Daves Road 2 Blender

Leaving for Modo 302!

2009-05-09T14:33:00.001-07:00

My Blender time has come to a end after completing my three animations, I am going to begin learning Modo and see how that goes for a while. Hopefully I can produce high quality renders! I am in the process of making my own website at the moment, i'll post it when it's finished and ill be putting all my work on there! bye bye Blender!

First Part of Animation 1 Rendered

2009-05-01T23:47:00.000-07:00

Here is my first render, there are a couple of artifacts that I need to fix and the whole animation when completed should last between 12-15 seconds. I will also add a dubover when the final version is rendered for when he speaks, i'm happy with the way its coming along!

Aliens @ Area 51

2009-05-01T18:44:00.001-07:00

Today I've been busy creating my scene and rigging the face of my main character, it took bloody ages to rig the face. I made a mess of the mesh and had to basically remodel the head once more, but once i finished i was introduced to the wonderful world of shapes! Shapes are fantastic, it basically allows you to save facial expressions! I made a few of them and can make my character speak, smile, frown and blink! I have also added the eyes to armature and can animate them seperatly. I am worried about my rendering times, I will do my first animation render tonight I will see how it goes, if it goes very slowly ill have to reduce the quality!

Animation Coming Along!

2009-04-18T01:16:00.001-07:00

Over easter I began work on my animation, I have made my character that I want to animate and have rigged his body. The next stage is to build a simple room for him and to rig his face, basically the story is going to be him getting trapped in a room with a smaller alien who causes trouble!

Above is a picture of my alien that I have made, here I am testing out the upper body rig. It was pretty sucessful and I have moved him in many positions, I need to tweak the hands slightly as they are not moving as I would like.

The next render is of me testing the lower part of the rig, I am not happy with the way the belt line as come out and will need to weight paint this area once again to get it right. Other than a small tweak to the feet I think the overall body rig is working as I intended it to. I want to start work on this right away but have my other modules to do, hopefully I can get them out of the way this week and begin the animation process!

Animation Update

2009-03-30T14:03:00.000-07:00

Well Friday this week I plan to start my animation which will be alot of hard work but will be worth it, I plan to use character animation mainly because once I learn how to rig a character I will be able to create a longer animation easier. Yes it's a steep learning curve but having read the "Introducing Character Animation" I feel it's well within my capabilities. What I plan to do is follow the tutorials within the book but create my own character rather than just copy them. I have a back up plan just incase it all goes wrong or I have made to much work for myself but im looking forward to starting it. One other thing I am back home in Newquay for 3 weeks and my mum recently cancelled the internet so it could go off at anytime, no worries though I will update the blog with allsorts of information on my projects when I return back to Cambridge!

New York + Texturing

2009-03-30T11:19:00.001-07:00

So I started texturing on this project this week it's become alot harder than I thought it would. Due the number of faces that I have, UV mapping all of it is just a nightmare, to overcome this problem I have been splitting objects and using the normal texturing tool within Blender, this should be completed in the next 2 days!

New York modeling finished!

2009-03-21T16:31:00.000-07:00

I've finished modeling today and hope to start the textures tommorow, the large blank area's will have posters and banners. I hope to add more detail to the buildings as I go along texturing to make it more real, the main challenge is working with glass that means im going to have to model the inside of a couple of buildings, but i'll leave that till last!

New York is coming along!

2009-03-20T12:09:00.001-07:00

I've started importing the objects that I have created to the scene, I also started work on the two main buildings once these our complete I maybe ready for texturing. However im still in two minds whether to add cars and people to the scene!

New York New York!

2009-03-18T06:58:00.001-07:00

I am currently building a New York street in Blender, this is for my design methods and technology project. It is coming along very well and I hope to have this finished in the next 2 weeks. My modeling skills seem to be improving everytime I use Blender and im picking up new and quicker techniques all the time! textures might be a nightmare once all the modelling is complete but im looking forward to the challenge!

Liquid!!

2009-03-17T16:25:00.000-07:00

Atlast ive managed to master fluids within Blender, it took a while and some very annoying little mistakes that I made but kind of helped me in a strange way. I believe ive mastered fluid's now after having to go through all the options after making those mistakes. The end result is pretty good, I maybe should have made the liquid start higher so it isn't visible on camera straight away.

Starting the assignment!

