Planet Blender

Four hour length tutorial on how to model a building for 3d interactive visualization
Blender 3D Architect - 2009-12-28 23:36:03

Among all the techniques used to create 3d models for visualization, the most used for architectural visualization is edge modeling followed by subdivision modeling. The edge modeling technique is the one that provides the highest level of control over precision and allows the artist to set measurements and divisions based on planes. It’s quite easy [...] Related posts:

1. Basic tutorial on how to model buildings with box modeling From all the techniques available to create 3d models for...
2. Architectural Modeling: Creating a bathroom with details for visualization A few days ago I published here on the blog...
3. Free ebook on how to model high quality furniture models for architectural visualization Even with lots of free assets available on the internet,...

KYouB Likes To Collect Coins in Other Worlds Too!
AniCator.Com - 2009-12-28 22:21:14

KYouB is starting to take more shape.   Enjoy his moves!

Donation
Blender Audio Development Blog - 2009-12-28 20:43:28

I’ve added a donation link and a sponsors page, so if you like my work and want to support me, please consider a donation. If there’s a specific audio related feature you would like to have, please mention that and I’ll also concentrate on that more, before doing other things. The names of the generous [...]

Weekly update December 21-27
Freestyle integration into Blender - 2009-12-28 20:17:55

In the last week the dev team was working on instability issues regarding the view map creation.  The work started with a thorough review of the entire view map construction process, which consists of 1) importing meshes from a 3D scene, 2) detecting feature edges, and 3) building a view map.  These steps are briefly summarized as follows. In [...]

Welcome
Blender Audio Development Blog - 2009-12-28 20:01:42

Hello and welcome to my Blender Audio Development Blog! I’ll post the development status and updates of the blender audio system here so that you can always be up to date, however I probably won’t be able to post to often, as I better spend my spare time on developing, right?

GIMP Digital Spaceship Painting Tutorial part 3
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2009-12-28 19:55:15

This might be the third part of this GIMP digital painting tutorial, but it’s actually a good place to join. If you have been following this process from part 1 then, as you can see from the main image, a lot of progress has already been made since the start of this spaceship painting process, and even since part two of this look at the creation of a science fiction illustration.

When we last saw the illustration it looked like the image on the left. The monster was still an abstract shape and the new improved space explorer had just been hashed in.

I was still a little unhappy with the look of the spaceman however, he looked a little too much like a superhero with bulging muscles.

 

So after a little more work our intrepid explorer now looks a little thinner and more vulnerable. His spacesuit is the same colour – basically – as the spaceship hovering over the scene in the background and that pretty much ties him to it, I think. But it is a little boring, and there is almost the danger that he might be mistaken for some kind of expendable exploration droid. I’m going to have to be careful to do everything I can to keep him looking human.

Here in this next image we can see that with a bright high-vis orange vest on his exploration/environment suit and some bright highlights he is looking a lot more interesting.

It’s still possible to mistake him for a robot though and he’s going to need a lot more work before he’s done, but right now the monster in the background is crying out for attention.

The monster is the focus of what we are doing in the next couple of images. Here in this first image I have started building layer after layer of detail onto the monster. When I’m happy with a particular look, or the number of layers has just gotten a little unmanageable I’ll blend the layers down, repeatedly using the GIMP function of that name, until there’s just one monster layer again, and then start over.

Here this process continues with ever more detailed layers of light and shade being added to the monster using my Wacom drawing tablet. It’s starting to look less like a smooth and ugly frog, and more like a frightening crocodile thing that could really do some damage to an unsuspecting planetary explorer. I’ve added more detail to the foreground jungle too.

Now the foreground jungle is casting a shadow on the monster. I created the shadow by adding a new layer, painting a black shadow on the monster, turning the transparency of the shadow down to something like 30% and then moving it about with the smudge tool (looks like a finger) to soften it. I was really quite happy with the shadow, it seems to turn the monster from a flat shape into a real 3D creature.

The last touch – for now – was to work on the transparent data screen in the explorer’s hand. Using the shift button to make straight lines and tidy it up a bit. I hope it’s telling him to look out behind him!

The image has come a long way during the work, with 7 different jpegs showing different stages of the progress in this post alone, but there’s still a long way to go. When it is finally complete I’m thinking of putting all the images of the different stages of completion together into an animation. It might end up being quite a long animation.

