I created the animation video for the logo last night and was somewhat impressed as to how easy it is to accomplish in Blender. I created 4 different video formats .avi (two different types), H264 and a .dvd or mpeg file. The most jittery was the H264 file and all three of the other formats were very smooth. The .avi raw file was the largest.
After I created the files I loaded Camtasia Studio 8 with my Coffee Mug tutorial and added the logo to the start and end of the clip. The resulting video turned out great other than the fact I really need to create a logo all my own and came up with some ideas for that. Placing the logo animation at the end of the video was a little much and I would prefer just the final still seen below.
During the day I will create a script for a short tutorial on creating a .avi from a frame series generated from blender and complete the video portion tonight. This will be a very short video as the process is quite simple. I will practice my script a few times to get it correct and add it to the video portion in Camtaisa Studio 8 later in the week.
Update:
Looks like I won’t finish the script today at work. I had some problems with creating a quick animation in Blender. It turned out to be the same problem I had during the weekend; when I finished rendering once and tried render again after a few changes it would not work. So, after searching and searching for a solution without any luck I went back into blender and tried to render, would not work (duh). I then went back into the video sequence editor and my images were still there but I had deleted them from the drive! I then selected the sequence of files, deleted them and hit the render button for animate and (bang head on desk) it worked! Day wasted, which meant I wasted HOURS on Sunday trying to figure this out. Now back on track but will be a day late but not a dollar short.
I checked when I arrived at work this morning to see if my rendition of the split wine glass was accurate to the original picture I was shown last Wednesday (11/21/2012) and much to my surprise it was remarkably close. The only differences were the surface the glass was sitting on (color and reflectivity) and the glass itself. In the original photo the glass is perfectly clear and in mine I frosted them a little. Other than that I am quite happy with the results now.
I also completed the animation of my fake logo for BlenderTravels.com. It is too dark for my tastes but for a start I do not believe it is bad, just not correct. When I fix the lighting I will re-render and post here. (When I figure out how to include a YouTube video in this website.
Last Wednesday prior to leaving for Thanksgiving break I saw a picture Jeff Raley received in an email. Both him and Jeff Pritchard said it was photoshopped. I said nope and it was easy to do. Here is my rendition of the picture. Now it will be time to add textures for by creation.
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 :).
Changed up the logo a little bit with some glow around the letters and glare to the gem stone. I made a few changes from the tutorial, mostly done myself. Think I am getting back into the groove! 🙂
I have been away for some time as work has been very busy. I have been in the process of training 11 new contract employees which has become quite the challenge. When I get home I have been going straight to bed without any blendering.
I have started again with a somewhat small project to get back into the swing of things before I finish up the Spaceship corridor. This project is one from Andrew Price and topic being an animated logo. I thought I would create one for my website BlenderTravels.com Here is a series of renders and screen shots of what I did yesterday.
Logo with a Pyramid as the image for Traveling
Logo with a gem stone as Andrew’s tutorial depicts
The volumetric lighting pass using Blender’s internal renderer
Logo using the gem stone, volumetric lighting and particles. Camera settings have depth of field for the particles / dust floating in space.
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.
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.
I added or rather duplicated (using array modifiers) the sphere and circle wire frame in the first small control module and thinking of adding wires etc. to the areas between them but I now believe simpler may be better.
New site covering miscellaneous activities including my favorite activity: Blender