2009-03-16T03:45:00.000-07:00

Recently my thoughts have turned to starting the main project as there are only a few more weeks to go and I don't want to rush the animation. I will have a go at making characters and create a character animation, this will bring my whole animation project to life. I will need to think of a back up plan as im only in the early stages of character animating, recently I purchased the book "Introducing Character Animation" and will be working through it over the easter break. Hopefully by the time i've finished the book ill be able to create what I want to.

The next stage will be planning what the characters do and where they will be situated, I will keep my idea's and progress posted! tommorow I hope to start the fluid tutorial. The next few weeks are important for this module and the others, I will certainly be upping my output on the blog in the coming weeks.

The physic's has been conquered!

2009-03-07T21:01:00.000-08:00

My god what I had to go through just to do this simple tutorial, I pulled my hair out, screamed and had a tantrum whilst doing this. Blender likes being crazy with physic's, I would set everything up and the domino's would fly in all sorts of directions. I had another problem with the domino's merging with each other but after searching through the forums I finally cracked it. Instead of using "Box" bounds I used "Convex Hull" and it worked! I love what you can do with it even if it can turn you crazy.

I've really nailed lighting and textures in Blender now, this means I can make animations look very realistic like the one I made here. The domino's started falling before the ball hit but that must of been some balancing issue but overall i'm happy with the way its turned out! it's 5am and im off to bed! oh yea I added some cheesey music just to make it less boring lol!

Getting All Texty!

2009-03-01T13:36:00.000-08:00

Man I just love Blender, 3D Animated text has always been a hurdle for me. I use After Effects alot and it just doesn't do 3D text well at all. But using Blender it's perfect, just playing around in Blender for 20 minutes I came up with this, with more practice with other tools I can bring more life to title sequences that i'll be working on in the future. Now that I know I can animate text, I can make a short intro for my main project animation. Now it's time to get my hands on that game engine in Blender.

Creating Fire

2009-03-01T03:47:00.000-08:00

I did the fire tutorial over the weekend and really enjoyed it. I'm glad that I did this tutorial as the possibilities are endless. However there are a couple of things that annoyed me or that I need to learn, one is that the particles don't reflect or show shadows and I can't make them become like a light? if you get what I mean. Anyways i'll most likely revisit this technique later down the line as it's very good way of creating real life looking lamps, burners etc

Path Animation

2009-02-15T09:30:00.000-08:00

I just did the path animation tutorial and it worked pretty well, basically I learn't the basic's of it rather than being flashy. With decent models using this technique I could make something that will look fantastic. As a starter to learning the basic's of animation this was a great tutorial and I hope to know the basic's of Blender's animation process by the end of next week.

On a side note for my Design Methods and Technology project I will be designing a typical New York style alleyway render. I will be posting the development of the alleyway here. Im looking forward to the rest of 2009 to maximise my skills.

Animation Tutorial 2

2009-02-10T05:05:00.000-08:00

The next tutorial carries on from the previous one but introduces the "Timeline" within Blender. In the tutorial I learned to animate using the Rotation, Location and Scale keys and was able to do a simple animation of a monkey spinning and becoming smaller.

Animation Tutorial 1

2009-02-10T04:25:00.000-08:00

Today I want to go through the basics of animation within Blender, I have done several tutorials before about animation however I want to start with the basics just incase I miss anything. Today I am doing the tutorials found on http://www.gryllus.net/Blender/3D.html and hope to complete them all by the end of the day.

The first tutorial was very simple and easy to follow, I had to create a sphere and a cube then animate them. Using basic keys by pressing the "I" key and saving the location of each object in the set frame I was able to create a simple animation that is shown in the video above. I decided to add some motion blur to the animation to make it seem less regid. I am enjoying going through these tasks and can't wait to start doing my own animations.

Alien is coming along!

2009-01-12T09:37:00.001-08:00

Working through this tutorial has been great, I have learn't alot from it and im now beginning to be comfertable with character modelling. I went step by step but along the way I added some touches to make him more unique rather than a straight copy of what the guy in the tutorial has done. The next stage is rigging him ready for animation, however I might add some background for him so hes not standing there in the middle of nowhere.

A big mistake!

2009-01-11T13:50:00.001-08:00

One problem I have come across with animation is my model dinosaur that I have created has far to many verts. Rendering any animation with this many verts would take days, so I am going back to basics. I am going to learn how to character model properly to get the most out of it when I begin animating, there is a brilliant tutorial found here.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_Character_Animation

The tutorial goes from scratch to create a life like character, I will work through this tutorial until im confident to begin animating within Blender properly and make something unique to me!

