Tuesday, September 28, 2010

The Pure Perl RayCaster
Pure Perl RayCaster can load a 3D object from a file (RAW format), display the object in wireframe perspective view, allow you to orbit and zoom your camera and produce a user defined sized ray casting image of the current wireframe view in a predefined color theme with or without smooth shading.

Good modeling and texturing package for the game modelers.

BlenderPocket
BlenderPocket is a port of the famous Open Source 3D creation solution "Blender" dedicated for mobile devices (Phones, PDA, ...) having a touch screen, small amount of memory (RAM), a low speed processor (with no floating point unit) and no graphic unit (no hardware acceleration). BlenderPocket is working today on all mobile devices with Windows Mobile 2003 or newer but it should be "easy" to make it work on any other devices...

Ayam
Ayam is a free 3D modelling environment for the RenderMan interface, distributed under the BSD licence. This means that neither the author nor any contributors make money out of this software.

Anim8or
Another program that can be used for modeling, texturing and animating your meshes.

Seamless3d
3D-modeling and animating software for the dudes who wanna make quality content for their web sites.

OpenFX
OpenFX is an Open-Source 3D modeling, animation and rendering suite with a powerful feature-set includes a full renderer and raytrace engine, NURBS support, kinematics-based animation, morphing, and an extensive plugin API.

3dCavans
Real time 3d modeling and animation tool with an intuitive drag and drop approach at modeling.
Modeling tools as deform, sculpt, and texture painting.

GDesign 2.0
2d / 3d cool application for windows.

TrueSpace

Fully featured 3D package that lets you to model, light, texture, animate and render

your 3D content.

Wings3d

Subdivision modeler that also lets you to texture the static objects. No animation tools included.

Nimbus Basic edition
Create amazing 3D scenes in less time with Nimbus software.

Make Human

An easy way to make fastly but at the same time realistic human body mesh in 3d.

Dele D

3D modeling and level designing editor that is focused at the game industry. Specifically good for static objects. Easy to learn user interface.

FreeForm
Fast organic modeling tool

EQUINOX-3D
The 3D modeler with the fastest, fully integrated ray-tracer.
No windows version awailable.

My3DEngine
My3DEngine is a simple application for creating, editing and viewing 3D objects.

3D icon editor
RealWorld Icon Editor is a complete solution for icons and does not depend on other software to create icons with professional look and feel.

Terrain view lite
TerrainView-Lite is a Virtual Reality-based 3D GIS software solution which facilitates the interactive visualization of high-resolution 3D terrain and model data.

Draw3D
Draw3D is a freeware 3D modeller, for creating or modifying 3D objects using a mesh of 3D points.

Innovation3D
Innovation3D is a 3D modeling program for Linux. It's primarily a mesh based modeler with preliminary support for NURBS.

Ztools
We are the developer of 3d modeling and animation packages - like those used for special effects and movies today. There is one drawback, however, these tools can cost up to ,000. So what happens if you are bored one day and decide to make the next Shrek? Well here is where we come in, our tools are completely free, but just as good as the ones pros use. So it can't hurt to download our programs...

Gmax

Based on the very popular 3D studio max. Modeling tool for the game developers.

3DS Max 6.0 (Discreet)
Commercial link.

SmoothTeddy
SmoothTeddy is a simple 3D sketch-based modeling and painting software application. You can make rotund 3D models such as teddy bears quickly, and paint them in an integrated environment.

Pictomod3D
Hi-Speed Mesh Creation using Photographs!
3D Scanning Software, Model from Images.

Moray
An interactive shareware wireframe modeller for the PC platform, supporting POV-Ray 3.5.

4D Blue

Even 4D blue is under developement it sill is one of the good choices for modeling, animating and photorealistic rendering.

Terragen

Terragen 2 is a powerful solution for rendering and animating realistic natural environments.

CB Model Pro

Another nice sculpting tool like sculptris.

Tree generators

Dryad
Dryad lets you intuitively create beautiful trees for your virtual world or game.

Ivy Generator
Really good tree and plant generator. Must check!

tree[d]
The tree generator

Plant studio
PlantStudio Botanical Illustration Software is a tool for creating 3D plant models and 2D illustrations. PlantStudio simulates herbaceous (non-woody) plants like wildflowers and cut flowers, vegetables, weeds, grasses, and herbs using a parameter-driven simulation of plant growth and structure.

ngPlant
ngPlant is a plant modeling software suite. Designers can use interactive tool to create 3D models of different plants and trees. Software developers can use 3D API-independent library to use generated plant models in their 3D applications, or to create plant modeling plugins for different 3D modeling tools.

