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Blender 3D - Free 3D design application


Schot

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Got my hands on this great free open source 3D design application. I've always had a thing for 3d design. Designing in 3D is hugely rewarding and provides horizons that you can't really get in programs like photoshop. I tinkered around with it a while and made this cool blob of textures and colours. I wasn't trying to make anything in particular. Just tried all kinds of stuff and ended up with this. I call it a glass ship flying over kitchen counter, heh. :)

 

Has anyone used Blender 3D or is into 3D design? Check out the Blender 3D gallery. Somce very impressive work has been done with Blender 3D.

 

glassship.jpg

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It's a 3D model and design package. It just so happens ray tracing is a recent addition to Blender 3D. In fact I think I had ray tracing enabled for the pic I rendered above.

Improvements for the Ray tracing system in Blender 3D internal render

 

I won't lie. 3D apps are no easy thing to learn. They really are quite complex. I've played with Maya, 3D Studio, Lightwave and now Blender. All of them are very complex. The most difficult aspect of 3D design that I've found is Materials. Materials in the most basic of definitions are what colour and texturize a model based on choices you make.

 

 

The really great thing that sets Blender apart from the other big bizz apps is that it's free. Free which translates into an immense wealth of tutorials and free assets. Personally I'm planning to build the DarkMatters logo in Blender and see what kind of animations I can come up with. Maybe make a quick DarkMatters/FDM logo intro that can be used on gameplay videos I make. I'd also like to try my hand at designing a humanoid character. :)

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I used blender3d some time ago. there's a ray tracing renderer called yafray that is fully integrated within blender gui. Just download yafray and you can render blender mesh through it. This app is really great, quite hard to get used to, not really intuitive at first, but once you know the basic key bindings, it's really fast.

visit blendernation, and google for blenderart magazine. These sites are really helpful.

 

@Schot : for materials, the hard point, blender really shines with node compositing. It's also a great video editor (believe it or not). Using nodes, you can mix textures on different channels such as normal mapping, alpha, specular, diffuse and so on. If I got time sometimes, I'll probably throw myself once again into 3D modeling.

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So true Nihilith. Those nodes take quite a bit of getting used to but much of the power to "skin" models is in the nodes it seems. For the render I made I used a few different tutorials to help me get into it. The last tutorial was to give the object a glow. I admit that I was expecting there to be a simple button to make it glow, lol. Actually... There is a button for that but the glow quality is terrible. Nodes is the way to glow. I followed the Blender 3D: Glow effect using Composite Node. Great tutorial. I was kinda confused at the start but eventually got it.

I'd love to get some pointers from you Nihilith. :D

 

@nostalgic: Come on nos. Give it a try. :)

 

@Dragon: A fellow tinkerer eh. ^^ Hmmm, explosions eh? Did you happen to have a fave tutorial? I love playing with fire. :D

 

 

 

Here's what I'll be working on. I've been wanting to model this for a long time. Shouldn't be too hard I hope.

 

FDMlogo.gif

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@Dragon: A fellow tinkerer eh. ^^ Hmmm, explosions eh? Did you happen to have a fave tutorial? I love playing with fire. :)

 

FDMlogo.gif

Ok, firstly, nice pic :D You can already do more with blender than I ever learnt...it was something I always wanted to do, but alas never quite had the time/persistence to work within the time I had...one day though!

 

As to fav tutorial...not really, I just googled "blender explosions tutorial" (without the quotes) or something like that. And it helped that I had a friend at high school who was amazing at it. He did so much cool stuff in blender its crazy.

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I used blender many years ago and it wasn't up to the standard of 3dsmax/Lightwave/C4D.

 

I can imagine they'd be a lot more solid now with a committed community.

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You just need a really good tutorial Jaguargal. That always does the trick when I'm learning new software. :)

 

@dreeft: It seems as though Blender has indeed come a long way. Maybe not quite as intuitive as the more developed 3D apps but certainly showing huge promise. Plus the projects I've seen come out of it are pretty darn impressive. You should load up the new one dreeft and see if it's improved a lot for you. I'd be curious to hear from someone who once used it long ago.

