Discordant Harmony

Category: Books

  • Wednesday Update: New 3D Modeling Project & Flames of Rebellion Progress

    Wednesday Update: New 3D Modeling Project & Flames of Rebellion Progress

    It’s been a little while since the last update on this site, but then again, I’ve been quite preoccupied with various projects ever since the downfall of the Ashryver Models situation. (That’s right: the Ashryver V1 painting classifier and everything related to it has now been destroyed, and no longer works. This is the result of a full-scale pivot to more reliable, worthwile, and engaging projects). I’m now mainly focusing on the final main book in the Flames of Rebellion Series, and a Blender 3D modeling project for a BeamNG.drive mod.

    In this update, it’s time to take a look at what’s been going on lately. I’ll also provide some rough estimates and plans for the Flames of Rebellion series, and when the next couple of books might be coming out.

    Blender 3D Modeling: the Soluna Project

    My current progress in Blender. I’ve increased the width of the vehicle’s body as it seemed much too narrow before, but at the same time, I may have gone too far.

    This is my latest (and primary) undertaking. I started working on this 3D modeling project about three weeks ago, and it was inspired by the lack of any AL50 Toyota Soluna (1998-2002) mods on the BeamNG.drive community. This is because it’s not a very well-known vehicle; with this project, I intend to fill that gap.

    My first step in this project will obviously be to get a basic 3D model. This is proving to be a very challenging and time-consuming process; however, I have completed the body outline, all four wheel arches, and now starting on shaping the hood after three weeks. My current estimate is that it’ll take another few months to get this model done if I continue working at this pace; December or January of next year is a good estimate.

    After that, I’ll need to move into the nodes & beams phase of the modeling process. This involves using the 3D model as a framework and adding the BeamNG core components around it, including the nodes, which are like the vertices in a complex chemical structure, and the beams, which connect the nodes together. There could easily be thousands of nodes and beams for a fully beamed (or JBEAMED) vehicle, so this might take another 4-5 months.

    The final phase will likely involve doing some UV mapping, sorting out the myriad bugs that I’m sure will emerge, and getting all the configurations set up. And this will likely just be for the basic Soluna copy with the standard interior and openable doors. This particular version of the project will be released on third-party sites like Modland only, since BeamNG prohibits the distribution of copyrighted vehicles on their own site.

    However, I have a workaround for that. Once I’m satisfied with the base Soluna mod, my intention is to go back and creatively modify the vehicle so that it fits with BeamNG’s in-game Ibishu brand. This should work well, since Ibishu is BeamNG’s equivalent of Toyota; from there, I can subtly change the taillight design and the gauge cluster, for example, so that I can market a lore-friendly Soluna version on the BeamNG repository. (This whole mod will obviously be free, of course. I don’t believe in charging money for mods of any kind, no matter how many apps are supported by the game’s ‘CarPlay’ screen, or how many ‘hours per day’ I spend on the mod).

    Right now, all of this is sounding rather daunting as I’m only on the 3D modeling stage. Honestly, though, I’ve made a whole lot more progress than I’ve expected in the psat few weeks–and certainly since the first blog post I wrote about this modeling project, when the Soluna was still a shapeless box. I’ve encountered numerous troubles along the way, most notably with the wheel arches. For some reason the geometry got destroyed as I was trying to fill in points surrounding the rear arch; the fan got all tangled up and cluttered. I had to completely reset the rear arch and start over; fortunately, that fixed the problem after a couple days’ of work. I can only hope that I’ll be able to push through similar challenges as this gets more complex, becuase I know these issues will be coming.

    Below is another view of the current state of the Soluna project; I’ve just diagnosed an issue with the main soluna_body being far too narrow. Hopefully I haven’t inadvertently broken anything else.

    Flames of Rebellion Book 4

    As you may recall, the previous book in the Flames of Rebellion series (book 3.5) was published just back in April. That was Reckoning of the Past, a medium-length in-between novel detailing a side plot in the series. Now, I’m moving hard on Book 4 in the Flames of Rebellion series, currently called The Conquest of Peace. This will likely be a longer book, in the 410-420 page range, as this is the series finale and needs to tie up all the loose plot ends. Right now, I’m sitting at about 30,000 words and 135 pages, putting me at about 35% through the book. I can’t release a target month right now, as it’s still a bit too early for that, but I’m hoping it can be published around winter 2026 (December 2026 to maybe January 2027).

    After that, only one book will be left: the prequel. This will be book 0.5, examining what came before the First World and the Thirteen Worlds and everything taking place in the main series. Book 0.5 will be set in around GY 23, which is the World Zero equivalent of about seven hundred years prior to the main novels. It will focus on the ancient Cymantian Empire, explaining the political conflicts and conquests that split apart the empire and led to the turbulent formation of the First World. While Jonathan, Lily, Phoenix, Ember, and Grace will not be a part of the prequel (at least, not right now), there will be many other new and intriguing characters, plus old villains like Aaron Fisker and the Cymantus itself. I’m still figuring out the best way to introduce this ancient world without making readers feel too confused.

