IZation Labs » Blender

Blender 2.57 Release

Lace — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 15:36:59 +0000

Just a quick post today. It’s worth noting that Blender version 2.57 has been officially released!

Blender 2.57 is the first non-beta version of Blender’s newest incarnation. What does this mean to you? If you’ve already been using the 2.5 series beta versions, this means that a solid, stable version has released for you to play with, with a few new and changed features and far fewer bugs! If you’ve been holding off on the 2.5 series and are still working with a 2.4 Blender, you are in for a treat. Blender 2.5 has a fresh new code base, a reorganized and very intuitive and efficient GUI, tons of new features like volumetric smoke and flames, and overall just more powah!

If you haven’t even heard of Blender, well what are you waiting for! It’s a free (as in beer) 3D graphics package that can hold it’s own against the big boys. Sound too good to be true? I’m not exaggerating. It is an absolutely amazing package.

Head on over to Blender.org to check it out. You won’t regret it!

-Lace

Suzanne Matchmoving with Syntheyes and Blender

Lace — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 14:30:44 +0000

This was an educational test in which I shot immobile tripod footage and tracked a number of points on my palm using Syntheyes.

Once the points were tracked in Syntheyes the data was imported into Blender, where the monkey head primitive built into Blender (Suzanne) was composited into the shot, seemingly resting on my hand. I had a few issues. I can’t seem to figure out how to get shadows working properly *an issue I solved after writing this article*.

You can see there is a bit of ghosting around the hand, due to the quick ‘mesh’ I made of the hand on which the shadows were placed. A little bit of editing would clean it up, but at this point this test as served its purpose. Onward to bigger and better things. There is a small amount of slippage / jitter between the 3D element and the video footage due to inexperience using Syntheyes on my part. Hey, that’s what these exercises are for!

I would be a bit more in depth with this post, but the wee hours of the morning are upon me and I need to get some sleep, so how about this. If you have any questions or comments, go ahead and leave me one right at the bottom of this page!

-Lace

‘r0B’ Matchmove and Breakdown

Lace — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 15:30:00 +0000

‘roB’ is a robot character I made for a short film at Eastern Michigan University. He’s a spunky little bot with a get up and get it done kind of attitude, and he can often be seen hanging out on my desk.

Okay, so not really. This a special effects test involving matchmoving and compositing courtesy of Syntheyes and Blender. It is a shot I’m quite fond of, and it even has a special effects breakdown to show the ‘steps’ taken to go from raw footage to final composite. I think the visual effects breakdown took as much time as the tracking and compositing work itself.

The raw image sequence was processed using supervised tracking in Syntheyes, meaning that each bright green triangular point shown in the video I actually supervised the manual tracking of from frame to frame. Time consuming? Yes. But look at the results! How cool is that?

Of course, my trusty Blender came through for me on all of the 3D aspects. Modeling, lighting, rendering, and compositing were all handled by this powerful beast of a 3D package. If you haven’t looked into it yet, really, what are you waiting for?

-Lace

‘Esty’ the Robot WIP

Lace — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:30:40 +0000

As a result of procrastinating all day (for those of you still in school, don’t try procrastination at home, I’m a trained professional) instead of getting to work on assignments, I decided to start work on a nice little robot character I found in one of my sketchbooks from a year or two ago. It’s too late to continue on him now, but here is an image of the work in progress with some random rust textures affixed. He has no legs, feet, or manipulators on his arms, and there’s still plenty to do, but he is shaping up to be a good looking little rust bucket.

Note, the trapezoid on his chest will eventually have button-like rivets along the outer edge, much like aviator jackets of old. He is to be a steampunk robot (one of the best kinds there is).

-Lace

Camera and Object Tracking

Lace — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 14:00:15 +0000

While for the most part my colleagues and classmates in the field of what can be summed up as (and heavily understated by the words) ’3D Animation’ are supportive of new experiences, new software, etc, occasionally work that I have done is overshadowed for someone by the fact that I did not produce it using a ‘socially accepted’ software package such as 3DS Max or Maya. I am, of course, referring to my preferred package, my swiss army knife in a world of 3D, Blender.

