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