Planet Blender

DVD update: Bearsly Junior Learns a Lesson
Blender Newbies 3D Video Tutorials (Learn to Create 3D Graphics with Blender!) - 2010-09-13 19:21:00

Here's another tutorial project in development where the character is a simple hand puppet named Bearsly, Junior. Junior is a young, restless cub that learns the important lesson of "walk, don't run", maybe. The modeling and texturing of the character and scene have been kept simple to help keep the length of the tutorial under control. But, the things learned can be easily transferred to more complex projects. The Cloth simulator will provide some extra puppet-like movements.

Here's the set for the animation


Here's the first blocking stage of the animation (no real timing yet, just keys every 10 frames)


Blocking stage 2 (keys are splined, still no timing work, f-curve effects added)

Dynamic Paint beta released
MiikaHweb blog feed - 2010-09-13 18:44:53

I have some good news. My "Dynamic Paint" tool is ready for another patch release!

You can download a build from MiikaHweb Blender Builds section or from GraphicAll.org.

If you want to make your own build, download the patch here. It's quite massive for a patch. Up to +4000 lines of code. o_O

It's still missing some small features / settings and some parts may not work yet. Yet it's stable enough to be relased as beta. Please notify me if you experience any bugs or crashes so I can fix them.

Soon I'll start writing a guide that covers whole "Dynamic Paint" system. I guess most of the bugs gets fixed while doing that.


I also posted a new video of a fluid-like paint test:

I was just testing some stuff before uploading the patch but the result turned out something quite cool. In that render wetmap is used as normal/bump texture. Looks like some sort of 2D-fluid simulation. xD

And thanks again for everyone who donated to support this development! :)


EDIT 2010-09-19: Some fixes and tweaks. Patch and builds updated to v1.0.
EDIT 2 - 2010-10-02: Version 1.02 released.
EDIT 3 - 2010-10-10: Version 1.05 released.
EDIT 4 - 2010-10-18: Version 1.06 released.
EDIT 5 - 2010-10-22: Version 1.07 released.
EDIT 6 - 2010-11-08: Version 1.08 released.

Modeling the Train, with Automatic Baking
Tube - Epic Production Notes - 2010-09-13 18:26:15

In between bouts of python coding I’ve been working on the model for the train and carriages. The model is asymmetric and modular so in theory loads of variations could be created by combining bits from the two models shown below.  The two ends of each train are different, as are the pantographs and all of the side panels.  The design is based on a mix of old NYC subway cars and Soviet-era Eastern European engines.  I built the model on top of an early design for the undercarriage which had been modeled by Jean-Sébastien Guillemette and Jarred de Beer.

The model for the train is currently very high poly as it will probably be used in a few close-up shots (these renders are all geometry – no texture normal/bump maps!).  There’s a bit of work still left to do (naming 3000 objects and parenting them in a nice ordered heirarchy for one!) and making a low poly version, not to mention further tweaking of the design and rigging the moving parts!  To make the low poly version lots of the objects can simply be moved to a hidden layer (or excluded from the ‘HI’ group – we use group instances to bring models into scene files), but many of the meshes need to be split up into smaller parts so that the smaller parts can be excluded from the low poly renders – for example we need to move the rivets out of the body panel meshes as they will be so small in many of the long shots they won’t be noticeable – even at 2K!

For continuity’s sake we need to make sure the rivets are in the same place in the high and low poly versions.  To save the texture painters some time later down the pipeline I’ve written a script which goes through every object in the mesh and separates the details from the main lower poly mesh component (I can define these using vertex groups etc) and then bakes the details’ AO ‘shadow’ onto the lower poly part of the mesh and saves the texture in a maps file.  The script also intelligently names all of these textures in case links get broken up as the SVN gets reorganized over time.  For example if the script finds an object called ‘side_door’ it will split the object into ‘LOW0001side_door’ (for low poly) and ‘DET0001side_door’ (for details) and then bake out the AO to an image called ‘IMG0001side_door’ while making sure that all the meshes stay linked to save memory (rendering without any textures is already taking up over 2GB of memory).

Unlike the normal P-key behaviour, the script makes sure that separating meshes affects all the linked duplicates, not just one of them.  The numerical prefix helps identify one specific detail mesh with its corresponding specific lower poly mesh.  For example if there are 5 duplicates of ‘side_door’ (‘side_door.001′,’side_door.002′…), the first will be renamed ‘LOW0001side_door’ with its details saved in ‘DET0001side_door’, the second will be renamed ‘LOW0002side_door’ and its details saved in ‘DET0002side_door’ and so on, so future ‘tubers’ to work on the model won’t have to spend hours searching the outliner list to find the right object!  The reason the number is at the start and not the end of the name is to stop blender messing with the numbers, and to help sorting in an alphabetized list!

Fingers crossed there won’t be any surprising bugs in the script, as baking out 1000 unique meshes is likely to take some time and we haven’t written a resume function for the script yet!

NASA KSC Buys RoboThespian
BlenderNation - 2010-09-13 17:00:07

Remember RoboThespian ? Lyle Walsh writes us that this time NASA KSC (Kennedy Space Center) is buying the Blender-controlled robot. Unluckily, he is not having his chance in space but to meet and...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Free Rigs for Blender 2.5
BlenderNation - 2010-09-13 14:49:06

Wayne Dixon is giving us many 2.5 rigs, 9 in total. 4 of them are original characters, an unofficial 2.5 remake of ManCandy, 2 characters from Big Buck Bunny and 2 camera rigs. Check the videos for...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Renderfarm.fi now supports Blender 2.54 Beta!
Renderfarm.fi - 2010-09-13 11:22:42

Superb news. Our build guru Gekko was faster than light and just a day after Blender 2.54 Beta comes out, we've successfully rolled out and tested the new rendering clients. You should take note that there have been some changes between 2.53 Beta and 2.54 Beta (see release notes), so please check your scene and try rendering some frames in the new version before submitting to Renderfarm.fi for rendering.

As before, you can just download the official release of Blender 2.54 and enable the Renderfarm.fi uploader add-on or you can wait for a day and get the Renderfarm.fi build of Blender 2.54 where the uploader is all ready and enabled for you. Another thing worth mentioning is that the libjpeg, libpng, libtiff, libgettext and zlib are now statically linked in the Linux builds. This was done in hopes of eliminating problems related to missing libraries on Linux clients and has actually been sent upstream as a patch to Blender (waiting for acceptance).

Bike sled – composition breakdown
My World of VFX - 2010-09-13 08:11:15

A while ago, I had the privilege to work on some of the Snowblind movie’s visual effects. What I did mostly was 3d smoke simulations & 3d particle simulations and some simple 3d background elements. There was one a bit more complicated 3d scenery too though. I used Blender for all those of course. I did a lot of compositing in After Effects and below’s one example of the layers what those compositions usually did hold.

The workflow in the shots I was involved in went so that Kalle Max Hofmann sent the raw video layers or pre composited layers plus an alpha layer for them. Then I added the particles and such and sent the layers back to Kalle. It was great to see afterwards how Kalle used and merged the shots in the movie. For example the last color gradings to night that you can see in this video was done by Kalle.

Oh, I almost forgot. I found this task at www.wreckamovie.com, go check it out if you’re interested in participating in movie making.