@Mike-Amos said in Elephant in the room: Sidling up to putin and dumping on just about everyone else does nobody any good. My thoughts exactly. This sh*tshow is bad for everyone -except for Russia and China. I'm guessing Trump is wooing Putin because he'd like to drive a wedge between the Russians and the Chinese, but honestly, I'd be surprised if that worked. I'm rather sure, on the other hand, that he'll manage to diminish the US's standing and influence. Also, if Trump and Musk continue to dismantle the American government, they'll likely leave the US's democracy in an perilous state. Which is worrisome.

There are numerous issues with mechanical hearts, none of which are dealt with in this or any current heart replacement. By the time this style of product becomes viable, there ios a greater chance ofT-cell replacements which will be a true replacement but budget requirement mean that these folk continue to spout nonsense about being available now and SOON a permanent solution. No bucks, no Buck Rodgers is a good analogy. Does anyone remember the flying car with eight engines and no need for a pilots license of quite a few yonks ago? He was charged for his fraud and sent to prison. The genetic replacement, grown from the patients own T-cells harvested from bone marrow, will also obviate the need for anti rejection drugs required with donated hearts. This WILL revolutionise the organ replacement world and remove the trade in stolen organse too. Not a pretty subject to research should anyone care to look around the subject. Consider also, gender reassignment surgery. What would that mean there also? Legal and political minefield, like the research done by a Moscow sewer department chemist who discovered and refined the properties of bacterial hunting bacteria much like the slug/snail relatives that are carnivores hunting their own kind and available in most gerden centres. The Moscow chemist? When the wall came down and the USSR became a footnote, western companies went in and took the lot, killed it so they could sell antibiotics costing a bloody fortune. Our tax money at work...........

Loving it

I can believe, it's NOT butter.

It has been downgraded to a category 1 cyclone lets hope it stays on that trajectory

If that is path tracing then they have a bit of catchup to do to get it to same levels as competitors. My opinion is this is some type of hybrid path-tracing that utilizes realtime effects. The DOF in particular looks like realtime DOF because it is struggling to blur correctly as it moves from focal distance to unfocussed. Or its method to do DOF is still not as good as a competitors. Unreal added path tracing initially as a tool to compare realtime with path tracing results. This allowed those using realtime to tweak scenes to get as close as possible to a photoreal result. It's intent was to not be a production ready rendering solution. That said it is still a very competent rendering solution but cannot be compared to Vray, Redshift etc as those have years in the game making both biased and unbiased light path engines. But from a realtime aspect Epic is as far ahead as anyone could be.

@Rich-O-Brien There is 2 versions the first one was hardwood and it was so hard to sand because you are always sanding end grain which was like an Anvil. the second one was in a soft wood whish took 2 people 2 day to sand, hefty but lighter that you think

Cheers Mike, interesting time we live in, and I say that being scared of the direction we are going in, I am not very optimistic, quantum computing and AI sends shivers down my spine

Now I am available for one-on-one sessions. Please do not hesitate to reach me out for drawing or watercolor sessions: https://www.skillshare.com/en/user/majid and here is my latest course: https://skl.sh/3PyOc70

Like everyone here, I have dealt with variable thickness lines and smudges on 'blueprints. I even made a Venetian Gondola which deliberately has completely different hull lines left to right. Interestin to say the least. I get peeved when a straightforward canoe, which has a symmetrical design. is so bastardised is suggested as a 'blueprint'. Just an observation and I will make of it what I can for practice sake. Got to laugh a bit more and use emoti thingy's perhaps.

I looked up your first post. It appears that you linked to images hosted on ImageShack. Maybe you can contact them to see if they still have them somewhere. Perhaps they are still there if you log in to your ImageShack account. [image: 1739457889331-screenshot-2_13_2025-8_43_43-am.png]

@Rich-O-Brien Right? Microsoft always has the same cut and paste answers. It was sort of by accident that I found the answer and as is often the case I had to find the answer myself. I was bolt up trying to fix this thing since Friday and 20 packs of cigarettes later I fixed the damn thing. Maybe this is the answer for the commonly disappearing start menu with other people? I don't know. I should add that the answer I found wasn't directly associated with my issue. All I saw was "Windows Font Cache" and went from there. I saw Cirque du Soleil many moons ago in San Francisco.

I'd rather not mate, I thought all the people who thought like that were in politics........

I've 3 under 16. They see me do stuff all the time in 3D and understand the fundamentals. Kids have a ton of options to get into 3D. Roblox, a gaming sandbox, allows them to delve into coding, modelling and animation. My eldest lad does tech drawing and engineering in school and it's Autodesk products that are pushed. But he did do the Donut Tutorial in Blender and nailed it. There's also apps like Godot that are great to get kids into coding, game creations and 3D. I think if SketchUp was part of the school curriculum here then maybe there would be more uptake. But Open Source software is easiest point of entry for kids interested. It comes down to parents and teachers helping them discover 3D. As soon as it becomes homework you've put a red flag up!

@L-i-am said in retopology?: @L-i-am Thanks Rich, might it be easier to import the model into blender? There's a workflow I use where I exported quad meshes from Blender to OBJ format. Thomthom's Quadface Tools has an OBJ import that converts the OBJ quads to SU quads. Its probably a topic I should put together an article on so users can benefit from that type of pipeline. Having it my head it not benefitting anyone. I know @panixia also has a particular approach to go from SU to Substance Painter and support UDIMs which is something the community would benefit from.

@L-i-am said in Clothworks and subD: @Rich-O-Brien Very good result. When you build a model for subD do you start with a plane, extrude the face, then scale rotate and move that plane, and on and on to create the quads. Is that the basic way to create the the model for subD? Not really. I'd make the most primitive silhouette possible... [image: 1737214786259-1bfce7c1-fd89-41ed-b11b-41aa3072d694-image.png] Then I add some loops and begin shifting them about to get some type of crude volume... [image: 1737214942023-5e947dd6-e673-4d4f-a0e9-060ef3cb0ce3-image.png] It's easy if you start with a very crude silhouette to begin with then just iterate from there. Saving snapshots as you go.

Mea culpa, I must think things through a bit mnore.

Quite au fait with saturated and non saturated fats mate. I agree totally as the cardiac and stroke threat is real especially when we get on in life. Nothing is quite so simple as it first appears but this does seem to be a piece of kit that just works. I did the Turkey crown and roast veggies in a little under an hour and both heating zones 'Synch' so they are ready at the same time. A rather handy piece of programming inho. I will hopefully improve as I gain expeirence but frankly, I am, very happy to NOT have a standard oven.

That about say's it all. Great sentiment and thanks for posting. I wish everyone the very best for christmas and the new year, make the next year one to remember for all the right reasons.