That's all, Folks.

Years. I've had this thing for years, and I'll be river dancing if I've used it more than twenty times.

I could claim I'm never using it again, but that wouldn't be true. But, given my (well proven) rather limited ability to generate this kind of content, it's time to move on.

Give up. Recognize one's limitations.

The towel, hat like
Flutters in the morning breeze
As it is thrown in

To end this farce.

I could go on, but that seems counter to the purpose.

Instead, I'm just going to go... to www.singularblues.com.

Oh, I'm sure I'll pop in from time to time. No more regularly than before. But if I ever do manage to generate something, the new site has first dibs. I'm paying for that stuff, after all.

Two Steps

Still struggling with perceived weaknesses in my story. This has to stop. If I don't get over it, there won't be a story. It's times like these that make me want that most elusive of relationships: the perfect writing partner.

I think that's a very difficult thing to find, for the same reason true love is difficult. Both partnerships require vulnerability. You can't "improve" if you aren't willing to share everything. "I'll share when it's ready" doesn't apply when the whole point is help make it ready. I'm sure this is obvious, but I'm equally sure the implications escape a lot of people. A perfect writing partnership means throwing any idea out there.

It's not trusting a person to be "safe." A perfect partner will tear into a bad idea. Burn it to the foundations, if necessary. It's trusting that they are doing it with your best interest at heart. Like a perfect romance, its how you look at what your partner does that has the most impact.

I wonder if I could trust anyone that much. I mean, it's obvious that I can, as I'm able to do almost all of the human things. But may I? Would I allow myself that freedom? I don't think so. I tried it, and it didn't work out. Try try again applies, but it's painful.

I'll just have to keep muddling along.  Or start muddling along. I think I've spent almost two months running in place.

It Never Rains

The title is appropriate for where I live, but this ain't about weather.

I decided to test render something on Saturday. I had discovered an issue with textures two weeks ago and finally got round to fixing it.

While I was at it, I decided to boost the Subsurf on a pair of objects--one needs it. The other was just there. Imagine my surprise when, 15 minutes later, nothing rendered.

A quick test determined that my graphics card can't handle more than about 4.2 million triangles.

That's kind of a problem.

It's a solvable problem. I'd just have to learn some new skills. I want to learn those skills, But learning would come at a price. Another delay. Another indefinite delay, atop an indefinite delay. I can feel the current hold up seeping away. I may not know when I'm going to get there, but damnit, I am sure I'm going to arrive. I don't want to muddy that fragile sense of certainty.

So I bought a new graphics card.

This thing is a beast.  First a short lesson on how the software looks at the GPU resources. Say you wanted to have two GPU cards working on your video game. To make that work you need special software and hardware to connect the cards and make them act as one. But that's for real time rendering. I'm not rendering in real time, and my software doesn't care whether the cards can talk to each other. It just cares that it can talk to them both.

Now, I suspect using both of them at once actually reintroduces the same limitation I discovered Saturday. I wanted to see just how fast I could go.

Imagine a two page spread. This is, in theory, the largest production image I would make. 4938 by 3726 pixels. My original test, using the old card, rendered that in 55 minutes, give or take one. That suggests a range of 45 to 120 minutes to render something of that size (the more transparent or translucent pixels, the slower. A fully trans scene take about double to render on that card, and on the new one. Same technology, so hardly unexpected).  Both cards, together, did the same in 9 and half minutes

I posited that the new card was a beast. Consider this: by itself, it did the two page spread in 11.3 minutes.

I literally spent money I don't have (as it happens, I have a reserve of money I don't have). I'm worried about that, all other thing considered. But I can't complain about the results.

This is huge. Large enough that I'm seriously considering spending more money that I don't have. My goal (perhaps impossible) is 6 pages a night. (Shoot for the moon.) At a worst case speed of 1 hour per page, that's 6 hours of render time. 3.3 kilowatt hours. I'd already done a lot of tweaking and given up image quality to get that down from 12 hours.

This card, however, can do the same--worst case--in 1.7 hours or .94 kilowatt hours. At off peak rates that's almost free! Sure I'm paying for that freedom, but I'm not paying twice, and given the nature of my living situation, no one else will have reason to complain.

So things are bit more stressful, and a bit easier. That seems like metaphor for life or something.

Diversion

I lost track of what I was doing. I figured it all out last night, but for a while there I was tumbling aimless.

