Author: Waylena

Planetarium professional since 1992. User of Free and Open Source Software since 2001.

JunoCam Citizen Science

My first attempt at Citizen Science on display in the dome!

A few weeks ago, I watched this video, produced by the Griffith Observatory a year ago:

As in the demonstration video I watched, I used Gimp. Of course I could have used Krita, but Gimp is my go-to since I’m so familiar with it.

First I downloaded set of images from 2021-07-21 Perijove 35:

https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing?id=11074

I opened the three color PNGs as layers and colorized them accordingly.

Then I played around with the individual layers’ brightness and contrast settings, then combined using Screen as the blend mode.

After I got the colors close to how I liked them, I used the G’Mic Tone Sharpening to bring out the detail.  (https://gmic.eu/index.html)

Before tone sharpening
After tone sharpening

I spent very little time on it, about 25 minutes total. I’m pleased with it and look forward to showing others how to make their own.

Cosmic Shaders from Darkfall

I saw this on my YouTube subscriptions feed last week. Very cool stuff. There is a good blog post on using the add-on as well: https://darkfallblender.blogspot.com/2021/03/blender-add-on-shader-library-version.html

Downloaded the python script from the Pastebin link provided in the blog post. Then installed the add-on through Blender Preferences.

The Shader Library is accessed through the 3D View. If you don’t see the tabs on the right, hover over the 3D View and hit the “N” key on the keyboard.

There are several shader types and options to choose from.

The add-on creates the node tree for the shader. This is a great way to quickly see what node trees can do without creating them from scratch.

I added some compositing to get a nice glow in Cycles.

Have to separate out the Environment (background as set up in “World” panel) and blur foreground alpha separately from the image to get that nice glow.


I always look for a Cycles way to make things glowy since I ultimately use fisheye for use in the dome. Eevee is super fast and that bloom is wonderful, but it’s a no-go when rendering straight to fisheye.

Fun with Blender and Mars

Had a bit of fun making videos to celebrate in the weeks leading up to the Mars Perseverance landing. This one was one of my favorites.

Links from the video:

Blender http://www.blender.org​

Blender HiRISE DTM Importer http://github.com/phaseIV/Blender-Hir…​

HiRISE DTM Quickstart http://www.uahirise.org/dtm/howto.php​

Terrain model data http://www.uahirise.org/dtm/dtm.php?I…​

Mars Perseverance Mission http://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

Plexus Effect

Video on Odysee

So I spent my morning digging into a tutorial by Chris P on YouTube building a lovely Plexus Effect using Blender and Animation Nodes. There were a few stumbling points due to the tutorial being for slightly older versions of both, but they weren’t so different as to be a huge problem. And if I were more practiced with Animation Nodes it would have been much easier to figure out those differences.

My resulting video isn’t a super high quality because it was rendered for upload to Odysee/Lbry. I don’t know if there is a way to embed as there is with the other video players out there.

My result video on Odysee

Outliner on the LEFT?

Just watched nice YouTube video from YouTuber Steven Scott, titled “Blender Blasphemy, outliner on the left?” and it got me rethinking my workflow, since I increasingly use the numpad keys with my left hand so my right hand can stay on the mouse. (especially since I’m using USB numpads with laptops more and more)

Anyway, check it out:

Nodevember is here!

Too much going on this year for me to dive into Nodevember, but I’m looking forward to seeing what other Blender peeps come up with. Rock on, node nerds! 

From http://nodevember.io :

Published
Categorized as news

Almost #nodevember… time to Prepare

 I’m looking forward to #nodevember this year. Last year I only made it about a week before life got in the way, so I’ll try again.

My personal goal is to improve my node skills and in particular try to stretch beyond the types of things I would ordinarily attempt.

In preparation, I’m enjoying reviewing the amazing work of others last year, like through this video from Curtis Holt: 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhLVzcCl1ug

And through my subscription to the Blender Cloud, I’m following the series Procedural Shading: Fundamentals and Beyond.

I don’t know if I will keep up this year, but for me the learning is never wasted. The prompts aren’t up yet as of this writing, but they will be here: http://nodevember.io/

Open Source Creative podcast

I highly recommend the Open Source Creative podcast. 

The host, Jason van Gumster, is one of those folks I’ve seen for years on the online Blender communities. He’s an author, a creator, and an all-around interesting character. 

I first discovered his podcast back when I was thinking of starting my own podcast but his is much better than what I’d had in mind. 

Find the audio in your favorite podcast player. Or visit the website directly. Some episodes are also in video format on the Open Source Creative YouTube Channel.

If you’re a FOSS user, do check it out!

Jitsi Meet and New Friends

 Last night I joined in a meeting of a Linux User Group in my state. I’d been meaning to physically attend a meeting for the past 18 years but never did make it happen. With the switch to everything online, I figured it would be cool to finally meet some of these folks.  

The Linux Users of Central Illinois – they announce meetings on their list: http://www.luci.org/luci-announce/ 

Turns out to be some pretty interesting folks in that group. Like those times my hubby and I attended Ohio LinuxFest in the mid-2000s. 

The point of my posting, however, is to say that it was my first time trying Jitsi Meet. You go to https://meet.jit.si/ and either type in the name of an existing meeting to join or else you start a new meeting.

At one point it wouldn’t let me turn my video back on after I’d turned it off, but that may have been a browser/permissions thing. (I was using Brave as my browser, and I’m still new at using that.)

I liked Jitsi Meet and I think it has some very nice potential.