#node wrangling

[trickinabucket]

Everybody!!! I found out how to do something w nodes I’ve been trying to figure out since like. A month after I started fuckin w blender

I had 3 slight variation of a skin shader that were all separate nodes; there were 4 in all. Each worked w a different color ramp. Everything else was the same.

So, u could account for cool, neutral, olive, and warm tones.

The problem was, it was a bit more complex than necessary to have them all be separate nodes. And what if I wanted to test out the different undertones for a new character? Have the same value, but different undertones? It’d be a pain shuffling thru them all to find out what u want.

But now it’s one shader! There’s a different output based on choice, but numbers plugged in could be the same.

Im happy abt it. I’ll show yall, maybe. One day.

[aspectpriority]

okay so like. in normal programming, you use classes to let multiple things pull from the same... thing. all cars can inherit Vehicle, all pets inherit Animal, and so on. makes sense.

but through a combination of not really knowing how to use that in Practice (i just have trouble implementing Concepts into tangible things, yes i know it makes me look not so smart, allow it), and godot's use of composition (all the elements are in different pieces that can be parented to another node, and you need to grab them to do anything with them, except there are rules i don't fully understand about how parent and child nodes can interact) - i genuinely have no idea how to use em. chuck in the fact that i think(????) you have to instance your classes to use them (it yelled at me if i didn't), and i am so thoroughly lost, you would think i'd never touched a computer in my life.

i will figure this out. eventually. maybe. but i am not having, the Best time of it i fear.

[humansbgone]

The sickness relapsed, so I was sick another week. As a result, I decided to take a couple days off to recuperate this time. On top of that, some time was spent just debugging all the things going wrong with my fancy new rigs once it was time to actually animate with them.

Nonetheless, I did get a fair bit of staging done! 3/9 scenes are done (or 3/10, depending on how you count it). Now that I've wrangled errors on most of the rigs, the rest should go a lot faster. On top of that, I've written a script to automate most of the reimporting for me if something does break.

Don't worry, there will be a background (and Rose will have hair). Sophodra and Rose aren't paying Gregorsa a visit.

I should be able to finish staging with at least half of next week to spare, maybe sooner. Then, work begins on setting up all the backgrounds, props, and crowd scenes. I'd estimate 2-3 weeks to set all that up, since it's going to involve some Geometry Nodes and kitbashing. And then, at long last, it will finally be time for animation! ...Which may very well last all summer. Well, I can always take my laptop to the park. Until next time!

[hymless]

How to fix Transparency w/ Lashes and Alpha Hair in Blender! Cycles & Eevee!

(This tutorial also helps with adding transparency to Sims 4 Object cc. If needed, I can make a post on that as well.)

This is NOT a Tutorial on how to fix broken/ glitched lashes in the SIMS game!!!

It was brought to my attention that others do not know how to fix this issue in blender, so I've made this post to help out. This tutorial works for BOTH Eevee and Cycles! (This only matters at the end when in the materials tab.)

None of the CC is Mine! Ty to ALL creators!

This is work for all methods of DAE exports.

This is Erecen. They will be our tutorial model today.

As you can see, the Alpha CC hair and lashes are not... working like how we saw them in game. So! We will need to fix this up within our Shading Node Wranglers to correct this.

(If you use a GLASS mesh, make sure you are shade wrangling on the GLASS!)

(This picture is only showing which is the Glass mesh!) Plz ignore this if you are not using Glass mesh export on Ripper.

Lashes/Hair Transparency

First import your sim and wire the texture nodes how you normally would. Stay in Shade Editor/Shading tab.

You will now want to Add a 'Mix Shader' node. Search for it by typing in "Mix Shader". Select and now drop it between your Principle BSDF node and Material Output node.

After this, you will want to Add a Transparent BSDF. I added mine the same way as the Mix Shader and have place it under my Mix Shader node.

With this Transparent BSDF node, you'll want to wire it to the TOP Green Circle of your Mix Shader node. (1 in pic below) This will disconnect your current wiring from Principle BSDF. This is fine since you now want to wire the Principle BSDF node to the BOTTOM Green Circle of your Mix Shader node. (2 in pic below)

Afterwards, you will now need to go to your Base Color node; (Where your sims diffuse lies!) It should be the top left node, unless you have moved it. (3 in pic above) Now take the Alpha dot and drag it all the way to FAC on the same Mix Shader node. From here, we need to go to 'Editor Type'.

After locating Editor Type, you now want to locate the sphere listed as Material.

