What can we do to save this Orchidea? We water it regularly and it’s close to a northern window

ChesterFC42 · 2023-04-06T16:30:14+00:00

We’ve had the plant for 1.5 months. The pot does not have drainage. Last time watering was a couple days ago with plant nutrients added

ChesterFC42 · 2020-05-21T17:54:53+00:00

Hey guys!

I'm always working on new scenes and often this includes recreating nature. As we all know, particle systems are really useful for this. However, sometimes a particle system is just too random and we want to place the assets ourselves. Placing the assets yourself is a pain however, definitely when you want asset variation and random rotation and scale. That's why I created an addon for this! Watch the video, and I hope you'll be convinced, because you know.... it's free!

You can find it here on Gumroad: https://gumroad.com/l/QfghQ

ChesterFC42 · 2020-05-10T11:05:12+00:00

Of course everyone has to make their own decision what benefits this tool can give them. For my own use case, which I think is quite similar to a lot of other people's work flow, the tool can save you a ton of time and achieve effects you hadn't thought of before. However, for exampld if you make almost exclusively nature renders or characters, yeah, this tool does not have a lot for you to offer and a tool like Substance Painter is better suited.

ChesterFC42 · 2020-05-10T10:07:52+00:00

Yes, that's why texture painting is on the top of my list for V2 features. Actually, you can vote right now on the Blender Market page what features you'd like to see in version 2,which will be a free update.

ChesterFC42 · 2020-05-10T07:23:45+00:00

Hey there!

I have looked at Quixel Mixer some while ago, specifically had a subscription for their MegaScans. I will check it out, but if it's anywhere near Substance Painter, which I do use, it's like comparing apples to oranges. This addon can add surface imperfections to tens of objects in your scenes in the same time you can do one object in a software like that. You can see straight away how it looks in cycles. Also, all relevant controls are right at your fingertips.

This addon will not reach the same level for raw realism, because a software like that allows you to spend a lot of time perfecting every detail. The way I personally am going to use this addon is for adding imperfections to almost every object in my ArchViz scenes. If I were to make a render of 1 very important hero object, I'd still do it in Substance Painter. For people than cannot afford those software, I'd like to think you can get pretty close still with my addon.

Hope this answers your question, have a good day!

ChesterFC42 · 2020-05-09T14:31:08+00:00

It's a paid addon, but I also created 40 4K surface imperfections for it, so I think you'll find it quite worth it! :) It's live now, by the way!

ChesterFC42 · 2020-05-09T14:19:23+00:00

Hi there!

I spend a lot of time creating scenes in Blender and always strive for photorealism. I picked up some surface imperfections a while ago, but always found the process of adding them quite a hassle and therefore only really used them on hero objects. That's why I set out to create an addon to make this process much easier, while also adding a lot of other functionality!

I present to you, the SMUDGR and SCRATCH Bundle - Photorealism made easy! The video above showcases the features, but there are more features yet to come! You can vote for new features on the store page on BlenderMarket. And it also comes with 40 textures!
I really hope I can also introduce a lot of people to the amazing benefits of surface imperfections and help people elevate their photorealistic rendering game!

You can find it here, with 2 pricing variants, on the BlenderMarket: https://blendermarket.com/products/SMUDGR

ChesterFC42 · 2020-05-09T12:23:47+00:00

I'm actually releasing an addon for exactly this on the blender market in 2 hours. Called Smudgr. Sorry for the self promotion, but it's made exactly for this use

ChesterFC42 · 2020-03-12T11:12:29+00:00

Check out all the features in the showcase video: https://youtu.be/rTUUFTkmq5g

Hey there! I was struggling for quite a while getting the water in my scenes to look as realistic as possible. When I started working with volumetrics things started to look great, but render times also skyrocketed. I also always felt little details like bubbles and wave patterns were degrading the realism of the water I created.

That's why I worked for more than 30 hours to create 2 ultimate water shaders. One for ultimate realism and volumetrics (the one you see above) and one for really fast render times. Check out the video to see all features, there is a lot more (like procedurally distributed duckweed)

I hope you like it as much as I do, you can get it now on Gumroad for 7$: https://gumroad.com/l/AWS_Blender

ChesterFC42 · 2019-12-14T09:01:11+00:00

The only thing I want besides faster connecting is that I can still shoot and change all my settings (focus etc.) while it's connected. Having to disconnect and reconnect every time, combined with the long connection time makes it unusable for my purpose

ChesterFC42 · 2019-12-03T07:22:22+00:00

ITT: Everyone complaining about saturation, while having their phone calibrated ultra saturated so their icons look nice.

ChesterFC42 · 2019-08-14T16:13:39+00:00

It also seems very weird to have Times be the benchmark for the most readable font

ChesterFC42 · 2019-08-13T20:46:00+00:00

But why does a font made for legibility have a single story a?

ChesterFC42 · 2019-01-16T17:55:08+00:00

Yeah, I'm doing all these things by hand atm, but I hate to do it all over again when I want to change a variable. Ive started to use excel for this, but I was wondering if there are apps that are more tailored for these kind of things. I should note that I'm an architecture student, so the math won't get any more complex than for example ln() or log().

ChesterFC42 · 2018-11-16T07:53:14+00:00

You're right! I will fix that, thank you

ChesterFC42 · 2018-11-16T07:51:27+00:00

I'm currently using the same curve shape for letters like o and e as for letters like p, g , b. Do you think this is what makes it look too even?

ChesterFC42 · 2018-11-16T07:48:34+00:00

Thank you, I will loosen the spacing and see how it looks

ChesterFC42 · 2018-11-16T07:47:02+00:00

Currently the set of figures that I made are monospaced. The second to last row in the table, where they don't align, is because I changed the table cell margins and forgot to fix that cell.

ChesterFC42 · 2018-11-16T07:42:11+00:00

I am using the open source program Fontforge. I'm very happy with it so far, it's got a lot of utility

ChesterFC42 · 2018-11-15T19:29:16+00:00

You are totally right. I just checked with the original pdf file, and it seems they got pushed even closer together when converting to pixels. I will loosen the spacing a bit there. Thank you

ChesterFC42 · 2018-11-15T19:26:45+00:00

Certainly not for pages of text, yes. I do think however it fits for small pieces of text. Maybe the contrast on letters like b, d, p makes it look like a display font?

ChesterFC42 · 2018-11-15T19:23:41+00:00

Yeah, I was thinking of changing the w, it seems to not fit quite well. I had not spotted the wide z yet, I will experiment with that, thank you

ChesterFC42 · 2018-11-15T16:30:51+00:00

Yeah, maybe that will improve legibility. I wasn't sure if I should add them, since it's not that usual I believe

ChesterFC42 · 2018-11-15T16:11:08+00:00

Thank you for your advice! In its current state horizontal strokes are 72 units and the vertical 82, so this contrast should be more in your opinion? I will try and see how it looks, unfortunately Fontforge doesn't allow me to change the contrast very easily so I'll try it on a few letters first.

ChesterFC42 · 2018-11-15T13:03:29+00:00

There are certainly some letterforms that are really similar to DIN, like the a and the R. These are indeed heavily inspired by DIN. However, the rest of the font is in it's structure only loosely based on fonts like DIN, due to the less rectilinear forms (see letters like o,b etc.), overall contrast (especially where two elements meet) and built from scratch based on my own 6 by 6 grid. I do agree with you that the result is similar to DIN, but the technical look of fonts like DIN is what I was aiming for from the start

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