A couple of years ago, when I was just starting to learn #UnrealEngine, I bought a modular cave/dungeon asset called "Cave of Tessellation". Since my day job is UE for engineering, not games, I bought it thinking to use it for a hobby project some day, and that's how it happens that today is the first time I've ever added this kit to a project. :)

This kit is so deliciously creative, I was heartbroken to realize that it was released in 2018 and my review today was the *first review*. This is a real gem that's been overlooked, and I'm hoping this post will take a small step toward fixing that. Here's the UE Marketplace link:

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/cave-of-tessellation

In case anyone's concerned, I have never met or even corresponded with the artist(s), and I have zero financial interest in this product or company. It's not perfect (what is?), and I note a couple of minor flaws in my review on the Marketplace site. But in a world of cookie-cutter dungeon kits, this one stands apart. Taka a look!

Last week I put the finishing touches (I hope) on my first project making physics-simulated clothing in Blender. I've used Blender for years for hard surface work, but our team's character artist asked me to create a dress.

I've tried hard to keep the topo mostly quads in Blender, though it will be triangulated during export to UE 5. * Constructive topo critique welcome. *

For the edges that are sewing points, I made a custom Geometry Nodes utility that cleans up the topo.

I made a simple theatre environment and an animated sequence (with my own IK constraints) for fun and to have a better way to present it during our team meeting.

There's a procedural fabric material that turned out pretty well, IMO, but I can't share that publicly yet.

After tweaking settings, I've got the sewing and related physics stable within 24 frames, but I leave 40 frames ahead of the first output frame.

If you are working with #GeometryNodes in #Blender you may be as excited as me about the new Self Object node which allows you to easily query the transform of the object that owns each the node graph. The docs mention that you can't obtain the geometry output from the Object Info node downstream of Self Object. IOW, image #1 is an error.

They don't tell you what to do about it. The answer is to use the Vector outputs from Object Info but get the Geometry from the Group Input, as shown in image #2.

This little example graph uses a Grid to create a 2D array of instances of its input stepping the rotation of each instance based on the index of the grid vertices. It's probably not all that useful as-is but shows the sort of thing the new node makes it easy to do.

Feeding a scaled-flat and manually (and randomly) tilted single cube mesh as input, the graph makes something like image #3.

(I release this example under MIT License terms. Use as you wish, but no warranty.)

#Mastodon experts: I have spent a couple hours in #RTFM but am unable to solve this...

I have the Advanced Web Interface enabled but am no longer able to open more than three columns in Mastodon. I have reproduced the problem in different browsers and with my adblock disabled.

This worked when I first joined but suddenly stopped, without a browser update etc. This makes me think I've accidentally flipped a preference other than Advanced Web Interface, but I can't find any others that seem relevant.

I've also tried switching off the advanced mode and verifying that it goes to single column, then back, but it still only wants three max.

Any ideas? Thanks!