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Ok, a belated happy mothers day to others around, I was at my mother's most of Sunday working on some rather critical details (A proper win7 key, and replacing some noisy fans).
First off was replacing the helicopter sounding thump-master IPPC fans (lol) with proper blade alignment NZXT Aer F fans that are much better sounding.
And that involved undoing some of the twist tied rats nest on the back that I had worked on for some time to get the wires out of the way of the air flow path.
I still need to make an air "turning vane" guide for in front of the PSU (in time, in time), and the graphics card is pending a monitor cable that will need to wait till the third (mini-HDMI to HDMI).
The rest us up and running at this point, and the comp is much happier now. The future AM4 core system upgrade is still pending, much to research before then.
There is a bit of a thanks list, tho to be short, thanks, AgentJayz, Paul and Kyle, and the GN crew.
In other news, I have successfully moved the DIM temp folder over to a new drive. And with my tools back from working on my mom's comp, I'll be able to make a proper power cable to add another drive for the Daz user content drive that is still sitting in a box.
A nice sweltering 90F day is a good day to not be doing yard work, lol. The past few days I've done some simple things around my desk that I needed my tools for. As for other stuff, I watched buildzoid (on twitch earlier) bring a GT730 memory clock up significantly, on air. I'm even more tempted to see just what the Zotac card can do within reason without producing Iray artifacts. Tho that will at the least wait till temps in here settle down to the 25c (75F) mark where I've done most of my testing in the past.
So, with the temps up there, it's a good time to sit and do just about nothing, lol. So, looks like I've missed a lot of goings on over at daz3d, time to look around and see what I've missed while looking into the new computer stuff coming out. It looks like there is some updates to a morph set that I've used a lot, so I should probably look to see if it effects anything I've worked on so far (I suspect not in a bad way, zev0 is kind of good with that stuff).
At the very least I need not worry about my computer keeping it's cool on a day like this, I don't have a wat-hog graphics card, lol.
morning, I had a little setback today as temps outside got over 90F again.
It's now sweltering in here again, and just arbitrarily swapping out the cord on the AC unit is a bad idea every way I look at it. In other news, I cobbled this togeather from the AMD press slides a few days back.
I feel it is completely in line with the demands of 3D figures and the lacking amount of memory on affordable cards to run Iray on. At this point, I may just give up on there ever being a good card for Iray, and abandon using nvidia cards all togeather. The AMD lineup is far better on the BTU front and heatsink designs any way.
I'm still around and kicking.
Spent most of yesterday working in hex on a little project.
It's been a very long day and I still have much to do still.
Paloma - there missing the buttons?
Lucem Signifer - We are masters of the force and can use it to manipulate the world around us with our thoughts. Yet our sacred weapon, the light saber has buttons that let non force users wield our weapons against us, why?
ok, got some rest.
I'm trying some things with the brass fins now.
Not sure If I'll leave the gap on the one grove or not
If I do that, it will need more loops and stuff there, and I'm not quite sure it would be noticeable in renders anyway. Time to cable this together and see how it looks with just procedural shaders on it.
Time for a Command decision. So far I've been using photos of the stage stunt prop as a guide for the rough dimensions, yet I feel there is a slight difficulty with the length of the hilt (it may be from photo focal length distortion). The hilt is a tad too short for one handed, yet it is almost a two handed hilt length. I may very much add some length somewhere before adding too many edge loops.
I like how the brass fins look, so I think I'll go ahead and UV map them and set them up for the final assembly later on.
Some progress.
(Face desk) Zzzzz.
Your model looks cool =) and the way they're holding it, it also reminds me of a microphone a bit.
I long wanted to design a grey Jedi character for myself, custom lightsabre included, but it's been years and nothing has materialised... because I still haven't decided for myself on how lightsabre combat really feels =) The blade obviously has no weight, sooooo?... is it just like brandishing a flashlight that will suddenly catch onto nothing when parrying/deflecting? how do we even determine optimum handle dimensions? what do you say, Zarcon?
