Flip'n'Fly

   ...We wasn't going to invent any new music styles. We just recorded soundtrack for screencaptured video from our absolutely crazy project - 3d interactive enviro 'Nux'. We're just a few creative individuals and we started our first collabs from experimental music before starting Nux project. Nothing that each of us made before have not changed us as much as this giant project and this music. Everything else used to be made just in way of start/finish and go to drain small drink:) After all, at least everything that surround us is made in this way. Whether it's something new or from Ancient Egypt. But here we have something other. It's all unpredictable. It's an improvisation - free flight. Everything is extremely complicated and confused but it's easy to do, it naturally flows by itself like a river. Probably, it's a trial to see parallel universes and explore some possible and impossible combinations of the same basic elements. Maybe it's experimentation with probabilities. As far as reality is just probabilities. We all know very well how one small event can change everything...

    So welcome to watch this screenplay video. At the moment Nux isn't still available online. We think that we still aren't ready for this - everything is still in process. But we want to show something, so we share this set of screencaptures. We're engaged in this subproject - video with music - for almost two years. Probably, girls who sang with us have already lost their hope to see the result:) During this period we was refreshing some of our visions of what we was doing till this moment. We was pondering everything even more deeply than usually. Heroic industrial era people was happy - they was sure that their heroes pondered everything for them. And all they had to do is to follow simple scheme - maternity hospital/nursery/school/factory/hospital etc.. Our lives are different and it doesn't fit to any scheme. It appears that Alan Toffler predicted something similar back in 1972 year. We became interested in futurology for our 3d-enviro project. We just look for some predictions to have an idea how everything gonna look soon. Because architecture and design depends on what, how and when people gonna do. It appeared that we will print smallest devices using desktop 3d printer at home soon, bigger things will grow-up on their own and t-shirts will know about us more than we will. Economical inequality will get smaller with time too. But even this is far not the main surprise which waits us in future. Of course the most part of those changes will go gradually, but the most of them already have started. Because of that we already try to make something with our lives and try to understand what's gonna come of that so we could plan our next steps. We will tell about all that when we will be ready. For now big thanks for stopping by and please feel free to comment and rate. Here is something that everything starts from - trial to look on usual colors of life through new eyes. Welcome!

    Our special thanks to Egy, Fragola and Matilda

for awesome vocal improvisations.

    Soundtracks (full set) free download:

http://www.jamendo.com/en/list/a130134/first-impulse-1

http://www.jamendo.com/en/list/a130328/first-impulse-2

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CD/DVD-Cover tutorial

Also this is a CD/DVD-Cover tut. InkScape/GIMP installation instructions and links to sources and all additional files here.

This is a legally free open-source vector-image editor. For some simple work Inkscape is better than proprietary analogues like Corel Draw or Illustrator.

Open the svg-file (SvgGphX1.SVGZ) with Inkscape. This and other source files for this tutorial are here: https://app.box.com/s/hd77bxmpr93prpv93id2. And also for this cover we must have fonts and images, included in the zip-archive with all required sources. You can use your own or my images - 'SampleImg1.jpg' and 'SampleImg2.jpg' if you want - please download it and save to your computer. Then copy the address of the image from file manager window and paste it into image properties window in Inkscape. You can find this window in the right-click menu.

Replacing full title (with extension - file type letters after dot) and adress in window with image properties we replace image in the oval clip. To rotate/scale/transform your own image and add/fix deformations drag corners of selection. Hold Shift to keep proportion. And release clip (right-click menu) if you want to change the shape of the oval without changing proportion of image or conversely. Later you can add cliping mask again.

In further I'll show you how you can set another shape of the clipping mask but now I turn to the letters, so those who want to make everything faster could do it.

Here you can add/change texts and fonts with two clicks. In the next step we're going to export finished artwork to exchangeable file format for printing or sharing with friends.

I recommend to print your cover as photography. To do this we have to export file as a bitmap. It's the simplest way to get best-quality image. If it's about even several tens of copies, this way is cheaper than typography print. But if you want, you can also export artwork to printable pdf-file for typographic print.

Inkscape includes awesome custom effects and filters. If your computer has not enough power just wait a moment:) Or remove filters...

