All about blender

[lost_soul]

This topic is all about discussing anything regarding Blender. As a n00b, it is amazing how a single bad setting can make your cycles renders require extreme levels of sampling to get rid of noise.... and still not look perfect. Today I learned how critically important the "multiple importance sampling" option is if you have an HDRI background with strong sunlight in an area. It reduces the number of necessary samples, and as a result, also reduces your rendering time while producing a MUCH cleaner looking image.

 

Also, the new version that is just about to come out (2.70) will increase cycles rendering speed on the CPU by about 30%. That is pretty awesome.

Edited March 13, 2014 by lost_soul

[At0mic]

The UI confuses the shit out of me. I'm very aware and understanding of the fact this is a powerful 3D modelling and rendering tool and hence by its very nature will be complex and have a complicated interface, but knowing this doesn't help much in the early stages. You can't just "jump in" and start using it and learning the basics through experimentation like other programs without a tutorial (a GOOD tutorial). Although I do like that it's free and seems to be under very heavy development, which is comforting. It's already proven its worth with short movies like Sintel.

[Lux]

Its pretty daunting to see video tutorials of people trying to accomplish certain tasks (things that have been previously linked in our forums) and have to use 3-4 different versions of Blender just to do it. Because so-and-so is broken in this version and so-and-so is broken in that version, etc.

 

One would think they would take at least one development cycle and try to fix some of the cross version inconsistencies before continuing to tack on features.

[Airship Ballet]

I can't say I've ever used Blender for real modelling purposes. When I was a lot younger I used to start it up just to drop shiny spheres through sheets of cloth and into glass boxes full of water, then render it overnight and watch it. I got into 3DSMax for a while but ended up dropping that and getting good at making sprite sheets instead. Something about it is just a lot more fun to me, and also appeals to my enjoyment of good ol' pencil to paper art.

 

Still, for what it's worth, Blender is great, especially considering it's free. I agree with Mr Riker that it's very daunting to look at with a lot of icons and sliders packed into small floating windows. I found that if you compartmentalise your learning you can learn your way around a window at a time and eventually it's all like clockwork. Like I say I never got further than playing with sparkly water and shiny surfaces but I'm a child like that.

Edited March 13, 2014 by Airship Ballet

[GameDevGoro]

Blender is fantastic.

 

Blender forever.

[_Atti_]

Blender is really good. I've been using it for like 3 years for architectural works both student and real jobs. I personally think it has really good interface, sure its not something one can learn by him/herself but it is so well documented and free tutorials are plenty it can be learned quite easily in a few weeks to a good level.

 

I've tried my hands at 3dsmax in the past(also a little taste of lightwave), and while it maybe technologically more advanced, from my experience its just not as slick and quick-to-use as blender. You can feel the freedom coming from it's open source nature while using it. Its those 'ah, they did think about That too..' moments that make it so loveable.

Edited March 13, 2014 by _Atti_

[stumpy]

the one thing I don't like about a lot of the tutorials for blender and other 3d modeling programs is they assume you know how to do something so they don't cover that step, or they use acronyms but don't explain what the acronyms actual represents.

[Airship Ballet]

True for most things, really. You can spot the people who have no real history of teaching or at least helping friends into something they're familiar with. I forget who, but somebody said that the highest form of intelligence is the ability to speak on anybody's level. A lot of people try a bit too hard to appear educated about what they're teaching and find it almost impossible to speak fluently in layman's terms. Anyway, I'll shoosh; it's about Blender knowledge compilation rather than my spiel.

[Arcturus]

The UI confuses the shit out of me.

In the next version (2.70) they added buttons for most basic functions and grouped them in tabs in the left panel so it should be easier for newcomers.

Its pretty daunting to see video tutorials of people trying to accomplish certain tasks (things that have been previously linked in our forums) and have to use 3-4 different versions of Blender just to do it. Because so-and-so is broken in this version and so-and-so is broken in that version, etc.

