Also, I’m getting tired of thirty-minute video tutorials on subjects that should only take thirty seconds to explain. Applying that concept to textual tutorials, I’m launching a new site. It’s called Blender Quicktips:

It’s bite-size Blender — small, simple tutorials that get to the point as soon as possible and then get out of the way. In other words, tutorials that make the minimalist in me oh-so-happy.

I’ve only got a few tutorials up so far, but I’ll be adding a lot more, on all sorts of Blender-related topics (bump maps, using Blender on a laptop, weight painting, moving the camera along a path, etc.).

It started with a sketch in my Field Notes:

This morning I came up with some ideas for the lighting and sketched out some quick concept art using Brushes on my iPhone:

After I got home from work, I pulled open Blender and did initial composition/layout:

Then I added some textures and tweaked the lighting to capture more of the mood I was going for:

Next, I worked on the spaceship model (and fixed the grass):

Tweaked the spaceship, got rid of the green light above, added a glowing green light inside and a rim light for the spaceship, and replaced the foreground placeholder foliage with the real thing:

I tried using Blender’s depth of field (defocus node) to get the result I wanted with the foreground foliage, by the way, but it totally didn’t work, so I ended up getting some tree/leaf/branch brushes in Photoshop and painting the foliage onto a frame, running the lens blur filter on it, and then transparently sticking it on a foreground plane in Blender. Worked out fine.

Finally, I added more trees in the background, took the bubble off the ship (because of the weird yellow artifacts in the last image), and tweaked the foreground foliage a bit:

I have to say, this artmaking thing is so fun. And Blender makes it really easy to get good results. I’m hooked. :)

I was going for something more whimsical/alien with this one.

Here’s the first test render:

Not too different from the final piece — the core idea is there. A few renders later, we’ve got a background and slightly better lighting:

And that’s where the piece sat for months. Last night I decided to finish it up, dropping the depth of field a bit, adding more to the background, and moving the camera to make it a little more interesting:

That was the final render. Still not enough, though. I pulled it into Photoshop, did some color correction (more contrast, less green and slightly more red), added some faint texture, and then added the cameo effect around the edges. Voila:

Once again, art is all about iteration. First tries are rarely good. You have to keep plugging away at them, tweaking and polishing and revising until, in the end, you get something worth keeping.

It started out with a quick sketch I did in my Field Notes one day:

I liked the idea and wanted to develop it into a full piece, so I tried doing a vector art version in Illustrator but didn’t get very far. I also tried painting it in Photoshop and got some decent preliminary results, but just about then I was starting to play around with the Blender 2.5 test builds (speaking of which, they just released 2.5 alpha 0 today — 2.5 is a huge improvement over 2.49 and is so so so awesome, and I’m now going to breathe deeply and try to get over the giddies ;)). I’ve been using Blender for a while (ten years ago I wrote a not-very-good article on it for the Linux Journal, incidentally) but haven’t done much with it, and I wanted to change that.

At first I didn’t get very good results either, and I almost gave up, but for some reason I kept going…and going…and going. And through the process of iteration after iteration, it turned into the illustration you see above. Granted, I’m still relatively new at this and have a lot to learn, but I’m seeing improvement and that’s exciting. Here are ten drafts of the illustration, from first go to final version:

Yep, iteration rocks. And so does Blender. :)

I’m also working on getting two issues of Mormon Artist out the door (our regular issue, #7, and the special contest issue which is ~blush~ about six months overdue). If I’m lucky, we’ll be able to get them done before the wedding. (If not, well, they’ll have to wait till after the honeymoon. ;))

In addition to the magazine, I’ve got a reader’s edition of the D&C (Doctrine and Covenants, a volume of LDS scripture) that’s pretty close to done. I’ve taken out the verse numbers and am in the middle of reparagraphing the text, and I’ve also reordered the sections chronologically and added section names based off of Dane Laverty’s. The book will be available print-on-demand via Lulu in both hardcover and softcover, and we’re probably looking at the end of November for that, maybe December.

Finally, I’m working on a 3D illustration in Blender called “Jetpack Johnny.” I’m itching to post a picture showing how it’s coming, but every time I’ve done that with other pieces, I’ve lost interest in completing the piece. This one’s almost done, though, and I’ll post it when I finish it. It’s looking far better than any other 3D work I’ve done before. I’m excited. (Not as much as for my wedding, though. ;))

Oh, one more thing: I moved my old writing and music over from Blank Slate, so it’s all now on the Etc. page.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been working on lately. I guess I like to keep myself busy or something. :P

The good news is that Blender can do depth of field. The bad news is that it’s only possible via postprocessing (using compositing nodes), which isn’t perfect. But it mostly works.

