#because geometry is shapes and you can look at them

[july-19th-club]

Seeing you break the numbers down to their constituent parts and put them back together gives the impression that you're a very analytical person, and I love it

see i feel like it's the exact opposite haha i dont feel very analytical im just REAL visual. abstraction confuses me i have to have it all laid out in blocks like a little kid

[meanbossart]

i just need to take a second to gush about how much i love durge drow and astarion, they feel so fleshed out and perfectly written together in their fucked up wretched ways. They really inspire me to write more for my own tavs, hopefully one day ill be able to say im as happy with my own work as i get when seeing yours. I have to ask though, do you have any tips on drawing head shapes and faces? or maybe about wrinkles? i find i really struggle with that stuff when drawing and i adore how expressive and grungey all your art looks!

First of all thank you so much, I love hearing what people think of the two of them together 😭

Honestly you've hit on something that's quite near and dear to my heart, I love developing and figuring how to draw and stylize different faces to get the most unique, interesting looking results - everything about the details is highly rewarding to me. What does x type of nose look like from this angle? In this style? How can this eyeshape best translate to my art? How different does a face look when its making this expression? What does that MOUTH DO? etc etc.

In fact you kind of inspired me to put a little tutorial/guide together the last hour lmao and what a blessing it is that the two current subjects of this blog serve as great models here, being that their faces are basically polar opposites!

When it comes to heads, you've probably heard it a dozen times before that you want to think of them in terms of geometry and facets; my process to drawing them is pretty conventional so I won't spend too much time on it, but it goes something like this:

Obviously I don't do every single one of these steps most of the time, which is just something that comes from practice/developing muscle memory, but it is helpful to start off this way for two main reasons:

By making these guide lines and splitting a head into pieces like this, you'll have an easier time seeing and understanding it as a multidimensional object, and in turn, facilitate It for you when you venture out into doing wacky angles and lighting.

Making different headshapes starts HERE. notice how Astarion's "face" slate is narrower and longer, how my durge's jaw pieces sit lower on the head, how all of the same pieces came together in the same way but we ended up with one real pointy elf and a real brick of a drow - making characters look different successfully begins very early in the sketching process.

The next thing you want to do branches out into every day life: start noticing yours and other people's facial features. How does an upturned nose look from a high angle? How does the size of someone's cheekbones affect what they look like when they smile? How about when the light hits them a certain way? Does someone's lip shape changes when they pout? When they laugh? How does a person's hairline change the shape of their face? You do NOT need to creepily sketch every stranger you see on the bus, but get into the habit of actually noticing what people look like when you talk to them - when you look at pictures, when you watch movies - make a mental list of interesting ways mouths, noses, and eyes can come together in a variety of different proportions to make completely distinct looking mugs, and how they change depending on how you are looking at them.

Light and shadow play a HUGE role in how faces look, too, basically as crucial as actual bone structure does. As you see up there I tried to rough out how natural, head on, and underhead light would look on these two very different looking guys, and while we can see definite patterns, there are small differences that come to be because of the sizes and shapes of their features.

Here is a very, very basic look at how some of these features come to look the way they do, how they interact with one another, and how they compare between a blocky, rather conventionally "masculine" head and one that's much softer and slimmer.

Note please that it is not one or two characteristics that give a chaarcter their "look"; you can reduce a face to eyes, mouth, and nose through stylization and still have them be recognizable, but if you want to do more than that, you have to consider the whole package! Chin, cheeks, brows, direction of the jaw, slope and size of the forehead, depth of eyes, ridge of the nose, etc - I know this is probably far more than you bargained for, but if you start making note of a FEW of these things now and slowly add on, this will eventually become second nature to you.

Similarly, understanding how these characteristics come together will help you with rendering light and shadow in a realistic way, and predicting what their facial expressions may look like - if no two people are alike, neither are their smiles. :)

Lastly, remember that I'm no expert - I have developed my own methods and semiotics and yours may look slightly (or vastly) different, and that's fine! I hope only that by sharing this it has given you a base to work off of.

Anyways, I HOPE this has been helpful and not just the unsolicited ramblings of a face pervert.

[dduane]

Peter Mum's Soda Bread Recipe

With work around here the way it is at the moment, most likely EuropeanCuisines.com won't be up again until the end of the year. (shrug) Such is life.

With that in mind, here per @the-book-of-night-with-moon 's request is the famous soda bread recipe that brought people to the site again and again for a couple of decades. If the recipe below seems very plain, that's because the way soda bread is done in North America and elsewhere in the world is not how everyday soda bread's made in Ireland. No fruit, no sugar—except for an optional spoonful if the baker likes it: I omit it—no nuts or other similar addenda: nothing but flour, salt, soda and (ideally) buttermilk. (Breads here that do have fruit and whatnot are referred to as "tea breads" or "fruit soda".)

The ingredients:

450 g / 1 lb / approximately 3 1/4 cups flour (either cake flour or all-purpose)

Optional: 1 teaspoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Between 300-350 ml / approx 10-12 fluid ounces buttermilk, sour / soured milk, or plain ("sweet") milk, to mix

If you're using plain milk, add 1 teaspoon of baking powder to the dry ingredients. This is perfectly legit; lots of professional bakers in Ireland do their soda bread this way, without the buttermilk and with additional raising ingredients besides baking soda.

So: preheat your oven to 200C / 400F. Meanwhile, mix the dry ingredients together well in a good-sized bowl, and then add the liquid and mix everything together. Like this:

That raggedy texture you see in the middle of the video is exactly what you want, and part of the secret of getting soda bread to rise properly. You have to get the loaf done as quickly as you can, so that the rise in the oven is maximized; and with minimum handling. This isn't a bread that needs to be kneaded. Just get it into a soft, mostly-cohesive lump as quickly and gently as you can, and shape it into a round about an inch to an inch and a half thick.

Finally have ready a really sharp knife to do that final cross-cut, which allows the loaf to spread and rise fully. Be careful to slice, not press. You don't have to cut incredibly deep: from a third to halfway down the round is plenty. ...There's endless online lore about how this is supposed to let the fairies out. Fond as I am of fairies, I prefer to think of it as letting the chemistry and physics out. (shrug) To each their own.

As soon as the oven's come up to heat, shove the loaf into the center of the oven on a nonstick baking sheet—I used a silicone mat here, but more for the look of the thing than any real concern about the loaf sticking—and bake it for 40 minutes. When you're done, it should look something like the one in the picture at the top of the post. It'll be easier to eat if you let it cool down most of the way; and a lot easier to slice if you put it in a paper or plastic bag overnight.

Anyway, tomorrow, so @petermorwood won't sulk, I'll make soda bread in the farl style instead of the above style that some of the locals call "cake". Farl's done on a griddle and cut into quarters for baking, and its geometry makes it uniquely suited (as Peter's father used to say) for eating large amounts of butter without a spoon. :)

ETA: attn @middleagedandoutoftouch: Check out the gluten-free soda bread from Ballymaloe. ...And there seem to be quite a few more of them out there: try this Google search.

[haggishlyhagging]

It took about two hours for Daina Taimina to find the solution that had eluded mathematicians for over a century. It was 1997, and the Latvian mathematician was participating in a geometry workshop at Cornell University. David Henderson, the professor leading the workshop, was modelling a hyperbolic plane constructed out of thin, circular strips of paper taped together. 'It was disgusting,' laughed Taimina in an interview.

