Ongoing project-Living room
Using what I have I’d say I have nailed it.Almost.But I can live with that.
Ongoing Project
Damn…lighting lighting..why did Lux have to refuse now..probably would be done by now.
Ongoing project…
A step by step process.
I have placed lights outside the window…n i tried a few inside but it gave either too much light and illuminated the ceiling and roof or a lot of shadow than I wanted.
So I enabled ambient occlusion and paper sky(changed t to light sky blue) to get that bright environment.
For ambient occlusion, I reduced factor to about .4 for me to able to see the shadows but also get that natural light feel…from a day scene.
The project goes on.
BLENDER 2.5 CHARACTER ANIMATION COOKBOOK REVIEW
Written by Virgilio Vasconcelos and published by Packtpub Publishers.
Virgilio is professor of 3D and 2D digital animation from Brazil. He contributes to translations, consultations writing of articles for Edirtora Europa that publishes magazines such as 3D world Brazil.
He has worked at Nitrocorpz Design Studio as animator and 3D generalist.
http://virgiliovasconcelos.com/
This book is for users who already understand the Blender interface, know how to model, render and are eager to go the next step of animation. Bringing the character to life.
The book has 50 recipes describing each process to understanding character animation. The support files are available at Packtpub Publishers www.PacktPub.com
available for download.
The book has 277 pages broken down into 10 chapters.
In Chapter 1 there is a proper introduction to rigging. Explanation on what rigging is and how to go about creating rigs and complicating them enough but also simplifying them enough for an animator.
The complexity of an animation must be just right. Not too simple, not too complex. Just enough for an animator to create realistic animation.
Understanding orientation in relation to building bone structure.
In Chapter 2-Rigging the Torso. Gets more focused into rigging something specific .The torso. Some of what is covered here is rigging the character and making the character breathe. Interesting hah.
Despite the author writing the recipes, he encourages the reader to be free and explore different techniques of rigging a character.
He goes ahead to show us how to create the torso…stretch a character and also how to make your character look alive.
The other chapters covered include Eying Animation. Controlling the eyes…considering eyes express a lot of emotions. How do you rig a character’s eye. Surprisingly it’s one the hardest parts to rig properly. Virgilio describes the whole process pretty well enough for Blender user to understand.
Facial Rigging-Which also includes adding expressions. Pretty complex stuff to learn but explained very well also.
After rigging, what next. Animation. How do you go about animating the bones and making sure nothing turns the wrong direction and achieving that smooth realistic animation. The Chapter-Blending with the Animation Workflow covers:
- Animating layers
- Changing between forward and inverse kinematics. Grasping and throwing objects (always wondered about that)
- Non-linear animation and other equally important topics.
You get to understand the amount of time you spend in creating an animation whether for personal project or professional work. That’s why organization from the word go is absolutely vital from the word go.
Virgilio uses recipes that are pretty easy to understand and some good reference as well.
As much you might be happy when you are done with this chapter. It’s not exactly over yet. You still have to master the basics. When to pose, when to stretch…basically knowing when to move and when to pose.
Chapter 7 Easy to Say, Hard to Do: Mastering the basics.
Virgilio explains to you:
- Adjusting and tracking time
- How to handle poses
- Anticipating an action.
The fun thing about mastering the basics is it will become instinct, as you get better at it. You will always know what to do. That is quiet cool.Somebody else is going to ask you sometime how do you know what to do, but you just do.Enough practice.
The next few chapters put what you have learned to test. He still emphasizes on the importance of planning. It’s something that should not be overlooked.
He gives us a recipe on animating a tennis serve. We get to define the extreme positions that that tell a story of what is about to happen. How do you go about creating extreme positions then basic time adjustments.
It’s pretty fun.
Chapters 9 and 10 cover animation refinements acting in animation.
Make animations more fluid like and with consistency, you will deliver better animations.
He uses pretty good visuals (images) to pass across the message.