If you export your artwork to a bitmap-file (*.png) you get a digital image with scale a little bit larger than square CD/DVD cover: 1476x1476 pixels or 12,5cm/4,92". It's always better to have a little reserve. But you have to keep on mind that if some letters are too close to the edge it's better to move them now. Check everything on my help-picture carefully, because on this stage every detail is important. Now the file which we have is absolutely ready for printing at tescophoto.com, zazzle.com, mpix.com and other similar sites. We just have to remember that we want to get 12,5cm/4,92in print-out. Some online printing services only provide 5 x 5" or 5 x 7" prints. For this case you must change page size (via menu File/Document properties) to 1500 x 1500 px or 1500 x 2100 px and export whole page area. White margins can be cut after.

Since those who like to have all and now probably gone printing already, we can now easy take a look on wonderful possibilities which Inkscape gives us for creation :) In few next steps I'll even try to interfere less. All you need is there on the picture, but it's just a little part of what Inkscape can do. It has even a few things which other vector-graphic editors don't, despite people pay money for them. Inkscape instead is absolutely free software. We'll start with creating a vector geometric figure... Then we gonna make a clipping mask of it for your new photo.

Editing geometric object.

Intersection of two figures. Objects must necessary be converted to paths before.

Importing the raster-image. You can move, transform and rotate the image...

We can select better place for the image.

Clicking on image with the right mouse button we can set object above image as a clipping mask.

Besides Inkscape we have Gimp, which is free too. It is a raster-image editor. I use it for adjusting pics and backgrounds. In few steps we gonna get deeper into this subject, but now I want to show few more tricks with text and vector objects in Inkscape.

It's a simple text into the text-frame. When you transform a frame, text will keep inside it. It's handy for editing small text. It's better to write everything we want to write here now, so we could see how many space it's going to take. Then we can find a nice place for it.

This is one more star. I want to place it on top of the photo to shade the corners. To do that we can copy layer with clipped image or just copy/paste it. Then release clip (right-click menu), delete the picture and fill the star with a half-opacity gradient. Notice that copying layer is easier because layers give us possibility to lock/unlock and show/hide elements which they contain. It's more handy than to have all elements in one layer.

Here you can see what layers contain in this file.

We also can replace raster background with some another form my creative collection https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/109907728345873054944/albums/5963536186264888321 or with the simple vector-square.

To edit big caption-text shaping we edit the node of text-path.

If the simple rectangle on background looks too boring we can put some hot collage to the background layer :) With Inkscape and GIMP you can do it without any problems. If you're ready to devote some time to this, you can make awesome visual mixes for your discs or booklets...

Fonts-menu for changing the fonts.

Putting the caption-text on the path.

In this artwork we really have only one layer created in Inkscape. The background collage is made in GIMP. So in this case it would be probably most easily for us to export the final file from GIMP. To do this we have to export the text layer from Inkscape as a bitmap picture and then import this layer into GIMP. It's going to be a png-file, which contains only the picture with the text on a transparent background. Since the GIMP is a raster-image editor, some visual effects are little bit more natural for it.

To import our exported text-layer or any other image to GIMP you can just drag the file from your folder right into GIMP's main window. I share a few GIMP-files scaled to printable dimensions. Select and download if you want some images here: https://app.box.com/s/hd77bxmpr93prpv93id2/1/1421420792

Layers in GIMP can switch between different opacity and blending modes. We can duplicate same layers with fonts for example, move them little bit and change modes of the layers to have great effects for the fonts.

To hide some areas of pictures, in GIMP we can create masks like in Inkscape. We could just erase these areas, but working with masks we can show some elements again... We can create masks (press Ctrl+M if you use my GIMP-settings) from selection, or blank white full-transparent masks for beginning. In GIMP it is a wonderful tool for free-shaped selecting.

By the way, I use here my special custom keyboard shortcuts. From the very childhood I use these shortcuts composed by my dad - graphic designer. I want to share custom keyboard shortcuts and layout settings in one file (GIMP-SETTINGS folder) into zip-package with all sources. Unpack and open 'Annotation'-file with instructions for use. I think it's better to spend few minutes to make GIMP-interface adapted to faster work...

Entering to the masks (click the symbol of mask in the layer-menu to 'enter') we can paint on the masks to show/hide different elements for masked layers.

GIMP's fantastic filters help to warm our creativity...

Don't forget to periodically save your artwork. GIMP's native file-format is .xcf with variants. Xcf contains information about layers and settings. For printing you can export the whole image as a jpeg-file. Jpeg doesn't contain any layer information but you can print it as photography in any place with printing service.

