Open Sourcing

Can't believe I didn't update my blogger blog with the new website sooner! For anyone that has this site RSSed and doesn't know already, head on over to my new web home!

I've been posting there for about the last year, so you probably have plenty to catch up on!

hings have been a bit busy around here lately, so updates have been lacking. I apologize about that!

One of the big things that has been keeping me busy is searching for a house. This is the first house that either my fiance or myself have ever purchased, so there is a lot to learn! We have managed to narrow down the search to one particular house that we feel could be the one. It is in a great area and community, and has nearly everything that we are looking for...except that we would be interested in changing the kitchen a little bit. I figured that it would be great to be able to see some ideas that we had floating around in our heads, soo...fire up Blender!

A number of months ago I taught myself some architectural tips for Blender, so I decided to put them to good use. I decided to do a quick model of the ground floor of the house we were looking at, then change it to what we were thinking it should be. This seemed like a perfect use of Blender and indeed it has been!

The video below is a quick model of the existing ground floor of the house. This is obviously a very simplistic model (no doors, windows, materials, etc.) but it gives a fairly good idea of what the house is currently like. The movement of the camera is a bit quick and jerky in spots, but I'll say again that this was done very quickly!

This next video shows the same walk through, but with some changes to the back of the house.

I knocked down a wall, opened up a doorway and added a breakfast bar and large countertop, along with more cabinets. Again, very simplistic, but it gives a nice idea of what it could be like.

This project was fun to do because I was really interested in what it would look like with the changes made. It was tricky to model the house in perfect scale because I didn't have blueprints or even pictures of it, so I had to make guesses based on the size of the rooms in the disclosure. This was not easy! I think it turned out to accurately represent the house though. I also like the look of the additions!

real quick update today. I worked on some weight painting for my Silver Surfer model. Here is a quick test of the finger rig:

ust a fun quick update today that has nothing to do with anything else really. I am waiting for the newest Blender training DVD to be shipped to me, which I pre-ordered a number of months back. It is entitled "Venom's Lab" and is a collection of tutorials on all sorts of things. It is by an excellent Blender artist Pablo Vazquez, who calls himself VenomGFX online. Take a look here if you are interested.

The image below is a quick test of the falloff node. Falloff is the lightening or changing of a color acting near the objects edges. This gives the object a very smooth appearance, without messing around with any lights. Quite an interesting effect and extremely easy to do!

ell, modeling of my Silver Surfer is complete! I finished up the head and hands this weekend. The picture above is the completed model with what I think will be the final material (this may change a bit). The picture on the right shows the finished body wire frame render. The anatomy of the Surfer made some of the modeling a lot easier. For instance, he doesn't have ears! He also doesn't really have eyelids. He also obviously doesn't have any hair on his body, which should make the materials really easy.

The picture on the left is a quick wire frame of the finished hand. I added quite a bit of detail to the top of the hand because I'd like to do some animations with close ups of the hands. They should hopefully deform really well, so the next step is rigging them up!

I also tweaked the head/face this weekend a little bit and am pretty satisfied with it. The video below shows a 360 degree view of it. The next step is rigging everything. It's been a little while since I have rigged anything, so I'm excited to get back into it!

am really excited about getting this head modeled! The picture to the right is a picture of the finished head and then where the head started. I concentrated on making sure I had nice topology and good edge loops all around. It needs some tweaking, as does the rest of the body, but at least the structure is all completed.

Modeling this head has gotten me excited about doing head modeling. After this model is complete, and before I rig it I may try to do a couple more heads.