#LunaticsProject

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)Honestly, I don't expect to get much push back over the political post. It's pretty obvious stuff, and I doubt there's really a lot of right-wingers following me (if I'm wrong, feel free to keep on keeping that to yourself). But I bet this next one will raise a bit of ire, because I felt I had to weigh in on the subject of generative AI. In particular, I experimented with Stable Diffusion prompt-to-image generation in 2022. I haven't really revisited the technology, though I know it has improved, and I have followed some people who are using it. I've heard a lot of different criticisms and analysis of it, from many different angles. I was particularly compelled by the "forklift at the gym" analogy that I used for the featured image here, because that made me think about the significance of artistic endeavors, not just as finished works, but as process. "AI, Automation, Ritual, and Process in Art" <a href="https://lunaticsproject.org/2025/08/11/ai-automation-ritual-and-process-in-art/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://lunaticsproject.org/2025/08/11/ai-automation-ritual-and-process-in-art/</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/LunaticsProject" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#LunaticsProject</a>

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)My physical state has led to some pretty weird psychological states over the last week or so. Mostly I would call it "thoughtful", but I've had some bouts of anxiety, depression, paranoia. I think it's mostly the fatigue, which conveys a kind of helpless feeling, and the crazy sleep schedule (I've been sleeping a lot more than usual, and more than once a day, so my body clock is sort of rolling out of sync with the world. Still... it put me in a mood to finish up some things I've been kind of sitting on. Mainly two essays. The first is a follow-up to the political essay I wrote in November 2024, right after the election was decided. I have tried to avoid politics on "Lunatics!" in general, but I'm afraid the Trump administration has broken my commitment to neutrality. This goes beyond "mere politics" for me. Anyway, in "Entering the Dark Forest", I was trying to predict what to expect from a 2nd Trump presidency, and there was a lot of anxiety there, but I guess I was trying to downplay it, because I didn't want to come off as alarmist. Well, today I feel like I really understated things. Nothing is really different from what I predicted, except harder, faster, and more painful. And well, that's what this essay addresses. I had been kind of sitting on it, hoping to give it a more optimistic spin, talking about what I'm going to do. But in the end, I realized that was just dishonest. I've got some things I'm doing, but I'm not as optimistic as I'd like to be. So it just is what it is: "Inside the Dark Forest" <a href="https://lunaticsproject.org/2025/08/11/inside-the-dark-forest/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://lunaticsproject.org/2025/08/11/inside-the-dark-forest/</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/LunaticsProject" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#LunaticsProject</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/Writing" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Writing</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/Essay" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Essay</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/Blog" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Blog</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/DarkForest" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#DarkForest</a>

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)Naturally, there is a summary for July as well. These include textual summaries of the highlights, the embedded Timelapse video, and my "Video Logs", which is me talking to camera -- with over-the-shoulder graphics, like the news once was long ago. <a href="https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/5csJqkh9zmpEhh3TM57vWK" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/5csJqkh9zmpEhh3TM57vWK</a> I spent a little more time than was probably justified working on icons for Fediverse software, programming languages, packaging systems -- and just for grins custom character emoji for Farscape. Some of those will appear in my video logs in the future, as well as possibly find use in diagrams for future articles. But a lot of it was working finishing the video texture effect for the Mission Control shots. <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/LunaticsProject" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#LunaticsProject</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/Timelapse" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Timelapse</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/July2025" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#July2025</a>

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)The July timelapse is longer. I was hoping to finish up the episode in July, though that didn't happen. I DID finish up the Mission Control shots for the "Launch" sequence though, which was a major hurdle. So I feel pretty good about that. I also converted the two Soyuz interior shots that I had pulled over from the following "Soyuz Flight" sequence into "Launch". These are now "LA-6-A" & "LA-6-B". I started working on the lipsync for LA-6-B, but there's more work to do there (I might get back to that this week -- but I'm going to be taking this VERY slowly: this is more about keeping me from climbing the walls than about getting any objectives met). <a href="https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/5csJqkh9zmpEhh3TM57vWK" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/5csJqkh9zmpEhh3TM57vWK</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/LunaticsProject" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#LunaticsProject</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/Timelapse" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Timelapse</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/July2025" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#July2025</a>

