Welcome to Day 6 of my 30-day 3D Design Challenge. I watched instructional video #7 in the list last night so that my subconscious mind could start generating ideas for today. What I decided is that the video quickly begins adding steps under the topic of Symmetry and Repetition. When the video jumped to adding symmetry and repetition at the layer level and then upped it to the global layer level just to switch over to the group level I had a feeling that “…this is something I understand right now but someday soon I will be working on a project and get stuck or confused about what I am controlling“. In other words, I felt a bit like I was peering into the 5th dimension for the first time. Maybe, this has to do with how the content was designed or how the video was created but it probably has more to do with my lack of experience with 3D design. So, I have decided to break this topic into two parts. I will cover
Day 6 – Part 1 – Symmetry and Repetition on the layer level and on Day 06
Day 7 – Part 2 – Symmetry and Repetition on the group level on Day 07
Part 1 – Symmetry and Repetition on the layer level
When the video starts the instructor explains where symmetry can be found at the bottom right of the screen and in the Actions menu when you right-click. What is interesting is that symmetry is set per layer but then it can also affect your design globally, at the scene level with nothing selected. I think this second part is why adding the group symmetry concept with this same video was just too much for me in a single lesson, but again I am a NOOB with this 3D design stuff, so I want to be very clear about that. It’s not the Adobe instructor, it’s me. I have kept the demonstration today in the 3 separate raw videos.
Video 1
Video 2
Video 3
Thanks so much for watching! Learning is not easy so thanks for the support!
Tools
Symmetry
Radial Symmetry
Repetition
Radial Repetition
David Kolmer
I generated this content after watching this amazing instructional video by Adobe:
The stamps live next to the primitives as a shape option for the clay tool and the erase tool.
Stamps can be in any shape! Also, Adobe Modeler comes with preinstalled stamps!
Check out what I came up with in the video, stay tuned below for more detailed step-by-step information on how stamps work.
Video of my creating
What are Stamps?
Stamps are based on meshes rather than the math of the primitives (essential tools for clay building) The outcome is that there are fewer options to change the Dynamics of the shape (like Taper, Fillet, Round, etc.) You can see above that Size is the only option to change the Dynamics of the stamp tool selected. Although, Single, pressure, and steady are still options which is a great thing.
There are two ways to make Stamps
First Way to Make a Stamp
You can make a stamp from a layer.
Select the layer
Right-mouse click to open the Actions menu.
Select the Stamp Icon
I want to point out that if you are working in VR the stamps in the tray are previewed in 3D. I just think that is amazing.
You can click on the create stamp icon anytime you are editing, because when you are editing you have a layer selected.
Second Way to Make a Stamp
You can import stamps as mesh files inside the app.
Modeler currently supports importing stamp meshes files in these formats:
OBJ
FBX
USD
GLTF
IMPORTANT: These files must be added through the app, you can not just dump them into the Window where MOdeler stores stamps. (Adobe > Adobe Substance 3D Modeler > Stamps)
Day 4 of my 3D Modeling 30-Day Challenge I have been wondering if Adobe 3D Modeler should be used for creating organic outdoor landscapes. It makes sense that this sort of scene would come up in the topic of “Resolution” because this file became very large very quickly.
In the video, I say that “I noticed resolution but it didn’t really click on what that was.” So, for the record: I know what resolution is and I should have brought more of my Adobe Photoshop knowledge to the table. What I meant to say was that it didn’t click how relevant or significant the resolution would be to file size. Then add to that the ramifications of delay to process certain morphs, smoothing, or the simple act of saving or opening the file.
I timed opening the file at 17 seconds but I noticed I missed 2 seconds in the beginning so it was probably an actual 15. Then I lowered the resolution, saved, and timed reopening the file. I lowered the resolution so low that the ground was actually damaged and had holes in it. So, too far! but the open time went down to 4 seconds with an actual of probably 1 or 2 seconds. So definitely improved the file-open time with a lower resolution.
Day 04 Resolution – 3D Model 30-Day ChallengeDavid Kolmer is an Instructional Designer and facilitator who does not know how to design in 3D. His goal in this rough cut series is to change that and be able to make a logo in 3D for his brand.
I am going to teach myself how to create 3D objects in the virtual space. I don’t know how to use Adobe Substance Modeler, Adobe Substance Painter, or Adobe Substance Designer, nor do I know how to use Adobe Substance Stager. I am going to spend the next 30 days taking the free Adobe Tutorials on at least Adober Substance Modeler and sharing my experience here. We will see how it goes!
