Leyland Warriors Presentation Day

Another weekend and more rugby…
This weekend was the presentation for the rugby club my boys joined this year, Leyland Warriors. So proud of them, and their coaches said some lovely things about them both when they went up for their trophies. It’s such a great group of people that run the club, always happy to help and give all the boy’s and girl’s full attention all the time. Even though we have only been with them for less than a year it feels like we have known them for a lot longer.

June 2016 Pictures

 June was the month that the sun finally came out to play, if only for a short time. It feels like we have had 6 months of rain here in the UK, so it was very nice to get the pool out into the garden. The boys loved it, but Kylo our dog still doesn't like water, thought we could get him in the pool as well, but no :)

Let's Play Galactic Civilizations 3 - 002

It was over before it had really begun..

Heading to Angainor II, a world surrounded by dust clouds which could help defenses but would be an isolated planet. Hopefully we can create a great supply line that would help them not feel alone out there while they supply us with what we need to make our civilization great…

Improvement in our hyperdrives have made our ship’s faster, we are still pushing for Ion Drives and Interstellar Navigation.

We are now at 184 cycles since we as a race, made a decision to push forward for the good of our people. Unfortunately it has now become very clear all too late that we have spread ourselves too thin. Hiring Mirazu Ysen with his ship "The Ysengard" was the right the right thing to do, but only one small fleet can not fight all the Pirates that we keep coming across the further we push forward into the unknown.

May 2016 Pictures

 May was a month of many new things. After almost a year of my boys and wife going "can we have a dog, can we have a dog" I finally gave in. After not much of a long search we came across a really nice organization that tries to re-home dogs, cats, rabbits and other smaller animals. Animal care were very good and not at all pushy, we could take as many dogs as we wanted for a walk (one at a time
of course), but it was our second one that the whole family, and yes me as well fell for. Liam, soon to be re-named Kylo is a cross breed Jack Russell with a lot of energy, but also just loves to chill and sit on you. He is 2 years old and loves to chase cat, also one of our neighbors has just got chickens which is driving him mad. We have only had him a month and he already feels so much part of the family it's like he has always been with us.

Let's Play Galactic Civilizations 3 - 001

Galactic Civilizations 3 - 001

After saying many, many times that I’m such a big fan of strategy games like Civilization and Galactic Civilization and that they are in my favorite all time games list, I thought I’d better start playing some.

First up is going to be Galactic Civilizations 3. Now even though it's been out since May 2015 and I picked it up early on I haven’t put much time into it (11hrs as of now on my steam account). I will be playing with Mercenaries Expansion Pack, Ship Designer’s Toolbox, Precursor World's, Mega Events and Revenge Of The Snathi DLC installed, no other mods.

We are the Arcean Empire, a noble and old race with a rich history. After centuries of always being

the underdog, and being almost brought to the brink of destruction by the Drengin. We were helped by the Terran Alliance to gain our world back and start to rebuild. We will never let our proud race be oppressed by anyone ever again. We will create an army of warriors that will strike fear into anyone that stands in our way. We will not tolerate or forgive threats to our freedom, we our The Arcean Empire…….

Our home planet Arcea orbits the Athol Sun which gives our planet life and amazing potential (class 11). Sending out the first colony ship the Backbone-1 with A.E.S Runner-1 to find a new world, and also A.E.S. Spotter-1 to search around out system for anything useful. It wasn’t long before Spotter-1 had found what our scientist called a space anomaly, this helped us increase our sensors greatly for future surveys. Next our crew of the Spotter-1 found an old Terran gunboat from the war, it had destroyed a Drengin Battle cruiser, but unfortunately all the crew members of the Mace MO had been mummified. The ship though old, is in working order and we can put this to good use to boost our fleet.

Learning Blender Week 004

Blender Week 004 Wooden Box

Already into week 4, thought I would try a couple of different simple builds this time around. Wooden Plant Box and a Glass Bottle of sorts.....

