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  • Animating A Robot Tutorial
    BlenderArt Magazine - 2009-10-21 23:37:06

    Let’s Get this Robot Moving: This tutorial assumes you have already modeled your robot, “Papero”. I have done a few preliminary tasks to make this tutorial easier to follow:

    For animating we will take the Papero model we made in the modeling a robot tutorial.

    Step 1.
    • I assigned basic materials to the separate parts so that they are easier to distinguish (if you have already followed the texturing tutorial, that is fine)
    • I have rotated the head to face straight forward.
    • I have also turned off subsurf for now (makes it easier to see what you are doing). (fig 1)

    Image 1
    With simple characters, such as our robot, you don’t need a lot of complicated movements. In fact you could probably get away with just using simple keyframing of his head moving from side to side, and adding additional keyframes as he changes location. But then this would be a very short tutorial, and rather unnecessary as you could figure that out all by yourself.

    The fact that Gaurav modeled “Papero’s head as all separate parts, presents us with an interesting option for giving our robot an interesting action set. We are going to animate the ear rings and ear ball shooting out from the side of his head as he rolls along. We are going to accomplish this by using Action Constraints.

    The basic premise of Action Constraints is simple. You create a set of actions once, then attach that set of actions to one bone with an Action Constraint. When you rotate the one bone, the set of actions gets triggered. Pretty slick time saver, it also assures that the action will be consistent throughout your animation.

    This tutorial was created with Blender 2.40 alpha-2. (If you have a previous and or possibly newer version, this should not be a big problem as Action Constraints have been around for quite a awhile.)

    So let’s get started.

    Step 2. We need a basic armature. There will be no IK chains or anything fancy.

    • Place your cursor below the robot.
    • Spacebar > Add > Armature. This will be the Root bone and will be used to move the entire robot. (fig 2)


    Image 2
    Step 3.
    • Next place your cursor in the bottom section of the robot, about even with the wheels
    • Spacebar > Add > Bone. This will be the Wheel Base bone, and will be parented to the Root bone. (fig. 3)

    Image 3
    Step 4.
    • Next place your in the main body section, Spacebar > Add > Bone, this will be the Body bone, and will be parented to the Root bone.
    • Tab out Edit mode and RMB on the robot head, in the Edit buttons click on the ‘Center New’ button, Shift + S > Cursor > Selection. (fig. 4)

    Image 4
    Step 5.
    • Press ‘A’ key to deselect all, RMB on the Armature and Tab back into Edit mode.
    • Spacebar > Add > Bone. This will be the Head bone, and will be parented to the Body bone. (fig. 5)

    Image 5
    Step 6.
    • Zoom in on the ear rings, place your cursor in the first ring, Spacebar > Add > Bone. This will be the Ring 1.L bone, and will be parented to the Head bone.
    • Place your cursor in the second ring, Spacebar > Add > Bone. This will be the Ring 2.L bone, and will be parented to the Head bone.
    • Place your cursor in the ear ball, Spacebar > Add > Bone. This will be the Earball bone, and will be parented to the Head bone. (fig. 6)
    • ‘B’ key, drag a box through the ear ring and Earball.L bones, ‘Shift + D’ key to duplicate them, Control + ‘M’ key to mirror them, drag them to the other side of the head and line them up with the ear rings. (Names will be the same, except will end in ‘R’.)

    This completes your armature.


    Image 6
    Step 7. Now we need to parent our robot to the armature.

    • Tab out of Edit mode, press ‘A’ key to deselect everything.
    • Select (RMB + Shift key) all the robot pieces, then select the armature
    • Control + ‘P’ > Armature
    • Choose ‘From Closest Bones’

    Now comes the fun part, double checking to make sure all the parts assigned to the correct bone, no help for it, so let’s get to it. The steps will be the same for each part.

    • Select part, Tab into Edit mode, ‘A’ key to deselect all vertices, look at the ‘Vertex Group’ panel
    • Scroll to the correct bone for the part you are checking, click the ‘Select’ button. If all goes well, the right vertices will turn yellow. (fig. 7)
    • To assign vertices to ‘Vertex Group’, select vertices wanted, scroll to desired bone in list, click ‘Assign’ key
    • To delete vertices from ‘Vertex Group’, select vertices wanted, scroll to desired bone in list, click ‘Remove’ key

    Make sure you test your robot in Pose Mode, select each bone and rotate/grab to ensure everything is moving properly. In Edit mode, select all bones and press ‘Control + N’ to recalculate bone roll (otherwise you might get strange results).


