Blender Labrat

Cycles, Let me add to the hype

2011-10-11T04:09:00.000-07:00

hehehe yes its time for me to do some cycles vids. Cycles has been out for a fair while, but was always a moving target where things would change almost daily. Now things have calmed down enough and i have a machine strong enough i can do some cycles vids :)

now please keep in mind,I'm not an expert on rendering so I may have made a few errors in my explanations, sorry for that, but please back these vids up with your own research to get the most out of cycles and what to expect in the future.

so lets get to it and I hope you enjoy these vids :)

--Intro---
http://mfoxdogg.com/25tours/cycles/cycles_intro.mp4
(audio sync problems whit this one, I'm sorry :(, something ran while recording and threw the audio out a bit )

--Shading an texturing--
http://mfoxdogg.com/25tours/cycles/cycles_shading.mp4

--Nodes and Advanced Shading--
http://mfoxdogg.com/25tours/cycles/cycles_nodes.mp4

Open Shading Languge
http://code.google.com/p/openshadinglanguage/

once again I hope you all enjoy these vids

See Ya's Later

GSoC dynamic paint

2011-08-25T18:17:00.000-07:00

I'M BACK!!!!! thats right imback, i finally after almost 10 long years got myself a new computer and now im able to get back to doing these tests and tours for you all.

Now the first one of the rank of this new stage is, Dynamic paint, now i have not seen anything about how to use this fantastic new feature which i find very sad,everyone focuses on Tracking which is nice , but all the other GSoC projects seem to be ignored like mocap tools better UV operators and tools, Improved Animations system and Collada support.

Because of this I'm going to try and do a tour of all of these just so the community does not just look them over in passing.

Now back to the topic at hand Dynamic paint, it allows you to paint 1 object with another object, well that's the basic idea but there is so much more you can do with it and allows for huge possibilities and will free up a lot of blender artists who have to bend themselves backwards to get contact textures. well anyway time for some links :) (beware as usual somethings do not go quite according to plan and i do make some weird noises :S)

General Options and basic operation
http://mfoxdogg.com/25tours/dynamic_paint/2.5_dynamic_paint_01%20_01.mp4

Vertex level operations and more brush options (advanced stuff)
http://mfoxdogg.com/25tours/dynamic_paint/2.5_dynamic_paint_01_02.mp4

Image maps and baking to image sequence
http://mfoxdogg.com/25tours/dynamic_paint/2.5_dynamic_paint_01_03.mp4

Blend files of the "one i made earlier" examples
http://mfoxdogg.com/25tours/dynamic_paint/dynPaint_blends.zip

More info and demos videos and development
http://www.miikahweb.com/en/blog

Hope you all enjoy these videos and hope they will help in your own experimentation

PS. my new computer is , AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 640 Processor, 3.9 GiB of RAM, ATI RADEON HD 4350 running Linux - openSUSE 11.4 (x86_64) - KDE 4.6

Its Great to be back :D

I Remeber When .......

2011-07-27T14:56:00.000-07:00

Sorry, old blender man reminiscing + rant post. you can ignore it if you want, dosn't worry me just needed to get my thoughts off my chest :)

I remember a time in blender, that blender was considered to be just a hobby tool, not much use to anyone, and in those days, everyone treated each other properly no trolls, no 'thinkmegoods' and everyone helped everyone and was eternally grateful for what they have.

These days, the community is all but a shadow of its former self, many old timers who help shape what blender is today stopped reading Blendernation and Blenderartists out of disgust of what it has become.

Everyone thinks they are a blender god, only because hey used blender for a couple months and managed to render a fruit bowl and think they know how blender works and how it should be. Out of all this decay came the notion that the blender foundation is a huge company with huge resources and they and the coders MUST bow to their every whim and have to be done instantly.

Of course this is certainly not true, Blender Foundation is funded entirely by donations and purchases in the shop. The BF has very little resources and can only hire 2 developers full time and the rest of the developers are all volunteers including myself, and only a handful can actually commit code to blender.

Since we are volunteers we can only work on it in our free time, which is not a lot these days. So be greatful we have remaind disiplined and worked on reducing the number of bugs after the entire 2.5 rewrite which is ~80% new code. You need solid foundations before you can build a building, 2.49 is great evidence of that. But not all is lost New features and projects will be let off the leach after 2.59 which is set to be released at siggraph.

So what im trying to get at here, is Please do not treat us as slaves, we have given up our free time for you, we design blender for you, and we aim to make you happy and please stop this arrogant crap you may have an idea, cool :) , but don't get upset that its not implemented straight away. We are doing the best we can, and be grateful that blender is free (both speech and beer) and always will be free, and just say thanks once in a while :)

Ok sorry for the long rant there, its an issue that has been one my chest for a long time, even reading that they didn't care about poor joe's health they just want bmesh now, now that is just not on that is not the blender way.

addons, Ivy Generator

2011-07-20T23:40:00.000-07:00

A fair while back i mentioned that the program thats generates nice ivy/vines over an model has started being ported over to an addon for 2.5. Well things were quiet for quite a while. and started twice.

But now this latest version has finally reached a usable state and i have to say it works really well, a few missing options and functionality for sure but it is still a fantastic addon. As usual here is some pictures :)

--EDIT--
To use this,
-you first select the mesh
-set the 3dcursor to where you want it to grow from (use autodepth)
-the 3dcursor has to be either on the surface or very close
-now add->curve->ivy
-set your options and away it goes, this may take some time

To use this addon you need an development/svn build (grab one from graphicall.org) it will NOT work in latest stable as some utility functions were written since stable that this addon uses

addon can be found here (registration is needed)
https://svn.blender.org/svnroot/bf-extensions/branches/ivygen/truman_ivy/

PS. I know i have not done any videos recently, thats due to computer issues,
soon i'll have a new machine and can't wait to get back to making the vids for you all, even planning on doing some vid tuts. oyu'll hear from me soon, i have not forgottewn you all :)

Particles Adaptive Subframes

2011-06-01T17:37:00.000-07:00

Sorry for being so long between posts , anyway, time for some cool stuff, especially GSoC shaping up to be a good one :)

Recently there has been a little development is the realm of particles, particularly Fluid (SPH) particles, anyone who has used fluid particles have all encontered the problem of exploding fluids, where wdroplets would just explode for no real reason, and the solution to this was increase the subframes, which rarly if ever work and add on a huge amount of simtime.

Now there is an option to apply the amount of subframes dynamiclly and mathermaticlly, using the velocity of neighours and distance, and all these fancy calculations, to give very nice and stable simlation with little or no cost in time.

