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Blender does everything...and does it well. Our shop recieved a video from an aircraft manufacturer with the engine start sequence in some goofy proprietary video format that nothing would touch. We have 'triple A' (Adobe, Avid and Apple) and a bunch of obscure video tools like Virtual Dub, yet nothing would open the video stream. In frustration I let Blender out of it's kennel and said "Sic 'em boy!" That darn little program ate that stubborn video without skipping a frame and sat there wagging it's tail smugly. We added annotation and edited out all the parts where nothing happened, and exported the finished video in a variety of easy-to-play formats for the engineers.
And you thought it was just for 3D.
Here's an addon Enrich that adds post production filters in a one click type of format similar to OnOne* but residing inside of Blender and using Blender's nodes.
While it's great to learn how to do post production on our pictures in the traditional way, not everyone has the time to devote to that on top of everything else they are trying to learn. Enrich offers a way to extend one's artistic vision in an exploratory manner without requiring a lot of time learning node setups. I am interested in learning the node setups myself as it is more flexible then this type of system, but even then a product like this can be good for quick ideation on which direction to take a piece before investing the time in the full composite. Anyways, just throwing it out there for anyone who might be interested. :)
*OnOne is a more fully featured product but it also costs significantly more and does not reside inside Blender. Both appear to be good products.
The Blender Conference videos are out for 2016. For starters there is a very interesting presentation on advancements in UV unwrapping.
It's about flippin time!
Any 2D or aspiring 2D artists out there? Grease Pencil continues to evolve and I for one am very interested in where it is heading. Realistically, it is more 2.5D then 2D or 3D. Being able to rig 2D characters and soon use modifiers, 3D cameras/lighting, Freestyle rendering, etc.. on them opens up a world of possibilities even for people who aren't traditional 2D artists. This presentation covers some of where GP is at now and where it is heading: Grease Pencil and EasyRigging Future Developments.
I'm interested to hear what others think of this. Is it bah, humbug.. who cares or is it interesting?
On the note of the GP, remember that bmesh, one of the most interesting unique features of Blender is also GP based. If not familiar with bmesh, do yourself a favor and check out the many YouTube videos on it. (Hint: there are some at my Pinterest Blender boards.)
One of the features of zBrush that Blender doesn't have is the remesh tool. Well, that was before Instant Meshes: A free qaud-based autoretopology program. Check it out. ;)
Wow, I'm going to have to sign up at CGCookie.
Viewport 2.8 updates, lots of good stuff it looks like.
No more Windows XP? Ouch. I knew it was inevitible (and doesn't affect me) but I know more than a few people who it will.
Laurie
Well one of the nice things about Blender is that they have the older builds available still.
Droping support just means that the current level of what the software is providing is no longer workable with that level of hardware/OS going forward but unlike commercial environments it doesn't cut people off from all of the development up until that point.
Realistically, modern software that is as demanding as 3D content creation software is going to strain working with an OS that old anyways, so if one is stuck with that upgrading to have more features is hardly as much of an issue as the issues they would be already facing trying to get their hardware/OS to function even with the previous version. Add to that anything that old is usually going to have a limited useful life before the hardware just dies.
Finally, there is always Linux with Blender.
This presentation: A New 100% Blender degree in a French University is more interesting then the title suggests. The presenter not only covers interesting material, what he gets his students to produce within a short amount of time, and the results he gets is impressive.
I've noticed the unusual amount of talented Blender modelers from Spain. I wonder if that curicula is in English too.
Which curriculum?
The one the €5 buys.
That's French. The university is free to French citizens but there's a €5 registration fee. He actually says later that the students get paid since they work on commercial projects during the curriculum.
However, the Blender community is worldwide. There are great people in it from most of the larger countries so there are some great Spanish artists as well. :)
Worth listening just to hear his accent. I will make do with CGCookie. These new improvement should have tutorials before too long and make it worth improving my beginner level with more tutorials.