You now want to find the correct SETTINGS tab. Please note how you render your renderings. If you render in EEVEE, take note of the picture above. Same for CYCLES as taking note in the picture above. This is very important since the SETTINGS options switch between these two areas depending on the Engine.

In Eevee, this should be in the first SETTINGS tab in the materials properties tab.

In Cycles, the SETTINGS you will need is located under the tab listed as Viewport Display. From there, a new drop down will be available called Settings. (This is the correct SETTINGS you want)

Either engine will now have a few modes now visible.

For both Blend Mode and Shadow Mode, change them from Opaque to Alpha Hashed. (It is only required to change Blend Mode to Alpha Hashed for the transparent textures to work. Hashing shadows makes a nice balance of translucency and ambient occlusion.)

And that should be it! Your lashes/Alpha CC hair should be working correctly now!

I hope this helps! If not, please feel free to msg me of any other further know issues. Thank you to @spookyxdoom for bringing this topic up!

I even had my bf try it out without knowing a single thing about Blender and they figured it out just fine with this tutorial.

I already plan on doing other tutorials on how I fix overlapping textures as shown below.

[thelongestway]

So, vignette time! To write this chapter, I actually went back through the entire text and wrote up a lot of the conversations that were had over stimulants in ART's lounge. I will probably find a way to publish them eventually, because they are fun! But for now, I want to know if this works without them. (Because fitting 73 coded pages into two pages of write up is a challenge!)

So, excitedly and without further ado:

Chapter 26: Nightmare

If anyone had told me when we set off for Trellin that me, Thiago, and a human-based HubSystem would be sitting in ART's crew lounge in the middle of a human rest period, staring at a pile of half-tagged data, and having emotional reactions that went between "what the actual fuck" to "is that what that was" through "that's actually hilarious" and "this is fucking terrifying", and that it wouldn't be half as horrible as this description sounds, I would have wrangled that human into ART's medsystem and made them stay there until it ran every single one of its tests that confirmed whether a human was maintaining a realistic perception of reality. Because that human obviously wasn't.

But it happened.

The analysis process was an incredibly human-coded mess. Our fucking tags were all over the place. Half the time they devolved into conversations about what actually happened in the commentary.

("No, no, these are analytical notes", Aspen said after one particularly long exchange, and Thiago laughed so loudly he probably would have woken someone on the crew if ART hadn't put up a privacy barrier.)

All of us had something we wanted to filter from at least one other person involved in the conversation, but we all still needed to understand the general picture, so only two analysts tagged those segments and just let the third one see the tags. (I filtered my name from Thiago.)

I learned a lot of new words, including one that I immediately saved to my permanent storage. ("Platonically." Which meant I could tell people to fuck themselves without implying sex. It was now my favorite word.)

We spent about half of our time actually working on the data. The rest of it was spent staring at walls because we were processing some horrible realization, or laughing hysterically because some (platonically) fucking thing made sense now and was incredibly stupid.

("That's how this usually goes," Thiago said, wiping tears of laughter from his face for what had to be the fourth or fifth time that night, as he clipped the node ships' initial understanding of what I was and put it into our feed.)

(For the record, it was "tiny, very strange, inexplicably mobile node". Which Thiago found very funny, and I found fucking horrifying. So I got to stare at a wall while he got to laugh.)

(I got to laugh at Aspen realizing just how much of their "annoying friendly AI mode" was inherited from Amy.)

(Aspen told me that a) their old AI was named Amy, b) there were two whole people in the world who mourned for Amy dying: me and the dead tech.)

(Tal. Ke got to keep kes name after that.)

Several hours--and several cycles of coding--later, ART gave us its big display screen so we could keep track of our notes, comments, points of contention and other results in a way that was a little easier on Thiago. (Because delaying a rest period makes humans even worse at working in-feed than they usually were.) And we finally had our results.

According to our analysis, Aspen and I got under each other's skin on multiple levels. (Which was obvious.) What hadn't been immediately obvious before the analysis, and the requisite log-checking it led us to, was that one of these levels turned out to be a protocol mismatch that neither of us realized was happening. Specifically, between the organic parts of our protocols, which neither of us even considered checking before, because we (being constructs) weren't completely conscious of them, even though they were doing a lot of heavy lifting

(This was actually ART's idea. And it was incredibly smug that it figured that out before either Aspen or Thiago.)

Which meant that the protocols which let me (a construct) communicate with (fully mechanical) HubSystems and SecSystems wound up plugged into Aspen's (construct) protocols that let them a) interface with other node ships, b) feel their body. And neither of us noticed, because the feed-mediated, but still organic-to-organic, connection was clean enough not to throw too many errors, and the ones it did throw were way too easily explained by us not liking each other.

