iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 09/08/2026

Who at StackOverflow thought this was a good idea?

A screenshot from StackOverflow showing a comment. The relative date on the comment shows "Over a year ago", but when I hover over it, it says "2014-04-16T14:27:33.843Z", which is over twelve years ago.

taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 17/07/2026

I think I need to start taking it easier. I don't know why I turn all my free time into more work. This is my personal forge, so all of this is stuff done on my off hours.

A commit heatmap from my Forgejo instance, showing multiple contributions for most days over the past year, totaling to 1837 contributions in the last 12 months.

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 07/07/2026

A "bigger on the inside" proof of concept in Blender. This was pretty challenging. The basic effect is pretty easy, with compositing multiple view layers and using a holdout to layer them, but I need to have an object that can extend from the […] [Video] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A still render of the same box, but showing an artifact seam in the lighting

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 03/07/2026

I liked this piece by @sako , so I recreated it in Blender with Geometry nodes. I spent a while mostly doing the Instance Grid node group. I got a simple version working pretty easily at first, but wanted something more robust, with functionality […] [Video] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A screenshot of an Instance Grid geometry nodes node. Gives options for working with the Size and resolution of the grid, as well as options for Margin between instances. Shown options for margins are Margin Type, Margins (relative) as a vector, an Edge Margins checkbox, and a Collapse margins checkbox.

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 11/06/2026

And this is the compositor node graph for the dithering. Yes, it's that simple. It was literally the first stupid hack I thought of, and it actually worked really well. I attached the viewer to the noise texture so you can see why it ends up doing what it […] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A Blender compositor node graph, showing the input image going to a RGB to BW node, and for each pixel, comparing if that is greater than a Noise Texture output (with a scale of 10k). The output of the comparison is piped into a Mix Color node factor, switching between blue and white, and then that output feeds into the image output. The Noise Texture Factor is attached to a Viewer node to show a shockingly regular texture in the backdrop.

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 17/12/2025

Art advent day 9: eggnog Spent a couple days working on this one. Couldn't get the cinnamon (both the powder and the stick) looking just the way I wanted, but it's not terrible. I spent forever trying to deform the cinnamon stick with a curve deform […] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A 3D rendering of a glass of eggnog on a table. The eggnog is in a round glass with a lipped rim. The liquid of the eggnog is separate from a top layer of foam. On top of the foam is a sprinkling of cinnamon, and a cinnamon stick is resting in the eggnog. The glass is resting on a wooden table.

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 14/12/2025

Art advent day 8: Stocking This was a pretty easy one. Just a couple tubes, some cloth deformation in sculpt mode, a quick fur object, and borrowing the candy cane from a previous day. I was going to put it over a fireplace or something, but "Fireplace" is […] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A 3D rendering of a stocking floating in front of a green backdrop. Three red and white candy-canes hang on the furry white rim of the stocking. The body of the stocking is a red velvety fur.

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 12/12/2025

Art advent day 6: Snowman Still 5 days behind. Planning to catch up over the weekend. This one was an excuse to sculpt a decent-enough male basemesh, then destroy it with my horrible rigging and posing skills and wobbly displacement in the snow shader. I'm […] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A 3D rendering of a humanoid snow man. He is wearing no clothes and is made entirely out of snow. He stands in front of a snowy hill, holding a snowball.

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 10/12/2025

Art advent day 5: Missing Way behind on this art advent, mostly due to Metroid Prime 4. Hope to catch up over the next few days, starting Thursday (am DMing The Lost City for some teenagers tomorrow evening, so I don't think I'll have enough time for more […] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A 3D rendering of a knit mitten laying in the snow.

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 10/12/2025

[Metroid Prime 4 review with some spoilers] Just finished #MetroidPrime4 with 100% scans. It was ok, but I really didn't like it all that much on the whole. I was really looking forward to this game, and like most things I'm excited about, I didn't look […] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A Metroid Prime 4 end screen, showing Samus Aran in front of a purple background. To the left of Samus is the following text:

MISSION COMPLETE
Scans Collected 100%
Items Discovered 95%
Time Played 14:47
HARD MODE unlocked
Press A to Continue

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 04/12/2025

Art Advent day 3: Caroling I couldn't really think of anything to do with this one other than literal carolers. It's pretty simplistic and amateurish, but I'm pretty amateur, so I'm not too beat up about it. I'm just glad this thing is getting me actually […] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A 3D rendering of three carolers holding sheet music and singing. They are all the same shape, but with varying skin and clothing colors. A light illuminates them from above like a stoplight. Stone stairs descend behind them.

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 03/12/2025

Today's advent prompt was "Candy Cane". The ribbon doesn't look exactly right, but I couldn't figure it out after a while of hacking at it. I probably need to do some fabric studies; they're definitely a weak point. #Blender #Blender3D #3DArt #Advent #CandyCane #Christmas #Art

A 3D rendering of a candy cane on a striped green background. The candy cane has one thick stripe and two thin ones running in a spiral up its body. There is a green ribbon tied into a bow about halfway up the shaft of the candy.

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 02/12/2025

@amberherbert.bsky.social and I are doing an art advent this year that we threw together. She's doing writing and I'm doing 3D art. Today's prompt was Ice Planet, and this is my bit. The mountains are quite exaggerated, but I still like it as a whole. The […] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A 3D rendering of an icy planet floating in space. The planet has peaks of white snow, descending through a misty vapor atmosphere into smooth, glossy ice oceans. You can see through the glossy surface of the planet to see a glowing ice-blue core. There is a nebula in the background, as well as some stars.

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 29/11/2025

This is the short, 2.5 minute render for comparison.

A 3D render of the One Ring from The Lord of the Rings. The inscription glows a menacing red. The ring lies upon a cloth map of middle earth, and a soft yellow-red light comes from elsewhere in the room.

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 29/11/2025

The #OneRing from #TheLordOfTheRings in #Blender. This actually took quite a lot of effort to get looking good. I tried a handful of different approaches, from boolean modifiers to normal maps, to actually sculpting the letters in (which did not go well) […] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 24/11/2025

This is a follow-up to this post, by the way, in case you want more details: social.axfive.net/@taylor/statuses/… This is the literal, unmodified spectrogram, too (I don't think gotosocial should mutilate it on me). It probably won't be very visible in browser.

A black and white spectrogram of a musical track. It is very narrow and tall, representing 10 bands of frequency across a song measured in centiseconds.

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taylor @taylor.social.axfive.net.ap.brid.gy · 24/11/2025

Follow-up music visualizer video. This time I used Simulation Nodes, and it looks a lot better. For each frequency band, I'm generating an icosphere 60 times per second and shooting them up the Y axis. This one was actually far easier than the way […] [Video] [Original post on social.axfive.net]

A higher-fidelity rendering of the previous video, done with the Cycles render engine. The bands of color glow brilliantly.

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