3D Coat 4b15gl Explorations

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These are some notes to myself on today’s foray into 3D Coat. I’m using Version 4beta15-GL version. Today I’m trying to work out how they created the mannikin, that has symmetry across layers, rather than in just one layer.

 
NEW MANNIKIN PARTS:

I cleared the geometry from the LowerLeg_Left layer. Then I put in my saved Shin_Left. This caused the LowerLeg_Right layer to create a symmetrical copy. Are the layers somehow what are linked?

 
SYMMETRY:

So I dragged the left shin and shank over to the left and tried to do a symmetrical clone. (Have to have symmetry turned on for that, you know.) It created a clone on the object’s local X axis.
So then I tried to move the symmetry plane back to 0. I held TAB, clicked the plane, and dragged, which moved the plane, but also pulled out a chunk of the geometry, because of the tool I had.
Hit Undo, the modelling got undone, the plane stayed where it was.
Subsequent holding of the TAB key had no effect on the plane, whether trying to click it or not.

 
CLONE:

Clone just means copy. No clones of any type are linked to transformations of the original. (as far as i can tell.)
–NOTE: in the mannikin, the right foot seems to be an “instance” of the left foot. if the whole right side is an instance of the left, this may explain how some of the modifications are carried from the left to the right.

 
MANNIKIN SYMMETRY:

Move Tool caused the mirrored side to update with changes to the original geometry.
Translate Tool does NOT. How to rotate new pieces into place? Must use Pose Tool?
NOTE: turning on symmetry does not make this work.
Pose Tool moves both pieces in symmetry, but see below about children.

Symmetrical Copy: This caused the left (selected) side body part to clone a copy onto this same layer, but in the original position/rotation relative to the current transform point. It also caused a copy of the object in the mirrored layer. Both (all 4) objects react to edits on the first object.
Perhaps this means that copy is the clone tool?
NOTE: Clone with Symmetry (right click menu) is NOT the same as Symmetrical Copy (bottom icons)! Clone with Symmetry caused the layer to be duplicated, with all attendant children layers. The hand and fingers got really lost and out of place. (This could be because I had two arm objects on the upper arm layer, that had already been symmetrically copied. Plus I had symmetry turned on, too.)

 
POSE TOOL:

Okay, I posed the left toe after transforming the left foot, but before transforming the right foot. The Pose Tool selection colour is still stuck on the left toe. (It turns black when it is inactive.)
Now I tried to pose the shank, but the Pose Tool selection is stuck on the toe. Even if I hit Clear Selection on the tool controls.
I’ve managed to get the Pose selection off the toe by activating the Pose Tool while the toe was selected. However, now it won’t work to select the shank.

OH, okay! It thinks my Left Shank is actually the Lowerleg_Left. My Shin is apparently no longer on… any layer?

All right, but the transformations (scaling) aren’t being propagated to the children. That should have worked? I used the Pose Tool across two objects… though they were on the same layer. :/

 

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2013 Tomato & Cucumber

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So growing tomatoes in my pots isn’t too hard, but I always have to buy cucumbers to make a start on a salad. So this time around, I decided to try to grow a cucumber plant in a pot. I thought I might have to make a twine lattice the vine could try to grow up on, onto the porch railing, but instead I have discovered bush cucumbers. That’s right, cucumbers you can grow in a pot!

I got a Burpless Bush Hybrid cucumber at WalMart. My mom said that was good to get, because she thinks “Burpee” and “Burpless” refer to how much gas the vegetables give you, rather than the company name… :X The plant had about 5 stalks with two big healthy leaves and two wilted dead leaves on each stalk. I’m not sure if that is normal or bad… but there wasn’t much choice there that day.

I got a Bush Early Girl tomato at Adam’s Fairacre farms. (Walmart was out of tomatoes; told ya htere wasn’t much choice there that day.) I haven’t tried this type, and I’m not sure it’s really a container version, but what the heck, I’ve grown non-container tomatoes in my containers before anyhow. Oddly, I didn’t see any Patio tomatoes at Adam’s.

This one has a couple of flowers on it already! Of course, now I worry that my cucumbers won’t produce the same time I have tomatoes ready to harvest. So who knows.

For posterity, I’ll let you know I paid $3 for the cucumber and $4 for the tomato.

 

And $11 each for two bags of 2 cu.ft. Miracle Grow Potting Mix. Okay, posterity self, remember this! My pots take a total of THREE cubic feet. Not four. So next year, buy like 1 cu.ft. of compost and mix it with the leftover potting soil.

 

I transplanted the plants in the pots on Saturday, May 11. I didn’t know how deep to put the cucumber, so it just had a half inch or so over top. I buried the lower two stalks of the tomato, and could have buried a third, but I didn’t want to cut off too many leaves while the flowers were already flowering.

