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Going Shopping in Ironman13’s Clothing Boutique – 3D Shenanigans #22

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In this live stream we’ll take two Genesis characters shopping in Ironman13’s Styling Clothing Boutique. We’ll build the whole scene from start to finish, including lighting and depth of field. This will bring some of the techniques together that I’ve shared with you recently, including how to spin the sundial. PS: The stream dropped out …

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How to bring back Selection Toggling in Blender 2.8

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I’m so used to pressing A to select or de-select everything in Blender. It’s been so ingrained in my brain that I cannot easily get used to the new default behaviour in Blender 2.8. Thankfully there’s a simple tick box in the Preferences that will bring this option back, so there’s no need for my …

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Building the “Fluffy Disco Kimokawaii” Animation in Carrara – 3D Shenanigans #21

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In this episode I’ll explain how I’ve made the Fluffy Disco animation that I’ve posted last week. I’ll start by building the animation in DAZ Studio using aniBlocks, then import the file into Carrara and add the hair. Once applied, we’ll drape it and have Carrara simulate the strands as the figure dances. You can …

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Upscaling while preserving details in Photoshop

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I’ve received a great tip from Patrick Schoolderman a couple of weeks ago, about how to upscale images in Photoshop with a new algorithm that Adobe call Preserve Details 2.0. I wanted to make a quick note about how to do this and share it with you. The workflow is as simple as opening your …

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An Overview of Strand Based Hair in DAZ Studio – 3D Shenanigans #20

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On today’s live stream, I’m giving you an overview on how to get started with the new Strand Based Hair feature in DAZ Studio 4.11. It’s only been released to the public yesterday, and we have not many details on how to create handsome looking hair with this tool, but I’ll let you in on …

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Building a Kitchen Comic Scene in DAZ Studio – 3D Shenanigans #18

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In this live event I’ll show you how to build the above funny kitchen scene. It’s simple with several subtle nuances, such as lighting and expressions. I’ll explain how to add your characters, pose them, adjust the camera, and add appropriate (comical) expressions. Then we’ll adjust the lights of the set and add our own …

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Animating sunlight (SS Time) in DAZ Studio

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I’ve recently explained how to make use of the realistic sun disk in DAZ Studio. I’ve talked about how to make this thing visible and how to set it to mood/effect you want, and I’m pleased with the results. This workflow works great for still images, but for animations, it quickly becomes clear that the SS Time parameter under Render Settings – Environment cannot be keyframed.

Or can it? Looks like it can, thanks to a little helper tool called the Sun Dial. Let me show you how it works.

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Podcast: Download (Duration: 7:05 — 6.5MB)

Urban Future Fly-Through Animation Workflow

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I’ve rendered this quick trailer for my 3D Shenanigans Live Stream, using Stonemason’s Urban Future 6 set the other day. I did this really quick, and there are some rough edges to this animation. It only took 8 hours to render the full sequence plus a bit of post production in Premiere.

I thought I’d share my multi-machine workflow and pipeline with you, indulging some tips of what I might do different next time.

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How to switch Photoshop from Timecode to Frames

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The Photoshop Timeline is a mysterious tool. You can open it from Window – Timeline, or you can open an image sequence/video clip and it’ll dock itself at the bottom of the viewport. By default it displays a sequence in a timecode of sorts, but it’s not the SMPTE or EBU timecode we’ve come to know and love. Instead, it’s something along the lines of seconds and frames, in a format like 02:02f or in other words, something NOBODY in the world would ever use.

But hey, they’re Adobe, and by default they can do anything they want (while extorting money from casual users). I don’t use Photoshop for physical film or video editing, but it’s a nice tool to have when converting rendered image sequences into video clips. I’ve described how to do this here.

When I work this way, I’m more interested in the frame count rather than some made up timecode-thing. I’ve found out how to change this in Photoshop CC, and thought I’d share it with you.

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FIXED: Creative Cloud reports “out of space” although there is enough

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I’ve recently migrated my cloud files over to Adobe’s Creative Cloud. I’m currently getting 20GB of space without device limitations. I made the move because Dropbox recently introduced a limitation of the amount of “new devices” that can be linked with a free account, which meant I couldn’t link my new Z600 and Z800 workstations on my render farm.

All of a sudden I see this notice that some files could not be synced anymore, telling me I’d have to clear up some space in Creative Cloud. No problem I thought, several image sequences had been converted into videos so I deleted them. My Finder window reported a correct 9GB of used space, but the Creative Cloud app still reported in excess of 20GB. What was going on?

Turns out when you delete files from Creative Cloud, they go into an invisible Trash – not on your local computer, but – you’ve guessed it – “in the cloud”. That space counts towards your quota, and unless this is deleted, new files won’t sync across your devices.