 Starting with the box, my strategy was to make it the way I would

if I was making it out of wood, so a bottom, four sides and blocks to hold it all together. Really simple, nothing too taxing in this. Using the same perceptual material from last weeks table helped with the look. Next was just creating a plain and subdividing it about five times and using proportional editing with random setting to make an uneven surface for the soil. And a tile-able texture image applied

worked ok, though later I thought it could of done with some depth by using some displacement, but I'm not at that level yet of knowing how to apply this in the right way.. 

Learning Blender Week 003

Blender Week 003

Continuing on from last week's wooden table, I thought I would pull back a bit from using too many elements like the modifiers, I need to walk or even crawl before I can run.. So a table is still a good start and wood yes, going for just a simple slab of wood, and splitting it in the middle to make it look interesting in some way. Next I added four very simple cylinders for the legs. Again I added my studio sweep (getting good at making these), and then a few lamp light sources around my table.

Now this is the part where I cheat, but please bare with me, it’s for a very good reason. As I have said in last post, materials and texture are really going to be the thing for me, and most likely the hardest to get my head around. So…. I got hold of a free material that is procedural called chocofur wood, and as you will see in the images below, a good material makes one hell of a difference.

Now I haven't the faintest clue about this material and how it works, but it does such a great job. I

also for my second render used a depth of field option through the camera setting that lets you mimic real life camera's to a point, it takes a little getting use to and several goes to get the look your after. To set a focus point you need to create a empty object and tell the camera to focus on that, the object isn't render in away, just used as the focus point. Then it's just a case of moving your F-stops to your desired look.
 Render time for both images was around 11mins each with 600 passes.
Until next week...

Learning Blender Week 002

Blender Week 002

A little reading, a little watching of video tutorials and a little playing around with Blender, so let's get building…..

Thought I would start with setting my screen up just to what I need to see. As with most software like this you can customize it greatly to fit how you need it to work for you. Main window for working in,

small window for render preview and a node window. Pressing (T) key hides the menu tab which gives a little more space, it’s all about the shortcuts…

A small rustic like table is what I thought I would have a go at first, so starting with a rectangular block I apply an Array modifier to the count of 4, then a Subdivision Surface modifier, then onto a Displacement modifier with a cloud texture to give the wood a small uneven surface, and then finally a smooth modifier. After that I applied the same to four legs.

     

Needed something for the table to sit on so created a Plane and curved the backend up to give it a studio sweep look which I think I will use a lot as I go on learning. 

Plane into studio sweep

I created four small bolts to make it look like the legs were attached that way by making a uv sphere and cutting them in half.

Texture

Node

Now the textures and materials….. This to me is going to be the hardest point of learning this software. The making of items isn’t too hard if you think of basic shapes and work out from there, but textures and materials are what makes things look and to all purposes feel real. For this first build I have gone with the easy way, and just used a texture image and applied it to the model almost as a flat image (see nodes screenshot), which worked ok but if you look closely at the final render you will see that it doesn’t really work with the sides of the model. This will need further looking into, I believe that if I UV Unwrap the Mesh I have greater control as to what parts of the texture goes where, but I haven’t gotten to far into that side of program.

Final render 5.32mins

Ok, so what have I learn't this week? Modifier's are going to be lots of fun and will help in cutting job times like using array to create four out of one. Shortcut "Shift +A" lets you add items, and I really haven't even scratched the surface of this 3D program. 

 Until next week... 

             

Hitman in real life

This is very cool. RealmPictures was approched by IO-Interactive to make a real life Hitman level. I think they did an amazing job.

they also have a behind the scenes video 

Learning Blender Week 001

Blender Week 001

My first week with Blender has been kinda slow, I have been gathering as much information/websites/books/videos as I can and trying to absorb them.

