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)

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.

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.

Leap

It’s ordered!  Praise the Lord.

Leap.  Yes, this was a leap.  A leap of expectation, uneasiness, hardware, and more.  I hope it all works out!  Leap!  I wonder… leap!  Well, my last cameras I’ve used are the Canon PowerShot A510 and the Quasar VM-L450, so this new camcorder is a great leap indeed!

This evening (or shall I say, morning) I finally ordered my camcorder, an Everio GZ-HD7.  Quite expensive if you’ve never actually bought your own camcorder before.  (Boy, that was anti-climatic.) ;D  Before I bought it I did some final research into the proprietary file format it puts your video files into, .TOD (HD video) and .MOD (SD video.)  I primarily researched the .tod issue and found out about the .mod one along the way.  You can read up on it here: Struggling with TOD at The Digital Video Information Network, and some solutions: JVC Workflow and Squared 5’s MPEG Streamclip.

As I have no personal experience with the camera and the .tod issues yet I cannot recommend anything beyond what I have read, but I may post on this later.  Basically you can use the software that comes with the Everio GZ-HD7 and save-as the video, or rename it to .m2t, or something… boy, I need to read up on it already!

Anyhow, I better start making some films now that I will have the first step in the equipement.  ;D  I may get Sony Vegas MovieStudio soon, to handle the HD.  (I don’t think Adobe Premiere Pro 1.0 does HD.)

So, perhaps this is the end of the tunnel, (or just starting?)

Thanks for listening,

God bless,

-b

P.S. Hope to be making films soon… I may be starting a graphic design company as well, so, we’ll see how all that goes.  But may I not forget my roots.  Thank you one and all!   Thank you John Calloway (http://johncalloway.wordpress.com/) for the help in camera research, and Andrew Duncan for insight into the digital video world!  Thank you all my other friends, supporters, comrades in the arts, and brothers and sisters in Christ… may we all find the path.  God bless, your friend, b

Working Towards Rewards

As of the past three weeks I have been working towards getting a DV camcorder.  I am looking at the Everio GZ-HD7 (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/479003-REG/JVC_GZHD7US_GZ_HD7_Everio_60GB_Hard.html) which is much more expensive than anything I had imagined I would look for at this time.

So, with working, events, and living, I find myself in moments of solitude, set apart for God and thinking.  Thinking “do I even want to get that camera?  I’m no sure I care…”, wondering, and praying some.

I will probably get this camera, (praise the Lord!,) I will likely endeavor doing interviews, making films with the members of Minosa Films, my friends and family, and even some commercial work.

But in every new step up in the tower of life, I must recall my duties and check my burdens – have I accomplished all that people have required of me to this moment?  Am I free to move on?  And I must decide and make action upon that conclusion.

I do not want to abandon the talents that have dogged my life so divenely my whole life, but I am eager and curious to move forward in this direction of film making.

Thank you for listening and God bless!

Can’t wait till the future, wondering about it all,

-b

Blender green screening, VSE – and how to make your own greenscreen!

I am endeavoring to learn some of Blender’s (blender.org) VSE (Video Sequence Editor) and node compositing editor.

With the VSE you can arrange video clips and do effects, such as achieving a fade out to black (using three strips – video, gamma cross and color generator.)

Using VSE as a simple video editor may be very useful, and as it develops hopefully it will overrun such commercial monster products as Adobe Premiere Pro.  One advantage over Premiere Pro 1.0 that I have found is that Blender’s VSE accepts an .avi compression that I use, whereas Premiere Pro 1.0 doesn’t.  Besides that, Blender is completely free and open source, and is an alternative to Windows Movie Maker.  WMM can be very useful for shrinking file sizes and doing some simple editing (and you can do text effects and transitions,) but Blender’s VSE seems less dumbing.

And now about the greenscreening:

With the node compositing I am endeavoring to make a successful chroma keying – taking out a certain color, like bluescreening, also known as split screen – but it is proving quite a bit harder than I hoped. It seems (as is perfectly logical) that to have an effective keying I need very clear, pure colors to key out. Otherwise you get grays when it looks blue and your footage becomes very spotty.

Hopefully I will get some good results soon. Here’s a screenshot of my first work with chroma keying – overlaying a video on an image – not so great, but I’m learning.

Old machinery (video) on old machinery (image)

Also, doing further testing this evening, this chroma keying business may be much more difficult than I had hoped. Looking online for professional options, I found these two sites: (the first site recommended the second site.)

DIY (Do It Yourself – Bluescreens, Greenscreens, Backdrops and Background stands) Highly recommended to check out – you can find out about how to make your own greenscreen the cheap way. (not fool proof.

EEFX (green/blue screen backgrounds and backdrops(?)) Great for seeing professional quality equipement, seeing the prices, and learning about what makes their cloth special.

Hope you enjoy – looking forward to filming soon! Praise God!

-B

Blender 3D 2.46 Released!

How can I write about MaPZone and not mention Blender 3D’s new release, Blender 2.46! Blender is one of, if not my favorite, program I use. It is an excellent 3D modeling, animation, rendering, and compositing program – and besides that, it’s open source, which means you can get it for free! (open source = free content and free code, so that the community can contribute what they think is needed, resulting in a rounded, professional package and frequent releases.)

It’s got a bunch of new features, so go ahead and check it out now!

www.blender.org

Check out Blender’s new features!

Keep in mind, however, that Blender is a very complicated program and may take you a long time to learn how to use. If you have any questions as you are learning it, feel free ask me over e-mail or IM – I’d be more than glad to help. I still have a ton to learn myself…

God bless,

Banor

Kenneth Anderson does Storyboards for upcoming film “Easy Street”

Kenneth Anderson (or Kenny) is my cousin. He has served in the marines, gone to Iraq twice, and enjoys filmmaking. He is currently attending the New School in New York City.

Recently I had a chance to talk to him about filmmaking in general: what camera to buy, different filmmakers who became successful with very small resources, etc. One of the best pieces of advice I got was to just make films – to have fun making films.

Currently he is working with director Vlad Nikolic (director of “Love” and professor at the New School) as a storyboard artist for the upcoming film “Easy Street”. The film is based on a true story and follows the life of a drug dealer. It will probably be rated R, due to heavy language and probably other things.  The film has an unusual aspect ratio of something like 3.1 – but I shouldn’t tell too much about the film.  And don’t worry, I don’t know a whole lot more!

Here is a picture I shot of Kenny with some of his storyboards for Easy Street.

It is a privilege (and just plain awesome) to see the workings behind a film.

Until later! Thanks for reading and God bless,

Praise God!

-Banor