OP, is this you?

BRAIN: “You are tasked to consider the evidence, and whether it proves BEYOND a reasonable doubt: whether my client is undateable. Is my client… a perfect man? No-”

ME: “She can kill me, yeah.”

It’s called being cultured, like cheese. Though art is a bit different as whatever shapes you does so long-term, even if you could zap away issues instantly the memory and thus influence will still be there.

Also health/brain issues for me are likely a bigger detriment than anything, resulting in me doing nothing most of the time (small chores on a good day). So anything created is a rare win in spite of that.

Sees pill

Sure, but that doesn’t help me now.

It doesn’t install a better auto-level sensor or tool-changing on my printer. It doesn’t give me a good print bed (one I bought was damaged by prints) or even just a newer control board. I’m not even going to buy a slicer key, I don’t want to spend more money on this nor do I want to think about it.

I’ve already acknowledged that some of this was my hubris and I would likely still be printing had I just stuck with what I had. Maybe someone could even help me get back there in exchange for/using my spare parts, but I live in nowheresville w/no car and don’t know anybody so that is not happening.

3D printer (FFF).

Didn’t start out too bad. I knew I was having issues but tried an upgrade I shouldn’t have done (because complexity). Upgrade was mostly done too, issue was fan wiring/firmware. I stopped with it there many years ago, so now it’s all dusty.

On top of all the variables/tuning/test prints, equipment/material cost etc. I also just don’t want to sell anything like I once thought I might.

If everybody could get insulin (even if they stock shelves or got laid-off from a tech/gig company), that’s when it’s a Joseph Stalin.

I mean yeah, that’s the problem. It’s a beautiful world… FOR YOU. Just like how dating sites exist, but that doesn’t mean they work for everybody.

I mean that would lower the bar for the activity itself (+multitasking), though I am not gonna buy or use a service and I suspect audiobooks are likely a big chunk of data too (esp. if uncompressed).

Unless speech synthesis is something that could work well here (assuming decent voice, I don’t mind older tech like DECtalk or macintalk that sounds better than some newer offline TtS options). Even that seems like it’d need some community effort, though (like manual phoneme editing).

So I’m not sure on that one. Probably not going to look into it.

For world-building, I liked Farscape for the Leviathans. One stretch of hell aside, it is a much better interpretation of biomechanical life than the standard dreary tubes-and-brain-only of most media (that is if they can even properly tell the difference between a cyborg and a robot). So that has really shaped my view on it, I’d want more microbiomes (and connection with other types of living cells) not less.

I probably wouldn’t do copies though, original brain is my priority. I would really need to trust/respect the organization requesting it, it’d need a really good reason, and I’d need assurances.

Long known but never read that series though, I have aphantasia (on top of other things) so am not much of a reader.

I’m just looking for a way to get my brain preserved and out of here 🧠 🤖

I mentioned Spyro’s skyboxes (also used for portals+seamless level transitions), but it also used VC for the textureless LoD models which allowed incredible draw distance for the era. Random effects mostly resulting from flame breath (soot, glow) but also some other small details (like the level boundary headbutt effect). Lighting too (more obvious in the worlds with bonfires).

Also Crash Bandicoot. Here’s a video on the character design (the vertex animation and spin model is interesting as well).

VC might not be obvious especially when it was just an optimization, though it might be more obvious if it used for a specific effect (like transparency), especially when viewed with modern resolution (+unfiltered textures).

Lots of games from this era have vertex lighting (and it certainly is a cool aesthetic* on its own) but I am much more interested when it’s actually used to significantly reduce texture usage (plus introducing other benefits). In-engine cutscenes and midi soundtracks (or stuff like sfxr) are also good for similar reasons.

* Will be nice to try it when 4.4 finally drops (it re-adds per-vertex shading) especially as it is an actual optimization. I say this as someone who turns pixelation filters off.

If you’re making your own models, another option to somewhat sidestep textures is vertex colors.

At the very simplest objects can be 1* color, though it’s still quite easy to color some details on low-poly models if you keep it in mind when you’re designing your mesh (which going for an aesthetic, is the goal anyway).

Note that per-face VC is an option (in Blender: color attribute>domain:face corner, and then use selection plus the paint mask option right next to where you switched to vertex paint mode). You can also use the Spyro skybox trick to fake hard edges using your mesh.

Lots of simple options with big look changes too (unshaded vs. shaded, matte vs. plastic vs. metal, manually-painted VC shadows).

Adding even multi-use textures onto this, I’m not quite sure on especially as it requires messing at very least fixing the UV map+re-exporting. After that, object scale may be an issue (unless something like triplanar works for you).

I even tried doing my own watercolor stuff, a failed matcap texture (which might be a fault of the shader) and a maybe-fine splatter texture. It seems like going this route is a step up in one (if not multiple) skills to be an improvement rather than reduction over just VC. A generated noise normal map for metal (maybe glass/wood) is a somewhat more viable exception.

* even if you’re using CSG (or say, textmesh) and not interested in VC, it might be a good idea to use a material that allows setting a color per-object via a shader parameter (this can be done via visual shader with ColorParameter plugged into albedo, blend mode can be used to allow grayscale texture like noise). A slight step up from graybox… unless your room is a cave, having color other than gray/white is an easy way to improve the representation enough for it to be playable.

EDIT: Alternatively, you could also just get the colors by using a set of materials like a color palette (stone, wood, grass, dirt, metal?).

You of all people posting this without comment. The only thing funnier (and sadder) is “cautious optimism about Trump”.