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Marius Oberholster Hey! I'm having an incredible learning experience, not only learning how Blender works (yes, still learning), but also about Open-Source and the incredible software available. Stick around!

Browsing Archive: October, 2012

Bricks now aged with recap

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, October 31, 2012, In : Tutorials 
Hey all!

Can finally move on to something other than bricks, haha, sort of:



This is where I am leaving it alone from this point and moving on to the blocks' insides themselves, because as you can see, they are still as white as the day they were modeled, if not more so, hahaha.

Let's recap on how this went on (remember, all procedural textures, not even texture painting):

This was the firstly applying the bricks. It was a scale test before unwrapping the whole thing and separating the two section...
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Run-off stains on the floor

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, October 30, 2012, In : wip 
Hey all!

I took some time today to specifically look at some buildings and I saw that when there is a place that water flows down regularly, where it hits the ground or drips for a long time, there forms stains too, so I added some staining on the floor as part of the floor's aging, but I ran into some difficulties, because I wanted to do it my way, instead of listening to HIS way, but thankfully, it didn't take nearly as long as before for me to relent and do it HIS way.

This is the result of ...
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Run-off streaks more rough

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, October 29, 2012, In : wip 
Hey all!

This is all for today, because I had some other work and it took a while to write and explain how to do it, but I am still very jazzed with the final result, so here is the old one and the new one:


left side = old run-off with displacement
right side = new run-off with displacement



Overall, I like it, but as you can see, the floor remains pretty much untouched since the last post. Will keep you updated!

Have a great one!

Thank YOU!!!!!!!!

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Some run-off streaks

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, October 25, 2012, In : wip 
Heya!

Worked late a night to get some more done and while I did get some work finished, it was more like a testing time than it was really writing. I needed to see if I could get the streaks I wanted in Cycles and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to, but HE insisted on HIS method for it being used (HE helped me last week with a theory on how to do it) and so I did and as usually it worked out well, giving this result after adding a bit to make them more convincing:

Remember that it's all procedural...
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Bricks are getting older, yey!

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, October 25, 2012,
Hey everyone!

I had gotten quite a bit done today. I added some dust and extra roughness to the scene. While there is still a lot to do and the tutorial is getting lengthy (due to everything needed), it will be worth it once finished.

Today I focused on getting some roughness on the bricks, particularly the tiny roughness you find on ruins due to erosion. While I didn't get enough detail, I did get the roughness required and here is the scene as it is now:



This is a close-up to show the roughnes...
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Working on its age

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, October 24, 2012, In : wip 
Heya!

Been working on a basic mask for the floor. This shows how it is progressing, from a top view (which you need to use while doing this, otherwise you don't have a clue as to what is where):



Basically, you can use gradient textures to make basic masks and I really do recommend them. I will also add though, that you will face some difficulty when it comes to coloring or boosting the brightness of the mask, without ruining it completely. I recommend adding a Brightness/Contrast one to make th...
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Adding some cracks

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, October 23, 2012, In : wip 
Heya everybody!

Been working on the tutorial and, oh snap, is it taking a while, hahaha. Personally, I've learned a ton during the writing of the book and people's reaction to it when I show them what it's about and what they would be able to do with it is really a confirmation that this is truly an anointed (means favored and chosen by GOD) project. Thank you for all the support!

Today's work followed on the tip from yesterday, which is grouping everything into node groups making the whole set...
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Bricks in color

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, October 22, 2012, In : wip 
Hey all!

I find giving you all updates on the tutorials as they progress, quite fun! Anyway, here is today's update. I have finished the mask and also the colored bricks (remember though that they are far from finished, this is just their base color):

While I am very happy with how they look currently, I am not satisfied that they look old (which they don't at all here, lol). So I will experiment a bit and see what works and what doesn't, but overall, I am very happy with the ratio of the brick...
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Progress on the tutorial

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, October 19, 2012, In : wip 
Hey all!

I want to show you a little something more from the tutorial. A factor image. This is what I use to define what goes where when I texture, to find it what it designates, you'll have to wait, but I can tell you that I used add here, instead of subtract, because I am going for something a bit more dramatic.

Remember, the image here is not the image that will be seen. It is a stencil or a mask if you will that tells Blender that this input goes here and this one goes there, aka Factor ima...
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A bit of what's going on with the book!

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, October 18, 2012, In : Tutorials 
Hey all!

