Little test piece of animation I did of a robot leg doing a single walk cycle
simple modeling materials and shoddy animation as it's just mainly a test to see how I could get the armature system to drive the pistons on the leg to make it look like it was being hydraulically driven. So the bones all use ik targets and various constraints to move the parts of the pistons automatically to line up as the leg moves

Playing with blender following a few tutorials made this. It uses a combination of dynamic paint modes and the fire simulation to take a sphere and make it look like it's burning away. Came out fairly well a few odd frames in there but still quite nice.

On Saturday I went with a friend to try the Sandbox VR Startrek Discovery experience, I haven't seen startrek discovery myself but it didn't seem to matter. My friend I went with who does follow the show said it was made with people from the show and it was an officially licensed vr thingamy made with CBS.

Sandbox vr are one of the many vr experience outfits this one was in the Hilldale Mall and they had a very nice shopfront all screens nice wood and fancy lights with a bunch of tv's showing footage from games they offered.

I came across this on a list of great games from the last year you probably haven't heard of and picked it up

Proviso: It is an early access title I know some people dislike those

anyway the basic idea is simple top down 2d space shooter edges of the screen wrap you have a little ship basic thrust based movement and directional fire not quite twin sticks as you always thrust forward (for the most part some mods alter this) you have weapons shields and ship types you fight of waves of enemies and collect orbs to upgrade

The upgrades are somewhat random

While I was out in Australia & New Zealand with Byrnie and Jen I took a bunch of video using a little DJI Osmo Pocket which has a nice gimbal to stabilize things and it shoots in 4k60 so gives reasonable image quality for something small enough to just slip in a pocket. Since it's gimbaled it can also do some fun panning timelapse shots.

I edited the Australia part of things over the christmas holiday and got round to doing the final bits and pieces the other day added a bit of voice over and so on. You can take a look here, it's something like 50% Timelapse 50% Penguins.

2020 Manifesto

An attempt to reclaim a much-maligned word. A better fit than "resolutions" for these...

1 - Regain 2nd Cat Race License

In theory I should have already started the campaign on this, however as I type this while the 2020 race season has begun, there have been no races organised locally. I haven't raced since June 2018, so as of the 1st December 2019 I lost my 2nd cat race license...so I'll need 40 points to get back up there before the end of November. Ideally I'll get it done way before that.

One of the offshoots of the rise of 3d printer tech is the proliferation of cheap "CNC" machines thet use the same control circuitry as a 3d printer but usually swap out the belts for drive screws and guide rails use a cheap spindle instead of the hot end and are usually constructed out of standard 2020 extrusion and a few machined parts.

I've seen these things knocking around but mostly assumed they were trash but their prices have been dropping a lot in recent years and you can pick one up for under 200 bucks.

My monitor had been showing some odd image discolouration so I've been considering replacing it and what with the black friday cyber monday and I guess mauve thursday I had a look what was on offer and ended up getting this bad boy

I've been looking forward to Obsidians new game for a while one of the splinter factions that spun out of the death of Black Isle who made some classic RPG's (Baldurs gate, Fallout) Obsidian have been making interesting if sometimes flawed games for a while with the great but unfinished KOTOR 2, Neverwinter Nights 2 which had alot of promise but was hamstrung by the engine. Things like Alpha protocol the slightly shonky Spy RPG game the third dungeon seige game and then the excellent but buggy Fallout New Vegas.

So borderlands 3 came out a short while back. Annoyingly epic exclusive although I managed to pick it up in the badly managed epic mega sale for a nice discount before they realised their mistake and pulled it.