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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!

Showing category "General" (Show all posts)

A different solution

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, February 16, 2022, In : General 
Hey all!



I've done many tutorials over the years - roughly 60+. That's nothing to snuff at, hehehe. It takes many many many many hours of work just to make one, and we're not even talking about the actual recording and editing part!

Over the years, I've gotten requests to make the files available for download, which I had an issue with at the time, for many reasons, but one was that I had no stable way of sharing the files. That, and I take a VERY long time to make a decision on something, but ...

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The Alternates

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, January 26, 2022, In : General 
Hey all!


Image by digital designer from Pixabay

I have come across a situation that I'm really not used to, but seems to be a common thing - a lot more common than you'd think.

About a year ago, I joined instagram. Fairly early on, I came across an account for freelancers and he spoke about objections and a few other things, related to price. He advised coming up with some kind of discount to get a project done, if they don't have experience with something specific.

In addition, I've also seen a ...

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Anime Impact Frames - Product and Why

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, January 19, 2022, In : General 
Hey all!

Recently, Marquis Miller messaged me on Facebook with a suggestion for my CGT - Impact Frames!

Initially, I wasn't too excited about it, until I actually got into it! It was such a challenge. I'm starting to see a trend here - what I'm not too excited to get into, turns out to be the most useful, LOL!! The last time this happened, I created the NPR shaders, based on a lot of work between myself and Wasili Novratidis. I like to give credit where it's due.

Anyway, moving on, I started wor...

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Throwback To The Future

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, December 15, 2021, In : General 
Hey all!

Throwbacks are not something I typically do, but with a very productive year, I think it's good to think on what was and what can be - a throwback to the future, hehe. I'd like to invite you to take a moment, and just consider everything you got done and that happened over the past year - and I mean the whole lot and consider what your plans/hopes/aspirations are.

Now, consider how many obstacles there were and how much you persevered and guess what - you're still here!

So, since this i...

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Anime Motion Blur techniques

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, November 24, 2021, In : General 
Hey all!



So, yesterday's video in the BNPR group on Facebook was an interesting result and I'd like to kinda share the process a bit and what I'm thinking. I uploaded it to YT unlisted for you:

The image below shows how to create a very simple sub for slow parent. It does not have a falloff - it is a 1:1 vector delay. You can think of it as the old Nokia3310 version of Snake. For a huge share of animation sequences that don't depend on the NLA, this method should be ...

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Take responsibility for your project

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, November 10, 2021, In : General 
Now, the second you hear that kind of thing, I'm sure you feel what I do: "Buzzkill" or "Partypooper" or "That sucks the fun out of it!"


Image by Colin Behrens from Pixabay 

Haha, no, that's not my intention at all, but it does sorta lean that way a bit - like having a walk-through when you first play a game or join a new platform.

So let's rip off that band aid, welcome Clippy with open arms and click those heels to get home, cause we all know there ain't no place like it! lol. Gosh that makes ...

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Audio must make sense

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, October 27, 2021, In : General 
Hey all!

Image by pencil parker from Pixabay

I really love writing these posts about film making! It's kinda a dream to do some videos on film making to branch out more about these topics. There are so many things that pop up, it's a treasure trove!

So, for today's post, we're checking out Audio! ooooh! lol.

Audio is a very broad topic, so I'm gonna narrow it down to the title - it has to make sense. This applies to every category of audio in film.

Let's talk about foley. Foley is a broad term tha...

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Better Proposals and why it matters

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, November 25, 2020, In : General 
Like any other freelancer, I know you know that you need to go looking for business. It's not just going to fall on you. Because of this, my family is kinda tired of hearing the word proposal. But, I propose to you, that it is one of the greatest words you can use when it comes to contacting people for work. You can kinda consider a CV a proposal as well; Curriculum Proposal-us.

Now, I've sent out a few and for various purposes. When I wrote my first one, my friend was honest enough to tell me...

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Still here and hard at work

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, November 16, 2020, In : General 
Hey all!

Just wanted to let you guys know that I am still here and that this site hasn't been abandoned, lol.

I've been working on a lot of different things lately and will share on those later. For the timebeing, just wanted to pop in and tell you about 2 specific things that has really been super awesome:

1) The outline branch

There is a build for Blender that contains a very special new node that has not been merged into master yet - the outline node.

This is basically exactly the same as the e...

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Node Groups mean New Features

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, October 2, 2018, In : General 
Hey all!