Well, going from some stuff that Adam Savage mentioned in 1-day builds vids, and some basic hilt info. I would guess about the diameter of a mop handle or thereabouts is a good start. The thing to remember is that prop makers are pressed for time, so custom sizes are not common, it's mostly off the shelf stuff in standard sizes. In the US, that is stuff like 3/4 inch (0.75 inch), 1 inch, 1&1/4 inch (1.25 inch), etc. I guessed the hilt at the handle to be roughly 1.25-inch (3.175 cm) diameter that also happens to fit most G3F grasp poses as well. Then I guessed lengths from there from the limited photos that are out there (Many knock-offs, few actual prop pics).
I'm still looking at lengths of stuff. And I'm horrible at posing apparently, lol.
Newtonian-Higgs force (physics) vs Star Wars force (the star wars thing), and a can of worms at best, lol. How much does the blade of a lightsaber resist the Newtonian-Higgs force with motion, and how much Star Wars force do "force users" apply to the light saber to move it? I don't even know where to begin with that as I'm still not beyond the warping of Space-time explanation of gravity myself mentally. I can not grasp how Higgs bosons can resist the 'change in velocity' that gravity fields also mimic the behavior of on objects, without the loss of energy from objects 'change in velocity' by the resistance applied by the Higgs particles presence
(Dumbfounded and confused face). In any case, back to the simpler Newtonian physics of light saber weight, well, it goes something like this.
Originally in the 1970's, the actors were told to pretend the light sabers were extremely heavy and keep both hands on them at all times (and given how energy can affect gravity, I can understand with that much energy in one place, the lightsaber blade and power source.). Later on in newer movies, the Jedi and Sith were much more skilled and able to wield the weapons one handed with far greater speed, unlike in the original three movies. Hypothetically that is also a hint that Luke was never as well trained in lightsaber combat as 'former Jedi' and Sith were, and keep in mind that Darth Vader was probably taking it easy with his sun. It is Afterall the dream of all parents for their children to exceed them in life. That is about the extent of what I don’t know about lightsabers, I'm not an expert at all, and neither is G3F1W.
Posing for two handed weapons is a chore at best anyway, lol. I will guess that the weight of the hilt is like holding a solid lump of metal (if not heavier), and whatever the blade is may or may not present a noticeable amount of wind resistance when swung around. When the blade hits something more substantial than air, well I imagine that is directly felt fully by the person swinging the lightsaber just like swinging a hefty metal stick at a brick wall.
The staff of render hell, is a far easier explanation, a very bad one. It is transcending the four dimensions of spacetime to produce a higher dimensional graviton vortex to be where it is regardless of anything bound to the lower four dimensions. Kind of like stabbing a sheet 2-dimensional paper with a pencil or citing implement (because it is bound in place by forces outside the 2-dimensional paper, the paper and everything in it gives way to the higher dimensional object). Nothing to do at all with magic, despite the Technomage origins, lol.
I read a more or less plausible explanation somewhere that says the blade could be basically a plasma arc, and the hilt houses a (presumably room-temperature) superconductor that enables the ionising current to loop without heating the hilt to infernal levels. I'm not sure this could make the hilt heavier than if it were a solid lump.
Originally the Force was required to wield lightsabres, but with what we saw in EpVII, I don't know anymore.
Basically I'm honestly leaning towards something that makes more sense to me personally, closer to a High Guard force lance or a Minbari denn'bok. Not sure how to integrate this into SW lore, though.
Well, originally it was as the name suggests, a light. Because back then 'Lazers' was the new thing. Yet you and us all know that light does not just stop at some point in space, unless something interacts with the light. Yet that was what the lightsaber was originally, a laser beam powerful enough to be substantial when it hit something. As far as the storytelling goes nothing more needed to be explained about how a lightsaber produces that energy blade or what the energy blade consists of, lol. I have seen a few diagrams with that other magic stuff in use, "Superconductors". Again, just a flashy technobabble term that probably is not feasible in this universe (without the hilt getting dangerously cold to touch, just for the stuff to be "superconductive", lol). What I was looking at, is a simple E=MC^2 factor of how much energy (regardless of type) would need to be crammed into the volume of the blade to start to act like solid mass when it hits something, and how that density of energy would produce the side effect of weight to the person wielding the light saber. In the end, I don't think the Starwars universe is any more compatible with Gene Roddenberry' creations as As Babylon 5 is with Battlestar Galactica, lol.