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)And there's now a summary article about June to go with that: <a href="https://lunaticsproject.org/2025/06/30/june-2025-summary/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://lunaticsproject.org/2025/06/30/june-2025-summary/</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/LunaticsProject" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#LunaticsProject</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/Summary" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Summary</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/June2025" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#June2025</a>

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)I've been on a bit of an unplanned creative hiatus, due to catching CoViD on August 1st. It hit me like a ton of bricks, with a bad fever and congestion. I've been very gradually recovering since then. At present, I don't feel much except fatigue and brain fog, but those symptoms are very real. Nevertheless, I did finish up timelapses and summaries for June and July. The June timelapse was kind of short, owing to quite a bit of non-production work, including some emergency fixes to my web servers. <a href="https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/pdDp19x6f6By47AGGjyQMd" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/pdDp19x6f6By47AGGjyQMd</a> Includes final compositing for "Suiting Up" and re-linking and re-blocking for the "Launch / Mission Control" shots (major changes to set and extras characters, which had to be updated in the shot files, and I re-thought some of the shots, resulting in some more re-timing). <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/LunaticsProject" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#LunaticsProject</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/Timelapse" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Timelapse</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/June2025" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#June2025</a>

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)So, I got my renders back from the server on the Mission Control Shots. Frankly, they need a bit more love. I need to add the video texture on the center screen for shots A & C. It IS used in shot D (the transition shot I showed stills from last night). But it hardly matters, the static image would've looked as well in that one, because we barely glimpse it. Also, the camera movement in D is a bit disappointing towards the end: the camera seems to hover/drift a bit before moving in on the Capcom. I think that should move faster -- which would have the added benefit of showing the lip-sync on her line better (she actually has two lines in this shot: first she asks Sergei about the "ride" in Russian, then she asks about the crew, in English -- presumably because she knows they are listening and are English speakers). <a href="https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/raHduNr9GPqpmfvRY8g43J" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://tv.filmfreedom.net/w/raHduNr9GPqpmfvRY8g43J</a> There is no sound in this test video. <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/LunaticsProject" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#LunaticsProject</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/WIP" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#WIP</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/Blender3D" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Blender3D</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/Kdenlive" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Kdenlive</a>

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)Last minute blocking of news crew. This is actually the news crew from an earlier transition, but I'm putting them into the foreground of a through-the-glass shot. This is actually a shot I had storyboarded a long time ago, but never put together. Getting it back in there. :ani_dab_l: <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/LunaticsProject" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#LunaticsProject</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/Blender" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Blender</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/WIP" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#WIP</a>

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)Okay, I think I have salvaged the render! This is a pretty good replication, just using compositor nodes to correct the ink color and thickness. :ani_dab_l: Whew! 😮‍💨 Of course, there IS something else wrong here, but I'm hoping no one notices... <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/Blender3D" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Blender3D</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/LunaticsProject" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#LunaticsProject</a>

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)Well, crap. The ink is wrong. :ohno: Somehow, I substituted the wrong ink style, and also the same one for direct and thru-glass ink. Really annoyed with myself for not catching this. :ani_baka: They're all bold and black. The original direct ink is actually a softer brown color and the thru-glass ink is much finer and dark green. It really does make a difference. To directly fix this mistake is trivial, except then it has to be re-rendered. Alternatively, I could do something complicated in compositing to try to get the same look. :huh: <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/Blender3D" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Blender3D</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/LunaticsProject" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#LunaticsProject</a>

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)And another thing: now it doesn't matter if Freestyle is enabled. It still fails without it -- as long as I'm in debug mode. So maybe this is NOT Freestyle issue after all. Repeatable crashes are SO much easier to test! As a control, I tried rendering the default cube and then a random other file of mine with Blender in debug mode, to make sure that didn't just make it always crash. But nope. Only this file. Also, the shot angle isn't that important. Even if I move the camera around, I still get the crash. So NOW, I'm disabling Blender model layers. Let's see which particular things need to be there to cause the crash. I should be able to narrow it down. <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/Blender3D" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Blender3D</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/LunaticsProject" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#LunaticsProject</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/BugHunt" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#BugHunt</a>

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)Okay. PROGRESS. If I use the "--debug" flag, it fails consistently every time! Yay. Reproducibility. :success: I suspect it's because of this: Switching to fully guarded memory allocator. <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/Blender3D" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Blender3D</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/LunaticsProject" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#LunaticsProject</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/BugHunt" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#BugHunt</a>