As usual pictures speak loader then words so below is a comparison vid, with resulting sims and time to simulate.

full res vid
http://mfoxdogg.com/development/particles_adaptive_subframes.avi

Patch and more info/details
http://projects.blender.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=27442&group_id=9&atid=127

Hope to get back to doing these again so keep watching :)

See Ya's

Blender 2.5, Addons

2010-11-18T05:07:00.000-08:00

Hi all, it been a while.

recently Rigify, the automated rigging system was revamped and was recently commited to svn i was going to do a little demo then i realised that i havn't covered Addons much so i decided to do some vids related to the available addons.

in these videos i use addons from the contib branch of the bf-extensions svn tree, get them using the following command.

svn checkout https://svn.blender.org/svnroot/bf-extensions/contrib bf_blender_extensions

(or equivilant)

General overview of the smaller addons : http://mfoxdogg.com/25tours/addons/addons_overview.mp4

Mesh Tools addons : http://mfoxdogg.com/25tours/addons/addons_meshtools.mp4

Finally, Rigify : http://mfoxdogg.com/25tours/addons/addons_rigify.mp4

Hope you all enjoy them and dive in yourselves to try out the magic of 2.5's py API and really push the addons and the API :D

See Ya's Next time

Blender2.5 and Vray

2010-11-03T18:45:00.000-07:00

Vray is a raytracing based renderer thats is used by millions and is extremely powerful and quite fast, with huge amount of options for maximum flexibility, an handles large scenes with absolute ease. I have been using it at work to render scenes and we barly scratch its surface, even have 1000 page Guide on how to use it and what the settings do.

http://chaosgroup.com/en/2/index.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_hXoTEjT0Q be sure to checkout the recommendations as there is quite a few showreels

For the longest time I have and many other blender users wanted a good export script to Vray (there was one for 1.8 :S) to the extent that i tried to make one many moons ago. But finally our long wait over! :D.

Bdancer has been working diligently on a 2.5 addon to allow you to render in Vray and it finally reached a state that i can actually start using it, and i have got to say, i absolutly Love it!. this is one of the best addons i have seen being made for 2.5 as the intergration is so well done and is pracricly seamless without hiding all the options and tools for those who can use them but also providing sane defaults for those who don't.

Ofcourse there is some gotcha's in the addon like only image textures are currently supported, and some options need to be turned of in blender render like colour correct as it cannot be seen in vray mode. Also you need the vray stand alone, which only comes with the maya plugin, not max.
The Git repo and more info including instructions and known issues can be found here
https://github.com/bdancer/vb25

also if you have anyquestions or want to report somthing please report it at that site.

now for me to stop and to show you some pics :)

Hope you all give Vray a try and give nice feedback to BDancer for all his hard work :)

See Ya's

A time of Reflection

2010-10-09T01:30:00.000-07:00

Hello all, this is a serious post.

After thinking about this for a long time, I have truly decided not to do 2.5 tours any more , partially due to blender only being in stabilization stages and I doubt anything new will be coming until 2.6.

But what mostly contributed to this decision is my personal life, time is very rare these days and I want to truly get back to using blender for actual content, (hopefully to get a better life then I have now) not just tutorials.
But also the reverse. I will be trying to cut back on my time at a computer to do other things, and live a bit more as I have become quite irritable and go off at little things.

I will still be covering any new tech/features that appears and stay up to date with blender development. and i will do tuts if they are demanded of me. just email me any requests and I will try my best to get them done for you :)

this decision is partially eased by the many sites out there making tutorials and videos of blender and covering things much better then I can. and that I request those who follow this to do your own experimentation to go discover these developments yourself, and add to whole that is Blender :) and feel the same goodness and fun that I feel

Thank you all for following me, and all those visit these pages (~300-1000 views a day) and I wish you all the best for the foreseeable future.

See you all around sometime :D

--------
Michael B Fox (mfoxdogg)
Animator - Programmer

2.49-2.5 Migration : Python

2010-10-04T13:58:00.000-07:00

<--Disclaimer-->
Python is really not my strongest aspect, and knowledge is quite basic, so please be gentle :)
<-->

So here it is after a long wait, Python :), now 2.5's python is an absolute joy to use even for a py novice like me. I hope you all enjoy these vids and get enough info to start writing your own scripts. Also Campell (py maintainer in case you don't know) assures me that the Py api is very much stable and no more rna renaming is needed.

Ok time for me to stop yacking and give you all some vids :)

Directories: http://mfoxdogg.com/25migration/python/python_directories.mp4

Editors: http://mfoxdogg.com/25migration/python/python_editors.mp4

Properties (get() in old py) : http://mfoxdogg.com/25migration/python/python_properties.mp4

Operators (blender tools) : http://mfoxdogg.com/25migration/python/python_operators.mp4

UI (api for bUI) (actually is the correct file now) : http://mfoxdogg.com/25migration/python/python_ui.mp4

So again i hope you all enjoy these vids and get out there and make some addons, there is already some quite nice ones out there, Bridge anyone :)

See Ya's Later

Bmesh Knife

2010-09-25T02:14:00.000-07:00

Earlier on today Joeedh committed knife tool to Bmesh, however, this is a vastly improved and a lot nicer knife tool :)

Log of the commit can be found at
http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-blender-cvs/2010-September/031306.html

an since I was so impressed I decided to do a little video demo of it :)

Hope you all start testing bmesh again :)

See Ya's later

2.49-2.5 migration : Rendering

2010-09-22T06:03:00.000-07:00

I know I said I was going to do python next, I'm still learning it and looking into the ins and outs of the New tools and API.

In the meantime I have noticed a lot of people having trouble with new rendering workplow especially textures and materials.

So I thought I should make some migration vids relating to rendering and texturing, along with some new features and hopfully have a little fun as well :)

anyway here they are:

RenderUI : http://mfoxdogg.com/25migration/render/RenderUI.mp4

Materials/Textures: http://mfoxdogg.com/25migration/render/MaterialsAndTextures.mp4

Global Effects: http://mfoxdogg.com/25migration/render/GlobalEffects.mp4

Optimizations: http://mfoxdogg.com/25migration/render/Optimizations.mp4

Hope you all enjoy these, and see Ya's next time

PS, I know I forgot to mention that radiosity was removed so no need to point that out ;)

Dynamic Paint

2010-09-14T04:04:00.000-07:00

Earlier today MiikaH releasaed a beta version of what is now known as dynamic paint (formally mesh paint), this system basiclly allows you to bake object/particle/smoke/etc interactions to a texture. like a the wetness a fluid leaves behind after flowing over an object.

