Category: Art

Art projects and discussions using various tools, including both 2D and 3D tools.

Gemini First Use – But Not Last

I’ve watched the Gemini button at the end of the Google search box for a few weeks ? Months?, but I’ve never tried it until today. Today I had a problem installing Java on Linux and I let Gemini help.

Background

A while ago I wrote a Java program to display artwork in the form of LibreOffice Impress files. The Showrunner program takes a list of Impress files and displays them one after the other and starts the first one after the last one. It is written in Java so that it’s easy to use on Windows or Linux.

I just got a new Mini system [5″ x 5″ x 3″] system. Basically a folded up laptop with 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD and it came with Windows 11 Pro – Yuck. So my first task was to install Linux Mint 22.3.

Installing Linux Mint 22.3 went without a hitch. But to use ShowRunner I needed to install Java. I tried to just install it. And that looked like it worked, but didn’t when I tried to run the program.

Continue reading “Gemini First Use – But Not Last”

AI Creating Fake YouTube Thumbnails

Over the past year or so I’ve noticed that AI is increasingly being used to create thumbnails for YouTube videos. These thumbnails are outlandish in many ways, presumably to attract views to the videos. Let’s start by looking at channels that preview new tools. Here are some of the thumbnails that I’ve seen recently:

Here are some of the examples that I created with Local AI.

Looks like fake forestry tools are pretty easy to make.

Continue reading “AI Creating Fake YouTube Thumbnails”

Run AI Locally

Note: While the Banner for this post, and the images were created by AI, the text was created, for better or worse solely by me.

As you may have, I’ve been watching the progress of AI to generate images and even videos for a couple of years now. I’ve not been interested in “signing up” for one of the services since it is pretty clear that it will run into a lot of money to do anything serious. However, I have a couple of extra computers with GPUs so I thought it would be time to try to run AI image generation locally.

ComfyUI Seems Too Complex

I took a look at ComfyUI. It looks way too complex. While I’m familiar with the concept of connecting the boxes – from texture creation in Blender among other places – I’d rather just check some boxes and paste in a prompt.

After some looking around I found Pinokio.

Continue reading “Run AI Locally”

Thanos Didn’t Do the Math

Thanos Infinity Gauntlet.jpg

I keep tripping across this flawed thinking in the Marvel Universe. And with the new movie coming out recently, maybe it’s time to remind us of the flaws. I’m not rushing out to the movie. I’ll see it when it comes to Netflix. But, as far as I can tell, Thanos is an idiot with no math or astronomy skills. Here are some of the reasons I say this:

If you HALVE the population of any critter in a constrained environment – and apparently Thanos’ “snap” halved the population of all critters in the universe, according to this account – then it doesn’t really take that long for the population to recover. Most populations follow a Leaning “S” curve, this is because growth slows as resources are depleted. So, if the population is suddenly reduced by half, it will make a sudden jump in growth rate to compensate and if the resources available are the same, it will recover to the same level. So snapping only has a short term effect. And I’m not even talking about the Avengers returning from the Phantom Zone or wherever they went. But then what?

Continue reading “Thanos Didn’t Do the Math”

DesignSpark – Easy to Use CAD

DSM Shelves with Dimensionsxx.png

DesignSpark Mechanical is an Easy to Use CAD tool. I’ve done a few hours research over the past few days to figure out a quick to use FREE CAD tool that can be used to draw wood working projects and dimension them to produce drawings for building home projects.

As you may know from my site, I’m a long time user of 3D Art software including 3DSMax and Carrara. But these are expensive. Even Carrara costs more than $250.

I’ve looked at FreeCAD, Blender and a host of others. But the idea is to find something free that’s as easy to get going as possible and allows you to produce drawings with dimensions. There is no doubt that FreeCAD, and Blender can do this, but FreeCAD is quirky – at least for me – and Blender has a very high initial learning curve and no dimension tool built in. There may be plug-ins for that, but that is more learning curve.

Continue reading “DesignSpark – Easy to Use CAD”

TurPunkenClaus – For the Lazy Holiday Decorator

I like to decorate for the Holidays, but I’m a lazy decorator. I’d like to have a single yard ornament to put up before Halloween and remove after new years. I’ve designed the perfect thing. You might call it one of several things and you might make it in various ways.

TurPunkenClaus

Continue reading “TurPunkenClaus – For the Lazy Holiday Decorator”

Hypercosm Fails in Firefox 3.X

Update: Fixed in a new release of the Exporter. A working version of the scene is here.

Fails in Firefox 3.0.12 and 3.5.2. Website reported as a failed site.

Using Max 2009 on Vista x86, SP1, I created and exported a simple scene with a knot, 3 lights and a camera.

Here is the scene on this website.

The model does not play in Firefox 3.0.13, either from the file system or from this website.

It does play in MS IE 8 both from the file system or from the website.

The samples on the hypercosm website play in both MSIE 8 and Firefox 3.

Continue reading “Hypercosm Fails in Firefox 3.X”