A hyperbolic plane is 'the geometric opposite' of a sphere, explains Henderson in an interview with arts and culture magazine Cabinet. 'On a sphere, the surface curves in on itself and is closed. A hyperbolic plane is a surface in which the space curves away from itself at every point.' It exists in nature in ruffled lettuce leaves, in coral leaf, in sea slugs, in cancer cells. Hyperbolic geometry is used by statisticians when they work with multidimensional data, by Pixar animators when they want to simulate realistic cloth, by auto-industry engineers to design aerodynamic cars, by acoustic engineers to design concert halls. It's the foundation of the theory of relativity, and thus the closest thing we have to an understanding of the shape of the universe. In short, hyperbolic space is a pretty big deal.

But for thousands of years, hyperbolic space didn't exist. At least it didn't according to mathematicians, who believed that there were only two types of space: Euclidean, or flat space, like a table, and spherical space, like a ball. In the nineteenth century, hyperbolic space was discovered - but only in principle. And although mathematicians tried for over a century to find a way to successfully represent this space physically, no one managed it - until Taimina attended that workshop at Cornell. Because as well as being a professor of mathematics, Taimina also liked to crochet.

Taimina learnt to crochet as a schoolgirl. Growing up in Latvia, part of the former Soviet Union, 'you fix your own car, you fix your own faucet - anything', she explains. 'When I was growing up, knitting or any other handiwork meant you could make a dress or a sweater different from everybody else's.' But while she had always seen patterns and algorithms in knitting and crochet, Taimina had never connected this traditional, domestic, feminine skill with her professional work in maths. Until that workshop in 1997. When she saw the battered paper approximation Henderson was using to explain hyperbolic space, she realised: I can make this out of crochet.

And so that's what she did. She spent her summer 'crocheting a classroom set of hyperbolic forms' by the swimming pool. 'People walked by, and they asked me, "What are you doing?" And I answered, "Oh, I'm crocheting the hyperbolic plane."' She has now created hundreds of models and explains that in the process of making them 'you get a very concrete sense of the space expanding exponentially. The first rows take no time but the later rows can take literally hours, they have so many stitches. You get a visceral sense of what "hyperbolic" really means.' Just looking at her models did the same for others: in an interview with the New York Times Taimina recalled a professor who had taught hyperbolic space for years seeing one and saying, 'Oh, so that's how they look.' Now her creations are the standard model for explaining hyperbolic space.

-Caroline Criado Perez, Invisible Women

Photo credit

[ssspringroll]

DL (mediafire)

Today I bring you not cc, but a small collection of .blend files for making cc a little easier. If you've ever wanted to quickly put a braid into a custom hair without completely obliterating your poly count*, then these might be able to help.

*braids will still add a LOT of polygons to your hair, but since every single polygon is visible** on these tiling braids, at least you know they're all being put to use, whereas if you were to physically braid 3 strands of geometry, lots of those polygons would wind up inside the braid, just adding to your count without contributing anything to the look

**if some polygons end up inside of other meshes, you may want to delete them to reduce the poly count further. The boolean modifier may be able to help you, but I haven't tried

These are completely hollow, tiling braid "facades". They just look like a braid, without being anything more than a stylized tube. Available in 9 shapes (which are all pretty similar, more or less, but have different 'vibes', and one of them technically doesn't resemble a braid, but if you squint it looks close enough) and 3 polygon counts to hopefully fit in with your project.

TOU: Same as my cc. Read it here. I obviously don't own this concept, so feel free to reverse engineer, make your own braid tiles, etc. Just don't use mine for anything commercial (using them in commissions is fine, just not paywalled final products!)

You will need to be using one of the newer versions of blender, I believe 2.8 and up. These were made in blender 3.6, so the files will not be compatible with old versions like 2.7x.

Quick start guide:

Open your hair wip's .blend

In object mode, 'Append' the 'BraidTile' object of your choice

Select 'BraidPath' and, in Edit mode, position it however you like

Additional info under the cut, because I tend to ramble, and these require a little bit of a primer before use, probably. Unless you for sure know what you're doing, in which case, feel free to just take these and run with them.

THIS IS NOT A TUTORIAL ON MAKING HAIR, OR HOW TO USE BLENDER. Seek that information elsewhere.

Before appending braids, you may want to open up the blender file and look at all the shapes, to decide which one you want to use.

When you first append your braid, or open the blend files, you may notice it does not look like the preview images above, and instead looks like a shiny pink slug. This is intentional! For previews and development work, I use @/simandy's base textures, but your hair will probably be using a different texture, so I have not included a texture at all.

Simply switch the material of the 'BraidTile' to the same material your hair is using, and adjust the uv map accordingly. I'm going to assume if you are making hairs that you know how to do that, so it will not be explained here.

Once you have your braid appended, and have edited the UV Map of the 'BraidTile' piece to your liking, you can also try scaling the tile in the X, Y, and Z axes to change up the look a little. Make sure you select all of the vertices before scaling, to make sure it still tiles. This should be safe to do, and not mess up the tiling at all, but make sure you do it in Edit mode, not Object mode. (If you mistakenly do it in Object mode, you just have to press ctrl+A and select 'scale', and that should fix it)

When you have your braid adjusted, switch over to the 'BraidPath' object, and use edit mode to move the points around however you want. This is just like any other hair strand, if you're used to making hairs with paths and curves then this should already be familiar to you. All the same controls should work.

And, if you already have a curve in your hair that you'd like the braid to snap to instead, you can select the 'BraidTile' object, locate the curve modifier, and switch the curve object to any other curve in your .blend. You'll want to change the curve in the array modifier to the same one, most likely.

If you haven't used curves to make a hair before, here's a couple quick controls you might like to know:

ctrl+T will let you Twist the object around the selected point(s) alt+S will let you Scale the object around the selected point(s) selecting the first or last point of the 'BraidPath' and pressing E will Extrude a new point, making your braid longer

Remember to do all of your positioning on the 'BraidPath' object! You do not need to edit the 'BraidTile' at all once you've set up the UV map and adjusted the scale!

It should tile, twist, etc. with little issue, and should get longer or shorter according to the length of your curve with no issue. If it doesn't, make sure both the array and curve modifiers of your 'BraidTile' object are using the same curve. They should be using the 'BraidPath' object by default, but if you changed this manually, ensure that both modifiers match for best results.

Unless you know what you are doing, I do not recommend messing with any other settings in the modifiers, or adjusting the 'BraidTile' mesh in any way besides scaling the entire object at once. Otherwise you could end up with gaps and holes in your braid.

When you are done posing your braid, you can apply the modifiers to turn the whole thing into a regular mesh. I like to make a copy of my 'BraidTile' and 'BraidPath' first, just in case I want to go back and change the shape later. After converting it to a regular mesh, I'd recommend going in with proportional editing turned on and randomly scale and move a few of the pleats just a little, to make the braid look a little more organic. You can even add a couple strands to make it look messier, if you dont mind adding to your poly count even more. But this comes down to your preference and style. The braid below has had some half-assed editing done to demonstrate the concept. (Note: This is actually the low-poly version of this particular braid shape)

Ultimately, it is up to you to decide how you want to blend the braid in with the rest of your hairstyle. I can't tell you how to do that, as it is ultimately going to come down to your own personal preference, workflow, and the hairstyle you are making.

How do I know if I should use Hi, Mid, or Lo poly?