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)Okay. One thing I notice is that it has never crashed on the first attempt. It's always after 2 or 3. I had assumed this was just random chance, and it might still be, but I'm thinking it might be some kind of failed cleanup. It only happens when the previous render used Freestyle, but I'm not sure if it matters that the current one does (should test that, maybe?). The backtrace is consistent -- it's always this same message. It looks like the actual error occurs in libc6, from a call by "libpthread" which seems to be "POSIX Threads". So perhaps it's trying to grab a thread to run the render in and failing? I know that Freestyle is unusual in Blender in that it always runs single-threaded, so perhaps there's some awkwardness in switching between threading models (???) But of course, the nature of the bug itself isn't really want I want. I'm stuck with the software. So it's really a matter of figuring out what part of my Blender file triggers this bug. Is it an oddball mesh of some kind? That was my first assumption. I'm going to start hiding layers and see if I can narrow down which element of the set is triggering this (assuming it is due to a single mesh). Troubleshooting. It's like science, but without the prestige! :ani_dab_l: <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/Blender3D" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Blender3D</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/LunaticsProject" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#LunaticsProject</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/BugHunt" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#BugHunt</a>

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)Does seem to be a Freestyle thing. I rendered about 20 X w/o Freestyle and no problem. Then about 4-5 with Freestyle and it crashed again. Also the console shows Freestyle was processing edge problems: Warning: edge 168 - 160 appears twice, correcting [... many lines like this ...] Warning: edge 160 - 159 appears twice, correcting Warning: edge 122 - 125 appears twice, correcting Warning: edge 180 - 179 appears twice, correcting Warning: edge 177 - 178 appears twice, correcting Writing: Building254_AqRm-Int--279test.crash.txt rmdir: Permission denied Segmentation fault Most of my renders generate some of these warnings from Freestyle. I don't really understand why, but I've come to regard them as harmless. But maybe not so harmless after all? The weirdest thing is that it isn't quite repeatable. Suggesting something like a dangling pointer or uninitialized variable at fault. Some kind of loose cannon like that. Also, no idea why THIS set should be sensitive. Maybe I'll start taking out pieces of the set and seeing if that effects it. Wish it was more repeatable. <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/Blender3D" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Blender3D</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/LunaticsProject" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#LunaticsProject</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/BugHunt" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#BugHunt</a>

Terry Hancock (Director/Producer)Hunting the frumious bandersnatch... SOMETIMES, this shot crashes Blender 2.79. Sometimes it does not. I was careful this time, and made sure to save the camera angle prior to rendering. Freestyle is on, so far, but it seemed to happen prior to running Freestyle. No change in PoV. What invisible monster lurks in this rather plain looking set...? The most problematic thing I can see is that the camera is clipping a foreground object. I had two crashes in about 8 tries, so call it 1/4 of the time. I need to fix something, but what..? After a few tries I get a crash and a backtrace: # Blender 2.79 (sub 0), Commit date: 2018-03-22 14:10, Hash f4dc9f9d68b # backtrace blender279(BLI_system_backtrace+0x20) [0x1a6c700] blender279() [0x1078395] /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(+0x38dd0) [0x7f7d3e25ddd0] blender279(BKE_mesh_tangent_loops_to_tessdata+0xcb) [0x180992b] blender279(DM_generate_tangent_tessface_data+0x246) [0x17416d6] blender279() [0x13e643b] blender279() [0x13e9134] blender279() [0x13ebf8d] blender279() [0x13ec652] blender279(RE_Database_FromScene+0x1b1) [0x13ed4f1] blender279() [0x1404802] blender279() [0x1404d18] blender279() [0x140814a] blender279(RE_BlenderFrame+0xbe) [0x140879e] blender279() [0x134a121] blender279() [0x10887ba] /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0(+0x7ea7) [0x7f7d3ea4cea7] /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(clone+0x3f) [0x7f7d3e320acf] :blender:👀 Unfortunately, this means very little to me. Maybe see if it crashes with Freestyle turned off... <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/Blender3D" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Blender3D</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/LunaticsProject" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#LunaticsProject</a> <a href="https://m.filmfreedom.net/tags/BugHunt" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#BugHunt</a>

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