One name that keeps coming up is Andrew Price, he runs a website called Blender Guru and that’s one to check out, he also has a keyboard shortcut guide that is free to download, which is very handy, as Blender is a program that will need you to remember shortcuts to speed up work flow, very much like Photoshop. I also picked up his The Wow Factor book which is way ahead of anything I can do and is really for once you have created something, how to give it that extra little thing that makes it stand out and look more real. For a later read someway down the line I think ;)

Video wise have have hit YouTube and have created a blender playlist that you can have a look. I will be adding more to it over time when I find something that I believe will help me in my quest to make something. I do find that watching each one several times helps me, but not just what the final outcome is but how and what they have done to get there can help with other little things..

I have also add two keyboard layouts that I found on the web, which might help.

Until next week, were I might have something on screen :)

New project, learn to use Blender

New project, learn to use the 3D software Blender.

I have been playing with the idea for sometime now, but have really not put the effort into having a good go at it, and something like this needs just that, effort and time. Now I thought if I start doing maybe a weekly blog post about my progress, it might make me push myself more.

I am aware that I blog for myself more than anyone else, and that maybe no one will even read this, it's still my way mentally to get my arse in gear…. As some of you may know my line of work is Photoshop. I had been a photographer for around 16yrs, then digital really took hold of the industry and I realized that the craft that I had learnt had gone, as it was no longer needed to get the right shot in one or two goes, you could shoot 100+ shots and pick one. So I looked towards the digital editing side of the business and trained myself until there was a position for me.

And now I’m starting to think the same again about the industry. Every photographer uses Photoshop, it has become the normal work process, not always for the best, so I look towards 3D. I have seen some amazing renders, you really would have to look hard to find that they are not real. More and more big companies are using them for their products and catalogs, I have read that Ikea’s catalog book in now 70% done with 3D software which is amazing when do flick through the book.
Why Blender? The main and only real factor is it's free, open source, so no cost outlay apart from the computer to run it on. You can of course buy lots of professional plugin in's, materials, textures and models, but there are also plenty of free available resources to play with.
So I will really try my hardest to write something every week and what I have learn't and what progress, if any, I have made.
Wish me luck :)

Here are just a few examples of 3D renders I have found that really inspire me to give this a go.

SteamVR Performance Test

 Thought I would give Steam's VR test programme a run last night. I bought my pc last year and I did my best to get the most for my price range, so I was interested to see how it would stand up to what some people are saying is the next big thing for gaming (though I have my own views on that).
The programme itself is available in your steam library under Software/Utilities and is about a 1.9gb download, which I thought was overkill for what it does....  Anyway once installed it runs for about 2mins to see if your pc can handle VR. I'm happy to say it passed and was marked as Ready, but only just in the ready marker! (see screen grab). I guess I'm glad that my system would be good to go, but VR is in my mind many years away from being a real need for any gamer, and at the price mark of $800 which will be £800 uk when it does come out here, as our exchange rate is odd that way, it's not going to be on many people's shopping lists.
 As with all new tech coming onto the market, the price is very important and really is only for the first adopters. I myself have trouble with motion sickness while playing fps, though I do believe they have managed to reduce that problem, I would still have to test run it, and even then it's like 3D movies, when they just chuck a few things flying at the screen to say "Hey look 3D" it's a real waste, they will really need to make it it's own genre not just adapt a few games to work with it. VR it's the future......

Steam VR.

Total War: Warhammer

(UPDATED) This game I have been keeping an eye on for sometime now. I always knew the total war series would make a great fantasy platform, I just kinda wish it wasn't with Games Workshop. Oh I don't think there is anything wrong with the warhammer game, it's just I see GW forcing dlc after dlc after dlc to squeeze as much cash out of the fans, as they do with all their other lines. I will maybe in the future pick this up, as it looks amazing and have always liked the Total War games, I just might wait to see how they play the dlc game.

Street Fighter V: Full Length CG Trailer

 Amazingly cool full length trailer for Street Fighter V. This game has come along way since Super Street Fighter II on the SNES, which was my first introduction to the game. Loved the switch over to the new look, but I just wish they wouldn't do so many versions and DLC content. It never feels like your getting the full game until you have bought it all.

 Some more images after the link.

Bill Nye

All the Bill Nye gifs you will ever need to answer anything on social media. :)