Virtual Bonsai
Virtual Bonsai allows you to grow virtual bonsai trees from the comfort of your personal computer.

Virtual Gardening
allows you to design your own personal virtual garden in stunning 3D graphics and then to simulate the growth of the trees in your garden with the passing of time.

Arbaro
Arbaro is an implementation of the tree generating algorithm described in Jason Weber & Joseph Penn: "Creation and Rendering of Realistic Trees".

OpenAlea
OpenAlea is an open source project primarily aimed at the plant research community. It is a distributed collaborative effort to develop Python libraries and tools that address the needs of current and future works in Plant Architecture modeling. OpenAlea includes modules to analyse, visualize and model the functioning and growth of plant architecture.

CanTree
2D tree generator. Easy and fast to use, but the results are sometimes amusing.

Texture and normal map tools

MaPZone

Amazing material genarating tool.

Nvidia melody

NVIDIA Melody creates high quality normal maps that make a low-poly model look like a high-poly model.

Xnormal

xNormal is an application to generate normal / ambient occlusion / displacement maps. It can also project the texture of the highpoly model into the lowpoly mesh ( complete texture transfer, even with different topologies

Light Map Maker

Light Map Maker is a power software tool that helps you to create compelling lighting effects.

AMD GPU MeshMapper

GPU MeshMapper re-invents the process of generating maps (including normal, displacement, and ambient occlusion maps) for a low-resolution mesh based on the details from a high-resolution mesh.

Animation

Daz studio

DAZ Studio is a free, feature rich 3D figure design and 3D animation tool that enables anyone to create stunning digital imagery. Easy to use.

Figures, Characters and Avatars: The Official Guide to Using DAZ Studio to Create Beautiful Art
Commercial link

fragMOTION

powerful 3D modeler used for the creation and animation of characters. fragMOTION is intuitive and easy to use and contains many features that are only found in top of the line modelers. And if that's not enough for you, the event driven scripting system makes it a breeze for you to add your own features.

Miscellaneous

3D Object Converter

This program supports 586 different 3d-formats. If you can't convert it with this, then maybe you can't convert it.

DrQueue
DrQueue is a powerful open source distributed render farm manager, used for a range of applications across the visual effects industry and for general batch processing jobs in science, engineering and finance. DrQueue is licensed under GNU GPL Version 3.

OpenEXR
OpenEXR is a high dynamic-range (HDR) image file format developed by Industrial Light & Magic for use in computer imaging applications.
OpenEXR is used by ILM on all motion pictures currently in production. The first movies to employ OpenEXR were Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone, Men in Black II, Gangs of New York, and Signs. Since then, OpenEXR has become ILM's main image file format.

Pulldownit
is a brand new dynamics solver which allows for the creation of fractures as well as massive rigid bodies simulations. By using its technology digital artists are able to simulate fast and easily scenes made of thousands of objects and collapse buildings, bridges or any kind of brittle material.

Voodoo
Camera tracking program

Icarus
Camera tracking program

Sweet homeSweet Home 3D is a free interior design application that helps you place your furniture on a house 2D plan, with a 3D preview.

PoseRay

PoseRay is an utility to convert 3D model meshes into POV-Ray scenes, Moray UDO files or Kerkythea meshes.
PoseRay can also edit the materials and act as a simple transformation tool for the geometry. PoseRay can also export the modified model to wavefront (OBJ) format for use in other 3D programs.

GLC-player
GLC_Player is an Open Source software used to view 3d models (COLLADA 3DXML OBJ 3DS STL OFF COFF Format) and to navigate easily in these models. With the album management, capture and multi-capture capabilities

Fractal tools

Fractint
Fractint is a freeware fractal generator created for IBMPC's and compatible computers. It is the most versatile and extensive fractal program available for any price.

Mandelbulber
Really amazing 3d fractals can be animated with this program.

Apophysis
Apophysis is a cool freeware fractal flame editor for windows.

Chaoscope
Chaoscope is a freeware 3D strange attractors rendering software for windows operating system.

Video tools

Wax
Wax is a high performance and flexible video compositing and special effects software. The idea for Wax is to be very general purpose and flexible in video compositing and effects, so that you can compose your dream video sequence with ease everytime.

