It has been said (it is written?) that if God had wanted to avoid The Problem altogether, he should have created Adam and Ed, rather than Adam and Eve...
Uh huh. 'Tis a little-known fact that his almightiness did indeed create Adam and Ed first. And guess what happened next?
"Pssssst," said the snake.
"Who, me?" Adam was looking around for something to polish an apple on, and not finding anything really useful about his person, because he had no pockets. Or jeans. Or undies, come to that. "I say, you haven't got a bit of rag, have you, Snake?"
"Rag?" demanded the snake. "Do I look like the kind of creature who goes around carrying bits of rag?"
"Well, no," Adam admitted. "Then again, you look kind of sneaky."
"Makes two of us," the snake observed.
"Me? Sneaky?" Adam batted his long, curly eyelashes in outrage.
"Were you," the snake asked, "or were you not told not to eat the apples? You can eat any other bloody thing in this garden but apples, and what are you doing? Scrumping."
"No I'm not," Adam said, too quickly. Then, "Well, yes I am, but he made me do it."
"God?"
"Ed." Adam idly juggled with the three apples he had picked. "Do you want one? I seem to have a spare."
"Snakes don't eat apples."
"Oh? What do they eat?"
"Mice, rats. Vermin. Odd, don't you think, that there'd be enough vermin in the garden to support a creature the size of me?"
"You are a very beautiful snake," Adam observed, for 'twas but the truth.
"Don't change the subject!"
"What subject?" Adam was confused, and growing more so.
The snake sighed. "Never mind. It was something about fruit ... speaking of which, has anybody ever told you about the birds and the bees, young man?"
"Birds and bees, we got plenty of," Adam said dolefully. "All they ever do is pollinate and catch flies and make honey and make little birds and bees."
"Hmm," hummed the snake, "you're not quite as dumb as one might have imagined. So, uh, what about you and Ed, then?"
"Me and Ed?" Adam stopped juggling. "What about me and Ed?"
"You ever, uh, make like the birds and the bees?" The snake would have winked, but his eyes had not been designed to permit winking, so he gave Adam a nudge with one of his coils instead.
Adam only shrugged. "Honey makes my teeth ache, and bugs get disgusting when you squash 'em, and we already got enough little bugs and birds. Don't need any more."
"Not," the snake mused, "that you and Ed would be likely to make any little bugs and birds."
"Me and Ed?" Adam snorted. "We're both fellas. Jeez, mate, somebody needs to have a talk to you, before you get any older."
The snake would have slapped a hand over his eyes, if he had possessed hands. This scene was not going as intended. "Let me start again," he said with what patience he could muster, which wasn't much. "Come over here, let me whisper in your ear."
Adam looked suspicious. "What for?"
"Because I'm going to make a few suggestions," the snake said, waggling an eyebrow. "Oh, for godsakes put the damn' apples down and get over here!"
And he whispered into Adam's ear. And Adam's eyes grew round as saucers. And then he turned his back upon the serpent and spake in the direction of the olive groves, from whence cameth the sounds of song, where his countryman was singing in praise of blueberries. And Adam sayeth, while the serpent slithered back into the fronds of the garden,
"Yo! Yo, Ed, get over her -- I got an idea!"
And the rest is history. Or mythology.
ooOOooOOooOOoo
Meanwhile, I have "The Fugitive" rendering in Lux (you remember the raytrace/Photoshop version from yesterday, right?), and this makes a perfect opportunity to answer a recent question, and show you what the LuxRender workspace looks like. There's actually two interfaces. The one you think of as LuxRender is, of course, Lux itself:
On the left are loads of dropdowns in which you'll find yourself selecting film types, film speeds, setting F-stops and shutter speeds and so forth. If you have a good grasp of the theory of photography, you will LOVE the way Lux works. The penny is really dropping for me now, and one step at a time I'm starting to make sense of it all. (My challenge at the moment is to figure out how to make Lux "honor" the bump mapping, because right now it barely registers any bump mapping I load onto objects. I'm probably doing something wrong, still. Must find out what.)
But before you get to Lux, you get to Reality, which is a plugin for DAZ Studio. Load up your scene in DAZ, get it all set, and you're ready to render, right? When you click on Render, with the plugin installed, you get the option of calling up Reality as your render option. Take this option, and the user interface pops up right over the DAZ screen:
...Reality's interface is all about tabs, menus and numbers. You're jigging about a hundred parameters which interact with each other to make a million different values. It looks simple, and the interface itself is -- it's as clean and "stripped" as the old DOS interfaces we worked in, and with, about 20 years ago. (Sounds of nostalgia.) But hiding behind the straightforward GUI is a very powerful bridge to get a DAZ scene into Lux. I've got the lights about 70% figured out. If I can get bump mapping figured out, I'll be cruising.
Jade, May 4