Today I get to release a new video - that feels like it took forever to make, hahaha.


GOD is so amazing!!!!!! (^^,) <3

This video comprises pretty much all the node groups that I currently have available for download. Sorry, they don't come with content to test them on, but you are more than welcome to check out Pond5. Their public domain collection has really expanded over the last year. And no, this is not sponsored, hehe.

I endeavored to show you guys what these nodes can do in as ent...

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Bible Animations - Exodus

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, March 21, 2017, In : General 
Hey all!!

This blog is profoundly quiet for the main reason that I'm working on an animation about Exodus 7-12,  KJV. For clarity, that means chapters 7-12. These cover the 10 plagues and their exit after the first Passover, but stops before the read sea,

Just to give you a reminder, check out this playlist:

GOD is super great!!

If you want to continue seeing steady posts, for the moment, that will be the most active blog for the time being. I totally recommend stopping by beyond checking out the...
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Brass

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, May 12, 2016, In : General 
Hey all!


Brass

Last week I looked at a brass material for a project I'm working on, and through the references I got, I could not tell the difference between brass and gold, except by context! I must not know them very well, but I was really surprised. I even ask some other people if they could and still they were as perplexed as I was.

What I did find out is that brass is sometimes a more pale yellow than gold is. Gold can often be an almost orange-y color. Not completely, but you get the point...

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BibleAnimations

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, January 20, 2016, In : General 
Good day everyone!

Wow, almost a month since I last posted here! :D

This is gonna be a post that encourages you to go and check out the Bible Animations website GOD had me make a short while ago - and I mean like very short while ago, haha. I don't know how far I'll get in the making of these videos, but I'm being really honest when I say I want to do the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation and do it well. That will take time and a lot of effort and if you think about it, not gonna happen u...
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Channel trailer

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, August 13, 2015, In : General 
Hey all!!

Super happy that GOD had me make this and I'm very happy with the result! :D Check it out:


While you're at it, don't forget to subscribe! :D

Have a great one!! GOD bless!!

Know JESUS yet?

Thank YOU!!!!


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RUN

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Saturday, July 11, 2015, In : General 
Hey all!

Most of you know I use Make Human to make characters in an anime style and I really really like the program. Well, they recently, like as in June 2015, started hosting competitions. Nothing fancy, but it's a nice way to push yourself to actually finish something and do something with what you've learned. So, I've entered for June and I'm also entering for July. Just for the sake of posting it, here is my July Entry - the theme word is Action:


If it weren't obvious yet, the name of the ...
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Yay, it's up

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, September 17, 2014, In : General 
Hey all!

The last post I did was on the other blog - about cast approx in the material options. Check it out!

Today I want to share with you something of an experiment for me - writing sound effects as well as music!
This is a fairly recent video I did for Cross Allegiance:


(Check out the rest of our videos on our YouTube channel - Editing done by Sterling C Franklin)

I was going for a spacy look with this one, because this is an abstract concept that translates into the natural. Basically, it com...

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Things

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, May 22, 2014, In : General 
Hey all!

Been very busy, but thankfully, I have gotten to verse images and updating the portfolio. So, for today, I have two things to share!

(screen shot of but a small part of the portfolio - this page only represents the tip of the iceberg, so I added links to more works. Find out more about how this portfolio selection had been approached in this post)

The second item of the day is, of course, a new verse image.

Today's verse image share is again about creation. I firmly side with AiG (Answer...

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Some news

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, April 22, 2014, In : General 
Hey all!

On the post today:
> New competition - What really happened
> New images
> A brilliant tutorial
> Blender news in one place on Facebook
> The panther dynamics facebook page and portfolio blog

> New Competitions are sometimes exciting and sometimes they can really take you by surprise. I was very surprised by Andrew's latest competition on his site, Blender Guru, and the theme is: What really happened. At first you're thrown for a loop and you think: "Wha'?!", but this actually has some very...
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Some new additions

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Saturday, March 29, 2014, In : General 
Good day everyone!

Recently I've been able to push out work on a scale that amazes me when I look back on it and I am very very thankful to have been able to and some of these works have been added to the portfolio site.
These works cover three types:
- Video Thumbnail
- Animation
- Verse image

Granted, I did not upload everything and it only occurred to me while writing this, that I didn't, haha.

Under video thumbnails and verse images, these pieces have stood out for me the most:



Out of the video w...
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A blog post about a blog

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, January 16, 2014, In : General 
Hey there!!

