Sunday 5 October 2014

Heat, dust, beer and new machines


After coming back from the mega-dusty festival I ended up with some stupid fucking flu type coughing disease job thing... no not Ebola. Besides the usual 4-day hangovers, all my friends ended up with some stomach bug and my GF got malaria. Typical harvest for a festival in Africa lol. We're all getting better gradually.






So anyway, back in Eroland, loads to do. I need to get that WM update for the bits out. Its been tested and it works. Still need to wrap it up and send it off to Rotica. But I've managed to import and setup my new machines. Man they're a game-changer! Now with all the new RAM and the graphics cards I need to redo my render settings and see what I can squeeze out of them. Its not necessarily that my renders will improve, but hopefully I can work faster now.


BTW have I ever shown you my wall of scribbles? Check the wall on the left in this picture. That's where everything happens. That couch is where I sit and chill and design shit (and where my GF plays her XBox). Then it goes on the wall, and then I work it out on those 500 screens there (which have been reduced to three thanks to the KVM switch!). 



 Anyway, back to work (and replying to my inbox)!!!Oh and btw Lali's getting new hair, not different, but better than her current Kuzaburo adaptation.


23 comments:

  1. I'm glad the demand for the V4-WM edition of LB was strong enough that you decided to make a commercial version. I decided to try one character (ONE!) using Genesis for Poser and it crashes constantly, you can't sculpt morphs for it and reimport them unless you have subdivision turned to zero, and there are issues with .mtl files not applying MATs with the proper UVs. I don't see being able to EVER get behind Genesis as a Poser user... ever. Fucking Daz3D...

    Is the hair going to be a complete redo, or are you simply re-rigging the model you're already using?

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    1. yo bro, yeah the demand is strong, as well as me having to concede to WM finally, although I'm glad I postponed it because WM doesn't offer the mathematical reversibility that Zones does.

      I'm glad I'm not alone on the Genesis thing, but I really hope that Poser doesn't take a nose dive under the pressure of DAZ's cutthroat marketing strategies. Poser needs to wake up. DAZ is very effective at selling stuff of limited use at the expense of proper useful 3D stuff. Trust me I've tried DS countless times, even for Project E, and any Poser user that's been frustrated at Poser has, but I cannot take DS seriously. Its just so cumbersome and steps away from normal software conventions trying to be commercially interesting (or just badly designed) that its like wasting your time trying to learn another language. And any software that relies so heavily on tutorials to use it sucks, per definition. I have better shit to do! But more accurately, DS is just a software package recklessly ram-packed with all kinds of gadgets that very few people actually use, that its obvious that they're just after one thing: market dominance and money! Everything they do just stinks of pure money-making, it sucks. I don't care about that shit, I want something I can USE, something logical, without having to spend hours watching tutorials.

      Poser might become specialist software, thus more expensive... if it doesn't get killed in the process.

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    2. oh and yeah, the hair prop will probably be from scratch

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  2. THAT'S A LOT OF BEER! of course. GF got malaria? Sucks. Sinister thought - I love it when their body temperature rises though.
    Creativity gets messy, I know. I need Rachel's big bright whites, to come over and "straighten" my place up a bit.
    Awesome set up though. I think there's a disco dragon hanging from the ceiling.

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    1. yeah dude and we clapped it ALL!!! haha, well, sinister or not, she was perfect to cuddle in the cold nights. Poor girl lol.

      HA ARE YOU COMMENTING ON MY MESS???? ahem. yeah its good thing I have a GF, she has these urges to clean up every few weeks, although she can be just as messy as me.

      That 'dragon' is a lego space ship I made when I was 12, kindof modeled after the klingon battleships. Cool name for a ship though: dragon!

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    2. Only joking about messes. My place, depending on how focused I am on a project can look as if a hurricane blew through. Sometimes the mess fuels my creativity too. It's complicated.
      Your place doesn't look that messy though. Far neater than mine, at times. Sometimes I get in cleaning fits, and end up wiping everything with clorox wipes. I be crazy you, you know.

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    3. yeah man when I get deep into a comic, the world around me drops away. its also in between comics when I'm experimenting with shit, that I forget there's such a thing as 'life out there', as therefore my room looks like a warzone! This is TIDY compared to what it can be!

      Lol the only thing that's tidy in that room are my computer's folders and runtimes xD

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    4. You could "super impose" Rachel wearing a sexy maid's outfit with an old feather duster into there. Lali, too but she might not wear anything.

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  3. Glas bottles aren't allowed anymore to our festivals here, so we have the same amount in cans xD
    And we are as well allways sick after...
    So get well soon

    How many pc's do you have there? I count at least 7 oO! the laptop included.
    I can be happy if my one and only new pc runs smoothly, which it doesn't...
    Lali must bring a nice income ;)

    She looks fabulous by the way, especially the second last one.
    The skinshader is great. I guess SSS?
    Still a major thing missing within Octane, and to fake it costs way too much resources.
    For most professional works, Octane is still no real choice.