I’m visual—show me what it looks like

Here’s the sample scene before adding depth of field:

And here it is afterward:

As you can see, both the foreground and the background are now blurry, leaving only the center thingie in focus.

Overview (Microwave Edition)

All you have to do is give the camera a focus point (Dof Dist or Dof Ob), add a Defocus node, and render with Do Composite.

The Gritty Details, Please (With Pictures!)

1. Set up the scene. Here we’ve got a pretty basic setup with cubes (using some array modifiers and a path to spiral them out), lights, a thingie in the middle (made by extruding a cube), and a camera.

2. Select the camera and go to the edit buttons. Click on the Limits button (under “Show:” in the upper right). You’ll now see a line pointing out from the camera, with a yellow line through the camera itself to show you where the camera’s focus will be.

3. Now to set the focus. You can either give the camera a set distance (Dof Dist) or an object to focus on (Dof Ob, which we set here to MainCube, but you could just as easily use an empty to have finer control over where the camera focuses).

4. Open up the node editor, click on the face (the middle of those three buttons), then click on Use Nodes.

5. Add a Defocus node (Add->Filter->Defocus). And ignore the fact that there’s nothing in the RenderLayer on the left — I’m pretty sure it’s a bug in Blender 2.49.

6. Drag the RenderLayer node’s Z output to the Defocus node’s Z input, the RenderLayer node’s image output to the Defocus node’s image input, and the Defocus node’s image output to the Composite node’s input. (Just follow the diagram. :))

7. Uncheck No zbuffer. This way it’ll look at the depth data from the scene, which is exactly what we want. Also set the fStop down to something low (lower is blurrier) — try 8 or 12 for starters. Note: when you do the final render, deselect the Preview button here.

8. Select the Do Composite button. (If you don’t, it won’t use the nodes we just set up and you’ll get an ordinary render.)

9. Render. You’ll notice the sharp artifacts on the far left and center bottom. To be honest, I don’t know how to get rid of these. My guess is that they appear because Blender’s depth-of-field isn’t actual DOF but is just a postprocessing illusion. If any of you know how to fix this, let me know.

Further Reading

• http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-243/composite-defocus/
• http://www.vimeo.com/1756578
• http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Tutorials/Composite_Nodes/Setups/Depth_Of_Field

Notes

This tutorial was made using Blender 2.49.

I was kind of surprised to see how much I had learned about Blender without realizing it. This time round I picked up several useful workflow techniques which made the whole process a lot easier (like moving render-heavy models to other layers and hiding them when I wasn’t working on them so my test renders would go faster). I’m not entirely pleased with how the small guy’s head turned out — the shading’s weird — but I wanted to wrap this up so I can work on a new short animation project based on an experience my coworker had.

Anyway, the render is straight from Blender other than some artifacts which I painted out in Photoshop and some color correction. And I got the textures from GrungeTextures.com.

I should also mention that from now on I’ll be uploading my artwork to Flickr for showcase purposes. (Once I get some free time, I’ll go back and put all my old art in there as well.) This’ll be easier than trying to maintain yet another gallery.

The background is a Photoshop composite of a number of different photos, including these from Flickr (licensed under Creative Commons):

http://flickr.com/photos/98469445@N00/299313394/ http://flickr.com/photos/98469445@N00/327471676/ http://flickr.com/photos/tontoncopt/1329834941/

The books and character were modeled and rendered in Blender, then composited in with the background in Photoshop.

[tags]Blender, Photoshop[/tags]

So, to fix that, I’m putting myself on a regimen of sorts. For the next while, I’m going to focus entirely on modeling. I won’t let myself texture anything. I won’t add a single light beyond the default one. In fact, I think I’ll even keep myself from rendering for a while. (The 3D window does well enough at showing you what the object looks like.) After I’ve gained enough skill with the modeling tools — both polygonal and NURBS — to feel competent, I’ll focus on texturing. UV texture, bump/displacement maps, the works. And once I’ve got that done, then I’ll move on to lighting. I’ll teach myself how to light daytime scenes, nighttime scenes, indoor scenes, outdoor scenes, the works. And then to animation, and so on. (But I think I might actually keep myself away from animation for a while, if only so I can master 2D art in Blender first. I should turn out a better artist that way, I think.)

We’ll see if this works. I think it will. :)

[tags]Blender, 3D, art[/tags]

(I just threw the background in there so it wouldn’t be all black.) Anyway, it’s a lot of fun, and I’m finding that game design is rather addicting. :)