I hope you all enjoyed the post from yesterday about text in BGE. Apparently, it can be called Dynamic Text; news to me, haha.
   Anyway, today I bring you something a little different and that is, a new blog!

Initially, I was not too thrilled about the idea, however, I believe that it's something I needed to do. Partly to get traffic going there so that people will be able to find my work a lot easier, but also just to write a little more broadly than what I do here.

This new blog is...
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MercyMe - Shake

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, December 9, 2013, In : General 
Hey all!

I'm currently working on a new tutorial that I really hope will surprise a lot of you like it did me, but while I'm working on it, I can't post any new content as there really is nothing to be posted that looks really good, haha. In addition, I am considering adding a shortcut for all the QBT's so far under the Blender Tutorials page, just like for the Blender Game Engine Tutorials page.

I do have something absolutely fantastic to share and that is one of MercyMe's new songs called Sha...
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Caves, how are they made

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Saturday, November 23, 2013, In : General 
Hey all!

I watched and did (for a change) one of Andrew's tutorials yesterday and it was a blast. I struggle intensely in getting the crystal how I wanted, but through a lot of leading, it is how I want it and, I hope you give it a try as well. Naturally, I just finished a book on Procedural Textures, very appropriately named, Procedural textures, and so I was not about to download the textures. Instead, I did the whole thing, from displacement to color, etc, all procedural textures in Cycles....
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2D without freestyle, for the Game Engine

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, November 20, 2013, In : General 
Hey all!!

3 for 3 this week so far, hahaha!

This week, I was on the Blender Game Engine group and I saw someone asking how to do a toon material for a game. I thought it would be insanely complex, requiring an extra mesh or whatever, but you can get a pretty cool look, is, just by using the material options:


As you can see, we have two very similar shapes. The one to the top left is low-poly and the one to the right is, high-poly. Naturally, the high-poly looks nicer, but with a little fine tuni...
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New tutorial, a wip

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, November 15, 2013, In : General 
Hey all,

I'm currently working on a new free tutorial and I'm really jazzed about posting it. Simply stated, it is how to make a speedometer and link it to a specific object. The same technique will be applicable in many other ways, but I'll add that in the tutorial :D.

Because of this work, I may not be able to enter the current Blender Guru Competition, but if I am able to, I would like to take a different approach and give you a behind the scenes type look of how I work.

Anywho, hope you get ...
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A little bright I would say

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, September 24, 2013, In : General 
That is, to stare into the sun, haha.

Hey everyone,

Today I get to share a little sun glare I've been working on last night. It's not exactly what I wanted to achieve, but very close and I am very happy with this as a sun glare (what I wanted would fit a shiney metal glare, not the sun)!


(Click image to see this in action, fast and slow)

This was quite a challenge to make, though I was shown the basic idea quite a while back. Only yesterday HE showed me how to do it properly. I am very very happy...

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Nasa is being very generous

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Saturday, August 24, 2013, In : General 
Hey all!

Today I would like to share a little something I got from one person that got it from another person, that apparently found it on NASA's website. What is this thing? Free 3D models of various spacey stuff!

Obviously, I just really wanted to give this a go and I believe GOD gave me a quick chance to try it and this was the result (after HE had me fix the textures, but more on that later):



Obviously, I
'm no expert on these things and have never seen their bases...

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4 Seasons - Spring and Summer

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, August 19, 2013, In : General 
Hey all!

As you all know, sometimes weeks go by without me uploading any new pieces. Many times, I am actually quite active on work in that time and here is a post to show you some pieces I've been working on.

Everyone is familiar with Vivaldi's 4 seasons. I found on Wikipedia, that there are some sonnets that accompany every movement. I do not believe that Vivaldi wrote them, as there is a reference to Bacchus. If he did, that's between him and GOD, but I don't agree with it. Thankfully, there...
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New profile pic! A good face lift!

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, August 1, 2013, In : General 
Hey again!

Wow, two posts in one day! Like that a lot! Anyway, on the Panther Dynamics FB page, I say I aim to design right the first time, yet for some reason, I left my profile picture in a dismal state. Unacceptable! If this service is to glorify GOD, it has to be done right and so, here is the new profile picture:



It's high time the standard gets a bit of lift on the overall presentation. If the standard is low, the income will be low and that is just not okay, lol.

Hope you all have a fanta...

