was sadly angular and ugly. So once I had the bulk of the shaping done, or so I thought, I added more edge loops so I could get better control of the shapes and a more refined look. Since I thought I was done I moved on to the ‘Y’. This one has been surprisingly uncooperative. It has not been particularly easy to get really balloony looking. I got one of the upper arms too skinny and had to fix that and then I foundBDayCard2016_03062016e_c_sm_wm that I had it’s leg too fat. It was really out of proportion with the arms. I so wanted to call it done but as you can see, it really isn’t. I will be working on that one again this week.

I did get a little tired of moving vertices around and decided to spend a bit of time one evening working on that studio sign that I started so many months ago. It’s coming along. I’ve almost got the entire background, first layer, done. When I get that far I’ll try to remember to get a pic of it so I can post it here. I’m hoping that with that piece, the only thing that I will need to go in and make denser will be the background and not the additional illustrations.

Remember the swing arm I was telling you I had ordered to mount my Cintiq to my desk? Sure enough, it was delivered just as I was finishing up last week’s post. I was really curious to see if it was going to work out so as soon as I had everything uploaded I shutdown the computer and started figuring out how to attach the arm to my Cintiq and then how to attach it all to my desk. Or, wait. I had to attach it to the desk first and then to the Cintiq. Not any easy thing to do as one person. But I managed. And, it works great. I like the flexability it gives. I can even get it high enough so I can stand if I want. Though so far I have only used it while sitting. And that has been so much better. I can get it nice and close for drawing or moving vertices. I took a couple of pictures of it for you. I may end up moving it back along the side of the desk where it is mounted. I’m not sure yet. Ideally I would mount it on the back of the desk so it cantilevered out over the desk surface, however, my desk is too deep for that to work. It would give me the same problem as before, maybe worse.

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And in case you are wondering, my eyeballs are not completely pixelated yet. I took a little time away from the computer to see Disney’s Zootopia this weekend. Yes, with all the kids. It was a good movie. I really enjoyed it. I can’t wait to get it on Blu-Ray so I can watch it a thousand times. There is so much in that movie. It’s really involved. Lots of models, and characters, and animation, and fur, and wow. I’m looking forward to getting to read about it in one or another of the magazines I get. As intricate as it is I kind of wonder if they used the Hyperion renderer for it like with Big Hero 6 or if they used something else. I couldn’t tell from the credits.

That’s the update. For now, it’s a lot more of pushing around vertices until I get things right. With a little luck, and patience, the additional adjustments to the ‘P’ and the ‘Y’ won’t take too long and I’ll be moving on to the rest of the letters very soon. I have a feeling that ‘B’ is going to be a challenge and the ‘R’ is looking a little cagey too. So check back next week to see how it’s going. You never know, I might have more doodles from another day job meeting or maybe I’ll get that last bit of background filled in on the sign. Or who knows…

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An ‘H’ An ‘A’ and Other Stuff – Weekly Update March 1, 2016

Posted on March 1, 2016 by SusanG

When I decided on this Birthday card project I thought it would go a fairly quick. Since I’ve only just finished the ‘H’, I’m thinking that’s not going to be the case.

I finally got the ‘H’ all nice and poofy balloon looking over the weekend. It took a lot of time to get it just right. I thought I had it full looking and then from one angle or another I could see the legs looking flat instead of rounded. So I kept going in and tweaking vertices and edges to get them in just the right place to create a curved surface look instead of a flattened surface. I finally got it looking enough like I want to call it good and move on. I will probably go back and do some more fine tuning when I add the balloon tail. That bit where you tie off the balloon after blowing it up so the air doesn’t come back out, the tail, or knot.

BDayCard2016_02212016e_c_sm_wm   BDayCard2016_02212016f_c_sm_wm

That’s something I haven’t really touched on. How do I want to show the balloon-ness with the tail at the end. And how do I show the string attaching to the balloons. This is related to that question of whether to make them mylar style balloons or latex style rubber balloons. I’m still working on that. Though I appear to be leaning towards the latex style. But my plan is to get all the letters balloon-ified then go back and add the the tail later. I’m sort of hoping to make one tail and then make adjustments to it per letter as I attach it.

