Call for Content: Blenderart Magazine #36

It’s time again to start thinking about articles, tutorials and images for Issue # 36 of Blenderart Magazine.

The theme for this issue is “Odds n’ Ends: props and accessories”

Welcome back to a new year of Blenderart Magazine. We are going to kick off 2012 with a look at how to create all the Odds n’ Ends that make images and animations look great. No character is complete without their clothes, armor and all the various accessories that complete their look. And scenes are flat and lifeless without a variety of well placed props to add detail and depth to tell your story.

In addition, we want to take a look at how to use some of the fun new features of Blender 2.61 with all these needed props and accessories. So get to modeling, texturing and don’t forget to write about it and share your masterpieces with the rest of us.

Looking for tutorials or “making of” articles on:

• any props or accessories needed for any character or scene
• how to use new blender features

Articles

Send in your articles to sandra
Subject: “Article submission Issue # 36 [your article name]“

Gallery Images

As usual you can also submit your best renders based on the theme of the issue. The theme of this issue is “Odds n’ Ends: props and accessories”. Please note if the entry does not match with the theme it will not be published.

Send in your entries for gallery to gaurav
Subject: “Gallery submission Issue # 36″

Note: Image size should be of 1024x (width) at max.

Last date of submissions February 5, 2012.

Good luck!
Blenderart Team

Queen of WTH did I just do….

I have decided that I am clearly the “queen of WTH did I just do”.

This has been a lifelong trend that seems to only get worse as time goes on. And generally it happens when I am all caught up in a project and totally focused on it, thereby not noticing when I have done something that is bound to cause a problem later. And of course it generally takes me forever to discover just what I did to mess up my nice little project.

So just what did I do this time. Well sit on down and I will tell you all about it. (like you honestly thought I wouldn’t)

Okay so my favorite site (CGCookie) scheduled 3 different user activities all with the same deadline.

• Blendercookie announced a modeling exercise featuring the “Little Bot Bunny” concept art of David Revoy
• Conceptcookie announced their first drawing exercise: a female head shot
• Blendercookie announced their 2nd annual snowman modeling contest.

Oh my what to do… actually it wasn’t a hard choice.

Oddly enough I had already started trying to model Little bot bunny a few weeks earlier and had gotten stuck. I obviously am not good at modeling robots. So I was totally stoked about Blendercookie doing this one. And I was more than willing to wait until the exercise was over and Jonathan posted a tutorial on how to actually model the little guy.

As for the drawing exercise, well I downloaded the reference image and studied it for quite a bit.  I do not draw well to say the very least, so I ultimately decided that I would wait for Tim’s tutorial on this one as well.

That just leaves the snowman modeling contest. Now this I can do.

I came up with a concept rather quickly and got to work. Everything was going rather well. Modeling went smooth and I even figured out how to get my tablet to work in sculpt mode. Actually it worked before, but I still had to use the mouse for rotating, zoom etc because I still haven’t set up any of the buttons on the pen or tablet to actually be useful. I finally got annoyed and figured out how to set up my pen buttons and the buttons on the tablet so that I didn’t have to keep stopping just to turn my model. (whoot for me!)

At some point I did something and my snow bank behind the snowman started showing artifacts when rendered, and no I never did figure out what was causing it. Snow bank by itself rendered fine, snowmen rendered fine, snowmen in front of snow bank, not so fine.

But I am a creative problem solver, so since I couldn’t figure this one out, I decided to render it out in layers and put it back together in the compositor.

Hah! take that artifacts!

Since I don’t use the compositor very often, I did a quick look up on the blender wiki and figured out how to set up my layers. So far so good. I hit render and after a short wait had my layers. I checked both layers and they were good, no artifacts.

Okay then, time to switch to the Node editor for a bit of compositing. When I opened the node editor I promptly checked “Use Nodes” box at the bottom and looked up into the window to discover it had added material nodes, whoopsie, I need compositor not material. No biggie, I clicked the proper little icon on the bottom and was on my way.

I set up my alpha over, added a modest glow, a little RGB correction and I was ready to render out. Yeah I totally forgot to check “Auto render” when I checked “backdrop”. Rather silly of me considering they are right next to each other.

Anyhow, I got ready to render out my composited masterpiece. I double checked that composite was selected in the Render buttons options and made sure I had a composite node attached to node setup. I have forgotten that last step a time or two. Alrighty then, hit render and wait.

And when it was done, I had nicely rendered snowmen with slightly glowing Christmas lights… and absolutely no snow???!

WTH! yep here it is. My “WTH did I do” moment. I swear there is one in every project. Although normally they appear much sooner in the project, not as I am so close to being finished.

Okay, recheck settings…. re-render…. still no snow.

