My Covered Barrels game prop is now available in Unity Assetstore. I am thankful for those many folks who bought it already. I am so glad that my work can be used in Unity now too.
I am pretty glad how this turned out. Having my own library of substances that I have built over the year proved handy. The tarp material creation was incredibly easy.
I might be creating more similar type prop assets. Having these in your scene can serve many purpose; they can be cover for the player in a stealth game, or can be used as props to communicate mood.
As usual if you have any question of these or any my other assets, please don’t be afraid to send me email.
Recently I have been having some issues with my late 2013 MacBook Pro 15″ (the model without dedicated graphics).
The trackpad mainly stopped registering a click. Sometimes it only recognized a click when pressed on either left or right side and so on. It did still click though. Also there was a feel on the top case like it’s slightly bulging.
A quick Google search made it clear, it’s got to be a bulging battery that is preventing the trackpad of functioning properly. Self replacing the battery would be out of question for me as I wasn’t willing to start to mess around with disassembly required to do so, and the battery is glued to the top case. And also I wasn’t be able to be exactly sure whether the trackpad problems originate from the bulge or whether the trackpad itself had a some kind of damage.
So it was obvious that I needed this to be looked at, so I made a reservation in Omotesando Applestore and took it in. The man quickly diagnosed the problem to be indeed a battery starting to bulge. So he offered the repair which would mean replacement of the entire top case with keyboard, trackpad, battery and so forth. It cost about 21000 yen including the repair cost. Now this is OOW; out of warranty type affair. I accepted the offer.
I took my machine there on Friday and got it back today Monday. They sent me mail around noon yesterday (Sunday). That’s three days. So this morning I picked up the machine.
Indeed, the top case is brand new and trackpad has it’s original feel and perfect operation. I am quite happy with this service. I don’t think 21000 yen is too bad for this. At least it wasn’t logic board.
However, I do notice that the keyboard feels different, a little a bit more spongy. This could be just me gotten used to the old, worn one. It might be that this is how new MacBook Pro keyboards used to feel, at least before the new butterfly mechanism that so many have had issues with.
If I had bought replacement battery and tried to fix that by myself, I well, might have botched the job and ruined the computer. What I understood from poking around a bit in the internet, removing glued batteries require use of some kind of heat-gun or solvent that would dissolve the glue. I wouldn’t be comfortable working with either of them near my computer. And even of this was successful operation, I wouldn’t still have gotten new keyboard and trackpad. Those things do suffer from wear and tear.
So yes, I am satisfied with the service I got from Apple. This computer has been very reliable tool for me. The first one I got suffered from loose Thunderbolt ports and got warranty repair once. The machine suffers from very brief small flicker sometimes in the screen; I believe this is due to wifi interference as mentioned by other people in the internet. I have not used this machine with wifi turned off; I might indeed try that just to see if it makes any difference.
When I was returning from the Apple Store I checked some of the current gen MacBook Pros. I cannot possibly see myself buying one just because of the dreaded keyboard issues so many people are talking about, and also I quite frankly don’t need one at the moment.
I really like Mac OS experience and I can’t see myself moving away from it; no matter how I am tempted to due to the high cost of maintaining Mac. For 3D graphics and heavy video editing I use PC, but for music and pretty much everything else I prefer staying in the Mac platform.
The iMac Pro maintenance thing (as witnessed by Linus Tech Tips and Snazzy Labs) does raise questions about how interested Apple is maintaining their computer line up. I am happy to so far report that my experience was quite good.
https://www.creativewithjaakko.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/logo.svg00crwjaakkohttps://www.creativewithjaakko.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/logo.svgcrwjaakko2018-02-22 00:14:542018-02-22 00:38:14Featured in 80.lv and CG Channel
I created this fully procedural Seaside Rocks Substance. (The source file (.sbs) is now available in Gumroad)
It was quite fun to explore different techniques to create the basic rock shapes and then use tile generator and various techniques to tile them and blend them together.
I was then able to use the same rock I created to cut interesting shapes on top of the rocks to look like they are weathered.
I am quite happy how this turned out except the cracks which need some more work. I am still trying to figure out the most efficient workflow on making those things.
