To those that know me, I have been away for awhile, and I wanted to pop in to give you a big thanks for all your support and help, humour and comments. It certainly helped me get through the Covid days. After about a whole year and a half of intensive Gamedev training, I have decided to put CGI aside and focus my attention on the traditional arts, story writing (which will not surprise those that know me), board games, and a few other non-computer related pursuits.
The practical reason is my eyes- I have to limit my time on the computer else they hurt and cause headaches, often using my BooxMax as my screen most days. Monochrome is not very conducive to anything colour, and headaches and eye pain are not conducive to computer related careers.
The personal reason is that there is nothing like having my hands on a real object. While I admit that the process was rather fun, even exhilarating at times, I was also annoyed at having an interpreter (blender) between me and my work: I prefer having full control over all of my mistakes . It was rather astounding to be able to generate hair on an animal, but it was rather annoying that I could not pet it- as silly as that soundsā¦
My time here a waste. It gave me the necessary space to explore a multitude of possibilities in depth at a reasonable price and at my own pace. I have been able to put to rest old questions and it has narrowed my path rather nicely without busting my bank account. It has shown my that I like to use my imagination, but that my choice of graphic rendering is either through physical medium, or even more so, a mental one: the use of words to quickly iterate worlds, peoples, creatures, and letting anotherās imagination do the rest of the work for me- the images in their head will always be better than mine.
I also give a special thanks to @FedPete, @NP5, @Miss_B, @ZachDude, @Cathy_N, and @ChrisSGCP - First for your comments and support. Also to FedPete and NP5 for your fun humor, especially NP5ās unique style of motivation which quite often sounds just the opposite, and for the both of them (and the others) for their willingness to forgive my own humour, often in story or poetic form, that just popped out of the wood work.
And to ZachDude who was a good sport, knowledgeable, and talented, whose renderings (This and This) were fun to wreck . Cathy has a natural talent- I hope you can keep it up. Chris has lively and fun work- keep up the energy and creativity and you will do well. If anyone wants to keep up some form of contact, you may PM me and we can swap emails.
There are others who should probably be thanked, but I cannot think of their names.
I am grateful you for your time and efforts for helping all of us students. I would certainly give my recommendation to both course material and community. I hope that the courses continue to improve and to inspire students to greater things- even if, like me, one ends up doing something completely different.
Also, is there a way that I can give some of my blender projects to the community? In particular that large incomplete project, that tavern. There are a lot of possible useable pieces, or at least passible pieces. It might be of use to someone here, student or otherwise?
Thanks again, and instead of giving an Irish Goodbye (to disappear without a trace), I will leave an old Irish Good-Blessing:
May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face; the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.
You showed us a different and sometimes beautiful way of storytelling (scene building and composition). And sometimes I was a little jealous because of the ease with which you did those creative things. Like the Tavern, which is/was a beauty in the making.
And yes, Blender is a very technical piece of equipment. Pen, paper, paint, or even clay are more manageable for other art forms. It is therefore a pity to read that working in front of a screen entails a physical inconvenience. The choice is therefore easy. Choose health.
I think you learned something here. Not just how to use Blender. But looking at things, objects, and constructions in a different way. I hope you can reuse that experience in your other forms of creativity and art.
I wish you all the best and thank you for your kind words and replies on this forum.
Oh no!
You had been away a while, I was expecting a completed tavern!
We had some good fun over your time here.
I do not have them. Look up aphantasia. Only recently researched/discovered. Always thought such ability was a figure of speech not real.
Sorry to hear this, it is a nightmare for all visually based lives.
I spent a lifetime hands on making and if anything the computer is easier on the eyes now than the small scale I worked in. Besides, it needed a workshop and outside garage like spaces, and indoors at the computer is so much more comfortable! The other gain is not having loads of physical āthingsā to store or dump as gifts on relatives!
Thank you for taking the time to let us know, so many just disappear never to be seen again. Also for the kind words about the community.
I wish you all the best in your returned to, older direction.
Wow, thanks for the kind words and recollection!
It was just as amusing to observe the effects of your āwreckingā
I too have been absent from CG, but I hope to come back to it at some point.
I have a good reason for my sudden disappearance: I landed a job in the gaming industry (couldnāt have happened without gamedev!!). So now Iām making character accessories full time. I never said my goodbyes because I plan to come back! It took me a while to learn a new engine and get used to the massive workflow but Iām positive Iāll be able to get back to doing new courses soon.
I am really glad that you found your own path and I am sure you will be very successful at it! Good luck with your creations and may inspiration never leave you!
Hi Zangk, like Pete, I too think weāre going to miss you. No . . . wait a minute . . . I KNOW weāre going to miss you.