    Image 7
    Step 8. Now we can start setting up our actions. Split your screen into 2, with 3d view on one side and Action Editor Window on the other (fig. 8 )

    Image 8
    Step 9.
    • Select the Armature, Control + Tab into Pose Mode (Armature bones should be blue/green depending on selection status)
    • Select the 3 ear bones (Ring 1.L, Ring 2.L & Earball.L), ‘I’ key > LocRot, this will be the base point in the action.
    • Go forward 40 frames, ‘I’ key > LocRot, this will be the end point in the action.
    • Go back 20 frames
    • Select the Earball.L bone, ‘G’ key, while holding down the ‘Control’ key, move the Earball.L 3 units to the left. ‘I’ key >LocRot.
    • Select the Ring 2.L bone, ‘G’ key, while holding down the ‘Control’ key, move the Ring 2.L 1 unit to the left. ‘I’ key >LocRot. (fig.9)

    Image 9
    Step 10.
    • Go back to frame 1 and test your new action by pressing ‘Alt + A’ keys.
    • In the Action Editor Window, rename your action something relevant, like “Ear action”, close the action (click the ‘X’ next to the action name)
    • Add a bone above the head (Spacebar > Add > Bone), name it Ear Mover, parent it to the Root bone, so it doesn’t get lost when moving the robot around a scene.
    • Select Ring 2.L bone and add an Action Constraint in the Constraint panel. Fill in the following settings to match the image. (fig. 10)
    • Repeat for Earball.L

    Image 10
    Step 11. Now when you move the Ear Mover bone, the Ring 2.L bone and the Earball.L bone will move through their action. (fig. 11)

    Image 11
    At this point you can go back to your Ear action and add in actions for the right side of the robot, so that both sides pop out at the same time. After you have added in the new actions for the right side, don’t forget to add action constraints to the right side Ring 2.R and Earball.R bones.

    At this point ‘Papero’ is ready to roll. He can be keyframed to move across the screen, bump into things and show surprise (his ears popping out).

    To practice on you own, here are some further suggestions on actions you can add to our little robot ‘Papero’ to give him a little more character:

    • Make his head pop up a little off of his body
    • Make his body pop up a little off of the wheel base
    • Have Ring 1 and Ring 2 rotate slowly back and forth while he is rolling through scene.
    • Have the Earball slide ever so slightly in and out of rings
    • Move Head back and forth sideways as if he is scanning his surroundings.

    Have fun with your new little robot. :-)

    References & External Links

    • .blend file

    • Modeling A Robot

    • Texturing A Robot

    Written by Sandra Gilbert (aka dreamsgate)

  • Controlling cameras for rendering with YafaRay
    Blender 3D Architect - 2009-10-21 18:53:03


    Earlier this week I was talking about how to control and make the camera of Blender 3D, behave like a real camera with settings such as ISO, Exposure and FStop with the help of LuxRender. Actually, we have to use those settings using the controls of LuxRender. This is a great way to make our [...] Related posts:
    1. Getting started with YafaRay for external architectural rendering In a previous article I showed up a quick and...
    2. Rendering colored glass for architecture with Blender 3D and YafaRay A few days ago I was talking about the uses...
    3. Updated guides about rendering with YafaRay and Blender 3D A few days ago the full yafray web site was...
  • Blender 2.5 – tutorials
    Tinker Code - 2009-10-21 18:13:06

    Hi, this is a friend of Farsthary. Although the volumetric renderer is now maintained/optimized only by the great Matt Ebb (aka Broken) with some assistance from Alfredo de Greef (aka Eeshlo), I thought it would be interesting for the supporters of the previous blog “True Volumetrics in Blender” to have some news from time to time, [...]
  • CONGRATULATION for All Blender Army :)
    Hello! - 2009-10-21 17:20:28

    Selamat kepada Blender Army Indonesia karena memenangkan kompetisi komunitas open source GCOS 2009, dan keluar sebagai juara kedua.  Penghargaan GCOS dan pameran akan dilangsungkan di Jakarta 26-27 Oktober 2009. Jenis penghargaan adalah sertifikat dan atau plakat yang ditandatangani Menteri Ristek dan atau Menkominfo. :)

