Blender Cloth Test #1

Today I'm experimenting with cloth. I would like to use the physics engine to shape the clothes for the characters in my project.

Below are some of the simplest cloth tests you can do. Place a square piece of cloth above an object. Enable collision physics on the object and cloth physics on the cloth. Run simulation.

Flat shading is a visual style that I really love.

Smooth shading test. Subtle outlining.

Suzanne covers her eyes with a sheer cloth

Now I need to create clothes. I found this add-on for sewing clothing in Blender which seems very promising. Basics of the sewing add-on:

• Model pieces (you can use actual garment patterns to create these)
• Use edges to mark the 'threads' that will pull your garment together
• Use the sewing strength feature in the cloth physics tab to pull together the garment

I wanted to make a sheer wide neck beach type shirt, but I made the neck way too large, wasn't sure how to shrink it, tried pinning it to the model by the shoulders, and after just way too much time decided to throw on some materials and render it anyway, because mistakes are lessons too I guess.

My real life garment creation skills are just about this bad. Next time I promise something better.

Attribution section:

• Stylized Girl by OscarLeif

Blender Level of Detail Test

Studio LLB has a quick tutorial on using the Freestyle line thickness modifier (distance from camera) to deal with level of detail issues. I saw this blend by DimitrisC and while I really liked it, I felt like it could be improved a little in terms of level of detail issues, because the part of the mesh furthest away from the camera turns into a mess of outlines and draws a lot of attention in my opinion. You can build the blend he provides from scratch following the tutorial on his blog, but I just wanted to play with the outlining so I used the mesh provided in the file. Note: I disabled the Node Editor effects in the original blend file.

Guide to images in the sequence below :

1. Only the Edge feature (Render -> Post processing -> Edge)
2. No outlining at all, for reference
3. Freestyle without thickness modifier
4. Freestyle with thickness modifier 'distance from camera' using an approximately exponential curve dropoff

That was a refreshingly easy exercise...Getting Freestyle settings right isn't easy, and Freestyle is pretty slow to render, which makes it frustrating when you are trying to explore a huge variable space.

Attribution section:

• Skin the Cube by DimitrisC

Blender Experimentation #1

I'm not very creative about post titles, so I'm going to start calling these "Blender Experimentation #[n]." This doesn't apply retroactively to the stuff I posted before today.

Today's experiment involved this female head model from Blendswap.
I was inspired by the 'exploding faces' style on this other model from Blendswap.
I created my version of the exploding faces as such:

• Duplicate the head (I used two duplicate layers)
• Displacement modifier to scale along normals
• Build modifier, or randomly select faces in edit mode, to break down the head
• Manually delete areas of too much detail (mainly the facial features)

Lighting was done with Environment lighting only and the material is the result of briefly experimenting with settings using Toon for both the Diffuse and Specular shaders.

No nodes or Freestyle

Edge Nodes

Freestyle

Edge nodes and some extra fun with the compositor

It reminds me of cover art for Mona Lisa Overdrive.

My other main project today was reading about copyright law. There are some literary works I'd love to try adapting as graphic novels. Many are not public domain nor will they be anytime soon. I'm mostly interested in releasing any work I do for free online, which is unlikely to be a problem (complete text of these novels is all over the internet, free of charge). But if I ever wanted to a print run, I might find myself unable to negotiate a reasonable contract for the rights to do so (I doubt the estate of some of these authors would be interested in dealing with such a small print run anyway...they save their efforts for dealing with big movie studios). I may very well still attempt to work on these projects, maybe just focusing on a few key scenes, but with the understanding that they will be purely a free and online sort of work. I could always do merchandising I bet, since the actual novel text or story won't play into that, and my visualization of the characters would be an example of a highly transformative type of work.

• Female Head by norby

My First Completed Blender Project

"Hands." Click to view full size.

So I finally completed my very first project in Blender. I decided to make it all with open source software, so I used the Gimp to layout the final comic. Actually what happened was that I wanted to use my copy of Photoshop but I left the laptop I installed Photoshop on was at the hackerspace and I didn't want to venture out into the cold at 3am for that.

Attribution section:

• Simple Rigged Characters by DoodleNotes1
• Hand Version 1 by masterxeon1001
• Four Basic Freestyle Setups by josef
• Paper textures from cgtextures.com

A Collection of Blender Styles

Still playing around in Blender. Aiming to do some kind of more abstract short piece to help me practice. Rereading A Lesson Is Learned But the Damage Is Irreversible for inspiration.

Attribution:
The figure is from http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/71173
The chair and the room are from http://3dmodels.katorlegaz.com/

Here's a collection of styles from blendswap:

Halftone Shader http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/66588
Pen Sketch http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/67692
Ink Shader http://loran-cg.blogspot.fr/2014/02/ink-shader.html
8-bit http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/44982
Basic Ink http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/44708
Four Freestyle setups http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/18717
Edge Nodes http://blendernpr.org/bnpr-exclusive-edge-nodes-part-3/
Ink and Watercolor http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/64712
Cel Shader http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/70987

I've outlined a bunch of things I need to learn to do in Blender to make what I'm trying to make, and it definitely feels daunting. I'll just have to keep practicing until I get there I guess...

Blender Room Mockup

Set dressing test using files found online that are licensed to allow for commercial use of adaptations (typically Creative Commons Attribution 3.0). Some links to good 3D model repositories like this:

• http://3dmodels.katorlegaz.com/
• http://www.blender-models.com/
• http://resources.blogscopia.com/category/models/

Below is a quick test. Flat white materials all around, rendered with just the edge features and a simple Freestyle lineset with distance from camera applied to line thickness.