This is largely due to personal preference, and how you're using the braids in your project. I have included the three different poly versions to try and be mindful of the overall poly count of your poor poor meshes, but even a lo-poly braid is going to add an easy couple thousand polygons to your project. Keep that in mind! If you plan on having a LOT of braids, something like this EA hairstyle, for example:

You will probably want to follow their example and use a very simple mesh and just apply a braid texture instead of using these. EA's braids here appear to be a simple box shape painted to look like braids.

If you only plan on having one, maybe two braids in your entire project, especially if they are very large braids, then you might want to go with the hi-poly option. They're the smoothest, roundest choice.

If your braid has a very small diameter, you can probably get away with just using the lo-poly option, and save some polygons you won't need anyway.

The mid-poly version exists as a sort of happy medium. They aren't quite as pointy as some of the lo-poly shapes, and they won't inflate your poly count as much as the hi-poly models, so you may find you prefer them for your applications.

It's all very subjective.

I think that's pretty much everything I wanted to say. If you have specific questions, my inbox is open.

Keep in mind I am not very skilled in blender! There's probably some optimization that can be done if you know what you're doing, and I welcome you to tweak these meshes to your heart's content, if that's you! I made these for me, but I figure they could make someone else's life a little easier too, so here you go.

If you make anything using them you are welcome to tag me! If you don't end up making anything with these then I hope you at least have some fun playing with them!

[the-teddy-roosevelt]

Let me tell you a little thing about cars.

I have had a gripe against modern car design, at least here in the States, for the longest time. Recently I have seen the utter abominations of the 21st century be more and more common and finally decided to share my stance to the wonderful world of the internet! So, be prepared for a lot of reading because this is a full scale rant with the occasional photo.

And now: Why Modern Car Design is Going to Kill Us All.

I have been doing much research these past months as I continued to observe more of these "newer designs" I have spoken so much about, and there are a few things I need to delve into.

The Flat Front

Supersize Me 2: Not so Electric Boogaloo

Elon's Bastard of a Car

1

The Flat Front

So, these cars I have been talking about, just to be more specific, are SUVs and Light Trucks/Pickup Trucks.

You see that massive, flat front in the image above? Well, believe it or not, that is causing more deaths in car-related accidents yearly! Due to being so boxy, when a pedestrian is hit, they are more likely to break bones around the torso/head, then pull the person UNDER the car rather than how a car normally would hit the person's legs, then they would hit the hood of the car.

These can also create massive blind spots/zones where you can't see what is right in front of you.

I shall dive more into this in the next section.

2

Supersize Me 2: Not so Electric Boogaloo

So, onto the next section. As you can see above you, this is a comparison of two cars, only 24 years apart(end of Escort to start of F-350). Only 24 years, and it had a 246% increase in weight, was 91.7 in. or about 7.64 ft. longer, and 26.8 in. or about 2.2 ft. taller.

This is a dramatic increase for little to no reason other than to "protect the drivers". As we have discussed in section 1, this is not the case. In fact, if one of these larger SUVs were to hit another, usually smaller car, it is more likely for the smaller driver to be killed, or at least seriously harmed by the bigger vehicle.

Speaking of smaller, children:

Children are one of the biggest victims of these larger cars with them being run over either in frontovers or backovers, most often by their own parents in a driveway.

If you don't fully believe me that these cars are truly big enough to run over the younger side of children, an entire experiment was done, putting kids in front of parked cars, and just look:

Terrifying.

I addition to this, the larger frame of these cars means that they create more pollution. Let me explain: The bigger cars needed more fuel, that means more fossil fuels being burned, and due to the US's car based infrastructure, there are more cars being produced, that is even more fossil fuels for both production and upkeep, and more pollution.

But oh dear reader, these SUVs and Light Trucks are not even the worst of it...

3

Elon's Bastard of a Car

Gentlemen, women, and all of you folk in between, I give you: The Tesla Cybertruck.

This... Thing, is the bane of everything I hate about modern car design, from the boxy shape going throughout the car, to being an "indestructible" vehicle, and its ability to kill anyone.

Okay, that is a lot I am claiming, so lets break it down.

We have already talked about how dangerous the box design is, but the Cybertruck appears to be a geometry problem found in high-school. This is unbelievably dangerous, making any crashes with other cars much more likely fatal.

The fatalities can also be helped by the fact the damn car is made of STAINLESS STEEL and "indestructible" according to advertising. Most cars are made to be able to crunch in order to let the force of impact be more spread out throughout the vehicle. Yes, it will cost quite a bit to fix, but hey, you're alive. Meanwhile when it is made out of such a hard material, such as steel, that crunch isn't going to happen and only kill the people inside the vehicle, and the people crashing into the giant steel block.

The company claims it can go from zero to 60 miles per hour in 2.6 seconds, which, if true, would mean it has a faster acceleration than most NASCAR and Formula 1 vehicles, with none of the accompanying engine roar to warn anyone that it's coming. The headlight, meanwhile, is one single bar of light, which some experts are already worried will blind oncoming drivers.

There are so many other things about this utter abomination that I would love to talk about, but I think this is where I'll leave off.

One last thing, I just want to say how this is mostly my experience and research from the United States of America, and not the rest of the world. Also, I do not see these things getting much better unless somehow the US removes all of its car based infrastructure.

Thank you for reading my friends, and remember, fuck monopolies.

[ask-unpleasant]

hey chat sorry for the month of inactivity. i was unmotivated to do anything with this blog

but then i looked at some of the art on here and realized that i just lost my love for the character designs. so you know how we're gonna fix that? we're redesigning some characters bayybeeee 😈

starting with the man the myth the legend, here is UNPLEZZIE 2.0

he's probably the only one i had genuine problems with other than not being very aesthetically pleasing. he seemed too boring, his proportions were always a bit wonky, and the way he became more and more simple the more i drew him dumbed him down to just...awkward.

for this redesign, i kept all the features that made him my unpleasant. the only really signature thing i changed was his hair, sorry not sorry he had to fire his barber. i changed his scars to be far less opaque as to not clutter him up (which was the main reason i left them out most of the time), the only drawback is that i'm no longer just scribbling them in with a brush, they're actual geometry, so i cut back on the arms just for my own sake. also his tail now looks (and acts) like an actual docked tail.

next is the QSWX GVCTXMG AMXLSYX VIEPPC FIMRK GVCTXMG GLEVEGXIV SJ XLI CIEV, here is CREEPY 2.0

creepy was probably my least favorite character to draw. its head shape with the hair that always ends off screen, the 4 arms, the lack of any real way to move visible, it has always been a mess of a character. don't get me wrong, creepy is my second favorite character to write for (beaten only by neuro), i love its personality and its inflection, i just never got the chance to show that because i hated drawing it so much.

so for the redesign, i've basically reimagined it. its face hair now has an actual definitive ending, it has a more unique shape, and is just much more expunged-friendly in my opinion. it looks even more like its mom now...

next is this one, i thought she was american. here's PARANORMAL 2.0

i'm gonna be totally honest i have no idea what i was doing when designing para for the first time. that outfit was 100% subconsciously stolen from some other character i can't think of right now. it also really just didn't fit her character at all. also i dont know why i gave her boobs???? what????

anyways for the redesign she's basically a whole new design now. i wanted to play with some shape language. also, para always had a sort of inhuman quality to me, despite her personality, so i've given her inverted eyes and some animalistic features. i guess it adds irony or something, i dunno.