The best resolution-settings for all printings are 300 dpi (dots/pixels per inch). I have one more thing to say but you can finish your artwork at this stage. Next steps will show the color/density corrections of the image, which are almost invisible...

With levels you can run up almost everything you want.

If you can't do something using levels, try color curves.

Now we'll glance on two awesome tools. First one clones small areas of the picture, defined by the brush you use, from one place to another. This way artists soften some blicks etc. With Ctrl you select the source area for cloning.

And this tool smudges blends where it's needed.

 These steps here are all the basic steps that are required to make any 2d-graphic design. Using these steps you can make various graphic compositions from small flyers, labels and booklets to big calendars and posters.

People who make that kind of things everyday, actually just make those steps everyday. Of course, they can do it faster. But speed doesn't always mean quality. After all, it's just an issue of criteria. Probably, today we enter some new era, where new ways of connections between people, and new criteria emerge. Creativity may become a lifestyle not only for professionals. A lot of futurists say that people now going to engage in different things during their lives. At least my life goes like this on its own. And I like it. At least it's not boring:)

It's very nice if you like graphic design and my thing helps you to open something new in your self-understanding. This tutorial is really concentrated. But on the other hand, you can always come back, and next time you'll see it, it will look far more simpler. Now, when you saw everything here, you should catch on what things do in my other file. Please feel free to change anything in any my file. And thank you for your time, please comment and rate. All questions and ideas are welcomed.

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Unofficial Reel 03

Regarding the new music style... We just were making musical accompaniment for video with our biggest project - "Nux" 3d virtual enviro. You can glance once at those video to understand that there can't be any 'usual' music:) And as we already engaged in graffity and experimental music, it was quite naturally to do something own.

  

We are trying to make music which would be designed for listening. Today, the most of the music which is proposed by music industry is appointed for dance, fitness, or everyday cooking on a kitchen. It's approximately like if we would driving boats on the roads instead of cars. If you're in traffic jam or in a subway train such music is useless to listen. It's inconspicuous because we quickly get used to everything that surrounds us. But subconsciously every of us feel it. We search for some solution for a long time. Almost everyone in tonux.gix say that one of the reasons why we make music is because we can't find something that we can just listen to. 

Free mp3 download: http://www.jamendo.com/en/artist/415374/tonux.gix

The new style haven't appeared at once. We have showed whole set of such videos on this channel. You can see how it all formed. We was making a 3d-material and tried to explore there... drove, flew, jumped... Then we thought, evaluated, discussed. And continued. Those video is a screencapture from initial scenes. We just captured our fun there.

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▹▹▹ open-source 3d-enviro 'Nux' ◃◃◃

This is screen-captured video from our greatest project - 'Nux' 3d-enviro. We - 'tonux.gix' are just few creative individuals and we make this in some chaotic way, some different way from 'start/finish and forget', and that's why it's still in the beginning stage. Sooner or later we'll probably share all the sources as a public domain. But at the current point we want to finish some things here. Besides other things we have some problems too - especially with files structure.

Last time lots of wonderful open-source game engines appeared, but we don't have enough time to test our scenes with them because 3d-mesh, textures, animation - all this takes a lot of time. Also, we consider ourselves rather artists than programmers. It's more interesting for us to experiment with 3d-shape for example... Well, and of course it's funny to play with all this when it interacts. Generally we test everything with blender game engine.

We make everything here from scratch, even this video and soundtrack. The consequence is that everything is moving slowly - tests with various engines aren't gonna take place soon. That's why we want to share our scenes. Maybe someone else would like to test these scenes with some platform.

If to talk about 3d, there still are no that much universal file formats like for example *.jpg or *.png for pixmaps. There are some more distributed or less distributed ones, but no one of them is dominant - 3d matter is developing really dynamically right now. I think that in next few years some stable solutions will appear for 3d-mesh, bones and physics, because demand in it grows more and more.

Perhaps even 3d-environments and what is called today augmented reality will start to replace 2d interfaces. I hope it will be powered by open-source software like most of sites and servers today.

We used only FLOSS (free/libre/open-source) software for this project and we had lots of fun with it. I don't mean anything bad about proprietary software. It is still quite productive, as the conventional world in general. We have water, electricity in our houses. But FLOSS is something special: just like the most elite models of Porsche or Lamborghini, it has no redundant parts;) just like these cars FLOSS gives the feeling of drive and comfort in the same time. You have more freedom but with more freedom you get more risks. "Driving" FLOSS requires more attention and control but it gives more satisfaction.

