Blender V2.68 is now out

blender.org - Blender 2.68.

Rocz3D has done a pretty comprehensive series on Blender Modelling on Vimeo. You can access them on the Vimeo site or via Rocz3D’s channel here.

Details here: Dev:Ref/Release Notes/2.68 - BlenderWiki.

Couple of important tips when doing lighting in Blender, taken from the current book I’m reading:

1. The wrong lighting will ruin a shot, regardless of how fantastic your modelling and surfacing.
2. If you can light a scene effectively without any custom surfacing, you know you have done it right. If you can convey the mood and setting of the scene properly through the lightning alone, then your job is almost done.
3. Do your lighting first, and make it good.

BlenderArt Magazine Issue 41 Imagine The Possibilities.

Some of you may have already seen this, but sharing this for others.

www.youtube.com/watch

Styling and Rendering Long Hair in Blender and Cycles | Blender Cookie.

Whilst browsing Pinterest, I found this. It’s a Blender rendering of Amaterasu from the game Ōkami. With the introduction of the Freestyle rendering in Blender, I suspect we’ll see similar artwork explode onto the CG scene pretty soon.

25 Fresh and Most Beautiful 3D Character Designs for your inspiration.

Found on Vimeo. An interesting video made in Blender. And the music is pretty catchy too. :)

vimeo.com/65556908

Here’s some videos off YT of AKB0048. See what you think.

The anime also uses some pretty nice CG, which is the first time I’ve seen CG used in that manner. Especially in an anime….

youtu.be/LFjA_Dey-…

www.youtube.com/watch

youtu.be/iL333P6OL…

www.vimeo.com/65295860

via How to model nuts & bolts in Blender (Part II) on Vimeo.

My Training DVD collection. This is from January 2013, and since this picture was taken I have one new DVD, and another on pre-order.

vimeo.com/64007378

An interesting use for Blender

vimeo.com/63821475

Up until know, I’ve been following tutorials on modelling in Blender and they all use box modelling. However, I wonder if I could take a modular approach instead, and model parts of the character separately, then merge them together. The only reference images I have (short of drawing my own) are three-quarter views, which are a lot harder to model from a face or side view. So, if I model say the leg and foot independently, I can clone it and attach it to the torso.

Going to branch my Bitbucket repo and give this a go.

vimeo.com/62986805

I’ve finally started building on Project 5Ds.

Progress image

Now I see why my previous attempts to model in Blender didn’t succeed - my reference images were not level and not the same scale. Whilst there was nothing mentioned on the tutorials at Blender Cookie (in those tutorials, the reference images came already prepared), the first step that Angela Guenette (modeller on the Sintel short - cover on the right) on the Blenderella DVD immediately mentioned is to prepare the reference images in GIMP: rotating, scaling, and adding horizontal reference lines to allow you to line up features across the various reference images.

Wish I’d known about this before spending time on my last modelling attempt. :/

Oh, well, you learn from mistakes.

I am starting a new Blender project, or, more specifically, restarting it. I’m going to attempt to model some of the characters from the anime Yu Gi Oh! 5Ds. I have it on a Bitbucket Git repository at the moment (it is a private repository at the moment), but may make it public at a later date.