I gave them a full can of water, split between them. Then of course it rained afterward. They didn’t seem over-soaked, however, so I’m not worried.

The only thing I wonder is how I’ll feed my tomato, without giving it to the cucumber. Apparently, it’s not a great idea to give cucumbers tomato food.

 

Ah well. Here’s hoping for some home-grown summer salads!

 

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Torchwood Dream: Ghost

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I had another Torchwood dream last night. It was in a department store after hours… some of the cleaning ladies were trying to swap jobs… and we were joking about which one of us was the ghost.
Meanwhile, Capt Jack is poking through the men’s department, looking for the big & tall section, because he’s apparently trying to hunt down Darth Vader. He’s trying to explain a breath mask to Gwen.

Then there’s some screaming, and out the back door, there’s a trail of corpses. So we start running like hell, and I can tell Jack is kinda looking at me, like who the hell is this? (Cuz no, I’m not working for them in this dream. Yet.) But we’re running too fast for him to tell me to get lost. especially since I’m faster than him. :P

We get out to the parking lot; there’s some trees/bushes in an island thing; it’s night out, but there’s lots of parking lot lights. Someone else is screaming somewhere, and Jack and Gwen go to check it out. But I think I see the ghost/alien hiding in the bushes.

And then it’s going, ‘yes, come over here in the dark where I will have the upper hand!’ And I know it’s going to attack me. But, although it’s invisible, parts of it are glowing, and I can see the glow. And it ain’t that dark. (Or I just have superior night vision.)

I look around for some kind of weapon to use against it. I see this broken compact mirror… with butterflies etched in the back. And the ghost alien is taunting me about trying to find something to hurt it with.

It zooms out and hits me with a claw in the crook of my elbow. But I have the mirror, and I can see the sucker, so when it tries to attack me again, I jump out of the way and slam the mirror closed on it.

Then the mirror is more like the size of a hubcap, and I can see the alien inside it now, and I’m beatting the crap out of it. Either through the mirror, or just banging on the mirror. It has a wolf-like head, with horns that swoop down the sides, and it has long spindly arms with one long pointy claw on the end. (which is also glowing a lot, so i wonder if it poisoned me when it cut me.) And teeny little dragon wings. And then the bottom of it kinda petered out. I guess it had stumpy little legs.

It screamed when I was beating on it, that I broke its legs. Then I was trying to break its neck. I think I wrenched its head… But I didn’t really believe it was dead, just trying to get me to let my guard down, so it could jump up again.

Anyway, that’s all there was to the dream.

 

Actually, thinking about it, it might have been inspired by this….

 

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Spring Equinox 2013 and Socks

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Happy Spring Equnox!

Yeah, well, it’s over; I was having a day off and trying to relax and have fun. A buddy of mine insisted on celebrating the equinox by dying eggs. I agreed, because we were both depressed, and that sort of thing is good therapy.

Naturally, I didn’t want plain coloured eggs. I wanted swirly marbled eggs like we made when I was a kid. Also naturally, I didn’t want to put out any bucks to buy those kinds of egg dyes. :X So I… experimented. With water, vinegar, canola oil, and food colouring. Well. The pink eggs are nice, anyway. :X

 

In other news; I finished my first pair of knitted socks with heels (my second pair of socks ever). They look a lot rattier when you’re not wearing them. I think I have the heel pattern where I understand it, but it’s still a pain. Although I might have to try this other pattern at Heidi Bear’s.

 

 

Tip when doing the sides of the heels: do NOT yank the knit slip stitches nice and regimentally tight. You’ll never be able to pick them up and knit on them! :X

 

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My Hat

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For some crazy reason, somebody got me back into knitting and crocheting things again… well, it keeps me occupied while my brain vegetates while watching Netflix… :X

I should keep a log of my projects here. After all, how else is anybody gonna look at ‘em? Except one person in my Brain.

So…. This is my first hat! It actually fits! It’s so cool! Well, I mean, it’s very warm.

I didn’t think it was going to fit, because I got the crown done and tried to put it on my head. Well, it fit, but it felt like it was sucking my brain out…. I made the brim pretty big, because I wanted to make sure it came down over my ears. But I seriously thought I’d have to do the crown over again.

But, no. I persevered in finishing the whole thing and attaching the brim, and tried it on. Voila! It was like magic! My first hat!

 

This is actually a crocheted pattern. I tried it with black sparkle yarn, but I could not see a blasted thing I was doing. And you have to count a lot on this pattern. And do math! The crown is made in a spiral. Oh, and the spiral got… a little… uh, well, there’s a lump in it for my ponytail. That’s it.

Then the brim is made separately, with two strands of yarn. It’s supposed to be sewn into a circle, then sewn to the crown, but I just crocheted the seams together.