I really enjoy seeing views on the website and I particularly enjoy it when I know that what you find here is interesting and educational to you at the same time, so thank you for your support. Feel free to tell your friends about this blog and the upcoming book on procedural textures (^^,)!

Back to the post. Today I started working on the ruin + ivy scene. I want to, through this tutorial show you that you can achieve some extremely complex things you may not even have dreamed possibl...
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An update on the book

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, October 15, 2012, In : General 
Hey all!

Working hard to get it finished as soon as possible! The next section will be tutorials and after that a few more things and it should be ready for release! So looking forward to having it completed and I have really learned a huge amount in the writing of it!

Today was a continuation of the displacement feature for Cycles. After getting this result, it was very important to find out how to fix it:

(the texture is not supposed to be a lot of thin blu stripes over a square sun's surface,...

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Node system art

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, October 12, 2012, In : General 
Hey all!

I have been working hard today, trying to figure out how to make an ivy leaf without a distort category in in Cycles's node system and oh snap was it hard!! HE helped me make two different shapes. One that looks more like a heart and the other that looks more like a weirdly shaped helmet. I think both shapes will look great for the Ivy Generator.

After finishing the shapes, I like looking at the surprise HE leaves in the node system. HE usually leaves some kind of image there to discov...
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Complex texture? Displacement? What is that?

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, October 11, 2012, In : General 
Hey all!

Seems I might have been a smidge too technical yesterday, haha.

A complex texture is a combination of a bunch of textures forming one result, like making the SA flag from a bunch of blend textures:


Every complex texture, will have a node system (it's DNA, building blocks, if you will), and a node system, looks like this for wood (if it is complex, and not the simple wood texture applied, which has no knots):


Displacement is what it says, something that is shifted from it's original spot....
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Cycles can displace complex texture setups!!!

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, October 10, 2012, In : wip 
Hey all!

Today I felt that the Cycles section just fell short ito features and length (that it would depend on the tutorials to fill it out), but I went looking and HE helped me find a bit of a surprise that you may not know about.

Before today I thought that Cycles could only use the displacement modifier to create bumps and other stuff on the surface when using procedural textures to define those bumps and dents. While that does work, it only supports a single texture at a time and not a whol...
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Quick ruin with procedural textures

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, October 9, 2012, In : wip 
Hey all!

While I was working yesterday and after watching Andrew Price's tutorial on creating a rundown warehouse, which can be found here, I wanted to find out how the Ivy Generator in Blender worked (I liked the results he got). So yesterday, after working some on the book, I started playing around with it.

Keep in mind though that this is not a small generator and contains a huge amount of faces (mostly the leaves) and that needs plenty of memory. Many of my attempts resulted in Blender free...
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Free tip today: Factor versus Color

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, October 8, 2012, In : wip 
Hey all!

In the node editor, you will find that when you have something like a Mix node, that there is a Factor input. This input can be altered in varying ways, by using a texture. But, every texture has both a Color and a Factor output, both of which have an effect on the Factor of that Mix node or other node having a Factor input.

The big thing here is to remember that the Factor and Color output is not always the same and can produce very different results:


(Left = with Color,  Right = with ...

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Some book time!

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, October 4, 2012, In : General 
Hey all,

Today I got to work on the book again (can anyone say yey!), lol.

I am currently in the section that describes how you can layer them to get various effects and so on and this little image, is from that chapter. This one, specifically, deals with layering using procedural textures to mask, if you will, other textures:

(Cube with emission shader to show the texture/material exactly as it is)

For now, the Cycles part is more about the principle of what you do and how you do it, but not goi...

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Making leather (^^,)!

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, October 3, 2012, In : Tutorials 
Hey all!

Since I've made wood and snow and so on, I really felt lead to do something different for the Cycles section. While writing yesterday, it came in the form of leather. I thought it would be a relatively easy thing to do, lol, my mistake.

Anywho, I worked and worked and got nothing. I worked and worked some more and got a cave floor:


(looks more like a dry planet's surface, maybe useful in a later project c'',) )


After working some more I got sand:

(sort of looks like a field of small dunes...

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I like nature photography

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, October 1, 2012, In : General 
Hey all!

Today I have something a little different for you!

The last week as been for me all about taking some good shots of bees. We have quite a few plants around the house that bees really luv and while I am not the biggest fan of them, they do make for some exceptional shots. Plus it is now the time where the flowers are rich on pollen so it is the ideal time to go snap some pics (^^,)!

Here is the greatest shot I have ever been granted of a bee:

This picture has no enhancements on it whatsoe...

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