Bible Animations

 - Snake improvements
The snake was the first thing to be dealt with this week. I spent quite a large amount of time on it in the attempts to re-rig it and see if the kink goes away, but the conclusion, as in the video, was that it was only reduced, but did not go away. What did make it go away was animating the head using the 3D cursor. When the head goes forward, the neck is kept straight, but this makes the nose point towards the ground. Just tilting that back up made the difference in this animation. Soooo thankful for every solution GOD gives!!! It was one of those ideas that came as an option of what can be done.
   Further adjustments include some things to make the transformation smoother, such as starting the snake off green and letting it "colorramp" to it's real color using a cloud texture and of course the eyes scale into existence. With black eye sockets and a more fierce brow (assisted by Freestyle), it turned out to be a much more threatening snake indeed.

 - Aaron's throw and context
Speaking of, rods, this week Aaron got to throw his at pharaoh. Thankfully, Pharaoh was not in the scene or the guards would've charged (haha). I honestly don't believe that Aaron threw the rod that hard, but there is actually a chance that he might have. If you look at paintings of Pharaoh and even hieroglyphics, there was not much security around him. It may be, because he was seen as a divine link between their gods and the people, that people left him alone. Odds are, if Aaron did throw it like that, that there might have just been a stare down, since Pharaoh was not a man strange to war.
   Now here comes the reason I believe he did not throw it that hard or far: he had confidence that GOD would change the rod into the creature he was shown. If you have confidence in what will take place and you're not trying to do it in your own power, you are at rest in that result's outcome. For example, let's say you are mowing the lawn, do you scream and tense up and so on while mowing? No, you just push it. You're doing your part and you let the machine do it's part. Aaron did his part, throwing it down, while GOD did HIS part, turning it into the reptile.
   I really do believe that he threw it forward just enough that the reptile wouldn't be on him and clearly visible and for that, you don't have to put in much effort at all.

 - Mic quality
On an audible note, haha, I tried working with my microphone in a different way this week. Now, I don't have a horrible microphone. In fact, I think it is quite good, but I do believe the way I use it can be improved. For example, the way I currently use it, means that it picks up less of my voice, because it is further away, to avoid wind noise. In the video, I did want to talk about this using some practical demonstration, but ironically, it just served to prove I can still improve the way I use the microphone to have less editing work to do and a better final result - can someone say irony! hahaha.
GOD is always on me about doing things with excellence and I never want HIM to stop. Whenever I try to compromise on quality, I would get this check from the HOLY SPIRIT that gives the message like: "You know you can do better than that and it's best that you do."
In the moment, I really don't like it, because it is hard on my flesh, but it is always always worth it. In fact, there is a verse for this: "Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." Hebrews 12:11, KJV.
   That means, sometime this week, I would like to sit with the mic again and try various configurations while reading a psalm or something, to see how the consonants do and the overall sound it. Any improvement, reduces the editing afterward - we'll fix it in post only works for make 'due', but you need to 'due' what you can before you produce or record anything, so you don't have a ton of post work that may not even be fixable...

 - Palm tree challenges
   There were a few challenges with the palm trees, thankfully nothing fatal, hahaha. Most of those you can find in the video, but one I didn't really talk about in detail was the rigging of the branches. Almost from the beginning I saw that rigging the physically modeled leaves were just not gonna be an option, for the amount of palm trees in the area, but I tried rigging the planes with the leaf texture. Worked very well, until you try to merge it with the rest of the branches and the trunk - not gonna happen! hahaha. So HE lead me to that old-faithful called slow parenting and that did a phenomenal job. I did it in two phases, so the movement would be more accurate (the origin is at the base of the tree, which means the movement would be almost inverted, so I added another empty at the top of the tree, so that the bottom empty's movements would be correct.

 - ZTransparency and solutions

   Now this was interesting! In chapter 9, while talking about the hail plague, it is recorded that not everything in Egypt got planted at the same time, because the barley and the flax were already grown, but the wheat and rie hadn't grown up yet. I did a little digging, as mentioned in the video, and found out that you have various kinds of wheat and barley and they can easily be planted far enough from each other to produce two harvests - give about a month or so. Whether the barley was green or not, still, I don't know. It says that the barley was in the ear, so most likely it was brown and ready for harvest when the hail was brought. As for the wheat and rie, I simply have to show ready soil!
GOD is so awesome!!!
Depending on context, I may have to show them grown with the locusts, but I'm not sure. I feel like GOD wants me to check it out like right now...
Okay, HE keeps saying that all the hail had left (such as some of the fruit in the trees and some herbs), was eaten by the locusts, so if anything came up since the hail, the locusts would've devoured that (they "darkened" the land, so that just tells you that there was nowhere anyone could turn to get away from them.

Will continue checking before modelling the fields to make sure that I'm not missing anything like that. HE's always faithful!!

Like I mentioned in the video, I really felt strongly that GOD wanted me to watch BornCG's videos (I recently subscribed and receive them by e-mail, especially the last ones on the walk cycle and the following a path). I was stunned to learn of the tool! It is such a powerful tool and such a gift, yet no one really mentioned it to me. It will make everything soooo much easier!! I look forward to using it!