Next is why do you animate the character when you animate it. The reason behind everything. Fluid movements are useless without a reason behind those movement. That means understanding why the character does what he does.
Virgilio nails it on the head in this book.
The book is a fun read and with the recipes and time, one will be good in a position to engage in character animation and eventually be a master.
Blender 2.5 Character Animation Cookbook
Hey guys, there’s another book coming out from packtpub. It’s all about character rigging and animation.
http://www.packtpub.com/blender-2-5-character-animation-cookbook/book
There will soon be a review of the book here. It’s gonna be awesome!
Level One logo particles
Achieving that lighting in blender is by playing around with w the values in te world panel. But what I used here was, I checked ambient,enabled approximate and checked Fall off and made the value 1.
As for the particle breakdown, It was a combination of the particle system and explode modifier.Of cause the mesh must have enough faces for this to work.I used the sub surf, solidify modifiers.As for the lighting it was just one lamp that gave out the shadows.That kind of lighting was mainly achieved with the world panel settings.
Night scene in a warehouse
The ups and downs of crating a scene in 3d have much to do with applying materials and textures.Little of it has to do with the actual modeling.I followed a tutorial from Blender guru about texture and it was pretty good…made me appreciate the hard work involved.Usually I speed through creating a 3d scene mainly because of I am impatient.But this is kind of a trial of actually taking time in creating something.I admit I rushed at some point and had to re-do some things again.
I tried a bit of compositing, never tried that before, pretty awesome.
Any comments, please let me know.
Blender 2.5 Materials and Textures Cookbook
Blender 2.5
Materials and Textures Cookbook
Written by Colin Litser and published by Packtpub Publishers.
Colin Litser began his passion for animation, and things 3D, after studying for an Art degree with 3D in its title. He is currently a contributing editor to Essential Blender.
This book is 291 pages, 9-chapter tutorial. A tutorial cutting across through levels of animation, modeling, special effects, painting, modifying image textures and a whole lot more.
The book covers the creation of several things in chapters.
Chapter 1. Natural Materials
Natural materials like rocks. It seems quite simple doesn’t it? It goes on to teach you how to texture the rock using nodes.
For somebody new but relatively familiar with Blender, this book is for you! For each chapter, the tutorials start with simple objects moving on to a bit more complex objects.
Chapter 2. Man-made Materials
Really impressive. Being one of the most used textures or materials, learning how to make those textures is pretty important.
Colin has created different tutorials in this chapter but all of them are related and lead to one thing in the end. It’s like making different parts of something then to realize they were parts of the same thing after everything is done. In this case, a roof. A copper plated rusty roof that emphasizes age, tileable, weathering effect and what not.
It’s pretty awesome, I was getting excited myself while going through thinking I can actually achieve something that has been bugging me for a while.
What we basically get to learn here is:
- Warping a texture to disguise seams in a repeated texture.
- Combining material using nodes.
- Creating realistic copper material.
- Adding oxidization weathering to our copper material.
That and among others, you’ll get to know once you get the book.
Chapter 3
3 is all about animation baby! Animating materials. That was new to me too, I wondered if it was possible and it is!
What’s covered in this chapter is:
- How to move texture and create animation without moving mesh.
-This can be done in a couple of ways one of them being:
Using coordinates to move texture over time.
Very interesting stuff, and once you know all that think of what you can do!
One more thing , Colin explains how to animate transparency in texture e.g. to represent a burning sheet of paper.
Chapter 4
For you to begin creating you first need to know how to manage a Blender scene, materials.
- Setting an ideal Blender interface.
- Setting up a scene for materials creation
- Naming materials and textures
What got me excited was appending materials.
This means using materials and textures in other
Blend files. Reusing them to save on time and money of recreating them again
Blender gives you the tools to make this possible.
While appending has its advantages, sometimes we may have to work with proxy objects and materials in production. In this situation, it’s vital to have linked materials. This helps because a link is retained to all multiple blend files. Once something is changed in the source file, that it’s updated in all other multiple blend files, and that saves you time.
