I get it, years go by, software updates and changes and things just keep moving along.
It’s progress I guess.
Doesn’t help though when you’ve been out of things for a while to find that not only has the playing field changed, but they moved it to a new location – without a forwarding address. Oh, all the basic tools are there, but after being out of making models and playing with Studio, it’s like Christmas. Every time I open software, I get surprised by bright new shiny toys.
Thanks to a dear friend, I’ve now discovered some new software as well, RizomUV, Allegorithmic Painter & Designer, Quadspinner Gaea, just to name three. I’m now stuck with a learning curve that is almost 90 degrees. Not sure if I’m young enough for that kind of challenge but I’m going to have a go. Mind, having played around a little bit with these and some other packages, it’s amazing how much things have changed. I really have been slacking off.
But, at the end of the day, the majority of changes are for the better, unlike some other software I can think of that just gets worse as time goes on. I should be grateful that at least I have a grounding in what I’m doing and am not coming in all fresh faced and new at this. I suspect if I did, I’d probably run away and hide.
However, I am very grateful to my friend for pointing me towards some of the new software I have to play with, they are awesome and wonderful fun to play with. I just have to remember that I’m not supposed to “play” with them, and get on and do some damn work. Work, hah! It ain’t work, it’s fun. If it ain’t fun, what’s the point of doing it?
Posted inBabbling|Comments Off on Everything changes
Over the past few years I’ve had a few emails from people “understanding” why I took my guns down from the Daz free server. I’ve tried explaining that mainly it’s because they’re shabby, untidy, really badly made and the mesh is a nightmare. Seriously, it’s just awful. Okay, they might not look that bad in a render, but I know what they look like, and I don’t like it. I’ve learned a fair amount since I made those guns, and it was time to update them and make them better.
Unfortunately life took a bit of a left field spin ball at me and I had a rather unpleasant heart attack. Recovering from that and the surgery left me unable to do much of anything, so I sort of bimbled around trying to get my health back on track and everything else took a back seat.
However, I still get the odd email. One this year in fact, though I won’t name the gentleman that sent it. Frankly I was surprised that anyone remembered me, it’s been a long time since I was present in the Daz forums in any capacity. Anyway. This is mainly to use illustration to explain why I took the guns down. The following graphic should be more than sufficient to show what I mean. The bottom mesh is the original, the top mesh is the new one. As you can see, there’s a hell of a difference.
Bottom original mesh, top new mesh.
I think really that shows why I took the guns down originally. They all looked very much like the bottom rifle. Just a horrible, awful, ugly mess. The other problem with mesh like that, is that it adds to your render times, most especially ray tracing. When calculating all those damn polygons it’s going to choke, badly. Now, that’s not to say I’ve suddenly gone all king of low poly, I haven’t, but the tidier mesh is much kinder to the render engine and the amount of time you have to wait.
How the rifle looks rendered. Cleaner, smoother, and faster.
Another example is one of the rifles from the pack I took down. The PSG-1. This one was seriously messed up. Looked okayish, but… damn that thing had some ugly mesh.
Here, take a look and you’ll see what I mean.
Waaaaay ugly, and far too many polygons. Top one is the new PSG-1 You can see what I mean about tidier mesh.
So, hopefully this goes some way to show why I took those models down. Aside from the fact that they were up there for a lot of years, I really should have done something about them before. But I’m on it, I’m doing something about them now. For those of you who like freebies, once I’ve completed the collection and made what I want out of the packs, I will re-upload them as freebies again. They were all free to start with, and they’ll stay that way. Hopefully this will be next year sometime, but I can’t guarantee it as I have a fairly busy world around me at the moment.
Before I sign off, some of you may have seen the following, I don’t recall where I’ve posted it. But these weapons, and others will be included in the packs. Hopefully that’s something to look forward to.
Four of the new guns that will be included in the new packs.
So, take care, have fun. I’ll be back soon (ish)
Just as a side note, I will also be updating and re-modeling the various western rigs that I had up as freebies as well. These will be made to fit Genesis 8 M/F but until I get to play around in Studio, I can say for certain how easy or difficult it will be to get them to morph to other figures. We shall see.
Side note: It appears that I may have posted an image of these and other weapons, way back in 2012. 7 years ago. That does not look good at all. My apologies to anyone who was waiting for these things. I really am working on it now, and I will not allow myself to get side-tracked again.
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