I've looked around a bit, and as of now, I do not see any GT1030 cards that have the minimum 4GB on them for Iray. Also, despite how attractive many AMD cards may look, OpenCL is not Nvidia Iray/CUDA and the AMD card as of now do not run Iray. So the list of cards that will work is somewhat limited, especially if you're on a budget. You're either going to need to use an older GTX900 series card (with 4GB and no less) or get a more expensive GTX1000 series card (with at least 4GB on it).
I was planning on getting a GT1030 to run through some Iray tests, however, that is on the back burner, given the lack of memory on the current offerings available. I would either suggest a 4GB GT730 (GK208 not GK108) card, or a 4GB GTX960 and better cards. The 4GB GTX1050Ti is also an interesting option, yet the GTX960 outperforms it in Iray render times.
I was window shopping for an ITX version of the 6GB GTX1060 however, I did not find one with a cooler I like. I did locate a very nice looking 8GB GTX1070 'aero' ITX card by MSI, I'm just not sure about the PCI bracket with the DVI plug blocking half the card's exhaust area on the back of the computer, almost exactly like the EVGA GTX960.
yea, I need to make a ATX PCI back-cover in hex, lol.
something in the works.
I have a lot of parts to make in hex, and to flesh out the frame still.
This is why I said "room temperature". That could well be explained in terms of SW lore. In the world of the Force, those Jedi who don't get to be knights could employ their talents to combine various atoms in just the right configurations to create a complex superconducting material that could work above 0C.
But does it ever act like solid mass? The blade-blade interaction is most certainly due to their magnetic field. When it comes to actual solids, it seems to cut through anything (outside of cortosis and the like). No recoil. No resistance. Nothing.
Star Wars lightsabers reminded me (and everyone else at the time the film came out) of Larry Niven's 'variable-swords' from his Known Space stories. These were a monofiliment made impossibly rigid by a magical force field ('stasis field'). The way that the lightsaber blade extends rather than just appearing supports this, a bit.
It's all just fantasy stuff anyway.
Yeah, the "plausible" explanation I'm talking about used magnetic field to contain the plasma (prevent it from spilling around), a similar idea basically just with a bit more real-world allusions (kinda like magnetic bottles in tokamaks).
I'm the sort who wants magic to have laws. Not necessarily real-world laws, but some framework. If magic has no limits, it's hard to create any storytelling conflict.
And for me, it's hard to design a character when you can't fully imagine how it feels like to be that character, physically.
Just noticed this vid, regarding lightsabers, may be of some interest.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUdLlGLSQHQ
I've never really gave the magnetic field thing much attention. Magnetic fields tend to be more round than the shape os a lightsaber blade. Beyond that minor oversight, sounds feasible. I just keep thinking about that power thing mentioned at the beginning of that vid, and all the ramifications of it.
That dude is a rock star =D "Safety is a No 1 priority", and they all put on those tiny goggles, whoa, and start smashing what is basically a live wire with a hammer, and throwing stuff at it. I literally laughed out loud. It's actually no wonder they ended up having to use the fire extinguisher.
Portable power sources are a problem IRL, but the most ready-made handwavium in fiction.
The specific config of the field is a problem as well, yeah - look how the plasma is made to stretch in the magnetic bottle inside a tokamak (and a more complex config of a stellarator):
http://jamesrome.net/drupal/iter
There should be specially shaped mag field sources around the actual plasma current.
This is where I prefer to believe the Force comes into play again - the user manips the field as well. It's probably never been touched upon anywhere in canon (even if we take the EU in full), but hey.
Theoretically, maybe, there is a way to create a "non-Jedi-friendly" helical field to contain a stretched-out torus (our blade) using some very weird config in the hilt (like it has a whacky guard with extra magnets), but my imagination kinda fails at visualising complex electromagnetic stuff and I don't have any handy EM analysis tools at work.
well, life has had me going many directions of late, and I sat down to do a quick fun render and found something else that needs fixing, lol.
