I had been handling these as four separate video textures, but it's just too confusing to manage, especially since they really need to be synchronized.
Kdenlive to the rescue: I just used the transform effect to assemble them into a single video texture, and then adjust all the textures to read from this. Synchronization is then just set up in this video file, making the Blender part much less hassle.
These have been through a lot. The two larger screens were animated by Timothee Giet. Then I created the two touchpanel displays using Inkscape and ffmpeg. And I fixed the timing and framerate on them using Kdenlive earlier. Now I'm taking the PNG streams and reassembling them to get them synced properly.
A-ha. I thought this bear was looking a little plainer than I remembered! I found and re-applied the texture!
Better.
Still have to figure out how my video display rigging works (or you know, whether it works).
BTW, the bear hanging in the Soyuz is quite realistic. They often hang a plushie of some kind inside the vehicle. I suppose this is partly for aesthetic reasons, but the official reason is that it gives a reference on camera for what's happening with the vibration and gee-forces inside the module.
It wasn't until I looked at the fully-rendered shot that I realized I had screwed up the rocket's position in this shot. I realized that we were actually able to see under the rocket, and that's not right! The engines are below the deck, pointing down through the hole into the flame pit when it's sitting on the pad.
Fixed now, and I'm re-rendering it.
The Soyuz actually sits (or hangs?) on those four gantry arms you see connecting just above the pod stages.
During the launch, the weight of the rocket is offset by the thrust, so the force changes direction, and then the gantry arms swing rapidly out of the way, clearing the rocket. I suspect this is purely mechanical rather than timer-controlled, though my research didn't actually tell me that.
The upper gantries are for stage and payload access prior to the launch, and include the elevator to take the crew up to the spacecraft on top. The fueling arm is invisible on the back from this perspective. #Lunatics#Blender#Render
I have to admit that I kept wondering what would happen if you accidentally dropped the rocket into the hole when transferring from the erector arm to the gantry, and whether that has ever happened!
What a mess that would be to clean up! (No crew in the rocket at that point, although there would be pad crew on the gantry, and that would at least scare the piss out of you, even if it didn't make you fall).
I assume there are fail-safes to keep that from happening, but it was a disturbing image. 😱
I supposing something like it could happen if the booster stages flamed out for some reason, coming off the pad. But then, the crew would hopefully be saved by the escape rocket system (which is that little tower on the top).
There are a LOT of safety issues to think about when designing a space launch system, to be sure.
I do not remember planning this reflection shot, but I don't think I could align it better if I tried!
It's quite hard to plan reflections, because I can't see them without doing a full render (or at least, a full paint render -- the ink lines aren't necessary). I spent a lot of time tweaking angles to get them to come out the way I wanted in the "Press Conference" scene, with the intervening glass.
Here we see a strong reflection, because there is no outside light coming in the porthole -- the Soyuz is still inside its launch faring at this point (they are still sitting on the pad for this shot, which is just prior to ignition). #Lunatics#Blender#Render#Animation
Huh. You know what's weird, though? We can't see Hiromi and Sergei's suit visors. Only Georgiana's. I know they are present in the direct shot, but they're not showing up in the reflection.
I thought it was probably this: the "Traceable" option wasn't selected on the visor materials for Hiromi and Sergei's suits. Selecting that, and re-rendering this frame, I get a better result.
It may seem like a pile-on by now to Premier Danielle Smith and the United Conservatives.
The Tory-run Ontario government came out Wednesday sounding the same alarm about Alberta's pension-plan flirtation as have (deep breath) Justin Trudeau, Pierre Poilievre, the Alberta NDP, BC's premier, Newfoundland and Labrador's premier, the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, seniors' groups, organized labour, the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses, and pension experts
"When Alberta fought Ottawa on carbon tax and the Impact Assessment Act, it had fellow provinces joining the court fight. When it tried axing equalization in a referendum, others looked the other way. But this is an anti-federal Alberta initiative that its neighbours and Confederation confreres see as a hostile, nation-damaging act."
#Republicans are truly the dumbest people on the planet. Imagine being an adult in #elected office and believing that someone's fashion choices are indicative of their #ideology. How TF is a #hoodie proof that someone is a #Marxist? This is just the latest #evidence that none of these #rightwing#lunatics have even the slightest idea what #Marxism is. To them, it's just a generic #pejorative for anyone they don't like. Shame on you if you #vote for these #clowns.
After much testing and careful comparison shopping, I determined that for what it is costing me to run my "virtual studio" site (which includes this Misskey, but also other services) on cloud services from Digital Ocean, AWS, and Backblaze, I should be able to run the whole thing from a single colocated server, which will greatly improve performance and capacity.
So I bought an off-lease Dell Poweredge R720, some new drives for it, and have plans to move it into a datacenter in Dallas (which is nearby).
This is a new adventure for me! First time I've tried this.
It's just sitting on a shelf, here, where I can hook it up for testing.
Another blooper, I guess. I apparently have not got correct isolation between my rig controls for the flame plumes from the core-stage and those for the pod-stages. So there is now flame mysteriously emerging from the vacuum!