(And trying to be polite about it. While the mismatch drove us both up the fucking walls.)

(And I, at least, had ART's walls to climb. Aspen only had their own.)

I could fucking kick myself. The communication between Dandelion and Preservation Station started with a protocol mismatch, why the fuck didn't I realize this could have been a simple glitch? Why didn't anyone, until we nearly tried to kill each other?

Aspen shrugged in the feed, "Because neither side had experience in interfacing between Rim constructs and node ships before? This sort of thing just happens sometimes in research."

"That's wrong. I interfaced with Dandelion for literal months."

"You mean the one ship in the fleet whose preference for most organic contact consists of 'no, thank you, not interested?' Who is very good at keeping her distance, and did so even before she was a ship?"

Thiago raised an eyebrow.

"Just how much of an outlier is Dr. Tenacious?"

"Enough that she might not have been counted if we were studying contact preference," Aspen said, laughing. "And before you ask, her current crew's gender ratio is also an outlier when compared to her earlier crews. She doesn't have a weird preference for brennan crew."

"You people are a statistician's nightmare," Thiago flopped onto the table and waved his cup of stimulant in the air. (One of ART's little service drones took it to bring him a refill.)

"Yeah. About nightmares," I said, pulling up the second half of our results. "What the fuck do we do about this part?"

All three of us fell quiet, staring at the screen. This was going to be the hard part. Because the protocol mismatch was only part of our conflict. The other part of it was how our minds processed the mismatch.

(Which our very normal organic minds did in an absolutely normal way.)

(Both Thiago and Aspen were weirdly excited about encountering the word "normal" in our logs. They insisted that that whenever the word "normal" came up in a natural conversation, that meant something was going to be either a) important, b) fucked up, or both. So yeah. Our brains and their processing were pretty normal by that metric.)

My organics were molded to work with a SecSystem, which in turn usually worked under a HubSystem. Which meant I sent a lot of data upstream, data that Aspen perceived as a constant stream of consciously-made noise, like I was constantly poking them to get their attention.

In hindsight, I was surprised they hadn't thrown me out an airlock. (I would have if someone pinged me that much). But apparently, and in full opposite to Dandelion, Aspen had a much higher-than-average tolerance for organic contact. Which meant they were actually pretty happy to accommodate (rather than filter) me, because they were chatty, and most people got tired of them quicker than Aspen got tired of people.

What Aspen wasn't fine with, though, was the content of my requests.

I was a SecUnit. Before I hacked my governor module, I was part of a surveillance system. A literal Panopticon. (It hit us all, mid-analysis, that I was the equivalent of one of those creepy little tendrils Aspen used. That was one of the longest wall-staring sessions we had.) The requests I sent to Aspen, both conscious and unconscious, fit that mold. Video was fine--they were informed of my preference for cameras and drones well in advance--but I wanted locations, databases, names, social markers; information that the Trellians considered private and not anyone's business.

Information that Aspen themselves couldn't help getting, because they were a trained sociologist and they weren't blind.

But from a long-term risk perspective, they couldn't let themselves have that information.

"For most of my tenure as the Courageous, I had more than enough on my plate for this not to be a problem," Aspen said, "I had to learn to be a ship, learn to be a station, learn to be a generation ship again, teach new ships, write laws and regulations and help enact them… It was a lot. But as all of this happened, my automatic analytics were slowly accumulating data and integrating it into my systems, which really became visible once we got to Trellin. I'd already been a station two times, and the switch was familiar, so the setup was mostly routine. I found myself with processing power to spare… And realized far too late that I was Big Data'ing myself into a nightmare. That I was beginning to have trouble seeing people as people, and not as confluences of all too well-studied external circumstances. And the closer I knew them, the worse it became. Which was when I realized I needed to do whatever it took not to become… That. And started looking for a replacement."

"What sort of solution did you find?" Thiago said quietly. He looked pale and nauseous.

"Well, dying is always an option," Aspen said indifferently. "But we decided to try to get most of me out of the Courageous and onto a fresh synnerve system, and see if that helps first. We can always kill me later if it doesn't work. Anyway, I was trying to give myself the best possible chances when this whole Caldera situation happened, and your automatic responses started activating, SecUnit. And they slotted into those analytics like a harpoon goes with a net."

"You should have just cut me off," I said.

"I was initially hoping your involvement would let me offload some of that processing, actually. You have an exceptional track record, and we do have an actual security breach in progress."