and finally, the moment GERIATRIC CAT you've all been waiting for, UNNERVING 2.0

in truth nervy's design is my favorite. the only gripe i had is the lack of legs, like with creepy. also i had to give her one of the same pride flag ass gradient as the rest so she'd fit in with the rest. other than all that i love her she is perfect just the way she is with minor adjustments

that's all the redesigns done!! i only did these 4 because stabby is not mine to redesign and NEURO is perfect just the way it is. feel free to give me any constructive criticism for these redesigns, i can always tweak em a bit. also the more stripy gradients wont a pattern that follows the contours of the body but rather just unmoving plaid always. i hope this lengthy yap sesh contributed something to something, maybe gave some insight into my characters.

and if you got this far i put a public discord server link in the intro post. you dont gotta ask anymore. dont tell anyone....shhh....*lovingly puts my finger on your lips* *smirks* *bolts away* *gets hit by truck* *instantly fatal*

[voldkat]

guess who figured out how to do botched 3d modeling . and continued doing so for the entire day . to feed the shape autism

this was inspired by the fact that i have hyperspecific headcanons for how the geometry of their heads and antennae . like every time i draw them i picture their shapes in my brain and rotate them . it's so fucked up /silly

also note that none of their face patterns are dented into their heads !!! the website just kinda fucks up and gets confused sometimes when merging shapes lmao all of these mfs have flat faces

sorry unparalleled innocence fans inno is not here again because i am Still trying to figure out its colors ( getting distracted and forgetting to ) . i might make a follow up post with its model if i ever get around to it ( and might model my ocs along with it )

closeups of each iterator ( sorted by age ) + design notes for all of them + the tinkercad project link below the cut :3c

LOOKS TO THE MOON

MEWNIE !!! a fairly normal looking iterator head . spherical shape . flat cylindrical earpieces with slots to support the antennae . doesn't get any more standard than that WEHBHJF

her antennae are very much standard too !! average height , average width , rectangular little things with singular yellow strips near the end . just an average old model during a time when the ancients were still in the middle of figuring things out

and also the circle mark on her forehead looks more like a crescent moon or a pearl in my design . which is very cool ( symbolism for both her name having "moon" in it and the fact that she's in the scholar passage )

SLIVER OF STRAW

ok . her design is also fairly standard but her antennae are a bit Strange . i figure this might be around the time the ancients are starting to experiment a little , but not as intensely as they do with the second gens

the rest of my iterator designs with antennae have sharp bends and are usually flattened prisms or extruded shapes , with the silly color patterns clear and visible on the side faces . sliver however . she's got ROUND !! almost like some sort of stretched out cylinder !!! AND her color patterns are on the top face and actually dented into the antennae , making it hard to spot them !!!! what a fucked up design . why is she like this /silly

nothing else of note to say tho so we're moving on :3c

CHASING WIND

WE'RE IN GEN 2 NOW GUYS !!! i actually Don't have a hyperspecific headcanon on what their antennae look like so i just eyeballed it based on how i usually draw them . they're certainly a weird shape . rectangular-ish prism thing that gets wider at the top with an ellipse cut out of it . and the color patterns are at the base of the antennae instead of near the top like they usually would be . they look like fucked up bug horns almost

you see the front of the antennae ? where the oval cutout doesnt reach ? yeah . that's not a modelling mistake . that's intentional . there's one little section where the top is nice and flat . what the fuck is up with these tennas /silly

i may give them a secondary pattern on their face later like suns' Lines On Face (/ref) if i feel like making that a signature design choice for gen 2 iterators . but for now all you get is Peculiar Antennae

NO SIGNIFICANT HARASSMENT

OH BOY . EASILY the one with the weirdest head shape . extruded rounded square for a head . screen face . no antennae at all . fucking Gamer Headphones . he was built WAY too different . built correctly ( fit for his purpose ) but also not ( breaks every single known iterator puppet design convention ) /silly j

on a more serious note , his earpieces are significantly thinner ( more flush with his head ) than average , and don't have the antenna notches !! that's the only reasonable comparison i can make tho because he looks SO Fucking Different

there are other little details that i feel i have to mention . like his screen is dented inwards a little . his 'mic' thing isn't touching his face but only by a slim margin . his fucked up eyeball isn't flat or dented in but actually extends out in the shape of a semicircle ish thing . yeah that's about it honestly

SEVEN RED SUNS

okay back to relative normalcy . except the shape of their antennae fucked me up SO bad that it was the sole reason i decided to model these fucks in the first place

they're almost triangular prisms but the outward facing triangle is like slanted inwards slightly . which makes the upright lateral faces weird right trapezoids instead of rectangles . but also they have extra joints at the base of their antennae which allow for more movement !! Thankfully those joints a pretty normal shape ( ordinary cuboid )

also another detail i want to mention is the Lines On Face . the lines bend at 90 degree angles . the left / right sides disappear below the earpieces but the bottom sides kinda just . Stop . after some point . idk that's all i have really

FIVE PEBBLES

AAAAND with gen 3 we've looped back to fairly standard looking !!! he looks just like his sister but with the colors swapped around , and longer thinner antennae . and the fuckass stripes on his face i guess . one of the newest models , yet with little to no thought put into customization , since his creators are getting tired of waiting

it's interesting to me how he's the only design without a symbol logo thing in the middle of his forehead . perhaps the ancients ran out of feasible forehead symbols ? or maybe just a staple of gen 3 iterators ? who knows . all i can do is speculate and make shit up

AND !! as promised , the link , except you'll have to make an account to see it for some reason :

[molagboop]

Metroid Dread Model Deep Dive: Raven Beak, Part 1

You know him, you've (probably) fought him, he's a staple of this blog...

It's Raven Beak! We're finally doing this.

Today, I'm providing a comprehensive look into Raven Beak's model. I probably won't have enough space to cover the entire thing, as the image limit for Tumblr posts is capped at 30, but we're starting with the head and working our way down.

The rest of this post is under the cut for your convenience.

Navigation:

Fullbody turnaround and helmet meshes

Helmet details

Shoulders, arms, and hands

Arm cannon

Wings and torso

Legs and feet

BONUS: Naked head

Raven Beak is referred to as chozocommander in the files: his textures are abbreviated to "commander[whatever]" in the files, with the name of a mesh or general purpose specified in the square brackets (commanderbody, etc). Raven Beak appears in three maps: Hanubia, Artaria, and Itorash. As Metroid Dread's cutscenes are executed in-engine, his model can be extracted from the map packages for the aforementioned regions.

There are several models linked to him during cutscenes that aren't part of his base model: chozocommander_arm, chozocommander_face (appears in Hanubia and after the mask breaks in Itorash), chozocommander_wing_r (which he rips off during the cutscene preceding phase 3 of his fight). chozocommander_arm is a more detailed version of his left arm that exists in the actor files for both Artaria and Itorash, the two zones where a cutscene involves the camera getting close to his arm while he chokes Samus out.

With that out of the way, our first order of business is his helmet, and there's a lot to look at.

Here's a list of all his meshes. We'll go over each part as they become relevant. Relevant to our current objective is helmethead, helmethead_clean, helmethead_cinematic, and brokenmask.

You'll notice that each of these have two meshes to their name. The names that are lower on the hierarchy are the actual helmets, and those higher on the hierarchy are overlays for the eyes to make them glow.

Here's what that looks like without scene lighting:

With the overlay...

... and without the overlay.

helmethead_clean features Raven Beak's helmet without the crack from the Super Missile: this is what we see during the opening cutscene in Artaria.

helmethead bestows the crack over the right eye.