We were enjoying it for almost 10 years, since the very beginning of our NUX-project. Now we want to say "Thank you" to all the people who create FLOSS. Of course we have to begin with RMS and Linus, as well as all the developers of Gnu/Linux and its distributions.

All you see on this video was created from scratch: 3d work was done in Blender; Gimp, Inkscape and (in past) Sodipodi were used to create textures, and the video was edited in Kdenlive and Cinelerra. Soundtrack was produced using Ardour, LMMS, Mixxx, Audacity, PureData, Qtractor, Psycle etc.

There are many other people we'd like to thank: the developers of KDE, Gnome, XFCE and other useful tools and desktop environments, as well as all the developers of these wonderful plugins and little programs, for instance sound or visual synthesizers like Calf or Mandelbulber and many many others.

Our applause to these awesome people!

Free soundtrack full set download: https://www.jamendo.com/en/list/a139029/future-begins

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Artistical 3d-enviro 'Nux'

Here's probably the most experimental soundtrack of ours. It's related to the 3d scene as well as to the screen-captured video. You can see the frames tensely vibrating in the start of the video. When we was making this, it looked like reality which we lived in until that moment was vibrating and disappearing in unknown way. It haven't returned yet by the way. It is somewhere behind, but after this experiment we already can see something else, as if we'd look through what seemed to be real before. 

We had this strange experience all along the process which I don't want to call work. Work means that the fundament is made first, then walls and roof are, and lastly all the details up to door handles etc. Here it was going in a different manner - everything appeared like from nowhere, sometimes logically and sometimes conversely. For example, some of improvisations was played without the background, which was being developed independently, and everything fitted better than it ever could if we would do it following classical rules.

Somewhere in the beginning of a second half of a video, there is a fragment of captured creation process. In 3d-matter everything is made in various ways too. Sometimes ground relief goes first, and sometimes streets, homes and everything. This fragment in video isn't a tutorial - we just show how it looks from inside. Usually we use hyper low-poly 3d-mesh models to place all the masses. After this we make it more detailed where it needs to be. At this point we have a little mess with all the files and generally this is why we didn't share these scenes with public. But we still plan to do this in some time. I think we're going to make it as a public domain - so people could use our scenes or parts of them in their projects and try them with various engines. Everything we use here is made by us - landscapes, buildings, vehicles and characters. This video and even soundtracks are made by us from scratch.

Thanks for watching, please comment, rate and come again.

Soundtracks full set free download: https://www.jamendo.com/en/list/a141895/free-fly

And printable version of cover (just download:)

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downloadable old rusty blender scene

Wnʞləʍ friends... this scene is available for download from ▹▹▹http://box.net/nux1i◃◃◃ It is already a bit "rusty" - won't run without python 2.5 on gnu/linux and untested on windows 9, but if it's not your case, then hope you'll enjoy!

This video demonstrates the mood of the scene, so one will be able to have an image of our ideas just from it. The music is some of the older fragments we used to create. And you can download some our newest soundtrax for your vids: http://soundcloud.com/tonux-gix

ƎɅ☮⅂

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CD/DVD-Cover

I want to share here my few ideas for making CD/DVD cover picture. After four steps you will have a simple design. The main thing here is that we gonna use fully functional graphic applications. Today there's a lot of utilities for making CD/DVD cover design, but thay have limited functionality. For example, you can't insert picture into a clipping mask or put text to custom free path. I use open-source free applications, and they're really easy-to-use and sometimes they have even better instruments than their analogs. It's Gimp and Inkscape. To make the simplest version of this cover you just have to install Inkscape. With it you'll be able to make a finished design and print it as a photography. Using GIMP you can edit inserted images and add custom effects.

InkScape download link: http://inkscape.org/en/download/

GIMP download link: http://www.gimp.org/downloads/

16 MB sized zip-package with source IncScape files, required fonts, custom GIMP settings and other additions: https://app.box.com/s/hd77bxmpr93prpv93id2

Custom backgrounds: https://app.box.com/s/j10t37fhj9kvhwgf01om

I made this cover in the same steps and with the same software. This is a cover for tonux.gix's new experimental music album. I'm one of tonux.gix members and I participated in this project too.

We wanted this cover to look a little bit like something "home made". Everything that tries to look like "professional" wants to please everybody. We thought that it doesn't make sense to us. We wanted it to look more cozy and warm...

