Crystallised Entertainment

Welcome to my Tumblr account! I’m a Demigirl hobbyist 3D animator and this is where I talk about what projects I’m up to currently. YouTube DeviantART

[crystallisedentertainment]

Status Update

Sorry for my sudden disappearance and lack of updates. I've been "all hands on deck" to grind out a video for my secondary channel for the last 6-8 weeks as I wanted to get the post work done pretty quickly (IE not take half a year) so I could free up the usual slot for concept art work.... Otherwise unfortunately there I can't fit it into my day and it's a long overdue thing.

I've almost done now; just need to proof watch, render out, and make a thumbnail - with any luck I should be done with this project by the end of the week and can return the usual hour slot to work on my main 3D animation projects! Originally I wanted this done in April, but a mid-May release window is still pretty good, and I'm glad I grinded as hard on this video to get it out of the door and out of the way! ^^

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So I'm slowly adding additional lights to aid the emissive textures as it appears they can only do so much... And I noticed one of the lights I placed wasn't centre and was casting a weird angle to the shadow, and while recentering the light I was reminded how the dynamic, real-time shadows was showcased in the exact same way for things like Unreal Engine 4 (like you did not need to recalculate the lights). Like just clicking on the light and moving it around and seeing the shadows just update in real-time was a BIG thing back in the day! And here I am just doing it and having my creative vision unhindered... Just fascinating, honestly!

Anyways I'm still working towards the end of pre-production for this tech demo/engine test thing. There won't be a "Behind The Crystal" for a while yet as I fear at this point I'm maybe like, 30 minutes away of completing this stage, and at that point I would have nothing to stream... So I'll just continue to chip away at it slowly. ^^"

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While this happened last week but I got caught up in stuff and just didn't get around to it when it happened in a classic Evie move... But 6 days ago marks 10 years since I created this Tumblr so I could have a dedicated blog to talk about and showcase whatever animation project I am working on... And a lot has happened in those 10 years (both as me as a person, and my projects).

While I don't know if I'm still gonna be on Tumblr for the next 10 years: I look forward to continue to yap about whatever I'm working on! ^^

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Howdy folks! It's been a hot minute, huh? Well truth is I haven't really touched Blender in the last few weeks due to time; even though there was very little left to finish on the street lamp prop... However I managed to fit some time in today and I wrapped up the model, including fixing up a rogue mask in Substance Painter turning the backside completely black, and placed it into the street scene today.

There's 3 that's visible in the camera, and I feel they will be an excellent source of light when I do that pass. There are 2 small jobs I want to do before I move onto the lighting pass: the first is adding some cars on the street, but I think I'll see if I can find a cyberpunk car pack as modelling cars will be too time consuming, and the other is doing a new version of my fire particle. The one I created and rendered out as a texture isn't fir the purpose - the texture just tanks the framerate to unusable levels, while the particle itself is a lot more resource efficient. The only reason I rendered is as a material was to cut down on disc space... which didn't even happen because the sequence consumes like 6GB. ^^"

But in any case, the creation of the scene itself is almost finished, and soon a render won't be impossibly dark which I'm super excited for. ^^

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I've done creating the node tree making up the texture of the cyberpunk street lamp. I wanted to show the "dynamically coloured" bulbs thing I mentioned yesterday as it has come out super well! ^^

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So last week I didn't really work on the street lamp model because a combination of wanting to finish the first draft for a video on my secondary channel, and being away from home for half a week.

I opened up the project today and saw it was honestly mostly done; There wasn't much more detailing I wanted to do going back with fresh perspectives. With the exception of the actual bulbs which I left as a "last thing" job - so I've using an emission fill texture to have it emit light when exported to Blender. I have the colour set to white so I can easily set to whatever colour I want inside Blender: by default it's gonna be blue, but I could do a "material override" in a project that has this model linked and set a different colour dynamically without the need to re-export the texture.

One interesting quark I do want to mention is a slight oversight the dimensions of the texture itself: I was under the impression the dimensions were set width x height, so I set the final export to be 8192x4096, but it turns out the opposite is true, and it meant details were squashed and aliased weirdly... Thankfully the fix is simple enough, so the project file is now correctly exported as 4096x8192.