Of all the helmet meshes, the cinematic version is the cleanest and most detailed: this one is used during parts of cutscenes where the camera zooms in on Raven Beak's face.

I'll be using this model to explore the smaller details.

All helmet meshes except the broken mask have their own textures: the broken mask uses the basic helmethead's textures.

brokenmask (left) and brokenmask01 (right). These are used to animate the sequence where the helmet breaks in the post-boss fight cutscene.

Earlier, I mentioned that the cinematic mesh is cleaner than the others. The textures and geometry on the cinematic mesh are crisper and more defined because it's used when we want to get a good look at his face: you don't need to see every plane of his beak in high definition during combat.

Here's a closeup of each primary model for the helmet to demonstrate. From left to right, we have helmethead_clean, helmethead, and helmethead_cinematic. helmethead_clean appears to have the lowest clarity in its textures. helmethead is passable, but the planes on helmethead_cinematic are leagues cleaner: there's very little artifacting (the janky crunch affiliated with lower quality jpgs), the colors appear richer, and effort was made to define the negative space.

Look at the owl-shaped crest in the center of the headdress (helmethead left, helmethead_cinematic right): there are darker lines between the arch behind the head, and care was put into darkening the spaces between the eyebrows, around the eyes, etc.

I've already hit the image limit, so we're going to examine the details on his face even further in another post: I've waited so long to share all the little differences between these helmet meshes in excruciating detail, so I suppose it's only fitting that our first entry is more about that than it is showing off the finer details of the headdress and mask themselves.

I would not have been able to dive this deep a year ago when the image limit was capped at 10. I hope they increase it further so I can inflict you with more model facts.

I am working on the second post. The navigation section at the top of the post will be updated as things go live.

[beebopboom]

A Bookshop in Soho Eden

This is not a new idea and after reading these wonderful post by @the-apology-dance here and @queerfables here my brain just got hooked on it. I wanted to see though, if I could take this idea one step further and oh boy can you - so if you want to join me down this rabbit hole I went down strap in for this rollercoaster - I broke it down to three parts that I will post separately

This is technically season 3 speculation as I bring up some points connected to the Second Coming for further down the line

Also I'm just going to lay out the information then connect in all in the end so just stay with me - it will all connect

But without further ado

Aziraphale's Jobs over the years

Let's start at the beginning or just after - the Garden of Eden

Angel of the Eastern Gate and donned with a flaming sword - technically on apple tree duty according to him but we only see him after the whole eating the apple business. What we do see is him doing is opening his “gate” for them to leave, closing it, and then getting questioned by God - specifically about his flaming sword. The next time we see him he is back at his post on the wall - Adam and Eve are quite a bit away by now - and this is when Crowley comes up to him.

The thing I find interesting about this is that he is still there after the apple business is done and over with - and he is still in guarding position, looking out towards the humans

So let's take a look into the actual bible for maybe an answer as to why -

Genesis 3:24 - “He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turn every way to guard the way to the Tree of Life”

Now the Tree of Life is an interesting mention with it's connection to the Second Coming

So let’s take a quick look into what the Tree of life is

The Tree of Life is mentioned in two particular stories in the bible - Genesis and Revelations - or in other words the Beginning and the End

Adam and Eve had access to this tree and were only warned against the Tree of Knowledge because they couldn’t have both - eternal life or knowledge of good and evil

So once they had taken a bite from the apple God then revoked their access to the Tree of Life by banishing them from the garden and placing a guard - no humans were to have access anymore

Until the Second Coming comes around where all the humans who have passed judgement(all the names written down in the book of life) and get to live in Gods’s paradise again - with the Tree of Life in the center and fully accessible. People are able to consume the fruits from the tree once again

The point I'm trying to make is yes technically he was on apple tree duty then but now he is on Tree of Life duty - it’s the purpose of him remaining in Eden, and on Earth among humans. Protection for and against humans

Now Aziraphale had one more job that I wanted to bring up, courtesy of the Demon’s Guide to Angelic Beings who Walk the Earth, and that is Garden Designer. We don't know exactly when he did this so we can only guess - I’m going to out on a limb and say the 16th - 17th century French Gardens

Developed from Italian renaissance gardens, this style of gardening used symmetry, parterres, and geometrical shapes. I’m just going to touch on some key features but if you want to learn more here are some links (here and here)

These gardens tended to start at the house and were meant to be view from above on the terraces. There would be a main path way that would lead away from the house and would come to a circular center that was often just lawn or water sometimes surrounded by trees, it was from here that the garden was broken down into sections. Through the use of geometry they created perspective and optics with rows and designs of the plants placement. Closer to the house these designs were more complex with them getting less complex the further away. Symmetry and control over the plants was a big part as it was a way show a man's mastery over nature. Water was also a key feature mainly through the use of still water ponds that served as mirrors. On top of all these interesting designs the gardens were often decorated with statues. These gardens were meant to tell a story whether viewed from above or walking within - it would seem as though you were going through different rooms

Some of these these design elements might sound familiar and they should - it's only reflected in one of the most visited places in the show

The Bookshop - A.Z. Fell and Co.

Aziraphale opened up the bookshop in 1800, but had been working on it for years as we learn from Crowley in 1793, all due to his love of books. Not that the actually wants to sell his books and actively makes it unpleasant to a customer.

The bookshop also serves another purpose though - it's a safe place. I've theorized before in this post about how something happened before 1793 but after 1601 that made Crowley get in trouble with Hell due to their arrangement - a fear that Aziraphale has had from the start. So Aziraphale took this chance to combine the things he loved and the need for a safe place so he could hang out with the one he loved - all wrapped up in the explanation that he was just doing his job and was able to make it a Heaven’s embassy - unable to enter without permission and easy ways to sneak out. But I’m not here to really talk about the emotional connections -

So let’s look at the actual layout of the bookshop - the bare bones at least

As soon as you go through the door you are hit with a second circular doorway - pointed out to be the omega symbol. In this front little area there are three tables but then we lead into the center of the bookshop with a big circle rug lit up by the skylight and surrounded by four pillars. It is from here that the bookshop opens up into different pathways and sections all directed by the actual bookshelves. Towards the back of the shop is a staircase that leads up to the second floor where you can still look down and around the lower floor. There are statues placed all around the shop with extra tables and chairs throughout and quite a few rugs with some French influenced designs on them laying about.

(credit to whoever made this - you are a godsend)

Rings some bells doesn’t it?

Now you may be asking why these specific gardens instead something more like Eden to commemorate their first meeting on Earth. I mean this is Aziraphale we are talking about - the angel who got himself arrested because he wanted to go on a french date and who decided to learn french, or in other words one of the more romantic languages, the human way. For designing a bookshop that would be their safe space picking a french design is not too far out there.

But what if I told you there was more to his bookshop and the of Whickber Street as a whole.

If you remember the whole Tree of Life rant I went on earlier let me add one more piece of information - the geometry symbol

so is that bookshop is not only meant to represent their Eden but particularly the paradise that is the reward of the Second Coming? Is he actually really doing his job in protecting the Tree of Life from humans? Even if it was a subconscious choice on Aziraphale’s part - could it explain the concept art of the cut dream?

Technically on Tree of Life duty guarding his books/fruit of eternal life from humans in their modern day Eden.

Now I’ll admit it doesn’t line up perfectly but I wanted to include it because my next point can still stand either way - and I’m going to go more into this idea in the other parts.

