Please recommend good blender tutorials
Community Forums/General Help/Please recommend good blender tutorials
| ||
| With a view to creating a stick man cycling on a bicycle, I konw google is your friend and I'll post the tutorial I'm (initially) plumping for off my own back - but if anyone has stumbled across a useful tutorial I'd appreciate a pointer or two, thanks. This one looks promising: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Manual/Your_First_Animation/2.Animating_the_Gingerbread_Man "You're a monster" ( in a high pitched voice, Shrek did wonders for the Gingerbread man ) On second thoughts, I'm starting here: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Manual/Interface I've done Blender tutorials in the past, created cities and the like - however a bit of water under the bridge since the last time. I'm torn with going back to using PaceMaker to achieve this goal - however I never managed to animate anything more than other peoples boned/rigged models within this. Another quick question - has anyone imported simple rigged models from Blender into Ultimate Unwrap 3D and then subsequently used the produced models within the LoadAnimSeq command? |
| ||
| The Best Blender Tutorials: http://www.youtube.com/user/blendercookie :) |
| ||
| Here's a useful tutorial to follow after downloading and installing Blender: Step 1) Uninstall Blender. Step 2) Destroy computer with hammer to remove any lingering traces of Blender. Step 3) Hit head repeatedly against brick wall to remove any lingering memories of Blender. |
| ||
| I too would suggest some visits at blendercookie, Jonathan and his crew are providing many tricks hidden in their videos. Some basic videos will help you finding "hidden" features. But if you follow their longer ones, the comments they give during that video will contain many helpful hints. You also see how they handle certain situations (slide vertices along lines etc.). For character animation: Just use something like the "Rigify"-addon to rig your character. After that is done, you can easily animate your character (although it won't look like in nature). Animating a character together with another object is a thing you can do in different ways. Eg. you could rig your character, add constraints (so the knee moves when you move a foot). Then you could parent the foot bone to the pedal/pedal-bone of your bike. The bike itself could be rigged too, so it moves correctly (pedals, chains, wheels...). If the Feet of your character are parented to the location/rotation of the corresponding paddles, you just have to animate the bike to also move the feet, which move the knee... etc. Another way would be parenting the bike to the character, so that the "force" of a foot (you parent the paddle to the foot) moves the pedal - which moves the chain, which rotates the weel. Where will be multiple ways to achieve it. The most easiest is to animate them "independ from each other" (no hassle with parenting and "parenting"-modifiers which copy attributes from the other object -> rotation,position,...). To get a hand on character animation: there are many tuts on blendercookie (have a look at David Ward's tuts). Tuts: Rigify Usage Rigging a non-human object Animating the interaction between two objects Rigging wheels If you follow that tuts, you will have chance to gain some ideas how to achieve things. Most things you will learn by experimenting. Learning by failing :D. bye Ron edit: corrected link forum codes |
| ||
| In general, Blenderg.org's tutorial section actually links to some very useful tutorials these days. :o) Maybe this'll help with your specific needs? |
| ||
| Thanks for the suggestions folks, very much appreciated. I am getting accustomed to the new user-interface (its been through some revisions since I last used it and I like the improvements) |
| ||
| What JustLuke said. |
| ||
| Care to share the reasons for the lack of blender love? Is it due to b3d incompatibilities? |
| ||
| No, its due to the fact that it sucks. To explain further, I started using 3D Studio Max when I worked for Gremlin Interactive in Sheffield. I picked it up pretty quickly. Trying Blender after that was just awful. I can't comment on its capabilities as I just could not get past the horrendous UI. Intuition did not come into it. Felt like it had been designed by a sado-masochistic world-hating clown who thrives on the sufferance of others. The one time I managed to get it to create a cube, it promptly crashed. And that was pretty much the end of my Blender experience. I wouldn't use it if they paid me. |
| ||
| Blendernation.com |
| ||