That’s different from Dropbox, where deleted files could be accessed outside the storage quota for 30 days, before being deleted permanently. With Creative Cloud, we’ll have to do this manually (but of course, nobody tells you this)… now that I’ve found how how to do it, let me show you how.

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Rendering with Blender from the Command Line

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I wanted to put some of my (old) computers to good use by helping them render animations. Everyone is stronger when we work together as a team, no matter if we’re built on carbon or silicone. Sadly though, Blender doesn’t start its GUI via RDP, which means it’s not so easy to speak to the application – unless you employ clunky workarounds.

That’s where the command line interface comes in handy. We can issue a text command to Blender, telling it which file we’d like to render, where to render to, and which frames of an animation to render.

Before I forget how this works, I thought I’d best write it down.

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Shattering my Logo in Blender – 3D Shenanigans #15

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On this week’s live stream I’ll take my 3D Shenanigans Logo and shatter it into pieces, to build a creepy backwards animation using the Cell Fracture add-on in Blender 2.79. I’ll start by explaining how the tool works, then we’ll move on to building the logo from scratch, add materials, and then we’ll build something …

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Creating Animated Fog with Carrara – 3D Shenanigans #14

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In this live event I’ll create animated volumetric fog with the highly underrated Carrara. I’ll show you around the app and explain how the programme works, introduce you to some of its features, and then I’ll animate good looking fog. Once exported as a transparent image sequence, I’ll try to animate it live over my …

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How to switch game modes in Subnautica

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I’ve had a few computer glitches recently while experimenting with a new graphics card. Unfortunately this lead to some random crashes, which in turn damaged my Subnautica game files. Suddenly my save games didn’t tell me how long I had been playing, and what type of game I was playing anymore, and instead only showed …

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Using Iray Canvases in DAZ Studio – 3D Shenanigans #13

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In this live event I’ll tell you everything I know about Iray Canvases in DAZ Studio. It’s a huge topic, and admittedly I don’t know everything about this subject, but it will cover how to get started with multi pass rendering and the principles of creating separate images from your scene. About Depth Passes There’s …

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Where does Subnautica store Game Saves?

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Subnautica game save files can currently not participate in any “cloud save” options as far as I’m aware. As such, to transfer files between systems or to make backups, we’ll have to dig deep inside a system folder to find said data. The exact path depends on which marketplace you purchased the game from. Steam …

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TurboTax and QuickBooks Self-Employed – what’s the best deal?

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This is a slightly longer than usual story, but I thought I’d share it nonetheless – maybe it’ll help someone who’s in a similar situation than I was in April 2019, just about to file my tax return in the US. Grab a coffee and take a trip around some Intuit products that helped me transform the way Julia and I do our taxes.

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Animating Numbers with Blender and DAZ Studio – 3D Shenanigans #12

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In this live event I’ll show you how to create 3D Text Objects in Blender 2.8, then bring them in to DAZ Studio to animate and render. We’ll animate a single number first, then apply the same animation to the other numbers and add small variations using aniMate. Other than that, I’m happy to answer …

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DAZ Studio Test Scene – share your Iray Render Speeds

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I’d love to see a decent Iray render speed comparison between the current NVIDIA graphics Cards, specifically for DAZ Studio performance. All we need is some data from a static test scene, render it on a variety of systems and compare the results. Well here’s such a scene! Please download it and render it on …

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About OBS Scenes, Collections and Profiles

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When I first started using OBS Studio, I was tremendously puzzled about its use of Scenes, Collections and Profiles. It all makes sense if you know what these mean, which I guess eventually you’ll find out – but I wish someone had explained this philosophy to me instead.

Let me help you with that in this article.

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Where does OBS Studio save settings?

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I genuinely like what OBS has to offer – especially the new OBS 23. In fact I like it so much that I’ve decided to support Jim and his the entire project through their Patreon Campaign. Today I’ve “refreshed” my Windows system, which is the system that I use OBS on primarily, and after every …

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Building a Creepy Corridor Scene in DAZ Studio – 3D Shenanigans #05

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In this live event I’ll build a creepy “survival horror” type scene: an unsuspecting janitor is working the night shift, while a bunch of super intelligent bugs have escaped and try to take over the facility. I’ll start by modifying the stock corridor to make it longer, then I’ll setup a camera with an extreme …

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Converting older Skin Shaders for use with Iray in DAZ Studio – 3D Shenanigans #04

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In this live event I’ll explain how we can use an existing Iray skin shader and apply it to an older character like Staci. In my last stream I’ve shown you how to apply existing Iray materials from the library to various surfaces, and this time we’ll create a whole shader (almost) from scratch. I’ll …

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