Zwei-Stein
Zwei-Stein 3.01 is a freeware non-linear, non-destructive video compositing and editing system which offers many advanced features unavailable elsewhere.

ZS4
ZS4 Video Editor can be used like an object oriented photo-manipulation program with a timeline: things that can be manipulated in a photo (workshop) program can be manipulated in ZS4 using parameters which alter over time.

Virtualdub
VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows platforms (98/ME/NT4/2000/XP/Vista/7), licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video.

AVIedit
It is a great tool to work with .AVI files. Regardless of small executable size, this avi editor offers you unlimited power of digital video processing. Some high-tech tricks included into AVIedit allows you to perform with ease and fun the many interesting things, like video warping, color restore, noise reduction and so on...

Avidemux
Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks.

DDClip free
Free version of DDClip pro

Open movie editor
Open Movie Editor is a free and open source video editing program, designed for basic movie making capabilities. It aims to be powerful enough for the amateur movie artist, yet easy to use.

2d tools

Alchemy
Alchemy is an open drawing project aimed at exploring how we can sketch, draw, and create on computers in new ways. Alchemy isn’t software for creating finished artwork, but rather a sketching environment that focuses on the absolute initial stage of the creation process.

Greenshot
Greenshot is a light-weight screenshot software tool for Windows with the following key features:

Create complete or partial screenshots quickly. Easily annotate, highlight or obfuscate parts of the screenshot. Send the screenshot to a file, the clipboard, a printer or as e-mail attachment.

MyPaint
MyPaint is a fast and easy open-source graphics application for digital painters. It lets you focus on the art instead of the program. You work on your canvas with minimum distractions, bringing up the interface only when you need it.

DraftSight
Free CAD software* available for Windows®, Mac® and Linux®**. A new 2D CAD product that provides professional CAD users, students and educators with a better way to create, edit and view DWG files.

Heekscad
Heekscad is a free open source CAD program.

Aviary
Package of eight free online based applications. Package contains: Image editor, screen capturing tool, that helps you to take full screenshots from the web pages, vector editor, image markup, effects editor, color swatch editor, music creator and audio editor.
Jcad
2d easy to use cad tool.

Qcad
QCAD is an application for computer aided drafting in two dimensions (2d). With QCAD you can create technical drawings such as plans for buildings, interiors, mechanical parts or schemas and diagrams.

How to Draw What You See (Practical Art Books)
Commercial link

Harry Storbacka's Digital Artist
Program that helps you to draw in correct perspective your drawings.

Gimp
If you dont know Gimp, you have a life, or you must get a life. I don't know which one is better. Gimp is good open source 2d photo retouching and manipulation tool.

Scetch-paint
Cool online drawing program

Inkscape

Inkscape is a vector drawing tool. And a really good one.

Pixlr
Online Photo editor

Muro
Another web-based drawing tool

PaintNET
Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows.

Sumo paint
Its like photoshop, but you can use it with your internet browser.

Harmony
Innovative online html5 sketching program.

Image analyzer
Photo analyzing and editing program with some really serious features. Like
Deconvolution for out-of-focus and motion blur compensation

Rendering

Kerkythea rendering system
Kerkythea is a standalone renderer, using physically accurate materials and lights, aiming for the best quality rendering in the most efficient timeframe. The target of Kerkythea is to simplify the task of quality rendering by providing the necessary tools to automate scene setup, such as staging using the GL real-time viewer, material editor, general/render settings editors, etc., under a common interface.

Freestyle
Freestyle is a software for Non-Photorealistic Line Drawing rendering from 3D scenes.

SunFlow
Sunflow is an open source rendering system for photo-realistic image synthesis. It is written in Java and built around a flexible ray tracing core and an extensible object-oriented design.

3Delight
3Delight is a fast, high quality, RenderMan®-compliant renderer designed to produce photo-realistic images in demanding production environments. The renderer was introduced to the public in the year 2000 after being used for more than a year as the sole renderer in a sister production company. It is now widely used and earning a reputation as a benchmark in rendering technology.

Virtual Light
new, free rendering tool. It supports radiosity, caustics and sky sphere lighting. It is a "global illumination renderer".

Aqsis Renderer
Open source 3D rendering solution adhering to the RenderMan standard

POV-ray
high-quality, totally free tool for creating stunning three-dimensional graphics.