 

@Dragon: Ah cheers man. :) We gotta get somthin goin for yah. Must achieve that goal! ^^

 

@Sil: You could do some pretty cool stuff with text Sil. Could be a great way to warm into the software too.

 

 

 

As it is I'm on the hunt for a really cool tutorial that we can try but as yet I haven't found something that excites me. Continuing the search! It would be wicked if we could manage a collaboration in Blender. :)

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The major blender revolution started with version 2.3 as far as I remember. Everything is matter of key-binding and mouse gestures in blender, where other software make you click on a far far away button, you can grab, rotate scale, extrude and so on just by moving the mouse over the model or hitting a key.

E G S are the 3 keys to know first, as you can extrude, grab and scale. What's really nice about other bindings are the constraint. hit G then X and you will only grab around X axis (same for Y and Z and works with extrusion, rotation and scaling) You can also hit N to get numeric inputs for transformation. By the time I tried some mechanical modeling, I turned on the "edge length" options, and each edge is labeled with its length, corners with their angles and so on.

@Schot : to start with the FDM logo, I would lay it down as a background image in the front view (NUMPAD 1) and set a plane (rotate it "RX90" 90° around X axis) over it. Then extrude along the general shape...

 

Here are some screenies to illustrate :

 

bg img

bg.jpg

 

adding plane

add.jpg

 

going to wireframe mode to see through the plane

wf.jpg

 

extruding, rotating & scaling (set back to solid mode to see the raw result)

ext.jpg

 

This is a 2 minutes work... just to show how I'd do it.

then add loop cuts (CTRL-R --> loop cut), to refine the model. Once the shape done, go to side view extrude and play along with it (add subsurf etc...) :P I would only draw the blue part of the logo then extrude it back a little, then inflate it to match the black border. This way you'll have a "stair" shaped border which, once "subsurfed" will look like a rounded inner chamfer

 

 

 


seeing from a side point of view

blue surface
_____
    |
    | 
    |______ black border

will result in

_____
    |
     \  round inner chamfer
       \______

 

Can't really tell if you'll catch my mind lol

 

Last note for today : when modelling, try to keep your faces as quads, as they react really well to subsurf, where triangles sometimes mess up. And the cross edges must always follow the flow of the general shape...

 

Wrong

wrongedges.jpg

 

Right

rightedges.jpg

 

 

 

 

If you want me to make a full try on FDM logo, just ask :paladin: I got quite a few ideas around it already lol

Edited by Nihilith
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@Nihilith: Oh coooool! That's awesome Nihilith. I mean I know you just basically set things up and whatnot but seeing your screenies of the logo in Blender is pretty sweet. Please do experiment with it. I would love to see it in 3D. :D At the moment I'm working the Ice & Blood map. Actually... Working on rebuilding the frame for it along with a pattern created from the FDM logo. Must label everything! ;)

 

I should be finished the map soon and will be jumping right back into this Blender fun. I'll toss out my basic plan for the render. I've been thinking about it for a while and what I'd like to do is give the logo a bit of an rpg/Sacred feel. To do this I'm planning on turning each of the letters into a Sacred related item. So the "F" will be a sword. The "D" will be a half or quarter moon shaped shield and the right half of the "M" will be a wing. Sword on the top, Shield in the middle and Wing on the bottom. Once the models have been created I think a nice morph would be kinda schnazzy. If it were an animation then I see it as going a bit like this... Shield "shimmers" into view or fades in to view. Sword shoots down from above and stops over top of shield. Wing folds out from behind shield. Then all morphs to present day blue logo with a subtle animation around it. Like black smoke or somethin wicked like that. ^^

 

To be honest I was thinking it could be fun to create a lil team for this. Just entertaining thoughts. We could even have someone work on sound if there's any sound designers/tinkerers around. ^^

 

@moo: I couldn't agree more. With what little I've done it is so much fun. :)

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Now that sounds cool. Got any concept art anywhere?