Rivers of Time

In Eden there is one big river that when it reaches out of Eden it splits into four rivers that water the garden and reach to the ends of the Earth - Pishon(full flowing), Gihon(bursting forth), Hiddekel(swift or darting), and Euphrates(fruitful). The Tree of Life it is said to have a river on both sides.

Now I’m sure we have all noticed the some weird instances of time being messed with in the show - particularly in the streets of Soho. They are sped up, slowed down, and normal speed. Often these roads are also depicted as wet.

So let me throw in the idea of Timestreams

It’d probably be easier to go read that but basically it’s -

The concept that time is always flowing forward or backwards, and meeting in the middle - always on the move always connected - never quite knowing where you step in. Just like the flow of water.

And wouldn’t it be ironic that Crowley, our time stopping demon, and his car are now constantly in this stream of time darting around only to finally stop and slow down in the bookshop

So we can take the four streets of our little spot in Soho connect it to the four rivers and apply some time fuckery - you get a place that is full and bursting with life, people darting all around looking and buying things that make their life more fruitful. But time is a bit wibbly wobbly for the residents, always flowing and connected - past, present, and future - so we get characters that are parallel’s to the past, that may have existed in a different time or universe, and that repeat often.

So if the Bookshop is their version of Eden it would make these streets representative of the rest of the world - what with a street that lead to chinatown and have various French and Italian restaurants along another - this idea is not too far out there

But also if you take the Bookshop as a little more representative of the Tree of Life in particular with the two streets surrounding it - Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death can very easily be equated with the Tree of Knowledge. The whole of Whickber Street is their Eden.

This is what happens when you have an Angel and Demon with too much affect on the world around them living in one spot for hundreds of years

So to wrap this all up please remember this is just a theory and for fun - take it as you will

But if you have followed along this long and I’ve somehow managed to get you entertain this idea of the Bookshop being their slice of Eden - whether Eden itself or just a single part of Eden (Tree of Life) with the whole street being Eden - wait and see for the next part

After all the apple (coffee) did come from within the Garden and then they lost access to the Tree of Life (bookshop)

This was Part 1

In Part 1.5 it just a couple theories concerning the Book of Life and more, like an intermission

And finally Part 2 we discuss the second place the Tree of Life is mentioned, the Book of Revelations, and how we have already seen a version of the Second Coming

[skyrimfuckery]

Working on my Squire’s Plate redo is partly an exercise of looking back and seeing how I’ve progressed. I finished the gauntlets today, and I’d like to take the opportunity to compare the textures for the inside of the glove for all the gloves I’ve textured so far. The reason I chose this area is because it’s easy to ignore during gameplay and barely gets shown during screenshots, yet it has the potential for the most personality as it’s literally the palm of the hand. Furthermore, this has been an area that I have always needed to texture, no matter the design of the glove. It allows for a good 1:1 comparison between things.

Starting off with the Blackened Steel Vambrace, I must say the leather texture has nice folds and creases showing off personality. It is very rough around the edges, and could use more detail in the color maps and more nuanced creases in the finger areas. The seam work is done quite messily, too. At the time I was set out on creating a good leather material both up close and at a distance, and not so much on creating a leather glove. I can tell you right now that my current work, which I will show last, still does not meet my imagination’s standards.

Moving up, the leather on the Evermorin Gauntlet is downright disappointing. I put in very little effort in the palm texture and only added the bare minimum: the cushioning but at the base of all fingers is accentuated, that’s all. There aren’t even any creases worth mentioning in the fingers. That’s not to say this gauntlet sucks, because if you flip it over you’ll find something I’m proud of to this day. This texture work perfectly illustrates my earlier point of the palm being easily missed, meaning shoddy texture work goes unnoticed.

My first venture into Substance Painter was with the Lorisian Glove. You’ll see that t he seams are way cleaner and not as squiggly as the previous two gloves. I went in the right direction by adding yellowish highlights to the top of the creases to simulate natural wear. Too bad it’s not enough and the palm is not exactly convincing. The thumb, however, looks fucking nice though. Note the lack of detail around the fingers, once again.

Then we have the Dragonstar Gauntlet. The leather was supposed to be a rough suede esque thing, which means it starts to look crusty really fast. The creases, however, are done pretty nicely. There is defined geometry, with major and minor details. Note the shaping around the base of the fingers, which is cleaner than the previous work. Apart from some deformed stitching, I’d say this is a pretty okay texture. This work builds upon my previous stuff because it uses both larger and smaller creases. None are hand-drawn, all are the result of a rotated overlay and clever masking. All in all, it doesn’t come across as convincing leather.

The Dark Witch Gauntlet technically isn’t leather. But a palm’s a palm. The fingers are very detailed and got a splendid 3d-look to them. The palm, however, is relatively barren. That’s because fabric doesn’t leave crease marks with use like leather does, but I could have added a few here and there because the thing is being used, and it would make it look less like shrink wrapped latex. The few creases that are there are subtle because they are supposed to convey the pulling of fabric close to the seams. Overall, I paid a lot of attention to actually painting the shape of a hand in this one, which you can see around the thumb webbing and the base of the fingers.

Closing up, we have the palm of the Squire’s Plate. The redo. This is the first gauntlet I textured using a high poly bake. I sculpted all the finger details in blender and transferred them to the lowpoly. The thumb has creases running perpendicular to its axis. The details that I’ve added to other gloves are here, with a few more. What this workflow allowed me to do, though, is to add worn areas based on the sculpt data. So you’ll see that the top of the creases are lighter and their bottoms are darker. One thing to note is that I underestimated the normal strength resulting the baking process, because areas like the base of the fingers are not as defined as I’d like.

The workflow that I used for my most recent project, the Squire’s Plate redo, has allowed me to produce the most lively glove out of them all. Yet I must say that the dragonstar glove has the most intricate details, with creases everywhere running in directions that make sense. The Lorisian glove was made with a good mindset, I just lacked skill and experience. My first glove, the Blackened Steel Vambrace, remains a great work for the time. For a while it was head and shoulders above my other leather work.

This post was for showing you my journey thus far, and for me to learn from my older successes and mistakes. I’ll definitely go back to the Squire’s gauntlet for a little bit to add some more juicy creases because I still have the project files so it’s literally no big deal.

Included are also some pics of the Gauntlet as it looks like right now!

[ckret2]

Were there any health effects for Bill as a child, being able to see into the third dimension? I know you mentioned its a uncommon to rare condition in his home world, known enough to make a science of it, but after you mentioned Bill can as a human strain his eyes to see into the 4th but it makes them bleed I’m curious. It fit the human ancient history of assuming someone with a condition is spiritually aligned. I mean besides the effect of seeing inside people and sort of around objects which I feel would probably mess with perception.

Less "uncommon to rare" and more "rare to extremely rare." It's known, but in terms of proportions of the population, if it were a debilitating health condition in the US, it would be in "no pharmaceutical company bothers to make medicine to treat this because the customer base is too small for it to be worth their effort" territory.

Bill's condition was only identified because the most characteristic symptom is angles that don't add up like they're supposed to. For example, in Euclidean geometry, every single triangle, without exception, has 180º degrees. If you have a triangle that measures 60º, 60º, and 61º—so 181º—and yet all three sides measure as PERFECTLY straight, that's bizarre enough to dig into, especially in a society that's historically shown so much interest in shapes' angles.

This is first and foremost known as the You've Got Weird Mathematically Impossible Angles condition, and because of that it got disproportionate resources for research thrown at it in spite of its rarity; "plus these people can see through walls" is a strange bonus symptom that was identified later when they realized everyone with this condition reported such visions. It's rare enough Bill grew up with the expectation that he'd never meet somebody else with the same condition.