Upon taking some preliminary video courses I have learned that this can lead to designing in Virtual Reality and Augmented reality and I want to be very clear that, this is my ultimate goal. For now, I want to build a logo for my brand and I am thinking that the 3D space might be easier than Illustrator. I have some basic designs in Illustrator and they look well… flat.
So far I have been working in Adobe Illustrator which to be fair I have not used in over a decade. I like it, it is very powerful. HUGE shout out to my buddy Luke Lindberg who has been holding my hand through this process. You are the man Luke. If you need a graphic designer, then hit him up!
What I love about living in 2023 is that if you want to learn something new chances are the platform that makes the product you want to learn is producing high-quality learning content and sharing it on Youtube for free! HOT JAMS! Just look at this, 10 fresh clean learning artifacts that walk me through the process. I would be mad to not take advantage of this! Adobe Tutorials “https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB0wXHrWAmCwrvuebNKHc7rooXkkVDwln“
So, I am jumping in, I am teaching myself something I know nothing about. So let’s look at what I came up with. You can tell by the concerned look on my face in the next video! This is not the face of a man who knows what he is doing. This is the face of a man who is vulnerable and swimming in waters he does not know.
After Working with the First 3D Substance Modeler Tutorial #1
So, to be candid. I created something and it didn’t work because I was just messing around with the shape of the brush and not actually creating something. Then when I went to reopen the file there was nothing there because I didn’t create anything. So I actually created this after watching the second tutorial but it relates to the first tutorial so I will share it first.
After Working with the First 3D Substance Modeler Tutorial #2
In this tutorial, it became clear how to use the creation “gizmo” or “brush”. You can press the “e” key to set it to a transparent object for erasing. Or you can press the “c” key to create in clay. I am still not clear on what pressing the “c” key does. It sort of bakes the clay and then you can’t erase what you have already done. I really dug in here and created many layers to get an idea of what the limits were.
I am really excited to enter this new space. Even if these aren’t the tools I eventually need to create VR and AR experiences learning these skills will be valuable when I do. I would like to thank the learning team at Adobe who put these learning playlists together. YouTube really is the best LMS on the planet Earth.
If you had to nail it down, what is consistency? How would you go about being more consistent?
31 days ago, I shared a post on Consistencyand I would like to follow up with my progress using this word to guide my 2023. I made some heavy claims at the end of that post and so far I am holding to all of them, and have even added a few, 31 days later. I have also added that I will not eat any processed sugar. That has grown into me learning about and following Ketogenic meal plans and bumping the gym visits from 2 days a week to 3 days a week. I have also started intermittent fasting with my newfound fullness of burning only fat and not sugar as fuel. It has been easy for me to not eat for 16 to 20 hours each day.
I hesitated to share my deeper feelings about this concept in my first post but I will do so here.
Consistently Who?
Consistency? Consistently me? … Well, who is that!? I change my mind all the time!
The Fleeting Soul
In college, I took a class called Introduction to Philosophical Problems with the great Professor Robert Money. We read a short trialogue, in which I remember many details other than the title of the work itself. (I will reach out to Prof. Money to get the deets if I can.) In this debate, a religious character is on their deathbed and then two colleges visit him. The two visitors are confused about how the religious person can be so calm. The religious character explains his faith in the traditional Socratic concept that the body will decay but when he dies his soul will separate from his body and travel to the afterlife. The character Philo challenges the mystic by claiming we change our perspective, mood, (basically our identity) from moment to moment. Philo the mystic asks how the religious man can believe in a single soul when we manage to change our mind or the full course of our lives in a single moment. Philo argues that there is a stream of souls passing through a person at any given moment.. and then of course the third character is an Aetheist and laughs at them for believing in souls at all.
I would say that Philo the mystic has a good case here. Maybe that is because I am agnostic. I’m not the atheist who will claim I can’t weigh the soul so it’s not real. However, the idea is by nature abstract. If I do have a soul then what is it? Is the mind the seat of the soul? I like this image of us having a continuous stream of souls passing through us because that is what life feels the most like. When I see pictures of myself from decades before, I sometimes have to take a moment to even recall that moment in time. Other times I can’t remember it at all. Getting old is a journey.
Is being consistent really about who you are? Or more about how you want to be perceived?
The Curse of the New Years Resolution
A friend asked how my “New Year’s Resolution” was going at a party two weekends ago. It struck me to the core. I thought, “I dare you label this effort a new years resolution! Besides, I wrote in my blog that I am trying out this word for the year. I intend to keep these plans.
This was my daughter’s birthday party where I ate veggies, pulled beef off the sandwiches, and served cake, but ate no cake. That’s not how I acted just two weeks before. Not even close. I would have had multiple sandwiches and two servings of cake, and I probably would have served beer at the party.
