Planet Blender

Sintel: Facial Blendshapes
Durian - 2010-02-23 22:42:03

Note: This blog post is only focused on facial shapes. Texture is still in progress.

Our main character Sintel has a total of 55 shapes. These shapes have all been hooked up to Nathan’s facial rig. Tomorrow I will start creating various poses (phonemes & emotions) for our facial pose library.

Some of my workflow when creating facial shapes:

- I start by shaping each in its symmetrical form using X mirror and proportional edit.  For better precision and polishing, I move vertex by vertex.

- While the shape is taking form, I constantly scrub through 0-1 (0-100%) range value to ensure natural motion from default to shape. I also check to make sure motion looks natural from all view angles of the face (front, three-quarter front, side, three-quarter back, top, bottom).

- Overriding the shape beyond full value of 1 will help magnify any trouble areas and/or continue building from it.

- For shapes that need to mix well together, I activate two shapes at their full value and continue editing on the active selected shape.

- For mouth shapes, I open the jaw for inside mouth cleanup, ensuring the mouth is not intersecting through the teeth.

-  Each shape is exaggerated beyond what is considered natural. This allows for better flexibility while animating. For closer shots, the animator can go from subtle to a maximum of about 60-70% of the shape. Pushing beyond 60-70% range is reserved for distant shots where the extreme maximum 80-100% of the shape can still be read from far away.

- As a final step I split the shapes up (example: left side & right side) using vertex groups and “Mirror Shape Key”.

p.s. Shape key creation in Blender 2.5 is awesome!

- Angela

graphicall: Indirect lighting teaser (render25 branch) by Brecht!! http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=1599
Twitter / graphicall - 2010-02-23 20:01:35

graphicall: Indirect lighting teaser (render25 branch) by Brecht!! http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=1599

Creating Realistic Fire in Blender 2.5
Blender Guru - 2010-02-23 17:51:31

Previously, creating fire in Blender was a chore. We were forced to use the outdated particle system combined with the clumsy halo renderer. We cringed as we hit F12 and watched the equivalent of a mustard stain materialize on screen.

Those days are over.

The new smoke simulator can not only create realistic smoke, but a gorgeous fire.

I’ve been working extensively with the smoke simulator over the past few months to find out the best method for creating fire. It’s been a long road but I believe I’ve finally got the formula right.

Last week, I launched an Introduction to Smoke Simulation that covered an in-depth approach to realistic smoke physics.

This week it’s all about fire… and it’s completely free.

What you will get from this tutorial is essentially the 3 months worth of experimenting, testing and adjusting, it took me to create the best looking fire possible.

In this tutorial you will learn:

• How to create fire and smoke using the new smoke simulator
• A simple lighting trick that will vastly improve the look of your fire
• The correct material settings for fire
• How to make your flames emit burning embers
• An easy heat distortion trick that adds nothing to your rendertimes

Here’s a sneak peak at what’s inside:

Subscribe to the Blender Guru now mailing list to recieve your copy now.

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Fluid Particles engine patch at last!
Tinker Code - 2010-02-23 16:35:13

Hi all Here’s at last the first public patch of the Particle Fluids engine , this means that this still doesn’t have particle surfacing included because it’s still a work in progress but the engine is pretty useful in its current state and particles can be rendered via splatting or using point density for [...]

graphicall: "finally a way to force removal of images (Shift+Click on the X)", since [27105], by Campbell, yay thanks!
Twitter / graphicall - 2010-02-23 15:36:48

graphicall: "finally a way to force removal of images (Shift+Click on the X)", since [27105], by Campbell, yay thanks!

Behold.. Johann van Grosso
BlenderNation - 2010-02-23 13:00:44

Pablo Vazquez creates amazing silly and cute characters. But not today. Check out this badass dude Johann van Grosso (a bust only). Pablo describes the process of its creation and shares the .blend file under a Creative Commons license. Pablo writes: August 2009, right after being rejected from the Durian Project. I applied as many others to be [...]

