Planet Blender v2 beta4 - 'Turning Pages'

Alchemy : Le Sketch Tool qui donne envie !
CoyHot's World - 2009-11-29 22:38:00

Des plombes ! C'est en ces quelques mots qu'on pourrait résumer la dernière mise à jour de mon blog. Désolé chers amis de cette hibernation épistolaire, mais les dernières semaines (pour ne pas dire mois) ont été relativement chargées de par mon nouveau statut de travailleur indépendant. En deux mots, c'est dur mais ça marche bien alors on va pas se plaindre.

Outre la totale liberté d'actions que procure ce nouveau statut (tout en restant cadré par les demandes des clients, bien sur), je peux goutter à nouveau à un petit plaisir dont j'avais presque oublié la saveur : l'expérimentation au service de la prod !

Dans ce but et en gardant toujours à l'esprit de mettre à l'honneur les logiciels libres, j'ai testé ces dernières semaines beaucoup d'outils de création Open Source en tout genre dont mes futures posts (qui ne tarderont pas autant que celui-ci, je le promet) vous montreront les champs d'application.

Parmi ces merveilles, je vous propose de découvrir pour ceux qui ne le connaitraient pas encore le logiciels Alchemy. Un mot pour le résumer : Chef d'Oeuvre !!! La philosophie annoncée par les deux développeurs de ce bijou semble simple : "Imaginons une nouvelle façon de créer avec un ordinateur". Au bout d'une heure à faire joujou (le mot n'est ni trop fort, ni pégoratif) on peut affirmer que ces deux bons hommes ont gagné leur parie !

Faites le test, mettez le doigt dedans et je vous parie qu'au bout d'une heure, vous êtes encore devant votre machine à laisser votre couple cerveau/bras s'exprimer d'une manière hallucinante de naturelle, comme je n'en avait pas ressenti depuis des années !

Pourtant au début, la première prise en main semble un peu bizarre. L'interface est minimaliste et déroutante, on ne trouve pas de calques ... cerise sur le gateau, il n'y a même pas d'Undo !!! Mais alors, allez vous me dire, qu'est-ce qu'il peut bien trouver à ce soft le Grassard.

Comme une vidéo veux mieux qu'un long discours :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyhznB4jG9w

Et la suite :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdV-ZsDbdHI

Tout ce que vous faîtes est vectoriel, plusieurs types d'outils sont dispos pour travailler précisemment ou pour au contraire laisser votre cerveau gambader et vous amener vers d'autres créations. Le mode "Mirror" est un régal, les variations aléatoires de couleurs donnent un effet pastel à vos créations en moins de deux, l'instance de formes ajoute des milliers de détails en un coup de souris (ou stylet).

Le coté expérimental est renforcé par quelques fonctions inédites (variations des formes en fonction de la voix captée par un micro pendant que l'on dessine, par exemple). Les dessins enregistrés via un CTRL+S sont sauvés dans un fichier PDF et chaque pression de CTRL+S ajoute une page au document. On garde donc un historique des esquisses rassemblées dans un seul fichier.

Mon fils de 6 ans a passé plus de deux heures dessus et a enregistré dans son fichier PDF une dizaine de dessins sans même que je lui indique quoi que ce soit. C'est dire si c'est accessible ! En plus on dessine à une vitesse halucinante sans même s'en rendre compte. On dessine, on efface, on dessine, on efface ... tout ça à toute allure, corrigeant sans cesse les erreurs afin de s'approcher par petites touches du résultat escompté. Super feeling !

Petites infos pour ceux qui veulent s'y mettre rapidement :

Touche S : Passe du mode trait au mode plein et inversement
Touche X : Interverti la couleur d'avant et d'arrière plan (comme Toshop), très pratique pour gommer/tracer/gommer/tracer/etc ...

J'ai réalisé les modestes croquis que vous pouvez voir en ouverture de ce post en moins de 3 minutes chacun ! Bref, Alchemy est devenu pour moi l'outil de sketching et de recherches le plus parfait au monde !

Alors jeune lecture (ou lectrice), toi qui tremble à présent devant cette merveille, cours vite la télécharger ici :
http://al.chemy.org/download/

Le soft est écrit en Java et est dispo pour Windows, MacOS et Linux (Open Source Powa !!!) sous Licence GNU et pèse seulement 7 Mo !!!!

Le site principal (la doc est super bien faite) :
http://al.chemy.org

Même les noms graphistes peuvent s'y mettre, je suis sur que les néophites seront étonnés de voir ce que qu'ils peuvent en sortir.
Some thoughts on 2.5 search
dot.help Blender Blog - 2009-11-29 21:17:29

Wow, I haven’t posted for over a year!

How about adding a list of x length of recently used operators to Blender search? That would cover all the repetitive needs pretty well I think. Just have it ignore shortcut key inputs.

Vista and 7 users who have learned to use search will understand what I’m getting at. Actually, as more people get comfortable with the “search based interface” of modern operating systems (think Spotlight, Beagle, Vista, 7 etc.) the same concepts would make using Blender easier for all.