    Secara khusus Kapten Blender mengucapkan terimakasih buat Blender Army Indonesia atas peran sertanya selama ini di berbagai kesempatan, baik forum, blog dengan komentar-komentar semangat, FaceBook dgn statusnya, dan juga [dot]BlendMagz 01. Percayalah, kemenangan ini milik bersama dan sebagai wujud modal untuk kegiatan kita selanjutnya. Semoga di tahun yg akan datang, yang merpakan Tahun OPEN SOURCE, kita semakin menjadi contoh dan memberi andil untuk perkembangan Animasi berbasis Open SOurce di Tanak Air. BRAVO.

    Next. KAmi akan mengikuti pameran di Jakarta 26-27 Oktober 2009. Doakan dan ikutlah berpartisipasi untuk mendukung dan memberi support Komunitas. Thanks For All.

    CHECK This: http://gcos.info

  • Guardian inspiration for my 3d CGI illustrations and…
    Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2009-10-21 12:58:16

    Big 3d eagle smash Tory, grrr... The Americans (not just the Democrats, the Republicans have voiced similar concerns) have told off the Tories here in the UK for embracing European partners with views that are a little too worrying, a little too closely. The Guardian comment piece that inspired this editorial illustration.  I immediately wrote a little something for my blog Dragonbat when I saw this comment piece and of course, I would need an illustration.

    I decided on something simple that told the story as directly as possible. So America’s anger is represented in the illustration as a big nasty 3d eagle with red eyes. As Europe is the backdrop to the story, we have the simple blue flag with stars in the background of the of the image, actually it is more accurately an image texture on the floor of the 3d space of the illustration. But…

    scribble, doodle, scratch, ah.. done. How to represent the Tory party was a little more problematic, their leader David Cameron is a bit bland and hard to caricature, but I couldn’t think of a better option. I gave him a very dubious looking arm band in the European colours to signify the bone of contention in our story and there you have it, done.

    From initial sketch to completed illustration the whole image with 3d elements added in the ever reliable 3d workhorse Blender and a few tweaks done in the more jittery and expensive, but still useful, Photoshop took about three hours. The picture isn’t perfect – and there comes a time when you just have to call it done – but the huge advantage of this illustration technique is speed, it allows you to add colour and interest even to something as fast moving and ephemeral as a blog post, and that can’t be a bad thing.


  • Building a Blender Bookshelf
    BlenderNation - 2009-10-21 09:00:41

    Renderosity features a *long* article about Blender books. Tony Mullen wrote: Hi everybody, My editor at Sybex just passed this link along to me and I thought people might be interested to see it. It's pretty nice to see this kind of publicity for the books and for Blender! Link Building a Blender Bookshelf
  • Blender workshop, Orleans, France
    BlenderNation - 2009-10-21 06:21:51

    French non-profit organisation Labomedia has hosted a number of Blender classes in the past. Their next one is planned from 26 to 30 October 2009. From their website (machine-translated): from 26 to 30 October 2009 14h-18h Exchanges of expertise and know-how about digital tools and practices: 3D animation (Blender), real-time interaction (Pure Data, Processing, Python) This time the workshop [...]
  • Texturing A Robot Tutorial
    BlenderArt Magazine - 2009-10-21 04:57:49

    This tutorial will teach you how to add and assign material to the model. It is basic to intermediate level tutorial. For texturing we will take the Papero model we made in the modeling a robot tutorial.
    Step 1 Assigning materials to a mesh: To assign a material to any mesh you have to first select it. So make sure you are in ‘object mode’ then select the head mesh. looking at the reference images we can see that the head have two colors, white covering only the front face while orange covering rest of the part. First we will assign a material to the head. Press [F5] to bring up the material buttons. In the ‘Material tab’ click ‘Add New’ and rename it to ‘Orange’. You now have added a material to the mesh.