I learned something new as well. Packing of files, what is called archiving in 3dmax.Something that enable’s you to pack textures and materials into one file and be able to move and work with the same from a different machine.
Awesome!!
Chapter 5
Explores further man-made materials but gets a bit more complex. For example, Colin shows us:
-How to create rust iron-based materials.
-Varying raytracing reflections to simulate dirt and grime.
Pretty sleek!!
Chapter 6
Like 5, 6 explores more complex material creation but more natural than man-made like:
- -creating a wave surface using textures (imagine that)
- -Creating imagine and bump maps with alpha channels.
Sweet stuff.
Chapter 7
Forget creating in this chapter, this chapter is all about UV Mapping and subsurface scattering.
Here we explore mapping textures directly on the faces of the mesh. An area where this is expressively used is the simulation of skin, from the leathery exterior of a dinosaur to the ultimate nirvana of the human head.
Through this chapter we work through common UV problems and their solutions in Blender.
- You learn how to create a face map from a photograph
- Learning how to extract color, bump and specularity.
- Applying UVs to create an accurate skin material
This book is all about accuracy in complexity.
Chapter 8
Painting & Modifying Image Textures in Blender
- In this chapter we will cover:-
- Post processing rendered images from within Blender (ocean animation)
- Adding several materials to a surface.
- Adding dirt to a model &
- Creating an aged photo with simple Blender materials
We learn ways to speed up renders and animations by using special painting techniques to significantly lower render times.
All these could save you time as well as minimize the agony to tight timescales.
Chapter 9
Chapter 9 is all about special effects. Some of the things we learn here are:
Creating smoke in blender
Adding complex FX without the render overhead.
Knowing special effects is a very crucial skill in 3d and digital media as a whole. It plays a big role in this industry and has propelled Blender to the forefront.
The difference between smoke and fire and explosions is all about textures and knowing how to even switch between those materials, knowing this will put you on top.
Bottom line, this book is crucial link between the not so beginners and the ones well versed in Blender. Each chapter as I said earlier has been broken down into tutorials that all add up to one thing.
It has important information on crucial aspects of 3d like UV Mapping and special effects.
In my opinion, a must read. I only wish it had more recipes!!
REVIEW:BLENDER 3D 2.49 UPDATED. Architecture,Buildings and Scenery
This is an updated book version of Blender 2.49 Architecture,Buildings and Scenery by the same author Allan Brito with 343 pages.
Published by Packtpub Publishers.
It has been broken down to 15 chapters.
It’s been broken down into chapters that explain each stage of architectural modeling and expounds on each.
CHAPTER 1
This basically is an intro to architectural visualization and blender 3d.Architectural visualization is best explained as a previewing or showing something that yet exists. Represented using computer generated software from different angles if need be from the same project saving on time and money if we were to go the old fashioned way of technical drawings that was difficult to understand.
We get to understand the importance of detail in architectural visualization, as they make a whole lot of difference when it comes to achieving that level of realism desired of course together with a whole lot of things like lighting, texturing and going a step further and using external rendering systems like YafaRay. That’s where Blender 3D comes in:
Blender 3D is a 15MB open source software that is a very powerful tool in the hands of a skilled artist. Apart of of the mentioned facts concerning it, Blender 3D has been used to create whole 3D Movies like:
Elephant Dreams and Big Buck Bunny which can be downloaded from:
www.elephantsdream.org
www.bigbuckbunny.org
Pretty impressive for a 15MB open-source software.
Blender 3D can be run on different OS s:
- Microsoft Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7
- Mac OS X 10.3 and later
- Linux
- Iris 6.5 MIPS3
Has very minimal system requirements of course depending on the project undertaken.For simple projects that require minimal detail.These are it’s requirements:
- 3-button mouse
- OpenGL graphics card with 16MB RAM
- 300 MHZ CPU
- 128 MB RAM
- 1024 x 768 free hard disk space
For a maximum performance machine:
- 2GHz quad core CPU
- 2 GB RAM
- 1920 x 1200 pixels display with 24-bit color
- 3-button mouse
- OpenGL graphics card with 128 or 256 MB RAM
Blender 3d doesn’t function on it’s own.It requires other softwares like:
Gimp for post-rendering edits and also in the creating of textures.