Yeah, I know.. it would mean typing text, reading, and developing understanding of application concepts. Hopefully these are things we haven’t evolved too far past!.
Contest - Era uma vez...
4RTE DIGIT4L - 2009-11-29 16:18:00

Olá pessoal!

Há dois meses atrás o site Blender Brasil anunciou o contest "Era uma vez.." e resolvi participar! No começo não tinha a minima idéia do que fazer.... mas assistindo o Filme Coraline, não sei o que aconteceu... eu fiquei extremamente maravilhado com o estilo... o ambiente... simplesmente com tudo!

E a partir daí, comecei a pesquisar refêrencias relacionadas ao "Terror Cartoon" ( se é que isso existe)... mas o santo Google me ajudou muito nessa empreitada!

Depois de criada uma identidade do projeto resolvi colocar as mãos na massa ou melhor na modelagem xD

Abaixo um mini - making of!

Primeiro fiz a modelagem básica da casa, que foi bastante rápida ao meu ver!

Adicionei telhados... mudei a posição das duas janelas centrais e arrumei um pouco as cores!

Aqui o ambiente assombrado começou aparecer! Quando foram adicionadas essas árvores..

Aqui adicionei uma janela em cima da porta e duas janelas nas laterais da casa e coloquei algumas pedras na base...

Aqui a imagem muda drasticamente para melhor claro! Renderizada no LuxRender, mudei a resolução da imagem para 1280x1024 e foram adicionados uma grade e uma cova!

Abaixo as configurações para deixar o ambiente sombrio e a noite no Lux Render feito por mim!

Após a modelagem da cenário completo.. fiz a modelagem do esqueleto!

E para finalizar, abaixo está a imagem final! Com o esqueleto na cova, o lattice na casa, a textura no chão e a composição completa feita no Gimp!

"Era uma vez uma noite assombrada"

Espero que gostem... abraços até a próxima!
BlenderCourse website cleaned up and Twitter account added
BlenderCourse.com RSS feed - 2009-11-29 16:10:00

It has been a while since the website was updated. Currently clean up some deprecated sections. Preparing the courses with the Blender 2.5 Alpha 0 version.
Meet Stu
Reyn's Blog - 2009-11-29 15:25:00

My latest character. Though he really possesses no special feats, one thing is for sure though, he loves to dwell on toilets and is a master of licking. ^_^Made with: Blender and GIMPRendered with: Blender Internal
Inkscape Vector Image with True Outlines • Cartoon Look • for Illustration Friday
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2009-11-29 15:17:02

The word on Illustration Friday this week is entangled, and I have created an Entangled Elephants illustration. You can see stage 1 of this Inkscape vector image here.

I am still starting out with Inkscape, but it really is intuitive and fun to use. Creating these nice cartoon outlines was simple. I just copied the elephant that needed an outline stroked the elephant beneath and tugged on the Bezier curves to make it a bit more irregular and cartoony. I was inspired to this method for outlines, rather than regular path stroking by this forum thread Creating true outlines • Topic • InkscapeForum.com. It seems this is something people re always doing, and it’s a routine task in Inkscape.

The image has nice flat areas of colour, something that Inkscape does superbly. In fact it’s a lot of fun with a pen and tablet to tease out a line, adjusting the bezier curves by dragiing on them as you go. It becomes quite intuaive after a while, and some quite free-hand-looking shapes can be created as the work becomes quicker, like the cloud in the background of this illustration.

I think the image is quite close to something that I could call complete, but I must admit that I’m tempted to fire up the GIMP, get my Bamboo Pen graphics tablet out and have a go scratching away at this image to give it a bit more interest. I could add some structure to the elephants at the foreground of the image, or perhaps work on the sky in the background and give it some interest to match what’s going on in the grass.

(edit)

So here is that image with a little bit of hatching here and there.
graphicall: COLLADA branch: since r25001, bone animation import works!! Thanks kazanbas!, congrats to NicholasBishop for the r25000 commit :)
Twitter / graphicall - 2009-11-29 14:47:31

graphicall: COLLADA branch: since r25001, bone animation import works!! Thanks kazanbas!, congrats to NicholasBishop for the r25000 commit :)
Shiny Petunia Spotted!
macouno.com - 2009-11-29 14:03:21

I just now stumbled upon a nice mod someone made of Petunia over at the lumalab forum. Thanks Engys for showing what you did! It once again proves how cool it is to give away your models for free. He also did a little walkcycle you can find on the forum.
read more...
Shiny Petunia Spotted!
macouno.com - 2009-11-29 14:03:21

I just now stumbled upon a nice mod someone made of Petunia over at the lumalab forum. Thanks Engys for showing what you did! It once again proves how cool it is to give away your models for free. He also did a little walkcycle you can find on the forum.
read more...
Blender revision 25000!
BlenderNation - 2009-11-29 13:33:10

Blender has reached its 25000th SVN commit – a measurement of development activity. Mike Pan comments on his blog. Mike writes: For those of you following the Blender development scene, you might realize we have reached a remarkable milestone today. The Blender source code has had its 25000th revision on November 29th, 2009. This means since October [...]
Project Euler: #5 in Go
goplexian.com - 2009-11-29 07:18:00

Here is my brute force attempt.

