I just found out Blender Summer of Code (BSOC) Sushi branch has precision modeling tools. That great news just brought tears of joy to my eyes 🙂
All posts by Michael
Comments from non-humans
I have not been all that active as of late due to my attempts at limiting the ‘bot’ comments infecting my blog. With these efforts I seem to have found an effective solution to this annoying problem. I will not be posting my solution publicly as it will effectively give the enemy another avenue of attack 🙂
However as a side benefit, my solution also provides me with a bunch of data which I can evaluate daily, allowing me to more effectively battle this problem.
Creating a Battery
As I said yesterday, I completed a tutorial from Johnathan Williamson creating a battery in blender, rendering in Lux Render.
I have not had any experience with Lux Render so I elected to use the Cycles render engine within Blender 2.63. Cycles does not have the default materials Lux Render has but I was able to create a semi-realistic copper material for the top. I think the results are acceptable 🙂
Soccer Ball
I did this quick Soccer Ball tutorial this morning. It was a little tedious at some points but learned quite a bit about different selection techniques. Below is in image of my screen showing you the number of faces. The selection techniques used during this tutorial made the process a great learning tool.
Some final Renders Below
During this next weekend I will create another tutorial for placement on YouTube highlighting the various selection methods used in this tutorial.
If find creating tutorials such as those detailing different techniques to accomplish the same tasks allow me to better remember them. I create the video in my mind first, then record the actual video (sometime multiple times). When the recording is complete the editing of the final addition takes place requiring about 2-3 times the actual recording time. Then I watch the complete video 3 – 4 times listening for things I may have forgotten. The final video is then rendered and watched again for errors one last time and posted to YouTube. That is roughly 10 times the video runs through my head. Plenty of time for cementing the information into my memory.
I also completed another tutorial by Johnathan Williamson, ‘Creating a Battery’, from last year before Cycles was in trunk. He used Lux Render, a program I am not at all familiar with so I used Cycles and it turned out wonderful. I will post those pictures tomorrow.
My First Tutorial
I have completed recording and editing my first tutorial. Below is a render of the finished tutorial and the photo used in the opening shot.
The tutorial is based on one of the Mugs in the Tea set ‘Still Life’ tutorial I started and completed earlier this morning. I thought this would be a good start for the following reasons:
- Use of many of the tools I am familiar with
- Practice with Cycles and Materials within Cycles
- Easy to  complete
I felt the video turned out great for my first. The total time of the video is just over 12 minutes, a little more than 15 minutes prior to editing. Editing of this video itself took a couple of hours.
P.S. I loved doing this.
P.P.S I am getting used to my recorded voice.
Still Life
Completed a short tutorial this morning. The total time completing this tutorial was about 3hrs including render time. The final render was done using Cycles with 1000 samples.
The only changes made to this scene were the Teapot (off white) and the mugs. Original scene was rendered with all white ceramic Teapot and mugs.
Texturing a small box
Trying out a light colored wood texture for my Nick Knack Box.
The texture isn’t perfect yet, I still have to move some faces around and eliminate / reduce some of the seams. For a first shot it doesn’t look all that bad.
Edit: I had to change the post title due to the amount of spam picking up on the old one.
Interior Architecture Scene
Interior Architecture Scene – Tutorial by Johnathan Williamson
This is one of my favorite tutorials by Mr. Williamson. Earlier in the year CG Cookie conducted a survey asking us users how they could improve and what items we would like to learn more about. This tutorial covered every item I requested in one shot, not to mention I had a great time completing it.
I know the lighting and color is a bit washed out and I think I can improve the quality with a few adjustments to the settings. Not to mention I could not locate the texture bundled with the tutorial for the chair and tried creating my own and that (color) seems to be the culprit. Within the next few days I’ll locate a better/darker texture and post again.
The Nature Academy Week 2
This is from Andrew Price’s “The Nature Academy”, Week 2: Rocks
Camtasia Studio 8
Downloaded the new update of Camtasia Studio (Version 8) and looking forward to experimenting with all the new features starting Friday after work and throughout the weekend.