Oh, if you see a misshapen lump on the front, that’s my crocheted buttefly. I think I’ll make one of those on eacy of my projects, as a sort of signature. It’s a pattern I created the day I learned to crochet. No, really. Crochet is very simple. Lines and scallops. The butterfly is just a line with some double, triple, quadruple crochet stitches to make wings.

Besides, I needed something to be able to quickly tell the front from the back. This hat is very bulky, so I have to unfold it to shove it in my pocket. Then re-roll the brim to put it on. It doesn’t *really* matter which end is the front, I suppose. The little “lump” in the spiral is hardly noticeable.

 

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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Torchwood

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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Torchwood

I have decided to make a few “Hitchhiker Guides” to various fandoms I’m familiar with (and write in). They’re meant to be quick references for folks who are interested in looking at stuff (crossovers mainly) in fandoms they’re not familiar with. For example, if you follow Dragon Age, but not Torchwood, but want to read my “Dragon Age: Torchwood” series, you could get a brief overview of what to expect.

I got the idea when I was reading BlueCougar‘s Torchwood/Law & Order crossovers. Blue’s writing is fantastic, but I had never seen any Law & Order shows in my life. So I had a really hard time picturing who the characters were, how they spoke and behaved, and even who the dip they were. I started watching Law & Order: Criminal Intent to get more info on them, and it turned out to be a pretty good show.

But anyway, I thought if there were a little cast of characters and synopsis of who’s who and what’s what, and had little pictures of the main characters, that would have been most helpful. So… I made this for all the folks who are bewildered when I talk Torchwood at them. ;D

 

I’m also planning to make one for Dragon Age, and possibly Black Butler. But hey, if you’re in a fandom and want to make a “Hitchhiker Guide” for readers, please do!

 

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Misapprehension of Words

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I was thinking the other day (when my brain isn’t busy doing stuff), about how long a person can go on with a misapprehension of a word. Of course, when you come across a word you don’t know, you can either look it up in the dictionary, or figure out the meaning from context. What amazes me is how I can get the absolutely wrong meaning from so many contexts that I never realize that I even have the wrong meaning!

For example…

 
Sanguine:

From Firefly–
 
Zoe: “You sanguine about the kind of reception we’re apt to receive on an Alliance ship, Cap’n?”
Mal: “Absolutely.” (beat) “What’s ‘sanguine’ mean?”
Zoe: “‘Sanguine.’ Hopeful. Plus — point of interest — it also means ‘bloody.’”
Mal: “Well, that pretty much covers all the options, don’t it?”

I was flabbergasted to find out that sanguine is supposed to mean hopeful. Not just hopeful, but dictionary.com says it means cheerily optimistic! Bright and happy and upbeat is totally not what I have in mind when I think of this word. Not that I think it means hopeless or morose, but… I always thought it meant sort of flatly ironic, a tad disbelieving, with a little dash of irritation at naivete.

Sanguine is supposed to be like, “Oh boy, I just know I’m going to win the lottery! Squee!”

Whereas I always had it to be like, “Yeah, good luck with that, because you’ll need a miracle.”

I still think of sanguine that way. It just doesn’t sound happy and upbeat. After 20-some-odd years, it’s sorta stuck that way in my head. I guess I had better stop using it. But dang it… then what IS a word that has that meaning???

 

 
Cradling:

Now here’s a funny one… For years, I was constantly bewildered by people, especially hard-boiled detectives, who get off the phone with someone and are so overcome by emotion, that they have to let the receiver slip down to the crook of their elbow so they can cuddle it like a teddy bear. Especially when the prior phone conversation wasn’t all that fraught with emotion. Was there some secret longing or wistfulness these tough characters had hidden deep down inside?

I don’t know what triggered it– it was certainly after the cell phone revolution– but I finally figured out that “He cradled the phone” is actually synonymous with “He hung up the phone”! ZONK!

Honestly, who says that? Well, it’s a moot point nowadays, I guess.

 

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Crazy Dreams

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The other night, I had some really crazy dreams….

In the first one, I was a minion of some evil overlord and I had an assignment I had to fulfill. We had captured the leader of some terrorist organization, and turned him into a stinkbug. My mission was to mail him back to his family, alive, so they would have to kill him.

No, seriously.

I had to mail him in this bucket, overseas to the Middle East or wherever. So I had to make sure it was no longer airtight, so he didn’t asphyxiate. I set the bug down, and this cardboard box we had the bug in. Some friends of mine were there, and I said, ‘now make sure this bug does NOT get away.’ Naturally, the little sucker escaped and tried to make a run for it! I HATE bugs! But if I mess up my mission here, The Boss is gonna be mad! So I’m grabbing this bug — very gently — and throwing it back in the box.