Yasrt
YASRT is a stochastic raytracer. It stands for Yet Another Simple RayTracer.

Yafaray
free open-source raytracing engine. Raytracing is a rendering technique for generating realistic images by tracing the path of light through a 3D scene

LuxRender
LuxRender is a physically based and unbiased rendering engine. Based on state of the art algorithms, LuxRender simulates the flow of light according to physical equations, thus producing realistic images of photographic quality.

RenderPark
RenderPark is a test-bed system for physically based photo-realistic image synthesis. It's a free software package providing a solid implementation of a wide variety of state-of-the-art ray-tracing and radiosity algorithms.

Plugins

Suicidator city generator

With it, you can automatically create entire, three-dimensional modern cities in a matter of seconds by adjusting various parameters, such as city size and complexity, rather than creating each building, each street, and each texture manually.

Blender plugins
Huge collection of python scripts.

List of Blender importers/exporters

Here is nice collection of blender importer / exporter blugins.

Warp Plugin

A sequence plugin to create a 'warped air' effect. Very useful for things like The Matrix style bullet trails or heat waves.

Pixelize plugin A sequence plugin to pixelize the image. You can control both pixel width and height. Pixel size can also be animated.

Cloud generator

This script could make realistic fake volumetric clouds.

Random level generator

The script that could make randomly huge dungeon levels.

The mushroom generator

Generate mushrooms.

Simcloth
Plugin for max that could simulate cloths.

Tutorials

Tutorialized

Great collection of tutorials about nearly everything.

Good-tutorials

Another nice collection.

Blender.org tutorials

Check it out.

CG tuts

Tutorials for various 3d-programs.

Weather tutorials for Blender

rain, snow, lighting, buddles, heat distortion

Architectural tutorials

High rise building and kitchen.

Blendercookie

Big collection of Blender tutorials.

MiikaHweb

Few really good tutorials.

Video copilot

Really good after effects tutorials. Actually I hope that all of the video tutorials would be like their. So check it out.

Creative Cow

Tutorials for video software

CGtutorials

Tutorials for various 3d programs.

Blender Guru

Some really nice ones for blender.

Blenderartists
The users can themself write and add the tutorials to this huge blender community forum.

Comment: If you know some of programs or tutorials that are not listed on here and you think that they should be, then please just tell me and I will add them.

Or if you dont somehow like that your program is in this list, you can ask me to remove it and i will do it as fast I can.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

3d - game stuff

I have been little busy for doing the game sprites for my friend who is programmer. Actually he is gradulating soon and this is why I am making some pictures for him.

He is doing as his thesis a 2d robotic game where you can program the robot for fighting against of the other player made robots. I will not speak about this idea more yet / in this post, but I'll show some stuff I have modeled and rendered for him.

These renders are not game sprites, but the models are real that can be used in the game by rendered from the different angle.

Maybe its better that i am not even trying to explain what all of these stuff are. You can use your

imagination for this. :)

The models will probably be better in the final version of the game. This is just art for him, so he can test his game engine.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Photography - Mushroom day

When you have wasted about 3 hours trying to realise about some annoying problem with your 3d program it may be better that you just save your project, close the computer and take your camera. Then just go out to the forest.

In the forest you're probably thinking that which kind of render settings did God used to make everything so realistic. but after few minutes you see it: It is realistic because everything is real!

That is just the beginning, soon you can lose from your mind all the modifiers and world settings and just keep saving the stuff into the memory card of your camera.

Most of the pictures is taken with my nikkor 70-300 4.5-5.6 VR lens except the last one that is made with tamron 17-50 2.8 lens. Camera body was nikon d80.

In the deepest forest there is something that you cant eat...

You cant say that the mushroom is a plant, because it isn't.
But at he same time it is not actually neither an animal.

There is probably thousands of the different kind of mushrooms
in the forests of Finland...

They are growing out of the trees and trought of the moss bottom...

Behind of all of this is something ununderstable, how can that small and weak
creature be at the same time so strong?

But still: Most of the varieties are deathly poisoned. So be careful!

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

3d - Short animation scene "Death soldier" part II

Part I

Maybe someone would be intrested about what is happend with the "death soldier" scene. Yeah almost nothing, but I have done other things. I don't have any kind of deathline with the scene so I don't wanna kill myself for doing it 24/7.