CAD pretty much provides the technical drawing for modeling which is very precise.It saves you a lot of time.
Presentation process after editing also requires some tools. In this case Ink-space or OpenOffice.org Impress.
The book further goes on to explain the relation between a CAD software and Blender 3D, making use of libraries to avoid time consuming process of modeling objects instead of just importing from a library.
Here’s a list of sites where one can get free models for Blender 3D.
- http://resources.blogscopia.com — furniture models in the native
Blender file format.
- http://www.e-interiors.net — lots of pictures and free models of
furniture. Most files are in 3DS or DXF file formats.
- http://www.linedstudio.com — more furniture models and scenes already
in Blender native file format. - http://blender-archi.tuxfamily.org/Models — collection of models to use in Blender for architectural visualization. All are in the Blender native file format.
Blender has has some pretty impressive stuff in it’s gallery, to check them out….here’s the link:
WWW.blender.org/features-gallery/gallery/art-gallery
The gallery is updated on a regular basis.
CHAPTER 2
Chapter 2 is quite basic and covers Blender interface.This chapter is for those who are not so familiar with Blender, for those who are familiar with it…..you can jump this chapter.
It explores Blender interface from windows, menus, selecting objects and what not.It basically takes you through how go about about familiarizing yourself with Blender.
CHAPTER 3
After familiarizing yourself with the Blender, in chapter 3 we learn the different aspects of architectural modeling and landscaping.
In Blender, we typically start with a cube.There are different types of objects in Blender like the curves,meta and surfaces.
Curves come in handy when modeling objects with curves, meta are sort clayish typically used in terrain modeling. Surfaces are best in landscape creation.
Coming back to meshes: We have planes, cube, circle,UV sphere, icosphere, cylinder, cone, grid, monkey and a torus.
Now ones commonly used are cubes, planes and circle in architectural modeling.
After having in mind what you want to make most commonly from a cube.We get into the mesh editing detail.To model something complex from a cube you need your way around a mesh editing tools in the menu named Mesh Tools in the editing panels.
In the process of modeling at some point comes the need for precise transformations.Which is possible in Blender. By holding down the control key on the keyboard and moving the mouse, we can use the grid lines as a guide and same applies for scaling and rotations.
We get to explore more tools used in editing like the looping tool that enables you to subdivide objects that would enable you create complex meshes.
We learn of merging of vertices, removing of double vertices. Extruding is major tool to creating new vertices and faces on an object. Extrusion can be done with vertices, faces and lines whichever suits the moment. It reaches a point where extrusion needs to be restricted to certain axis. By pressing either of the axis key,(x,y and z) this restricts transformation to that selected axis. Pretty helpful in some situations.We are given a pretty easy to understand illustration that helps describe this example.
After you are done with the basic concept of a modeled object, there’s times when you need to smoothen or create, maybe you need to create a building with several floors and the long way is pretty time consuming.That’s where modifiers come in.
Commonly used modifiers in architecture are array tool,boolean and subsurf. The subsurf tool smoothens models to desired levels, array modifier…creates copies of objects. In this case buildings with several floors will be done in an instant. Boolean tool gives more options to editing and creating complex meshes.
We further explore more modifier tools,working with groups to simply complex projects and proportional editing.
CHAPTER 4
Modeling for Architecture.
The previous chapters were like a big intro to the actual architectural modeling.
This chapter covers the creation of floors, walls, roofs and other elements.
But first,we just don’t get into it.Some very important point s are made clear about architecture that are vital for architectural modeling.
For one,we get a brief explanation on the differences between architectural modeling and other forms of modeling one of them being scales of models are usually big because buildings by nature are very big.
Another key aspect of architectural modeling is planning.Time is money and hence planning is everything.