Check it if you want - we use this music as soundtrack for video-screencapture showing our biggest absolutely crazy project - Nux 3d interactive enviro.

 If you are ready to start your cover picture, go: http://blotproject.blogspot.com/2013/12/cddvd-cover-tut.html

 

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Marto - interactive virtual 3d city - creation

A lot of things we do - we still do "manually", even on the computer. It looks like it's soon to change. And in 3d as well - we probably won't work directly with 3d mesh and textures. Probably, an operational artificial intelligence can be especially good in what we these days call game engine. Let alone quantum computers that can , for example, "see" an entire huge database all at once.

However, I believe, a lot of people will still want to know how it all works under the hood. So we've decided to share these screenplays. These aren't tutorials. They just show how an interactive virtual environment - and an artwork - emerges out of nothing. Presently, the game development industry works like a factory: one people do the 3d mesh, other - textures, and level designers then put it all together.

At tonux.gix we do everything in a very chaotic manner:) Especially in cases like this one. Sometimes everything is moving slow, and other times we redo whole pieces over and over again. When it all will reach certain condition, that will satisfy us - we will share the source files, so that anyone can add their stuff, edit and develop the whole thing. It provides a great deal of artistic satisfaction. And it is a pleasure to work with all this material as well. We learned a lot during the years of working on the Nux project.

Btw, we used our own self-remixes as soundtracks for this video. You can download it for free:
http://jamen.do/l/p500193385

 #‎3d‬ ‪#‎art‬ ‪#‎artwork‬ ‪#‎modern‬ ‪#‎new‬ ‪#‎music‬ ‪#‎free‬ ‪#‎VR‬ ‪#‎virtual‬ ‪#‎virtuality‬ #‎blender‬ #multiplayer #‎blender scene #‎blender multiplayer scene ‪#‎licks‬ ‪#‎fun‬ ‪#‎follow‬ ‪#‎followme‬ ‪#‎follow4follow #screenplay‬‪ #‎gameplay ‪#‎soundtrack‬ ‪#‎style‬ ‪#‎download‬‬ ‪#‎open‬ ‪#‎Gimp‬ ‪#‎Inkscape‬ ‪#‎Kdenlive‬ ‪#‎Cinelerra‬ ‪#‎OpenShot‬ ‪#‎Calf‬ ‪#‎Mandelbulber‬ ‪#‎GNU‬ ‪#‎Linux‬

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Recording with Audacity.

 "Audacity" is the fabulous application - it's very good and absolutely legaly free open-source.
Here's where you can download it: http://audacityteam.org/download/

After installation Audacity should automatically detect the mic and you can start record right away I think,
but check the record sourse.

To record, first of all press the pause button, then the record button, and then release the pause button.

In the end you should export the sound to some file type - you can choose 'flac' or 'ogg' for example.

We looked at the case where we played the background track outside of Audacity. You can even play it on other device - on your phone for example. Use headphones, so the mic wouldn't catch the back track.

Also, you can use Audacity itself to play the back track. It can play one track and record another on the same time, you don't need to wander through crapy menus with mysterious options.

A little issue may appear though, when using mp3-encoded track, or exporting recorded audio into an mp3 file. Audacity is free open-source software, and mp3 format is patented in some countries and some States. But in all other cases, one may install an mp3 library to encode/decode audio.
mp3 'Lame' codec for Windows: http://lame.buanzo.org/Lame_v3.99.3_for_Windows.exe
mp3 'Lame' codec for OSX: http://lame.buanzo.org/Lame_Library_v3.98.2_for_Audacity_on_OSX.dmg

Also, keep in mind that if you record without automatic level control or some sort of limiter, you may overlap the level. In plain english - you don't want to sing or play the instrument too loud. You can check the levels in Audacity, they're supposed to be to the right from the play button by default - if you're too loud, they go red. Better play quieter - you can amlify the recorded signal very easily and lossless. Instead, if you overlap the levels, signal will be distorted and cut, and you won't be able to restore the information that's lost. The best way to avoid getting into this is to simply step back a little from the mic.

audiosonica.com - Multimedia Audio Course by Marco Sacco / Distortion

Modern integrated microphones in laptops and tablets are much better than those "The Doors", "Velvet Underground", "Animals", "Moody Blues", "Beatles" etc. used to record their music back in 60s. Those records don't seem to sound bad even today. And worth mentioning that not only voice was recorded with microphones, but also drums, and sometimes even guitars. It's like with colors - our cognition works in such a way that the absolute value of a color (like is it pale or bright) doesn't mean much to us, but ratio is what makes difference. We perceive things relative to other things.