Now this is system is extreamly nice, with various effects liek drips and erasing. The workflow of using it is very nicely done, really same workflow as fluid, designate a canvas, designate a painter set output paths and away you go :) , my only gripe is it controls the UI when baking like smoke, I would like it to be like fluid so you can playback and still see where its up to.

So moving on, i have been following this for a while and had a real nice play with it today and the results are below :)

More vids and information found here

http://www.miikahweb.com/

I hope you all try out the patch (if you can) its amazing and extremely useful :)

see ya's later

2.49-2.5 migration : Animation

2010-09-09T06:16:00.000-07:00

Now I know I said I wasn't going to these, but it felt bad to leave this series unfinished, so here is the next one, animation.

As per usual, here is some vids on the new animation system of 2.5, named Animato, and how to migrate from 2.49's IPO based system

whats covered:
F-Curves Vs IPO(and Drivers (and introduction to the RNA system)) http://mfoxdogg.com/25migration/animation/FcurvesvIPO.mp4

DopeSheet Vs Action Editor http://mfoxdogg.com/25migration/animation/DopesheetvActioneditor.mp4

2.49NLA Vs 2.5 NLA http://mfoxdogg.com/25migration/animation/2.49NLAv2.5NLA.mp4

Fun Stuff http://mfoxdogg.com/25migration/animation/funstuff.mp4

Hope you all enjoy these videos. Next ones will be my last tutorial vids covering New Python

See Ya's Next time

2.49-2.5 Migration -- Interface and workflow #2

2010-08-27T06:46:00.001-07:00

Here is the next video in my migration series, in this we go even deeper into the interface and workflows and why they are the way they are and how to use them efficiently and effectivly.

It contains:
-Deeper context and its uses
-Multithreaded UI
-3dview controls
-Properties controls
-Console

http://mfoxdogg.com/2.5_migration_interface_2%20.mp4

Hope you all enjoy it, and im quite surprised by how many followers I have, I never expected this many when i turned it on, thank you all :)

2.49-2.5 Migration -- Interface and workflow

2010-08-18T01:20:00.000-07:00

Hey all, here is Part 1 or my 2.49-2.53 migration series.

Now this video is about 1-2 weeks old, because I had this done and uploaded but really didn't like it and hoped to do better one but due to circumstances (being very sick is one of them) I haven’t been able to have another crack at it, but after watching it again I found it to be quite good. (not to mention i can feel you all getting quite impatient with me)

I do ramble on a bit, but not as much as I did in the past and loose my place a few times but overall it give a nice explanation of how you do things in 2.5 but more importantly why they are the way they are now.

what is covered:
- basic window/area management
- Context
- property and tools separation
- New workflow
- UI control/themes

Here it is
http://mfoxdogg.com/2.5_migration_interface.mp4

Next Time......ummm i really don't know :P See Ya's

PTex

2010-08-09T23:38:00.000-07:00

Imagine this, chatting on IRC one night, Matt Ebb mentions a nice new Open technology to Nick Bishop, Nick says quite calmly 'oh that looks nice and easy to implement', common "what if" conversation follows thinking it wont happen.

wake up the next day and see that the new technology in full glory and to find its all that you expected it to be, this my friends is the story of Ptex and blender :D

Yes thats correct, Disney recently released it Ptex technology recently to an Open License. Breif summary is, treat textures essentially like micro polygons where each face can contain different texture resolutions, so you can have a 4k texture on 1 face where you need it, like a table top and have say 1k texture on the legs as they are not so visable.

This Tech has been around for quite some time, and is supported by a few apps like PRMan, 3dcoat, Mari and couple others and is absolutly fantastic that we have it now. so now for me to stop blabbering and show somthing :)

http://ptex.us/

Yes i will get back to tours soon so don't give up on me just yet :) planning to do a video series of migrating from 2.49 to 2.53 as there has been much friction about that

see ya's

Blender2.53 Beta Released

2010-07-22T17:10:00.000-07:00

Yes after a very long period blender 2.53 beta has been released :D.

the list of improvements is immense as you would know if you have been following my tours ;) but there is quite alot that i havn't covered particularly the Sculpt+multires overhaul, which allows HUGE amounts of verts ( >8 million at work using a uv sphere as base) and uncountable new tools and options and of course Addon's :),

i'll give a little news, the Ivy generator is being made for 2.5 as we speak ;)

so Head out and Grapb yourself Blender2.53 Beta :)

PS, i will be doing more tours once i get some system and ffmpeg issues sorted. so i havn't abandoned this yet :D

Updated Showreel

2010-07-12T23:49:00.000-07:00

just posting to say i have updated my showreel and see any comments before i put it up on vimeo and on my site

now please be mature and not damn me because some are from Max (easy to tell eg, they are not rendered :) )

anyway here it is

http://mfoxdogg.com/works/showreel01.avi (h264)

PS. made using blender2.5's Sequence editor

2.5 animation tour 2 take 2

2010-06-11T15:31:00.000-07:00

Hey all , thanks to TheVerb for showing me how to use ffmpeg properly (with a few tweaks like i don't use pulse for instance),i have canned recordmydesktop in favour of ffmpeg which produces much better results.

anyway i have redone the animation tour, much better this time, but there is a few faults a) due to a misscalculation of the recording area size the timeline header was cut off b) the video seems a little stepy thats due to the fact ffmpeg could only record at 8 frames a second.

Other then those 2 its worked out very nice audio is nice and clear and keeps in time, a more common fileformat and much smaller file size (not as big as i thought it would be)

so here it is 2.5 animation tour Take2
http://mfoxdogg.com/2_5_animation_2.1.mp4

Book: Blender2.49 Scripting

2010-06-09T04:12:00.000-07:00

Ok this book has been around for a while , but i just received a copy and im very happy to say this is a fantastic book :), can be found here https://www.packtpub.com/blender-2-49-scripting-language/book

This Great book has been laid out and written for proper textbook usage and with that i would recommend to any coding Instructor. Like the coding books i have it starts off with the basics of Blender Python, like how to install and setup python and what tools will be used plus breif intros. Then it ( skips basic python as you could fill 10 books on it ;) ) gets into object creation and blenders internal data structures, like datablocks and their heirachy.

All the while providing clear and concise diagrams to really put the information into context. this is genuinely a must in all developer related books so the reader has a clear understanding and minimizes confusion later down the track.

At this point suddenly gets into some pretty deep stuff like mesh construction and volumes and some pretty high mathematics , these have been missing from alot of these kind of books , which i love a lot, the learning curve has been dampened a lot by great and clever explanation.

After all this it applies all this knowledge into higher much advanced uses like IPO, bones and Constraints in here like the other chapters everything is explained clear and concise which really gives the reader great inititive to really develop scripts for these aspects of 3d.

