Bits of Blender #72 - A REAL 3-button Mouse

With Blender I use a trackpad, Wacom, and a Huion tablet monitor, but I’ve always wanted a good ol’ fashioned 3-button mouse, and I finally found one! This is not a paid endorsement, just news of a cool mouse I found to use with Blender 🤠 You can get the Elecom mouse here: https://www.amazon.com/ELECOM-Japan-Brand-BlueLED-Symmetrical-M-CAD01UBBK/dp/B07W5CXW6M

New Logo and New Bit!

Blender can be a challenge to learn at first, but its key commands are instantly addictive. I started using Adobe Illustrator with version 1.1 in 1987, but when I discovered Blender 2.37a in 2005, its shortcuts like G, S, R, X, and E quickly overtook 18 years of Illustrator muscle memory. I even caught myself trying to use them in the venerable vector tool! 

So for the new Bits of Blender logo (my series of quick tips and tutorials for the Blender community), I turned to Blender itself. I began with thumbnails using the Grease Pencil. For the final artwork, I switched to Blender’s Curve object using version 4.4. 

The Curve edit mode’s Pen tool, introduced a few years ago, should feel familiar to anyone who’s used vector drawing tools like Illustrator. The circular design features text wrapped around the outside of a bezier circle and the inside of another. Getting the text to align inside the circle had me stuck for a moment. I realized it was a matter of scaling the circle on the negative Y axis, which is not something you'd do in Illustrator! 

I created a one-minute Bit tutorial to share the solution. Let me know what you think of the new logo, and/or share your own tips for working with Blender’s Curve tools!

I did thumbnails using the Grease Pencil. Here's an example of the one I picked to move forward with.

It is always good to design in black and white first. This is just a step from being final, I decided I preferred the text in the circle to be all caps.

Final art, animated.

The logo mentions the year we started, has two sillouettes of the Blender Monkey object to represent me and Richard. The "o" is a nod to the 3D cursor pioneered by Blender. And of course it has a 0 and 1 to represent the computer "bit", which we use as a play on words for our series (a "bit" as in "a brief performance").

A Tour of Blender (and Bits of Blender turns 17)

Seventeen years ago, Bits of Blender launched on YouTube, back when videos were 320x240 and could not exceed 10 minutes. That was long enough for me and my 9-year-old son, Richard, to share quick Blender tips.

Blender 2.4x had a reputation for being challenging, but we thought a 9-year-old using it might inspire others to get over that initial hump in learning it.

For our anniversary, we’re dropping a special Bit... a 45-minute guided tour of Blender 4.4 as we build an animation from scratch, visiting each of the workspaces.

Watch now and share your comments on the video or memories of our old Bits! #blender #blender3d

Side note, this 45-minute episode about Blender was also edited in Blender with its Video Sequence Editor (VSE)!

Distribute Grease Pencil Strokes

I’m happy to share my first Blender Add-On! I couldn’t find a tool to evenly distribute grease pencil strokes in Blender or existing Add-Ons, so I built one myself. It’s simple but gets the job done! Check it out and let me know your thoughts.

#blender #blender3d

https://github.com/johnrnyquist/distribute_grease_pencil_strokes

Handling Gesture Recognizers and TouchesBegan in SpriteKit

Are you working on a SpriteKit game and trying to use both gesture recognizers and touchesBegan? I spent more time than I expected figuring this out. After asking AIs and not getting clear answers, I ended up checking the friendly manual myself.

Thought I’d write a quick blog post about it—maybe it’ll help someone else searching for this later.

The issue is that touchesBegan happens before the gesture recognizer. There’s an easy fix: set delaysTouchesBegan to true. Here’s an example:

override func didMove(to view: SKView) {
        let panGestureRecognizer = UIPanGestureRecognizer(target: self, action: #selector(handlePanFrom))
        panGestureRecognizer.delegate = self
        panGestureRecognizer.delaysTouchesBegan = true
        self.view!.addGestureRecognizer(panGestureRecognizer)
} 

Why was it tricky to find? I think it’s because SpriteKit doesn’t get much attention these days, so there’s not a lot of discussion about it online. Hopefully this saves you some time!

Swashteroids 2.6

Version 2.6 has a lot of new features:

• New Phasing power-up! Temporarily nothing can touch you!
• New Xray power-up! See what treasures are in which asteroids!
• New button to trigger shields, enable them in your own time (or not).
• Improved the TRAINING section.
• Now using Apple SpriteKit’s physics engine to detect collisions.

Since my last Swashteroids blog post in Dec 2023, I've released many updates!

Version 2.6
Version 2.5
Version 2.4.2
Version 2.4.1
Version 2.4
Version 2.3
Version 2.2
Version 2.1.2
Version 2.1.1
Version 2.1
Version 2.0.1

Here's a video showing all the new power-ups (note: this is level 5)

Swasteroids 2.0

I’ve released Swashteroids 2.0 to the App Store! A fun retro open-source game built on my open-source ECS framework Swash. 

All new user-interface and art. Play with or without buttons! Plasma torpedoes and hyperspace are now both power-ups, and they're moving! Game play mechanics have been tweaked, ie asteroids' base speeds increase per level. The game starts easier as well so you can warm up.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/swashteroids/id6472061502