CG Cookie is well worth it for someone getting started as they have learning paths that guide one through the fundamentals. I have some Pinterest boards listed earlier in this thread I believe but they are mostly for someone with the basics down. Another good resource is CG Masters
Thanks. I have bookmarked this thread and have box modeled 3 or 4 times toon style humanoids to completion but haven't tried to do rigging or blendshapes or animations yet. As it happens although I have quite a few DAZ models now and like them, the style of character I want to model is not like that, but is decidedly amateur looking on purpose; if you've seen the Alike short as stylized as that and I like that although that is not the style I will be trying to do but very unrealistic.
...yeah, that is about what it takes for the uninitiated to understand and learn Blender, a university course.
Dude... Really?
Well besides both CG Cookie and CG Masters having courses on rigging and animation, I have a Pinterest board just on rigging/animation and Lynda.com and Udemy also have courses on all of the above. Udemy's courses are on sale right now btw.
This presentation: Open Movies and Radical Sharing Online I put off until the end but it ends up being a very interesting presentation. The presenter gives her perspective of the role Blender has taken on in a social context (her PhD project.) I know, that sounds boring also, but it isn't, or at least wasn't for me in the end. Take a moment to check it out if you have it and throw in your two cents. I'd be interested to hear it.
We all learn differently, so for some perhaps; my experience was different, watched some vids, and got going.
I found Blender easier to learn than Daz - in part because there are instructions for it, as well as the vids.
Aren't you overstating the difficulty? Despite my wife telling me for 37 years that I'm the stupidest man on the planet, I've had few problems learning Blender. There are only a million good (and free) tutorials available.
Thanks for that link Gedd. It's interesting to see how the scientific community has embraced Blender. Here's a project close to my heart, http://arc-team-open-research.blogspot.ca/2012/11/taung-project-3d-forensic-facial.html ; There are several other projects involving high resolution CT scans of broken or damaged fossils which are then reconstructed by a worldwide network of volunteers.
For examples of scientific and engineering uses of Blender there are other presentations from the 2016 conference at the Blender Foundation YouTube channel on this topic that I didn't link to as it is a somewhat specialized interest other then to have an understanding of how wide of a breadth the Blender community is. :)
I also do not use all of the features provided by Blender, but that does not stop me to using Blender at all.
The most important for me was to found a way to have a measurements, to match the one's in Daz Studio
and just start using Blender to do simple things, for current needs.
Blender has a lot of wonderful, easy to use generators, like the landscape one, that I use a lot.
To find the landscape generator, press the spacebar and type landscape in the search field.
Some of the generated landscapes I sculpt further in Blender, but most of the time it is enough
to play with available parameters and see, if you like the changes or not.
I also scale up the terrain, by replacing its x, y, z unit dimensions with 100 times larger ones.
Then I simply switch to top, orto view and in Edit mode, I made a UV map, by choosing "Project from View (Bounds)" and "Unwrap".
Then save a file (in Blender native format - for future use) and export it as .obj.
Next I import .obj file to Daz Studio, convert landscape to subD and apply an iray Uber shader to it and play with the textures
(many of them one can find on ShareCG - for free). Almost instant terrain for use in Daz Studio.
Below I attach the screenshots of the metric scene settings in Blender (important for matching dimensions in Daz Studio)
and the proper import settings from .obj in Daz Studio, and some other relevant screenshots, to get you started.
The conclusion - do not be afraid to experiment with Blender, it is not that hard and you will be happy afterwards.
I thought that about Daz3D for years...until I decided I was going to learn it or else. As of today, I no longer use Poser at all anymore and use DS exclusively. It's EASIER. LOL. Maybe one just has to get out of the mindset that "I can't" because "it's just too hard" :)
Laurie
Thanks for the mini-tutorial Artini. I will have to try that! :)
Laurie
...if Blender had a fully pointer driven UI like Daz and Hexagon (or like Andrew proposed several years ago) that didn't require memorising a bunch of hotkeys out of the box and/or having to know scripting to customise it so it worked more like the other programmes I use, I probably would have been working with it for years.