You would thisnk this is as far as the book would go, but no, after these it goes into the really cool stuff of pyDrivers and PyConstraints, and even scriptlinks and i say alot here but it would eveything i have just said, its very well written and makes these quite advanced subects really understandable and usable in proper usage.

So in summary," Blender2.49 Scripting "is fantastic well written book that i would higly recommedn to any budding blender artist or coder (or even those who actually know what they are doing :) ). Though i do have to say that it has a few loose ends like teaching UI before getting the script to actually work but each to their own ;) . Even the publishers are great, "Packt Publishing" Specialise is great books for OpenSource programs and their other books are definatly worth a peek

So in conclusion, "Blender2.49Scripting" is great book that i hope you all enjoy as much as i did

Once again it can be found here https://www.packtpub.com/blender-2-49-scripting-language/book

Sample Chapter can be found here https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/0400-Chapter-5-Acting-on-Frame-Changes.pdf

2.5 Animation Tour #2

2010-06-08T15:04:00.000-07:00

Hey all, recently i have been asked alot on how to use 2.5's animation systems, what does all this mean, how do i use drivers etc etc
Until one (oxigen) asked me to make a new tour on how the animation systems work so here it is :)

whats covered:
-animation related user prefrences
-autokeying
-fcurves and its editor (quite long that one)
-dopesheet
-nla editor (only very basic info)
-keyingsets

http://mfoxdogg.com/2_5_animation_2.ogg

Hope you all enjoy it and really start animating in 2.5 as it is such a breeze and lots of fun to animate with :)

Adaptive Subdivision Sculpt

2010-05-31T16:08:00.000-07:00

Yes its true, farsthary the man behind the SPH particles and alot of the volumetrics, has done it again :)

recently he announced that he was working on adaptive subdivision for sculpt like sculpt-Tri and even asked the man behind it if he can use it, ofcourse he said it was ok (way to go mate, thank you so very much)

for thos who don't know, adaptive subdivision will subdivide automaticlly areas of expected high detail, like if you were using a texture brush.

and this morning farsthary released an experimental patch of his work, abd i have to say, its amazing, it has a few problems to be sure (like infinatly subdividing) and it only subdivides after the strooke, which is understandable.

anyway time for me to stop yapping and show some pretty pictures :)

http://farsthary.wordpress.com/2010/05/31/unlimited-clay-in-the-wild/

and alot more info can be found here

http://farsthary.wordpress.com/

2.5 Tour #12

2010-05-05T14:53:00.000-07:00

Hey all its been a long time coming, sorry about that, but tour #12 is here. :)

now there hasn't been much in the way of new features mainly alot of bug fixes so this isn't as jam pack as my previous tours.

whats covered:
-interaction presets
-Addon architecture
- chain script
- dynamic spacebar menu
-new outliner features
-very basic use of particle fluids
-new tools for image editor
- nd anything else i have forgotten :S

I hope you all enjoy this tour and sorry for taking so long and actually staying with me for this long :)

-EDIT-
thanks to loopduplicate he managed to get it working and a little less quality
http://www.rowdyrabbit.com/blender/2_5_tour_XII.ogg.OGG

http://mfoxdogg.com/2_5_tour_XII.ogg

See you all next time and with the upcoming GSoC projects i should be plenty busy soon :)

2.5 Shading Recode Tour #1

2010-03-28T03:42:00.000-07:00

Hi all, sorry for not post this, or anything for that matter, earlier but i have been extremely busy but things are calming down again, and i can get back to showing you all wonders of new developments :)

and this one is a goodie, the Shading Refactor, basiclly a tour of the renderer improvments of being brought in from durian

topics coverd are
- brief history lesson (boring :P )
- breif talk of whats new in the core (yet more boring junk)
- new lamp mechanics and options
- per tile subdivision
- AO
- enviroment lighting
- Indirrect lighting
- mesh lights
- irradience maps

Here it is :)
http://mfoxdogg.com/2_5_render_01.ogg

P.S, recordmydesktop has little issues when pausing as you will see, dreadfully sorry for that, completly out of my control :(

2.5 Tour #11

2010-02-16T01:10:00.000-08:00

just a quick rambling tour, not overly much to go over, lots of bug fixes, the most messing in comprehensable tour i have done, just to maily give an update of progress and why certain things have not ben done, and got a few big issues off my chest mainly about spacebar

anyway enough rambling
here it is tour #11
http://mfoxdogg.com/2_5_tour_XI.ogg

Render improvments

2010-02-04T21:31:00.000-08:00

Recently Brecht has started work on the long awaited render refactor , not a lot to the user has been done, but there are some really nice things

-the shading pipeline has been somewhat modulated, was a can of worms earlier, still is but a lot better now
- lamp power is in watts instead of a random number, to help in samplers and integrators
- a lot of things has been removed as they were not of any use anymore like weighted falloff and the spec trans value for instance, backbuf is gone as it can be done easier and better in the compositor and few other things

more info can be found here
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/ShadingSystem

The biggest things have been integrators, i have only tested pathtracing but there is new raytracer integrator (i think was commited at time of writing) both of these are rudimentary and very very stupid, mainly for testes and comparisons (in other words to get the core working then improve)

don't get excited about the pathtracer as brecht said it will not get into trunk, well this version anyway, but that doesn't stop us from playing now does it ;)

the following render was made using the path tracer at 64 samples, its just indirect lighting and diffuse as it doesn't take lamps into consideration or anything else

hope you like it

See Ya's

2.5 tour #10

2010-01-20T12:45:00.000-08:00

sorry i havn't been posting here for a while been very busy and nothing really big enough to write home about, anyway there has been many small things and i think this the first tour since alpha 0 was released so lots of cool new things, i may have missed some small things though :S

anyway its covers
- Colour wheel
- keymaps
- background images
- custom properties
- shell
- multires
- sculpt
- audio
- New playback
- python Operators
- new particle effects

now thats a long list and this is my longest tour to date ~50 minutes long :S

now to stop you from waiting anymore here its is :)
http://mfoxdogg.com/2_5_tour_10.ogg

Hope you all enjoy it and i'll see ya next time :)

2.5 raytracing

2009-12-17T21:51:00.000-08:00

Yes i know trhat this has been in for a long time, but i havn't really played with it so today i got over 44 million to render in ~5mins, don't believe me, see for yourself :)

(vray bible got 2 mins with 7 million and no reflections/refractions hehehehe)