    I got you mail with the LB test for V4 WM but haven't tried it since I haven't used V4 WM yet.
    Staying with the good ol' V4.

    I really like the "a" from "Lali ist supAgeil" in you arcas afterparty pics^^

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    1. thanks man!

      lol there are 5 working computers, a laptop for internet, and the two PCs on the floor are buggered (an old pentium 4 and an IBM workstation). I have two new i7s I managed to get for very cheap. I wanna use them as render nodes. The one i5 I keep as a backup, I might convert it into a backup server.

      Yeah Lali brings some decent cash, despite Genesis' success. But its not all expensive what you see in the photo, most of this stuff was acquired over the years from sales and second hand from friends. Those screens are from 2007. Lali bought the PCs, the custom built desk, the ceiling and most importantly, the beer!!!!

      Yep the simple scatter node in Poser. It works wonders, but you do need to pull a few tricks with the scaling and some masks to get it right. I'm still experimenting with that.

      Fake it in Octane? octane has no SSS? What about lux? Btw, Poser's progressive render setting doesn't have SSS either. That sucks because its actually faster than firefly at times!

      Hehehe good to hear that V4 is still kicking it. Besides her lack of polys here and there and her bending issues (which can be overcome) V4 is still quite ok!

      Aber, Lali ist gans supageil!!!!

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    2. Oh sorry sorry.
      I made a mistake... there is SSS in Octane.
      I just got it all wrong. I remember the fuzz about octane not having sss and that there were users like redspecc trying to fake it or whatever.
      I followed some of his improvements for a while but obviously didn't see that there is a working sss node in octane.
      I am feeling very stupid right now... and I will work with octane now and test the sss node myself!
      The render time increasement will be an important part rather I use sss node or not.

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    3. lol well no worries from me, I know diddly squat about octane, beside what Epoch tunes me about it. I suppose you could contact him if you want tips, but he's a busy fella too.

      Well, have you tried it?

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    4. A little bit, but the sss shader setup is complex.
      I might play with it in the standalone, there I can easily see how the nodes are build.
      The Poser plugin in comparison is just a list of the nodes, but no visible nodes, so working and editing materials is way easier in the standalone, at least for me.

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    5. hm interesting. I wouldn't really know because I've never tried it, but interesting to know it works with nodes too.

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  4. Oh sweetie you re SO bad... l end up with a beer belly blighting that Adonis-like body of yours! x

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    1. haha I've also borrowed a hometrainer from my friend. Did three laps today already. Don't want that beerbelly indeed!

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  5. What brand/model is your KVM switch? I have a Linkskey who's mouse sharing has never worked well.

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    1. the 4-ports Belkin Soho. Is has VGA ports and USB keyboard and mouse ports. Recommended by milady KristinF, who also uses it to pieces. Only drawback is that it doesn't let extra buttons of gaming mice through, but for that PC I just attach a separate mouse.

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  6. Ero,

    How much did you get the i7 machines for?
    The reason I ask is because I dumped i-cores in favour of Zeon processors.
    Got a 4 year old HP server on that well know market place for around $70US that has a Zeon X3460 @ 2.67 GHz (4 cores 8 threads) It breezes through everything I throw at it.

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    1. Oh I'd stay with Xeon for sure. I cannot afford Xeon though. These i7's are valued at 1500euro each but I got them both for 2000e (friends hehe).

      $70 is nothing! I used to have an old IBM Workstation with Xeon processors and although it wasn't very fast, it was solid as a rock (and weighed as much too). I also got it for like $200. Unfortunately it died some time back.

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    2. You can afford Xeon, Like me, for $70 The complete machine with 8GB ram included. ;)
      Since the introduction of cloud computing there are plenty of nearly new servers going cheap.

      i7's for 1500 Euro each!, that's why I stay away from i-core processors.
      Out of curiosity, what graphics card do you use to render?

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    3. oh but these are 3.7Ghz Quads (8 threads), 32Gb RAM, with a 2Gb Nvidia GTX 760 card. I doubt Xeons are stronger than that?? is it $70 second hand?

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  7. I've been down the overclocked i5 - i7 XXX GB RAM super duper graphics card route and found barely any difference in speed to the machine I have now. I kind of gave up on the i-core hype after overclocking cheap Xeon's. Does poser really need that much fire power? and do we all need hex and 8 core machines to play Solitaire! :p

    Yes the machine I have is second hand & can take up to 32GB of ram. The 4 core 8 thread CPU can be overclocked to 3.2GHz and beyond. (more likely 4.2GHz +) If I got an Xeon X3480 were talking 3.7GHz ovcerclocking power with room to take it to 4.5GHz+ air cooled.


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Hey, because of a sudden influx of spam, I need to moderate comments from now on, unfortunately. I'll try find a work-around in the meanwhile. Cheers!