"Which is why you gave me SecSystem level access."

Even saying that made me shudder a bit. Because I wasn't a SecSystem. I was a SecUnit. To my organics, this meant I was given more access and more decision power than I was supposed to. But--for a double whammy--the Trellians' policies on privacy and surveillance prevented me from taking what I actually needed as a SecSystem to do my job.

In a vacuum, I was treated better than I'd ever been with regards to access. In context, I felt like I was given a ton of responsibility and absolutely no tools to handle it.

And when my starving systems asked for more, Aspen gave them more, as much as they could, because they thought they could help us both at the same time. And made the problem worse, because my threat assessment absolutely flipped out.

(Aspen's performance reliability dropped about 12 percent when they realized that. They needed actual minutes to get back to work.)

(They really fucking hated making things worse.)

"Yes. As much as I could. But you wanted more, and you wanted what I couldn't give you, because then I would be fucking up a lot of long-term risks that this kind of surveillance involves. And I wasn't going to let that happen."

(I still didn't entirely understand that part of Trellian policy. But we agreed to backburner it. And weirdly, it didn't feel as important anymore. Maybe because I no longer felt like I was being made into a SecSystem while not being one.)

Aspen continued, sounding disgusted with themselves: "Worse still, I thought this was your conscious choice. That you wanted to be the surveillance nightmare I was trying not to be. And I treated you accordingly."

"I still might be," I said. "We have a lot of differences in how we think we should handle operations. And we've still got one coming up, which we need to decide how to handle."

"True," they allowed. "But they aren't really as important if we manage to stick to our lanes. A harpoon and a net still complement one another, and it would be pretty good for your people and mine to go forward with this together. If we can find some way to let you handle the short-term risks without accidentally digging up the seeds we're sowing right now, I'll consider that a good outcome for the current situation. And then we can figure out our next steps afterwards."

"Yeah, but how?" I said. "We don't have time to rewrite our entire fucking protocols. A ship touching base with a station is one thing; a HubSystem and its components are a lot more closely integrated. The best we can do before your transfer is probably some kind of shoddy filter for our automatic triggers."

"Hmm," and I head a weird little smile in the Courageous' voice. "Actually, some kind of shoddy filter might be exactly what we need. Can I try something, SecUnit?"

"Go ahead."

Aspen pulled out a process they'd been working on in the background and activated it in our joint feed space.

And suddenly there was a dark-skinned human sitting at our table.

They had coarse salt-and-pepper hair and a smile that reminded me of Ratthi's.

"Hi," Aspen said, throwing a quick glance at me and then looking away as they fixed their colorful Arborean wrap. "Is this better?"

[zombified-queer]

Rung's tits are powered by the holy energy of the ultimate milf! Gotta keep his primes well fed so they perform to the best of their ability ;)

Oh man I know for a fact failgate tried to show off fucking whurl in a closet and. Broke the wall. Rodimus did NOT wanna see that (now he's trying to figure out how to get whirl to fuck him with that frankly disrespectfully attractive spike)

Cyclonus does his best to make them act civil, but... I think we both know it's not going in his favor lol. But oh man, it's so hard to make a decent argument when a minibot has his fingers under your plating, pinching and twisting wires while that spike jabs into nodes... You can't blame the guy for giving in! Especially not if/when tailgate figures out how he can keep a vibrator on cys anterior node while he fucks all his thoughts out...

Whirl is here for the show, and mercilessly taunting cyclonus

Rung’s refineries never run out and you KNOW that’s the best kind of energon for his big, strong Primes. They need such high quality energon to go around saving universes. And if they slip that spike into his valve, then who is Rung to complain? His Primes know what he likes best.

FAILGATE MY BELOVED. Shame they took his superpowers or we could have had him wrestling Whirl into all kinds of crazy positions. Putting Whirlybird through walls. At this point they might as well be fragging in the middle of Swerve’s!

Cyclonus needs to wrangle his weird conjunxes to behave but it’s so hard when they know just how to make him overload so hard he cries. And then THEY’RE overloading because he’s crying. Tailgate and Whirl are absolute menaces to this poor old mech. Fucking Cyclonus stupid with a spike in both his valve and aft. Putting a vibrator on his node and they don't stop until he's full-frame sobbing with so many overloads.