*edit*
sorry misread its actually 44million :S sorry

Indirect AAO

2009-12-06T22:00:00.000-08:00

Hey all sorry for no posts but here is a nice one, recently brecht (super coder) has been working on priliminary Indirect illumination using AAO (Approximate Ambient Occlusion for those who don't know well anyway its not true GI as its hackish and a bit iffy but gives nice results, it works by reflectivity (ray mirror and colour brightness) and emit (so we have rudimentry meshg lights)

anyway here is a nice test render for ya's to see whats happening

its alittle drowned out by the white one but you can see the others :)

2.5 tour #9 part7: Python

2009-11-17T12:44:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the delay, been very busy, here is part 7 of tour #9 this one goes into a basic lavel of the new py api and tools,
i made this tour friendly to those who don't know python so it should help them atleast use the interactive console and basic python

what's covered
- small ui changes
- Interactive console
- blend py api
- Py Operators
- Py UI

http://mfoxdogg.com/2_5_tour_python.ogg

i may have missed a few things or did a few things wrong im sorry im still learning this myself, but it should give atleast a start to get some scripts going and testing the new fully integrated python API

freestyle

2009-11-03T21:59:00.001-08:00

hey all, today i had some time to try out freestyle intergration, i have played with this a long time ago and since then alot has been done, its even been ported to 2.5 and all those changes have really been done for the better, its stable and very nice and extends the edge renderer beautifully (just need more strokes to play with ;) )

anyway here is a couple of renders

2.5 tour #9 part6 :Follow Up

2009-10-24T00:41:00.000-07:00

Hey all here is another 2.5 tour for ya's, this is just a follow up tour going throguh the problems that has been fixed since my last tours like drivers for instance, and alot of the new things

whats covered (from memory :S )
- Continuous Grab
- KeyingSets UI/Keying
-Fcurve modifiers
-Fcurve Pivot Points and 2d Cursor
-Drivers
-Projection Based snapping
-Raytrace improvments
-Practical Example use of Drivers
- anything else that i have forgotten :)

Anyway here is the tour
http://mfoxdogg.com/2_5_tour_followup.ogg

And here is the jack in the box .Blend
http://mfoxdogg.com/jackinthebox_test.blend

Hope you all enjoy it :)

2.5 Deep shadow maps

2009-10-14T00:24:00.000-07:00

Just a quick small post, recently Brecht commited his own version of deep shadow maps.

Keep in mind its jest so the durian team can do some shading tests and lacks many features the joeedh's DSM has like tiled maps and catering for transparencies, and shear speed

anyway images speak louder then words so here ya go

Classic-halfway buffer

Deep Shadow Buffer

2.5 tour #9 part5 :Cache editing

2009-10-08T03:09:00.000-07:00

this is a short tour of cache editing in 2.5, not much to say really :)

just watch it and be amazed :)

http://mfoxdogg.com/2_5_tour_cache_edit.ogg

Hope you all enjoy it :)

2.5 tour #9 part 4 particles and simulation

2009-10-06T03:10:00.000-07:00

here is part 4 of my 9th tour : particles and simulations

covers:
-where things are now
-new cache system
-effectors
-point density texture
-and a few other things that have slipped my mind atm (too tired)

I must admit this wasn';t my greatest tour there is quite a few crashes and i tended to wander around a bit but i still hope you all enjoy it :)

http://mfoxdogg.com/2_5_tour9_physics.ogg

2.5 tour #9 part 3 : materials/shading

2009-10-02T21:11:00.000-07:00

here is part 3 of 2.5 tour #9 : materials and shading

- tour of new buttons layout and how to use it
- multiple material
- Textures
- New bumpmapping and colour managment
- Volumetrics
-Volumetric Textures

http://mfoxdogg.com/2_5_tour_shading.ogg

Hope you all enjoy it :)

2.5 tour #9 part 2: Animation

2009-10-02T03:42:00.000-07:00

this part covers the new animation system

it covers
- Basic Keyframing
- Keying sets
- Fcurve basics
- Modifiers
- Drivers ( didn't want to work but i showed the procedure)
- Quat V Eulars
- NLA editor

so anyway here it is 2.5 tour Part2: animation

http://mfoxdogg.com/2_5_tour_animation.ogg

Hope you all enjoy it

2.5 tour #9 part 1: Interface

2009-10-01T04:43:00.000-07:00

hey all, for this tour and every tour after im going to split it up into parts as there is way too much info to cover in one tour.
so anyway here is the first tour, User Interface

i started with UI so you can get to grips with the UI and hoplfully give us nice and proper testing insead of just focusing on UI :)

what is covered:
-Context! what it is and how to understand it
-UI manipulation, split, join, rip, swap areas
- 3dview tools pane and repeat last operator
- threading, constant responsive UI
- new button types
- misc stuff, like quickly themes colours and such

now please under stand i did not plan this so i do wander off a bit a few times and my speaking might not be completly coherent, so please now comments about that :)

so enough of me here is blender tour #9 part 1 : user interface

http://mfoxdogg.com/2_5tour_ui_changes.ogg

Hope you all enjoy it

Bmesh Tour #1

2009-09-04T03:39:00.000-07:00

By request of the current main developer of bmesh , Joseph Eager (Joeedh) , i have made my first demo video of Bmesh

now i have been following development of this for a very long time i have even ported the mesh primitives to it a long time ago ( code is incompatible now so don't ask)

i am extremely impressed with how far it has gone and it evolution of that time :)

so any here it is

http://mfoxdogg.com/Bmesh_tour_1.ogg

whats covered:
-new feature rich extrude
-Dissolve (vert/edge/face)
-New feature rich subdivide
-maintenance of edge data (UV's, Vcolours)
-Rotate Edge
-How it behaves with modifiers

Thanks to Dread knight here it is on vimeo

2.5 volumetrics

2009-08-26T23:53:00.001-07:00

Yes after so much work and teasing volumetrics have finally been commited into 2.5, Hooray!!!

and yes with this you can finally render smoke :) but not higres smoke

i will go into this in more detail soon, and in my new tour when i do it ;)

so for now here is a small tease render i made at work, enjoy :)

2.5 Tour #8

2009-08-01T18:24:00.001-07:00

Hi all in recent weeks alot has been done to get ready for siggraph and to mark this i have made another 2.5 tour :D

in this tour i'll be covering:
-layout/ui changes, mainly tool settings and user preferences
-interactive console/reports
-basic macros/python
-Keymaps
-some time on particlkes+modstack
-basics of the NLA (due to a crash this is cut a bit short, sorry)
external renderers and new features of internal renderer

http://mfoxdogg.com/2_5_tour_VIII.ogg (~100mb, runs for ~40mins)

Hope you all enjoy it :)