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Polar bear

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, June 28, 2013, In : General 
Hey all!

Been working on some things and so haven't been posting as much as usual. But I know you'll luv this one!

A few weeks ago, I received the idea to make a polar bear, sitting on ice, with his paw in the water, but with a very painterly look. That, I believe, was just to show the image had to be simple.

Anyway, having the idea, I started off for MorgueFile to go get reference and there were some stunning shots!! Remember to always check the licenses of the photo's. Very important.

So I want...
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Remember two posts ago, the sea?

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, May 2, 2013, In : General 
Hey all!

I've worked on that special project over the last weekend, like intended, but I am still not completely satisfied with the final result, but that's only because this was an experiment. Here are a few frames as it progressed on a feature called, Dynamics Paint:

When I started, it was because GOD gave me an idea of how to do the foam, but I had never worked with this feature before and had to watch some tutorials to learn how it worked and some of the stuff that can be done and I particu...
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Finally back to doing something, lol

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, April 26, 2013, In : General 
Hey everyone!

I am still editing on the book, but this last week has been garden work like never before and today I took some time off to just do something fun (was so tired I fell asleep whenever I sat down, lol).

Anyway, I am working on something with the ocean modifier (not specifically for the ocean modifier, but it may certainly apply), but first I had to get a material in Cycles that I would be happy with and this was the result:



While it may be far too dark in this scene, it is really not...
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Entry finished! (^^,)

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, April 17, 2013, In : General 
Hey all!

I am very glad to report my Blender Guru competition entry is in and I am extra nervous about this one; animation.

I went more for a non-typical animation, but still counts and I really hope you all will like it a lot. I would like to post it when the competition has closed (29 April 2013, 23:59 GMT) and the winner has been announced (two days on). So please be patient until then.

On the upside, after around 4 days of rendering, it means I can get back to editing the book (oh yeah!). I ...
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Been quiet

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, March 26, 2013, In : General 
Hey all!

Sorry I've been a little quiet. There are two reasons for this:
1) The book is nearly complete and there is no visual stuff left to do on it
2) We've been having some big connection speed issues as well due to some cable in Egypt or something. Still have to check the e-mail.

Currently I'm working on my entry for the next Blender Guru competition. I really want to do an animation, but as things stand, it will most likely be a single render, but we'll see how quickly I can model, texture (...
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Some new features in Cycles

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, March 19, 2013, In : General 
Hey all!

Busy with some things on the book, but all the tutorials for it are done, so I don't really have much of an image to share today, so I thought I'd update you all on how Cycles is growing.

Cycles is the relatively new render engine native to Blender. It is by far more realistic than Blender Render, but also a bit more difficult to work with, especially for new users and those that avoided the Node Editor like the plague. In it's initial phases it was not only so unpractically slow that ...
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Two things

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, March 15, 2013, In : General 
Hey all!

 - First South African Blender Meetup

So tonight was the first South African Blender meetup and I couldn't attend (didn't know it was happening until tonight, LOL). Anyway, the whole purpose of it, was to discuss what to do for a meetup over here that would make sense for locals (such as workshops, just hang out, creating a movie as a group, etc.). Whatever the outcome, I would really like to know. You can keep an eye on the Blender Nation feed found at Blender.org for updates on more ...
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Oh look, stairs!

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Saturday, March 9, 2013, In : General 
Hey everyone!

A bit of a late post, but something cool! Recently I receive the theory that you can make a spiral staircase from a single step, a cylinder and few modifiers. The great thing is, you can!


Obviously, this does not include the railing, but, you can add it. I've tried to add one, but this was the best I got in the time I played around with this:

Needs some adjustment, no, lol.

Anyway, how you do it is super simple:
 - You model a step (flat plane, otherwise it will distort later)
 - You ...

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Tiles down, trees up

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, March 8, 2013, In : General 
Hey all!

Only started the tree tutorial and almost finished. Yey!

Has been quite a bit of work and I am really jazzed about the result. In it, you will be shown how to do a little something like this:


I like this image a lot and I made like two other compositions, but this one just worked the best for the tutorial. While this is merely a proof of concept, I leave it up to you to really push it further in making it work in your scene (I don't have a scene requiring trees right now, so there is no...
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Update on the earlier post

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, January 23, 2013, In : General 
Hey all!

Here is the update I was talking about earlier today that I was hoping to make. It literally just finished rendering:

(render fresh from the Cycles Render oven, lol)

As you can see, it looks a lot better than it did without the grout in the joints:


I really like this tutorial a lot, and I know you will too!!