Adding water was really fun and I really like how it added sparkle and additional detail to the material.
In Substance Designer it’s easy to implement more detail to this such as leaves, small debris from sea and really go to town with micro detail. I also think about improving the graph by creating more rock variation, it’s possible to derive them from same base and just change them in graph. Being able to reuse nodes is so nice.
By the way, does anyone know how to split link? I know how to add those split points to make lines flow cleaner but it would be so nice if we could just draw a new line from those split points, so there would be one main line. Making y-like split into a link would be so good for organization sake.
Substance Designer iRay makes substances like these look really, really good. It’s quite easy to forget that actually what we are looking is actually a height map. Even when viewing from perspective, rocks and things like that look almost like they are real rocks with undercuts and bottom, especially when rendered with shadows. Then in game it looks just quite perfect and if real 3D objects are placed on it, the illusion is perfect.
Seaside Rocks Substance graph is quite simple.
I will make Substance with fully tweakable parameters soon. Also Youtube breakdown of the material is coming soon.
If you want to take a look at the substance I created, grab it from Gumroad now.
https://www.creativewithjaakko.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/logo.svg00crwjaakkohttps://www.creativewithjaakko.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/logo.svgcrwjaakko2017-12-20 23:15:242017-12-20 23:15:24My Gumroad site
I created this DNA Double Helix 3D model in Blender using modifiers and SSS which was super easy to setup in Principled shader introduced in 2.79 for Cycles renderer.
Modeling DNA double helix 3d model using modifiers in Blender is a breeze. Basically the strand was created using a path. If one wants to animate the strand, adding a basic shape key to the path would allow perfect animation as the geometry will follow the path; nice and easy workflow.
The displacement is taking advantage of the adaptive subdivision which for some reason still considered “Experimental feature” in Cycles. This is super efficient as it subdivides the mesh dynamically based on the camera position. This allows more complex scenes to be rendered fully in GPU. Rendering with dual GPUs it was a breeze to come up with nice looking renders, even with effects like depth-of-field.
Lightwave has had the adaptive subdivision feature since early 9 so Blender certainly isn’t the first one in this camp. And I think this feature should be in the main feature set. However, although being called “experimental” the feature is mostly stable and I didn’t have any big issues as long as I kept the subdivisions in reasonable amount.
I did some searching and found out interesting article which mentions that DNA is actually near white. The colours we traditionally add to DNA molecules is just for labeling purposes. I am big fan of the beginning sequence of Prometheus where the Engineer’s DNA is being rearranged. With things like this we can have some artistic freedom.
The model is a good starting point for more complex CG animation setup in Cycles. One could add particles or volumetric lighting to make the environment look like the strand is in some kind of liquid.
https://i0.wp.com/www.creativewithjaakko.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/render01.png?fit=1200%2C649&ssl=16491200crwjaakkohttps://www.creativewithjaakko.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/logo.svgcrwjaakko2017-10-09 00:00:172021-10-06 08:52:28DNA Double Helix 3D model
I created this Sci-Fi Console recently for my personal portfolio for UE4. I baked the normal map from high poly using Substance Painter. I’m quite glad about how this turned out with PBR metal-rough workflow.
Here is an example how we can use Live Boolean in ZBrush 4R8. The feature is super handy- first time we can have accurate real time preview of boolean operation. We can keep working with the mesh pretty much infinitely by adding substract, union or intersect subtools, and we can also arrange these to boolean groups. When are are finished, we can create boolean mesh. This will create new tool for us, leaving the working tool intact. Pretty nice ZBrushey approach to booleans.
Check out the video below on how to create motorcycle engine kind of shapes using Array Mesh and Live Boolean in ZBrush 4R8.
I made a video about this issue as some friendly folks in Turbosquid pointed out to me the reason I had these low poly artifacts in cycles renders of my models.
It turned out that this effect is not only happening in Cycles but also in Renderman and other packages as well. This is what is known as “Terminator artifact”.
