Postmortem: Daily Blender

Done! Today was my last Daily Blender render (since I’m not doing Sundays). Whew. Here they all are:

Other than feeling guilty about spamming people on Twitter and Facebook about it each day, it’s been fun. I’ve pushed myself and done far more Blender than I had in the whole year before this month (just six pieces), and I’ve learned a lot. I’ve started using the rigid body sim, the cloth sim, the hair sim, the cell fracture addon, and environment maps. I’ve done a little more sculpting (can’t say that I’m any good at it yet, though). And, from looking at this overview image, I’ve learned once again that my artistic style is all over the map.

Things I still need to work on:

• Modeling. I found myself avoiding it as much as possible this month. I can do basic stuff, but not much beyond that. (What would probably be best, I think, is a “Daily Modeling” challenge. But not just yet, and I’ll probably keep it private this time.)
• Lighting. Environment maps helped a lot, but I still feel like it’s purely accidental when I end up with good lighting in my pieces.
• UV mapping. I’m still scared of it.
• I only used Freestyle on one piece. I wish I’d used it more.
• OSL. I’ve done a little with it but not much.
• External renderers (LuxRender, Yafaray, Mitsuba, Appleseed).

This daily challenge thing has once again proven productive. (The other time I did it was NaShoStoMo back in April 2011, which netted me twenty stories.) But now it’s time to rest.