Have a great one!

Thank YOU!11

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Continuation

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, January 22, 2013, In : General 
Hey all!

After continuing working on the tutorial, I found that there was a snag, thankfully now fixed, in regards to the joints of the walls, ceiling and floor. This too has been fixed as well as discussion on how to create that uneven look. Hope you like this preview:


(prior to the joint fix)

I added the orange ball to show the mat finish I added for the tiles that don't form part of the feature wall. Yet even there is very little gloss. Also, the tiles are actually a lot more square, but foca...

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A bit later, but still the same day

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, January 11, 2013, In : General 
Hey all!

Yesterday's post was early, and this one a bit later, haha. Thankfully still the same day though.

Today marked the completion of a tutorial and this is the final result:

Absolutely a joy to work on this and I think they even work like this as a group.

I hope you all like it as much as I do and that you're also looking forward to the book.

Thank YOU!!!!!

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Particles+Collision vs BulletPhysics

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, January 4, 2013, In : General 
Hey all!

Today was a bit of experimenting. The game engine has what is called Bullet Physics. It is what it needs to tell the software that this object is heavier than this one, this one is touching ground here, this is in the air over there, etc.
Now, this system is far more accurate and versatile than what is currently physics options in Blender Render or Cycles Render mode. There, the closest you get is the soft body simulator.

So, today, I wanted to find out how to bake a bullet physics anim...
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Just something fun

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, January 3, 2013, In : General 
Hey all!

Was a bit under the weather today, so I took the day to just make something random and here it is:



I played around with the remesh modifier. One of it's features is the ability to make a mesh pixelated (or block) in appearance. Everything in the scene has been made that way, except the lighting, because this is Blender Render, not Cycles. The composition originally left a bit to be desired, so I quickly changed it. This is how it was:



I think this project would make a cool wallpaper, bu...
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Not gone, just working

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, December 10, 2012, In : General 
Hey all!

Today's post is just to let you know that I haven't stopped working. Currently, I am focused on the current Blender Guru competition. The theme is CHRISTmas (I added the caps), and the closing date is the 21st. Considering that leaves only about a week and a work week at the most, it is hard so squeeze it in using Cycles as render engine, but I glad to report that the entry is going well.

Other than that, there isn't much blending going on atm.
Feel free to enter the CHRISTmas competiti...
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A little prep

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, November 19, 2012, In : General 
Hey all!

As you all know, before you go ahead and do any kind of project, especially an art one, it is vitally important to do some research and do some practice runs (in the case of tutorials). They enable your project to not only be more creative and convincing, but of a much higher standard.

This is today's prep for another tutorial I am working on:


Not quite where I want them and still working out the kinks, but really happy with the overall result (the one on the far right needs a bit extra...

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Some new (to me) features

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, November 16, 2012, In : General 
Hey all!

As you know, this blog has been going for just over a year now, and I do thank everyone of you that have been reading!

     Image posts
There is a different kind of blog post known as an image post. What it is, is a normal blog post that you attach an image to. That image is then displayed right under the Title and Date at full size. This means that if you do want to use image posts, you need to make sure that your images are not full HD. Not everyone has a monitor that size and the sty...
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Update

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, November 15, 2012, In : General 
Hey all!

So far, the book is around 230 pages! Fantastic!! I am super excited about it and I really hope to finish it as soon as possible. Due to unforeseen circumstances that will still come (means I can't predict the future, lol), I can't give a release date, but I can continue to show you the progress as I work.

Looking forward to the other tutorials to be added to the book and tonight (it's just turned 22:44 as I am writing this post), I would like to just leave you with a very well done wa...
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Finished ruin!!!

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, November 14, 2012, In : General 
Heya!!

Here is an 8 image summary from start to finish on this project:

Right after modeling, this was the first look (obviously, this was pre-unwrapping)


Post unwrapping and finishing of the basic bricks, I added some dust. This dust was later edited and became close to invisible.


Of course, what ruin would be complete without run-off stains and muddy bases and so on? None. This was even after displacement was added (and before I knew of the texture bug in Cycles).


The ivies have finally been add...
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Preview

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, November 8, 2012, In : General 
Hey all!

Today I was working on the trees and got bored and so I made these instead by just messing around with the textures. Think they came out rather cool! I stuck with the circular theme, because it looked amazing. The top middle one was made first.