Here it is on vimeo

Ward Aniso Revived

2009-07-26T05:26:00.000-07:00

Hey all, will the recent work done on the renderer in 2.5 i thought i would resurrect my Ward Aniso Shader, and with the new bumps its pretty impressive and was quire smooth to port

anyway as usual pictures speak louder then words

Without Bump

With bump

Video (~800Kb, XviD)
http://mfoxdogg.com/ward_aniso_2_5_test.avi

No vimeo because it has to be seen in full res and quality

Hope you enjoy it :) anyway cya's all later

New Bump Mapping

2009-07-22T04:24:00.000-07:00

sorry for no news been very busy, anyway brecht last night commited some work from great Alfredo De Greef, which included much better image texture filtering methods and a new bump mapping method :) which heightends detail and blelievabilty of bump map textures :)

as usual images speak louder then words so here is some test renders :)

Old Method

New Method

2.5 Tour #7

2009-07-02T02:01:00.000-07:00

once again here is another tour of the current state of blender 2.5 :)

http://mfoxdogg.com/2_5_tour_VII.ogg

this one covers
- styles/ui themes
- Particles/new cache
- ID search
- IDlist/add (materials textures)
- colour picker
- add OP
- .25B.blend

Hope you enjoy it as much as i did making it :) as usual if someone can put this up on vimeo for me i'll be eternally greatful :)

btw my posts are going to rather sparse as i am now working and to get the job i had to move so im still getting settled and not much time to do these tests/tours

2.5 Tour #6

2009-05-24T23:22:00.000-07:00

Hey all, its that time again, time for blender2.5 Tour #6, Horray!!!

covered in this tour
-new buttons and layouts
-resposivness during rendering and animation playback
-scripting, both UI and normal Py scripting
-new drivers system
-resizable subregions

http://mfoxdogg.com/2.5_tour_VI.ogv

Blender2.5 Tour VI from inazuma on Vimeo.

Please note that audio is pretty low, happened during recording so be sure to turn up your volume.

Hope you enjoy it, and see ya's all later

More animato tests

2009-05-11T20:24:00.000-07:00

Hi all sorry for no new stuff as there really hasn't been anything to show, but withGSoC on the way and much more 2.5 stuff i'll be pretty busy :)

yesterday Joshua Leung (Aligorith) finished his animation work in that we can now keyframe everything :) he also brought back the anim button that went walkabout :)

so here are a couple tests, 1 for animated AAO the second is Animated SSS by animating the radiuses and the third is animating the locations of colour ramp elements

Editing Styles

2009-04-27T21:13:00.000-07:00

last night ton commited the possibility to edit UI styles, being the ui properties of the UI elements, and its more then just colour its whether they are shaded, colour when selected, gradient rates

anyway here is a picture of my darling little red theme :)

Blender2.5 Tour V

2009-04-08T23:28:00.000-07:00

After much demand....and annoyance :P i have made another tour of blender 2.5

this mainly covers the animation improvments, and some UI changes as there isn't much else to cover (i'll do a post on etch-a-ton next week if time permits)

anyway here ya go, I present Blender2.5 tour #5

http://mfoxdogg.com/2.5_tour_V.ogg

thx to the generosity of Ken Hursh (inazuma) its now on vimeo, enjoy :)

anyway hope you like it, and have a nice easter :)

see ya's

Some more animato Fun

2009-04-01T18:52:00.000-07:00

since there really is nothing to show, i thought i would try animato seriously
so the following video is me trying to get an effect of a lone light in a room swing ing around and give a nice creepy feeling. i think i did it pretty well.

Here are the Fcurves used, all curves have atleast 1 generator modifier, energy has 2 sine curves

Animato-Fcurve Modifiers

2009-03-26T04:46:00.000-07:00

animato- fcurve modifier from Michael Fox on Vimeo.

A simple test of fcurve modifiers in blender2.5's animato system

No Updates

2009-03-11T05:34:00.000-07:00

Sorry for no recent posts, there hasn't been anything to show :(

anyway, this post is to tell you all that there will be no posts until the new UI/operators start taking shape which might take a few weeks :(

I will try to post any experiments/tests i do but a new tour is a way off

anyway hope to see you again soon :)

Blender2.5 animation tests

2009-02-27T19:32:00.000-08:00

here are some tests i have done with blender2.5's animato system

Blender 2.5 anim test (Wave) from Michael Fox on Vimeo.

A short test of animato, making the wave grow as time goes on by animating 3 parameters

blender2.5 animation test (Nodes) from Michael Fox on Vimeo.

Another Test of animato, this time animating node positions, i know this has no real purpose, just looks funny, the data is there for scripts and the like to automatically align/sort/position nodes

Blender2.5 animation test (bevel) from Michael Fox on Vimeo.

Yet another Test of animato, this time animating the bevel weights of individual edges making the bevel bigger as time goes on

Blender2.5 Tour IV

2009-02-13T01:01:00.000-08:00

yet another tour of blender2.5 :)
in this i will cover:
- keying sets
- threaded renderer
- 4-way-split
- operators and repeat last action
- menus and a sneak peek at the code

anyway as usual images speak louder then words :)
http://mfoxdogg.com/2_5_tour_IV.ogg

and thx to zanqdo here is a vimeo version :)

Blender2.5 tour IV! from Daniel Salazar on Vimeo.

new file host

2009-02-09T20:07:00.000-08:00

not really just different address :)
my most of my files are now at http://mfoxdogg.com so all my old links no longer work, just put the new address infront instead of dark-stone :)

Blender2.5 tour III

2009-01-28T20:51:00.000-08:00

http://mfoxdogg.com/2_5_tour_III.ogv

please keep in mind this is just a quick dirty tour, so no comments on my voice please ;)

i know i didn't mention 4way split, just press F5 and select it

anyway i hope you enjoy it :)

[EDIT]
thx to inazuma (mov) http://www.dark-stone.com/mfoxdogg/2_5_tour_III.mov

Blender2.5 tour II

2008-12-31T22:55:00.000-08:00

http://mfoxdogg.com/2.5tour_II.ogv

[EDIT]
thanks to squggly_p :)
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=a33e5f2c63015114d2db6fb9a8902bda (DivX)

Deep Shadow Maps

2008-12-20T18:50:00.000-08:00

hi all, for a very long time,Deep shadow maps have been in development and only recently the devloper has found time to work on it , last i tried this is was very slow eg 5mins for a simple scene, but with the latest work its way down to 93secs :)

Deep Shadow Maps, are shadow buffer shadows, but these are volumetric, where as normal shadows only worry about geometry, dsm looks at the texture as well providing nice hair/fur shadows and proper coloured shadows :)

well as usual, images speack louder then words ;)