To be fair I drank more than my fair share of alcohol on new years night 2022 and then gave up alcohol the next day. So I suppose my friend’s statement of this being a “new years resolution” rings true. What bothers me is this understanding that people don’t follow New Year’s resolutions. To my benefit, I am also following my first two guiding principles, honesty, and consistency.
So, let’s start with a 1-month update on how How do I plan to implement consistency in my life, and how I’m doing…
I have given up caffeinated coffee since November 24th, 2022, and replaced it with adaptogenic mushroom beverages. I have added a cup of caffeine here and there but only when I’m working out.
I have consistently sat in meditation or yoga for at least 10 minutes a day.
I am not drinking any alcohol for January 2023 and plan to keep this going indefinitely.
I have hidden my cell phone when I am around my children and this has only been an issue once or twice when Zoom popped up from work.
I am building models and figures with my children less often than I would like, but the LEGO building has definitely increased, and I have stepped up to build some incredible aquariums for my kids which I can share later.
I am helping my children read books every day. I have also started flash cards with the younger child.
When I speak I am working on focusing on being calm and honest, and maintaining my true calm and thoughtful demeanor (as much as possible), this has remained a challenge for me but my new diet has helped me improve on this.
I have not gone Disc Golfing much at all, but the ground is covered in ice right now so I have focused more on the gym.
“I will consider going to the gym once in a while.” This is the promise that I didn’t make but was able to keep. I started with 2 times a week but have bumped that up to 3 times a week. I am using the free Strong Lits App. and linking that up to send data to the YMCA app where I track my other activities from the gym and all steps counted by my phone.
Since following this new way of life, I have found some new ones.
I will not eat breakfast and will not eat after 7 PM.
I will not consume carbohydrates.
For now, I will not eat any food that has been found to increase the glycemic index. (Potatoes, carrots, apples, bread, candy, alcohol, etc.)
I will go to the gym three times a week and spend at least 15 minutes on the elliptical and then do a 5X5 Stronglifts set. (below)
What I like about the free StrongLifts app is it takes your weight and looks at how often you workout and then slowly increases the weight as you go. The great thing about resistance training is you continue to burn calories after you lift for repair.
No Sugar
I am not eating any sugar and I have also cut out fruit that increases the glycemic index. So not eating bananas, oranges, mango, grapes, raisins, dates, pears, etc. But I am eating berries, plums, kiwi fruit, grapefruit, etc.
I found a video, (or the video found me) about the benefits of cutting sugar by Dr. Berg.
Ketogenic
I have also given up starches and grains to switch over to burning fat as my fuel instead of sugar.
I have to say that burning fat is keeping me full for much longer. Intermittent fasting has been much easier than ever before and two weeks ago I only ate a huge salad with meat, eggs, and cheese at 1:30 PM and then hearty soup at 4 PM. That was it. That’s all I ate all day, and I feel super full! Last Monday I only ate one meal at 4 PM.
A Whole Lemon Blended with Tumeric
Another thing that I had heard about was throwing a whole lemon in a blender and blending it up with some ice, stevia, and water for a snack while “Fasting” There is a debate whether eating lemon juice during a fast will “Break the fast”. The juice from a whole lemon is 3 carbs. However, if you blend the whole lemon and drink it all it does not raise your glycemic index, i.e. does not cause you to generate insulin, so as far as a state of ketosis is concerned you are not breaking your fast. I have also started throwing a fresh rhizome of turmeric in this shake and taking it with a 1/4 teaspoon of sea salt.
Workout During my Fasting
Something I just started to try out was going to the gym during my fast and seeing how I felt. I did that this morning at 10 AM and I still didn’t feel hungry until 12:30 PM. Then I ate a shake with a whole avocado, some organic cream, walnuts, strawberries, raspberries, water, stevia, and ice. It’s 3:19 PM now and I’m still not hungry.
Striving for a New Self
Perhaps consistency is just striving for a path to keep me coming back to my best self; to keep me honest. I am going to consistently accept Lou Reed’s “New Found Man”. I am finding that I am coming back to things that worked for me in the past. It’s like I am living my life like a track list of “David’s Greatest Hits”. What’s interesting is that these are things that people have shared with me that worked for me and now I am going back to them. Just like the song by Lou Reed that was shared by my friend Bart Ringer.
If you have ever taken a class on play analysis or studied theater in school you might have heard the word stasis. Stasis is another word for peace or rest. When a play starts something happens that breaks the characters out of stasis and the play is about the action the characters take to return to stasis. I feel like when I was traveling the world and making a living doing theater, stunt work, and teaching English; my goal was to live in a state of broken stasis. I was young and that was a cool way to live, it made my life seem interesting, but it was exhausting. Now that I am older and I have kids and own a couple houses I think I have redefined that goal. All I want to do is find a way to return to stasis. I don’t listen to music because I think it’s cool anymore. I listen to it because it relaxes me.
