Sep
10
I can’t believe that I forgot to post about my die. It is one of my favorite projects. Basically I modeled a red die with white markings. I learned how to easily slice up a model and a little introduction to materials (a very, very small introduction). It was not too difficult to put together since I have a lot of the basics down and am much more at home with the interface. It was cool to see how using these fundamentals to create a pretty realistic looking die.
Looks like I rolled a 4
Sep
6
Recently, I complete two goblets in Blender. The modeling was not bad at all — I think I am getting a hang of simple modeling. The real fun came when I did some basic lighting and texture of the goblets. It was fun trying to figure out where best to put the lamp and at what strength so that the shadow would show up just right. The first goblet I made there was a section at the end detailing how to make it look like glass so I followed that and the results were pretty nice by my standards at least 
. The shadow was a bit too sharp but I think that was due to the glass needing more subsurfing levels added on the rendering.
Glass goblet
The second goblet was created slightly differently then the first and had a link to a tutorial about how to texture it. This second one was a bit more fun because I played with some of the settings now knowing a little how they worked. Here is the result
Copper goblet
Sep
1
So more blender modeling for everyone to look at. The project was to make a gingerbread man. This was much easier then the organic model project. I used a few boxes to make the box and then a separate box for the head. Hopefully when I learn more about animation I can make him do something maybe even in time for Christmas.
gingerbread man
Aug
27
So this past week I finally finished Henry’s model. It came out pretty well for a first time attempt. After finishing the model I compared it to the real model and I must say that Henry could use some more tweaking. I was just excited that he actually looks vaguely similar to the model. A few of the lessons I learned on this project:
- Patience is key while developing an organic model. Sometimes getting the model to work means trying lots of techniques.
- Quads (faces that have four points) are much better then triangles (faces with three points). This may not seem the case until you subsurf your object.
- When you begin modeling after you have your basic blocky shape select all the vertices and sub divide them then. It adds more vertices in the beginning but makes it easier to model.
- Don’t expect to make it look exactly like the real life model.
henry finished!
henry in real life
Aug
22
So I have been working through the Blender 3D: Noob to Pro wikibook recently. As most projects I work on I tend to start and stop them sporadically as I get distracted by other shiny objects. This is no different with Blender. The good thing is that each time I pick blender back up I remember a little bit more. Yay for self teaching!
Currently, I am on the tutorial of Photo Assistance or as I call it organic modeling — I think it sounds nicer. The basic idea is to take pictures of a real life object and try modeling it in Blender. After looking all over the house for something to model I found this:
my model, a wooden llama
The first time I tried modeling Henry here (yes I named the model) it didn’t seem to work out well. I started by focusing on moving vertexes according to the pictures that I took. I keep getting weird sharp corners and irregular faces. After a while I just deleted the model and started over.
This second attempt so far has proved a bit better approach. I am working more with the faces to make a rough fitting of Henry and then later focus on the vertexes.
my current work
Aug
8
This past week I have been continuing with the blender book and created some landscapes. The few tutorials were about textures and it was fun to see my project evolve and take shape as I went along. It was also fun to see a finished render that was not just gray but had some color to it.
As I have been going through these tutorials I have been pretty surprised as to how simple it is to do 3d modeling.
Mountains with texture but no stenciling.
Mountains after stenciling was applied...a bit more realistic.
I know that this is not very spectacular looking but I am pretty proud of it.