[EDIT] turns out i had bias way too high :S

Irregular shadow buffers, 58secs

Classic-Halfway Buffers, 73secs

Deep Shadow Maps, 93 secs

[EDIT] settings used, 1 sample, 2 soft, 512 buffer size, 0.22 bias

Blender2.5 tour

2008-12-02T14:44:00.000-08:00

Hi All, In my previous post i promised a tour of blender2.5, so here it is :)

http://mfoxdogg.com/2_5_tour_02_12_08.ogv

the tour shows you:
-action zones, then new way to join and split areas
-real time refreshes when splitting and moving area edges
-RNA and the rna viewer
-multiple windows

detailed info on this and many other aspects of blender2.5
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/Blender2.5

now please keep in mind this is basically a status report not a really major thing, so please keep your questions and crits clean, and not about my voice ;)

anyway i hope you enjoy my tour of blender2.5 and i'll see you all later :)

Book , "Animating with Blender"

2008-11-30T18:30:00.000-08:00

hi all, i have been very busy with 2.5 and all (will give a nice tour soon) but ~a week ago i received a copy of the new book by Roland Hess. "Animating with Blender".

Roland (better known as Harkyman) was also the editor and main driving force behind the new official blender guide "The Essential blender", and that same energy and driving force was truly carried on into this book.

"Animating with Blender" is really enjoyable book to read, its takes you through every step of making a short film including story and character development, to storyboarding and animating all without taking itself too seriously and unlike many other books like this i have read it provides a very nice and easy film to case study, (which is a very nice little film ;) )

Any one interesting in 3d animation in general should read this book , though it is blender based, this can be used for any 3d animation package, like it goes into trisVquads in terms of deformation, an the basic principles of animation itself.

So in Short this book is a truly great book for anyone interested in 3d animation and is must have (along with "the essential blender" and "bounce tumble and splash") for any serious blender user :)

the book can be found here

I truly hope you buy this book and enjoy reading it as much as i have :)

Projection Texture Paint

2008-11-04T21:48:00.000-08:00

Hi all,
Recently Campbell (ideasman_42) has been working on improving Texture paint and i have to say he is doing a pretty great job :)

In the current texture paint mode you have to be careful while you are paint not to go over your UV seams as it goes by the image you have assigned, if you did go over a seam and the face is bigger then the one you were just painting like a different island the brush size will change, now it behaves like you are actually painting on the model with a brush you wouldn't even know the UV seams are there as with current paint is rather bad with seams.

Anyway, Pictures talk louder then words and here is a screeny for ya's :)

Volumetrics Re-Revisited

2008-10-20T22:52:00.000-07:00

Hi all sorry for no posts very busy and has been little in terms of things to test

fortunatly a recent commit to volumetrics finally made it fast enough for me to do some serious testing and it has been great fun doing so :)

It is very easy to use and is blisteringly fast (check http://mke3.net/ for more renders and info)

the following is the results of this testing

Texture Nodes

2008-09-14T19:17:00.000-07:00

Yes thats right, Texture Nodes :), for quite a while texture nodes have been under development and i have to say they are really good, it will allow like material nodes textures that are not possible with a stack based methodology

Currently there are quite a few things missing like mapto, vector maths and input geometry but its is still quite usuable and very nice :)

Test Render

Node Setup

Patch can be found here
https://projects.blender.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=7897&group_id=9&atid=127

More Information can be found here
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/TextureNodes

Happy Birthday!!!

2008-09-11T03:23:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me. thats right today is my 24th birthday :) hooray!!. to mark the occasion i made myself a nice present :)

Happy Birthday to Me, Happy Birthday to Me *dances away*

Volumetrics Revisted

2008-09-09T00:24:00.000-07:00

Hey all, there has been alot of talk about volumetrics work, well its ben rewritten from scratch this time focusing on smoke dust, particle based volumes essentially. it has become much cleaner code, easyer to under stand (1 panel instead of half a dozen), quicker to get results and depends far less on raytracing.

so i asked nicly and got my hands on a patch to test and i am happy to say i really love this :), it truly is much simpler to use, though maybe a little slower to render. this is an early version so no complex meshes or shading or even different colours but still looks great :)

3 different textures (clouds,vorononi, musgrave)

3 texture layers (colouds, clods, musgrave)

Grease Pencil Revisited

2008-09-07T00:52:00.000-07:00

hey all a while ago i did a post on the initial version of the grease pencil feature. since them many things have been added including animated strokes, strokes drawn into 3d, and strokes can now be converted to curves and armatures, so now you can draw your paths and armatures, but the sampling is very fine so many points are made

what elae has also been done is extend it beyond 3dview, you can now use grease pancil in nodes and image editors :)

ok this you have already seen :)

but now we have node editor :)

and also the image editor :)

effector recode and absorption

2008-08-21T19:25:00.000-07:00

recently the effectors/fields of blender eg, wind, spherical, etc etc, were recoded to behave the same across the board, and with it cam some nice new features.

including effector absorption.

what this feature is that an object will absorb the effector, like a windbreak, the effector is not deflected though, so no fancy air bouncing ;), but the effect is truly great as this vid shows,

another demo with this (cloth) can be found at wxtools.com
new effectors and other features can be found here

Wardaniso

2008-08-07T21:36:00.000-07:00

hey all, there really hasn't been much to report latly so i'll show you what i have developed over the past few weeks,

Ward Anisotropic Distribution Specular shader ( wardaniso for short), this is a proper anisotropic shader instead of the hackish Tangents thing, it looks more natural and behave like any other spec shader thus making it easier to use

eg. normals are not played with so it dosn't interfere with diffuse like Tangents does.

with this shader the spec can be cuved around the object and have much easier control over the aniso direction.
following is a comparisoin video of the 2 diffent methods, mine is on the left

patch can be found here: https://projects.blender.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=17401&group_id=9&atid=127

the formula for this and many other shaders can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specular_highlight

Shrinkwrap

2008-07-18T19:36:00.000-07:00

well as the name says this feature is a shrinkwrap modifier that basically, wraps a mesh around another, and i have been doing some tests latly and its quite nice, here are the results.

this uses the cut parameter that projects to an object and wraps around your object in the process

this uses the noramls projection, the wrapping mesh is an edited UV sphere

MultiRes revisited

2008-07-15T23:39:00.000-07:00

hi all, i got my X issues sorted out and a recent commit to the new multires made it much more stable, stable enough for me to do my tests :) and the following video is a result of these tests and im loving it :)

presenting the worm (or giant turd whatever you think)

New Multires

2008-07-13T17:39:00.000-07:00

as one of the Google Summer of code projects, Multires is being rewritten, this project has brought many new things to multires including making it a modifier and using the CCGSubsurf (subsurf mod's algo) so weights and such are interpolated properly, the #1 thing about this work is the ability to change the totology of the base mesh and the sculpt and multires will be updated including the armature modifier, so you can have properly rigged multires meshes :) , which is impossible in 2.46

detailed information can be found here

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Nicholasbishop/SummerOfCode2008/MidtermReport

anyway i would love to make a vid or renders to show you but im having X server troubles so i'll post one of the vids that Nicholas Bishop made (devloper of multires and sculpt) made

Blender GSoC - Multires Screencast 4 from Nicholas Bishop on Vimeo.

volumetrics

2008-07-09T05:28:00.000-07:00

yes you read corect volumetrics in blender, after a long time of teasing the patch has finally been released, and sure enough i had to have my tests :) early impressions are ok, still very buggy and a litlle difficult to use but the results are nice.

