Been an interesting time of late, not been able to get much done while not really having stood still, right in the middle of the Mercury retrograde period or so I am told. Not quite three steps forward and two in reverse but close in retrospect. Just as the hell or high water tide mark was passed by the ruling buffoon in Westminster after claiming again and again, that the nation would be shucking the EU shackles once and for all. Yet here we are post prediction and still shackled to the block awaiting the titan of destruction. Meanwhile they say that a neighbour of ours is having a game away tomorrow in a foreign land and apparently it is historic to have gotten to this point by all accounts. Well that’s what I hear about it anyway. And talking about things in the wind, a well known toy tosser from over the pond is interfering in another countries politics, but it could just be he is taunting an inquiry into his methods and ways at home. After all he does not ever face the flack at home nor does he respect the bearing his country used to (before he ripped up the rule books) have on the world stage and it looks like he doesn’t care about that deterioration either.
All Things Being Equal.
At the start of last month I had to look at my progress towards getting a design studio finished. I have a home network of two machines, one permanently online (office machine) and the other a character shop and animation as well as graphics machine with extended memory and new SSD (faster drives) only to have to stop that direction of travel. The one machine for all media and the other the office machine was not realised either, as the sound cards and graphics cards were just not up to scratch. The office machine will have to be the sound dedicated music recording and finished media suite. The new machine without the character software Reallusions iClone suite was left at the final hurdle not able to proceed. The price of the software suite last month was reduced from $1,999 to £490 ($599) and so I took the time to. Divert into the workshop area of the design studio. A 3D printer has been bought and first print is done it has issues and from the groups I have joined it seems no machine comes without any, except for one or two lucky people. It seems that upgrading and improving the machines is part and parcel of the community talks and group actions. A few have voiced my own opinion that the machine should come out of the box working and up and running asap. The truth is most groups spring up to fill in the gaps in the machine capabilities. They identify the problems with the product and highlight its specific problems. They then find the solutions and share that in the respective groups. The actual help from the manufacturers is bare bones and they tend to join and chip in a little. But basically they use the groups to debug the problems and at least that means the next developments will address those specific problems.
Quite a Microsoft attitude to development and it used to just be a software domain of provenance. Now with the advances of the likes of Apple, turning out various sized screen versions of essentially the same phone with different bits added to the original model. It does show up the real problems with techies developing products and goods as well as services for real people in the real world. The take on what they think it will do in the hands of others that do not know the right way to get what you need from the software or device. The back room development process of scientists in sanitised environments is the cloned condition, that how they develop user interfaces it is aimed at them getting specific results from a prototype, being left in place as ‘don’t fix what ain’t broke’ as it took months to get it to just be able to do that mate applies here. It was part and parcel of the software design cycle way back in the days of Windows 3 (Yeah 3), where Adobe built their own GUI interface for their software as windows was just a static platform to begin with. It was called quick and dirty solutions to make a rough prototype, a bit like rough casting is the dirty bit of making masters for mould and casting a new line. Throw things together to test the premise and prove the model, then tweak it to get the output you need to sell the concept. Then last stage tidy it up and make it more user friendly.
So given nothing is perfect and when people make things they will never be perfect it does mean that we have to accept the limitations of early designs. In the eighties most engineering backgrounds out there had an unspoken policy to never buy (part with hard cash for) a new development product or software, it was accepted that you would wait until the second or better the third development of the product. I do still have that sort of reserve and when all my friends were raving about thousand pound and 1500 pound 3D printers that came on the market about six seven years ago. I knew they were chucking back development money at those prices (the first accountants rake back protocol’s) and that in my case prudence still said wait to see if they iron out the kinks or not. But seven years later or so and tracks and layers in printed output is still an issue.
As a small designer with a limited workshop for making single pieces with a budget set of machines, 3D printer, Laser plotter, Pen and Vinyl cutter, CNC engraver and cutter. Small turning lathe for wood and metal cutting set of power tools. A good mitre saw, table and panel saw and a metal and wood drill (technically the CNC can do that now). All for full finished single products or prototyping, none of them capable of mass production. Most of the online groups for printers show and share printing upgrade units for the very machines they are using, putting together kits to help other users and the feedback to tweak it with to get it more user friendly for the less technically minded. So with the software iClone being too expensive I bought the 3D printer to get the workshop started. It will take a year to put it all together at a budget of some of the goods each month or second month. The shopping list is growing and it will force me out of the flat into a workshop situation in time. Have to clean out the other room for the workshop. Have a laser engraver in my shopping list with all the upgrades to turn it into a pen and a vinyl cutter with as large a 2 axis area as possible as standard. The 3D printer will make the kit to convert the base laser into a three tool quick change engraver and printer plotter.
Well I had written off the software until Wednesday night when an email from the Reallusion group I joined with the intent of buying the software suit when its price came down. The blurb indicated iClone 7.4.1, 3D Exchange and Character Creator 3.1 with all the DAZ exchange kit and library extras to get started was now just $229 dollars and it would end the offer on the 3rd of November. So £185 was the bottom line which was much less than half price since their last sale. So thanks to this piece of luck I am now the proud owner of a suite of programs that can now make talking heads in rapid sessions. No more lip syncing by hand and eye frame by frame, it is ready for mocap (motion capture) via just a couple of good cameras (why I bought three in the first place). So after the learning curve I will have my six character base up and running in a few weeks there after. The workshop is now on hold for the time being (December for the laser kit) as I am still no good at trying to do many things at once. With the advances in Blender in the latest revision 2.8 and all the back catalogue of characters and props from as far back as Poser 7 and then on to DAZ now being able to be transferred through iClone and output into Blender for finished output. There will be a lot of getting to know the programs in doing this first as a base set of lessons in using the new software. At least while I am learning I can save as much up as a can over the couple of months it will take to get to grips with the suite. This will give me a bottom line in savings over the period for buying the next level of hardware for the workshop.
The 3D printer is pivotal for making the kit prototypes for my geometry, the Scottish products and coins (CNC in aluminium) are the next stage and the laser and plotter are for polish and packaging for single units for prototype pitching.