Planet Blender

Video Tutorial: The Solidify Selection Script
Blender Newbies 3D Video Tutorials (Learn to Create 3D Graphics with Blender!) - 2009-10-12 22:42:00



In this tutorial, we’ll take a look at a built-in script called the Solidify Selection script. This script, created by Campbell Barton, will allow you to solidify a mesh by adding a second “skin” to it based on the selected geometry.

You can view the tutorial at BlenderCookie.

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

graphicall: Brecht just added hes Deep Shadow Buffer implementation in trunk!! What a nice surprice :D [23794]
Twitter / graphicall - 2009-10-12 22:09:19

graphicall: Brecht just added hes Deep Shadow Buffer implementation in trunk!! What a nice surprice :D [23794]

Texturing landscapes according to slopes
feeblemind - 2009-10-12 19:55:26

Texturing landscapes according to slopes is a challenge by itself if you are not aware of all the subtleties lying deeply within Blender. Of course, it might sound difficult even with the following guidelines ; if so, you might be interested in reading my tutorial about Using stencils with Blender.

In this tutorial, we will see how to set a Stencil texture so that the shader shows either one of two shaders:

• a "snow" texture on surfaces that are mostly horizontal
• a "rock" texture on surfaces that are mostly vertical

Of course, the Stencil texture will control to which extent each texture applies to the surfaces according to the slopes, and the gradient between them.

I will not cover the snow and rock textures ; you are free to use any Image texture or any procedural texture. For this example, I used a Clouds texture for the snow and a Voronoi - Minkovsky texture for the rocks, both with Colorband enabled. At a distance, it is good enough for the purpose of this tutorial.

In the Shading menu F5, Material buttons, display the Texture panel. You have ten chanels available for textures. In the first one, put your 'vertical' texture (e.g. Rocks). On the second one, you will set your Stencil texture. And in the third one, you will have your 'horizontal' texture (e.g. Snow).

Setting the gradient texture

Basically the stencil would be a Blend texture. Activate the Colorband in the Colors tab, and set the color of the first cursor to black color (don"t forget to set Alpha to 1.000). The second cursor should be set to white color. Then add two cursor in between, the one on the left being black, like the first one, and the one on the right being white, like the last one. In the Blende type, do not forget to choose a type of Blend (Linear is just fine) and to press the Flip XY button so that the gradient is 'vertical'.

You now have, from left to right, cursors 0, 1, 2 and 3. 1 and 2 will help with controlling the gradient and, thus, both the transition from snow to rocks, and how much dominant each texture is.

Some comments:

• The more close the cursors 1 and 2 are, the more sharp will be the transition between the snow and rock textures
• The more cursor 1 is on the right, the more the vertical texture will be dominant
• The more cursor 2 is on the left, the more the horizontal texture will be dominant
• Both textures can only be dominant at the same time is the transition is very sharp

It is easy to view on a render how the stencil will apply: the black areas will show the vertical surfaces and the white areas the horizontal surfaces.

Focus on the stencil

As usual, in the Map To tab, activate the Stencil and No RGB buttons. You might find that the Neg button is useful also if you have to switch between the horizontal and vertical textures, if you paid no attention to their order in the texture chanels list.

All the voodoo magic is in fact done in the Map Input tab. You will just have to make sure that the Nor coordinates are taken into accound instead of the regular Orco. Is it really as simple as that??? Well, indeed, it is.

Well, you just have to sculpt and texturize your own landscapes, now!

This site contains Google Advertising Cookies and our Privacy Policy is…
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2009-10-12 18:46:54

To comply with what Google wants from the publishers displaying Google ads, (Google Advertising Cookie and Privacy Policies – AdSense Help) this website now has a privacy policy.

Google suggests the following language as being a good explanation of what their advertising cookies are doing on this site and I’m just going to copy it verbatim for use as the privacy policy of this site.

We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.

It is well worth following the links to the actual Google pages explaining the cookies for a fuller understanding of what is going on.

Blender++ batch renderer
BlenderNation - 2009-10-12 18:26:49

Blender++ is 'yet another batch renderer', but with one important difference: it's cross-platform and Windows, Linux and OSX builds are available. Marco Rapino wrote: During my spare time I had the chance to develop this handy software which can be used to run background renders with Blender both for single frames or animations. I know that there [...]

New Fur Training Video at cmiVFX by Sebastian König
BlenderNation - 2009-10-12 15:16:54

cmiVFX Have released another 'Mammoth' videotutorial by Sebastian König. Like his previous tutorials (Organic Modeling Techniques, Blender Unwrapping and Baking, and Blender Texturing) this one looks very impressive. It sells for $19.95. Sebastian König wrote: Hey there! I have finished a new tutorial for www.cmiVFX.com! This one is about creating and shading hair and fur in Blender. In [...]

Face tests
Sintel, the Durian Open Movie Project - 2009-10-12 15:13:06

The last week I’ve basically been doing test renders and bug-hunting, eg. some very not exciting aao test renders which resulted in me getting mad at Blender.