The fact of the matter is, I have never seen any package commonly ‘recognized’ to be superior produce anything that Blender could not. In fact, I often see quite the opposite, in that few packages are as capable in reference to the multitude of features in which Blender dominates. What else can do particle simulation, volumetric smoke and fire, water, soft bodies, modeling, rigging, animating, texturing, and real world physics simulations all in the same package? Show me the money, folks.

I’m not necessarily saying that other packages are less capable, nor that Blender is the end all be all for every 3D user in the world. What I am saying is this; when you see a truly quality example of someone’s work, something they put a great deal of time and effort into perfecting to perfection, by all means ask how it was done and with what package. Compliment it if it truly shines, suggest better ways of doing things, compare pros and cons, and develop a unique and meaningful conversation or critique. What better way to learn?

But please. Please, refrain from changing your mind on the quality of craftsmanship just because it wasn’t made with an Autodesk product. It can leave a bad taste in both of your mouths, and may make you seem uninformed. By writing something off just because that high school computer science teacher you had said that it wasn’t worth a nickel of your time, you risk missing out on a tremendous number of opportunities! You might learn something new if you give yourself a chance to open up to it. Of course, that lesson can be applied to a lot of things in life, not just 3D modeling and animating application wars.

Now that the render I’ve been waiting on is done, I can stop pseudo-ranting and get to the interesting part of the post. I spent all afternoon and evening today working in Syntheyes and Blender. The included short fifty frame video marks a number of firsts for me.

Into SynthEyes went the image sequence, (video footage broken into a separate image for each frame). SynthEyes is a software package that, to put it roughly, determines how cameras and objects move based on video footage so that we can further manipulate them in software like Blender. It’s one of the things that lets us add special effects. Then came an hour or two of supervised tracking, a first for me, as in the past I have used SynthEyes’ built in autotracking functions to automatically track my footage.

This time, not only did I track the movement of the camera using supervised tracking, but I also tracked a moving object in the footage, a vehicle driving down the road. After the tracking was done and the data was exported to Blender, I began playing with the idea of testing the footage by attached something to the side of the truck.

After a few hours of fiddling, the final product now arises. It’s a short (nearly two whole seconds) technical test slash learning experience comprised of a truck moving down the highway with an image of the TRON style spheres pasted realistically to its side. Not only is the truck moving, but the handheld camera is swiveling in a tripod like manner to track the truck as it moves along the road.

This may look pretty basic, and in some respects it is, but it is one of the most difficult hurdles in achieving realistic special effects and photoreal 3D additions to live action film. And jumping those hurdles can be a lot of fun.

-Lace

PS. Bonus points if you noticed Suzanne.

Photo Dump

Lace — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 05:23:23 +0000

Well, I’ve accumulated enough photos to do a decent photo post, so here it is, enjoy. Clicking on any of the photos should bring them up full size.

Above is a mockup of a simple website I made in Photoshop for a final lab last semester. There was no focus on web design throughout the course, the lab just had to show our proficiency with the tools that we had learned, and so could be a website, a video game interface, or anything similar, really. The images in the mockup are all examples of my own work as they relate to the ‘purpose’ of the website.

This one was from fiddling around in the beginning of December. Nothing too special here, just some flat Christmas tree shapes that I made in Blender and then duplicated and rotate to make trees. Then the trees were copied and moved about the snowy scene that I created. This was, basically, the result of fiddling around while in a computer graphics course while covering ‘vectors’.

This one may seem familiar, as there was a video of it in the final post from 2010. This hand gun was modeled, textured, and animated for the same class that I doodled the Christmas tree setting in. It was overkill for the project, as all that had to be shown was proficiency in manipulating entities through a timeline to create an animation. Something as simple as a 2D basketball shot through a hoop a few times would have sufficed.

This one was for the same Photoshop class as the first image. It is a composite of three seperate images. The first was of myself holding up the hammer against a different white background. The second was a photo of the barn wall with a nail driven into it. The third and final was a closeup of the subject’s head (my father). He was instructed: ‘look like someone is about to bash you in the head with a hammer’. He did a splendiferous job.