| sado-masochistic world-hating clown I like your turn of phrase, thanks for the extra suggestion Ringo. |
| ||
| Whatever you think about Blender, there is no denying there is some pretty awesome rigged models generated with it: http://www.blendswap.com/blends/view/67567# |
| ||
| To explain further, I started using 3D Studio Max when I worked for Gremlin Interactive in Sheffield. I picked it up pretty quickly. Trying Blender after that was just awful. I can't comment on its capabilities as I just could not get past the horrendous UI. Intuition did not come into it. Felt like it had been designed by a sado-masochistic world-hating clown who thrives on the sufferance of others. I started with Kinetix' 3d studio R4 (before it got "max") and it was a hell. Later incarnations had useable material slots and better interfaces. But I do not remember using shortkeys or other things increasing the efficiency. Later I tried to convince myself to move to Blender... that was way before the interfaces got revamped - It took only some days until most of my used workflow steps got reached through shortkeys. Sure I still miss much knowledge about multiple aspects of cgi-generation (eg. never done that much compositing in blender). But to call it a "sm clown" is way differing from what Blender deserves. You can achieve really impressive things with Blender... but with Maya,Max,... too. It just depends on your own creativity and will to learn things. If you are not able to model it, you may better use "clay"-model-tools like zbrush (a "lite" version of that approach can be found in Blender). And for people just doing their first steps in 3D-modelling I think Blender is a good suggestion as you will find way more tutorials for that as for Milkshape or other free tools. @crashes: As long as one does not use beta versions, the Blender releases are really stable for all "base" operations (exceptions are newly introduced features and beta plugins one activated). bye Ron |
| ||
| Have you try AC3D which I think it is easier 3D Modeling there is compare to Blender! |
| ||
| In my previous xp with blender it never crashed. I am amazed at the variety and quality of models on blendswap. Will also try ax3d |
| ||
I'm sold on Blender, after less than an hour of tutorial managed to produce (albeit somewhat rudimentary) 3D bike and imported into my B3D project, happy dayz ;) |
| ||
| http://cgcookie.com/blender/ |
| ||
| in fact #9 you know %uck all. |
| ||
| in fact #9 you know %uck all. Oh look, Nice_But_Dim has yet another account. Suppose his mate (he has mates?) has borrowed his account without permission. Again. |
| ||
| Pardon winkle. |
| ||
| @azrak, yeah blender is capable of producing some pretty impressive models - I reckon it'll be an hour or two more of tutorials before I reach that level of complexity ;) |
| ||
| @Blitzplotter, Start with Basic & go to Next http://cgcookie.com/blender/cgc-series/blender-basics-introduction-beginners/ |
| ||
| I'm surprised D4NM4N hasn't posted some links. If I remember from previous posts he's a fan of it. I on the other hand have tried it on a number of occasions and still just can't get use to the interface as I find it just to cumbersome to work with. |
| ||
| @azrak, thanks for the additional link. @dawlane - I struggled with previous incarnations of blender (I'm going back 1 or 2 years...) The latest version seems simpler to get a handle on - admittedly there is a lot of functionality embedded within the GUI. I found myself making my own notes within notepad++ to an online video tutorial. I wasn't looking for something super-hi-poly count(at the moment) within my project, so it has filled my requirements for now. However, seeing the eye-candy on blend-swap has really got the imagination going. My drive was that for whatever reason, the 4 or 5 bikes that I exported from blender (they were other peoples models) UU3D was struggling a little with the export. Therefore I hung my own together which UU3D exported with no problem - admittedly it is exceptionally basic but I need to focus upon the logic within the main project for now. |
| ||
| Just remembered this. Mostly outdated by now, I'd of thought. I did keep it fairly up to date for a while so you may find something of use there. [edit] Tidied up the above thread, in case it's still of use to anyone, and stumbled across this in the process. [/edit] [edit II] Also, don't forget that all the training DVDs *produced* by the Blender Foundation are released under Creative Commons so it's perfectly legal to download them from torrent sites. You'll have to search for those yourself though. [/edit II] |
| ||
| Yan, thanks for the additional info, its appreciated. |
   |