I have been really bored at home. So I decided to waste time productively by wasting it on Terragen. Here are the results
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This is a random terrain which I then edited and then played around with the sliders.
The Terrain Map is one I created. The rest are all experiments with Haze density and Atmospheric Blue Half-height.
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I then moved on to Blender 3D. I love this software. It’s powerful, fairly light on the system and is open-source freeware. But just because it’s open-source and free doesn’t mean it’s light on features. It has features comparable to high-end 3D Modellers like 3DS Max, Maya and Cinema 4D. Anyway here’s what I came up with
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The Tumblers are a set of SpinDuplicated Vertices.
I am feeling really restless. I think I’m stuck in a rut. I want to get away from here. I want to go on a trek. I want to backpack, hitchhike and generally be king of the road.
Everything is making me want to travel. Durgapur seems a very small city suddenly. Kolkata is not appealing much.
I want to travel!
Instead I’m stuck here wondering about my endsems and listening to music very loudly.
I’ve been reading Shaw’s Don Juan in Hell all over again.
My favourite part is this one…
Hell is a place far above their comprehension: they derive their notion of it from two of the greatest fools that ever lived, an Italian and an Englishman. The Italian described it as a place of mud, frost, filth, fire, and venomous serpents: all torture. This ass, when he was not lying about me, was maundering about some woman whom he saw once in the street. The Englishman described me as being expelled from Heaven by cannons and gunpowder; and to this day every Briton believes that the whole of his silly story is in the Bible. What else he says I do not know; for it is all in a long poem which neither I nor anyone else ever succeeded in wading through.
Heh heh
I went for a walk in the morning as I planned. It was an interesting walk. I walked for about forty minutes. It was a lot of fun.
I also washed my room today evening, and washed the dishes. I think boredom is getting to me.
In other news, Facebook informs me that a friend has sent me a Golden Retriever Puppy and I can “Pet him here”. I assume they mean the Golden Retriever puppy and not the Friend.
Since I came back home, I have not read anything except for two Agatha Christies and Two Asterix comics. Surprising. Most of my time has been spent watching VH1,Animal Planet, THC,Nat Geo and Discovery and on the internet.
For past two days, I’ve been listening to music and watching TV.
It’s now that I appreciate my PMP. It is really great.
And also VH1.
VH1 has a couple of great programmes now. There’s one called Sunday Brunch on Sunday from 11:00 AM. It features a different artist every week. So far they’ve had Sting, Steven Tyler, Jim Morrison, Freddie Mercury, Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson. This Sunday it’s gonna be Madonna so I’m happy to miss it. They talk about the artist, to the artist and show concerts and videos. Quite cool
They’re having a series called “Gods of Guitar” this month. They talk about great guitarists and play videos and concerts. They’ve had David Gilmour, Pink Floyd, John mayer and Eric Clapton. The Pink Floyd episode was cool because they showed a documentary on the making of The Dark Side of the Moon. They showed how they used synthesizers, multi-tracking, adt, flanging and other sound effects on it. I wish Big Al had set that in our course instead of Quadrophenia.
Quadrophenia is good, no denying that but still, The Dark Side of the Moon was released in March 1973 and Quadrophenia in October 1973. The Dark Side of the Moon was recorded at Abbey Road Studios just like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Dark Side of the Moon would have been perfect to show the progression of sonic experimentation that he showed us with The Beatles. The lyrics of both are cool, but The Dark Side of the Moon is a shade better in my opinion.
This week they’re going to show Jimi Hendrix, Deep Purple, Mark Knopfler and someone else whose name I forget. The whole of this week, I think plus Saturday the whole show.
CNN has a show on Iron Maiden on Saturday at 2:00 PM, I think.Check your local listings. It’s called Behind the scenes with Iron Maiden and features backstage footage, concert videos and interviews.
Nat Geo’s Air Crash Investigations are great. The way they examine everything is so professional.
Animal Planet still rocks and so does Discovery.
The History Channel has this cool series called Biography. Today they showed Al Gore. Their Jumbo Movies are also nice.
Meow FM(104.08 FM) may call itself “India’s first just-for-women radio station” but Friday to Tuesday, after 10:00 PM they play cool english songs. Friday they play Old Classics, Saturday Hip-Hop Monday Soft rock and Tuesday Pop. Sunday, they play listener requests. Friday nights they also have a band playing unplugged. One of these played a song by Susheela Raman. Nice songs. A little bird(which is big and bald) informs me that her albums are there on rapidshare and other such sites. I did not tell you anything about where to get them, understand?
I have to read the Iliad, The Orestia, Book Six of the Aenid, A bunch of Horace’s Odes and two books(Genesis and The Gospel of St.Matthew) and a chapter(Chapter 5 of the Book of Daniel) from The Bible. I’m leaving out The Aenid.
Update: Google search informs me that this week, the fourth is Led Zeppelin. Hendrix and Led Zep are going to be Video Shuffle shows. Knopfler and Deep Purple are gonna be Concerts(A Night in London – Knopler, Live in California ‘74 – Deep Purple). Saturday 11:00 AM onwards.
Okay, I should be studying for my end-sems. But then I wanted to play around with Blender again. Damn it, that thing’s addictive.
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Anyway, I decided to start off simple. No fancy organic modelling or complex Ferraris. Just a plain scene of some apples on a plate. The plate is on a glass-top table, which is on a floor.
The apples were easy — SpinDup (Blender’s Lathe tool) a set of vertices.
Follow same method for plate.
Table was a bit of a difficulty. I decided to have two different cubes for the glass-top and the rims.
Floor– just a textured plane.
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Then I decided to add lights. Lighting was not coming off right. I went to Blender’s Wiki for help on Lighting rigs. And then… I realised that my workflow was screwed. I was adding lights after materials, basically screwing up all my shaders. *Sigh*
I’ll have to rework the scene. Models will stay, I’ll have to create a spare material, assign it to the models and then read up on lighting. Then create a proper rig, and most probably ray-trace it.
*Sigh* 