You're talking about my video in which I used three versions of Blender. Nothing is "broken" in any of them. MD5.mesh and .ase formats are not officially supported by Blender's developers. The only reason we can make models and animations for Darkmod in Blender is because some game oriented coders wrote plugins. It's true that the plugins often become incompatible with newer versions of Blender. It's then up to the creator of such plugin to fix it. Fortunately, unlike commercial programs you can download and install all versions of Blender for free and they don't take much disc space. Also the video about baking Blender's physics and exporting as MD5 is an extreme example and jumping between different versions of Blender shouldn't be the most daunting thing about it. Usually I don't use more then two versions and the second one is only needed when you export.

 

On the other hand the exporter of Quake's .map format is officially shipped with every new Blender's installation. Some time ago some developer asked if they should continue supporting it and someone on the forum pointed Dark Mod as the one place where it's still being used because of the thread I made about it. So I don't know whether it will be in 2.70.

the one thing I don't like about a lot of the tutorials for blender and other 3d modeling programs is they assume you know how to do something so they don't cover that step, or they use acronyms but don't explain what the acronyms actual represents.

It's not good to explain basic things when the subject of the tutorial is some advanced functionality.

[Lux]

You're talking about my video in which I used three versions of Blender. Nothing is "broken" in any of them. MD5.mesh and .ase formats are not officially supported by Blender's developers. The only reason we can make models and animations for Darkmod in Blender is because some game oriented coders wrote plugins. It's true that the plugins often become incompatible with newer versions of Blender.

 

I see. I've basically only opened the software to have a look at it but the plugin incompatability makes a lot of sense as that occurs with all software. Its been a while since I've watched that video and I was just recalling from obviously an incorrect memory so apologies if that confused anyone.

 

Thanks though for the clarificaiton. In any case seeing how the capacity in which I'd use Blender would be for TDM, I would likely encounter the same issues with plugins though with your knowledge on the subject at least we have someone to turn to when we encounter this situation.

[lost_soul]

Well the brand new version of Blender (2.70) has a feature I have been hoping for forever, but I never actually asked for. Quake-style controls in fly mode!!! This makes it SO much easier to position your viewpoint!

[Arcturus]

You can even turn gravity on and walk like in game engine on your model.

[At0mic]

Can you rocket jump?

[Arcturus]

My new short animation:

 

[Bikerdude]

Man thats very impressive, its impossible to tell the snowman is a model, well done young man!

[Obsttorte]

LOL, that's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Very cool stuff, mista.

[Arcturus]

Thanks guys!

[Springheel]

Holy crap, that's awesome! I would have completely thought it was some kind of person in a costume.

[Arcturus]

Thanks! That was the goal

[Lux]

Yeah, it is pretty amazing. I wanted to see him go down the hill and have a tree cut him in half ::sadface:: hehe. Looks very real.

[Arcturus]

I shot the video without knowing what I would put there later. Also simulating interaction with real objects is tricky. You can see that I had to mask part of skis behind the grass. That was relatively easy because you can increase contrast between grass and snow and use that part of the image as a mask.

[At0mic]

Woah, that's impressive, particularly the perfect (at least to my untrained eyes) matching of a 3D object into footage. Of course what one would have to have learnt to even get that far kinda scares me...

[Arcturus]

Blender has a camera tracking tools. You can track distinctive features of the video automatically, though manual corrections are always needed.

 

 

You can specify sensor size and focal length of the camera. Blender will calculate movement of the camera and create virtual camera that will move like the real one.

 

 

Tutorial on camera tracking:

 

[lost_soul]

Is there some reason point lamps cannot cast real-time shadows in Blender? I mean, even Freakin' Doom 3 can do that! I want to build a decent looking room with real-time shadows in Blender, but spot lamps are not that flexible because if you increase the radius of the spot (to use it as an overhead/ceiling lamp), your shadow quality will suffer. The way to compensate for this is to increase the buffer shadow size of the spots to something like 8192, but that can tax performance a lot.

 

I can do decent lighting in Cycles, but I can't produce anything good with the internal engine because the light/shadows are not real-time.

[Arcturus]

You can always enter "rendered" mode. It's not as fast though.

Some guys are collecting money to fund LWO exporter.