 

Lol... I actually had a go at what Nihilith suggested, even using the logo. I did it a slightly different way, using a bezier curve instead of lots of little pieces resulting in one piece. Then I set it on fire ;) lol I followed another tutorial and gave the 3d logo a burning effect. I'll upload it later cos I'm out today and on my iPhone at the moment. Anyone no of a .avi to .gif converter that's free and doesn't leave a watermark or logo on the final product cos that's all I have. Or a way to have blender animate as a .gif file? Thanks :D

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Now that sounds cool. Got any concept art anywhere?

 

Lol... I actually had a go at what Nihilith suggested, even using the logo. I did it a slightly different way, using a bezier curve instead of lots of little pieces resulting in one piece. Then I set it on fire :) lol I followed another tutorial and gave the 3d logo a burning effect. I'll upload it later cos I'm out today and on my iPhone at the moment. Anyone no of a .avi to .gif converter that's free and doesn't leave a watermark or logo on the final product cos that's all I have. Or a way to have blender animate as a .gif file? Thanks :)

 

You can also go for particles, transforming each vertex of the mesh into a particle emitter. The logo can then spray sparkles all over the screen to then fade to the normal model ang light up... just an idea, among many others... Bezier curves are another approach to modeling, but at last, everything is converted to a mesh made of polygons, so any way is fine. I prefer what's called "box modelling" (extruding from a starting primitive) than bezier curves, but they show really convenient when going for spinning shapes (glasses, bottles but not gears, as an array modifier is much more convenient) or extruding along a path (making a road for example, or a spring).

 

@Schot : I'll give the logo a go asap :lol:

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Well, here is my attempt at some animation of the logo :lol: Didnt do too much experimenting, just trying to get a feel for the way it all works at the moment, this may actually have gotten me interested enough in blender to work with it and learn some cool stuff :) Anyway, my hard work:

 

fdmlogo-1.gif

 

Ok peoples, comments, constructive criticism? Lay it on me. Its all good for learning. If anyone wants I could render a higher quality version. Which im going to do regardless I believe, this one looks too small and the flames are a little whacked...

 

edit: this one is slightly bigger but has a dodgy ad on it from the program I used:

 

fdmlogo.gif

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Well, here is my attempt at some animation of the logo :) Didnt do too much experimenting, just trying to get a feel for the way it all works at the moment, this may actually have gotten me interested enough in blender to work with it and learn some cool stuff :) Anyway, my hard work:

 

fdmlogo-1.gif

 

Ok peoples, comments, constructive criticism? Lay it on me. Its all good for learning. If anyone wants I could render a higher quality version. Which im going to do regardless I believe, this one looks too small and the flames are a little whacked...

 

edit: this one is slightly bigger but has a dodgy ad on it from the program I used:

 

fdmlogo.gif

This looks real nice. Could you please post a full screen static render of the mesh. I'd love to get a snapshot from the blender window with your mesh on also. You should add some scenery :)

 

@Schot : I'm pretty sure you should open a blender 3d sub forum :lol:

 

First raw work on the logo.

 

output.jpg

 

Now that the shape is almost ok, I can work around the scenery

Edited by Nihilith
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What sort of scenery? Well, sure, I can post a screen shot of the mesh and a render...with and without flames too :) I must say that it doesnt look as good as yours, I was still learning how to get it to curve neatly so my mesh has a few pointy bits :D

 

Ok, screen shot of blender window (as you can see, pointy mesh...im working on that):

 

ss.jpg

 

Mesh render, no fire (I tried to get the same sorta colour scheme that schot had in his gif further up...I failed :D):

 

nofire.jpg

 

And render with flames (it really looks much better as an animation, but im gonna try play around with the fire particle colour effects to see if I can get a more realistic still):

 

fire.jpg

 

So yeah, some work needed, but im having alot of fun with this :)

Edited by Dragon Brother
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Oh nice guys! :D Love the animation Dragon and you put it together in such short time. Sweet. ^^ I would in fact love to see a larger version of it. You should really get a Youtube account going and upload those AVI's Dragon. ^^ As for the animation itself it's hard to comment on at that size. Oh! I'm wondering what it would look like if you made the emitter invisible. That could be cool.

