Building My Durian Portfolio

I’ve been working on building a portfolio for the Blender Foundation’s upcoming open movie project, the Durian Project.

My skills are probably not up-to-par to be accepted to the core team, but oh, it would be so awesome if I made it.

So, keep in touch and check out my deviantART page where I’ve been uploading new artwork to my portfolio: http://artislight.deviantart.com/

Enjoy and God bless!  I appreciate your prayers and best wishes,
-Benjamin Bailey (banor)

What’s been happening

Someone gave me a very nice comment on this blog, so I thought I would give a shot at updating this blog by giving you this post.

Since I last wrote, I have become a Blenducation editor (see my presenter info at the bottom of the page here,) and I should be doing my second public class on Thursday evening, though I may do a two-hour class to see how that goes (instead of a one-hour class.)  See the post about my first public class here, and watch the the video recording version of the class here.

I have also been modeling more of late. Here are some thing’s I’ve done:

Head model for animation – got a lot of help on the topology from a head-modeling-timelapse video by Jonathan Williamson

Frame from the final animation renders – had technical (encoding) issues, so I couldn’t submit this animation to the Blenducation particle hair animation contest.

What I modeled in my first public Blenducation class. (False-colored, disasimbled, etc., after the class)

So, those are some things that have been happening with me.  I hope to continue design on my personal/professional portfolio website, advertising my services.

Cheers and God bless, and may you have a blessed Sunday,

-b

Various drawtypes in Blender – quick test

There are various drawtypes for objects within Blender’s 3D viewport.   Besides that, there is the Subsurf modifier and the “Set Smooth” button which adds goroud shading.  Here is a simple screenshot illustrating my point:

Drawtypes, Subsurf, and Set Smooth in Blender

Now I admit that this might not be worth reporting about, but it’s better to state that fact here than at the beginning of the post, warding readers off. 😀

Next on the Dancing Taco project: continue modeling the onion, then test the shading and texture with renders and tweaking.

I have started setting up some big goals for me this semester, (with someone’s excellent help,) and I really hope I accomplish them.  It will be extremely hard to conquer these goals, but it will be worth it.

Anyhow, I wish you the best in all your worthy endeavors!  God bless and goodnight!  I cherish your prayers.

-b

Christmastime

It is Christmastime.  You think of snow, and bright, cheerful mornings that you can sleep in on as long as you want, and a cup of coffee waiting for you downstairs.  After all, it’s Christmastime.

Success lies behind you: six months of accomplishments, pushes, and failures.  But that’s OK, you’re making it.  The key is to never give up.

Anyhow, onto the rest of the post…

Sorry for the lack of posting here on Minosa Films.  To make up for the delinquency, here’s my first post of many (at least I hope so.)  Let’s say I’ll try to write 1 post a day, till New Years (that’s 2009.)

To catch up, here’s what I just finished working on today: my entry for the BlenderArtists Weekend Challenge #316. The theme was “The Toymaker.”  I started on December 19, 08, and posted my entry some 15 minutes prior the deadline (December 22, 08, at 1200.)  Hope you enjoy!

My entry for "The Toymaker" (BlenderArtists.org Weekend Challenge #316)

My use of the SSS (SubSurface Scattering) messed up his skin.  The poor ear and hand modeling is sad, but I really like the hat.  And the face turned out to have quite a bit of character.

The Toymaker (screenshot from Blender)

I prepared the windows in Blender to show off some different features of the Toy Maker.  Notice the awkward teeth?  🙂

You gotta love the hat (screenshot from Blender)

Like the caption says, that hat rocks.  Do I get one for Christmas?!

If you would like to see other entries and vote on who the winner should be, check out the poll thread for the challenge on Blender Artists!  (I voted for “Evil Toymaker” by fly.)

Now I better wrap things up for the evening and leave some news to report on for the next few days.  Oh, and I need to rustle up a report for BlenderNation.com…

Anyhow, God bless and goodnight!

-b

3D architectural renderings by 3D Arkitektur

Do you want your 3D architectural renderings done fast, professionally, and for a low price?  Check out 3D Arkitektur, a Danish 3D architectural-rendering company, with design services ranging from modeling and rendering to 3D walk-through and 3D fly-by animation!

3D Modeling and Rendering - Residential Exterior

3D Arkitektur is owned by Kirk Outsourcing, a Danish graphics company that features a wide selection of graphic-design services, including:

• 3D Arkitektur – 3D modeling and rendering, 3D walk-through, and 3D fly-by animation
• LazyMovie – Rotoscoping and chroma-keying services
• LazyMask – Clipping-path services
• LazyAnimation – 3D Character and Industrial Animation

Architects, interior designers, real-estate agents, and construction companies will find 3D Arkitektur a very capable resource.  Their English-speaking staff makes sure to keep close contact with customers throughout the whole production process.

