month into blender, i want some EPIC guidence

[shoehorn5]

first off, some of my stuff

0001.png

please look at the attatchment, and please watch my youtube video in which the majority of my stuff is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZlb-Ux-8NQ

and, for kicks, this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GegdH0FKdtI


what i want to know is, what steps do you guys generally take when figuring out how to model something. like, what is the "x" in the sequence: see pictures of epic thing, x, start to model epic thing.

i generally start with a cube for all furniture, and a multires thingy for single heads.

also, are their any good tuts on beginning lighting around?



and realise that i've been at it for a bit more than a month in time, but with high school and other computer projects going on, it is more like a week



if you read that, you are a hero, i am a TERRIBLE writer.

[Nixon]

hey there welcome to the forums:)
flashy music on the vid hehe...for 1 months into blender thats very good and lots of stuff in

regarding your questions..
when i start an object i try to figure if its symetrical on any or more than 1 axis, if so i usually model with mirror modifier on...if so i delete half of my starting form...like for buildings usually a cube,
circles are great for startin too with a lil tweaking the verts of a circle can form lots of great geometry for extrusions,
some objects can be easily modeled using a curve and a circle as the rotation object...lots of things like bottles, doorknobs or chess figures are often rotation objects wich can be defined just with a curve and a circle wich has the curve as the bevel object,
multires i use for sculpting mainly as far as heads go i followed tutorials and the proposal in them is usually to go poly by poly to keep good control of all the edgeloops and the topology in general....

regarding the lighting tuts i leave it to the others to point to some..the only i could think of was the 3point light rig by jonathan williamson on blendercookie.com and one on the usage of indirect lighting with the new features of 2.5'S approximate ambient occlusion (works with aao only so far)

anyhow have fun blendering and cya round the forums

[shoehorn5]

thank you!

[Nixon]

you are welcome its a pleasure to share my findings
theres some lil thing that came to my mind ...before using things like multires or subsurf modifier try to block out the basic shape of things before u go and crank up the geometry...with a proper simple mesh as the base for the subsurf or multires it will be much easier to get the shapes right and it will be easier later on to go from the intial primitive to the complex mesh u desire for your type of object,
anyhow check out the some of the tutorial sites around the net they offer a huge ammount of knowledge on blender
like:
blendercookie.com (my king of blenderutuorial sites since it has the best instructors around Kernon Dillon, Jonathan Williamson, David Ward..also lots of freebies and cool interviews)
CGTUTS+ (a huge site with awesome sister sites like, nettuts+, vectortuts+, psdtuts+ and so on)
CG Guerilla (for 3d and animation basics..not restricted to blender but general information on 3d modelling)
blenderUnderground.com (has lots of great tuts aswell)

these are just a few but theres lots of more around however these are packed with stuff for months i think:D

[shoehorn5]

WOAAAH!! i know what i'm doing for a couple months!! tutorials galore!


and that is some good advice. i generally just started with a cube, and it took forever to get to a starting point where i could add details. *and there was zero topology in the end product.

also: random note to self: 249 res fluid sim + dual core processor =

slowpoke-pokemon[1].gif

[Nixon]

haha...yeah fluid sim take ages...faking stuff can save lots of time..however real fluids i guess are hard to fake:D

[shoehorn5]

i love seeing them though, i'm a huge geek xD

[shoehorn5]

i'd imagine the ease of using an animated material or texture on a cylinder for a glass in a scene where it isn't the main focus, or isn't being spilled.

[Nixon]

animated texture is a good i dea i think in case it isnt the main focus as u said...
maybe particle sys could do some fluids too...I'm not very good on fx yet so i have to guess alot

[zyzzy]

Hey Shoehorn5,

Great looking work you've done so far. Incredible for only a month!!

I enjoy playing around with the physics stuff too.

You should check out the "Bounce, Tumble, Splash" book by Tony Mullen if you haven't already. It's all about Blender's physics simulations, and faking too.

at the e-shop: http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/product ... cts_id=107

radialronnie, from this forum, is selling his too: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3394

also, welcome to BlenderNewbies.

[Unhurdof]

Welcome to the forums !!! xD


You've got some great stuff for blending for such a short time. I'm sure it's a sign that there's more great things to come!

If you want some really epic advice, here's my 2 cents...

1. Have fun because cgi is too awesome to be uptight about it!
2. Be patient with your own learning process, because as they say "Rome wasn't built in a day"
3. Even if you don't follow along, watch and read as many tutorials as possible because you will learn much by watching other artists' technical and creative processes
4. Don't attempt anything too ambitious too quickly because the more familiar you are with Blender, the more successful and fun your final result will be
5. And, have fun, for reasons previously stated! lawl



Again, welcome to the forums and good luck with your future endeavors!

PS, I'd really like to see you take a shot at modeling that slowpoke-pokemon! Seems like it'd be fun.