Meanwhile, I’ve poked some holes in the bucket with a screwdriver. Then I looked at the lid and realized the lid was still airtight. It needed some holes drilled in it. My friends disappeared. The bug turned into a squirrel. And was STILL trying his darndest to escape!

So I GRAB the little sucker by the scruff of his neck in one hand, and I’m trying to assemble the bucket and box into some form of squirrel container. With air holes. I shove the squirrel in the bucket. The breaks I punched with the screwdriver allow him to escape. He scarpers off and I’m grabbing his tail for dear life. (Keep in mind, I’m normally very very kind to animals. But this was a terrorist, here!)

I yanked him back and started experimenting with taping his tail down to the bottom of the cardboard box. He squeaked and squealed and carried on like I was hurting him, so I figured I must be doing something right. So a few pieces of tape later, I start closing the box lid…. Well, the little beggar was faking it. As soon as I let go of him, he shot out of the box and tried to run away again.

I was wrestling with the squirrel and trying to imagine how this thing was going to even get through customs. They’d probably open the bucket, it was a pretty suspicious package. I wondered if I should declare that I was shipping a live animal, but that would just entail more paperwork, plus they’d have to quarantine it….

 

Then I had another Torchwood dream. That makes my third. The first got changed into a story, and the second had an outline written down for yet another story that I might (hopefully?) forget about. No, no; I can’t forget about it, I wrote it down in my Brain. But this here… this is just a little snippet.

Oh, before we start, I want to make it perfectly clear, that I am NOT in any way, shape, or form responsible for what my brain does when it is dreaming! Do Not Blame Me!

 

Okay, so in this dream, me, Owen, and Jack were sitting in the Torchwood SUV. We were in the parking lot of some military/police place. Maybe a training academy? And garages. There were a lot of buildings. Anyway, some military/police vehicles started surrounding this one building like they were gonna storm it, and we figured we didn’t really want to park there.

So Jack drives the SUV towards the gates. Some rookie cop guy tries to stop us, of course Jack ignores him and drives out over the curb. The rookie guy is a little fanatical about his job. At first, I thought he had an assault shotgun pointed at us, but it turned out only to be a really big maglite. He throws himself bodily at the SUV and actually lands halfway on the hood. Now Jack has to stop.

The guy is out there yelling, “Get out of the car, NOW! Put your hands on the roof!” Jack gets out and is doing all this, while me and Owen are just sitting there snickering. Then the guy yells, “Spread your legs!” And we just start cracking up.

I go, “What is this? His first time?” Because the rookie guy is just really serious about all this.

Meanwhile, Jack is having a good time. He’s like, “Frisk me! Frisk me! I have a gun!”

Me and Owen are just dying in the back seat. I’m thinking, gawd, laughing is the worst thing to do when the cops pull you over. It’s just gonna make him mad! I’m SO not with these people!!

Now the rookie guy doesn’t have any gear, just his assault flashlight thing… No gun, no handcuffs. So he grabs the seatbelt and uses it to tie up Jack. Jack is way too happy, and the poor guy gets so flustered, he finally gives up and leaves.

Then Jack is kinda stuck tied outside the driver’s side door. So he’s telling us to get out and come untie him. Ain’t neither me nor Owen want that job!! I am SO not with those people, and they do NOT pay me enough!!

 

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Bloodsong’s November Writing Project 12 Final

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Well, I’m not sure if this November’s project was a failure or a success or something in between.

On the positive side, I got a lot of writing done. On the negative side, I didn’t make much progress on the two stories I wanted to work on. On the positive side, I did get two new short stories written on the last two days. On the negative side, neither was what I wanted to do, neither is exactly finished, and even if they were, I can’t publish them without screwing up the publishing schedule I wanted for my Dragon Age: Torchwood works.

On another positive side, I realized that I could work more on my writing, at different times, to get better results. On the negative side, my Brain is still latched onto that last story that’s not quite finished, and not focusing on what it’s supposed to be doing this week.

So I am a very confused person. Yay? Boo? Who knows!?

 

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Bloodsong’s November Writing Project 12 Week 3

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Nov 19: DA:TW ep1, DWTW-V
Nov 20: –FAIL–
Nov 21: DA:TW 21T
Nov 22: DA:TW ep1
Nov 24: DA:TW ep1
(weekend)

This is the last week in November. I can tell you right now, the Doctor Who/Torchwood story is no way going to get done this week. In fact, in the middle of last week I fell right out of the mood to write it. It’ll come back, though.

The Dragon Age: Torchwood has been a big pain in the butt. The plot will NOT settle down. And some of the plot is stupid. If you look at it too closely and think about it. Going to have to stop thinking about it. And bits need to be rewritten. A lot. This writing is the messiest piece I have done in… ever!!

Details in my Dragon Age blog post.

 

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