Planning is done in two ways depending on who is the author of the project.A project in which you are the author and one that a client is the author.One in which you are the author,there’s freedom to change things as you go along and one in which the author is client,freedom is not there unless permitted by the client.
The book also goes on to explain the importance of modeling with precision by using the background grid as a guide.This is done by holding down the ctrl key while scaling,rotating or moving an object.Another option given is using edge length where the values or length of an edge is visible by activating it in edit mode.
Working with layers which helps in reorganizing your work and simplify what would otherwise be complex project.
We then get into actual practice. Brito starts with walls which really don’t have a specific way of modeling because of different needs in a project.
He further goes on to explain and show how to model rounded corners using simple easy to understand images which would otherwise be tricky, openings as in windows and doors and how to go about them as they can be a real headache if not thought through.
He further explores floors and ceilings, using CAD files that should be in DXF formats which is the only format that Blender can read.
CHAPTER 5
This chapter covers adding of detail to models..this as i said earlier plays a big role in achieving realism.Things like doors,windows,frames,door handles are pretty important.
He expounds on the making of windows having in mind the different kinds of windows like the double-hang sash window and skylight.One thing that stands out here is the using of measurements in the creating of a window so as to achieve the desired level of realism.The level of detail to be used is always determined by the location of the camera.A camera that is far away requires less detail on the object being modeled while that is close requires more detail.
Then he gets into doors…i have to admit,detail pretty much excites me.The explanation of windows and doors is pretty cool.
CHAPTER 6
After we are done with the building,windows and doors comes furniture that further increases the level of realism.
As explained,furniture can be classified into two categories, internal and external furniture.
Internal is for what occupies inside a building like beds,furniture and external cars,fence and fountains.Allan explains as to why detail is required in some aspects of modeling of furniture.
We get to learn the option of either using a library or modeling something yourself.For reference images and free models..these sites will be of importance:
We are shown how to append models from external libraries by going to File menu, and accessing the append or link option.A shortcut to that is Shift + F1.
He explains how to model a sofa and a chair which is actually quite simple and after all that you have achieved something that will add some level of realism to your project.
CHAPTER 7
After all the modeling is done comes materials.Chapter 7 covers how to create,organize and apply material to objects.Allan shows shows us how to go about doing that.
We need to have an understanding of how materials work in order to be able to achieve realism as well.Obviously that realism is achieved by understanding a lot of things as including materials.
What makes wood look like wooden surface and metal surface like a metallic surface? It’s all reflection.How light reflects on those surfaces.
An understanding of this will be big in 3d.
We get to explore working with colors, gradients, shaders which are used to determine how a material reacts with light.
Ray tracing is an option of achieving a reflected surface feel and of course these things models appear more realistic.
We learn how to create glass,,mirrors, glossy reflections ,retraced shadows and glossy transparency.
One thing i must mention is about wireframe.In architecture you might be required to represent a model in a structured manner for more understanding or to make a big impression and that’s where wireframes come in.In this mode one can see the structured form of a model hence understanding and explanation would be easier.
CHAPTER 8
Materials was the first stage and only contributed a certain level of realism.Textures…that’s where the magic is!.Textures are described in an understandable easy manner as image files of surfaces 0f real life objects like wood, stone, glass and what not.Considering that some of these surfaces can be difficult to find or you might have to buy spend a lot of time on the internet searching for them, libraries come in handy.Creating your own textures and storing them in your library will be of great advantage to you in the future projects because most them are commonly used over and over in different projects.
This book explains on the different kinds of texture in Blender. Procedural and non-Procedural textures and how they are used in Blender.We further learn about texture libraries, how to apply textures, mapping both the normal mapping and UV mapping.UV mapping is an elaborate way of placing textures in their exact locations.
Free textures websites:
www.cgtexture.com
www.blender-archi.tuxfamily.org/textures
Chapter 9 expounds on UV Mapping.
CHAPTER 10
This chapter is on lighting.LIGHTING!
