House repairs are noisy plus 90s 3D

Would like to record a new tutorial today but Roof Repair people are rather noisy so may have to try later.

In other news, I went to a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London last night, called Kraftwerk 3D.

You had to wear polarising 3D glasses and it was fun to see all the 90s style 3D Graphics. Some of the particle effects did give me a few ideas for abstract art and tutorials :)

I particularly enjoyed the 'robots' that replaced the performers at one point.

Here are a few images fro the event.

Super Busy Month of May

Whew, you may have noticed that it's been a while since I posted a blog.

The reason is so much has been going on this month (May 2017). Some health stuff that's all concluded now and significant disruption with an extension being built on my house (I believe it's called an Orangery). Work won't finish on that for about another month but hopefully the really noisy stuff is done now.

Despite all the above, I have been giving thought to where to go next with Blender. I haven't been able to completely focus on it of late with everything that's been happening but that should change now.

I'm planning another live event where I have some pre-considered topics that I want to cover.

I'm also thinking about going into detail on specific topics, such as how and why to use certain modifiers. To that end I've been playing with some of the less well known ones to see if I can find either a novel use, or better understand the thinking of the developers for it.

Anyway, enough rambling, after all it is really all about ...


L'art pour l'art

Blender Filmic Adventures

Well I followed the instructions and installed the Filmic add-on. https://github.com/sobotka/filmic-blender

I've been dabbling with the Filmic settings for a few weeks now so Blender Guru's tutorial on the subject was very timely, and clarified many issues (https://youtu.be/m9AT7H4GGrA).

I'm not yet completely convinced by it as while it may be more technically accurate, and have (sort-of) higher apparent dynamic range, I'm finding colour setup to be more challenging with Filmic enabled.

I will continue with it however and as I get more familiar with the necessary default lamp settings etc it will hopefully become easier.

This was the first scene I published using Filmic colour settings.

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: