April 2017

Restoring the WordPress Database - my journey #WordPress

This is a technical post. So a big sorry to those of you who like my reviews, travel posts or art posts. This post is born of the pain of a crashed site. There were actually multiple issues, but I will address each in it’s own post so that anyone searching for individual answers can find them without having to scroll through heaps of unrelated stuff.

How did I make the x-ray machine model?  #Blender

(Sorry – this is a repost as my database corrupted and I had to do a restore. Annoying as I had been in a hurry and had not done my normal post-post backup. Lucky I had a copy of the text.) I’m a Blender noob, so let me show how I used my simple skills to make the objects. Now the bench was really easy. Essentially it is a whole

Film review: My Name is Nobody (1973)

I try to watch a film every day. This is to help stir my story-telling instincts as I work on the never-ending novel. I’ve falling into a patch of westerns. The latest was a 1973 film called “My Name is Nobody”. I chose this film for several reasons: I never realised that Henry Fonda and Terrence Hill had been in a film together and was curious Terence Hill westerns mostly

Ceiling mount added   #Blender

Wow! Today was amazing. It’s like suddenly something clicked and I found myself achieving more in less time. The ceiling mount took me about half-an-hour. Admittedly I did spend an additional hour beforehand studying a number of videos regarding bending stuff in Blender. The reason was that I decided to try using a Bend modifier. This is different from how I formed the C-arm which is actually a curve. However

The control panel for the x-ray     #Blender

I shall keep it brief because once again I am up late. I have made a simple control panel in Blender as per the plan. Just a panel with some buttons and a joystick. No great detail as not really needed. Here is how the entire thing is coming together (as rendered in DAZ Studio). As a bit of comparison, here is the attempt I made this time last year.

Progress with the C-arm mount interface    #Blender

Hi folks, I have spent so much time on this little component! It’s because I’ve made several versions of the C-arm mount interface, each unsatisfactory, and then started again. And each attempt now takes me about an hour. Wow am I faster or what! So what made me so unhappy? Well, I guess that none of them looked elegant enough for me. Some were too boxy. Other’s did not seem

Textures for the C-arm model        #Blender #DAZStudio

This is a really quick and easy process. First I will show you the end result: Nothing particularly special; mostly white. The Image Intensifier facing the x-ray tube has a black surface as per reference material. I’ve also placed a small blue line around its exterior. The x-Rray tube has a little blue sticker upon it. So the overall appearance is white and clean – suitable for a hospital. The

Lessons Learnt: Unwrapping and moving textures from #Blender to #DAZStudio

This is another post where I demonstrate my mistakes and the lessons that I learnt. So yes, this post is mostly for noobs like myself who are learning Blender. The topic revolves around “unwrapping” a model, exporting it and then importing it into another application. Think of “Unwrapping” as the process where you peel the skin off an object so that you can paint it and stick it back on

A little work on the C-Arm of the model  #Blender

So today I started modeling the C-arm. Only spent an hour or so due to other responsibilities (i.e. housework and spending holiday time with my daughter). So no texturing or anything fancy. Just a few basic shapes that I thought that I would share so that you can see my progress. So a side view: A