Tomorrow I'll import the files into Blender and setup the texture graph. ^^

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Good morning everyone! Today I'm streaming a "Behind The Crystal" - with the main goal is just to add as much detail as I can during the stream time... Come vibe above! ^^

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Didn't do much last week because of lack of time... But regardless I have tried to give a worn look to the light sensor plastic. The idea was the rain and sun had worn away the paint. I think it looks good but at the same time I may have gone a bit overboard; so I'm a bit conflicted on it.

In ay case I've started to "stain" the actual metal material, which I'll probably add rust on top of after that. But it does give a good effect on showing that these street lamps have been in service for a while.

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So since my graphics tablet has been unshackled from the Christmas decorations adorning it, I've slowly been adding wear to what I've done so far during the last "Behind The Crystal" livestream. The warning sticker took some work to get right. I tried initially for the paper underneath to use a bump map but it end up not looking right, so instead I did a fractal noise diffuse layer to give the illusion of torn paper which has turned out much more desirable as seen.

This evening I've spent some time adding scratches to the keyhole. This is just using the height and roughness maps to show the inside has been scratched up, and using 2 different alphas to further sell that look. I ultimately decided to only have the inside scratched up as in my mind there is where the damage would be from the kay continuously being inserted and rotated around. And honestly I think it looks pretty good!

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First "Behind The Crystal" of 2026 is going live! Today's agenda is simply to begin texturing the Streetlamp prop I finished UV mapping last night... Come say "Hi" above! ^^

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I've put in some overtime to get it done today (fortunately my IBS permitted me to do so), but I've just finished UV Mapping the cyberpunk street lamp model ready for texturing during tomorrow's "Behind The Crystal" livestream! ^^

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Happy 2026 Everyone!

I hope everyone had a Happy Holidays and an amazing New Year! As you can guess I'm back from my 2 week holiday. ^^

Looking back at 2025 personally: I'm not gonna sugarcoat it - I spectacularly failed on all my personal objectives I set for the year... They weren't resolutions so I have that going for me; but it's still a yikes! I suppose only being able to spend a maximum of 1 hour per day on a hobby will do that to ya, though. =P

My only objective this year is to finish the Cyberpunk street project. Anything on top of that will be a bonus!

I have already scheduled this year's Winter holiday. I'm not planning to do as many relaxation-based excursions this year as I did last year - so this will be the main one (as it should be)! ^^

Let's make 2026 a good year! =)

[crystallisedentertainment]

Behind The Crystal - Modelling Cyberpunk Streetlamp

The final one for 2025. =)Today I am:- Finish modelling a cyberpunk streetlamp prop in Blender.- Begin UV Mapping prop. -------------------

So here it is! The last "Behind The Crystal" of 2025!

Today I'm hoping to finish modelling the street lamp and start UV mapping it... Come say hi! ^^

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Chrimmas Holiday Time Once Again!

Well it's that time of the year again where I take a 2 week holiday and I'll be back on Saturday 3rd January. I've had more holiday breaks this year compared to previous years overall... So I think it may be on the cards to reel it in a bit next year.

In anycase: I do plan to do 1 final "Behind The Crystal" livestream at 1045hrs GMT for the year over on YouTube. So I hope I see y'all there! ^^

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I've been chipping away on the street lamp prop this week. I've removed some points to the wire curves to make them more fluid with smoother curves, which helps on how they look.

Currently I'm adding some door hinge meshes to the wiring box. I probably need to make them higher as it doesn't quite look right... But it looks pretty good as far as first passes are concerned.

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Okay I'm gonna be 100: My concentration has been a bit all over the place during my usual 1700 to 1740hrs block I have scheduled for working on my animation hobby... But I have done the wiring for the 3 lights coming from the sensor block. Needs some further refinements but I'm happy on how it looks so far! =)

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So on today's agenda for "Behind The Crystal" is that I'm going to continue work on ze lamp post I started 2 weeks ago, and maybe start UV Mapping the mesh if the stars align... So catch that above! ^^