Hi my dear friends and/or watchers :)
Feels like yesterday when I posted my last journal entry... but that's already soooooome time ago... So it is about time for an update
Yes, I am still alive and kicking. I am still visiting DA every 2-3 days and I am reading all comments/notes and try to reply as quick as possible. Just in case you were worried about missing content updates (see also below).
So far I could avoid a Covid infection *knocking on wood*, thanks to keeping the distance, wearing masks and having four immunization/booster shots in the last years.
Hiking and photography took over most of my available spare time. Last year I could reach another goal of mine, hiking more than 2000 km in one year, puhhh.... but this also means I have to set a new goal for 2023... hmm 2200 km as goal and maybe reaching 2500 km...? ;)
Photography wise it was again a wonderful year, we had a festival with lots of street artists in our town which was simply amazing and so much fun... and of course thousands of photos. Same with our light art festival which takes place every two years, some fantastic installations with light and sound, the outside laser show at St. Mary's Cathedral was simply magnificent and of course there were also very artitistic installations where I just scratched my head and moved on to the next one... but hey, that's art... Apart from such festivals I am mostly interested in nature and wildlife. That fits well to my hiking activities .
For the phography nerds: I am shooting with Canon R5/R7/90D with a full range of lenses from 10mm to 800mm, Fuji X100V and Sony RX100VA :)
Rendering... hmm... difficult.... I just did 7 renderings for the yearly calendar for my colleagues in office... and my workflow is somehow completely broken... Previously I prepared everything in Poser and used the PoserPlugin for C4D to get the content into C4D, material assignment worked very well and for additional content I used InterPoser for C4D to grab some props for direct import. Both plugins do not work any longer So I have to do the "good-old" wavefront export/import again like 15 years ago... In addition lots of my material libraries which worked fine for a decade stopped working with C4D V21 (the last version I bought). So I need to spent some time to make this workflow efficient again for me. If you got any hints what workflow/tools for Poser<->C4D is working fine for you, please comment below. Since I am not following all the poser forum entries any longer I might have missed something.
Last but not least: office. Sill working in the same company, still responsible for process improvement, still heavily overloaded and I am working nearly all the time in office, not from home! I like this more, this keeps life and office better seperated
Thanks for taking the time to read this, stay safe, take care and I whish all of you a fantastic start into 2023!
Yeah, that was quite an "interesting" year...
A lot of things I have read in some SciFi novels became reality... Oh boy... I never thought that such a pandemic situation could become reality in my lifetime.
But as you see I am still here, reading comments, giving replies and from time to time I create something new in Poser / Cinema 4D.... but not so many this year...
Poser 11 stopped working due to the shift from Smith Micro to Bondware but finally works again. Poser Pro 14 most likely will stop working in January when Adobe Flash will be killed...
Sadly PP14 still runs much better than the newer Poser 11 (yes, their versioning was kinda stupid). I tried DAZ/Studio but I still think it is some very strange software...
Oh and I am still "stuck" on the "old" C4D R21 version... this new rental model does not work out for me... not with this high price tag...
Artistic wise I am currently heavily occupied by doing lots of fotowalks with my DSLR.
Mostly nature, wildlife and macro-photography. And that is really entertaining and as a bonus your away from all the people = best social distancing ever and as an additional mega bonus your doing something for your health
So I walked roundbout 500km by feet in 2020 and examined the surrounding landscape/nature of my city with my camera and took about 8000 pictures.
Having fun in Lightroom, created lots of panoramic views... yes... really relaxing and gives you also some mental distance to the Covid stuff. Luckily it was always possible and allowed for me to get outside...
I also continued to do some 5k runs, many more than in 2019 but sadly not in some offical competition since they were all cancelled due to CV19.
Office: I still enjoy working in the process improvement area with some excellent colleagues from all over the world. Of course this year we met only in virtual sessions. Working from home is ok and helps in this situation but I prefer working in office, better connection, faster server access more displays etc. etc.
That's my latest news update for 2020.
To all of you: Please take care and stay safe!!!
I am wishing all of you a hopefully much better 2021!