The Zoo

Rub his belly for luck!

Went to the North Carolina Zoo this weekend, to celebrate Kerri's birthday. The weather was perfect, and the animals were cooperatively active. Followed by dinner at Elizabeth's.

Strata Studio Pro versus Blender

I've been using Strata 3D CX for nearly twenty years now, and I'm very familiar with it's strengths and foibles. And for what I have been doing (creating renderings of tradeshow display ideas to get clients interested) it is a marvelous tool. The interface is designed so someone coming from an Adobe background can start working relatively quickly, like holding down the spacebar to pan around the view, or option-spacebar to zoom. But as I got deeper into modeling, specifically modeling organic shapes with textures, I noticed there were things it didn't do. And some of those things are pretty crucial, like UV mapping of textures. Also the animation controls were unreliable for things like skeleton based mesh deformations. They just added a UV mapping feature, but it is lacking. Previously their advice had been to use Wings, another free program. But that's how I started using Blender.

Strata added Lua scripting, but there hasn't been a monumental surge of scripts being written for it, and little by way of documentation.

Blender, on the other hand, has very little documentation beyond things put out by third parties. The sheer number of tutorials is gratifying, though it does make want to speak in an Australian accent when I work in Blender.

There is no real polish in Blender. It's like getting a car that doesn't have body panels, and the stereo has to be installed by the owner. Setting up materials can be a challenge, and I still have no idea how some things work.

Strata rendering is both more accurate and faster than in Blender, but there's limited ways to share 3D data with a general audience. Their one tool in that regard is poorly documented and in my experience it is buggy.

I will continue using both, but I'm leaning more and more towards Blender.

Refinements

Working some more with Blender, refining the body of the trike for the rendering. Not sure about the background photo, I might have to go with something a little more urban.
The nice thing about Blender is it makes certain things very easy. Using the Solidify modifier to add thickness makes the entire process very simple.
Now if I can just figure out the Constraints for animation, I might just get somewhere.

Illustration in the age of Photoshop

I find myself sitting astradle the digital divide, with most of my illustration skills learned before computers took over the field. I've learned to impose those abilities on the digital tools, but I've always felt a disconnect from the work. I've used a Wacom tablet for years as a way to get some of that feeling back but with limited success. I've drooled over the Cintiq screen tablets, but they are so very pricey. Nothing beats the instant on, micro-resolution, instant feedback of paper and pen.

Mobility

I'm trying out the new mobile blogger software on my iPhone. So far it's doing pretty well. I really like the autocorrect feature so far, though it has a notorious reputation as an agent of chaos in the realm of communication.

Nothing gets around the basic fact that typing on an iDevice is sub-optimal. I can type fairly fast when I get in a groove for it, but on the phone, I have to take twice as long to get the words out.

Maybe that's a good thing. It makes for less 'stream-of-conscious' style writing.

I've also been trying out ways to access my mac from somewhere else, for instance using my laptop to access the computer that has quickbooks, so I can post invoices from any room in the house, etc. And now I've used Teamviewer to control my main desktop from my phone. Difficult, but possible.

At this point, I can definitely see that 'portable' interfaces can be used to supplement desktop computing, but it is a far cry from replacing them.

Leaves changing color

It feels like we just got over the super-hot days, and already I'm seeing leaves change color. North Carolina hasn't been hit too bad with drought this summer, certainly not like the mid-west. It just seems like a bit of a leap.

I'm not sure I want to be raking leaves this soon.

Confidentiality

I've been looking back through a lot of work I've been doing and I've realized a lot of it is under a seal of confidentiality. That's really kind of annoying, since some of my better work can't be made public for a certain amount of time.

But on the other hand, it encourages me to do my own projects, like the trike renderings. I've always had a tendency to go my own way with things, anyway. Now I have a handy justification.