Halloween Mantis Spooktacular

This turned out pretty nicely, save for some differences between the quality of the photo and the quality of the render. A bit of Photoshopping could fix that right up. As a side note, Blender crashed like five times while I was making this. I guess the repetition of learned tasks that crashes necessitate is good for the learning process in the end. So thank you, Blender. For crashing. Five times.

Yafaray Render

The nicest render I could muster with Yafaray.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Today we learned how to make shadows appear for objects placed on top of photographs. I did this, and it looked swell. I was on top of the world, tweaking lighting effects, working to create the perfect render, when suddenly... tragedy. My world came crashing down, in more ways than one, and all my beautiful work was lost. All that remain are distant memories of shaders and shadow samples, and this sob story. May this tale serve as a warning to all aspiring Blender modelers, or anyone using any software: save what you're working on.

In stead of that, I created a funky blob-like thing and added a material to it.

The Strong Bad

This was made using the mirror modifier. Modeling is complicated!

Texture Adventure

Mystical orb statue thing, or ancient bowling trophy? You decide.

Today I learned about advanced unwrapping, texturing, and bump mapping.

Image Cube

Featuring random images from my personal pictures folder! Texturing is easy. I'm sure all textures are as simple as this cube.

... right?

Array of Light

Today we learned about arrays and light. Artistic! I think I'd like to add more to this later. Let's hope my home computer doesn't take five times as long to render this same image.

Light Saber

Here's my weekend project - a light saber. I thought it was kind of an interesting extension of what we were doing in class. Well, not that much of a stretch, but come on. Who wouldn't want to create a light saber?
I think I enjoy modeling a lot. I'm excited to learn more tools to work with, and to learn more about what makes the program tick, so to speak. Stuff like how to make a light saber glow would be cool.
I added a close up just for good measure. Sans those shadow effects that take oh-so-long to render.

Screwing Around with Blender, Again

I decided to create a better screwdriver over the weekend. The first one wasn't so bad, but I wanted to create one that looked cleaner and more finished. I also added some color to this one, which looks a lot nicer. Where can I get a screwdriver with those colors? Anyway, by adding some more faces at the tip, I was able to give it that flat appearance that screwdriver 1.0 lacked. This one also took a lot less time to make, which is a good sign!

I feel so much more like a professional screwdriver modeler now.

Screwing Around with Blender

First attempt at modeling a screwdriver. I learned about edge loops, extrusion, subdividing faces, the brush selection tool, hiding backfacing, and scaling multiple axises at the same time. Good stuff to know!