Use this space to share interesting news from the world of science, engineering, space flight, software development, technology, etc. New products, discoveries, ideas, and technologies welcomed, as are conceptual papers, white papers, reports, and the like.
Please refrain from sharing content related specifically to AI development- there is a separate thread for this and your reply will be moved there if it’s about AI.
Side discussions are welcomed
To start things off:
On the health and human progress side of things:
At first looked to me like spaghetti and metaballs.
At first looked to me like spaghetti and metaballs.
Might be time to take a break from Blender and go on a walk outside if that’s the case.
lolz
Actually, metaballs have never been used by me in Blender. Though they were used extensively in a project way back in the late '90’s. In C4D, or maybe even Bryce 3D.
Then you need to take a break from C4D and/or Bryce 3D, I guess? I also remembered I managed to get Blender working surprisingly well on my Steam Deck, so you actually can’t escape Blender even if you touch grass nowadays.
On a related note, here’s a conversation to get the thread back on track: have any of you found portable 3D modeling or animation apps that at the very least let you practice your 3D skills away from the computer? For me, the best “3D Practice” apps I have so far are 3D Modeling and Design App and Naomi, both on the iPhone App Store. I’ve also heard good things about Prisma3D, but that is exclusive to Android phones. And of course, Nomad has emerged in recent years as a solid way to practice 3D sculpting and real-time rendering on the go and even a low-cost alternative to ZBrush in some cases! Well, it’s certainly better for sculpting than Blender, at least.
I think mobile apps, while they won’t replace Blender or especially the “industry standards” any time soon in remotely-professional settings and productions, are a great way to get younger generations interested in 3D, stay sharp on fundamental skills like UV Mapping even when you’re away from your computer for extended periods of time, and most importantly teach you how to work with and around limitations–with the exception of Nomad, you HAVE to adopt a low-poly art style for mobile 3D work, and even with Nomad it gets dicey when your model exceeds 1 million polygons TOTAL. That is, of course, assuming you download an app that actually requires you to learn low-poly, fundamental 3D and not an AI app that cheats you out of all that learning…
The new XP-Pen Magic Drawing Pad looks like an incredible option for mobile artists:
It might not be able to fully replace an iPad, since it can’t run Procreate(?)- I’m pretty sure at least. Still, Clip Studio Paint and Nomad Sculpt are nothing to turn up your nose at, especially with 109% sRGB color on the screen with a paper finish.
Would be very interested to hear from anyone that has had a chance to try one 
Stupid question incoming:
I’ve used a Wacom for years, but haven’t ever tried one of those ‘screen tablets’. How do you deal with the fact that the physical pen unit is literally covering up (visually) the part of the image that you’re painting?
Like - with Wacom style, the onscreen brush isn’t obscuring the image, so I can see what I’m doing. What’s it like working with the screen tablet?
Currently I have a XP-Pen 24 Pro, and I can’t say I’ve ever noticed any issues with obscurement. You have significantly less obscurement than you do on paper, because you can zoom in and pan around. If you’re used to painting/drawing on paper, a screen tablet is similar but a significantly better experience. On the flip side, if you don’t paint or draw on paper, I can imagine why a screen tablet might be disorienting at first.
You can see here that where the brush is isn’t covered at all by my hand- there’s actually a good half inch of clear space even towards my hand
I think that may be the key point, i hadn’t thought of it that way. My real-life with a pencil on paper is practically nil (only for a quick rough), so I guess It’s a bit like comparing an apple to an orange, instead of 2 different kinds of apples. (And whether or not you’re used to one fruit or the other).
And who knows, I might try one someday and and think “wow, I wish I’d thrown the wacom out years ago”…
It also makes a huge difference how you draw- as a right-handed person, I draw from top left to bottom right, so my hand is always ahead of where I’m drawing. I didn’t even think about this consciously until now, but I’ve been doing that since I first learned to write- if you draw with your hand behind your drawing with pencil, you smear the pencil and get your hand dirty. If I were to draw with my left hand, I’d draw from top right to bottom left for the same reason.
Tangental for sure, but interesting
Procreate is exclusively an Apple-centric project–they’ve said in the past that they won’t support Android due to having to optimize with all sorts of different hardware configurations and architecture. I can see why they would think that, especially when in gaming news you’re always reading about poorly-made PC ports of games, where it seems random whether your specific PC build will handle the game fine or not, and how the console versions run smoother, even if the hardware is technically much weaker (Dragon’s Dogma 2 is the most recent example of that, albeit also an example of why ray tracing still isn’t ready for the mainstream, yet). Still a bit annoying when you consider Nomad Sculpt is arguably more complex than Procreate yet seems to work on everything.
Either way, Procreate is kind of overrated, anyway. It has a ton of competition now with countless cheaper apps that basically are just as good for illustration on both the App Store and Google Play, and there are better, more focused apps out there for 2D animation than most illustration apps that just add “frame by frame animation” as a bullet point in the features section. Plus, the interface seems specifically designed for touch screens with all this unique swiping motions, which is intuitive if you’re more used to drawing on actual paper, but not so much if you’re used to a UI similar to Krita, Photoshop or Substance Painter. This XPPen device coming with Ibis Paint X is a solid substitute for Procreate.
Though I’ll probably stick to the iPad myself until it stops working, all those apps mentioned are available on the App Store, as well. The “Magic Drawing Pad” does have a lot of useful stuff I wish Apple considered when making the iPad Pro (like a paper finish screen), but those are just “wants,” not “needs,” until my current iPad goes kaput.
All good points. I don’t have an iPad- I’ve been considering one- but I’m now considering a Magic Pad. They’re a lot cheaper, and as you say, there are alternatives to a lot of the Apple-locked softwares. Things to mull over
AAA-grade movie scenes being rendered out in seconds (with almost no power to boot)? It could become possible if Photonics are finally able to make it to home hardware.
In theory, this would make even an RTX 4090 card look like a snail in comparison.
That would be awesome if 3D rendering consumed less electricity in the future. It’s not quite the biggest source of carbon emissions in the US (I’ve been told transportation is), but it would still make quite a difference and every little bit counts in reducing power usage and electricity bills.
This presentation by Unreal Engine in very impressive (to me), especially that nanite tesselation:
I guess this could be moved to: Unreal 5
On that note, I’ve had a lot of success with Lucide, which is a free and open source icon project. It’s the largest I’ve found and it’s actively maintained. I highly recommend it. Check it out:
Wow, I used Font Awesome in our Rails/Bootstrap stack some time ago, but I didn’t know that they had been bought.
I’m confused…
…they use the same name ?? Or on provides fonts (and now get paid for this) …