Here is the jagged edges we get in low poly models in Cycles. This is what is called “Terminator artifact”
This has got to do with just how shadows are rendered in polygonal models and actually this is expected behavior. Programmers of Blender Cycles knew very well this would happen. It kind of sucks though and at the moment we don’t have a lot of alternatives except stick with Blender internal render, subdivide our models or use softer lights to reduce the jagged shadows.
This is where Eevee will be super useful. I can’t wait get my hands on it.. (and it will even support Filmic Blender which is awesome).
Here is more information about low poly artifacts in cycles:
I found a way to disable Wacom circle in Photoshop CC; you know that annoying clockwise turning circle that pops up in in Photoshop CC.
While it’s handy to have brush settings available when right clicking, with pen this doesn’t really work. It’s rather annoying and destroys usability of Wacom Tablet in Photoshop.
The fix is to go to Control Panel, Ease of Access Center and click Make touch and tablets easier to use.
Under “See also” there is “Make touch easier to use”. Click that and there is the option for “Press and hold”. Select it and press Settings… There, uncheck “Enable press and hold for right-clicking”. Voila!! A way to disable wacom circle in Photoshop!
This works in the current version of Windows 10. I have heard reports that sometimes Windows resets this setting so it maybe necessary to get back in there and change it back when OS is updated.
It is also possible to disable “Use Windows Ink” in Wacom Tablet Properties, but this will cause Photoshop CC to stop recognizing Wacom tablet pressure so this really wasn’t a fix.
I am using Wacom Intuos Pro M (2014) model. I am not sure if this fix helps users of other tablets, but it’s certainly worth a try.
https://www.creativewithjaakko.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/logo.svg00crwjaakkohttps://www.creativewithjaakko.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/logo.svgcrwjaakko2017-07-20 01:01:092017-10-15 03:08:06Disable Wacom circle in Photoshop CC (Windows 10)
Covered Barrels Prop for Unity
CG assetsMy Covered Barrels game prop is now available in Unity Assetstore. I am thankful for those many folks who bought it already. I am so glad that my work can be used in Unity now too.
Covered Barrels PBR Game Prop
It was quite interesting project to make and I made this video about it too.
I am pretty glad how this turned out. Having my own library of substances that I have built over the year proved handy. The tarp material creation was incredibly easy.
I might be creating more similar type prop assets. Having these in your scene can serve many purpose; they can be cover for the player in a stealth game, or can be used as props to communicate mood.
As usual if you have any question of these or any my other assets, please don’t be afraid to send me email.
Late 2013 MacBook Pro Battery
UncategorizedRecently I have been having some issues with my late 2013 MacBook Pro 15″ (the model without dedicated graphics).
The trackpad mainly stopped registering a click. Sometimes it only recognized a click when pressed on either left or right side and so on. It did still click though. Also there was a feel on the top case like it’s slightly bulging.
A quick Google search made it clear, it’s got to be a bulging battery that is preventing the trackpad of functioning properly. Self replacing the battery would be out of question for me as I wasn’t willing to start to mess around with disassembly required to do so, and the battery is glued to the top case. And also I wasn’t be able to be exactly sure whether the trackpad problems originate from the bulge or whether the trackpad itself had a some kind of damage.
So it was obvious that I needed this to be looked at, so I made a reservation in Omotesando Applestore and took it in. The man quickly diagnosed the problem to be indeed a battery starting to bulge. So he offered the repair which would mean replacement of the entire top case with keyboard, trackpad, battery and so forth. It cost about 21000 yen including the repair cost. Now this is OOW; out of warranty type affair. I accepted the offer.
I took my machine there on Friday and got it back today Monday. They sent me mail around noon yesterday (Sunday). That’s three days. So this morning I picked up the machine.
Indeed, the top case is brand new and trackpad has it’s original feel and perfect operation. I am quite happy with this service. I don’t think 21000 yen is too bad for this. At least it wasn’t logic board.
However, I do notice that the keyboard feels different, a little a bit more spongy. This could be just me gotten used to the old, worn one. It might be that this is how new MacBook Pro keyboards used to feel, at least before the new butterfly mechanism that so many have had issues with.