After finishing, at least for now, the ‘H’, I moved on to the ‘A’. This didn’t seem to take as long. I’m not sure if it’s because I started a little more efficiently or I just don’t have it quite there yet. I have a feeling it may be a bit of both. It is certainly not as poofed out as the ‘H’. It looks more streamlined, or like it was made from the long balloons like are used for the
balloon animals. I did start with the edges I had and didn’t add extras at the beginning. So fewer edges mean fewer vertices to manipulate. Though I do tink I might need a few more edge loops. At least two on each leg, one above and one below the bar. If I do that I will definitely need or want to go in and exaggerate the poofiness more. Its a tough call since it looks pretty good as it is.

BDayCard2016_02282016e_c_sm_wm    BDayCard2016_02282016g_c_sm_wm

I probably give the impression that I spent a really large amount of time each day working on the ‘H’ and the ‘A’. Unfortunately, I got into a sleep deficit during the week that because of several mundane tasks and chores I just couldn’t recover from. Which means I had more non-productive days than I care for. This is important because during the week I work on my projects in much smaller time chunks than on the weekend. And that can really have an impact on how long it takes me to finish a project.

I did figure out how to navigate in the 3DS Max view port while using the grip pen for my Intuos tablet. Of course if you’ve been using a Wacom tablet for a while you probably already know what I did or needed to do to fix this. And when I ran into the problem
I sort of maybe remembered what I needed to do but I didn’t think to try it until this weekend. I went into the the utility for the tablet settings and changed the setting for the button on the pen. It was set to either right-click or double-click and I changed it to middle mouse. And it worked. Yay! I would say it worked like a champ except it really didn’t. It worked fine, just not optimally. I made the top button the middle mouse and I find it a bit awkward for regular use. My plan is, for the Cintiq I will set the bottom pen button to the middle mouse. I think it will feel more natural.

I’m starting to get a little excited about possibly using the Cintiq for 3DS Max. I think I said I wasn’t so sure about it because my regular monitors are 27 inches and my Cintiq is 22 inches. That was before I ordered the arm mount for my desk. I’m a little height challenged and I’ve had some trouble getting comfortable with the Cintiq with my desk and chair combination. I’ve tried some different configurations, none of which have worked very well. I saw a picture of some animator’s or other computer artist’s desk
with their Cintiq mounted to their desk by this swing arm. So I started looking for one. I found it and have had it book marked for months but I hadn’t purchased it. Until this last weekend. I finally ordered it and will have it early this week.

I’m very excited at the prospect of being hunched over my Cintiq like it’s a sketchbook or drawing table and tweaking edges and vertices for hours on end. This could get dangerous. So check back next week to find out what happens with the arm mount and if I manage to pull my eyes away from my balloons long enough to go see Zootopia or if my irises become pixelated. If they aren’t already.

Post Script: While preparing the images for this post I discovered that there is much more work I need to do on both the ‘H’ and the ‘A’. Guess what I will be doing this week. Maybe I’ll get to start on the ‘P’ soon.

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Sometimes I Wonder…But I Think It’s Going to Work – Weekly Update February 23, 2016

Posted on February 23, 2016 by SusanG

Sometimes I get started on a project and part way through it I wonder if I should question my sanity. If I’m lucky, I’m half way through the project or even further before this thought hits me. And if I’m not so lucky, it hits me early in the project. This can be a good thing, if I need to re-assess and try something different. I don’t think that’s the case with this birthday card project.

BDayCard2016_02162016a_sm_wm

I started working on the second round of refining the letters, into their more balloon like letter shapes. That round seemed to go fairly quick. And you can see here how the top half of the letters look compared to the bottom. Not really a lot of difference.  This is probably why it seemed to go fast.

Even getting the rest of it completed to the same level was fairly easy, I had it done in just a few days of working on it part-time. This should have been my first clue that I wasn’t really being aggressive enough with inflating the letters into puffy balloons. But at least everything is at the same level here. You can see how they all look. But when I apply the turbosmooth modifier, you can really tell that they’re not even close to looking like balloons.

