Still working on the Dancing Taco project. Hope I will finish it. Here is the current render of the tomato:
Current version of the tomato (new render)
However, previous versions were quite embarrassing:
A very embarrassing render of a tomato (first render)
Also, I am considering designing a T-shirt, which will be a neat experience. We’ll see if that happens. I found this neat PDF document that has some good guidelines regarding making a custom design. I may use CafePress to print my design, but it may not have enough options for what I want to do. We’ll see.
Cheers and God bless! Hope you are enjoying the new year. I better get to writing my JaNoWriMo novel. ;D
-b
P.S. I have recently downloaded The Mancandy FAQ videos from blip.tv (through Miro,) so I may get into learning a ton more about rigging soon!
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. 😉
Blender 2.48 is released! Blender is an excellent 3D modeling, UV mapping, rigging, animating, and rendering program that is open source and completely free!
NOTE: This version of Blender has two dependencies. The installer will let you know what they are. Downloading and installing these dependencies (needed third-party apps that help create the need environment for the program to run) is not that hard to figure out.
God bless and looking forward to the days ahead! It’s really late, so I better hit the hay.
…trying to make a game in Blender… I have had a desire to make games for a long time… I abandoned that desire thinking gaming wasn’t good. However, if I am careful with my time, I would still love to create some computer games.
Hopefully the Minosa Films group will rehearse (run through the script of) “Is This Love?” this Sunday after church. Currently I plan to rehearse the film and prepare it as needed for production. It is very tempting to just say “Hey, who cares, let’s film now” when the script is not film-worthy yet. Like a ship that is not prepared for the ocean, our film will sink. So, we must prepare.
Tentative plan:
Brief script rehearsals (group)
Find location – if current location will not work (banor, others)
Pray about it
When script has gone through revisions and is film-worthy, we will then commence a 2 day schedule:
Day 1: Take cast and crew to location. Walk through scenes and familiarize the actors and crew with the location: when and where events take place in the film
Day 2: Shoot film
By the time the production is film-worthy and ready to shoot, we will have gone through a number of brief rehearsals, script revisions, blocking, acting emotions, etc., so that when we film we are ready, with no wrinkles or big problems to iron out on location (hopefully.)
Well, God bless and best wishes,
May you be guided on the road ahead,
And may we all find what we are looking for,
Never give up,
-b
About BlenderNation:
BlenderNation is the central news site for Blender, the free open source 3D content creation suite.
Yes! Finally! Praise God! My first real article has been accepted to BlenderNation (BlenderNation is the central news site for Blender, the free open source 3D content creation suite.[1])
Read the article now!
I am so glad and highly appreciative that my article as been accepted. I have been endeavoring to get an article submitted for some time now, and had somewhat given up hope (for a time) that I would ever get something submitted. But Bart (Bart Veldhuizen, BlenderNation’s primary contributor and founder) has been cleaning out the backup of article suggestions that the Blender open source community has been sending in. A recent addition to BlenderNation has been the “Rapid Fire” articles, shooting off multiple, short article suggestions and links. A wonderful idea!
So, I am very thankful for Bart accepting my article! And I am also thankful to Zelgadis (Head of the Morevna Project) for leading the open source community of Synfig in an endeavor to create this open source animé film and for letting me know my article had been submitted (I hadn’t found out yet!) Also many thanks to the Morevna Project open source community contributors and all the open source developers, artists, and enthusiasts of many kinds spanning the globe.
YEEEEES! It’s working! Praise the Lord! Whoot! Yahoo!
OK, onto the point: I have successfully produced a very short video clip from a 720×480 (or was it HD SP?) mpeg2 video file into a final output of a 720×480 mpeg2! This may sound like “So what?”, so let me explain:
Using Rob Scott’sBunnyHopHop workflow I have used Blender 2.47 to do a minor edit to a 720×480 (or was it HD SP?) mpeg2 file with proxies, exported an excerpt of the video to PNG, optimized an AVS script in AvsP, (find the AviSynth wiki here,) ran it in QuEnc to encode the video to mpeg2, and the final result was a compressed 720×480 video with a/v in sync!
See a screenshot:
Current video editing workflow: Blender, AvsP, QuEnc, and VLC Player
Praise the Lord! This is a big mile marker in my video editing journey!
Now I hope all my editing needs will be met by open source software and Blender, and that BlenderAVC will rise to meet the standards of editing HD in the open source world!
About BlenderAVC:
BlenderAVC is an open-source project to provide the “glue” between Blender’s Sequence Editor and video in the AVCHD format. It provides a way of automating the creation of AviSynth scripts and proxy files so that AVCHD and HDV video can be efficiently edited within Blender.
P.S. The video I tested was from a number of .tod video files through CyberLink BD: PowerDirector Express and exported to mpeg2. In future testing I may use other workflows to optimize the time spent/quality.
As the days pass by and progress is made in various areas, one may wonder what happened to Minosa Films – like, where are the films?!
Well, I suppose everything has a journey. And each journey has it’s pilgrims, and once in a while, you run across a hero. Well, I am a pilgrim. And I need to do my part, and my part is not only the technical side of making sure we have a camcorder that will work, but scripts to make movies from. So, I need to write scripts. We have one script for a film titled “Is This Love?”, and I plan to make revisions upon it (basically add to/and or rewrite it.) I think it would be wise to have more than one script on hand, so, I need to write! 😉
Recently I found out about a neat project called Morevna Project. Check it out here: morevnaproject.org. I am considering contributing to it. From the website:
The main goal of Morevna Project is creation of full-lengthened anime movie, utilizing Open Source software only.
Other goals:
Promotion of Open Source software and its ideology.
Testing and improving existing Open Source products by giving appropriated feedback to developers and community.
Validate Open Source tools as suitable for creation of professional good-looking animation.
Provide content for other artists to learn from or to re-use, including documentation and tutorials
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.)
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…
Minosa Films is a small Christian film group stationed in the United States, dedicated to providing you clean, quality entertainment. We don’t just make you laugh, but think. That’s what we’re about: giving you a perfect film with a powerful message.
Minosa Films 