Serving the Scandinavian market for years, 3D Arkitektur is going international.  With offices in Copenhagen and productions facilities in the Philippines, 3D Arkitektur uses Danish leadership and Scandinavian efficiency to meet your expectations of a photo-realistic 3D presentation at an affordable price.

3D Modeling and Rendering - Residential Interior

Using the industry standards for their work, 3D Arkitektur artists use Photoshop, 3DS Max and AutoCad for modeling and animation, and V-Ray for rendering.  3D Arkitektur has a fast and speedy delivery time of only three to four days!

Send them your architectural design sketches for a photo-realistic 3D render, animated to your preferences.

For English speakers, Kirk Outsourcing offers architectural renderings through LazyAnimation.com, where all information is in English.

“Yo Frankie!” open game online for free download!

Hey, check it out!  The “Yo Frankie!” open game project is complete and open for free download!  Go ahead and go check it out now!

Besides that I have been working on a modeling tutorial for Blender.  I really hope it turns out well.  I am modeling a character that I made, called “Snorks.”  He is a little man with a big name (his full name is long,) and is a professor at a college.  I am using this tutorial to guide me as I model him.

Anyhow, that’s some news… working on an article on 3D Arkitektur, also hoping to compose at least one song by Christmas.

God bless,
See ya later,

-b

One big sigh: video editing success

I have finally gotten my video editing to work!  Hallelujah!  Ha ha ha!

History

Alright, here’s the story: I’ve been trying to get my video editing workflow down for a long time now, nearly a year since I got more serious about it.

For some years now I have played with video editing very little, but have enjoyed making short films with family.

December 2007 I purchased the Adobe Video Collection (2003) from a friend to use for my personal video projects and to edit something to DVD (Miracle In Gansu play to DVD.)  But after nearly a year I still have not gotten the project done due to a lack of knowledge and to my royal procrastination skills. 🙂

During this time I tried to get Adobe Premiere Pro 1.0 to work for my video editing tasks, but for the  majority of it I was unsuccessful.  The only successful project that I produced from it was DuelMind, a short film for the 24 Hour Christian Film Contest (however, I was unable to enter my film into the contest because I had never used YouTube before and did not realize that the file size of my video was way too big.  The next day a friend of mine gave me some advice which solved my problem – but the deadline had passed and it was too late.)  And even with that project I think the audio and video were getting out of sync.  😦

I will let you know: a/v out of sync has been my greatest technical video editing “curse.” 😀

I have tried to get Cinelerra to work, (actually the link goes to the CV version, whereas I may have been trying to get the official release to work,) but I was not successful with that.  I have seen Kino, touched Avidemux, tasted VirtualDub, and used Windows Movie Maker.  The latter program was the one I used the most, especially before I got the Adobe Video Collection.  Simply put: It worked.  But to use who are artistically inclined or professionally minded, it just isn’t enough.

I saved up for a camcorder and purchased the JVC Everio GZ-HD7.  The .tod file type (video container) posed a big problem, though, and for long time I was stumped (and frustrated.)  Multiple times I have considered selling the camera and getting a MiniDV SD camcorder.  But in a way I am glad I didn’t, because the Everio can get some sweet footage, and the fact that I couldn’t edit my video like I wanted to drove to new measures to discover the answer to my problems.

Eventually I decided to give the CyberLink BD Solution software a try (it came packaged with my camcorder.)  Surprisingly enough it worked, and it has been quite useful to get some DVD projects done.  I am planning on using it very soon to get another DVD project done.  I edited the Dr. Narendra Singh – 2008 Interview with PowerProducer Express.  Simple editing features are available, like splitting (cutting) video.  You can also use a range of video transitions inbetween video clips – but I only ended up using a few of them, like Fade and Burn.

Now this is where the history gets a little blurry… at some time I tried Blender’s VSE (Video Sequence Editor) to try to do my video editing, but I still had trouble with the audio/video being out of sync – and I couldn’t figure out how to export my video with the audio!

So the days passed, and my years waned… no, that bad. 😉  But one day someone heard my call, a man by the name of Rob Scott.  He had been working on something called BlenderAVC and kindly let me know about it by commenting to one of my posts here on the Minosa Films blog.  That’s where it really started.  From there I tried to get BlenderAVC to work.  I filmed with a few different settings and gave Rob some of my .tod files to work with.  Rob Scott’s BunnyHopHop workflow is very useful as well.  But BlenderAVC still wasn’t working for me.

I finally got a project to work in Blender’s VSE, the audio and video being in sync!  However, I won’t likely need to edit that project.

