Planet Blender

Recalculating normals, marking seams, evening teselation, turning tris to quads etc on my spaceship model with Blender
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2010-04-30 20:17:42

http://starbrightillustrations.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Screenshot.png

Instead of posting about it i should probably be getting on with it, but what I’m doing is painstakingly – and over a period of days – tidying up my spaceship mesh in Blender.

This spaceship is intended to eventually be the Franklin, a unit used in the Vega Strike, open source space trading, combat and exploration game. I’m following a lot of advice I’ve been getting at the Vega Strike forums and step by step bringing this model to the point it needs to be to be added in game as a unit.

http://starbrightillustrations.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/17_franklin_render_back2.jpeg

All this detail in the image here needs to be sharpened as explained in this Vega Strike forums post written by Chuck Starchaser. I’m beginning to wish I had added these seams before duplicating four guns for the wing hard points and attaching them. Oh well.

http://starbrightillustrations.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Screenshot_wing_edge.png

Once the edge is marked as a seam and sharp it glows a bright radioactive orange in the default Blender theme. I was worried that I would forget which seams were marked. it turns out that i was worrying over nothing.

It’s not all plain sailing though. There are quite a few tricky seams to mark, like this one which is a circle with a bit hollowed out of it. it’s hidden away under the spaceship’s wing and buried underneath a pipe. I’m not sure how often it’ll even be noticed in the game, but I guess if a thing is worth doing then it’s worth doing right.

Once my mesh was looking a bit better I added the subsur fmodifyer as suggested, but it tore a bit of a hole in the nose of my spaceship model.

Now why on earth did it do that?

http://starbrightillustrations.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/franklin_render_action_with_subsurf1.jpeg

I moved some edges of the mesh around and managed to get rid of most of the holes. So here are the latest renders.

http://starbrightillustrations.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/franklin_render_action_with_subsurf2.jpeg

http://starbrightillustrations.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/franklin_render_back_with_subsurf2.jpeg

http://starbrightillustrations.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/franklin_render_side_with_subsurf2.jpeg

http://starbrightillustrations.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/franklin_render_top_with_subsurf2.jpeg

http://starbrightillustrations.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/franklin_render_under_with_subsurf2.jpeg

It’s interesting seeing this spaceship model evolve step by step through the various 3D Blender processes toward completion, isn’t it? Hopefully you’ll be able to follow the progress all the way to it’s eventual appearance in the game.

Here’s the blend file. it’s getting quite big with all these quads (and some tris still).

http://www.starbrightillustrations.com/blends/franklin_wip10.blend

[dot]Blend Magz Issue .04 is Available!
BlenderNation - 2010-04-30 14:00:56

Hiza Ro and the Blender Indonesia Army have done it again!  Check out the latest issue of [dot]Blend Magz, Issue .04!. Also, be thinking about what you will submit for their next issue, on the theme “Go Green”.

Inside Pixar’s Leadership
BlenderNation - 2010-04-30 09:02:13

A very frank and mature discussion about creative leadership with Ed Catmull (president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios). Inside Pixar’s Leadership

Modeling Feathery Wings
Blender Cookie - 2010-04-30 04:42:06

In this Blender 2.5 Video tutorial, I go over using the particle hair system to create downey feathers. Then using the duplifaces technique to add the longer feathers, as well as their texturing and a quick rig setup. Support the site – Download includes: High resolution .mov Video .blend file at the state of the tutorial Textures used in [...]

http://blendercookie.com

Shape Modeling Exercise Series - #1
Blender Newbies 3D Video Tutorials (Learn to Create 3D Graphics with Blender!) - 2010-04-30 00:59:00

This is the first video in a series of videos on modeling shapes in Blender.

The point of these videos is not to model a complete object but to rather focus on different shapes and issues that you may encounter while modeling. So, essentially, these are exercises.

Hopefully, these videos will help you better understand how to approach modeling certain shapes, and what tools are available in Blender to make things easier.

(The techniques demonstrated aren't intended to be the exact solution for every scenario.)

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

gravestones
Matt Ebb - 2010-04-30 00:38:00

okunoin cemetery, koya-san