If i had deathline or someone pays me for doing this, then the situation would be really different. Maybe the scene would be already done.

Or am I just my trying to write for a guilty of my consience? The small red man on my shoulder screams, "You don't have done your works, you're just only played in Playray and wasted your time with your friends." Then the white man on the other shoulder tells me how to survive: "Just write to your blog that you have had other works to do, but you're doing your best for this, just mercy yourself." The last blog message ended to the scull. Now the scull is already completed. I did add a textures for it and I think that it looks actually a pretty cool. 1.1


1.1

Its not of course perfect. If i wanna make something perfect, I am sure that I will do it then until my own head looks perfectly the same that the one in the picture 1.1.

About the texture. Its not human scull texture. Everyone can see it. I just generated it fastly with photoshop. Just something where is little bit color and some pattern. Thats enought for this scull because in my mind i will not show this in the completed animation so much, its just part of the propertiers. (If i dont change my mind.. That would happen also with this animation.)

If there is some intrested people, i would do a tutorial about how to generate with photoshop fastly
almost realistic rocky textures.

Next project with this animation is of course to add this scull to the scene and complete all of the vines.

I will not do it today. So i hope that you'll come back for reading the part III until its here.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Tutorial 3d - How to create 3d Ubuntu logo with blender.

First at all: I am not an Ubuntu user, actually I do use Windows 7, and I don't have so good experiences with Linux, but still I respect it somehow more than the system I am actually using.

It's like computer Robin Hood in the computer worlds, who will fight against the big multinational companies. And everything they do, they do for free. It's something that anyone must respect I think.

That was enough of rubbish at this time, so let's get started with the Blender.

If you don't know what blender is, or you don't have it, you must first install it. I will not concentrate in this article about installing things, but you will find everything you need from here: http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/

Help with installing Blender in Windows operating system: tutorial

Just remember to remember, that I am using Blender 2.54 beta version. It means that the version is not actually yet finished and there would be some bugs... But I like it more than 2.49.

1.0 Download this picture to your computer.
You can of course do everything with your own
logo but dont fail with it!

Now open Blender. You will see the screen where is a big cube center of the everything. Press MMB (middle mouse button.) and move your mouse. You will see that it effects to the view and you can watch the cube around. Learn to use that first, because if you don't see what you're doing, you actually can't do anything... Also if you use the MMB wheel, you can zoom and unzoom your project.
Press Shift and MMB at the same time and you can
"scroll" the project. This is all you need to know at this time about how to view your the project.

But you can also use "flying mode". Just press "SHIFT + F"

"Numbad 1" is Front view, "3" is side view and "7" top view. With "numbad 0" you will get view trough the camera. While pressing "CTRL" button at the same time when choosing some view youll get opposite view. Like if you wanna go in the back view, then press "CTRL" and "Numbad 1" at the same time.

With "Numbad 5" you can switch between perspective and orthographic modes.

You can select things by clicking RMB (right mouse button.)

You can also select everything clicking letter "A" or unselect everything by clicking it again.

Now select the cube and press letter "X".
You'll see the pop up that asks something like "do you really really wanna delete this thing?" You can also use key "Delete". The pop up goes straight to where your mouse cursor is, so you just only need to click it with LMB (left mouse button.) and the cube "dies".
You can undo this your horrible cube murder by clickin'
"CTRL + Z".

If you did that undo thing, you must kill him again... You know, "Violators will be shot, survivors will be shot again."

1.1 Add an image.

("CTRL + SHIFT + Z" is redo but you can also delete it manually again.)

Now press "N" and you'll see how the new menu pop ups or hides if you press it twice. You can press the key "N" as many time you want to, but make sure that the menu is visible because we'll need it now.

Then press print scree.. Ahh, no! It was my job, sry guys... So here is the picture for you sir. (1.1)

Now you must add that image of the Ubuntu logo which we downloaded few hours (or days) ago at the time when we started this tutorial... Probably (I hope) you can do it without my help, just make sure that the N-Menu looks like the same as mine when you're Done.

But where is the image then? Yeah, you can't see it in the background because you're on perspective view mode. In your keyboard, there is a button called "numlock". Now you must make sure, that that the "numlock" is on. Then press the button "5" in your "numbad".

If youre using laptop... Yeah, there is not numbad, so you must use some different way that I dont know, but here is a tutorial about it. (For everything is tutorial..)