    My current end-of-series target is summer 2027, or about a year from now. If possible, I’d like to get the Flames of Rebellion universe closed out before the next International-Offshore Excursion, which is still tentatively set for summer 2027 as well. This will provide clean break for the next project, which might be something completely different, and much more grounded in reality. Stay tuned for that.

    Well, with that, I think that’s everything for this site update. I’ll be updating the Flames of Rebellion page soon with some more details about Book 4, and expect more updates as the Blender 3D modeling project progresses. Hopefully I won’t destroy any more geometry!

  • Summer Update: AI Models, Flames of Rebellion, Chamber Music

    Summer Update: AI Models, Flames of Rebellion, Chamber Music

    With the academic year classes having come to a conclusion, the summer has officially started. I made a goal for myself back in late April, when things were still extremely busy, that I would try to push harder on the fourth and final book in the Flames of Rebellion series when classes ended. I had just published Book 3.5 on Amazon and was feeling motivated to wrap up the series; Book 4 already had about 9,000 words of content in it from the previews I had written.

    Now, as of late May, I’ve mostly achieved that goal. Over the past few days, I’ve put down over 3,000 words into Book 4, The Conquest of Piece, reaching over 12,000 words. Things have gotten significantly more interesting than the first few chapters, and I’m using a rather chaotic mind map with sticky notes to keep track of this book’s plot. In a couple of chapters, the plan is to create a serious plot twist by adding an evacuation situation of the Tranquility’s Ozridia base due to a bomb threat (or possible actual bomb). I’d also like to fully develop and flesh out Jonathan and Lily’s romance, as this is the last book now. I’ve already added some romantic cues in the first few chapters; I intend to make Jonathan’s upcoming birthday party the culmination of their relationship.

    On the subject of artificial intelligence and machine learning, I’ve moved onto a new Kaggle challenge: house price prediction. After failing horribly to get the sentiment analysis model to work, I stopped trying to extract answers from Claude and pivoted to something else. This house price prediction challenge involves the creation of a model to predict the prices of houses in the Iowa area based on various attributes, like number of bedrooms, pool quality, fence presence, square footage, etc. The dataset is quite large; there are seventy-nine features available, all with varying correlations to the central SalePrice target variable. So far, I’ve analyzed the data using some Seaborn scatterplots, generated correlation matrices to see which features to encode, and gotten started on cleaning the data (which has involved deleting outliers and imputing NA values). I can already tell that this challenge, while still labeled “introductory”, is slightly more intensive in terms of data preparation and analysis than the Kaggle Titanic challenge.

    I’m also loosely working on the virtual card deck project, where I’m attempting to create a virtual cards app that people can customize to fit their specific needs. Right now, I have a modal where you can input the number of decks, the name of each deck, the background art, and the titles/descriptions for the cards in the deck. Most of the data is persisted, and the modal seems to be behave as expected. However, I’ve been running into trouble getting all the data to save to local Storage, not just the number of decks. I’ve asked lots of questions of Microsoft Copilot, but no real results have come yet. This project is one of the most complex undertakings for me yet when it comes to web design, HTML, and JavaScript, so I’m not expecting it to work perfectly for many more months.

    Tomorrow, I’m starting a chamber music perspectives (CMP) camp, which will run for about a week and a half and take place from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM. This camp involves not only a series of small ensemble performances (piano trio and string quartet size), but also some composition masterclasses and the opportunity to compose a piece of your own for the ensemble to play. This will be the “Final Project”, as it’s been dubbed; it looks like this camp will be very fast-paced and packed with activities. This final project needs to be started from scratch on day one and completed by the tenth day, giving us less than two weeks to compose a fleshed-out, playable, and refined 3-5 minute piece. For context, it usually takes me about two months to compose a high-quality 5-minute multi-instrument piece; however, I only work about 45 minutes every other day. At this camp, we’ll likely spending at least an hour and a half every day on this final project.

    Some other miscellaneous endeavors from the past couple of weeks include an AI radio show, which I just finished today. This is the third such show I’ve completed now (well, fourth, if you count Why You Should Be Afraid of Physics Class, a 20-minute-long drama), and I’m using Fish Audio to generate all the voices. These shows generally run for 25-28 minutes, and this latest episode contains the guest host Sal Khan. You’re probably wondering: how did I possibly get Sal Khan to appear on a low-level AI-produced radio show? Because this isn’t an AI-produced show: the voices are all AI. I do the editing and the generating of the voices. Sal Khan is a cloned voice available on Fish Audio, and I’ve cloned a few others for use in these episodes. It’s quite an interesting process, actually. I’ll be using DaVinci Resolve’s Fairlight studio instead of the clunky Audacity to edit this show together. Hopefully it won’t be too much of a shock to use. (The video editor portion of DaVinci Resolve is actually quite easy to learn. I’ve put together quite a few videos with it now).

    Well, tomorrow’s going to be quite a busy day, with the starting of the CMP Chamber Music Perspectives camp. I’ll try to work on the AI models this weekend if possible, in addition to the usual (shortened) BeamNG Roleplay sessions. Stay tuned for more updates.