YouTube.com - The Doors - Riders On The Storm

history.sandiego.edu - Recording Technology History

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Noise reduction with Audacity.

 "Audacity" is the fabulous application - it's very good and absolutely legaly free open-source.
Here's where you can download it: http://audacityteam.org/download/

Firstly, you're gonna need to select a piece of pure noise, open Effect > Noise Reduction and click Get Noise Profile button, so computer knew what to filter out.

Next step: Edit > Select > All or the hotkey Ctrl + A (or (CMND + A on Mac) and apply reduction via Effect > Noise Reduction > Ok or Ctrl + R.

Finally, in Multi-Tool Mode (F6) you can very easily adjust gain.

At Audacity's wiki you can find more detailed article with other techniques of noise reduction, such as Notch Filter and Noise Gate : http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Noise_Reduction

 Noise reduction Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_reduction

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About the "Blot"-Project

With this project we'll try to show different ways to open our own creative activities and find people for creative collabs. We like to feel it when every small thing changes everyone of us. I think that yet ancient people felt something similar building their first houses. Then, the same feeling accompanied Archimedes and Leonardo. Perhaps people who make something useful today experience those feelings too. And it doesn't matter whether it's a great scientific discovery or a small handmade thing. Even a small thing changes us.

We gonna show here something that we do together. Actually, this site is one of our common projects too. In each specific case it's individual achievement. Each of us does something own - some little parts which we then build bigger projects of. Also we show here some finished things, which we made together with awesome people outside tonux.gix. Perhaps this site will once become a place where a lot of other people will find friends to make something interesting with and then show what came of it to others. We already have here a few tutorials which could help you to enter modern creative technologies. I know that there are a lot of people now, who like the process of creation. Tonux.gix is just a bunch of crazy people. We make some weird initiatives for more than 10 years. In this period we've learnt a lot of useful things from each other. For example each of us today feels free to make 2-3 dimensional artworks. We mount our videos and even perform music experiments commonly. We plan to share various creative ideas here and put here sources and tutorials to them.
I hope you don't mind about construction works here:) We designed this place comfortable, with special climate. We make everything serenely and leisurely. This site, similarly to most of our projects shown here is noncommercial as this helps to do everything more thoughtfully, to get more satisfaction from the process. I believe you can find new awesome friends and few interesting collabs within this project. You know - creativity is very comfortable as lifestyle... Please feel free to comment and ask whatever you want. Crazy ideas and thoughts are welcomed. Thanx a lot for dropping by, and please come back. I promise that here everything won't stay still:)

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Your Own Planet

I promise, this creative act will be as easy for you as jumping into a swimming pool on a warm day! Creativity will wash off everything that needs to be washed off.

  Creating a virtual planet is, in essence, not harder than painting over an air balloon. If one tries to do this using the classical art methods, many inconveniences may arise:D But the most important thing is that a virtual planet can stay with us forever. One can bring it back at any moment to add or change something, or just to take a look at it. One may share it with anyone who would want to play with it, create some mountains or rivers or even cities on it... Your small planet may just be a 15-minute adventure, or your first impulse into a some infinity. Sometimes it happens like that. And it doesn't depend on our age, gender, nationality or social status.

All we need for this is Gimp and Blender. Gimp is a 2d pixel-oriented image editor and Blender is 3d graphics editor. Both programs are free open-source software and are very comfortable to use. You can download them legally for free from their official websites.

I think it may be much easier to choose versions which don't require installation. They may be fired up from any folder on your hard-drive, USB stick, etc.

https://www.blender.org/download/
https://www.gimp.org/
https://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/gimp_portable

This way you can store them in a sub-folder of your project.

This will be your first planet. Blender allows painting simply on a 3d surface. It may seem strange, but we, humans, first painted on 3d objects. Flat surfaces didn't occur that frequently in the nature:D I don't want to dive into too much detail on how to add an image to a sphere in Blender, and I think we should start directly from creativity. That's why I have prepared a Blender file with everything needed to start. You can download it here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6cbWankBfQ3VWtXNnNZLUt3QUE

To paint we need to enter the texture paint mode. On the left panel we have tabs with tool settings etc. With 't' key we can show/hide these settings. And with Ctrl+UpArrow we can show/hide all panels.