Set dressing feels a lot like playing the Sims. I'm leaning towards continuing to work on this one before I jump into my first big planned project.

Learning to Blender: Nonphotorealistic Rendering

I started learning Blender in pursuit of an old dream: make a graphic novel with 2D style art using 3D rendering techniques. To avoid burnout (the learning curve is really, really steep) I find it helps to spend time doing research: collect inspiration, download resource files, find tutorials, browse forums, and find examples of styles you want to emulate and styles you want to avoid. For inspiration I also picked up Transmetropolitan Vol. 1. Very good stuff...good thing there are nine more volumes and one special edition volume to read.

I'm still not ready to work on a graphic novel project but I'm getting there and it is definitely starting to look more feasible. I've gotten the hang of the compositor, which I mostly use so that I can have my linework and inking render layers done separately from coloring/fill layers.

Here's a great resource: a Blender ink shader. Download the .blend file and stick whatever subject you want in there for instantly great results. Here are some experiments I've been doing with this and the compositor.

Learning to Blender

Last year I focused mostly on projects that developed my 2D vector illustration skills. I tried to break into 3D but the learning curve is steep. These last few weeks I've finally decided to reopen this issue and learn Blender. Blender is oriented towards artistic modeling, rendering, and animation rather than engineering design; it is fairly powerful and packed with features; it is free, open-source, cross-platform; it has a Python interpreter.

The blender learning curve is steep. I'd suggest some tutorials. I did some of the tutorials from Amadeo Compositions, which are reasonably helpful. The First Steps and Preparation series spans 17 hours and covers almost every feature in Blender...so I got bored at around the 10th video. I'd say pick and choose which videos to watch based on what you need to learn to get your own personal projects done. Once you have the basics down it helps to switch to a tutorial where you actually make something, like Amadeo's Appetizer Tutorial.

I'm not interested in photo-realism and I got fairly antsy waiting for Amadeo to finish making endless adjustments to some of the meshes created in the tutorial, so I turned a few shapes upside down and created this Study in Jello:

This second image is the main tutorial payload. This is as far as I felt like tweaking the various parameters. There are lots of weird things going on, and some visual effects that should be there are conspicuously absent, but hey that weird flare from the sun on the strangely shaped glass chalice makes it look like an intentional gold stripe on the glass. Pretty cool.

Holiday Gifts and Files

I'd like to finally make good on my promise to myself to learn 3D design tools. I spent all night trying my hand at Blender. I won't let myself be discouraged by the steep learning curve. But to make myself feel a bit better, here's a long overdue post: more laser cutter projects I made for the holidays.

Gorillaz - stained and painted laser etched plywood

I used this reference drawing.

Here is the vector art I created in pdf format.

Samus - stained and painted laser etched wood

I used this reference drawing.

Here is the vector art I created in pdf format.

Knit Wood - stained and painted laser etched plywood

Here is the vector art I created in pdf format.

Magnolia Card Set - paper mod podge

I made a total of 13 of these. Easy, fun project.

Here is the vector art I created in pdf format.
The original was a very low res gif online.

Map of Wisconsin with an error - painted plywood

Lakes and rivers are represented, as well as state lines

By mistake, I painted part of Minnesota underwater...

This is also a simple application of the Four Color Theorem

Here is the vector art I created in pdf format.

16-hex anisohedral tiles - painted plywood

Joseph Myers runs a program to discover interesting tilings like these.

He also provides PDFs to all the tilings directly from that link.

To sum it up in one line: 10 of these tiles create a pattern that can be simply repeated by rotation and translation (no holes allowed)
With 20 tiles, you need only translate the group to tile the plane.

Here's the direct link to the download from Myers' page (compressed archive, pdf inside)

I added some extra engraving to pattern the tiles for visual effect.

Music Box Files - Pan's Labyrinth Lullaby

I finally got around to scanning a music card strip and collecting all the resources needed to share it with others. I scanned the strip for the Pan's Labyrinth Lullaby, which you can see in action here: http://youtu.be/LDgYSWoSoqU

In this resource pack:

• A scan of the card (filename Lullaby.jpg)
• A chart that shows what notes the music box plays (filename actualnotes.jpg)
• A file for use with Sekaiju, a free & open source midi sequencer (filename pan_lullaby_final.skj)

Link to files on Google Drive

Notes on using Sekaiju:

• Open the .skj file in Sekaiju
• Use the 'View' > 'Show new piano roll' feature to see the editor I used
• The file is not identical to the final punch card composition, but very close

I bought my music box from this online store based in the UK but you can also get them through Grand Illusions now.

Other note: the music box punch card note labels are based in another key, as I understand it, and you can 'translate' by transposing to the key of C. I'm not a classically trained musician or a trained musician of any sort, so instead I ignore the stuff printed on the card and just refer to the handy chart I made (filename actualnotes.jpg). I transcribed this piece by ear off this version of the theme: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47mLY8vX3L0

Happy punching! P.S. -- if you're interested in a resource pack of another music box project let me know. I plan to get them scanned and online eventually, but if I know somebody is interested I'll expedite that. The best way to let me know is to send me a message via youtube (not just a comment on a video). Actually for any resources pack you need (laser cut stuff, etc) just let me know in some form (I think I get email notifications on comments left here...)