[salemssimblr]

📩 Simblr question of the day: What is your favorite part of Rendering? What's your least favorite part? (Include your favorite and least favorite renders in your reply if you'd like to)

answer in whatever way is most comfortable for you and feel free to share this SQOTD around, make sure to use the hashtag SQOTD and tag me in separate posts ~ 💛

This question was contributed by a community member! (Tagged on the OG post to avoid spamming the simmer :))

I have LONG AWAITED receiving a sqotd!! I'm SO EXCITED to have received one and that it's THIS ONE ahhh

I know I'm a day late 😭 but Cult of the Lamb completely consumed my weekend ooops

My favorite part, other than the final result, would probably be the sculpting process. It can be a pain but it also makes the piece come alive. I especially love mimicking gravity (moving jewelry, hair and accessories to sit or flow properly). It's finicky work that often takes me hours but the payoff is so worth it.

My least favorite part has to be the WAITING lmao. Even with my settings I still have to wait a little while for the render to run and while it is I'm chomping at the bit ready to edit it! Other than waiting, I don't love node wrangling, I could do without connecting the same nodes over and over and over again, but I do it for the sake of the art lmao

Overall I really love the rendering process and there's not too much about it I hate. It's a creative outlet I truly enjoy!

I don't have a least favorite, but a group of least favorites lmao but it'd take way too long (& too much pain lmfaooo) to go through my archive and select them, so instead I'll just share a few of my favorites with links to their original posts (:

Thank you again for the ask! I'm so glad to finally answer one of these!!

[project-isengard]

Blog 14: Sharing Wrangle Code I understood

This will be short one. As wrangle node uses VEX, I am fairly new to it but I have studied some C++ so, I am getting a hang of it.

In here we are creating a parameter ramp to manipulate area .Mask here is a parameter so if will check if that area has mask value greater than 0.5 and then it will multiply with mountainrange float value and result will be calculated in Height. Ultimately, Increasing the height.

[jonfazzaro]

"\*You\* are the agent who will wrangle the task graph, above the level of the leaf nodes. We believe the wrangler will be human, not a model. We are not sitting around to wait for the research on autonomous agents to conclude, for these all-purpose systems to be built, launched, tested."

[helicalinsight]

Maximizing Performance: Tips for a Successful MySQL to Redshift Migration Using Ask On Data

Migrating your data from MySQL to Redshift can be a significant move for businesses looking to scale their data infrastructure, optimize query performance, and take advantage of advanced analytics capabilities. However, the process requires careful planning and execution to ensure a smooth transition. A well-executed MySQL to Redshift migration can lead to several notable benefits that can enhance your business's ability to make data-driven decisions.

Key Benefits of Migrating from MySQL to Redshift

Improved Query Performance

One of the main reasons for migrating from MySQL to Redshift is the need for enhanced query performance, particularly for complex analytical workloads. MySQL, being a transactional database, can struggle with running complex queries over large datasets. In contrast, Redshift is designed specifically for online analytical processing (OLAP), making it highly efficient for querying large volumes of data. By utilizing columnar storage and massively parallel processing (MPP), Redshift can execute queries much faster, improving performance for analytics, reporting, and real-time data analysis.

Enhanced Scalability

Redshift provides the ability to scale easily as your data volume grows. With MySQL, scaling often involves manual interventions, which can become time-consuming and resource-intensive. Redshift, however, allows for near-infinite scaling capabilities with its distributed architecture, meaning you can add more nodes as your data grows, ensuring that performance remains unaffected even as the amount of data expands.

Cost-Effective Storage and Processing

Redshift is optimized for cost-effective storage and processing of large datasets. The use of columnar storage, which allows for efficient storage and retrieval of data, enables you to store vast amounts of data at a fraction of the cost compared to traditional relational databases like MySQL. Additionally, Redshift’s pay-as-you-go pricing model means that businesses can pay only for the resources they use, leading to cost savings, especially when dealing with massive datasets.

Advanced Analytics Capabilities

Redshift integrates seamlessly with a wide range of analytics tools, including machine learning frameworks. By migrating your data from MySQL to Redshift, you unlock access to these advanced analytics capabilities, enabling your business to perform sophisticated analysis and gain deeper insights into your data. Redshift's built-in integrations with AWS services like SageMaker for machine learning, QuickSight for business intelligence, and AWS Glue for data transformation provide a robust ecosystem for developing data-driven strategies.

Seamless Integration with AWS Services

Another significant advantage of migrating your data to Redshift is its seamless integration with other AWS services. Redshift sits at the heart of the AWS ecosystem, making it easier to connect with various tools like S3 for data storage, Lambda for serverless computing, and DynamoDB for NoSQL workloads. This tight integration allows for a comprehensive and unified data infrastructure that streamlines workflows and enables businesses to leverage AWS's full potential for data processing, storage, and analytics.