You'll see, that the perspective of your view disappears. Now everything looks like in the same size, no matter how far away they are from the camera.

This is my scetch about perspective and ortographic pictures, I'll hope it helps you understanding the difference.

Then press button "7" from your numbad. Its the top view. Now you see the background image, in the 3d-view.

As you can see, I did hide the N-menu. (1.2) We don't need it anymore. Ever. Or only in this tutorial we don't need it. Actually its some very important menu, so just try to remember how it hides and comes back. "N" button!

(Now, if you're like me, you're then touched every button in the whole program and tested all of the settings you could find. And you're in some submenu that you have not ever seen and I have not told about it. If this is true in your situation it's maybe better that you start everything from the beginning again. Only in this kind of situations go to the menu (left up corner) and press "New" or just press "CRTL + N" You can everytime come back to this and start over again!.)

SHIFT + C". This centers the 3d-cursor. That thing which looks like sniper rifle sight.

1.2

1.3 extruding verticles

Now press "SHIFT + A". -> Mesh -> cube. The cube is back!

(I just wanted to make sure that you will understand the great possibilities of delete...)

Select Mr Cube and press "TAB

verticle called little square.

Press "A" and unselect all of them, then select every one except one in the corner. Then press "X" or "delete" and choose "verticlenumbadverticle

1.4 Create faces by selecting two opposite edges and
pressing "F".

Press button "G" to move that verticle. If you like to move it, move it. Just get it into some the corners of the logo. Then press "E". The feature is called "extrude and you see that the another verticle growed up from that another.You can move the other verticle where ever you want to. Extrude it again and make that your thing is looking like mine in the picture 1.3

Then select both of the last points of your line and press "F".
It makes another edge between the last and first verticles.

Now, change to the edge selection mode by pressing "CTRL + TAB".
It opens another popup and your mission is to click the "edge".

Now click the two edges that are opposite each other and press "F" It will make face in that space that is between of the two selected edges.

Continue for doing the faces until your work looks like mine in the picture 1.4.

1.5

Now switch back to the verticle mode. Then press "CTRL + R". Don't click yet anything, just move the mouse around and you'll see that every time when you touch some edge you'll see a pink line.

All the time save your project. You can also save it with different names if you want so you have duplicates and if something goes wrong with the file, you have still other files.

Next time when you're eating something and you don't feel like "save the project" when you have eaten enough - you have not saved your project enough. ;)

Set the line to some place and then press "LMB". Then press "MMB". The "LMB" sets the edge visible and "MMB" sets it to be in the center of the nearby edges. Now you have created an edge and you must correct the verticles to make the shape similar with the background image. Or similar like in the picture 1.5.

Now, if you press "TAB" key and switch the project in the object mode - you can see that there is still little corners in your project.
We don't care about them yet.

Now you can watch your thing around if you want to. (Of course you can do it every time when you want to but I wanted to make sure that you get it and don't feel like everything is going to explode if you touch some wrong button.)

1.6 You can also change the subsurf modifier
setting in this place.

Make sure that youre in edit mode. Then press "A" key and then "E" key. Then just extrude that stuff little bit up.

Now you must go object mode. We will add subsurf modifier. Select your thing and press "SPACE" key. Then type in the search field "sub" and you can select the "subdivision set" modifier with mouse.

Your mesh starts looking smooth and every sharp edges goes away. This is at the same time good and bad thing as you can see. Press "T" key and on the left side of the blender appears another menu, just like "N-menu". In the bottom there is text "Subdivision set" and there is number 1. Change the number as 2.

You must go next to the place that is shown in the picture 1.6.
Click "add modifier" button. Then add "edge split" modifier.
Make sure that "edge angle" is unselected and "sharp edges" is selected.

Then you can forget that modifier place for little time. We'll go back for fighting with the mesh.


1.7

Go in the edit mode and also in the edge selection mode. Select all the edges that must be sharp in the finished model. Like in the picture 1.7

Hint: you can select all wanted edges faster by clicking "ALT + SHIFT + RMB" when selecting something.

When you're selected everything, press "CTRL + E". Then select from the menu "edge crease" and use your mouse for making the edges sharper. When you're ready click "RMB" to accept your work. Then, again go back that previous menu. (CTRL + E) and select "mark sharp". Now your edges are sharp.

