It is a bad few days when your WiFi goes out, your phone dies and your charger decides to kick the bucket all at the same time. To top it all off I could not get a new charger until today. The problem with the iPhone 5 would be the new charging connector they have. I have multiple micro USB chargers around the place here and only one for the iPhone 5. Finally a trip to Best Buy and 42.00 later I have a new charger cable plus I bought a micro USB to Lightning adapter. The adapter is .5″ x .375″, very easy to loose and at 20.00 I had better not. Enough of that, it is nice to have my phone on charge now and the WiFi back. On to creating scenes in Blender.

I had been noticing objects missing when I would open a file I had just worked with the day before and at times I would find duplicate objects here and there. Something was going on and I wasn’t sure exactly what it may be. Add to that my files size was increasing by a large percentage so I decided to do some investigating.

What happens when you create a scene with the various options: Full Copy, Link Object Data and Link Object?

Full Copy: Largest change in file size.

1. Materials Duplicated with .001 added to material name.
2. Layers Copied and Layer Names are maintained if using the Layer Manager Addon*
3. Object Edits (Mesh): Not Replicated Between Scenes
4. Object Rotation Change: Not Replicated Between Scenes
5. Object Location Change: Not Replicated Between Scenes
6. Object Scale Change: Not Replicated Between Scenes
7. Object Layer Change: Not Replicated Between Scenes
8. Object Material Change: Not Replicated Between Scenes

Link Object Data: Second place in change in file size.

1. Materials Not Duplicated
2. Layers Copied and Layer Names are maintained if using the Layer Manager Addon*
3. Object Edits (Mesh): Replicated Between Scenes
4. Object Rotation Change: Not Replicated Between Scenes
5. Object Location Change: Not Replicated Between Scenes
6. Object Scale Change: Not Replicated Between Scenes
7. Object Layer Change: Not Replicated Between Scenes
8. Object Material Change: Replicated Between Scenes

Link Object: Smallest change in file size.

1. Materials Not Duplicated
2. Layers Copied and Layer Names are maintained if using the Layer Manager Addon*
3. Object Edits (Mesh): Replicated Between Scenes
4. Object Rotation Change: Replicated Between Scenes
5. Object Location Change: Replicated Between Scenes
6. Object Scale Change: Replicated Between Scenes
7. Object Layer Change: Not Replicated Between Scenes
8. Object Material Change: Replicated Between Scenes

*If you are using the layer management addon, any layer names you created prior to creating your new scene will transfer to the new scene. Changing layer names within different scenes as no affect on other scenes as well.

Knowing exactly what is happening when you create new scenes within your model is very important to know. What you do with your object within your scenes and what affect it has on any other scenes you have created is another one of those pieces of information you need to find for yourself when using Blender. What information is carried over to the new scene as it is created with the different options (layer location, objects xyz position, material etc.)? I will be doing some experimenting tomorrow morning, organize this information and report back then.

See ya then.

I downloaded the new Version Control using Mercurial video from CGcookie, watched most of this in the morning and was so thankful for this information from Sebastian Koenig. As he talked about at the beginning of the video regarding creating new versions of all your .blend files as I do, showing me how messy and confusing it can be or rather ‘reminding me’ of this I find this solution so nice. I will be trying ti out this evening or just installing depending on the time I have after watching the rest of the video when he talks about Dropbox of which I am a great fan.

I have also been trying to slim down the size of my .blend files. As I was working last night I had noticed items showing up in different layers, disappearing, duplicating etc. and was kind of stumped. So this afternoon I also opened up an earlier version of my .blend file for the modern home which was 1.3gig presently and removed all scenes except for the default ‘scene’ scene. I then revised my ground plane again by removing unneeded faces (more than half) and then dropped the particle count, saved and the file size dropped to ~700K, much better. Right now I am going to try a render of the whole scene and check the time and tomorrow I will work on a more practical approach to handling scenes with out jumping my file size so drastically. I think I was creating the new scenes incorrectly but we will see.

On to the rest of Sebastian’s video and the render.