If I had bought replacement battery and tried to fix that by myself, I well, might have botched the job and ruined the computer. What I understood from poking around a bit in the internet, removing glued batteries require use of some kind of heat-gun or solvent that would dissolve the glue. I wouldn’t be comfortable working with either of them near my computer. And even of this was successful operation, I wouldn’t still have gotten new keyboard and trackpad. Those things do suffer from wear and tear.
So yes, I am satisfied with the service I got from Apple. This computer has been very reliable tool for me. The first one I got suffered from loose Thunderbolt ports and got warranty repair once. The machine suffers from very brief small flicker sometimes in the screen; I believe this is due to wifi interference as mentioned by other people in the internet. I have not used this machine with wifi turned off; I might indeed try that just to see if it makes any difference.
When I was returning from the Apple Store I checked some of the current gen MacBook Pros. I cannot possibly see myself buying one just because of the dreaded keyboard issues so many people are talking about, and also I quite frankly don’t need one at the moment.
I really like Mac OS experience and I can’t see myself moving away from it; no matter how I am tempted to due to the high cost of maintaining Mac. For 3D graphics and heavy video editing I use PC, but for music and pretty much everything else I prefer staying in the Mac platform.
The iMac Pro maintenance thing (as witnessed by Linus Tech Tips and Snazzy Labs) does raise questions about how interested Apple is maintaining their computer line up. I am happy to so far report that my experience was quite good.
Featured in 80.lv and CG Channel
UncategorizedMy free rock height generator got featured in 80.lv and CG Channel. I try to be worthy of the sudden fame.
The generator is available in my Gumroad page for free forever.
Seaside Rocks Substance
SubstanceI created this fully procedural Seaside Rocks Substance. (The source file (.sbs) is now available in Gumroad)
It was quite fun to explore different techniques to create the basic rock shapes and then use tile generator and various techniques to tile them and blend them together.
I was then able to use the same rock I created to cut interesting shapes on top of the rocks to look like they are weathered.
I am quite happy how this turned out except the cracks which need some more work. I am still trying to figure out the most efficient workflow on making those things.
Adding water was really fun and I really like how it added sparkle and additional detail to the material.
In Substance Designer it’s easy to implement more detail to this such as leaves, small debris from sea and really go to town with micro detail. I also think about improving the graph by creating more rock variation, it’s possible to derive them from same base and just change them in graph. Being able to reuse nodes is so nice.
By the way, does anyone know how to split link? I know how to add those split points to make lines flow cleaner but it would be so nice if we could just draw a new line from those split points, so there would be one main line. Making y-like split into a link would be so good for organization sake.
Substance Designer iRay makes substances like these look really, really good. It’s quite easy to forget that actually what we are looking is actually a height map. Even when viewing from perspective, rocks and things like that look almost like they are real rocks with undercuts and bottom, especially when rendered with shadows. Then in game it looks just quite perfect and if real 3D objects are placed on it, the illusion is perfect.
Seaside Rocks Substance graph is quite simple.
I will make Substance with fully tweakable parameters soon. Also Youtube breakdown of the material is coming soon.
If you want to take a look at the substance I created, grab it from Gumroad now.
Also I recommend these Youtube series by Allegorithmic.
My Gumroad site
UncategorizedSome of my most requested Substance projects and models are now available in Gumroad.
Game Asset in Substance Painter Project File
UncategorizedThe Substance Painter project file (.spp) for my Covered Barrels game asset is now available at Gumroad. This is great asset for learning.
https://gumroad.com/l/euZn
DNA Double Helix 3D model
CG assetsI created this DNA Double Helix 3D model in Blender using modifiers and SSS which was super easy to setup in Principled shader introduced in 2.79 for Cycles renderer.
Modeling DNA double helix 3d model using modifiers in Blender is a breeze. Basically the strand was created using a path. If one wants to animate the strand, adding a basic shape key to the path would allow perfect animation as the geometry will follow the path; nice and easy workflow.
The displacement is taking advantage of the adaptive subdivision which for some reason still considered “Experimental feature” in Cycles. This is super efficient as it subdivides the mesh dynamically based on the camera position. This allows more complex scenes to be rendered fully in GPU. Rendering with dual GPUs it was a breeze to come up with nice looking renders, even with effects like depth-of-field.