As for that concept work you asked about I don't. :/ I really would like to but the hardest part I'm finding is the shield. personally I don't find half/quarter moon shaped shields attractive but it's important to me that the shield be as close in shape to the D shape in the FDM logo as possible. Still working on that one. If I could resolve the shield design then I would have a much easier time completing a complete concept. I do have an idea that might work. A sort of hooked shield. I'll figure something out and draw up a rough draft. :)

 

Love your render Nihilith. I feel like I could reach in and pick it up. It looks so real. :) Seeing the shape as you've put it makes me wonder what a 3D version of FDM should be. It would be simple enough to just allow it to remain as a rounded shape just like you've done. It's exactly how I would have imagined I'd make it as well. But now... I'm wondering what sort of intricate shapes, textures and details could be built onto it. None the less I think it best to keep it simple for now but man my imagination is flying right now, hehe.

 

 

I think you're right about the new section. Granted we have an Animation section already which I completely forgot about. Whoops, hehe. I'll move this topic into that area and if I see that the section is taking off then I'll probably either change it's name to Blender Animation or just add a new section inside called Blender 3D.

 

Now for a bit of a treat. The FDM logo was made using the Pen tool in Photoshop which means I was able to export it as an ai file which I then was able to import into Blender. Which was wiiiicked. ^^ The transition wasn't perfect but I've fixed it up and saved the logo as a flat mesh if anyone wants to join in the fun with an already made shape of the FDM logo. In addition I saved a PNG of the texture I made for the logo as well:

 

Download the FDM logo .blend file

 

161x196px Image

th_FDMtexture161x196px.png

 

512x512px Image

th_FDMtexture500px.png

 

 

Have fun and I hope to catch up to you guys soon! :D

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Ahhh...sweet! That means im not gonna have to remake my model of the logo :D Did you mean you wanted to see it without the logo, just flames? I'll see what I can do :D And I'll look into the youtube account...could be fun.

 

Edit:

 

Ok, here are two videos:

 

 

and the second one I tried to increase the size of the flames of fire above the logo itself...it doesnt look too much different tho :) :

 

 

Enjoy

 

Btw, schot, did you have any sorta idea of what you wanted to the logo to do if animated? Ive been bitten by the blender bug it seems and want to do more stuff :)

Edited by Dragon Brother
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Oh nice guys! :D Love the animation Dragon and you put it together in such short time. Sweet. ^^ I would in fact love to see a larger version of it. You should really get a Youtube account going and upload those AVI's Dragon. ^^ As for the animation itself it's hard to comment on at that size. Oh! I'm wondering what it would look like if you made the emitter invisible. That could be cool.

As for that concept work you asked about I don't. :/ I really would like to but the hardest part I'm finding is the shield. personally I don't find half/quarter moon shaped shields attractive but it's important to me that the shield be as close in shape to the D shape in the FDM logo as possible. Still working on that one. If I could resolve the shield design then I would have a much easier time completing a complete concept. I do have an idea that might work. A sort of hooked shield. I'll figure something out and draw up a rough draft. :)

 

Love your render Nihilith. I feel like I could reach in and pick it up. It looks so real. :) Seeing the shape as you've put it makes me wonder what a 3D version of FDM should be. It would be simple enough to just allow it to remain as a rounded shape just like you've done. It's exactly how I would have imagined I'd make it as well. But now... I'm wondering what sort of intricate shapes, textures and details could be built onto it. None the less I think it best to keep it simple for now but man my imagination is flying right now, hehe.

 

 

I think you're right about the new section. Granted we have an Animation section already which I completely forgot about. Whoops, hehe. I'll move this topic into that area and if I see that the section is taking off then I'll probably either change it's name to Blender Animation or just add a new section inside called Blender 3D.