Press "Numbad 7" to go back in the top view.
If you wanna fix now your mesh a little, then press "Z". Now you'll see trough of your mesh because its in wireframe mode. (if you don't then its time to save your creation and keep making it tomorrow You can always save by using "CTRL + S" shortcut)
In edge selection mode you can fix vertexes, but remember, that every time when you move something, you must choose 2 vertexes to make sure your model stays in it's shape. (If you choose only one and do something, then your mesh is soon looking like the Hitlers summer cottage after Stalin's tea party.) You can select both verticles by using Brush selection tool. You'll get the brush selection tool pressing "C" key in edit mode. Press "Z" again after you're fixed your stuff.

1.8

Go in the object mode and select that your creation. Then press "SHIFT + D" It will make a duplicate of your mesh. Now you can move it away from that first one. Press "R" key to roll it. Move and roll it to the other empty place, it fits to there perfectly. Then duplicate it again and fit it to the third place.

Okay, now the hardest things are back. I will not explain that specific way creating those balls because doing them is actually the same project as creating those bigger blocks.

Just Click "SHIFT + A" and circle from there. Then from bottom of the "T-Menu" make sure that there is in the verticles place number "6".
The "circle looks blocky, but now you can fastly make faces to it. Remember: opposite edges and "F" key. Extrude it like you did extrude bigger block. Extruding happend in edit mode with "E" key.

Then add "subdivision surface" and "edge split" modifiers and make "Edge crease" and "mark sharp" (CTRL + E)
Now you can duplicate your circle and you should have something like in the picture 1.8 Save the project.


1.9


2.0

Now we are going to make materials for this. Open the Ubuntu logo in your favourite image editing program. Photoshop and Gimp are very good choices.

Comment:
Like the anonymous user said, you can also simply press the sample button from the color selector and click the background image. So you dont need to use photoshop for this.
(not even gimp)

It may effect to the result some how if you set the opacity of the background image to zero.

Use the pipette tool for finding the HEX colors of the logo. (1.9) You must copy the color value into the clipboard by pressing "CTRL + C"

Now get back to the blender.

Choose the same block which color you have in the clipboard. And go to the materials tab. Its in the same place where you were changing the modifier settings. But if you still can't find it - here is the picture. (2.0)

Click new.

You see the white rectangle that is named diffuse. Click it with RMB and it will open the same color picker as you can see in the picture 2.0.

Click hex button and paste your hex color code to the place. Then press enter. Immediately the color of the block changes to red. Rename the material to be "Red"

Set specular intensity to 0. Or if you want that there is little bit this kind of effect, just add it little bit, but don't too much, because it will look stupid and nothing like the logo you're creating.

Then select other block, but don't click "new" click the small "ball button" that is left side of that big "new" button. You'll open menu and there is that your red material. Select it and add the same material to every of your objects you have there.

Now you must be thinking, that "why", but before you jump out of the window, I'll tell you:


2.1

Every single setting you do for that material happens in every object at the same time. So now you add for the object the reflections etc. And then you just need only add different colors for the other objects. If you every time create a new material you must also add the same reflection settings or textures or what ever and that's not funny. You can save some of your expensive time for doing this way.
Its play time. Now play with all the material settings and see how they will affects the preview ball.

I did add some reflection to my version If you wanna do like I did then add to the "Mirror" settings "reflectivity: 0.200" and to the "Gloss" settings "amount: 0.900". (hint: The gloss setting affects for the render time, so you can make it rendering faster if you forget gloss.) That's all I did.

So go to the photoshop and find the other color. (and save your project)

Then select the object which material you chosed and press this button. (2.1)
Now rename the material to orange or what ever material you picked from the picture. Then to the diffuse field add that color in HEX-field.

Do the same for the third color and you've created 3 dimensional version of Ubuntu logo. (remember that there is only 3 colors in the Ubuntu logo.)

Then what you must do is to set the lightnings and render it. There in that scene is two objects which we have not yet touched. (Or you might have, but I have not.) Lamp and camera. You can guess which one is lamp and which is camera.

If you now press "Numbad 0" you'll see trought the camera. Now find a better position by pressing "MMB" and just messing around. You'll lost the control of camera, but don't worry. When you think that you have found something creative view press "ALT + Numbad 0" and the camera is there again.

Then press "F12" key.

Wait until blender have rendered the picture. It should not take so much time, but if you're running blender on some slow computer - you can stop rendering by pressing "ESC".

