mkb3/14/25

F. 3/7/2025

I'm working on learning Marvelous Designer. I haven't gotten anywhere directly relevant to the Studio project that I'm working on, but I'm learning. Since the example projects are not immediately relevant, I'm not getting caught up so much on getting the details right. Better to absorb more, faster, than to do less, slower. I can always go back and iron out the details later.

This is the pleated skirt that I made as a half-hearted replication of Persona 5. Obviously, there are some issues. Not sure exactly how to amend it, but that's not pressing.

I woke up at 3am today; got up at 4am.

I went to bed in the afternoon yesterday, getting up around 9pm to touch up my dental and facial care. So, I slept a lot, but I got up early, and it's 1:15pm, and I've been productive.

I played about an hour of Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018). I'm going to be running a D&D oneshot for my undergrad friends in a new setting— that mixes Dark Sun, Wild West, and Mad Max elements— and I bought RDR2 a while back, so I had it— just took a while yesterday setting up the two disks on my PS4.

Anyways, I worked on Marvelous for a little over an hour today. Consistency is going to be the key. Judging by my notes, it's been over a week since I worked in this program. I don't feel especially out of flow in regards to Marvelous, but I didn't start feeling particularly in flow, either. There is work to be done.

Right, so for alla prima, I need to import a character mesh, doing a weapon swing. That's the first step. I've watched the entire refraction weapon trail tutorial, and it's not super complicated, but I just need something for it to act on. I'm going to do that bit— import the mesh and animation— right now.

Ok, so it didn't work importing a Mixamo animation to the base skeletal mesh. I'm going to need to pair it with the matching Mixamo mesh.

Done!

I worked on formatting the 2nd edition of Wanderer's Guide to Dromknost, my D&D book, for about 25 minutes. I had to fiddle with it. I still hadn't discovered a foolproof way to remove the extra vertical black lines in the last rows of the tables— but I found it! I select that row, right click, Cell Options, Strokes and Fills, then change the strokes to Paper (color).

Sa. 3/8/2025

I'm working on the refraction weapon trail currently. It's in Unreal, and I don't want to overload my computer (and make it crash), so I have the tutorial on my phone hooked up to my monitor— at 50% speed. This tutorial is closest and simplest compared to the goal of the refraction trail, but it has no vocal instructions. I watched the entire thing through earlier this week to prep myself. I'm at 2:55 minutes of the 23:18— it's taken like 20 minutes to get this far. And I'm overheating.

So I'm going to take a break!

Later.

I worked in Marvelous Designer for an hour more. I learned how (and why) to make darts (it has a special dart tool; you can also make a dart from a segment's point, i.e. from an edge), how to add buttons and buttonholes, and how to make POINTY SHOULDERS! (Pointy shoulders involve a short horizontal rectangle placed under the shoulder seams, with a lower Particle Distance and Strengthened.) I also just extended my screen onto my monitor— Marvelous doesn't use a lot of computing power, and I appreciated the improved video quality of the course.

I slept in a bit today.

By my new standards, that means that I got up at 6:30am. I was planning on getting up at 4am. Do I wish that I had [gotten up at 4]? Yes; I'm running low on time to get everything done— but I am making the most of it!

I have a new morning routine! I'm still figuring out the order, but I meditate, stretch, write three pages (can be anything; today I wrote some prose fiction), and read 15 minutes. I also didn't use my phone (other than to set a timer for meditation) until 11:45am. I'm trying to see how little I can use my phone (even for music)— especially before noon. I've noticed an increase in cognitive clarity.

There are some things that I've been slacking on.

• I need to work on securing funding for the summer. Haven't really done anything for that.
• I need to work on my upcoming Texturing assignment. It's due Monday, and I haven't even started it. As a grad student, I have to model and texture some plants to go outside of the house. I messaged Mengliu, invoking my right to turn it in 24-48 hours late!

So I will add these to my schedule in the coming days.

Later.

I've been rereading Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore. And I needed to take a break from work— recharge a bit— so I sat down and finished the last two chapters. There are flaws but it truly is one of my favorite books. It possesses all of the comfort, stimulation, and intrigue that reading has offered me since I started reading.

What are my favorite books?

1. Epic by Conor Kostick. I have read this book literally dozens of times. Sometimes, when the need arises, I read it, turn the last page, and start again immediately from the beginning.

2. Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan. See above.

3. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by You-Know-Who. Of all of the last six books in the series, this is my favorite. Things finally get over the crest of maturity into real Darkness. I'm also a sucker for subtle romance. I consistently read the entire series at least once a year— often more.

4. Babel by R.F. Kuang. I've only read this book once (it's too dense to read frequently) but it supplied my linguist brain with a unique concoction of language-specific lore that I have never before, nor since, found anywhere else. I often refer to reading this book (as me, a linguist) as "holding a key to a door that most people don't even know exists, let alone can open".

5. The Binding by Bridget Collins. I often think of this book as the best-written fiction book that I have ever read. It has just the right mixture of light fantasy, gloom, and gay romance. Like Babel, I haven't read it very often (though more than once). It's like a rich dessert; you can't eat it for every meal.

Later.

I just spent 15 minutes trying to get my USB-C to HDMI adapter to work. I blew into the ports? I dunno, but it works now. I worked before, and the issue wasn't the HDMI cable (that worked connecting to my laptop), but it stopped working. Now it works again, so I'm going to work on my weapon refraction trail more.

I just worked on it for 20 minutes more, and now I'm up to 5:07 minutes on the video (50% speed). I'm starting to get ideas on how to make it look less gelatinous and more like brush strokes. It's all based on a Noise generator, which is then iterated on a bunch. So if I make a tiling brush stroke texture, and use that, instead, I'm thinking that it should work. I doubt that I'll have time to experiment with that this Milestone, but Milestones 4 and 5 are all about bringing it together, so I'll have time then.

M. 3/10/2025

I'm working more on the refraction trail. At 5:37, in M_RefTrail_01, a 1 and a 2 constant are connected to a Lerp Interpolate, which is then connected to the material's Refraction element. But the issue is that my material node didn't have an active Refraction element. So I had to activate it on the left menu, but I had to choose the type of refraction. I chose Index of Refraction, but I really don't know if that's right. In the video, it just has "Refraction" on the material node. If it doesn't work, that may be something to play with.

Ah ha! At 6:09, it manually changed the refraction to Pixel Normal Offset. Potential problem solved!

Double ah ha! I now have the beginnings of a weapon refraction trail! It's still gelatinous— but it will remain so for this Milestone— but it refracts! And it's socketed to the weapon! Ah ha!

I am now at 11:17 minutes.

T. 3/11/2025

I think that I'm not going to keep a whip as the primary weapon for Pareidolia: Unbound. And I'm not keeping the human main character. Instead, the player will be controlling Sir Babbage, a pumpkin-headed warrior, wielding a giant wooden polearm shaped like a honey pot stirrer. It will take two hands to wield, but can be held in one hand when Babbage enacts his ranged attack— still knucklebones, which will shift the perspective from behind and to the right to behind (closer) and to the left. It will still destroy Babbage's left hand and forearm—

Wait.