So, in his home dimension, it's not an eye thing; it's a whole body thing. All of him bends slightly into the third dimension. In a human body, he doesn't have the same "condition," so he's straining JUST his eye to look into the fourth dimension; which is why it's so damaging to a human eye.

As you'd imagine, yeah, there are gonna be some health side effects to a condition that means your whole body is slightly bent weird. His mom had a condition that I've been imagining as some cross between Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and scoliosis, if you were to try to apply those to a sentient line segment; and Bill's hypothesized that his mom's condition contributed to the fact that he "bends" out of the second dimension. He doesn't have THE SAME condition, but there's some symptom overlap.

Like, back pain. And the emotional pain that comes from people constantly recommending stretches for your back pain that would make your back worse. If he hadn't gained godlike power, he probably would have gotten arthritis early. If he'd ever needed surgery, doctors would've found his organs are just a little bit wrongly placed. Probably rooked up his digestion somewhat, since the organs designed to absorb sunlight evolved expecting light to fall on perfectly flat panels, not a slight dome. And also: other things I haven't thought of!

But nothing extremely debilitating. Probably nothing he even would have gone to a doctor for, until the arthritis. Just a bunch of tiny inconveniences, slightly weird corner angles, and the ability to see through walls.

As far as he was concerned, the biggest negative impact on his life was that it made TV & movies hard to watch, because he's used to seeing the world as shapes but TV only shows the flat lines that normal shapes looking "forward" can see. And also the devastating social isolation.

[blubberquark]

Picking

The question “How do you know which in-game item a user has clicked on?“ has surprisingly many answers. It’s not a particularly difficult question to answer, but there are several “correct“ answers out there in textbooks and tutorials. Each of them is supposed to be for 3D games, but they all can be made to work in 2D, for obvious reasons.

Render To Buffer

In order to determine which item a user has clicked on, you render the 3D scene to a special buffer, with special colours and without shading. Every object has its own unique colour (maybe you give each clickable object a unique 24-bit or 32-bit ID) that can be looked up somewhere. Objects that aren’t clickable are just 0x000000.

Now you can look up the position of the mouse cursor in that buffer, look up the colour in your look-up table, et voilà, you get the object the user has clicked on.

Render To Pixel

Rendering the whole 3D scene again with false colours is actually rather wasteful. How about instead of rendering a whole buffer the size of the window, you just render a 1x1 pixel buffer, and set up the camera/view frustum/projection matrix so that the perspective of that pixel is the same as the perspective of the corresponding pixel on the screen? The maths here should be simplified if the reticle is in the centre of the screen. If your engine has view frustum culling, this could even be highly performant.

Draw-And-Pick

Do you enjoy living dangerously? Do you hate your colleagues? Your future self?

Just do drawing and picking in one pass. What could possibly go wrong? Inside your drawing code, just check if the pixel you are currently drawing is under the mouse. This only really works if you are doing software rendering, and it will come back to bite you sooner or later, but it saves you from implementing a separate picking step. So who can say if this is really wrong?

Geometry

This is the most boring answer. In Unity, there is an option to do a ray-cast on the collision data. Sometimes this method is not pixel-perfect, because some objects have hitboxes that are smaller than their render geometry, some have hitboxes that are simple shapes circumscribed around their geometry, and some don’t have collision geometry at all, so the mouse click goes right through them.

All in all, having your level geometry in a data structure you can query easily for continuous collision detection is a pretty good deal. If you can, take this deal!

Physics

This is the most fun answer. Just spawn an object, launch it into the direction of the cursor, and trigger an action when it hits something.

[powdermelonkeg]

Tears of the Kingdom: The Final Analysis

Part 2

Picking up where we left off in Part 1, our next shot takes us to Hateno Village.

First and foremost, the mushrooms. ALL the mushrooms.

The mushroom umbrella is patterned with mushrooms, and the man in front of it looks to be wearing a mushroom hat.

Similarly, so is this girl with the broom. A mushroom emporium? Maybe a collector's thing, like golden bugs or gratitude crystals?

It looks as if they took over the Ventest Clothing Boutique; the shirt is patterned with mushrooms, and the flags now have mushroom hats of their own. For some context, here's the original:

Purely speculatively, I think this might have some kind of gimmick outfit that you earn by hunting down rare mushrooms.

Moving on.

We've got a somewhat better look at the strange new towers, this one on top of one of the smaller peaks surrounding Mt. Lanayru.

The next shot shows a camp in the ruins of Castle Town. All the malice and leftover guardian bits look like they've been removed.

This bit here looks like a plot of land. Maybe a Tarrey Town situation, where you expand camps by bringing them supplies?

We can see a tower and the rock portal in the distance.

And Link is here in his green garb, meaning that whatever this camp is, the return of Ganon hasn't done anything to dissuade them.

Link climbs up near the rock portal, and we get a better look at it, as well as the generator thing.

That is VERY deliberately made. Possibly a fallen ruin, but still, very portal-like.

The generator thing looks to have replaced Ta'loh Naeg Shrine

Because that down there is Kakariko Village.

EDIT: This is an error; I misinterpreted the angle of the town. Ta'loh Naeg is on the opposite cliff to this. Thanks @dracrownian!

Also, this scaffolding looks to have been built AFTER the sky isles appear, because this one is built on a piece of ruin.

Hyrule Castle floats in the distance, but now we can see beneath it. It's hard to tell from this far away, but it LOOKS like it's hovering over a pool of malice.

There's a quick shot through some trees

With some Zonai swirls off to the side

As well as some geometric shapes along the bridge. Between those and the ferns, I think this is near Faron Woods, but not in it, seeing as there are no tropical trees.

Edit: According to @fluffmugger, @priconstella, and @almostandrogynousdonut, this spot is actually up at Thyphlo Ruins!

And then this scene. Oh, this scene.

It took me awhile to find this geometry on the map. Especially with that spiral off to the right; most of them have correlated to where Shrines are, but this one doesn't. What clued me in was this bit here.

A bigger triangle-shaped rock with a small, short triangle beside it, slightly offset.

There's exactly one spot in Gerudo Desert that has these like this.

Southwest of Gerudo Town, right here. And there are two things of interest that stand in this area. The first, to the southwest, is the Gerudo Great Skeleton, which can just be made out here:

The second?

Arbiter's Grounds in Breath of the Wild was barely anything, just some vague pillars hinting at something-

-just beneath the surface.

The BotW pillars don't quite match exactly. They're definitely not the torii-style gates above in the sky isles. But they ARE arches, over on the left, and the top squares of the pillars match the square bricks peeking out of the sand as the temple rises. It could be that the arches in BotW are what the beta version of Zonai arches looked like.

We then switch to the castle. Recall-able rocks plummet down around it, which indicates sky isles above.

Due to the sheer volume falling at once, I'm willing to believe that the rise of the castle is what directly causes the isles to show up.

Also

These are Sheikah at the forefront

And this looks to be some kind of logging camp or new settlement. There's a sign here that I imagine is meant to be interacted with at a later date.

And I've hit the picture limit, so when I finish Part 3, that link will be updated here.

Edit: Part 3!

[girakacheezer]

Marlowe Devblog #10

I came across an issue in the game where if a box is flush against the wall, I can stand on the floor beneath the box as long as I’m walking into it.