BlenderNation is on break – selfservice news!
BlenderNation - 2009-12-28 15:36:07

Hi all! Maintaining BlenderNation takes a lot of time and energy, and I’ve decided to take a short break from writing new articles this week. I won’t leave you without your daily dose of Blender news though, but this week YOU will be responsible for writing and publishing news. Users of ‘Digg’ will be familiar with the [...]

Twitter Updates for 2009-12-29
Matt Ebb - 2009-12-28 15:01:00

• Upular: sampled from Pixar's Up http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVxe5NIABsI #

I’ve found a live and active forum for The GIMP, includes art, resources and tutorials, but I don’t like it.
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2009-12-28 14:45:23

 

I love forums, whenever you have an IT or computer problem and go Googling for the answer it always seems to come from the kind people who hang out in forums. I’ve been spending a lot of time hanging out in GIMP lately and I’ve been looking for a forum to post my art and find answers to my problems, and here it is. GIMPER.NET – The GIMP Community – Index page. There does seem to be one big problem though. I don’t see any signature links, and when I created one and previewed it – it looked dead. If the site doesn’t allow signature links, then why should anyone create content for them?

Oh well, I guess I’ll have to keep looking for a proper GIMP forum who don’t mind the people who create the content for them linking away to their own site.

In the mean time I’ve been working on my latest spaceship illustration. When we last saw it, it looked like the image to the left, but it has gone through quite a lot of development since then and as a tutorial-like guide I’ll post some of the iterations here.

 

 

First I darkened the spaceman character in the foreground of the image. In this illustration the spaceship is to be an imposing presence, but despite that still a backdrop to the foreground action.

 

 

Then I moved the spaceship to the top of the layers pile so that I could work on it without being disturbed by the elements of the image that would otherwise overlap it – a really good reason to keep each element of the illustration on it’s own layer. I added windows, greebles and other details until I was happy with it, for now, and then mixed all the spaceship layers together into one spaceship layer and moved it back down to it’s proper place in the stack.

When the spaceship is in its proper place, it is behind a translucent white layer which nicely simulates the effect of seeing something far away through a lot of intervening atmosphere – the colours fade. I darkened the jungle foliage in the background of the image and worked into it to make a little more detail. I also muted the colours of the monster in the image – which is still a quite abstract shape – because it is going to be lowering in the shadows in the completed picture, if everything goes according to plan.

With only a few light-colour trees in the foreground the brave interplanetary adventurer looked as though he was in the open, so I deleted them and blocked in a shape to better represent the jungle clearing feel that I was originally going for in this digital painting. The adventurer was beginning to look a little lost too, so as you can see in the image to the left, I resized him.

And here we have the current state of play with this illustration. The space adventurer wasn’t looking heroic enough, and it seemed strange that he was looking through binoculars into this dense alien jungle where visibility can’t be more than a few meters, so I’ve bitten the bullet and started to completely redesign him.

You can see the very first stages of this image here, and I’ll be posting updates as I make more progress in bringing this digital painting home, so far using GIMP exclusively.

graphicall: BUILDERS: don't forget to delete your 'install' dir before compiling! This can lead to old scripts being packaged
Twitter / graphicall - 2009-12-28 13:55:52

graphicall: BUILDERS: don't forget to delete your 'install' dir before compiling! This can lead to old scripts being packaged

Elpis the game
BlenderNation - 2009-12-28 10:02:13

Nycholas Weissberg is working on his game ‘Elpis’. Here’s a ‘work in progress video’. For more information, check out this thread on BlenderArtists.

Thanks for your support :)
Tinker Code - 2009-12-28 04:00:13

Hi all One more time the community is there when I need it: every bit of help count in this side of the world and after Christmas Blendiac and WifeofBlendiac will bring me all your support at once, allowing me to ugrade the hardware and to continue building my home, also freeing myself from annoying tasks [...]

Possibilities are endless
Tinker Code - 2009-12-28 03:52:36

Hi all The possibilities that fluid particles bring to the artist are truly endless, if you think outside the box not just realistic fluids simulations are possible, including now multifluids interactions but crazy FX’s if you are willing to experiment and go beyond physics range parameters. One nice side effect of being tightly integrated in [...]

One of the Many Advantages of Being Different
ArtofInterpretation.com: Recent Images RSS Feed - 2009-12-28 03:00:00

From my "Common Objects Uncommonly" series. Technical note: As always, pure Blender internal render.