Dinosaur 2 Be Animated

2009-01-04T08:49:00.000-08:00

I created this dinosaur using subsurf, the mouth could be better and i might improve it but for now hes there to be animated. I have downloaded a DVD recently on how to animate models and I will be working through that and taking the points from it and implementing them into my dinosaur.

My first animation!

2008-12-30T15:55:00.000-08:00

I was a bit bored so I thought i'd dive straight in to some animation, looking on the official blender site www.blender.org there are several tutorials on animation. The first being this simple cube bouncing and spinning, the tutorial was very easy and gave me a good understanding of how animation works within Blender.

Finished

2008-12-09T09:29:00.000-08:00

Finished atlast!!!! My final render done, im pretty proud how this has turned out after adding the ray shadows and effects in. I like the way the shadows work and the crates have made it less empty giving a bit more life to the scene. Overall im happy with the way its gone and looking forward to more blender projects in the future!

Now there is a roof over our heads!

2008-12-09T07:50:00.001-08:00

My project is almost complete, the tunnel now has a roof as it goes into the darkness. I want the tunnel to look almost abandoned like a old warehouse. Rather than using lamp lights as shown here, I am going to create some real lights like the long ones that hand of the top of the roof and maybe some crates if I have time.

Internal Scene coming together!

2008-12-09T04:49:00.000-08:00

My foundation has been set for my tunnel scene, the next stage is to build a roof and make the tunnel deeper. It looks a big bare in side the tunnel so I will make some crates etc to liven it up! but it's going well so far!

External Finished?

2008-12-07T22:15:00.001-08:00

Right, atlast I think I've finished my external render. I went for a "Sin City" communist war scene, with have only the important parts in colour. It creates a nice effect but I would have like to have made it as realistic as possible. The best part about the scene is the tanks, they came out way better than I thought they would. One part im not sure upon is above the gateway area, its maybe a bit to "grey" and needs living up.

This might not be the finished article just yet but I need to start my internal shot asap as im running out of time, if I have enough time I will add tree's and more colour to the whole scene. For now im happy with the way it has gone as it's my first big project in blender, I will continue using Blender now as a hobbie as im loving it, who knows what i'll be able to create in the next year?

Grass & Some textures added!

2008-12-07T18:28:00.000-08:00

Ive just finished the grass and landscape for my scene, I will however reduce the amount of grass until the rest is completed to allow me to work faster. Also I have added some textures to the walls at the background, the next stage is to texture the rest and add some tree's the the bottom left. I might make this a "Sin City" type design where everything is grey scale apart from some important parts like the tanks, grass etc, im not to sure yet though we will see how things come along.

The tanks are added but not finished!

2008-12-01T15:33:00.000-08:00

Ive now added my tanks they need more detail and polish to the top of them, I may make them rounder and move the guns to a different position. I also added a sky to the scene, this will most likely change I want the sky to be even more dramatic so I will be searching for thunder clouds on the web. The overall external scene is coming together nicely, the next stage will be designing the road and the "garden" area's on both side. I am thinking of adding some large guns to the top of the wall just to give it some more detail.

The Wall is complete!

2008-11-28T05:49:00.001-08:00

The wall is complete, im delighted with the way it has gone so far. The next part now is to start adding extra's like trees, tanks, sky etc and maybe some more to wall of my base.

2008-11-28T03:39:00.000-08:00

The final time I am changing my mind with my final project and now im going to keep at it until it is finished. I am going to model and render this scene from a picture for the game Red Alert 3, it won't be a exact copy of the picture but I want to take many elements from it.

Image taken from http://recensioni-videogiochi.dvd.it/images/Command_Conquer_RedAlert/command-conquer-red-alert-3-03-l.jpg

Ahhhhh run a asteroid!!!!

2008-11-27T02:58:00.001-08:00

Ive made my rock to go with Mars, this took a age to render but im happy with the way it's turned out. The rock is just a little bit dark for my liking, I will need to lighten the place up and made add a bit more colour as it is looking a bit dull. The external enviroment is coming along nicely and I hope to finish my spaceship ready to be added to this scene.

The screenshot above is the wireframe view of what I have created so far, it needs tweaking with mainly just colour and lighting.

Assignment Enviroment

2008-11-27T01:59:00.001-08:00

I've been working on my background for my external scene, I decided to create Mars within my sky. It was pretty straight forward other than the lighting and works well, however it does look dull at the moment and needs more life to it. Whilst making the planet I had a idea to make a "ground" render that I will be working on next, it's basically a scene from one planet to another from the ground. I may change the colours and the way Mars looks just to make it a bit more unique but I will see how things go in the other department first.