How Ask On Data Helps with MySQL to Redshift Migration

Migrating your data from MySQL to Redshift is a complex process that requires careful planning and execution. This is where Ask On Data, an advanced data wrangling tool, can help. Ask On Data provides a user-friendly, AI-powered platform that simplifies the process of cleaning, transforming, and migrating data from MySQL to Redshift. With its intuitive interface and natural language processing (NLP) capabilities, Ask On Data allows businesses to quickly prepare and load their data into Redshift with minimal technical expertise.

Moreover, Ask On Data offers seamless integration with Redshift, ensuring that your data migration is smooth and efficient. Whether you are looking to migrate large datasets or simply perform routine data cleaning and transformation before migration, Ask On Data’s robust features allow for optimized data workflows, making your MySQL to Redshift migration faster, easier, and more accurate.

Conclusion

Migrating your data from MySQL to Redshift can significantly improve query performance, scalability, and cost-effectiveness, while also enabling advanced analytics and seamless integration with other AWS services. By leveraging the power of Ask On Data during your migration process, you can ensure a smoother, more efficient transition with minimal risk and maximum performance. Whether you are handling massive datasets or complex analytical workloads, Redshift, powered by Ask On Data, provides a comprehensive solution to meet your business’s evolving data needs.

[mostlyihyperfixate]

.

Well, the vet called me a little after 8:00 this morning with Emmett's ultrasound results.

The lymph nodes near his small intestine are enlarged. His gallbladder is as well, but that's most likely due to the fact he hasn't eaten anything in almost a week. So the swollen lymph nodes are the biggest concern.

This could be caused by three things: 1) he has cancer; 2) his lymph nodes are fighting off whatever disease started all this; or 3) he's got some virus I can't remember the name of, but, basically, he fought off an illness (and he did have a cold last month), but his immune system didn't do it properly, so the virus has mutated and is now attacking all of his organs.

The last thing comes in "wet" or "dry" variety. The wet is pretty easy to diagnose. If Emmett had wet, he'd have fluid in his abdominal cavity, and that fluid is very distinctive. Since he doesn't have any fluid in his abdominal cavity, if he has this problem, he has the dry variety. The dry, unfortunately, is very difficult to diagnose. He'll have to undergo surgery simply to find something to biopsy. They can try to find these places via ultrasound and get the biopsy without surgery, but most of the time, the pathologists don't get enough from this procedure to do anything with it. So they have to go back and do the surgical biopsy anyway.

The good news is that Emmett has really perked up today. He's been running around all morning. He's not all stiff anymore. He hid under a rug for a bit again, and when I went to pack him up for today's vet appointment, he was actually sitting outside on the patio, perched on the arm of a chair. And he didn't eat, so that sucks, but I realized before I went to wrangle him that he didn't actually get his prescribed appetite stimulant tonight. He's got so much medicine he has to take that that one simply got missed.

Here's the thing (that a lot of people probably already knew, but I did not): cats develop food aversion when they're force fed. So it is possible that he's getting better, but since I gave him some food granules yesterday and some syringes the night before, he just won't eat at all.

So he's off at the vet's to get a feeding tube placed. This will be done this afternoon--and might make things easier, since I can give him his medicine and water through this, instead of via IV or syringes.

If it's food aversion, it could take anywhere between a few days to over a month for him to start eating on his own. The hope is that, since he's showing signs of improvement, he will continue getting physically better, then eventually start eating on his own again, and that will be that. But if he keeps being lethargic, stiff, etc., then he'll have to go in for the surgical biopsy.

I'm trying my best to remain hopeful. It doesn't seem likely it's cancer if my mom's cat has the same problem--but no one really said what's supposed to be done if he does have that virus that attacks his organs.

But there's nothing I can do for now. The vet tech said she'd call me when he was getting ready to be sedated again. So I guess I'll whip out my stenograph and do some speed practice in the interim. I've already exercised for the day, cleaned everything on my list for the week, and I've still got a big hole in my thumb (that at least isn't opening up and bleeding every time I look at it funny anymore, and the dead skin hardened enough for me to clip, so the wound isn't catching on everything I touch).

You are not in any way required to stay tuned, but I'm sure I'll have more to say as things progress.

[here-be-dragons-and-whatnot]

Forgot to upload it, but I was able to get a couple frames of my dynamic fur simulation out of Eevee. It will take more work (and a GPU) to get a more realistic result, but I love that it took maybe three hours tops to make this (and a good portion of that was wrangling a node-generated texture).