Since I didn't have a particular aim, I started developing the most difficult asset I need. This time I did it the "right" way, by figuring out where all of the pieces and parts have to go, and rigging the thing. That took two tries to get right. Not bad, considering I've never done anything like it before. 

Having done that, I'm back in familiar territory. Modeling an aircraft. I really wish I had more actual talent for these things. It's coming along well, and I think it will look pretty good when it is done, but it's also going to be pretty clear where the inspiration came from.

Oh well. If wishes were horses, we'd be inundated by horse shit. It's just well they aren't.

 I originally wanted to develop something much smaller, but it just didn't work out the way I wanted. Hardly a first. Pretty much everything I've ever done has ended up looking totally unlike the thing I was trying to create. Of course, like everything else, I wish I was already done with the bloody thing. I've got a lot left to figure out.

A Hairy Situation

I'm definitely a child of the modern age. I want my gratification and I want it now.

Working on my little project has tried my patience to the extreme. Not because it's overly difficult (though it has been a challenge). The issues is that solving a problem doesn't end the problem. Either the solution needs to be put into effect (over and over and over, in a never ending cycle) or the solution just creates a new problem.

Take hair, for example.

I'm not an artist. I feel like a total nut job thinking I can possibly do what I want to do with my complete lack of any skill. Logically, I have no reason to feel this way. The choices I've made turn out a pretty decent product, so I should just be happy. But I can't help feeling like a fraud. Especially considering how fast I can do it. Still. Not an artist.

I get around that limit by cheating. I'm cool with that, because I created my cheats--I stood on the shoulders of others to get there, but they are still mine. 

The cheating has it's drawbacks. Hair being one of them. All of the hair I can use is trying very hard to be realistic. I'm trying very hard to something other than realistic. Pretty much the opposite. Photo-realism is hard, and not really worth the effort, IMO. At least not without the big bucks to justify all of the work. I'd like to get paid for this effort, but that's not why I am doing is. I don't expect to get paid. Rather the opposite, in fact.

Unfortunately, the hair looked fake when I made it look fake. You'd think that would be a good thing, but it's not.

Top right, although all of the hair suffers from the same problem. Black hair just hides it better.

It doesn't look like hair. It looks like pile of clay. I had hopped to avoid having to mess too deeply with the hair, because I didn't think I could solve the issues. In photo real mode that hair is doing a lot of tricks to make it look far, far different. But those tricks don't respect the the quirks of the render engine I'm using--or maybe the engine does respect the tricks. Likely the latter, given how basic the tricks are. I had hoped the way I was creating the NPR would cover for the multitude of sins of the hair. Like a hat.

Lazy as I am, I was willing to let it go at that, but a third party review found it wanting. So, hair 3.0:

Version 3 is basically a compromise between versions 1 and 2. I think it looks much better, but then I was okay with version 2, so what do I know? It's stuff like this that kicks the legs out from under my confidence. I'm just not qualified to judge the quality of this stuff. I keep telling myself that it doesn't have to be good if gets the point across. I just don't know that it's getting the point across.

All of the work I've put into it, I just want it to be done. Of course, it's not. Far from it. It's not that I mind the work. I actually enjoy it. But it's so much. Once I "finish" something, or find a solution, I can't manage to pat myself on the back before I realize how much more I have left to do.

Once Upon a Midnight Weary

Since the day I started this project, sleep has been in short supply. I'm tired, and I can't think. This is bad, as thinking is how I earn my pay. Thinking is what I need to do to take this thing to the next level. I'd like to just go to sleep, but the workday remains

Now that I think of it, no it doesn't. I'm self employed. The workday ends when I say it does.

Heh.

I've reached the point where I want to share the fruit of my creative endeavors, but they aren't yet ripe. As a compromise, I'll be vaguebooking here. No one reads this anyway.  It's the perfect compromise. Someone might see it, (the world's moved on to Tumblr, though) so it's as if I'm sharing. Yet, it's vanishingly unlikely that anyone will be spoiled by a post here, or get their hopes up for a product I can't actually deliver.

Now that the introduction is over, the meat of the story is that the story isn't meaty enough. It's lean on action. This is a problem because later parts of the story are quite heavy on action. given the comparatively slow pace of the delivery, I feel like having the action build suddenly, just before the second half, would be...wrong. One might (rightfully) accuse me of pulling a Cerberus.

Huh. What do ya know. This has already been profitable.