The final image of this dump was rendered just hours before this post was made to the site. I followed a Blender tutorial at BlenderCookie to make the glowing light effect, then added the TRON logo for kicks. This image is now the background on my larger monitor. Feel free to copy it and use it if you like it. I think I’ll do more with this scene and effect in the future.

-Lace

Time for my End of Semester Coma

Lace — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 15:31:46 +0000

Finals are winding down and Christmas season can finally become the focal point of this student’s attention. It’s been a long few months, but that’s one more semester down and three more to go. I’ve finished two decently large projects for school this semester, including a semi real rendering and animation of the PK380 sidearm and a short (three minute) film about a robot who has to save the day. The former can be viewed in this post. The latter I think I’ll clean up a bit more before I release it to the world.

Hey, you Buckeye Central students. I’ll be seeing you soon! In case I don’t post again before the day arrives, Merry Christmas!

-Lace

‘r0B’

Lace — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 18:43:57 +0000

It’s been ages since my last update, and I apologize for that. Things have been rather busy at school, and it’s not about to slow down as exams move closer and closer.

However, I do have for your viewing pleasure a test/demo reel of Blender works that I’ve been doing for my upcoming animated short ‘r0B’, a story about a little robot who has to fix a broken down assembly line before the clock runs out. These shots were mainly all tests of some kind, the last one is my favorite, which shows the overall environment to date, as well as some test camera animations with random noise added to the movement for realism. This is an assignment for my SAG 245 class at Eastern Michigan University, which is due Tuesday, November 30th. I’ve got my work cut out for me.

-Lace

Domino Tracking (Syntheyes and Blender)

Lace — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:19:51 +0000

I spent a decent amount of time yesterday reintroducing myself to blender 2.5(3) and am happy to say that I can now use it almost completely in my SFX pipeline. Earlier versions of Blender only come into the game once, and that is to import my Syntheyes python script, as Syntheyes has a lack of compatibility with the new python API the Blender uses. All of two minutes later, it’s back to the new version and it’s wonderful speedy goodness. Here’s a tracking test of the days work.

The items onscreen are not final, they are simply visual aides to help determine the quality of the track and to configure the lighting. I have something much more interesting planned for this footage.

-Lace

Blender Missile

Lace — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 04:31:52 +0000

Below is a quick render of a military missile I’m working on for a new project. It was made in Blender 2.53, and is a first foray into UV texture unwrapping and mapping in the newest version of Blender. A few more adjustments are all that’s needed and I’ll be starting on some other aspects of the required scene. References images and concepts were found via a Google image search.

Click subscribe if you would like to be notified of upcoming posts!

-Lace

Pipe Dreams

Lace — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:09:02 +0000

Though it took a long time working on it here and there between work and my other projects, I have recently finished a more professional, more finalized special effects test. I learn a great deal every time I tackle another piece, and I think it shows in the final product as compared to my last test. All rendering, design, and compositing of 3D elements was done in Blender, the camera tracking was done using Syntheyes, and the video editing using Final Cut Express.

(If you want to, I would suggest taking the time to watch the video in HD rather than the default, it looks much better that way.)

Something that helped a great deal for this project was the addition of a newly built networked attached storage server, also known as a NAS. The system I built is running a free operating system called FreeNAS, and allows me to store and access all of the project files together in a central place on my home network. Eventually I may try configuring port forwarding and a service like DynDNS so that I can access my files from school and other places as well over the internet.

One of the nicest things about the new server, however, is its amount of storage and backup capabilities. HD footage can be a bit of a storage hog, with an hour of footage taking up as much as forty-some gigs of space. Inside this standard off-the-shelf parts NAS machine are two two-terabyte SATA hard drives that are basically identical twins, straight down to the data. They are connected together via a form of software raid, meaning that if one of the two hard drives die, I still have my data safe and sound on the other one until I can replace the failed drive. I had to lose a terabyte of data before I understood how useful raid could be.

