An awful day yesterday which began with a sleepless night gripped with stomach pain and vivid nightmares. This meant waking late yet still feeling weary if not exhausted. I decided, in those circumstances, that programming was a good thing to do. It's a perfect way to focus and settle the emotionless mind.
I started to program Argus, simple upgrades and fixes, at first slower and more difficult than anticipated. Then I had to set up my parents new television, but they weren't happy with the size, so this was, over the course of the day swapped for another, and I spent more time, stress, and constant shouting from my father, setting up the new machine. It looks and works well, but of course my father hates it, everything, and everyone, as is his character.
Steady work on Argus continued, and later at night, some initial painting of the masks and Salomé daisy prop.
Argus changes were completed this morning from 7am to 9, an early programming session of peace. The complete changes are (not that this matters to anyone...):
-Sequencer taskbar shows Time from 'from' frame rather than from start of film.
-Option to preserve initial camera and light events when deleting time from the start of a film.
-Option to avoid same consecutive actor number or frames when filling with random data.
-New auto-name option will auto-name costumes and actors when texture name is typed, name actors when costume names are typed, and name tracks after the actor when creating or pasting a first event.
-Darker boundary lines between same-named track groups.
-Three circles option added to F-value context menu, and two, four and eight circles options removed.
-Halve, Double, and Negate options added to F-value context menu.
-Range 0000.dds to xxxx.dds for textures added to Costume display for ease or use.
-Tracks are now split in logical order from top to bottom in a neat staircase.
-Added Bold, Ghost, and Acetate blend modes.
-Include film option added.
-Option to flip/mirror costumes along x/y/z.
-Fix to frame number/mouse pointer not being restored after rendering.
-Option to auto-name tracks.
-Option to merge all subsequent tracks of the same name.
-Full Circle removed from Modulator Depth context menu.
-Halve and Double options added to Modulator Depth context menu.
Mostly small changes, but the new Bold, Ghost, and Acetate modes are interesting; these change the look. Before this only 'Normal' and 'Add' were available ('Add' is D3DBLEND_DESTALPHA, which is exactly like Photoshop's 'Linear Dodge' - this is amazingly useful). Include film gives me the option to create a sequence which does something then load it into another film.
I've written several new songs in the past few days (White, Male and Poor; I'm In Love With My Car; Bitcoin Millionaire; The Loneliness Society) and am keen to get creating. Everything is waiting for the Salome performance to conclude (of course, the music for this must be recorded too). I've set ambitious targets for August, including painting as well as music.