Lightwave has had the adaptive subdivision feature since early 9 so Blender certainly isn’t the first one in this camp. And I think this feature should be in the main feature set. However, although being called “experimental” the feature is mostly stable and I didn’t have any big issues as long as I kept the subdivisions in reasonable amount.
I did some searching and found out interesting article which mentions that DNA is actually near white. The colours we traditionally add to DNA molecules is just for labeling purposes. I am big fan of the beginning sequence of Prometheus where the Engineer’s DNA is being rearranged. With things like this we can have some artistic freedom.
The model is a good starting point for more complex CG animation setup in Cycles. One could add particles or volumetric lighting to make the environment look like the strand is in some kind of liquid.
You can buy this DNA Double Helix 3D model royalty free at https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/dna-double-helix-blender-3d-model-1211337
Sci-Fi Console
UncategorizedI created this Sci-Fi Console recently for my personal portfolio for UE4. I baked the normal map from high poly using Substance Painter. I’m quite glad about how this turned out with PBR metal-rough workflow.
The model is also available now in Gumroad.
Thousand subsribers
UncategorizedA thousand subscribers in my Youtube channel. Wow. Thank you all.
Live Boolean in ZBrush 4R8 + Array Mesh
UncategorizedHere is an example how we can use Live Boolean in ZBrush 4R8. The feature is super handy- first time we can have accurate real time preview of boolean operation. We can keep working with the mesh pretty much infinitely by adding substract, union or intersect subtools, and we can also arrange these to boolean groups. When are are finished, we can create boolean mesh. This will create new tool for us, leaving the working tool intact. Pretty nice ZBrushey approach to booleans.
Check out the video below on how to create motorcycle engine kind of shapes using Array Mesh and Live Boolean in ZBrush 4R8.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4L07_9pTt8
Low Poly Artifacts in Cycles render (Terminator Artifact)
UncategorizedI made a video about this issue as some friendly folks in Turbosquid pointed out to me the reason I had these low poly artifacts in cycles renders of my models.
It turned out that this effect is not only happening in Cycles but also in Renderman and other packages as well. This is what is known as “Terminator artifact”.
Here is the jagged edges we get in low poly models in Cycles. This is what is called “Terminator artifact”
This has got to do with just how shadows are rendered in polygonal models and actually this is expected behavior. Programmers of Blender Cycles knew very well this would happen. It kind of sucks though and at the moment we don’t have a lot of alternatives except stick with Blender internal render, subdivide our models or use softer lights to reduce the jagged shadows.
This is where Eevee will be super useful. I can’t wait get my hands on it.. (and it will even support Filmic Blender which is awesome).
Here is more information about low poly artifacts in cycles:
https://developer.blender.org/T37814
and here is a more technical explanation of it:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7986/ebd7b5427bbe54edb7c0c9cf674fee817933.pdf
I made video about this topic. Please check it in Youtube.
Disable Wacom circle in Photoshop CC (Windows 10)
UncategorizedI found a way to disable Wacom circle in Photoshop CC; you know that annoying clockwise turning circle that pops up in in Photoshop CC.
While it’s handy to have brush settings available when right clicking, with pen this doesn’t really work. It’s rather annoying and destroys usability of Wacom Tablet in Photoshop.
The fix is to go to Control Panel, Ease of Access Center and click Make touch and tablets easier to use.
Under “See also” there is “Make touch easier to use”. Click that and there is the option for “Press and hold”. Select it and press Settings… There, uncheck “Enable press and hold for right-clicking”. Voila!! A way to disable wacom circle in Photoshop!
This works in the current version of Windows 10. I have heard reports that sometimes Windows resets this setting so it maybe necessary to get back in there and change it back when OS is updated.
It is also possible to disable “Use Windows Ink” in Wacom Tablet Properties, but this will cause Photoshop CC to stop recognizing Wacom tablet pressure so this really wasn’t a fix.
I am using Wacom Intuos Pro M (2014) model. I am not sure if this fix helps users of other tablets, but it’s certainly worth a try.
Also make sure that you have latest drivers for your Wacom tablet from Wacom site.