BDayCard2016_02192016a_sm_wmBDayCard2016_02192016b_sm_wm Once all the letters were at the same level of refinement again it came down to deciding whether I continue to make small incremental adjustments to all the letters or if I go for the end result, or really close to the end result. The difference between the two is where I spend the time. I can either spend small amounts of time on each letter but have to touch them several times, over and over until it looks the way I want or I can spend a bunch of time on a letter to get it to look like I want and then spend a bunch of time on the next letter to get it to look like it belongs. This is where I started wondering if this was really the best idea, creating the letters from scratch instead of using a font and then enhancing it. But as I thought about what I would have to do to even with a font to get the letters nice and round and puffy, I realized it wasn’t going to make it any easier. It could make it more difficult depending on how 3DS Max were to build the faces. So…I decided I might as well go for it and make my balloon letters really look like balloons. I got started. But as you can see, even smoothed, it wasn’t enough.

BDayCard2016_02192016c_c_sm_wm      BDayCard2016_02192016d_c_sm_wm

I had to get even more dramatic. I selected the center faces on the side and transformed them so they were pulled out really far, and then I deselected the top and bottom faces and then did it again until I got to just the few in the center. Then I selected the edges that were along side the panel of faces that had been inflated and did the same thing. To make it a little easier I took the edges on both sides of the panel and adjusted them at the same time so I had some consistency. And I did it the same way I did the panel, deselecting the top and bottom sets until I got to the center set. Finally, I was starting to get something more like I wanted. It even looks right when smoothed. And from another angle.

BDayCard2016_02192016f_c_sm_wm     BDayCard2016_02192016g_c_sm_wm BDayCard2016_02192016i_c_sm_wmThat wasn’t quite enough though, because I really want things to look like the angles are creating choke points. Sort of like taking one of those animal balloons and twisting it or putting a rubber band around it. So the bar in the middle of the ‘H’ needs to puff out and look like it’s also being squished into the legs. I think this is going to work.

BDayCard2016_02202016d_c_sm_wm    BDayCard2016_02202016c_c_sm_wm

It turns out that getting it just right is a very time consuming process. It takes a lot of manipulating first faces and then edges and then vertices. And then doing it again. It means a lot of mousing and a lot of clicking. After last week’s episode with the wrist and arm pain, this could be a bit of a problem. With that much fine control needed I risk more of that pain. So I hooked up the Wacom Intuos to see if that would help but I couldn’t figure out how to move around in the view port with the pen, other than the zoom. I had the same trouble with the Cintiq. I could use the mouse on the Intuos, but that would defeat the purpose. I have a few other keyboards and mice hanging around and decided to try the wireless one on the other pc. It helped some. The mouse is smaller, but that wasn’t a perfect idea either. Too small a mouse is just as big an issue as too large a mouse. I do have one mouse that fits my hand really, really well. I have two of them actually. The Logitech M705. It’s just the right size. I decided that I would use a wired keyboard and that wireless mouse, and get one more of the M705 mice for back up. When I went to purchase the backup mouse, I found that Logitech also makes a 700 series wireless keyboard and mouse combo and wouldn’t you know, the mouse is the M705. So now I’m mousing with a properly fitting mouse and a wireless keyboard with a nice soft wrist support. I think this is going to work out as soon as I get used to how touchy the mouse is in 3DS Max.

Now that I’m comfortable again. I will just need to remember to get up and move once in a while, eat, sleep, all those little things. Check back again to find out how well things are progressing and if I’ve gone gaga from staring at the computer screen and manipulating vertices for too long.

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Working On Stuff – Weekly Update February 16, 2016

Posted on February 16, 2016 by SusanG

After spending so much time last week and weekend working on Sticks and getting him fixed up I woke up Monday with some lovely pain in my hand and forearm. A rather annoying occurance. I sometimes spend a bit too much time mousing on the computer too intently. The pay off for this, besides the progress on whatever I’m working on, is a bit of what is probably some carpel tunnel. Or at least repetitive motion issues. There are all sorts of things that can help but the first issue is getting the pain to go away. Which keeps me from doing things I want to do. For me this time, it was mid to late week before I got some descent relief. At which point I set about making it worse again.