Blender + Hugin = Science on a Sphere
BlenderNation - 2010-02-23 06:00:38

And now for something completely different: science. On a sphere. I want one. Ron Proctor writes: Science on a Sphere uses four projectors to produce images and video on a sphere shaped screen. The Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City has one — it’s something you almost have to see in person to really appreciate [see these [...]

new drawings!
pablo lizardo - digital artist - 2010-02-23 05:27:23

In some free time in argentina and then here in US I did this drawings, hope you like it!

All the images are made in myPaint, only the last one has a few effects done in gimp.

Modeling a Porsche 911 GT3 RS – part 07
Blender Tutorials Downloads Videos & Education - Blender Cookie - 2010-02-23 03:22:51

In this multi-part Blender video tutorial we are going to be taking a close look at how to model a Porsche 911 GT3 RS. Due to the nature of the car these tutorials encompasses a lot of techniques from both organic modeling and hard-surface modeling styles. A particular emphasis is placed on creating good topology [...]

http://blendercookie.com

my first post from Tube project!
pablo lizardo - digital artist - 2010-02-23 00:13:40

Hello friends!, I copy/paste this post that I write for the Tube project Blog:

Well, first of all, I’m gonna to introduce my self: I’m Pablo Lizardo from Argentina, to be more accurate I’m from here! sooo far away!! As Fateh and Bassam told in the latest post, I was accepted as intern to “work” for the next 3 months in this awesome project called “Tube”

I came just six days ago, so all is new for me, luckily all the people in the team and at the hampshire college are great and really kind. So there wasn’t problems with the adaptation time. Before I start talking about the project, I want to make a special mention to Bassam, Fateh and Jarred who give me all I need, and are always asking if there’s all going right!

Well, do I’ve mentioned that the town/city (Northampton, MA) is really beautifull? i think not! All the buildings and houses are like the movies

Another little thing to mention is that all has a lot of patience with me , because my english is really bad XD, I guess that get laughs at my back! But i think that i’m learning a lot, so i think that in … 3 months I’ll be ready to communicate with english people

Lets talk about important things! The food is really strange, I miss the argentinean food! but I must adapt to this new forms of eat! I feel lucky because I came with Yerba Mate.

From the first day I start to work in the Nerdodrome,It’s a very nice place where a lot of cool things happen!, There’s also a project called Caldera which is produced in the same place, fortunately here we have a lot of new computers to do all the work together without disturb to anybody.

In the project, I’m mostly dedicated to draw some boards for the animatic. So I’m doing a lot of 2d stuff, sometimes i have things to do in 3d but not too much. I don’t have problem with that because I love to draw and make sketches!

Here’s some images that I did in this few days. Keep on touch for more blog updates!

- Pablo

Hello world!
tube - 2010-02-23 00:07:31

Well, first of all, I’m gonna to introduce my self: I’m Pablo Lizardo from Argentina, to be more accurate I’m from here! sooo far away!! As Fateh and Bassam told in the latest post, I was accepted as intern to “work” for the next 3 months in this awesome project called “Tube”

I came just six days ago, so all is new for me, luckily all the people in the team and at the hampshire college are great and really kind. So there wasn’t problems with the adaptation time. Before I start talking about the project, I want to make a special mention to Bassam, Fateh and Jarred who give me all I need, and are always asking if there’s all going right!

Well, do I’ve mentioned that the town/city (Northampton, MA) is really beautifull? i think not! All the buildings and houses are like the movies

Another little thing to mention is that all has a lot of patience with me , because my english is really bad XD, I guess that get laughs at my back! But i think that i’m learning a lot, so i think that in … 3 months I’ll be ready to communicate with english people

Lets talk about important things! The food is really strange, I miss the argentinean food! but I must adapt to this new forms of eat! I feel lucky because I came with Yerba Mate.

From the first day I start to work in the Nerdodrome,It’s a very nice place where a lot of cool things happen!, There’s also a project called Caldera which is produced in the same place, fortunately here we have a lot of new computers to do all the work together without disturb to anybody.

In the project, I’m mostly dedicated to draw some boards for the animatic. So I’m doing a lot of 2d stuff, sometimes i have things to do in 3d but not too much. I don’t have problem with that because I love to draw and make sketches!

Here’s some images that I did in this few days. Keep on touch for more blog updates!

- Pablo