ABGC On Sale

My course A Blender Game Character is on sale at CartoonSmart thru Saturday, $25 (usually $39) #b3d

Bits of Blender #67 - Text Boxes

Did you know you could use text boxes/frames in Blender? John and Richard show you how in this Bit.

 

Bits of Blender #66 - Object Fonts

Do you know how to create your own fonts using Blender objects? This Bit shows you how.

Bits of Blender #65 - Typography

It's the Bits of Blender Christmas edition! In it we show you how to do some typographic tricks using nodes.

Bits of Blender #64 - Scene Linking Revisited

Bits of Blender #63 - Lists in 2.69

Weather won't stop Blenderheads

Seven Blenderheads braved some cold, wet Colorado weather to come out for some hot coffee at the CBUG meeting at the Fika Coffeehouse. Clockwise from the left: Ryan, Ben, Ben, Chris, Richard, and Harrison (with me behind the camera), thanks guys for coming out!

Bits of Blender #39 and #40

My boy, Richard, and I have come out of a long hiatus. We just made two new episodes of Bits of Blender. We're getting back into the swing of things so pardon any rough edges. We're doing some things a little differently, the biggest change is we now publish at at higher resolution. I am also (finally) giving Vimeo a try (I've had an account forever but hadn't taken the time), they look so nice there.

For those of you not familiar with "Bits", it is a set of casual tutorials done by my 10-year old and me. We do them both for fun and to serve as a video reference of many Blender features. We're warming up so we are ready for 2.5. These cover in 2.49b. Enjoy!

Bits of Blender #39 - Environment Maps

YouTube

blip.tv
vimeo


Bits of Blender #40 - Making a Lego Head
YouTube

blip.tv
vimeo

Blender to Acrobat 3D

A co-worked was talking about Acrobat 3d yesterday. It sounded cool so I had to try it!

The first thing I found out was Acrobat imports the Universal 3D (U3D) format. Looking at my export options in Blender, I did not see an option for that. So a quick Google brought me to the open source MeshLab. With MeshLab I was able to export the BLEND to OBJ and then convert U3D. That worked on a simple model (a cube with a UV), but crashed repeatedly when I tried a more complicated model.

Searching further, I found out the free (but not open source) DAZ Studio exported U3D. I use DAZ and I like it. So I brought my OBJ into DAZ (no problem) and exported the U3D. DAZ exported a large file very fast!

Then I went into Acrobat Profession 8, opened a document, went to Tool=>Advanced Editing=>3D Tool. With the 3D Tool, draw a box into which you will import your U3D.

You can see a quick test of the Blender Basics mouse in Acrobat here. I didn't do any tweaking to the lighting or materials after bringing it into DAZ via the OBJ format, it is just a straight import/export with no finessing: Blender=>OBJ=>DAZ=>U3D=>Acrobat.

Settling...

I decided to go ahead an release my two latest Bits of Blender. YouTube is still not accepting FLVs since last week so I rendered these video in a variety of different formats and sizes, trying to get the quality as close to the FLVs as I could. They look okay, but I'm a bit frustrated with YouTube that I have to settle. FLV as the raw format seems to be the nicest quality for screen capture work displayed on YouTube.

I've got threads going in both the Adobe and YouTube forums on the issue, but so far no luck. You'd think Adobe would be a little put out as export to YouTube is one of the selling points of Premiere Elements 4. They certainly have more clout than I.

Broadcast Yourself... but not with FLV

Richard and I have uploaded 29 Bits of Blender. This weekend we did two more and tried to upload them. Using the same preset I've use for all of them, I found that YouTube was giving me an error "Failed (unable to convert video file)". After some trial and error, I found out it was the FLV format that YouTube is choking on. This is the format Adobe Premiere Elements 4 uses to upload to YouTube and what we've used for all our previous Bits. Why it stopped working, I've no clue. But YouTube will not accept a FLV today whether from Premiere or through the browser(I tried it both ways). I exported a WMV from Premiere and then uploaded through the browser and that worked, but is lower quality. I exported a MOV using H.264 at best quality it also worked, but it too was lower quality. I hope YouTube fixes this problem in short order.

BFCT

I received notice today that I am officially a Blender Foundation Certified Trainer (BFCT)! Blender is the number one animation program. It is an honor to be among only seven BFCTs as of this writing (six at that link, my info is not up yet) and the second BFCT in the United States.

Blender is a great program, I enjoy using it professionally and teaching it through my CartoonSmart.com videos as well as the Bits of Blender series I've been doing on YouTube with my son.

If you haven't tried it yet, click on the logo above to go to the website. Blender is free and open source. You can model, texture, rig, animate, light, render all in one package (as well as a game end and video editing). It is a small download and available on Solaris, Window, and Macintosh (to name a few). The requirements for running it are modest and it is an extremely stable program. There is a large, active, user community at BlenderArtists.org. News about Blender-related topics can be found at BlenderNation.com.

