All posts by Michael

Working for 20 years as a Manufacturing Engineer for various Aerospace companies the only 3D programs I had any interaction with were CATIA, Solidworks, AutoCad and NCAD so it is no surprise Blender is a new world. I love it! I also enjoy most outdoor activities, fishing, hiking, camping etc. Most music and College Football (UW Huskies!). Favorite vacation spot: Hawaii.

Sparks

Completed a new tutorial creating sparks in Blender by Andrew Price at Blenderguru.com. Short tutorial but very informative especially on some new nodes in the compositor I have not used.

I rendered the animation when I went to bed last night and it took 6hrs and 36min to complete from the first saved frame to the last (100) frames. When I got to work this morning (about 2 hours ago) I output the files in four different formats H.264, JPEG, MPEG, and Raw. The only file that would play on the players they have at work was the MPEG file. I will try the others when I get home and see what will play on my computer, probably all of them, then upload the one appropriate for YouTube.

As a side note, I was using Blender 2.65 release candidate 1 for this tutorial testing it out for any glaring bugs (pun intended) 🙂

None found so far.

 

Final rendered scene prior to animation

Getting Close – New Nodes in use for fading out the sparks

Things did not seem to be working correct here for some reason

First shot at the render – no color or fade out of the sparks yet

Reading: Digital Modeling

I am currently reading a book recommended by Johnathan Williamson titled “Digital Modeling” by William Vaughn. At times it has been hard for me to understand some concepts such as proper edge flow thru your model while reading and not able to actually do what is being described to you. This time, rotating an edge to change the direction of a loop seemed so simple when I actually was able to try it, look at what was happening and understand. Made so much more sence when actually doing it.

It seems so simple now that I have done it rather than just read about it. The concept seems so simple now :).

New Theme

Started watching a new tutorial this morning, nothing I will be doing but information on texture painting etc.. I also downloaded a new theme shown on this tutorial. It is very similar to my theme I tweaked only better.

New Theme

 

Tough getting back into the groove

Spent a little time with the spaceship corridor last night and finished up on of the control panels and I have one left. This one should be easy, just a row of monitors and small control nobs for them.

Did a quick tutorial on using Greebles tonight. Greebles are items (normal maps) placed onto your model to break up the surface making it more interesting. It was an OK tutorial as there was no sound and minimal typed words describing what they were doing. All in all not a bad tutorial especially since they used the greeble pack provide to citizens on CGCookie, my favorite website.

See ya tomorrow!