Posts : 902 Join date : 2011-06-23 Age : 47 Location : Wisconsin, USA
Subject: The act of creation... Fri Jul 22, 2011 1:36 am
Shadowcrunch blends. And when Shadowcrunch blends, things happen...sometimes. Oh...blends means using Blender, the open-source 3D program. Latest small goal set for myself? Make a generic half-ass mecha, animate it, texture it.
Step 2, get it into Unity3D with all animations, and make it walkable/movable using WASD and such. To that end...
Modeled the half-ass mecha...generic, low-poly, and very plain. Texture is done. Hands suck bad, but I wasn't worried about the damn hands right now. Next I will add a skeleton. Here however are initial shots of the half-ass mecha.
That's the working view...and now the render...used TOON shader material for that 'anime' vibe
Shadowcrunch Journeyman
Posts : 902 Join date : 2011-06-23 Age : 47 Location : Wisconsin, USA
Subject: Re: The act of creation... Sat Aug 20, 2011 2:03 pm
Sorta update. Had to learn a few new modeling and animation things before going further with a better looking mecha. I've been doing this 3D stuff for a long time, and now with the help of a decent tutorial (a little more specific and detailed than normal...) I give you a simple test render... Should probably add, this would be a bit better had I used a photo reference like the tutorial showed, but I didn't have one, so I winged it...
Shadowcrunch Journeyman
Posts : 902 Join date : 2011-06-23 Age : 47 Location : Wisconsin, USA
Subject: Re: The act of creation... Sat Feb 18, 2012 10:40 pm
Temperature in my little lunch room-slash-office just went from 68 to 75 in under 10 minutes. I blame the heater in here AND the steam heater on the other side of the wall. Good god I'm dying now...WAY too friggin hot.
ANYWAY, on to the actual 3D Blender stuff of this post. Since I got a firm grasp of setting up hair now, I started trying to get clothing done right. In the physics tab of Blender (version 2.61) I noticed a button labeled 'Dynamic Paint' and wondered just what the hell that might be. Clicked it, found some options, and decided to back up.
A little google, a little wiki, a little Blender docs website....WOWEE!!!! If I wasn't concentrating on clothes right now, I would be all over experimenting with this new feature! Check this awesomeness out:
Quote :
Dynamic paint is a new modifier and physics system that can turn objects into paint canvases and brushes, creating vertex colors, image sequences or displacement. This makes many effects possible that were previously difficult to achieve, for example footsteps in the snow, raindrops that make the ground wet, paint that sticks to walls, or objects that gradually freeze.
Oooh...some examples:
AND holy hell this last one is light years beyond what I thought blender could do with textures and such. Just friggin WHOA!
Shadowcrunch Journeyman
Posts : 902 Join date : 2011-06-23 Age : 47 Location : Wisconsin, USA
Subject: Re: The act of creation... Sun Feb 19, 2012 9:19 pm
WOOHOO!!! Blender ORG just released 2.62!!! They added some awesome UV tools, some retopology tools (about friggin time!!!), modified the game engine, and added the Cycles rendering engine!
Yes, big whoop. I'm the only one actively blendering, but you all must admit your interest in what 3D (especially open source 3D) can do. The big thing about this release in my eyes is having the cycles engine built in, rather than having a daily build 'trunk' version from graphicall. When I first heard about Cycles, I watched some youtube videos involving rendering a train, and what I gathered at the time was you could render things in 'passes' and the passes would be a separate render. However, I have learned a bit since, which I explain below.
From what I've been reading, that's not the exact main purpose for the rendering engine, and I am currently TRYING to buffer a video which better explains the feature....please hold...
Okay, rather than posting an 8 minute video of some boring guy, I will just say this cycles thing basically lets you work on editing your RENDERED view. In the vid, the guy split his screen between workspace and render window, and he was modifying objects in both. It's basically a realtime render preview of your workspace, and it's FAST. IF you want to see it in action, youtube 'Blender cycles render engine' and...OH...finally found that first train video....will post now. Only 3 minutes of your life wasted.
Shadowcrunch Journeyman
Posts : 902 Join date : 2011-06-23 Age : 47 Location : Wisconsin, USA
Subject: Re: The act of creation... Sat Sep 08, 2012 10:15 pm
Okay, I don't even know how I want to introduce this... well, one of my graphics buddies from "across the pond" (england, not Michigan) directed this my way in the graphics forum I frequent. He said maybe it could help my work on the web comic when I want to start adding some resolution. I will say right away it's upsetting that I've had this feature for a while now from one of my graphicall nightly builds (for my Freestyle renders) and I had NO IDEA what it did, and no hope it would do what it does.
This will be most interesting for anyone who ever had even a minor grasp of Blender, AND YET... due to lack of skills in modelling, decided to try Zbrush to sculpt the awesome human form. People who spent decent amounts of time on tutorials to learn Blender (whether they kept at it or not!), and also worked on the many Zbrush tutorials just to try to figure out the damn UI and all the 2.5D crap (Zbrush still pisses me off when I look at it). BUT, this should also interest anyone interested in 3D graphics in general. 17 minute video showing the "new" SKIN modifier, and how to go from a single vertex to an entire human "base mesh" WITH an automatically created armature for posing and animating!