Choosing health issues should always come first, from someone whoās had issues with her eyes, 1) BRVO (branch retinal vein occlusion) 10 years ago, and 2) since the beginning of 2020, a very, very mild case of Glaucoma. Relax everyone, Iām NOT going blind!!
My Ophthalmologist found absolutely no physical damage to the eyes, but my eye pressure goes up and down a lot from time to time, so Iāll be using prescription eye drops every night before going to sleep for the rest of my life. At first I didnāt like that idea at all, but after doing it for almost 3 years, Iām considering myself very lucky.
Take care of yourself Zangk, and please feel free to stop in here every once in a while to keep us up-to-date on whatever āprojectsā your working on, especially if you ever finish work on the Tavern.
Hello Zangk,
I was away for a little while too. I think its been a month since I was here. I had to take care of something for my little sister. I was planning on coming back to blender and this community on November 10th. But I got a notification on my email since you mentioned me.
Thank you so much for your kind words. It means a lot to me. I suck at goodbyes(Usually I avoid goodbyes since that makes me uncomfortable.But I am working on that little problem too.) But I am definitely not going to miss saying my goodbyes and farewells to you. Since I posted my first post on this community you have helped me a lot with your positive and wonderful comments and opinions like @NP5 , @FedPete , @Miss_B and a lot of others. You gave me a lot of wonderful ideas on how to improve my models too. I still have to add some of the things you said in my bowling alley (I took your advice to learn new and come back to it later by the way.). It was always fun and informative to chat with you about my projects and ideas. And it was so much fun to come back to your tavern project and see what else was new in there. I was so amazed by the amount of details you created and the realism of it.
I am really sorry to hear about your eyes. I hope you sort it out and pursue your dreams.
That doesnāt sound silly at all. When I make something realistic in blender sometimes there is a thought that go through my mind, as "Why canāt this be a real thing? It would be so much fun if I was actually in there! " such.
That was one of the reasons I wanted to lean 3D modelling. So that I can create the things from my imagination. Something beautiful and unforgettable and inspiring.
Also feel free to come back here once in a while to keep us up-to date on whatever new projects you work on. Considering the fact that you are one of those people that can inspire a person to be their best self (In my case that is literally TRUE you know!) it would be awesome to chat with you once in a while.
I wish you all the best and all the happiness in the world.Take care of yourself. And have fun in your new journey.
--------but the offer still stands- is there a way that I can give some of my projects away here as a free set of asset? Sort of a give back to the community? I would rather someone find get enjoyment out of them than collecting dust. I have the Tavern in mind ------------------
There are lots of pieces that are, more or less, modular like pieces. The tavern looks mainly complete, and on the outside looks pretty much finished (save perhaps for some roof pieces here and there. All it needs is a fresh coat of paint.
I donāt need to, I have been taking drawing courses where the creator there has the same issue . Now donāt get me wrong if were now to tell you that I never thought your work had any imagination! Because, well, you donāt have one! But apparently it does not impinge on your creativity and witā¦ this has always been a problemā¦ your quick comebacks always tend to come back.
Interesting enough, while I do not have a lack of imagination (my overindulged posts prove as much), I mainly think along the lines of abstract concepts and ideas, usually no sound or image included (but not excluded entirely). That is, I think āsimplyā if that makes sense. I just āunderstandā things at times without any corresponding image- even an art idea is rather a strange simple inspiration that I work out rather than a visual. I suppose one might call that āintuitionā All my blender ideas were āheh, that idea is funnyā¦ lets see where it goesā¦ā and the rest is by āfeelā and the project unfolds itself, I donāt even know where most of my projects will end up by the end!
That is kind of ironic- your reason for coming to the computer is my reason for leaving. I am keeping an āeyeā out on the E-Ink market- lots of potential booming in the coloured screen marketā¦just not fast enough yet.
If you only knewā¦ Heh. Latin, Greek, Anglo-Saxon (soon) and language creation, and letter system to pad my āimaginationā for story, art, and board game ideas. Not to mention writting story building, history, maps, all to pad my story ideas.
As I said to @NP5 I have been taking a course, it is all about construction and building things up. It is brutal because it is all in fine felt-tipped pen and all mistakes come through. It is to force you to push through and finish your work despite the mistakes. Rather useful.