Lightcuts Revisted

2008-07-04T04:15:00.000-07:00

Hey all, it turns out my previous post about light cuts was actually wrong, i was using it the worng way and wasn't workng right hecne the difference in light power, now after talking to the developer Unclezeiv i have finally have some correct data on lightcuts :).

Just to refresh, lightcuts is the process of making groups of similar lights act as one lamp, yet still render like there is more eg Lamps dupliverted to a grid will behave like a really fast area lamp.

ok the scene in the screenshots is lit entirly by a IsoSphere with Lamps dupliVerted to it so 42 lamps with raytraced shadows with 1 shadow samples (hance the banded shadows, any more samples and blender crashes).

without lightcuts, rendertime :30mins

with Lightcuts rendertime: 5mins

-EDIT-
I forgot to mention, Lightcuts also allow for basic IBL

Grease Pecil

2008-06-29T02:27:00.000-07:00

recently Aligorith developed the first version of 3dview notes functionality, which means the director or animators can make notes in 3dview as you can see in this screenshot

patch can be found here

Simple Deform Modifier

2008-06-25T17:46:00.000-07:00

recently anew mod has been developed, simple deform, what this mod does is curve/taper/twist the mesh, for simple shapes
in the following screen shot is from far right to left, base cube, curve, twist, taper

this mod can be found in the shrinkwrap branch

Harmonic Skeleton Generation

2008-06-23T21:25:00.000-07:00

this feature had a breif stint in svn before 2.46 but was declared to buggy and hard to use, since then it has been under a recode in its own branch and it has become more usful, including a visualisation of the harmonic graph

here is a screen shot of it in action on a quick dummy

the paper and demo vid can be found here
http://www-evasion.imag.fr/Publications/2007/AHLD07/

Procedual Ocean Texture

2008-06-05T23:42:00.001-07:00

recently a patch was made that contained a procedual ocean texture, used ofcourse for oceans, it was originally made for ProMotion studio and is now freely available

just a quick test

baked shadows

2008-06-05T16:39:00.000-07:00

Thats right you can now bake shadows easily now, you bake them just like AO or textures, select shadow in the bake tab, the baked result is the same as the shadowpass, so its either bright white to black

the shadows in the render

the Baked shadows

Coloured Shadows

2008-05-29T19:07:00.000-07:00

recently Harkyman (Roland Hess) developed a patch for coloured shadows, the first real good use for this is lightening the shadows by giving them a grey colour , also in this patch it allows you to make a texture affect the shadows.

here are some test render, only 1 lamp in the scene

some fun

a real use of this, simulating a dirty light

the patch and additional renders can be found here

GSoC Lightcuts

2008-05-26T22:40:00.000-07:00

hi all, this GSoC project will implement Lightcuts into blender, lights are when you have alot of lamps close together light cuts will make those lamps into one yet still provide correct lighting , and the advantage of this is a huge optimization on speed and mem usage. here are my tests, please note as atm the power is rather glitchy so they will not look the same but is the same scene

the scene is lit by a 32X32Grid with dupliverted lamps totaling in 1024 lamps essentially a non raytracing area light

without light cuts, time = 4mins

with lightcuts, time = 3 secs

Blender's Procedual Textures in Luxrender

2008-05-14T03:51:00.000-07:00

as the title suggests there is now blender's procedual textures in luxrender, previously it was images only and that was rather bad when you have 100s of objects.

so now we are moving towards anything that can be made in blender can be made in luxrender. what makes this really cool is that the textures are direct copies from blender's source code.

the following render is using blender's musgrave texture

another recent render i have made in Luxrender

Luxrender can be found at http://www.luxrender.net/ as with most of what i showcase here you need a CVS version of lux to use these textures

Grass using particles

2008-05-08T18:33:00.000-07:00

a few weeks ago Gimble3D in #blenderchat was having trouble with animating grass growing using the new particles in 2.46, so i thought i'll give it a shot myself and here are the results, and i think it turned out really nice

OpenGL snapshot of 3dview

Final rendering

here is the .blend if you want to see how i did it, works best in the latest RC or later

Not quite acording to plan

2008-05-07T19:46:00.000-07:00

Yeah this post is to prove tht not all my tests actually work out :S, i was testing out some additions to the shrinkwrap modifier particularly removal of unprojected faces, but it seems its not rtemoving enough as the video proves, that causes quite some trouble

not quite according to plan

so you don't go away without something nice to look at ;)

Blender 2.46 Cloth from Daniel Genrich on Vimeo.

Raytraced Colour Dispersion

2008-05-05T18:23:00.000-07:00

hey all, here is a test of raytraced colour dispersion, a nice extra to the IBL patch i am using, i quite like this and works really well, even though its rather slow, enjoy :)

raytraced colour dispersion, dispersion = 0.1, 20 samples

18 textures!

2008-05-05T16:55:00.000-07:00

thats right, 18 texture slots, as many blender users has run out of texture slots from time to time, and have to plan the textures out carefully, then worry no more thanks to cambell it is now possible to use a max of 18 texture slots :), currently only available in the apricot branch

18 textures

GLSL in Apricot branch

2008-05-04T17:13:00.000-07:00

Hi all, today i will post the results of me playing around with the GLSL functionality of the apricot branch of blender.
Now GLSL is the OpenGL shading language, using this you can get a realtime preview of how textures, bumps and lighting will look in the render or GE.
GLSL has been in blender for quite a while as part of the GE only, now its being extended into the 3d view, anyway onto the results

here is a screenshot of the 3dview

and here is a GL rendering video of it in action

welcome

2008-05-01T02:23:00.000-07:00

hey all this is my blog for posting results of my latest testes in experimental development features of blender, www.blender.org, here are some tastes of what to expect from this blog

Shrinkwrap modifier

IBL (image based lighting)