Character creation

So I have begun chrating my characters for my short films when I begin them.

This is the first which is near completion.  The belt buckle needs work but as for the rest I'm pretty happy.

May I introduce you to STACY

Pulling my hair out!

As promised post #2 for today, all about a particular piece of furniture that i am struggling with.

as you can see from the following picture there is a sign in on the back wall of the club that reads "Fatal Addictions"

At present that is just a flat image texture on a plane.

What I am TRYING (and failing) to create is the blood spatter in 3D.  not terribly prominent, but the idea is that the blood is a molded plastic relief which is maybe 6 inches deep in the real world with a backing box behind it, which would contain a light which would illuminate the blood spatter from behind (the blood being made of a plastic or glass type material).

I want it to look exactly like the original logo which I made in Photoshop for the original second life version, just all swanky and 3D and pretty

I have images of all the components  (The lettering and syringe are going to be modeled separately and the whole thing put together in layers)

Here is the complete logo:

And here is the .png file of the blood spatter behind it.  I am sure there must be a way to turn something 2D into something 3D in blender, but I have yet to either find a video tutorial, or stumble across how to do it myself and it is getting quite frustrating.

Anyone with ideas or offers of help please get in touch. it would be greatly appreciated.

New projects and new challenges

Well. as is always the case with blogs, I always forget that i have them, and that I need to update them.  Life has kept me busy, and when it is not life doing so, it has been blender, and my new project.

A small bit of history, When i was using second life a lot, I loved building buildings etc.  Well, I decided that now i am beginning to find my way around blender, that I would recreate my pet project building from Second life in full and glorious 3D.

It has certainly been an education!  Using some stuff I have gained from various tutorials on how to achieve things I have slowly pieced things together.  Right now, I have gotten stuck on a particular piece of the fixtures and fittings (2 articles today. the second will be covering that very issue.

Well. Let me show you what I have got so far.

Still some of the finer work to be done, plus furniture fixtures and fittings although I am not entirely sure it is optimized for what it's final use is going to be, a sound stage of sorts for shooting the animated series in that i was planning. so. I am sure that it will probably result in huge render times for the animations.

I.m still just a beginner so if anyone out there knows their way around blender better and would like to look the build over and see where things can be tweaked so that things render faster and makes the workflow as a whole faster, I would be more than happy to include my most recent version of the blend file for you to scrutinize.  All you need do is send me a comment or an email and I'll get it to you for you to look over in horror at all of my mistakes!

Another Text Based Splash Screen

Well. Work is going slowly on the dragon.  Having to UV unwrap it and realised i made one helll of a mess of the mouth so it is taking a great deal of effort to pick apart the seaming.

So.... while I do that, Let me post this video that finally finished rendering.

Another splash screen. I used a tutorial on Blenderguru.com to create this and while it has a flaw or two, I'm generally pretty impressed with the result.

A busy day here today, but I wanted to get all of mny work that i have done so far up here.

This next one is a work in progress.  I am also learning modelling as I go along.  (Gonna need that to create my characters ain't I?)

While this isn't one of the characters from my proposed series.  it IS an excersize in how to model.

This began life as 1 cube. (the eyeballs are seperate circles, but the body and head are all made from that one cube)

Still a long way to go.. textures to be added.  Feet to be made, as well as wings, Rigging, Lighting, Animation, the whole 9 yards, but as far as a first effort goes, I am pretty damn pleased with it!

My first 2 attempts a blender animation

Bring on the Videos!

I made couple videos using Andrew's Tutorials  Here are my results,

This one was my first proper Blender ptroject.

Using Andrew Price's tutorial from BlenderGuru, I was able to produce this (after 4 or 5 failed attempts) and while there is still a mistake or two in there, I am pretty pleased with the results!

So, the focusing kinda screwed up on this one with my camera settings. (I'd set the focus, then decided i wanted the camera in a different place and forgot to change the focus... Oooops).

Gonna re-do this one so that I get the result that i wanted so keep tuned in!

This is the beginning

Well... where I am at today.

Opened this blog yesterday as a place to show off what i have made.  Still working on the layout, eventually I will find something that I like the look of, and then promptly change it all again a couple of days afterwards, but that would be the perfectionist in me, and also the overwhelming urge that makes me believe that things should not stay the same visually, they should always be evolving and improving, which, means that I rearrange and upgrade things frequently, so, if the page does not look the same 2 days in a row, I apologize (not) and hope you are adaptable enough to get used to it.

As far as 3D modelling goes.

I have had Blender installed on my machines for years, but never took the time to sit down and actually figure out how to USE the damn thing.  Well.  I(deally I want to get into Character animation.  The idea behind it being I want to create a sort of Youtube video series featuring a cast of regulars.

I have script ideas and character outlines in my mind (It's going to be a comedy type show) and I have tried the sort of cheating version of making it, which proved unsuccessful as well as a load of hard work to not be able to achieve the results i wanted.  I tried using Second Life as a means of creating and animating the characters, filming int using Fraps and then editing it up in Sony Vegas, adding dialogue tracks and sound effects as i went.

The problem being, using second life limited me as to what i was actually able to DO with the characters. So. I thought I would have a crack at making my own.

I have found some GREAT tutorials which have helped me learn a hell of a lot about how to use Blender on www.BlenderGuru.com

I'm working my way through a few of those, as well as other tutorials that i am finding as I go along. All of which are proving fun to do, as well as learning my way around the software along the way.

I am still only a week in to using it, and my results are outstanding compared to what I thought i would be able to achieve in this amount of time.  That I must confess is more down to Andrew Price and his tutorials, and of course the awesomeness that is Blender than to me I believe at this point, but... It is a learning process, and I will post you guys my results, good, bad or ugly as I go along.  This has a second purpose too, it will allow me to look back on my early stuff and see just how far i have come along also.

Some of this aint gonna be pretty, and for the time being, please don't ask me "How did you make that?"  coz I'll just shrug my shoulders at you and send you a link to the guide I followed.  I am still on a steep learning curve myself and nowhere NEAR at the point where i feel that I could possibly teach or demonstrate yet.

So. Please check back often, and, Sit back and enjoy the ride!