[kaleidoru]

the absolute suffering i went through just to add this face texture 🤣 had to wrangle some nodes and also didn't realise i had to change the blend mode to alpha blend to get it to be transparent... i'll mark the seams on the clothes and unwrap those tomorrow... then i need to learn how to texture paint and rig them

also heart peets

sloppy reference i made for myself for a Thing

[mychlapci]

sunstreaker anon back again to deliver on more of my rancid babygirl being a freak in the berth

i saw those tags about him getting his valve destroyed by a con and i am nothing if not a believer of sunstreaker being fucked by someone who he could probably rip into pieces, enjoy~

so sunstreaker gets captured. it doesn't really matter how, maybe he got a bit too cocky when it came to jet judo and a seeker finally managed to wrangle him into submission, or maybe one of the decepticon frontliners knocked him out on the battlefield. either way, he lands himself in a cell.

and while he's not exactly a wealth of valuable information, he still gets the honor and the privilege of being interrogated by starscream himself (who i think wants to get some revenge on the stupid frontliner who keeps knocking his seekers out of the sky with a jetpack and more spite than any one cybertronian should reasonably have in their frame)

so sunstreaker is in a bit of a pickle because he's got a degradation kink and starscream continuously insulting and smacking him around while he just sits there and takes it is really starting to revv him up. he can feel the lubricant seeping out of his valve beginning to pool in his closed panels and his spike is starting to knock against his pelvic plating and his HUD is filled with notifs about opening his panels for the pretty seeker to claim

starscream meanwhile is becoming very aware of the fact that the frontliner is becoming all hot and bothered and eventually he just straight up kicks sunstreaker's panels. and to poor sunny's horror they immediately snap open and he just has to sit there in a puddle of his own fluids as starscream keep insulting him

starscream stoops down to thoroughly inspect what he's working with and he hooks a clawed digit through a few of the chains crisscrossing across sunny's valve, giving a few harsh yanks and calling sunny a whore for enjoying the rough treatment so much

"Yeah you like that, filthy grounder~ you like being my toy, a vessel for my pleasure"

maybe when starscream is finally done with his turn, he leaves sunstreaker strung up in the air barracks for the rest of the seekers to have their way with, and he just has to sit there and take it as they take turns with him.

when sunstreaker finally gets released, either via bail or escaping or getting rescued he's left with the horrifying realisation that maybe he enjoys getting treated like an object more than he'd like to admit and he spends the next few solar cycles furiously trying to ignore the way his valve aches pleasantly from how thoroughly starscream fucked him.

maybe the seekers even left him with some new additions to his interface array. maybe skywarp gave him some extra piercings and laced a ribbon through a bunch of hoops to keep that jet transfluid trapped inside him and sunstreaker really should wash that out but well, he really likes the feeling of it sloshing around inside of him

ough i really like the idea of sunstreaker (and really all the speedsters really; rodimus, drift, sideswipe, jazz, blurr, ect...) being public services for the army because their charge runs really high

-burnt ice

fuuuck Sunstreaker with a degradation kink owns my heart. Tied up and helpless he gets tossed around by angry decepticons, at first he tries to bite back but why would he, when getting hurt and called names just feels so damn good. His groin is buzzing with charge, node rubbing against the hot, slick metal of his panelling every time he's jostled carelessly in his restraints. And when Starscream kicks him into the groin he can't even hold in his moan, panels transforming away to reveal his soaked valve and twitching spike...

Sunstreaker with his legs tied apart, filthy 'cons fucking into Starscream's sloppy seconds until Sunny's precious plating is scraped and his frame hurts, but he's never before felt more beautiful and desired. They laugh and jeer when they tug at his piercings and his valve clenches around nothing, asking for a big fat seeker spike to stuff it into submission... mhmmm Sunstreaker coming back to the Autobots limping, biting his lip and shuddering once out of sight, his well-fucked pussy still tingling with left-over charge still buzzing from one pretty golden loop to another. He can't let anyone know that he enjoys being treated like a little fuck-toy, it would completely ruin his reputation... Maybe if the Autobots found out they'd fuck him too, since clearly they're jealous of how perfect he is at everything and would want to get back at him. They'd make his valve squirt until he can't walk anymore... maybe that wouldn't be that of a bad thing, now that he's fantasizing about it a little bit...

[brandwhoreafterdark]

You take requests right?

Could you maybe do something with Cliffcee? With Arcee topping?