My newest and final idea

2008-11-22T11:27:00.000-08:00

Right after attempting to make the bubble bobble character I decided I haven't had enough practice in subsurf modelling just yet and should stick to something more simpler. I was going to the UFO as a back up plan but now I felt that was a bit boring!

I thought what would be exciting and be within my skill level to do, well im decided to do a spaceship. Not a UFO type spaceship, a fighter one, where I can keep adding small details to it the longer I go on to bring it more to life.

I browsed the web for idea's of spaceships that I could create, above is a image of the perfect spaceship. Hopefully I can do something of the same quality now that I have the base down.

Image taken from http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u179/darkbloodstone/star%20ships/fighter_atmosphere.jpg

I began my spaceship about 2 hours ago getting the basic shape down before I add the small details. Below is a screenshot of what I have done so far:

The next part will be to texture it, im not the best at texturing yet but I will browse the internet for some tutorials so that I give this spaceship the justice it deserves, hopefully I can use my Photoshop skills to bring the model to life.

More Idea's

2008-11-11T10:04:00.001-08:00

I will give the first idea a huge go but if im not ready or able to do it I will need a back up plan. My main back up plan is this : -

I want to create a simple UFO type space ship that will land on a planet from space. The Spaceship will land into a secret underground bunker where I can do my "internal" render. The internal render will be a typical warehouse type place and should be fairly easy to do.

Image of Spaceship taken from http://www.northernsun.com/images/thumb/2241Spaceship.jpg

Idea's for main project!

2008-11-11T09:48:00.000-08:00

Above is a cute version of Bubble Bobble, but I want a good version and an evil version. I want it the scene to be of another planet to keep it with the Sci-Fi scene. As I only need to render the scene this semester it would still be a good idea to be thinking of animation. What I would like to is an animation of the two characters battling it out on this weird and exciting planet.

There are elements of the picture above I would like to incorporate, mainly the pointy rocks and the canyon in the background. What I would add where I could have the evil Bubble Bobble character placed is a big cave with his glowing eyes. I could do a scene inside the cave and just outside it for my internal and external shots.

Ideally I would like the sky to be something like the image above, it would make the hole setting more atmospheric.

Image of Bubble Bobble charcter taken from http://yfinder.de/bub2.jpg

Image of Desert taken from http://www.info-world.com/egypt/countryside/desert0.jpg

Image of Space taken from http://members.fortunecity.com/wallpapers2/space/1024x768/EtaCarinae.jpg

Paperclip Time

2008-10-21T05:11:00.000-07:00

Right I seen the challenge in the PDF! and I went to war with it, my god Bezier Curves can be annoying. After a few attempts I got hold of it and started making my paperclip shape look like a paper clip. I added my final touches to make it more realistic and im glad ive mastered something new.

Deckchair!

2008-10-21T02:58:00.000-07:00

Well this is the deck chair tutorial from the PDF file, creating the deck chair was easy after I got over the initial problem of the guy stating the wrong window. After the chair was created I felt I could bring it to life, using what I learned from the Vase tutorial before. I added a surface with a texture I found on the web and did the same with the chair. Using reflections and 'Ambient Occlusion' it brings the whole package to life. One thing I would change is the texture I used for the chair, something that would suit it better. Overall im happy with the way this turned out and my next challenge of the day is to find out about water effects, maybe add a swimming pool to this scene.

A Lovely Vase

2008-10-20T19:12:00.001-07:00

Let me just say this tutorial is amazing, its found "here". It's easy to follow and I have learned a insane amount from doing it, from creating realistic reflections to 'Ambient Occlusion'. AO is a whole new kettle of fish it makes it so realistic however it's very usage heavy, it took me 15 minutes to render this image. The tutorial went very well up until that dreaded lighting part, the lighting that I have done looks alright but compared to what the guy did it's not what it should of been. My vase also ended up a bit more taller and slimer, I must of got one of the extrutions wrong but hey makes mine look a little more unique. Im really proud of my end result and hope to use some of these techniques it my upcoming renders.

Realistic Trees

2008-10-18T11:38:00.001-07:00

Using the method I learned from the landscape tutorials I made it less "hilly" this time around. Now I wanted to be more creative with my trees after the Snowman tutorial so I looked on the net on how to make realistic trees. I then came across this fantastic script that helps you create realistic tree's, this process was very stressful on my pc. I will need to learn more about this script if im going to continue using it as its heavy on the usage, maybe lessen the number of branches, but hey its a great script for making a forrest like scenario and im happy.