A time consuming part is the hair and make it look attached to skin. I have no idea how the BBB crew stayed sane with all that fur.

Here are also some wip images including the moment I found the linear workflow button. When you want to look further into linear workflow, which hides behind the little button called Colour Management, which can be found in the render settings, check out this link:

Colour Management

So long and have a nice week, but stay tuned for more.

-Soenke

Architectural glass with Indigo Renderer
Blender 3D Architect - 2009-10-12 15:00:33

In the past few days I was reviewing some projects created with old versions of Indigo Renderer, to start working on updates and see how fast the last releases are compared with the old freeware Indigo. In one of those projects I saw something that caught my attention, which is the way glass is created [...] Related posts:

1. Rendering colored glass for architecture with Blender 3D and YafaRay A few days ago I was talking about the uses...
2. Indigo Renderer 2.2 for architectural rendering in Blender 3D It`s been almost a week so far that I`m using...
3. Using architectural glass in Blender 3D If you have visited the blog in the last couple...

Blender++
Akta's Way - Blog - 2009-10-12 09:05:03

Update!

I’m actually proceeding really fast with the version 1.2 of Blender++. So far here it is what has been included:

• Queue support. You can now submit as many render as you want. Start and end frame for each blend file is customizable
• Threads used. You can select how many threads you want to use in your rendering process. This is really helpful when you’re using your machine and don’t want it to be stuck on the rendering (of course you need at least a dual core or better )
• Bug fixes

What needs to be done still:

• Pause rendering
• Remote job submission
• Remote machine shutdown (in case you don’t have access to it )

Baked data works fine in your renders as long as you have it baked somewhere and the path is specified in your .blend file. At the moment I’m busy also with the Blender Conference in which I’ll present a new project about games, but I’m quite confident to have 1.2 by the end of this month!

———————————————————————————————————————–

During my spare time I had the chance to develop this handy software which can be used to run background renders with Blender both for single frames or animations. I know that there was already a software calle Fast F12 from super3boy, however even if his idea was brilliant, I didn’t like several things:

• It’s not opensource
• It’s only for Wndows
• It runs using the .NET Framework 3.5, included in Vista but needed if you have Win XP

Moreover what I wanted from this software was a kind of remote control of it. For example, let’s say I start my animation render at home and then I go to the office. At some point I’d like to know the status of the rendering, so I access to my Blender++ server via mobile phone or desktop client and see how is it going. Maybe I want to stop the render for some reason or start a new one. This was not possible with Fast F12, but now it’s included in Blender++.

Summarizing here what we have in this 1.1 version:

• Background render (single frame/ animation)
• Progress bar and status bar to have an idea on what’s going on and some render infos
• Internal server that can be configured and to which we can access to check the render status and stop the job if needed
• Possibility to set the Blender binary path in case it’s in a different folder than the default
• Multiplatform support (Win, OSX, Linux)

Blender++ was developed entirely in Python and needs wxPython 2.8.1 or higher in order to run on Linux and OSX. For Windows binaries are available so no need to install python on your machine.

What should be done next:

• Queue support. Now just one job at time can be started
• Remote job submitting. I have to figure out a couple of things, but should be really easy
• Show preview, either on the local machine or remote
• Any suggestion?

Of course the source code is available as well for download. Here on sourceforge you can find all the stuff you need, please if you find any bug leave me a message. Comments and critics are really welcome as well

Right now you can download:

• Blender++ (1.1)
• Blender++ Net Client (1.1). This is a demo client that shows you how you can access to a Blender++ server from a remote machine. Beware that if your network is behind a NAT it won’t work if you try to access from outside the network!
• Blender++ mobile client. It’s made in Python as well, so you need a Nokia S60 2nd edition or higher phone to run it. You need to install Python as well on your phone, google PyS60 for more infos.

That’s all, hope you enjoy it

ps: now there are only Windows binaries on sourceforge, in the evening I’ll put the source code plus OSX and Linux versions. I need to get back home first

pps: I’m back home, Linux and OSX versions are available now! Remember that Python 2.6 and wxPython 2.8.1 or higher is required to run Blender++

Blender++ project page on SourceForge

Barrel
Vimeo / Blender3D [Animation/Videos] - 2009-10-12 06:22:42

The traditional way of filling Barrels as it has been done in Switzerland for centuries.

Cast: phlopper

Barrel
BlenderNation - 2009-10-12 05:00:21

Barrel by Philip Aigner (phlopper). Barrel from phlopper on Vimeo. Youtube Download

Bringing back 2.4x Stuff in Blender 2.5
BlenderNation - 2009-10-12 00:31:33

Ton happily reports the Durian team fully uses 2.5 trunk now! It goes sometimes with pains… but reports have been greatly tackled by Campbell and Brecht - Missing features and todo items should still go to the 2.5 todo: Tom and Campbell will fill in the wiki todo for mesh, sculpt, sequencer Mesh retopo: Angela (Durian team) missed [...]