    Image 1
    Step 2. Changing the material properties: Now we will change the property of the ‘Orange’ material so that it looks like a plastic. Fist change the ‘Col’ sliders of R,G,B to 1.000, 0.600, 0.000. This will make the material of orange color. Now in the ‘Shaders’ tab change the ‘Ref’ to 1.000. change ‘Spec’ to 0.700 and finally ‘Hard’ to 130. The ‘Lambert’ shader is actually a ‘diffusion shader’ it take cares of how much the surface reflects light. Next ‘Cook Torr’ is a ‘Specular shader’ it defines how much shininess a material will have. You can take the image 2 for reference of the ‘Orange’ texture.

    Image 2
    Step 3. Assigning multiple textures to the same mesh: Keep the head mesh selected and get into ‘Edit mode’ also enable shaded view [Z] now select the vertices as shown in the image1. Now press [F9] and in the ‘Link and Materials tab’ (Image 3) click the ‘New’ button this will create another material for the selected vertices. But you must assign the selected vertices for the material first. So now press the ‘Assign’ button. Now remember the ‘Mat’ Number for the selected faces.

    Image 3
    Step 4. Now get out of the ‘edit mode’ and press [F5] again to get to the material buttons. Here you will see that the second material assign is the same as was the first. We need a white plastic here so go ahead and click the ‘x’ in front of the ‘Orange’ Material. Now again add a new material and rename it to ‘Plastic white’. Change the properties of the white material by picking the values from the image 4.

    Image 4
    Step 5. Assigining the premade material: Now you know how to assign a new material but what if you want to reuse the same material again. Now as you can see the ear pieces are of the same orange plastic. So to assign them the orange material just select them and in from the material tab select the ‘Orange’ material. All the material you create are added to the dropdown list.

    Similarly assign orange material to other parst where it is needed. Upper and lower body have the same type of plastic material but only the colour is red. So create a new material for it called ‘red plastic’ and assign it to them.

    For the ‘eye piece’ and the ‘eye glass’ assign the following material.

    For the shoes you can assign the ‘White plastic’ material the same way.


    Image 5
    LIGHTING AND RENDERING THE SCENE

    Step 6. Adding a lamp: After assigning materials change the ‘viewport view’ to top [numpad 7]. Zoom out a little and add ([Spacebar] ‘Add |lamp |lamp’) a new light in to the scene. Move it to the right as shown in the image8.


    Image 6
    Step 7. Using a Camera: Since we have use the default scene we already have one lamp and a camera assigned. Now we will position the camera. To get in to the camera view press [numpad 0]. Here you can see three frames first one is the ‘capture frame’ second one is the ’safe frame’ the third one is actually the camera itself. Right click the out most frame and press [G] grab now if you move your mouse you can see the camera moves. Try to position the camera as seen in the image 7.

    Image 7
    Step 8. Now its time to render the scene. To render the scene go to ‘Render’ menu and select ‘Render settings’ or just press [F10]. Here enable the ‘Shadows’ button and also enable the ‘OSA’ button. Now to render the scene just press ‘F12′. You can see the render like image 8. Also don’t forget to add a ‘plane’ below the robot and stretch is so that it look like the floor in the image8.

    That wraps up the ‘Texturing and rendering the robot scene’ tutorial.


    Image 8
    References & External Links

    • .blend file

    • Modeling A Robot

    • Animating A Robot

    Written by Gaurav Nawani, Graphic Artist at Ironcode Software

  • Video Podcast – Episode One
    Hynds|Studio - 2009-10-21 01:57:20

    Yes, it’s official. And it’s released! Episode One of the Hynds|Studio Video Podcast is here, and gives you a quick introduction to the Compiling Blender 2.5 series. So without further ado …

    the Hynds|Studio Video Podcast

    Episode 1
    Compiling Blender 2.5 – Introduction

  • Free ebooks about rendering for Interior Design and architecture with Mental Ray
    Blender 3D Architect - 2009-10-21 00:15:58


    For architectural visualization artists starting to work with Ray Tracing renderer such as Yafaray, LuxRender, V-Ray and Mental Ray it’s quite important to understand the basics behind of these softwares. In my classes I always recommend a few tutorials, articles and ebooks to help on the documentation of process like Global Illumination and Illumination. At [...] Related posts:
    1. Urban landscapes with Blender 3D and YafaRay In the past five weeks I’m giving a course at...
    2. Review of V-Ray RT by an architectural visualization artist It`s not often that we can see an article about...
    3. Guide about interior lighting for architecture with Blender 3D or YafaRay In architectural visualization we consider the light of interior scenes,...
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