In the beginning it is enough to paint a few general spots. It will be easier for us to customize them later with Gimp. The secret is that by painting here we are painting on a flat image, which has been unwrapped on a 3d shape. We can then save what we have painted and open it with Gimp as a normal image. To do this we need to go to the upper right of the panel with the image and choose Image->Save As Image. It is important to increase the quality of the jpeg file to at least 90%.

Gimp specializes on image editing and will give us many incredible possibilities to enjoy real creativity. We can drag our image to Gimp just from a file browser window.

At the left we have a panel with our tools, and at the right we have a tab with a stack of layers. You can, for instance, duplicate a layer containing the source image, and operate on this second copy. In our case this will allow us to feel comfortable to experiment more freely. It is also a good idea to save the file as Gimp's native 'xcf' format so that we can return to the file as we see it in Gimp (with all the layers etc.) at any time.

In general, Gimp, like Blender, is similar to other software of the same kind. It has almost everything that other graphic techniques always provided, and additionally wonderful instruments that appeared in the digital era. Clicking the right mouse button will show a menu with different submenus. I remember how fantastic it was to discover all this different tools and filters myself long time ago.

To view the result of our experiments, we need to export the image to some universal format like jpeg, png, tga or other file that Blender can understand. In our case it is best to just overwrite the original file we exported from Blender. Then Blender will just read the new version of the file when we reload it.

Sometimes Gimp is perceived as a cheap copy of Photoshop. But when you start to go deeper you realize that in fact it gives much more possibilities for experimentation and creativity. Photoshop is better adapted to making money. But if you want to live, to develop intellectually and emotionally, this is not enough. Gimp is better for this. After all, we live in a time when one can achieve both.

By the way, in addition to the ones you see on the screenshot, there are more advanced fractal algorithms under "Filters/Render/Fractal Explorer." This is why these who discovered this aspect of Gimp love the program. Behind an unambitious general appearance Gimp hides a whole studio/laboratory...

3d-editors developed slightly later than 2d ones, and they are much more progressive. But, I think, we shouldn't concentrate on software too much. Earlier, when a person studied violin, for instance, the situation was very different. Not so long ago, during an average human lifetime nothing significant changed. In our time, most likely, the traditional algorithmic instruments will be replaced by something entirely different, different in principle. Programs will become self-improving. This may change the structure of our lives, our society, or way of thinking. It is possible that such changes may become normal for us.

For instance, it is possible we will be working with 3d material with the help of an artificial intelligence, instead of manually like we do now. But this doesn't mean we don't need to know anything or be skillful in anything. Our natural curiosity will not bore us. And we are veeeery curious what's inside and how it works.

For instance I'm showing here variants of how a simple sphere may appear in 3d material. I won't describe them in detail with words. You can analyze everything yourself. It is also one of the characteristics of our near future - while before we were acting within a more or less specific set of instructions, soon these tasks may be performed by robots. We will be the most effective in domains where strict rules and instructions are absent, and we have to be inventive:) It's not scary at all, and it's fascinating. This is the environment that allowed us to become who we are today and we have created out of chaos everything that surrounds us today. I wish you success on this path, enjoy it and come back again.

Since we have learned something about 3d graphics, let me briefly mention one important thing. Currently there is a significant difference between 3d graphics which is used to generate 2d images in movies, architecture etc., and 3d graphics used in interactive environments. But these two types of display are coming closer together recently. In games the level of detail and effects is very close to the one in movies. But, in order to see it, one still needs expensive video cards. In general 3d surfaces are composed of small 2d elements. All items have only surfaces, and only very rarely there are particles as in the physical world.

Of course, ways of simulating particles already existed for a long time, but they are not easy to use, especially for interactive environments. Probably this is a step for the future. Simulating particles would be very easy for a quantum computer. For now I will share with you a single image, made on a regular laptop with the help of mandelbulber. Of course it's only an toy image - one can not fly there:) I have embedded (with the help of Gimp) a fragment of our Nux project, that was made with the usual surface-only approach. You can download a 4K-sized image here, crop or scale for your screen size and use as a wallpaper.

Also here you can find screencasts of the early stages of modeling a small city in our Nux project. These videos seem to be somewhat meditative, probably it's better to view them in the evening in a sleepy mood:D

And now, when you know some truth about this seductive virtual reality, I can share with you some links:

https://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/earth-cycles
https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/
http://www.gimpusers.com/tutorials

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