 

Now for a bit of a treat. The FDM logo was made using the Pen tool in Photoshop which means I was able to export it as an ai file which I then was able to import into Blender. Which was wiiiicked. ^^ The transition wasn't perfect but I've fixed it up and saved the logo as a flat mesh if anyone wants to join in the fun with an already made shape of the FDM logo. In addition I saved a PNG of the texture I made for the logo as well:

 

Download the FDM logo .blend file

 

161x196px Image

th_FDMtexture161x196px.png

 

500x500px Image

th_FDMtexture512px.png

 

 

Have fun and I hope to catch up to you guys soon! :D

 

To get a nice render with the texture, and apply multiple textures on a single mesh, you can work with vertex groups or UV Mapping. By the way, UV maps and textures must be a power of two wide and high (1024*1024 for instance). It would be great if you could provide the first texture in 512*512 for example. This way, after the mesh unfolding, this texture could be applied the inner part of the top surface. Then, I'm pretty sure we can play with the texture coordinates to animate it. To get a render like the one I posted here, it's really simple.

 

For the mesh, I used a blueish material with some specularity and hardness. The plane is light grey with no spec. Then I deleted the default light and added Ambient Occlusion. I played a bit with the mesh size instead of moving the camera to make it fit the screen. settings : 640*480, OSA 16, F12 (render), F3 (save render):)

 

@DB : my mesh is rounded cause I added a subsurf modifier. But there's a lil secret about getting harder corners.

If you only extrude once and apply the subsurf mod, you'll get a really rounded shape (talking about the side of the mesh) I will show you what I mean with screenies.

 

The basic shape and a pointer to subsurf settings

subsurf.jpg

 

The subsurf applied (visually) to the mesh in edit mode

subsurfshown.jpg

 

Extrusion

extruded.jpg

 

Render with subsurf... so awful

subsurf-1.jpg

 

add a loop (CTRL-R in side view, move the mouse till you get the purple line, then click to validate the cut, and place it with the mouse. click again to validate the placement.

 

Step 1 : Adding the loop (CTRL-R, move till the section comes across the side faces, then click)

addingloops.jpg

 

Step 2 : place the loop close to the upper edge and click, repeat the 2 steps for the bottom face.

placingloop.jpg

 

Render with subsurf and loops added.

subsurf-looped.jpg

 

From a mathematical poin of view, simplified to the maximum :

Subsurf rounds the corners. The wider the length between the corner and the next vertex, the longer the radius. By placing a loop close to the corner, this shortens the radius of the "rounding"

 

ROUNDING_THEORY.png

Edited by Schot
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Ahhh...sweet! That means im not gonna have to remake my model of the logo :) Did you mean you wanted to see it without the logo, just flames? I'll see what I can do :) And I'll look into the youtube account...could be fun.

 

Edit:

 

Ok, here are two videos:

 

Enjoy

 

Btw, schot, did you have any sorta idea of what you wanted to the logo to do if animated? Ive been bitten by the blender bug it seems and want to do more stuff :)

 

 

Nice! That's a pretty cool effect Dragon. Looks like you do indeed have the blender bug. Which I was hoping would happen, hehe. :) I'm loving every moment of playing with Blender as well.

 

Hmmm, animated logo idea you say? How about keeping it kinda sorta simple. A short logo animation of the FDM model could be cool. We could say that the goal of the project would be an animated intro to add in front of gameplay videos that the community could download for use. As for something more specific I made a draft animation for inspiration. I've always liked the "flying towards camera" effect but feel free to do whatever comes to mind. Tinker and play. :D Something that might help with the video uploads to Youtube is if you were to set your render output to a resolution of 640x480. Your videos will look much sharper. :)

 

I'd suggest you start a new topic for your work Dragon. :drunkards:

 

 

 

@Nihilith:

 

As always excellent instruction Nihilith. :drinks: Your model looks so nice and clean. Sadly mine is kinda beat up. The import of my Photoshop Vector to Blender didn't go quite so well as I had hoped. As soon as I turned it into a mesh it created all kinds of unnecessary vertices. I spent quite a lot of time cleaning it up but next time I'm definitely going to do it your way. :D

 

Here's a 512x512 texture.

 

 

Back to the drawing board. I think I need to remake my model...

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wow really nice work guys. Im getting an urge to use this program again. I just needed some motivation and I found it! I saw a cool tutorial on a robot, Im gonna give it a shot.

 

Ive been getting an error, any one know how to get rid of it? I can still run blender, but I want to make sure its running 100%.

 

blender.th.png

Edited by moo_moo45
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