In the book, I will tell you how you can make this kind of thing with procedural textures, because many times you need an art piece for a scene (especially when doing architecture) and as a respecter of copyright, you won't just fling something ...
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A bit off-topic: Wet bricks

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, November 6, 2012, In : General 
Heya!

Over the last weeks, I have been posting about the tutorial I am working on and while I currently am experiencing quite a bit of difficulty there, it has given me some time to just mess around trying to look for a solution (already prayed and waiting for HIM to reveal it).

While messing around with some of the textures, I came across a combination that works really well for wall tiles, but after playing with it a bit, turned it back into bricks I add the gloss node as well and got this in...
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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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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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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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Client of the month certificate

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, September 24, 2012, In : General 
Hey all!

My brother is a personal trainer and a very good one at that. To inspire his clients to push as hard as they can, he wants to give them a certificate system. One that goes as the title of the post; the client that achieves the best results in that month, is client of the month and receives this certificate with their name on it:



I think it is a fantastic idea and I really enjoyed working on it. Originally, I wondered how we would put this thing together, but my brother is just the idea...
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Rendering out an animation as an image sequence is good!

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, September 20, 2012, In : General 
Was wondering what to post today and I believe this will be of great help to you if you are new to Blender or even been working with it a long time and need some tips.

A while ago, just after starting with Blender, I would always render out directly to video. I thought that was the best way of doing it, because I mean, after all, I wanted the final piece to be a video. Logic doesn't always apply when you are new to a program, especially not Blender.

Shortly after I was lead to Andrew Price's we...
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Caustics in Cycles

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, September 18, 2012, In : General 
Who knows what caustics are?
Well, as simply put as I can:
It's the light pattern you see after light has passed through a transparent medium, such as glass. Great examples are of course the following:
 - Light stripes at the bottom of the pool
 - Rainbow lights when light shines through cut crystal
 - That focus point you can get with a magnifying glass
 - And naturally this:

(Photo I took earlier this year that I wanted to maybe do as an exercise in Cycles)

Those white light spots you see that come...
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Slowly toasted for too long

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, September 17, 2012, In : General 
Heya!

Finished the toast today. What a work-out with Cycles!
Here is the final toast:

Only rendered at 100 samples
(click for full-res version in new tab)

I have to say, I really enjoyed this project and I have learned quite a bit on Cycles. Particularly how to layer procedural textures. It was a blast. For the toasted color I think it is too black, but I tried getting it lighter (didn't wanna budge). Oh well. Would still look good as a prop for a scene's background, so in that sense I believe it ...
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Just a quick update

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Saturday, September 15, 2012, In : General 
Hey all!

Yesterday I wanted to make a proper render with full global illumination and so on, and after about 2.5 hours, it reached 900+ passes and I stopped it there. When I wanted to print screen, I pressed F12 instead; bam!! There goes 2.5 hours, hahaha.

Oh well. This morning I rendered again and stopped it at 896 passes. Here it is:


(For those of you wondering what that target is in the middle of the image: it's the 3D cursor)

Have a great day everyone! Still plenty to do on this and hopefully...

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A little something just thrown together

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, September 11, 2012, In : General 
Hey people!!

Today I wanted to take my first shot at wood with Cycles and did some water, sky and so on, and this was the result:



The render was done at 10 samples. Not bad considering the low amount. Here is a free tip. While working with the render view, it is much much faster to set it to a single sample, Direct light and while layering textures to use an emission shader. It means that you don't have to wait nearly as long for a preview and you pretty much get to see a live result on your ob...
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Remember the Ogg

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, August 30, 2012, In : General 
Hey all!

I've gotten some feedback where people have struggled to open the videos I upload and send them (not just one, so please don't think you are being singled out), so I am re-posting about the video and audio format I use.

For video and audio I use OGG (no audio on the site yet, but I'm really working on getting something up here).
To play the OGG files, you do need to do one of two things (or both):
 - Download VLC and play the OGG files with that
 - Download the DirectShow filters here and...
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Progress on the final stages of the Blender Render section

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, August 29, 2012, In : General 
Hey peoples!

I have been working hard this morning fixing some things, shrinking others and having quite a bit to do, lol.

Specifically, I can't disclose it yet (want it to be surprise), but I can tell you that there are at least still two pages to finish and add, bringing the total amount of pages to a round 150 for the Blender Render section (if I don't find more to add of course), but I have started working with Cycles again so I can do it justice for all of you.