I have not been ignoring you Kettu, I just have not had five seconds to think about the light saber stuff the past week.
Found it.
apparently, the 'reflection' is turned on on the hair, with a gray map. Now the blue highlights need to be a tad stronger.
Put the diffuse map in velvet, set to 50% strength, and wah-la.
ok, that done, what to do with these two, hmmm.
I just noticed the ears are going threw the bow
Are there no bones in the bow?
apparently not, tho I did just get that hair style. Also, I didn't notice the ears in the bow till after doing all the former renders.
I will presume there is at least some adjustment morphs for the hair. (and there are, some dials)
ok, the 'Adj Ear up' an 'Adj Ear back' dial is not exactly it. There are a few other bow style dials, tho I'm not sure they would help either. I'll look at them, tho I suspect elf ears was not considered when this hair style was made from the looks of it. (and why does Grammarly keep crashing, brb)
That's, well, shall we say, What is the "Bow Hide" dial for if it does nothing at all?
ok, that gets the bow out of the ear, and into the hair.
Oh, I should check to see what zips I have for her, tho I don't think that will make a difference for Vanessa's elf ears.
ok, that sort of works, make the lower ribbon part shorter.
ok, still alive and kicking.
A friend sent me a little gift to restore.
And I just located the parts it needs
time to have some fun.
ok, this may get rather 'interesting'.
I can't find a lipstick map for the color in one of the promos for DES Desidora.
Was that shaader trickery used for that promo? There are reds and pinks, no black? And that is the darker red in the screencap. (looking to see if there is an update? No, not yet.) Where is DES's PM?
ok, while that ferments elsewhere. (there is now a thread for that)
ok, some progress, and I needed to send something to hex to split off something for something (and of corse gramerly crashed again, 'g' thanks)
It's just easier this wa then fussing with move arrrows off in the blue yander, lol.
ok, a bit of Mika7 (25%) and DES Desidora (75%). Izabella7 ears.
I still have some work to do.
well, I was going to try to do something like the lace skirt up top,
however, that hongyu is not G3F compliant. What a piece of work, lol. hongyu, you got to make sure the thing fits G3F before the item leaves the modeling program, not after you start rigging it for G3F 
.
I forgot how broken hongyu thing is. I need to just uninstall all the crap that does not work and the zen desk insists there is nothing wrong with it, just to save me the grief of seeing it.
I hope the next iteration of Genesis is a hell of a lot better with auto follow than this, and PAs get what they need to actually make stuff work, the first time.
2015-07-03 Hongyu's Bikini for Victoria 7, still charging money for it and it is broken.
2015-09-01 Hongyu's Bikini 2 for V6, second attempt, still charging money for it, and it is also broken.
That's not cool, that is wrong!
ok, Irelia Bikini Top it is then. (Check that, I think I found something better.)
I only had to set the shape matching to generic for it to actually follow the shape of the figure, and set the hidden FBM nipples to 250% to keep them from poking through because of some really messed up JCM defiance the top was giving me. It's almost like the Irelia Bikini JCMs are trying to morph the outfit to Generation 6 shape fighting the mesh smoothing, lol.
ok, I'm not sure how that spot got there (it is not different from gen6 to gen7).
Tho at least the Tropical Style outfit does not have JCMs pushing the thing a few inches into the figure and smoothing is able to fix that without the need for d-formers or fussing with settings.
well, something that I thought would only take a few hours, ended up taking all weekend to do. Seriously daz, Y'all have had over a year to fix this stuff and your still charging money for broken stuff in the former posts. Some of the stuff is so bad, I'd rather have teeth pulled without anesthetic.
In any case, DES Desidora, Egypt Sandals, keyhole stockings, Cathy Skirt, Yulia Panties (skirt protection), TS Bikini Top, Ghawazee Shirt (refitted for G3F by Fisty), Batibat Hair, AElflaed's Fancy Shaders, and GIS (top of the world skydome).
Oh, by the way, the Tropical Style Outfit actually fits her without any fussing at all, Thank you Nikisatez.
And from the edges of the galaxy, lol.