Bigs up Your Vocation
I had a phone call with a mentor (an official unofficial sponsor) of mine who recommended a book titled “The Art of Work“. I started listening to the book soon after our call. I found a YouTube video where an AI bot is reading the whole book. It is creepy that a bot is reading me the book, but I kind of like it and I have been listening to the book while I organize spreadsheets of eLearning content I am curating. This book is giving me a path. It’s giving me a mental model of what building a career and mastering a trade can provide.
The opening of the book talks about how the meaning of the word “Vocation” has lost some of its glory. In the past, a vocation was a calling or a mission. It was often reserved for those being called to work for spiritual or religious endeavors. One thing that struck me is that the book lays out 7 layers of a master. I will write more about this in a future post but for now, I wanted to identify that the layers build on each other. You don’t just complete number 1 and then move on to number 2. You complete 1, Awareness, and that is the base that you use for #2 Apprenticeship.
So to apply this to my word for 2023 of Consistency, it should build off of my theme for 2022, Honesty. So having consistency without honesty will not work.
So for this year, I will be: Consistently Honest So, I’m getting closer to how to be Consistent.
Just getting drunk on new years eve and then waking up the next day and saying I will give up alcohol for January is the first step, but it’s not the path I need to be on. It is not my “path with heart”. If I write these things down and publish them to the world for all of my millions of readers, or even just a couple (thanks for the support Mom.); then I have put the idea out there and even if just one person reads it, I will feel more compelled to follow through.
So, consistently who? Well Consistently the new me. Who is that? Well, I think it’s more of a how. How do I want others to perceive me?
In my previous post, I dug deep and shared about a position I held as an Instructional Designer; where I was not passionate and my skills were not well aligned with the needs of the learner. So, here are the top 5 things I learned from the most challenging Instructional Design job I have had so far.
Let Go, Your EGO
Think less about how you are being perceived by others, Focus on the value you can add to the business.
I was trying to add value to the department I was serving. However, I was thinking too much about myself and not enough about the needs of the business or, more importantly, the needs of the learner.
Let Your Interests Guide you
Do not work for an industry you are not pasionate about, seek out your passion.
This topic almost seems idealistic because we have heard it so much. In my current position, I am engaged because the industry I serve is electrical components and electric systems. I find it terrifyingly interesting. When I worked at insurance I felt a bit like I was serving an economically dark lord. I realize I was not working for the satan, but from my perspective, according to my truth, I might as well have been. A person much wiser than I once uttered, “
“Choose a job you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life” – CONFUCIUS
Strive for New Skills
Do not fall back on the skills you have, Seek out new skills.
It is easy to skate by on the skills that have served you best in the past. However, as a learning professional, “The way we have always done it” or “I’m going to use the tool I know best” does not always produce the best outcome for the learner. So, as a principle, force yourself to seek out new tools and identify where they would be useful. However, do not use them simply because they are new.
Enhance, Don’t Rebuild
Use the tools already in place, and then enhance or build on them.
This is huge, and this ties directly back to letting go of your EGO. Don’t build something new just to say, “Look, I made something new.” Often times what is in place is working so don’t touch it. Instructional Designers and even higher-level learning architects do not have to be Organizational Development experts. It’s not our job to reorganize the business so it works better. (Although, sometimes it feels like the fails of business structure are flung onto the easy targets in the training department.)
Use the systems that are in place and find ways to enhance the way people interact with them.
If learning content exists then use it and build on it, do not scrap it and start over unless you have to.
Learn From Failure
Learn From Failure
Don’t let your ego get in the way of learning new skills, fail head first with passion and then learn from your mistakes to improve.
If we do not feel comfortable failing, then we never truly grow.
I recently completed listening to the LOKI series on the If You Ask Betty Podcast, where Betty and her guests discuss how LOKI is every learner and our goal is to find and reach for our glorious purpose.
Another key point in the 5-part series by BettyDannewitz is that failure is fundamental in this process of discovering your glorious purpose. In the Television show by Disney+, LOKI (link to trailer) fails so bad that we can perceive him as an anti-hero. However, when LOKI meets Morpheous and is really challenged to the core, his path diverts, he can start to embrace his failure as legitimate and use that experience as a moment of learning.
“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” –ALBERT EINSTEIN
—Albert Einstein
Did you know that Albert Einstein could play the violin?
Improvement Dave 