I also made sure that I can r...
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Lemon tree is growin'

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, August 24, 2012, In : General 
Hey all!

Apart from all the visual projects, I really do enjoy gardening. I believe HE asked me to plant quite a few things, one of which is this little lemon tree. I checked Wikipedia to make sure I wasn't taking a great picture of a weed, LOL.

Though the picture isn't very sharp, I really think for my cellphone's camera, it did come out extremely well. It was touched up in The Gimp.


This one was done with my dedicated digital camera and it required about the same amount of touch up, if not a b...
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Camera tracking tips!!

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, August 23, 2012, In : General 
Hey all!!

I want to give you all a freebie on account of all the visitors to the site. 65 per week is a good number so far and I really appreciate every reader!!

The last week or so, I've done work with camera tracking, to try and figure out how I can best work with it and get a great result and HE has given some great advice on working with them and some features you may not know about in Blender.

- Plan your shot
There are many things to consider, one of them is the amount of complex shapes you...
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Opus Codec

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, August 16, 2012, In : General 
Hey all!

For those of you who don't really go into much detail when it comes to video editing, you have many ways in which you can save a video. Many packaging ways, if you will, that can make the final video smaller in size than other packaging methods. These methods we call codecs. As this is a very competitive market to find the most effective packaging method, there are a lot of politics around their use and patents are involved, and so on and so on. What that means is, that if you use cer...
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Book continueing!!

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, August 1, 2012, In : General 
Oh thankful am I!!!!!! lol

I've been working on the book for what feels like a year (think it's been 6 months, but I'm not sure). Anyway, today I got the chance to continue working on the flag tutorial for the book and got around 16 pages done!!!!!!! Double yey!!!

For the moment though, there isn't much to show from the tutorial, but I will add that it does include a how to on making the French flag as well as the SA flag (proudly SA peoples c'',) )!!

Hopefully it surprises you how flexible proc...
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Space station getaway

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Saturday, July 28, 2012, In : General 
Hi all!!

A few days ago, Andrew Price uploaded a new tutorial (part 1 of 2 to be more precise) on making a space ship corridor. Now, I really liked the idea once I've found out that it's not for a ship to go through, but a hallway in a space ship itself.

I have only watched a small part of the first one and I am yet to finish watching it and also part two when he releases it (or at least that's the plan GOD willing), but before all that, I took today to make a corridor too. It just sort of grew...
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Current tutorial image change

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, July 23, 2012, In : General 
Hey all!

I've been thinking about the image I wanted to use for the cover of the 3D tutorial and although the current one looks cool, it is still very much like looking into a bumpy cube = no proper depth for different positions.

So the plan is to not only finish the tutorial today, but to also fix the cover image and hopefully get it posted tomorrow!

If it works (and I pray it does, because it really seems like the HOLY SPIRIT's leading), the new cover will be a very cool surprise. If you see t...
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Updated logo

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, July 12, 2012, In : General 
A few posts back my brother's logo was shown. He was given some inspiration to update its look quite a bit and he asked me to put it together from the old one and so here it is:



If you follow this site regularly, you could have seen that I posted this in the portfolio section of the site earlier today, next to the old one. Out of the two, I really do prefer this one and enjoyed making it. In keeping with the old design, perspective was still left out, but I had to split the contact info, becau...
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3D Portfolio section!

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, July 6, 2012, In : General 
I recently applied for a job and needed a proper portfolio of my 3D work (and I made sure I added only what HE wanted in) and you can check it out using the navigation at the top (far right).

Obviously, they will not remain the best works and will be replaced by other pieces as I learn and grow in skill, but I like the work so far!

Hope you enjoy scrolling through it!

Oh, about the feature pic. I did a comparison a while back between Cycles Render and Blender Render for the book I'm still workin...
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Paul Personal Training!

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, June 26, 2012, In : General 
My brother needed a personal logo for his group on FB.

I usually like to do the designing, but prefer it if the person actually gives me a sketch of what they want me to do and then just transform that into a final product. And that's what we have here.

My brother has very specific ideas about what he wants and so with such clients is essential that they give a proper example of what they want, and that way they can very easily be satisfied with the work.

In this case, he only requested that the...
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New business cards!

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, June 4, 2012, In : General 
Hey peoples!!

Today I can show you my dad's new business cards. I did quite a few designs and here is the one most of us (family and friends), thought he should've chosen and the one he actually did.

