Posted on August 26, 2009

• My render finished this afternoon (it took around 52 hours if you are counting), but a doctor’s appointment, Ian’s Tae Kwan Do, and putting the kids to bed had to come first. I’ve called this one “Afterglow”, though it doesn’t really bear much resemblance to the original.

  As long as I have been using landscape programs, I have never been able to work with a real (round) planet. I’ve always built my scenes on infinite plains. This only really comes into play if you move the camera really high or move the sun below the horizon. It is basically impossible for the sun to cast light on clouds if it is below the horizon of an infinite plane. Being able to render my scene on a giant sphere makes possible (without cheats) scenes like “Afterglow” where the clouds are lit by a sun that has set. The only light in the scene comes from the clouds and the sky (so it may seem a little dark to some of you).

  It is a scene that I have always wanted to do (this probably won’t be the last you see either) and I’m glad it is now possible. Unfortunately, Vue d’Esprit crashed every for minutes while making this. The planetary render mode was designed to render these spheres from high altitude (think pictures of planets rather than the surface of them) so perhaps that it why it got unstable.

  Anyway, sorry for the long explanation. I hope it was worth the wait!

• If you didn’t catch my Twitter/Facebook updates the past couple of days, I was in San Antonio yesterday with Jessie. The nice folks at Rackspace flew us down to tour their offices and meet the crew. I don’t take many business trips so this was a special treat for me, even though I had to give a little speech (shudder). Anyway, they were wonderful to us and I left with the feeling that my site was in good hands. We even got to see the Alamo(and will never forget it).
• Just a quick note that some new pricing will be rolled out in the next few weeks. I’m not going to say much else beyond the fact that if you like the current price I offer for Lifetime Memberships I would recommend you not wait too much longer.
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Posted on August 24, 2009

• I had hoped to have my render all ready this morning (as I have to go out of town for a couple of days) but a nasty Vue d’Esprit bug reared up and ate it. Completely unusable. I’ve started the render over and will be as careful as can be to have it up when I return Wednesday morning.

  Unfortunately it seems crashes and lost renders are part of the game when you try to push the envelope with 3D software (especially with Vue d’Esprit). I think the project will be worth the wait and I hope you will agree. Unless my computer is struck by lightning the render will be up on Wednesday.

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Posted on August 18, 2009

• Believe it or not I have saved every news post since October 1999. That’s almost 10 years of Digital Blasphemy!

  If you are interested you can now browse the news archive by year. Just mouse over the new “news archive” link on the left hand side and pick a starting point. It runs backwards because I always post the newest news at the top.

  Highlights include: “Ryan has major surgery” (a nadir really), “Jason is born“,”We move to Illinois“, “Ian is born“, “I’m going to be a Dad!“, “Ryan and Jessie get married!“, and last but not least “First house!“.

  There’s a lot of posts and I certainly don’t expect everyone to read it all. Just want you guys to know that it was there.

  The new render should be up tomorrow (fingers crossed).

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Posted on August 16, 2009

• I have added a “New Images Only” Twitter Feed this morning. If you are only interested in when new graphics are posted to the gallery and don’t want to hear anything else from me, you can follow at http://twitter.com/dbnewimages or subscribe to this feed (“http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/66129689.rss“) using your RSS reader of choice.

  This page (along with the “main” DB Twitter account and Facebook Page) will have posts that are a little more in depth, more frequent, and not always related to my graphics.

  All additions to the gallery will be documented as they have been before, but the new feed will be for those who are only interested in the gallery updates and not posts I make in between.

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Posted on August 14, 2009

• What would guys think if I added a smallish thumbnail to my status (see right-hand column) displaying either a tiny version of, or a crop from, the current project I am working on? People could then track a project as it evolves from germ of an idea to “finished” wallpaper.

  The biggest snag that I can foresee is people not liking the direction a project is taking and trying to suggest that I follow their vision rather than my own. Anyway, just wanted to throw that out there and see what you guys thought.

  On a related note: over the past few weeks I’ve been trying to make a post of some kind (on Facebook, Twitter, here or the free gallery) every day. These aren’t always directly related to my work.

  I enjoy checking in from time to time and reading the comments that accompany the post. Since I work out of my home I only have Jessie and the kids to keep me company while working. They are great but I like to hear other viewpoints from time to time.

  Interacting through DB, Facebook, etc helps with the isolation that comes with going it solo. If you are only interested in reading my my wallpapers efforts then I hope we can find a way to make the updates less intrusive but still “discoverable”.

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