P.S. I received an unexpected raise at work today 🙂

Now I am just have fun tweaking some of the objects within the model right now. The grass plane is too big, extending places where it does not need to be making it difficult to composite the image and as I said before the file is quite large. Last night I settled on limiting the passes that were rendered and then upping the particle count of the grass to 350,000. This may seem a little on the extreme but it actually came out quite nice. Now that I know what the setting need to be on the grass I will add the leaves, clover and a sprinkling of flowers. So, the final render of the grass, home and foliage will be done tomorrow night and then I can finish the compositing. Compositing is an aspect of CG I really enjoy and one of my favorite aspects of Blender.

P.S.Even though I changed the size of the plane used by the particle system for the grass, changing the emission amount won’t make that much of a difference because I did not have all of the vertices of that plane weight painted enough to make a difference. I need to get that plan out of the way for rendering and compositing.

I have been working on finishing up the Modern House from the Architecture Academy and have created a monster of a file. At this time I am rendering out different scenes, at various sample sizes to create a composite I can live with. The longest renders, surprise surprise are with the grass particles and the CPU. Once that is complete and I am hoping I have enough particles in there so I will not have to render again. I will then composite all the renders together. I am crossing my fingers I can finish soon because this is taking quite a long time.

Yes I do have a real job and it is taking its toll so I had to take a couple days off and actually work. I had to clear the head for other reasons as well and to make a long story short people outside our organization are driving me nuts. In a nutshell there are other managers within the plant wanting myself and another Engineer to be onsite last weekend ‘just in case’ we are needed. Thank the lord my direct super saw things my way and all I had to do was sit on the computer at home and ‘monitor’ the activity. A complete waste of a Saturday and a Sunday as NOTHING happened.

On to other topics. I have been working within the Architecture Academy, Blender Cookie’s Character Modeling (I need to get my Wacom 12″ Tablet set up properly for sculpting), playing with multiple tools and today watched the ‘2d Tracking and Compositing’ videos. Not that I have a real need to learn this, it just looks like a lot of fun to play with. I’m thinking, right now of bringing in my Flip UltraHD video camera into work in the morning, taking some videos and seeing what kind of crazy stuff I can come up with 🙂

I have just few finishing touches to put on the Modern House for The Architecture Academy and I’ll post that render tomorrow. One thing I had to address is a driveway. In final image of the Module, the gardens are done, including the lawn however the lawn extends out in front of the garage. Well everywhere I have ever lived, from a couple Alabama double wide trailers to some quite nice ‘Street of Dream’ style houses, never have I had to drive over my lawn to enter the garage so a minor change is required there.

Have a great evening and see y’all tomorrow

Quick first render of the Modern House

Very quick and dirty

I took the time today or rather this evening to clean up some models I have been working on and I must say I am in love with Meshlint. Of all the items it checks for the one I love is telling you the name of your object is not that great. Reminding you to rename your objects. I wish it had an option within the addon to change the name right there. Hmmmm maybe that can be added.

17 hours a day at the office, four hours for sleep leaves three hours for commute, dinner and everything else that must be fit in during the 24 hour day. I have asked and asked but the Lord just does not want to add more time to the day. 🙁

Purchased this new tool from CGCookie yesterday and all I could say was wow! Since starting the Character Modeling project and working with the Dynamic Topology tools and getting close to the retopology part of the project I have been hesitant to begin that portion. This project has taken a long time (in days, not hours) and has pushed me to the limit when it comes to this type of work. I find that CGCookie released a new tool to help in the process of retopology and decided to go ahead and spend the 30.00 for the beta and upgrades and I am more than impressed with this tool and it’s simplicity and in a sentence, the addon just works. This weekend I will upload a couple simple pictures of me just playing around with the sculpting tools, not making anything close to impressive and the difference it makes (plus its fun).

I am very surprised by the response of some individuals on BlenderNation from the likes of:

‘harris3d’: “This is obvious a Modo’s contour tool copy ! That would be illegal to distribute it and much more to charge for it, selling it is way illegal Jonathan.”

Then the moron had the audacity of posting his own blog as proof of his statements… I know, logical huh?

I guess he doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘Libel’ and it’s implications since he posted online for all to see and never be removed, ya again logical.

Just in case he runs across this and wants a definition of the word:

Libel is defined as defamation by written or printed words, pictures, or in any form other than by spoken words or gestures.

Defamation—also called calumny, vilification, or traducement—is the communication of a false statement that harms the reputation of an individual, business, product, group, government, religion or nation. (This harris3d is actually illegal)

Happy Friday everyone!!   🙂