This issue also occurs sometimes in stacks of boxes, but normally because there’s a very small ledge/difference in position that’s less than 1 pixel and thus not visible to the human eye.

Since this is similar to the issue I faced in Marlowe Devblog #3, I thought maybe a similar solution would work, where I could just simulate collision in different orders to find the correct outcome.  But with throwing entities into the mix, this would double the number of simulated collision runs in a single entity check, if not increase them further, so this strategy is becoming less appealing.

I looked online to see if anyone else has faced similar issues with tiles or whatnot, and one solution I saw people mention was to “change the player’s collider to a circle”.  In this engine I’m making, collision isn’t really built to the point where it can work with arbitrary geometrical shapes, just rectangles (it makes calculations a lot simpler), but I can still use the idea of a “rounded hitbox” to fix this.

The issue right now is that as a perfectly rectangular object, when we try to fall down and into the right into this “wall”, the corner of our hitbox hits the hidden corner of the wall below the box and end up getting pushed up as well as to the left outside the wall and box.

Using a circular hitbox though, the corner of the player’s hitbox wouldn’t get snagged on the hidden corner in the wall anymore, allowing us to “slide” past it.  However I don’t have circular collision programmed into the engine, so instead I’ve opted for a slightly different solution.

The idea is instead to use a hitbox that behaves more like this, with “rounded” corners to help us slide past things when we’re against a mostly flat surface.

In practice how I achieved this was by snipping the ends of the collision lines for map collision, so that there was a bit of room to avoid hitting the corner/edge of the line inside the “wall”.  I chose to snip the map lines instead of the player box since in general map lines are bigger than entity hitboxes, and rounding the corners of a very small hitbox could lead to weird interactions.

However this had an issue where if I jumped into a corner just barely, I could clip the player’s corner into the line and get OOB, since map line collision is permissive in that if you were behind a line the frame before, you’re allowed to be behind the line until you’re in front of it again.

So I updated the collision such that for the map lines, there was a tiny space behind the line that if the corner/edge of the hit box was in, it would snap the player to the line edge, even if it was on the inside of the line before.  This prevented the issue where the player could clip OOB via corners in geometry.

This update to line collision also meant it fixed the issue I previously had in devblog 3 without the need for multiple collision simulations, so I was able to remove that code from the map collision which will increase the perf of collision code in general.

This also lets you slide around corners if you bonk into them just barely, which is a nice feature to have to make jumps/collision feel more fair.

I also applied a slightly modified version of this corner forgiveness to entities, and it works well here too.  It also solves a previous issue I had where you could get snagged on a corner if sliding against a solid flat wall of boxes, which previously I had a solution in place that sorted entities by distance from the target before running collision checks, which was a rather expensive solution performance wise.  I’m able to remove that sort() call now, thanks to this.

[dottedmage]

GOOD LIRD I FINALLY FINISHED THIS

Finnally a proper references for my agent headcanons hurray. “Nakey” version + other info under the cut (looking you with eyes, you will read everything)

Timeline for this is Sara and Cube post RotM, Mars and Eight with their splat2 outfits but beginning of splat3 appearences (i was too lazy to come up with clothes lol)

Sara

-23 years old

-Top left side of her head is permanently scared due to direct contact wih sanitized ink. Has permanent blury vision on her left eye, moderate hearing loss on her left ear and pain on her left shoulder.

-His hands and feet got hit by significant amounts of fuzzy ooze while cutting it all down. This is why he wasnt able to keep going 👍 (no bones for an ankle to be broken uknow)

-Says the most unserious of things in the most serious tone, seems like theyre joking but its always from their heart

-Sees themselves a lot in Cube and takes care of it and gives it advice contantly. Offered Cube to go live with them after their mission was over but Cube refused

-Knows a little bit of octarian, hes trying his best but has a unique way of mispronouncing words

Mars

-22

-Very clumsy during his 1st time as an agent so he has lots of scars because of that

-Scars on his right side are from a bomb explosion gone very wrong

-After splat2 she grew her hair out and styled it to match Maries a bit

-Lives in a shared apartment with Sara and sometimes Eight

-Was catching up with her high school missed agent years and is now studing some general science/space-based course 👍 he like space a lot

-Was very mad and very upset and very sad he was not the one choosen to be sent into space to save the earth

-Fluent in octarian, also knows a bit of salmonling

Eight

-22

-Her weird spots are a reaction from perlonged exposure to a sanitized environment, the bigget her spots are the better, the smaller the worse. She sometimes wakes up with random pains, especially in her right arm and back

-Lives with Pearl and Marina post OE, also spents a loooottt of time at 4 and 3s place

-Fluent in inklish but has a funny accent

-Loves travelling with Pearl and Marina, honestly she loves travelling with anyone but her cool lesbian moms go to 100 places in a month so its a plus she gets to go with them for free

-Very good cook, is bad with deserts but shes getting better

Cube

-16

-Became a little furry tiger-ish inkling due to prolonged exposure to fuzzy ooze. Unlike Sara it is less fuzzy, its just spread all around its body

-Cannot change into squid form and produces ink very slowly in a small amount, limiting its capacitie of participating in ink related sports.

-Scavanged the deserts around splatsville for trinkets to sell in 2nd hand markets and fairs. Meet with Deep Cut once or twice during that period, hence their pre-assumption that it was gonna steal the stuff for itself

-In their free time they used to participate in turf wars. They considered doing salmon runs but found it extremelly wrong and immorall

-Little buddy was a salmonid that wanted to see more of the world so they snuck into, a very distracted, workers hat. Lucky for them that worker was very friendly, and tired of grizzcos work, so they showed little buddy all around splatsville and its deserts and even a beach. They quickly beacame friends and are inseparable now

-It knows salmonling wowow

-Maths fan, number one stan of geometry and shapes

-Tableturf card collector

-Lives in a too-big of an apartment with the squid sisters

-Goes to school now hurray!!

-Visits Sara a lot, doesnt spent much time there as Eight but does show up unannounced

Suspense music, relatioship thang:

Sara

About Mars; My friend, my one and only. I can count on her for everything. I do have to keep an eye out for her extreme clumsiness

About Eight; I wish i got to spent more time with her. Shes very fun and makes me feel at home when shes around.

About Cube; Was this how Callie and Marie felt when i joined the splatoon? Fun kid, has to stop stepping on metal.

Mars

Sara; oh Sara my good friend Sara. We ding dong ditch together, our neighbours hate us but they dont know that. (also i dont think she realizes were dating....)

Eight; oooo my love kiss kiss muah muah

Cube; funny kid, does need to make up for not inviting me to space with them. Im joking, i love it and the little rocks it gives me.

Eight

Sara; Hes very unserious! You would think behind her intimidating looks is someone thats shy and reserved but she has the wildests things to say sometimes, shes very funny i like her a lot (we need to talk to her abt that, you cannot keep assuming things Mars...)

Mars; There is not a single conversation with you where i dont laugh my heart out. Thank you for the butterflies in my stomach head and eyes

Cube; It comes into our house, it eats all the food, it gives a long detailed compliment, it leaves. Interesting child i guess.

Cube

Sara; Seemed very intimitading at first but i think shes just worries about me but hey! i can take care of myself fine

Mars; i like to give her animal shaped rocks and crystals.

Eight; I haven't talked or seen her a lot but she cooks so well

o wow you read it all congrats! you have the right to 1 (one) drawing request ;) and if you have anything to ask please do, talking abt headcanons and stuff makes me develop characters faster and its fun :]