Now, before I show you the cards, I want to add that there was no wrong or right choice in this case. I believe HE inspired every one of the 5 or 6 ideas and layouts I did, so all of them qualify. Most of us just liked the other one more, but since he doesn't like black, he went for the whit...
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1st Car

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Saturday, June 2, 2012, In : General 
Yesterday I modeled a car, the first car I've ever done! It was quite fun, but it had a purpose: it was to go on my dad's business cards. He said for his cards he wanted an old-style car and since I don't know all the rules regarding car designs and what you're allowed to make and what not, I went original and did something from scratch with an old feel to it.

The only references I used were from experience (old cars I've seen) and a place that has an old luxury type car's silhouette as their ...
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Blocks in Blender

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, May 11, 2012, In : General 
There's a game out that mixes 2D and 3D and gives you these blocky characters that can rotate their 2D world 4 times (like a cube's sides). After seeing it, I remembered that Blender actually has a feature to remesh something into such a block figure and so I thought I'd give it a go on something simple.

This is the scene before some editing with Perspective view:


This is the same scene with minor editing set on Orthographic view:


Looks cool and works with animation, but there seems to be a snag...
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More fruit! lol

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, April 27, 2012, In : General 
As part of the products, I wanted to make apple juice too, so I struggled a bit to make these, but I think they came out fairly well (^^,). Took an evening to get the modeling and basic texturing and the next day to finish them, but they look great imo.



One of the biggest challenges was getting these to look like they could be real and that came in the challenge of the top. I don't think it's 100% right, but I like it overall, because it still convinces many people I show it to, lol. Anyway, t...
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An example of one procedural texture

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, April 13, 2012, In : General 
This is the Stucci procedural texture set to color and normals. It can be simpler and a lot more detailed and complex. As you can see, detail and resolution is not a problem when it comes to this texture type.


(for full res, right click > view image)

As an extra, I'm working on an entry for the new Blender Guru competition: The Perfect Holiday, and I plan to do the whole thing using only procedural textures. Whether I submit it or not, remains to be seen, but I really want to finish it with sup...
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Blender Render VS Cycles Render

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, March 9, 2012, In : General 
I can see a massive difference between the two, but I don't want to call one better than the other, because one is more developed and the other works different. So I'll say this: I personally still prefer Blender Render (BI)

Here's why I do.
I've used the same project, creating first a Cycles Render version and then a Blender Render version. Out of the two I like the overall look of the Cycles Render one more, but the capabilities in procedural textures in Blender Render overshadows the quality...
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A bit of an announcement

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, February 17, 2012, In : General 
It seems BlenderArtists.org has a problem with the amount of images they are getting posted on the threads, so I'm forced to make this the main location for updates regarding progress on projects. That means, for the most info, check the threads and FB for notifications as to when I post or subscribe using the "Subscribe to this blog" widget on top of the page.

As a first update, I'd like to mention Cycles! The new render engine unique to and built into Blender. What makes it unique to Blender...
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What a week!! (^^,)

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, January 5, 2012, In : General 
Finally got to a lot of things this week!! I got to mow the lawn again (it's been raining a bit, keeping me from it for about two weeks) and it was great exercise! That same morning I redid most of the site's organization and I like the way it looks now. It's a lot more organized and making better use of the space. Especially the home page.

Also got to write a musical piece for one of the CA (Cross Allegiance) videos!! Really excited about it being used for the Gospel!!!

This has really been a ...
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Jaw-dropping Blender animations!

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, January 3, 2012, In : General 
I'm a big fan of Andrew Price, the one HE places in stewardship of Blender Guru. On one of his posts (in the lists category), he added 27 animations he thought was of exceptional quality, showcasing what Blender can truly do. After watching Lighthouse, I just had to share the entire list. Yes, I don't support all of the videos, because I have certain standards as a Christian and there are things that are unacceptable to me, so use this list at your own discretion. I'm sure you'll be able to w...

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Welcome! Whoo hoo! First post! lol

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, December 28, 2011, In : General 
Hey everyone! This is a new addition to the Panther Dynamics (PD) scene.

I know PD will be of help to you in anyway it can. If you ever have any questions or comments, you could probably comment here (will see after the first post, lol) or you can use the contact form (link at the top of the page).

Well this has been short and sweet. For those by the sea, have fun and think of those inland, lol.
Hope to chat soon!




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