You need to understand lighting well to be able to again get realistic results.Blender has different kinds of lights and all are unique to different environments. Brito tells of the different lights that Blender has and where to best use them.Whenever we have light there must be shadows, so how do you get soft shadows and how do you get sharp shadows, under what kind of lights.
We are given a small exercise that better explains how you understand this.
Chapter 11 goes on to delve into Advanced lighting based on two main techniques. Radiosity and Ambient occlusion and in what circumstances they are used.
CHAPTER 12
Chapter 12 is about YafaRay. An external renderer that has features that normal blender rendering machine does not have such global illumination and raytracing. YafaRay is really good when you want to go to the next level in renderings despite the downside of higher machine resources being consumed hence longer render times.
Allan take us through the installation of YafaRay how to run it with Blender simultaneously, understanding the YafaRay setup, materials used in YafaRay and render methods.
CHAPTER 13
So far all the chapters have covered Planning a project,modeling,handling materials and textures, and lighting.Chapter 14 is animation.Animation in architectural visualization most of the time means walk-throughs.
Just like a typical project you have to plan the animation process otherwise you might end up miscalculating the time set up for an animation buy either being less or just too much and by the time the rendering time is over after a couple of hours it will all be useless.
Allan explains the aspects involved in the process of animation like key frames, managing key frames, IPO curves and more.By the end of the chapter you should have a good understanding of animation in architecture.
CHAPTER 14
At this stage the project is done unless maybe after all that time it has taken to render you find a flaw in the rendered image.Then what…..Gimp.Its an editing software for images that would be a really big help in terms adjusting the rendered images and also creation of textures.
This chapter explores Gimp.
CHAPTER 15
So far we have been operating on Blender 3D 2.49b.Chapter 15 is about Blender 3D 2.50, a new version of Blender.It’s out already but i doubt a lot have used it much including me.It’s interface is different from the other Blender versions so you need to be shown around to know where what is but the shortcuts are pretty much the same.
We are told on how to manage windows in 2.5,how to go around modeling in the version.I have to admit i had to sweat a bit to get to know how to create models like a cube a plane and what not, i have to remind myself from time to time.
The differences between Blender 2.5 and 2.49b are pretty clear once you go through this chapter or if you already have, apart from the obvious interface…which is pretty cool.I like this one better, it’s more welcoming and you get that interest in learning it.
An area with many changes is deformations and animation,where anything can practically be animated.
DIFFERENCES
After going through the book,there’s little difference from this book and the previous one.The cover itself is pretty much the same as the other one and i mistook it for being the same book as the other one hence giving someone the assumption that there’s nothing new to learn.
For those who have read the first book,you probably already understand what wasn’t covered in the previous book.I’d say this book is for those who want to learn and understand architecture and haven’t read the first book. There’s added information about architecture that is vital to understanding architecture,buildings and scenery.
Modeling without blueprints
After making the first the Jaguar in Blender,i wanted to make another one but i hated the process of setting up blueprints.So i didn’t…..i just started modelling and after a week,i had this.Of course there are errors here and there but it’s pretty good for a start.Not to say that i haven’t tried it before,i have but never finished……i got frustrated at somepoint then abandon the whole thing together.
It’s a matter of practise,it’s a matter of time…..with practise,you’ll get there.
Come to think of it…i haven’t given it a name…mmm..it has the Batma- Benz look.
There are free pdf magazines on blender and some tutorials as well here.
Flintstone Mobil
Couldn’t resist making this. I just came across it on the internet and it’s simple enough so it doesn’t even need blueprints…Fred would be proud.
Arms stash
I developed an interest in modelling of weapons after i made the first one(sketchy a5000).So,i thought why not make something like an armoury except dingy looking.More like a stash of weapons for illegal purposes.
I used uv mapping on the walls……but it doesn’t behave like i would want it to.Upclose the walls apppear like i used a small texture map so it appears stretched.
Anybody wana help me on that?
Recent Comments