I'm sure there is a brilliant math way to solve this problem, but this solution solves the problem in 0.067 seconds for me, so I think that it is good enough.

/*What is the smallest number that is evenly divisible by all of the numbers from 1 to 20?*/

package main
import "fmt";
func main(){
   var x int64 = 20;
   divisible := false;
   for ; !divisible; x+=20 {
   if (x % 11 == 0) && (x % 12 == 0) && (x % 13 == 0) && (x % 14 == 0) && (x % 15 == 0) && (x % 16 == 0) && (x % 17 == 0) && (x % 18 == 0) && (x % 19 == 0) && (x % 20 == 0) {
   fmt.Printf("%d\n", x);
   divisible = true;
   }
   }
}
Project Euler: #5 in Go
goplexian.com - 2009-11-29 07:18:00

Here is my brute force attempt. I'm sure there is a brilliant math way to solve this problem, but this solution solves the problem in 0.067 seconds for me, so I think that it is good enough. /*What is the smallest number that is evenly divisible by all of the numbers from 1 to 20?*/ package main import "fmt"; func main(){ var x int64 = 20; divisible := false; for ; !divisible; x+=20 { ...
Sixth Sense Technology
BlenderNation - 2009-11-29 05:36:56

Here something for all of you techie tinkerers to try when its released. In a presentation by Pranav Mistry on "several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data", Mistry says he'll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all. I expect we'll see some of these ideas [...]
ProFORMA – 3D Scanning Project
NewVision Animation Studios - 2009-11-29 04:49:10

Qi Pan, an engineering student at Cambridge University, has developed a 3D scanning system that utilizes point clouds and a single USB webcam (Vanguard project members take notes). The name, ProFORMA, stands for “Probabilistic Feature-Based Online Rapid Model Acquisition” – talk about a long name! Using point clouds, the system calculates the dimensions of the [...]
Project Euler: exercise 4 in Go
goplexian.com - 2009-11-29 04:36:00

Alright, this problem was actually quite easy to solve despite that I noticed there was a sharp dip in the number of people who have solved it compared to the last 3 exercises.

The only tricky part was figuring how to compare the digits of one number to another.

s_mosher from #go-nuts pointed me in the right direction with the divide by 1000 then modulo 10 trick.

This solution, just like #3 and the rest, is very C-like.

/*Find the largest palindrome made from the product of two 3-digit numbers.*/
package main

import "fmt";
import "os";

func main(){
   var x, y, z int;
   for x = 999; x > 900; x-- {
   for y = 999; y > 900; y-- {
   z = x*y;
   if z / 100000 % 10 == z / 1 % 10 {
   if z / 10000 % 10 == z / 10 % 10 {
   if z / 1000 % 10 == z / 100 % 10 {
   fmt.Printf("%d * %d = %d\n", x, y, z);
   os.Exit(0);
}
   }
   }
   }
   }
}
Project Euler: exercise 4 in Go
goplexian.com - 2009-11-29 04:36:00

Alright, this problem was actually quite easy to solve despite that I noticed there was a sharp dip in the number of people who have solved it compared to the last 3 exercises. The only tricky part was figuring how to compare the digits of one number to another. s_mosher from #go-nuts pointed me in the right direction with the divide by 1000 then modulo 10 trick. This solution, just like #3 and the rest, is very C-like. /*Find the largest palindrome made from the...
Similar Surface Modifier Complete (sort of)
harkyman.com - 2009-11-29 04:30:50

If you’ve been following this blog, you saw my proposal and skeleton code for a surface deform modifier that would allow you to, for example, do cloth sim on a basic shirt form, then use that to deform a more complex shirt model. I had proposed it to utilize the shrink wrap code for initial pinning, and the internals of the old-style hook code for actual deformation.

The other day, Brecht committed an addition to the Cage Deform modifier which performs this same task. I believe it uses the heat weighting algorithm for pinning, followed by the cage deform method of deformation. I haven’t tried it yet, but it sounds like it will do exactly what was needed!

In the end, I had absolutely nothing to do with it. I’m just happy that there’s now a way to pin one entire mesh’s surface to that of another.
One Month Old
Reyn's Blog - 2009-11-29 03:14:00

Our little puppies just turned a month old yesterday! Yay. Here are some pics I shot with them:
Project London: The Most Ambitious No-Budget Effects Movie Ever? Yes!
Phil McCoy's Posts - Project London - 2009-11-29 00:42:32

Ian Hubert is interviewed on Jawbone.tv. The article is specifically friendly to Blender and Project London. Check it out!