Tag: effects

ONE BY ONE: Modifiers. Today it’s how to use the HOOK modifier in Blender!

blog, Resources, tutorials

I love Blender…

Did I mention that before? Well, it’s because I’m “hooked” on it. Hooked! Geddit!!

(Rufio! Rufio!)

Anyway, I am hooked on Blender and one of the reasons is it’s none destructive workflow that you can achieve using Modifiers.

Hooks are a big part of this, if you want to, say, add a deforming patch with falloff to a surface that you might want to edit later, or if you want to add an animating lump into a shape, or if you want to control the control points of a curve so it can be animated.

Talking of animation, you can also use them animate pin groups on soft bodies, allowing you to create capes that you can target to a character, or ropes, or even the end of a belt.

Hooks are really good. Especially if you are a one-handed Pirate.

Smee?! Smee?! I think I can hear a ticking clock! To the boats!

Take a look at the video below to find out more. Better still, subscribe to the channel and you’ll see a new one of these every week. Sometimes a “One by One” where we talk about what each part of blender does – at the moment we are concentrating on modifiers – other times tutorials on specific things or quick tips to make your life easier.

You want to see something not here? Then let me know in the comments. I’m always keen to help out where I can.

Take care and stay safe.

ONE BY ONE: The vertexWeightProximity Modifier! Unsurprisingly, it’s good. Really good!

blog, Resources, tutorials

I love Blender…

And I love it’s Modifiers. Yes, it’s another One By One.

Being able to deform the shape of something its quite important when it comes to animation. The most simple rig uses deformers to simulate bending, twisting and volume changes and these are all accomplished with deformers. Some of the best facial rigging comes from a conjunction between bones, shape keys and deformers.

But using them can be a little daunting. Addressing them on a “One by One” basis makes it easier to get to grips with them.

VertexWeightProximity is a prime example of one of these modifiers.

You can create a vertex group which performs a shape change and then drive it’s power with an empty. Close to the skin, deformation, further away no deformation.

Here is a simple tutorial to explain the use of it, without making it part of a much bigger thing. Nice and simple. Hope you like it.

Take a look at the video below to find out more. Better still, subscribe to the channel and you’ll see a new one of these every week. Sometimes a “One by One” where we talk about what each part of blender does – at the moment we are concentrating on modifiers – other times tutorials on specific things or quick tips to make your life easier.

You want to see something not here? Then let me know in the comments. I’m always keen to help out where I can.

Take care and stay safe.

ONE BY ONE: Shading using the Geometry Input Node Random Per Island in Blender!

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I love Blender…

But I didn’t use it for ages.

I used Maya then Modo and Maya, then Maya on it’s own then Blender!

For a while there were things in Modo and Maya that were not in Blender. They’re all good for certain things, but there was an option in Modo that I loved which used a gradient to add a level of difference between each separate island of geometry that had it.

It used the object’s individual ID of each object to pull a value from the gradient, making each item with the same shader slightly different. A few releases back Random Per Island was added to the Geometry Input Node that allows us to do exactly that.

Please watch the vid and you can see some of its wonderful uses.

Take a look at the video below to find out more. Better still, subscribe to the channel and you’ll see a new one of these every week. Sometimes a “One by One” where we talk about what each part of blender does – at the moment we are concentrating on modifiers – other times tutorials on specific things or quick tips to make your life easier.

You want to see something not here? Then let me know in the comments. I’m always keen to help out where I can.

Take care and stay safe.

TUTORIAL – Baking out UVProject into a UVMap in Blender!

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I love Blender…

But sometimes they way it does things leads a little to the imagination.

Take converting a UV projection to a UVMap, it should be a one, maybe two click operation.

It’s not.

You need to create a UVMap for your object and then another for the original projection and then you have to make sure that the Projection UV is active, but you have to have the UVMap selected as well… It’s overly complex.

But, once you know it, it’s quick to achieve.

On occasion, this rambling 14 minutes sounds a bit off, but watch along and you’ll get the idea! Take care and speak to you soon!

Take a look at the video below to find out more. Better still, subscribe to the channel and you’ll see a new one of these every week. Sometimes a “One by One” where we talk about what each part of blender does – at the moment we are concentrating on modifiers – other times tutorials on specific things or quick tips to make your life easier.

You want to see something not here? Then let me know in the comments. I’m always keen to help out where I can.

Take care and stay safe.

TUTORIAL: Fspy and UVProject in Blender! – making photoreal scenes with little effort that look ace!

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I love Blender…

And I tell people a lot about how much it can do. Yet, People often think it doesn’t do the same sort of stuff that people can do in Maya and 3DSMax in regards to TV quality visuals.

A lot of visuals are faked by using real photographs. Guess what? Blender can do that too.

So on this tutorial, we talk about two things, Fspy and UVProject. Fspy is a free, open source software that creates a camera and it’s position from the vertical and horizontal planes in our picture and exports them into Blender via an addon that you get when you get the software. And UVProject is a modifier – see I’m still all about the modifiers – that makes the UV mapping for your shader correspond with the view from your camera.

Couple these two together, and you can quickly create scenes that would take forever to build and shade.

And Hollywood has been using this process for years to make environments seem real.

You can find out more about Fspy here:

https://fspy.io/

The photo used in this tutorial has come from unsplash

https://unsplash.com/photos/K5sjajgbTFw

And the person who photographed it is Nolan Issac:

https://unsplash.com/@nolanissac

Take a look at the video below to find out more. Better still, subscribe to the channel and you’ll see a new one of these every week. Sometimes a “One by One” where we talk about what each part of blender does – at the moment we are concentrating on modifiers – other times tutorials on specific things or quick tips to make your life easier.

You want to see something not here? Then let me know in the comments. I’m always keen to help out where I can.

Take care and stay safe.

Tips and Tricks: Painting in Krita, Making Planks semi-procedurally and adding IES lights to Blender

animation, blog, Resources, tutorials

I love Blender…

I think I have made that pretty clear in the last 22 videos.

But I also love Krita, a free open source painting application that has some amazing tools in it. So today we’re starting with a very quick fix of Krita, where I show you how to use it to make a texture tile using the wrap-around feature and a clone brush. Like Photoshop, but the tools got there first in Krita!

You can download it at:

https://krita.org/en/

The photo we use in it is by Pandav Tank who supplies free photographs anyone can use at Unsplash.com. https://unsplash.com/@pandavtank

Unsplash is a free-to-use, attribution required website that allows photographers to get there photos out in the world so people can use them on projects for free. It’s superb.

https://unsplash.com/

Following this we load this into Blender and add it to the floor shader and go through the motions of making a plank shader procedurally, albeit with a texture to work with first.

Lastly we get to talk about IES lights. These are mathematical models of actual lights, giving accurate falloffs and light looks perfect for Archvis work.

For a massive amount of IES profiles, go to: https://ieslibrary.com/en/browse

Take a look at the video below to find out more. Better still, subscribe to the channel and you’ll see a new one of these every week. Sometimes a “One by One” where we talk about what each part of blender does – at the moment we are concentrating on modifiers – other times tutorials on specific things or quick tips to make your life easier.

You want to see something not here? Then let me know in the comments. I’m always keen to help out where I can.

Take care and stay safe.