Busy few Weeks

It's been a busy few weeks.

I spend a few weeks of the new year just producing animations/stills. It's great to just do that for a while to come up with some new ideas both artistically and for new tutorial material. I'm now starting to produce tutorials on them. Here's the first one - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3fGc_QM3yI

I've also been making various cookie cutters (in Blender of course), and the cookies to go with them. Most of the cookies eaten by colleagues and family though!

I was even asked to make do dog biscuit cookie cutters :)

It's been very cold, dull and miserable here so have some summery art to tide you over

Blender and 3D Printing

Having spent some time learning to use Blender, I found 3D Printing was a great way to make some of my virtual creations into real ones.

At first I used a company called Shapeways to which you can upload a model and they will print your model and send it to you. Here is a scene I made showing a honey bee that I modelled from images.

And here is the same model, with a few tweaks, printed by Shapeways. 

They can print in other materials too, here I created a ring design and printed in carious materials including gold plated iron and bronze (modelled in Blender of course).

I designed this mug for my partner and it was printed in clay.

Once I had my own printer, I had a lot of fun printing thing myself, starting with models from places like Thingiverse (I didn't model these I just fixed geometry issues, printed then painted them):

Then I started to model things myself :

I also found uses around the house for my little prints:

Tiny little brackets for shelving.

Here I wanted a large selotape holder (I fixed a blade to it too), makes

present wrapping much easier.

At a 3D Printing show in London in 2016 I saw a vase with vanes so thought I'd have a go at designing, printing and painting one myself:

I found that you could buy LED Tea Lights very cheaply and designed these decorative lamps which were used during someone's birthday party, they fade from one colour to another:

I never stop learning with Blender and finding new ways to use it.

If you'd like to know more about my 3D Printing adventures so far, I have a play list here - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCtL34Gw96S8oXQUaxTgH8skGmk3n3NDN

Sardi

The Holidays are Almost Here but not a snowflake in sight.

Just finished getting things ready for the holidays, just lots of wrapping to do...

Weather has turned mild again but wet, came home with rather muddy shoes yesterday. I'm hoping for a few days of snow (preferably when I don't have to drive anywhere). It's very rare that we have snow around Christmas in my part of Britain.

Getting ready to record another tutorial, this time to show how to recreate the motion capture scene I did with some drone footage of my garden. I'll hopefully share the raw drone footage too so others can play with it.

Only a few days of the competition left, some good entries so far but it would be nice to see a few more.

Here's a snow scene:

Making Blender Tutorials

I really enjoy making tutorials, although sometimes they can be hard going. In fact, the ones I've typically been most unhappy with, usually because of lots of having to repeat things (which I do 'on the fly' rather than stopping and starting again) or bad sound that I've had to replace, people often seem to like the most.

One of the trickiest parts is that I often create a demo scene or animation, post that somewhere and see what the responses are. If most people like it and want to know how it's done, then I make a tutorial. That way I know that at least some people will watch it.

I recorded a tutorial to go with 'Pipe Run' today and I think it went quite well. 1GB of video before editing.

At least it's Friday, yay :)

Have a Friday picture:

Sunday

Most of my Christmas shopping (online) is complete which is a relief, just have to go through lists to make sure I haven't missed anything and then sort out Christmas cards.

I had some fun using Drone footage and camera tracking. The stabilised footage is much easier to track than the hand held types I've tracked in the past. I started with a castle but ended up with a hole. Here it is - https://youtu.be/DASh8qN6UCc

Some really nice early WIPs for the contest, I'm not going to comment on any until the contest though but I hope lots of people are going to take part, it's great fun looking at the works people have created.

More baking in a few minutes so must go.

Have a picture from the past:

Busy few days.

I've been so busy with both Blender and non-Blender work over the last few days, it's been hard to find the time to Blog. With Christmas coming up I'm trying to sort things out for that too.

Anyway, hope many of you are going to enter the competition, it's only small prizes but I think it's a great way to practice and I very much enjoyed the last one.

Thinking about doing a live event soon, not sure what I'm going to talk about yet though but maybe there will be questions.

Miserable weather here (UK) but nothing serious for the most part. It didn't stop me going for a brisk walk during my lunch break and looking at how different the trees look without their leaves, and a brave squirrel clung to a tree as I passed within a few feet, just watching me. I know some people think they're pests but they do make me smile.

Here's a picture just for fun:

Competition Prize

Very excited that this T-Shirt arrived today. It's going to be a prize (or one just like it) in my new competition.

I've been thinking about this for quite a while.

The T-Shirt logo was designed in Blender of course :)