In other news, I just recently finished a new and much lengthier project with the help of a close friend. I’ll be posting a video and information about it soon, so check back often!

-Lace

Tracking Teapots

Lace — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 14:04:09 +0000

With the shelling out of some decent dinero and about six hours of effort, I have here for the entertainment of all up and coming VFX enthusiasts a camera tracking test. If you are looking for bright lights, action, and large explosions… well you may be disappointed, this is just a test, there’s nothing too fancy about it, visually. The key focus was the tracking of a CG item to handheld video footage, and it turned out well for a first attempt.

The tracking was done using Syntheyes, the same software used for tracking in films such as Iron Man 2, Alice in Wonderland, and Avatar. If it isn’t already, Syntheyes is becoming an industry standard. However, if you can’t afford the license, the Voodoo camera tracker works rather well, and is free for the most part.

The compositing and CG effects were done using the node editing engine in Blender 3D, a free and open source program that continues to improve daily.

For a look at what the best of the best can do with Blender, check out this Sintel trailer, the newest short film from the Blender Foundation coming out in a few months

Critiques are welcome. More to come.

-Lace

Full Color 3D Printing from Shapeways

Lace — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:15:18 +0000

Ladies and gents, Shapeways just knocked my socks off.

A new material has been added to the selections at Shapeways. It’s name: Sandstone. It is the newly appointed cheapest material to print in, beating out Strong, White, and Flexible by a third of the price. It only costs one dollar to print a cubic centimeter of this stuff.

The truly amazing thing, as alluded to in the title, is that the material can be printed in full color. That’s right. Full color. Some of you might be thinking ‘So?’ or ‘Hmph. About time’. Others who know a bit more about the mechanics of 3D printing are amazed and overjoyed at this next step in the right direction. The logistics and technical difficulties in pulling off full color printing amaze me, and the new ways things can be printed rocks my world.

FULL COLOR. My mind is blown, Shapeways. Well played.

Go here to learn more about this newest material and it’s capabilities.

–Lace

New Shapeways Models

Lace — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:21:48 +0000

I’ve been doing more and more modeling in the ‘just for fun’ category, and many more of these have made it to Shapeways and are now printable. Six of the most recent items are shown below with their most base level prices, determined by the material used for production. Plastic = cheaper, metal = more expensive (yet cooler). No matter what material you purchase, I still receive the same markup (typically a dollar or so, with my models). Click the name or the image to view the model at the IZL shop at Shapeways, and as always, you can click the link just above to get more info about the IZL Shapeways Shop and how it works.

Alchemic Necklace

This work was made using a reference image from one of my favorite animated series’, Full Metal Alchemist. It’s the necklace that one of the key characters use to ‘fuel’ the kind of stylistic alchemy that she prefers. Bonus points if you can tell me the name of the character.

This model is of sufficient size to be worn on a chain around the neck. ($5.00 USD)

Pokemaninizer Badge

Made as a gag for a close friend of mine who has a crush on a trainer from the popular cartoon series. This friend is quite the ‘maninizer’.

The model is roughly the size of a quarter. ($5.00 USD)

BahtHead 0.6

BahtHead 0.6 is one of my favorite models to date. He’s such a strange little robot head. He has a full body now, but so far only the head is printable.

He’s 2 X 2.4 X 2.2 inches. ($20.00 USD)

IZL Medallion/Coin – BahtHead

An IZL Character Coin, this one is the head of the robotic figure in shown above. The front has the face of the head on it as well as the saying ‘Normal is a failure of Potential’. At the bottom are the letters ‘IZL’. On the back is the back of the robot head, topped by the website URL.

The printout is just slightly larger than a typical US quarter, and about twice as thick. ($5.00 USD)

IZL Geared Necklace (Parts)

The parts to an IZL branded geared necklace. This item is meant to be a worn and should assemble and spin properly after the parts have been printed. *ASSEMBLY IS REQUIRED for this model.*

This model is 3 X 2.5 X 0.8 inches. ($20.00)

If the other model which is printed fully assembled comes to me and works as is it will become available for printing, and may replace this model.