So, time passed…

Conclusion

But just today I downloaded the most recent version of BlenderAVC – BlenderAVC 0.7!  I can import my .tod files and it works fine!  But I still had trouble with my audio and video being out of sync.  I wrote some e-mails to Rob Scott asking for advice, but I didn’t need to… read on. 🙂  I noticed that Zelgadis (leader of the Morevna Project) was online, so I started IMing him.  He suggested I change the FPS on my file and so, after some tweaking, I reported back to him with a “OK, it’s official.  You the man!” victory cry that it had worked.

BlenderAVC 0.7 - screenshot of some successfully synced audio and video (see the last two strips)

So, praise the Lord!  One of my biggest video editing hurdles has been removed.  With further testing I hope that I wll be able to consistently repeat this successful outcome and get the rest of the workflow down pat.

I have not yet realized how great this is… if it really is true.  Maybe I will be glad tomorrow?  😀 Ahead of me lies the journey of actually learning what “video editing” really is!  Whew… this is very good.

So, I guess that’s about all.  I hope your journey is as exciting as mine – no, WAY more exciting!

One big sigh: Whew, video editing success.

God bless, friends, and may your journey be bright,
Best wishes,

-b

P.S. So a big PRAISE THE LORD!!! 😀

Is Blender as good as 3DS Max for professional 3D renderings?

I received this very good question in one of the comments:

Do you think Blender is as good as 3D max for professional 3D renderings?

Mike,
dk.lazyanimation.com

And my answer:

Mike,

Your question is a very good one, but I am really not the person to ask.  However, I will try to give you a good answer nonetheless.

As you well know, the quality of the final render lies heavily upon the work done in the modeling/animation application prior to the rendering.  The detail of textures, proper placement of lamps, and correct shading and maps all play into getting the stunning result we all want.

Blender’s internal renderer may (or may not) render as high quality results as 3DS Max – I do not have experience with 3DS Max – but Blender’s internal renderer results are definitely satisfactory for general usage.

With the use of an external renderer such as Yaf(a)Ray or Indigo you can achieve higher realism in your photo-realistic renders, and with a program such as Freestyle (coding for the integration with Blender is still in progress as far as I know,) you can create artistic stroke renderings as well.  I have also heard of another photo-realistic renderer called Pixie.

Now onto your question directly:

“Do you think Blender is as good as 3D max for professional 3D renderings?”

Is Blender as good as 3DS Max for professional 3D renderings?  I don’t know, but I would say a big “yes.”

Give Blender a try, learn online with all the great tutorials out there, and you will soon see that Blender is a very capable program.  I highly recommend it!

To find out more of what Blender can do, see the features page (and also see the new features for the 2.48a release,) and check out the image gallery (I do not like some of the images here for various reasons, but I hope you will be OK with them.)

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask!  I am welcome to answering your questions.

God bless and best wishes!

-b

P.S. All of the above programs that I have listed are open source.

Blender 2.48a released!

This needed release is an important bug-fix release for the excellent 3D content creation suite Blender.

Check out the article on BlenderNation.com here: http://www.blendernation.com/2008/10/23/248a-update-release/

And you can download the new version here: Blender 2.48a.

God bless!
Happy Blending!

-b

P.S. A little background story on why this release is needed can be found here: http://www.blendernation.com/2008/10/22/yo-frankie-delay/

P.P.S. God is good… He is always good, nomatter what you or I face…

P.P.P.S. Looking forward to doing some “personal filming” sometime… my own music, you name it – the whole she-bang… hopefully…

P.P.P.P.S. A friend of mine told me about Owl City, an unsigned music artist.  Well, I started listening to it today (once I remembered,) and, lo-and-behold, I liked it!  That artist’s work is now the official “focus for listening” for October 23, 2008… in other words, that is the music group I focused on listening to today (on Playlist.com.)  Check out some of their music here. Wow, so inspiring… I could do my own MUSIC!!!! WHOOT!!! … or, JOIN A GROUP, or START A GROUP, or… SOMETHING!!! … 🙂  Maybe I’m crazy, but I love the idea, wow… I want to start… start soon. 😉

Celtx Against Maleria Student Challenge

Check this awesome challenge: Celtx Against Maleria Student Challenge.

The video on that page is inspiring, especially the words of the filmmakers:

I make media that matters

If I can get my video editing problems figured out into a consistent, reliable, and proficient workflow, I would love to participate in this challenge.

I am now participating in the Morevna Project and am working on learning how to draw one of the main characters, Ivan, as well as drawing a soldier design suggestion.

Check out our new Minosa Films Production Forum! Sign up to the Forest Quest forum (follow the link and hit “Register”) and start discussing current projects (uh… well, we don’t really have any current project discussions on there yet… LOL)

So, anyhow, those are some updates.

God bless, and, as always, best wishes,

-b