Do you know what the definition of crazy is? “Doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.” Yeah, I spent the next hour or so doing exactly that. Fast forward past that hour that was filled with variations on checking settings, render, wait, no snow. I even tried turning off compositing and just rendering the snow layer.

NO SNOW!

WTH, I had snow, it was really cool snow. It was there before I opened the Node editor.

Sigh, grumble, grumble.

So there is obviously a problem with the snow. I have already checked all possible settings concerning rendering and the compositor. Time to check the material itself.

When I clicked on my snow bank and switched to the material settings, imagine my surprise and confusion to see that the little material preview window showed, yeah wait for it…. a black sphere. WTH! why is it black, snow is white. My snow was white.

Looking at it closer showed me the cause of all my problems.

Have you figured it out yet?

I had my snow bank set to use nodes, specifically Material Nodes and there was no material applied in the Nodes, hence the black sphere.

Remember right after I rendered my render layers and opened the Node editor, then clicked “Use Nodes” and material nodes were auto added to the Node editor window?

Yeah that!

I unchecked “Use Nodes”, deleted the material nodes that had been added, and amazing a re-render showed my snowmen in front of a SNOW BANK!

Victory!, Whoot!

Okay, moral of this story, keep track of what you check, add etc. And if you accidentally enable something that you weren’t trying to do, UNDO IT immediately before you forget all about it. Otherwise, you might just end up with something very odd happening that just confuses the living bejeebers out of you.

And to put a happy ending on this little story, here is my snowman entry:

Happy holidays everyone, May your new year be filled with blender fun and joy!

Whoot, I finished my homework!

LOL, I have just finished the first modeling exercise assigned by BlenderCookie. I think I did okay.

It LOOKS like a flashlight. Which I think was only part of the objective. I think it is also supposed to display good topology as well. And I think I got most of it okay.

I did have a few problems with the switch and the bottom end cap. They look reasonable, but I am fully convinced that there is a better method than what I came up with. So of course I am eager to see how Jonathan does it.

Luckily, the assignment wasn’t about lighting or I would have received a massive fail.

Funny story!

You would think that after 11 years, that my husband would no longer be surprised by anything I do.

Yeah, not so much. Apparently I still manage to make him question my mental stability.

I was quietly sitting at my computer working on modeling the high poly flashlight, for BlenderCookie’s first modeling exercise. And doing really well, I might add

When my husband looks over and says “Why are YOU modeling a flashlight?”

And of course my answer was, “because I was assigned to.”

He gives me a really dumb look and just stares at me like I have lost my mind.

Now honestly, my answer wasn’t as strange as he seemed to think it was, I WAS assigned to model a high poly flashlight as part of BlenderCookie’s modeling exercises, which I decided was too much fun to pass up.

But there is the fact that I somehow forgot to tell him about BenderCookie’s new modeling exercises or that I was planning on participating in them. And since I have never shown any interest in modeling tools of any sort, I suppose he could be excused for thinking I was nuts.

And then again, seriously hon, after all this time, why would anything I do surprise you? This is me after all.

The importance of “Play Time”

We all know how important it is to push away from our computers and get some real life play time in.

We do know that right?

But as artists it is equally important to take time to play in our chosen art medium as well. All too often we get locked into the mentality that we must be either involved in a project or working on improving skills and techniques and we forget to just play.

This is something that I am very guilty of and I’m sure a good many of you are as well.

Sadly enough, it took watching my five year old to remind me how important it was to play.

I recently received a graphic tablet for my birthday. Now mommy got to use her graphic tablet all by herself for about two weeks before the ever curious five year old noticed that mommy could use it to draw on the computer.

Yep, you guessed it, she has been hooked on it ever since and every time mommy tries to use it, she is in my lap demanding “draw time”.

First thing, it was amazing how quickly she grasped the concept of the tablet and how easily she uses it to draw and paint. Yep, mommy is still occasionally struggles to get it to do what she wants. (Yes I am blaming the tablet, not my completely pathetic skills )

Okay, on to the play part. While eventually she ends up drawing “something”, she actually spends far more time simply playing with the different brushes. Moving them randomly about to see what effect they have and changing colors often to see how they blend together.

If I would let her, she would probably spend the better part of the day just swirling colors around and changing brushes.

It is absolutely amazing watching the different combinations she comes up with, something I probably wouldn’t have known about if I hadn’t been watching her just “play”. Some of those brushes are just fun.

We have even done some tag team drawing time, which results in lots of giggles and drawing over each others scribbles.

It is relaxing and rather liberating, so the million dollar question for today is;

“When is the last time you just sat down and played?”

for wondering minds, my daughter’s favorite program is MyPaint, and her favorite brush collection is Deevad4.