And cheers to you for mentioning that 2018 Substance is still useful!
…Yikes, I hope I kept that license key somewhere, I’m sure I did…
If only to learn it because it seems to be a hard requirement with so many artist positions. =\
(Although…if we really blew them away with Blender tools and they couldn’t tell the difference, would they really care? Hm…)
See Also: My digital games collection
It seems the Ukraine conflict and the U.S’s plans to counter China’s push on Taiwan indicate that the future of warfare is:
…Just…a gazillion, never-ending swarms of coordinated, “cheap”, militarized drones…
doesn’t make any sense.
My theory?
The real conspiracy: It always goes back to the desires of capital.
Why is it always that climate change is a huge con job and it’s all a secret control plan that we…need to stop burning and breathing known carcinogens?
Oh, because the evil shadow government orgs like the EPA and OSHA want to take all our good ol’ jobs (tey derk er jurbz!) with their “regulations” and “standards” and “penalties for pollution” right?
And they’re trying to make America “less great” by no longer being a mass-polluting post-war economic powerhouse! Think of the lost profits! Think of the widespread misery and poverty wrought by a secret New World Order of…(Paper flip) corporate regulation! What’s next? Unions?!
Yes, chem trails are ultimately a path to such horrors as a less wealthy C-suite and not putting clean air on the commodities exchange market. (gasp)
…And all these conspiracies are seeded and peddled by the very sources that told people to take veterinary dewormers or inject sanitizer to cure a virus, have brought us the highest unemployment rates seen in a century, dismantled and fired safety regulation and watchdog agencies (deh DERK-A-DURRBS!), are trying to bring back child labor and company towns, and conveniently rail against taxation which they dodge anyway.
EDIT: Sorry for the essay LOL.
I really appreciate your take and efforts to be compassionate about the loads of people who simply were let down by a lack of, or sometimes learned cultural opposition to, education. We’re paying for it so hard right now.
I mean, yeah, MK-Ultra was a very real program, for instance. The Cold War Era was loaded with shadowy nonsense conducted by spooks, all over the place! Real conspiracies totally happened!
But people on the whole crave sensation and don’t have the logic or education to discern between whistleblowers and grifters.
I think the part that is so painful is that there’s just so much noise.
It feels like conspiracy theories generally used to be…More harmless? More often the stuff of kooky neighbors and not always dangerously deluded basement militants and chart-topping podcasts.
Now it’s a carefully engineered, algorithmically driven pipeline from the former to the latter.
Now, thanks to social media, they’re politically weaponized psy-ops: Get the masses all riled up about aliens, mind-control vaccines, and satanic child-farming underground pizza delivery chain networks…
…And they won’t bother to focus their energy any real and “boring” conspiracies, like monopoly-forming, price fixing, shrinkflation, planned obsolescence, cop unions, the insurance industry, manufacturing consent, stock market manipulation, wage theft, billionaire bunkers, car-required civic planning, surveillance normalization, gerrymandering, Cambridge Analytica, McKinsey, class warfare, too-much-to-list about Boeing…
Because those are very real problems perpetuated by very bad powerful people, and they take a ton of very risky work to fix.
And those conspiracies are so very boring and predictable, because it’s a massive shell game with a million little nodes that all lead to countless instances of “Someone is doing these bad things to amass more money or influence.”
Last note: It’s also really odd and telling how the ones who are SO adamant about government conspiracies don’t tend to care much about corporations.
Government mind control chips in water (to make us more… subservient or something?) Totes!
But ad companies listening to your devices to figure out when you’re at your weakest to push ads for foolish purchases?
Naaaaah!
I learned this word from Roller Coaster Tycoon as a kid lol.
Weird tangent on the main post but I just got one of those “bum guns” off one of those unsold merchandise auctions and it’s been life-changing. Ridiculously simple to install. Literally like one of those kitchen sink sprayers just T-jointed onto your toilet water supply. Why isn’t this standard?!
I now no longer fear the bizarre crisis reaction of the masses that is "Make a mad rush to hoard all the TP."
And I’m hoping being nicer to myself will avoid unnecessary embarrassing future doctor’s visits…
Reportedly this is where some kids found gems like Roller Coaster Tycoon in just a CD jewel case, too. :D
A needle in a tumbleweed, if you will. :p
Yeah, it’s crazy it was hiding this long but I see this as a win that they dealt with it so swiftly and show they take their package security seriously.
100%. Retopology kinda drives me up the wall because I always seem to end up with mismatched loops and stuff.
One day I’ll save up and support Retopoflow, but in the meantime, check out a new fork of Poly Quilt! it’s freely available in Blender’s extension repository!
I see a lot of people say it works a lot like Maya’s poly-build/paint/something(?) function, and a lot of people would say they import Blender meshes back into Maya just for retopology, so that sounds like quite high praise if this works similarly.
Looking forward to trying it myself. :)
I don’t know if retopo will ever be fun, but maybe at least it won’t be miserable? Hahaha.
Blender 3D Artist here:
If you already use Blender and want Inkscape-like functionality, grease pencil has gotten REALLY impressive! Worth checking out! But let’s talk about materials real quick:
I personally got burned when I dropped hard-earned cash on Substance and they sold out from under us.
It might not be 1:1 for the most powerful features found in Alegorithmic’s traitorware, but the PBR Painter add-on has been AWESOME for painting materials in Blender.
There are some other add-ons for materials and advanced effects too.
(For designing, I’m glad fo see Material Maker mentioned! It’s impressive and legit! I hope that project goes far!)
I honestly think a majority of that stuff is totally doable in Blender right now, add-ons just make it easier and/or a bit more efficient, and these devs are worth supporting.
Armorpaint looked pretty cool, but is it still being developed? Seems like it’s been awfully quiet, which is a shame because it seemed very promising!
It’s sad because Substance was the ONE time I relented and said “Hey, maybe this commercial software will be really worth it.” Fool me once.
EDIT: argh, I know I didn’t crop it. I gotta put all these on my computer so I can bulk-snip that exact number of pixels from each image lol…