Bit o' the Game Engine

Richard and I have launched our 18th Bit for Bits of Blender. This one is a whirlwind introduction to Logic Bricks and the game engine. I've begun teaching him about the game engine as a prepare a course for CartoonSmart.com. He couldn't resist having us show a little on it.

One thing I noticed in the video is that the velocity for one of the objects is faster than the framerate of the capture software. The software was capturing at 15fps, the game engine was running at 60fps, and I'm not sure what the YouTube encoder does to the fps.

Blender Game Engine

As I begin work on my next CartoonSmart.com tutorial, I decided to give my boy (and co-host of Bits of Blender) a first taste of the Blender Game Engine. Even starting with the very basics, he had a blast. Making something from scratch move, applying physics, knocking things down, what fun!

One of the things that is unique about Blender as a 3d modeling/animating/rendering package is that it also includes a game engine. In fact, if you ever accidentally hit the "P" key, you've experienced the game engine. Even more interesting is that there are two ways to program Blender games that work nicely in concert. One way, is visual using what Blender calls "Logic Bricks". The other way is textural, using the Python programming language. Blender has Python built in and even includes a text editor! Funny how I seem to get more excited over that than the game engine, but really I'm excited about both.

The nice thing about the game engine is that it is useful for gaming but can also be useful for animation. How? Blender allows you to record what happens while the game engine is running. It records it onto the IPO curves of the objects.

I've said it before... Blender is deeeeeeeep. There is so much it has in it. And it is stable. And addictive... ;-)

More Bits of Blender

After getting Premiere Elements working again, I added three more Bits of Blender. I also wanted to say "thanks" to Jay Shaffer for coming up with the music intro to BoB!

Bits of Blender launched

I just launched a new YouTube series called Bits of Blender. It is a series of short tips on using Blender. I hope it will be useful as a video reference. It is a little more casual than my CartoonSmart videos and I'm doing them with my boy (who is a 9-year-old Blenderhead). They are short and too the point, I hope to create them on a regular basis to help with documenting Blender's features. Blender's got a bit of a learning curve, so I hope this helps. These videos are like a reference book and my CartoonSmart videos are more like a big tutorial, where you learn as you work on a project. Sometimes you only want/need a snippet of info.

Blender Triology

CartoonSmart.com is offer all three of my Blender videos, over 9 hours of training, as a package-deal for $40! This is a savings of $15. But if you do just need one, check out the 3d page for all the 3d courses at CartoonSmart.com.

Big Buck Bunny!

Big Buck Bunny premiered on the web today AND I got the DVD today as well! The 10-minute short created with Blender turned out great! I'm looking forward to exploring the DVD, which not only has the movie but also has the files used to create the movie. Even more amazing when you think that it was done with open source software that is only 9mb to download. Also cool was seeing my name in the HUGE list of credits for folks who purchased the movie before they started making it, I think our confidence in Blender and Ton's group paid off :)

Something I love about open source

I was just re-reading through the Blender release logs and for version 2.45 (the current one):

The 2.45 is a bugfix release, to stabilize the 2.4x series.
No new feature have been added, but serious effort has been put in tracking bugs and fixing them. Some performance issues have also been addressed.

Years ago, when I was used Director daily, I don't know how many times I read posts crying for a release that just addressed bugs. Skip new features. I guess the business folks at Macromedia (now Adobe) couldn't makes sense of the importance of stability to users. Blender is one of the most stable pieces of software I use. When you're trying to get a job done, stability is paramount.

Blender Basics 2

Blender Basics 2 was released today by CartoonSmart (no foolin')! BB2 is 4 hours (twice as long as Blender Basics!). In BB2 you learn how to:

• Use procedural textures on materials
• Place an image using UV maps
• Use the Screw tool to create corkscrew extrusions (like springs)
• Use multiple textures
• Extrude along 2d and 3d bezier paths
• Lathe using the Spin tool
• Create a basic rig (a skeleton)
• Skin a rig 3 different ways
• Use boolean modifiers on objects
• Use layers
• Use groups
• Append from other files
• Create new screens
  
• and more tips on working with materials, meshes, objects, lights, and rendering

BB2 assumes you are familiar with navigating around the 3d workspace. So it is appropriate for users who have seen Blender Basics!, either the full version or the free version (which is the first 40-minutes of Blender Basics!), or if you are already familiar with some of the basics this video should be fine for you. It is still going through the many features of Blender through the creation of the scene pictured above.

The video high quality, it is compressed using the H.264 codec at Best quality, Millions, 1024x768. The audio is AAC 44.100kHz. The only place to get it (legally) is CartoonSmart.com. Just as we did for Blender Basics!, CartoonSmart.com and I will be donating a percentage of the profits to the Blender Foundation to support further development of Blender.