(I'm sorry if i sound rude im just extremely thristy)

Anon I just want you to know that I love you. You don't sound rude at all and I, too, am thirsty for this ship. Dom top Arcee is an S-tier fantasy and her eager spike-hungry bottom Cliffjumper just makes it even better

He looks so good bent over like that.

Knees tucked beneath his body on the berth, chassis down and neck craned to the side so his cheek rests against a pillow, optics trained on her. They're hazy and foggy with steam, frame overheating with charge. His thighs are spread, sloppy valve sending thick droplets of lubricant dribbling down his legs, pooling in little glowy puddles around his knees. His spike bobs and quivers with every shuddering ventilation.

"'Cee…" he finally breaks the silence, glossa poking out a little as he pants. "C'mon… 'nuff already-"

"Shut up," she swats his aft. "I'm enjoying the view."

He whines and grumbles but doesn't say anything else, twitching as another bead of lube slid out of him.

Arcee continues to watch. His valve is so beautiful, swollen up from far too much stimulation, wet and wide open and ready just for her. Whenever she decides to claim her prize. Not yet. She takes a silent holocap, saved to her memory files for later.

Her mate gulps. "C- Cee…!" There's a note of urgency in his voice now. "P… please…"

It's whispered, almost shamefully, and she grins. Always so stubborn. Never did like asking for help.

"Alright."

He gives a yelp of victory as her thumb and forefinger slide easily into his valve, disconnecting the magnetized toy that had been nestled to his ceiling node for the past several magacycles. It was a relatively simple little bit–egg shaped, not even the length of her finger, but able to stick to their insides and vibrate endlessly. Cliffjumper shudders with relief.

The berth creaks softly as she climbs up behind him. Rises onto her knees, and though his view is obstructed, he hears her panels retract and he knows exactly what her spike looks like. It's just like her, long and slender, silver with those blue ridges that he loves so much, pink biolights thrumming up and down the length. His valve clenches at the memory, more slick escaping the lips.

One hand finds purchase on his right hip, and the other grabs his left horn. It's rough and pure, molten pleasure blows through his veins. His whole body bucks and writhes, and as his back is arched, her spike slams into him with a fluid, brutal motion.

Cliffjumper crashes into a wailing overload, valve spasming and spiralling tightly around the length impaling him. His optics flicker wildly as his visual feed corrupts, and he swears loudly, "Frag frag frag oh frag YES r- right- right the- ere-!"

It threatens to overwhelm him and he turns his face into the mattress, sobs of pleasure wrenching their way out of his throat no matter how hard he tries to hold them back. Arcee fucks him through the overload, still tugging his horns back like he's a wild mechanimal she's wrangling. He loves it, can't get enough of it–so much so that he can't stop a full system reboot.

Cliffjumper goes limp beneath her but Arcee doesn't stop. She can feel in their bond that he's fine. More than fine, even. If she stopped now, he'd pout.

He comes back around to the filthy, sloppy sounds of his valve and the sharp clang of metal every few seconds. His sensors are glowing happily, and already another overload is building. He looks up at his mate, optics half shuddered a single rivulet of drool sneaking past his lip plates, and all he can think is, 'Primus I hope we go all night.'

[not-poignant]

Worldbuilding anon here! Thank you for giving such a detailed response! I had never heard of Obsidian before now, but your graphics were so pretty that I immediately downloaded it and I’ve been having a great time playing around. I love this interface so much! I also could never get into World Anvil (I think I made an account, tried it for a day, and never went back) and I much prefer Obsidian.

Obsidian is fun! Once you learn the tags for hyperlinking and for headings you are set for life, basically. Also, Obsidian has like easily hundreds free plug-ins for you to use that have been made by users of Obsidian and can be added at any time. I'm pretty sure I've added a couple, but if you go into Settings -> Community Plug Ins -> Browse you can find so many things dedicated to helping you out. There's things for graphs, tag wrangling, different layouts, making templates and each one will have a description of how to use it. So that's cool too if you're needing your Vault/Obsidian to do certain things. :D

I found World Anvil a little unwieldy for me. It was slow loading (and I'm speedy), and I got intimidated by templates clearly intended for game-makers and not authors. I know people say 'you can just fill out what you want' - but I'm a completionist, and seeing a lot of empty spaces made me feel pressured to come up with irrelevant information, and made me less focused on coming up with relevant information.

Meanwhile I know some people hate Obsidian because it makes you do everything from scratch, lol, but I love that, because I really only need certain information, and I love the option for a visual graph! (Also you can change the colours of the nodes which is fun). :D