Reminiscent Skeleton Key

A skeleton key inspired by a fantastic series. It is oddly familiar, like a lost item, or a scattered dream that’s like a far off memory…

Hopefully this key will help you line the pieces up.

It is nearly 3 X 1 X .3 inches. ($5.00)

If there is something specific you would like to see modeled and printed, get in touch with me and we’ll talk ‘business’. I’m always willing to consider doing some custom or specialized work, and I would love to hear any input or criticisms, as always!

–Lace

Synth-Growth

Lace — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 01:14:00 +0000

Here is a short video I made a few weeks ago that grew out of a tutorial I was following to make ‘plants’ grow. I also made use of Blender’s built in Python camera changing script for the first time. There are some problems with the frame switching between shots that I need to figure out, but I felt this render was good enough to post.

It took four or five days to render this out, as I used some badly implemented concepts to make the ground look better which took up far more processing power than If I had just modeled the ground to begin with. Final product is close to what I was aiming for anyway.

–Lace

Robotic Biped (WIP)

Lace — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 01:16:19 +0000

Here he is, my first official full size character model; BahtHead. Well, watch the gif below, anyway, and you’ll see his current state in the last frame. I’ve been making renders along the way (didn’t start on the head until it was nearly done) so you can see the different additions and occasional subtractions I’ve made to his structure over time.

I know he’s not finished, there are plenty of places that I’ll still tweak. Next up, I have to snap on some rubber gloves and start watching some hardcore rigging tutorials. This should be interesting.

The head is, to my knowledge, printable, but I haven’t done a test order yet. The body won’t be printable for a while still.

Comments and suggestions are more than welcome! I need the input! You there! I’m imagining that look on your face. You have something to say, to suggest, don’t you? Spit it out!

–Lace

Stairways, Keys, and Robots

Lace — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:18:57 +0000

In spite of holidays looming and exams taking up much of my time, I’ve been working on some models instead of visiting with family like I should be. Not only that, but I’ve also been modeling with 3D printing in mind, so many of them are now at Shapeways! For more info on 3D prints, click on the new IZL Model Shop link up above.

Most of these models were done in a single sitting, though one or two are still works in progress. All were done in 2.49b. There is a model or two that I’ve done in the new 2.5, but… suffice it to say, they aren’t quite ready for daylight yet.

On a personal note, my favorite is the robot head.

–Lace

Blender 2.5 Alpha

Lace — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 02:14:16 +0000

Just a very quick update, the official release of the new Blender Alpha is tomorrow! For those of you who haven’t been following along, 2.5 includes tons of new features and a redesigned GUI! Go here for more details!

via — BlenderNation

–Lace

Rigged Pistons in Blender

Lace — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:54:05 +0000

After following a fantastic tutorial by Jonathan Williamson (no relation) I put together this rough animation of a working piston. All of the modeling, animation, and rendering was done using just Blender.

The end of the piston is parented to an empty, and the empty is parented to the through rod which is connected to the flywheel. The in-out movements of the piston and cylinder are calculated automatically. The only thing animated in the video is the flywheel’s turning along it’s y-axis. I’ve been wanting to play with this for a long time. Next up, a steam engine!

I’ve another video rendering out right now. It’s taking awhile, it’s HD and render time is half an hour or so per frame. Can you say ‘not optimized’? Oh well.

–Lace

Volumetric Smoke with Blender 2.5

Lace — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:37:38 +0000

I spent some time in Toledo with one of my closest friends, Nathan, this weekend. Between playing tons of video games and a Windows 7 installation, I finally got around to trying out the newest Blender 2.5 svn, which can be found at GraphicAll. In this specific instance, I started tinkering with the volumetric smoke, a feature that previous versions of Blender have been without. Here’s my very first experience with one of my new favorite functions in Blender.

Many examples of the capabilities of this system can be found online, particularly on youtube and vimeo. The higher you pump the resolution, the more realistic the smoke looks!

That’s about it for this post, but here’s a teaser. For those of you interested in RFID technology, expect a very interesting post mid-December.

–Lace