I started the next project. I believe I have mentioned that I feel it is time to get another card prepared and posted. So that’s what I started on. I’ve decided on a Birthday card. It took a bit to come up with how I want to do it. Good thing I had that thinking time while my hand and arm were resting. At this point I’ve decided to go with some balloons saying Happy Birthday and I was thinking of having, just at the bottom, Sticks’ hand holding the strings to them. Then some one reminded me of an idea I had worked on for them a few years ago, so now I’m reconsidering if I want to use Sticks’ hand or another one.

I want the balloons to be interesting and really balloon like. Instead of using a font and creating letters that I then have to edit and manipulate to have more personality, I decided to make the letters myself from base primitives. In this case I started with a cube for all the letters. Here’s a look at what some of them looked like just roughed in. As you can see at this stage there is a lot of work to do on some of the letters.

BDayCard2016_02132016a_c_sm_wm

From this point the first step was to make the shapes look like the letters they are meant to be. This involved some addition of edge loops and some edge and point manipulation to get things in a better shape and position. In some cases I also had to extrude faces to then match them up to another leg or side of the letter. I would select the faces, extrude them just enough, then I would delete the faces I had selected as well as the faces they would be meeting up with. With no faces, I chose the edges that made up the outline of the faces I had deleted. I used this to move the edges closer to the side I wanted to connect them too and when I got them close enough I switched to the point selection mode and welded the appropriate points. Now no holes and a fully connected  letter. Some good examples of letters that were done this way are the ‘A’, ‘P’, and ‘B’. I also had to do this for the ‘R’ and the ‘D’.

BDayCard2016_02132016c_c_sm_wm

The inside cutouts on some of the letters have been a little tricky. Since I started out with a cube and extruded faces to make the shapes, all the cutouts like on the ‘B’ or ‘P’ are mostly square. Ultimately that’s not what I’m going to want. But I’ve got to start somewhere. So square insides it is. I will be fixing this as I continue to BDayCard2016_02142016b_c_sm_wmrefine the shapes.

I have managed to complete a first pass on all the letters so they all look like the letters they are meant to be.

You might be wondering why it doesn’t exactly spell out Happy Birthday yet. I’m trying to work smart. Instead of creating every single letter and then trying to get both ‘P’s or both ‘A’s to look exactly a like, or at least really close, I am creating one of each letter I need and then, once they are complete, or close to, I will copy any letters that I need to finish things out. Remember this is the first pass. I still have more refining to do.

It looks like it’s going to take at least two more passes maybe three to get things really just right. For the second pass I’ve started trying to refine the letters more and I was thinking I BDayCard2016_02152016b_c_sm_wmwas plumbing them out to make them a bit more poofy and balloon like. But when I added a Turbosmooth modifier to the shapes, they really don’t have the volume I want. You can see the difference of the ‘H’ and ‘A’ here as compared to the ‘P’. So I’ll get the rest of the letters to the same level of refinement and then do another round, probably adding more edge loops so I can smooth out some areas and hopefully get things even fuller. I’m still trying to decide if I want them to be mylar style balloons like you get at the grocery store or closer to regular type balloons that just come in the long shapes or the round shapes, not usually in letter or special shapes.

That’s where I’m at this week. No, I didn’t work on Sticks so no new pictures or animations of him for now. I won’t be forgetting him. Really, he’s got work I need him to do. I’ll be getting back to him soon though. And I’ll be getting this card farther along. Yes, even in spite of the pain from too much mousing. I find it very hard to stop and rest for very long. So even though it would be better for me to take a good long break of a week or more, I probably won’t. I will continue to work on things in small chunks and also work on ways to make things more comfortable, and hopefully alleviate the strain that causes the pain. It will take some experimenting. But I have several ideas that I will try first and then a few more that I will try later if those don’t help.

In the mean time I will keep clicking away making 3d computer art and animation because that’s what I do. Come back and see what I get up to next.

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