I am not done the course, but it is really good, but very grueling work. I decided for the sake of saving my eyes from that course is toā¦ compile the whole thing into a document so I can print itā¦ It is trueā¦ I actually recently finished doing itā¦Talk about intelligenceā¦
Oh ya, there is a possibility that I could be teaching art at some point for a private school
I did not really find it all that complicated. I found myself gleefully flying over the keyboard and mouse- but I have an issue of simplicity. - how can I develop the most ideas in the shortest amount of time? But seeing the power and use of blender, I will certainly appreciate those who use it. But for me, I think I would like to be the guy that bosses the blender artists around- telling him what to create so that I donāt have to
Thank you- a sort of double cross back I think. My other projects fueled my blender ideas, and my blender ideas likely have fueled my projects. As one artist said (and I donāt know who), diversifying oneās knowledge increases oneās creativity and problem solving power- it helps you think outside the box, to see what others cannot, and so allowing you to create truly unique things. It is not enough just to learn how to draw, go and bake bread as well
And I did learn a lot here- I learned that I found it funny to write poems and stories on a website dedicated to learning a technical piece of software. With all my posts and poetry I could release a āGameDev Journey: Short Stories, Poems, and Insightsā book
I also learned that I liked making stories for my pictures sometime more than making the picture itself! What silly thing can I create, and what sort of sillier story can I attach to it. But sometimes NP5 ruined it by making an even sillier storyā¦
We will have to make arrangements for the ZachZangk challenge sometimeā¦ZachDude provides the picture, the I edit it.
What a happy outcome, I am very glad for you!
Your work was always inspiring, and I am glad that others think so too- being paid is a pretty good indicator
I might be landing a job with art at a private school. It is more or less a given if I want it, but I will have to rearrange some things in order to be able to follow through.
Ouch, I feel for you. I know someone worse than myself you cannot even stand natural light, and yet the doctors cannot find out what the issue it at the moment. I am glad that you fond some way to manage it.
One project is a board game. The game is a 4X space empire building game. While there are many out there, they are too simplistic and are not what I want- I want something like the Masterās of Orion II computer but as a board game. Then I can play it off my computer and with friends.
The beauty being, if I can create this system and make it robust, I can then create my own proper ācivilizationā board game, like that of Sid Myers, and while abstracted, not stupidly so.
My main image editor for my visual prototypes is Paint.net (so I never truly got away from image renderingā¦). I have designed the rules for it, having written over 40 pages (maybe 60) worth of material. Only some need to be used frequently, other are more reference and setup material. I will likely put these into their own separate books.
When I am done with my images (which is coming close) I will put it all into Vassal so I can play test it. I play tested it a few years ago with carboard cutouts and printed paper cardsā¦ that was a very long process and a lot of work. I quickly found out what worked or did not work each turn, and played on through for 18 rounds before it ended (4 player game, although I am planning for up to 6 players, with 7-8 player expansion if I want). This took me a few months to do since I had to play, consider, and when necessary, rewrite. It was enjoyable to see theory turn to realityā¦ and theory miserably failing.
I suppose giving leave does not eschew occasional visits.
Thank you again, all your comments and compliments have visibly proven my convictions. Any fool can cobble a string of words together (look at my posts)- it is in the fact that you care about people that keeps a community running.
He he. I discovered this condition, wiring, from a bbc web article, when it was new. They talked of it as these people have no imagination. Odd I thought recognising it all as me.
Some years later there was another article, where someone who had been head of Pixar, and Disney, had read of this and thought, that is me. So he asked a few employees, top animators, and several were the same. This seemed to lead to a revised bbc attitude! Understanding in mind visualisation is not the same as imagination.
Fascinating in many ways. It explains people saying the film character looks nothing like it was in the original book. But for me any description of a person is just word padding, getting in the way of getting on with the story! Or the concept wanted posters are of any use unless you keep them in front of you all the time to check passers by! Sounds like you can tap into the non visualised way too, very much concepts and ideas.
Your tavern model I have trouble thinking of a way to make it available to anyone. Perhaps it is done enough that somewhere like Sketchfab would take it?
Perhaps host it somewhere and leave a link to it in one of the forum Wikis?
Teaching job sounds good. Next you will have a YouTube channel!
I think I have found a way using Dropboxā¦ I hope:
Go Here
It is called 24.refactory- because I was cleaning things up and at my 24th saveā¦ that mean I have 24 total versions of this project as I built it up.
If you can access, It might be alot to take in at once. I may even have lots of extra hidden about that I have now have since forgotten due to my hiatus.
Again, hopefully this will work.
If this works, I might release some other projects for āexamplesā and viewing sake for the community.
. It was rather astounding to be able to generate hair on an animal, but it was rather annoying that I could not pet it- as silly as that soundsā¦ 
. Cathy has a natural talent- I hope you can keep it up. Chris has lively and fun work- keep up the energy and creativity and you will do well. If anyone wants to keep up some form of contact, you may PM me and we can swap emails.
. Now donāt get me wrong if were now to tell you that I never thought your work had any imagination! Because, well, you donāt have one! But apparently it does not impinge on your creativity and witā¦ this has always been a problemā¦ your quick comebacks always tend to come back.