Press "F11" and you will get back to the 3d-view.

Now press few times "Pause Break" button from your keyboard. "7 times" may be good. Now with pressing that button you should soon see how it does not affect anything in blender. Just wanted to make sure that you're still awake. :)

We have still little job to do.

Have you ever seen a professional photography studio? You may be, or may not, but if you try to find it from the google, you'll find it, watch the pictures so you can understand what I am trying to tell. Google.

So we will create the same, but it does not cost anything for you. What a wonderful change.

Now you should know how to add objects. So add a plane.
With extruding and Subdivision surface modifier you can do in really fast time some kind of photography surface and background for your object. 2.1 The shading must be set to be "smooth".

2.2

For this really simple lighting you need only two lights. So you can add the second one right now. "SHIFT + A" -> lamp->hemi

Hemi light sources are something that are not possible in real life. They don't make shadows and secondly they affects everything in the scene. If you have too powerful hemi light it destroys all the contrast of your render, so be careful with them.

Now choose that your hemi-light. Go to the object data tab. In the picture 2.2 this tab is next of the modifier tab, but when you choose light, some tabs disappears, because you can't use stuff like modifiers for the light objects.

So change the light settings and put to the "energy field" number "300".

Then select the other light. There is a field called "sampling" With this setting you can make your light for projecting soft shadows. Now there is number 1. So change the number to be something like "10" (hint: Sampling of light will affect the rendertime of your project, so if you want to make it render faster you can add smaller number.) and set "soft size" to be "3.000"

2.3 Finlal render with little photoshop retouch.

Now save your project again and render it. If you like to, you can now save your rendered picture by pressing F3. You know, if you wanna make it perfect, you must open that file with photoshop and do the same things for the render as you would do for the real photo.

Now if you press F11 it does not come back to the 3d view. It will go back to the File Browser. So if you wanna go back to the 3d-view, click the smalla button on left down that says if you let your mouse sleep over that "display currect editor type. bla bla" click it and find from there your 3d-view.

Here is my blend file: ubuntulogo

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Photography - Some old stuff about water

I am not a nature photographer. I am photographer who are intrested about everything. Nature is one of my favourites, because it is so easy to take good looking photos about nature. :)

Have you heard about thousand times some old phrase "One picture is more than thousand words.. bla bla bla." Yeah. It may be, but I will not to try speak about every photos that much. "Let the picture speak to you!" (The second phrase.)
I will give you only photos that is something to do with water from years ago, so lets roll!

The start with really basic photo from Aulanko Finland. The "golden
reflection" comes from the trees on background. Just like every
photoshop man would do, I did of course add "few million" levels of
saturation and cropped the whole stuff. Somehow I didn't like to see the full
reflection of the bird in this picture. Hope you could understand my irony. :)

The classical rule about photography is "Do not ever show two photos of
a kind in the same gallery..." Actually I dont know is it any classical rule about
anything, but now I am breaking that rule so badly. Or sadly, because
I knew how stupid it is to show many same kind of photos in the same place.
But its the part of this show, so try to understand. :p

Everyone knows at this time, that this is going to be a decorating art show.
It is truth that many of my photos looks like it, but its not what I actually
wanna do. It just happens... Because first two photos were pointless,
I wanna continue with this pointless line till the end of this.

You know, if most of your time you waste for thieving sausages from
innocent people - you may need to chill sometimes also.

This is one of the photos that includes nearly nothing, but still there is
something that makes me thinking that it is worth of sharing.
If youre intrested about photomanipulation - then take tons of
this kind of pictures. They will save your life. Somebody said about this
photo, that it is scary. Can you see it like that?

With long exposure it is possible to make stuff looking like something that
actually never happens in real world. Bot who cares if it looks like cool stuff?

Did I say, that I will show only photos that are something to do with water?
Yeah I said, and now I must explain what that thing is and why is it in the
picture show which is trying to show only pictures of water?
It is a cow. As you can see it is also a walking a path, so the thirsty animal
is of course looking for a water in the dry desert. I just like that photo!

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Other - The Complete 3d link gallery

DraftSight
Free CAD software* available for Windows®, Mac® and Linux®**. A new 2D CAD product that provides professional CAD users, students and educators with a better way to create, edit and view DWG files.

Harry Storbacka's Digital Artist
Program that helps you to draw in correct perspective your drawings.