Snowman!!!

2008-10-18T09:14:00.000-07:00

Now that I am becoming confident in Blender I went for a pretty hard tutorial found on "http://biorust.com/index.php?page=tutorial_detail&tutid=81&lang=en". It was to make a simple snowman within a forrest, this tutorial took along time but I felt it was worth it I learned loads from doing this. I think I am able to create my own scene now with my own idea's, my main aim from now on is to add more detail to objects and make them more life like. One big problem I have is managing shadows and lighting, one day I will get the hand of it.

The Green Grass

2008-10-18T06:30:00.001-07:00

Now that im finally becoming confident in using blender I am able to start some more complex tutorials that i've found on the web. The first thing I wanted to learn was how on earth do you add textures and make them good looking. I went searching for this answer on the Blender website and I came across this great tutorial from "http://blender.20fr.com/hills.html". It showed me how to make a complex but smooth surface and how to add textures, I used the grass texture he provided for my design and I felt it went really well now I have a great understanding of how to make fantastic looking landscapes! right now im going to search the internet for a wide range of great looking textures so that I can crack on and create some of my own stuff rather than following the tutorials. I can honestly say im getting addicted to Blender now, I love it!

Mr Robot

2008-10-16T12:10:00.001-07:00

Using everything ive learned so far I decided to have a go and create a robot. The robot is very basic but he has a certain charm to him! I would of liked to have made the face more detailed and added some textures to him, this will give me something to learn in the future.

Making it more fruity!

2008-10-15T03:26:00.000-07:00

The challenge today was to create fruit on a plate, I made some fairly simple shaped fruit including apples & grapes. I would have like to have been more creative with the designs of my fruit but I'm not quiet ready just yet. The "Making the Plate" tutorial was pretty simple to follow with a slight hiccup using the spinning tool which was solved by moving the cursor to the right area.

During the making of this I came across the 3D text tool and I thought it would be a good idea to to learn it. I ended up extruding some text above the fruit saying "Daves Fruit" and gave me some needed education in making 3d text. One huge problem I keep having trouble with is getting the lighting and shadows right, with more practice I hope to master this within the next week. Overall the exercise went well and I'm getting pretty handy within Blender and more idea's are popping into my head of what I could do for my main project.

Mountain Challenge

2008-10-08T03:55:00.000-07:00

Above is the mountain challenge of making this frankly weird mountain/valley surface, this came out well compared to the image in the tutorial. One problem I came across was lighting, I ended up learning how to add lamps and extra lighting which could be very helpful in the future. I still need practice with the lighting aspect but im getting there!

Mountains!!!!

2008-10-08T03:40:00.000-07:00

My very first landscape, the tutorial was very simple and now I have a idea how to make nice and unique landscapes to basically set a scene. I made a few hills using this technique by using the subsurf modifier and made them green to make it seem a little more real!

Pepper Challenge

2008-10-07T08:12:00.000-07:00

I had a go at the pepper challenge, it's not quiet what I had in mind or what is shown in the picture in the PDF but I gave it a go and thats what I came up with.

Popping the Pills!

2008-10-07T07:31:00.001-07:00

A question has been on my mind ever since starting Blender "how do you add colour?" well now I know, thanks to this tutorial. The tutorial has made Blender seem simple and goes by easy step by step stages until its all implanted in my mind. The pill was fairly easy to make and now I know how to make cylinder type shapes from a sphere. After duplicating one side and attaching it to the other I was able to colour and smooth the pill to give it a better visual appeal. Bring on the next stage!

Building a simple Castle

2008-10-07T06:41:00.000-07:00

Last week I began in Blender, at first it was a bit overwhelming and I didn't have a clue where to start even though I have used complexed visual effects software this just seemed another level at first.

Well I have got to say I had great fun learning this package and creating my simple castle. I started the tutorial from the "BlenderCourse" PDF, just this tutorial gave me some hope at the end of the tunnel that I can learn this and be good at it. The tutorial started of simple showing you all the short cut keys and how to move, scale objects within blender. One problem I had was aligning the cubes so there wasn't any gaps, this took a while and was pretty time consuming for a simple job, then comes Marie.

Marie showed us another way how to create the castle and how to use the extrude, split and copy tools. Using this method I had no gaps and my castle began to take shape, I was able to make the pointy parts of the Castle quicker and more time efficient using this method.