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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 "Learning" (Show all posts)

Metal Shaders

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, March 16, 2022, In : Learning 
Hey all!

A while ago, I became fascinated by metal in anime. Now, I know what you're not thinking: "But you're such a metal head! You should know this by now!" - to which I don't say anything, since you weren't thinking that, BUT, I will tell you what I discovered and it blew my mind! Still picking up the pieces, lol.



So let's rewind the clock a smidge. The 80's was a glorious time for anime and we got some of the coolest robot sci-fi stuff, between Voltron, transformers and some of the mobile ...

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Be realistic about where you are and how to finish

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, November 17, 2021, In : Learning 
Hey all!! :D

I love this topic, because it always comes down to budget and I love finding solutions, instead of focusing on problems!



Image by sasanqua camellia from Pixabay

So, let's say you have a billion different projects going on, then you can cherry pick now! Yay for you! :D

What I'd recommend here would be to analyze which project has the least amount of work do finish it and to complete that one first. This is similar to tackling debt - knock the smallest ones out first and use those paym...

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Perform Perform Perform!

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, November 3, 2021, In : Learning 
Your performance must soar - if it just kinda hovers, it's not gonna... wait for it... fly, lol.


Image by Clint Post from Pixabay 

Jokes aside, a really solid performance comes in various forms. I remember a short video from Finding Nemo's BHS (behind the scenes) and the animator that did Dori's animation for the shot where they think Nemo's gone and Marlin leaves her to go home, he pulled out all the stops to make it as personal as he can and the director still wanted more. I was like, REALLY?...

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Always start on paper!

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, October 20, 2021, In : Learning 
You hate the planet!! You're awful! HOW COULD YOU?!
It's quite simple really [tearing sound], see? lol.

There is a classic saying that says if you fail to plan, you plan to fail! While I do not agree with this 100%, I have seen the MASSIVE difference that comes from planning - not just in quality at the end, but also the time savings!


Image by Bruno_Germany from Pixabay

I've been playing around with probability in number sequences for the passed few weeks and I have to say, it is so so so importa...

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Explore different styles and incorporate the best fits

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, October 13, 2021, In : Learning 
Hey all!!

Sometimes we can find ourselves in an echo chamber of sorts and it can mean we get locked into certain norms, expectations, formulas, etc. This is why we always need to, as they say, broaden our horizons, look at different things and find inspiration in unlikely places, if you will.


Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

Let me give you an example I saw recently. I recently saw Ready Player One and it has a very strong point in that it has it's own grounded world, but it contains many worl...

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Production Design

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, October 7, 2021, In : Learning 
Hey all!


Image by chraa from Pixabay

I saw a post by DreamWorks on LinkedIn a short while ago - they have a lot of open spots on their TV production teams. They were looking for a production designer and I didn't know what exactly that is, so I obviously checked what they wanted - A Production Designer is responsible for the final look of the show/film/art/design, etc.

Personally, if I could make everything anime, I would, BUT, I know that is not the only style in existence. It doesn't fit all s...

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Rendering - Expectation vs Reality

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, January 13, 2020, In : Learning 
Whenever we do rendering, we have a massive selection of options to choose from. We can choose to do most of the work in pure rendering, or we can do a lot of the work in post (lol, not like "we'll fix it in post"). For example, you can actually generate glares within the viewport, like with the Flared add-on.

We can also choose to do most of the work within the shaders themselves (my preferred method).

Many things can be defined with masks and separated out and so on, so you can find a large v...

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Interpreting A Tutorial [Blender]

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, February 20, 2019, In : Learning 
Hey all!

Yay, third video of 2019!! GOD is so good!

Here it is:
GOD is so good!!!

The aim of this video is really to get you into the frame of mind to learn what it takes to take any tutorial that might prove useful to you and use it in any engine in Blender (to some extent obviously). Since all engines are not the same, results will vary between engines, but you can still get a lot of value out of old tutorials while you switch to 2.8! It'll get you over that educational learning curve and not o...

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SSS and realism

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, June 21, 2016, In : Learning 
Hey all!

For a while I've wanted to try making a Make Human character look real, but never really got to it. We're not talking years here, but a month or so, until a specific verse image about three weeks ago:



Ever since this one was made, I've really wanted to make a post about it, but I felt like GOD wanted it to publish on the ministry page first, before putting it out here. I don't know why, but I trust HIM and today is the day I get to share it with you guys.

> SSS - Sub-Surface Scattering
 ...

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Motion Blur

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, January 5, 2016, In : Learning 
Hey all!

I feel lead to talk to you guys about Motion Blur. Most of you know what it is, so I don't have to go into that, but in Blender there are a few ways of doing this, so I want to tell you what I do, why I do it and what I believe GOD has shown me is the best for, at least, 2D Work that you want to add motion blur to.

In Blender, you know we have three options for rendering and they all have motion blur options:
> Blender Render
   - Sampled Motion blur (takes forever, so not even remotely ...
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Palm curves

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, December 9, 2015, In : Learning 
Hey all!

I have been using curves a while and I knew they could be tapered, but I thought that you would always only be able to do so through another curve or through programming (and I looked - though looking back when I did, I didn't even check youtube, hahaha). Anyway, GOD knew I wanted to know and lo and behold, like this or last week, there was the answer, in the beginning of a video I could not seem to find!! Thankfully GOD knows how to stay on me about things and HE helped me locate it....
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Teeth but no nails

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, July 16, 2015, In : Learning 
Hey all!

This post has an interesting story. I was kinda excited when GOD told me to post this, but I did not really get to it when I wanted to - HE does that so I'll write things down. But guess what I did not do - write it down, haha. Progress is hard..., but so worth it! So I was sitting at my desk yesterday or the day before and I wanted to write you guys something and I sat here and went: "Nothin'! I got nothing!" hahaha. All I knew was GOD gave me something to write and I could not remem...
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Anime with Make Human + Blender

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, April 17, 2015, In : Learning 
Hey all!

Firstly, wow, this was a challenge! Still is a huge one, because I am yet to accomplish a proper hair result. Not to mention that I've only gotten one good eye, hahaha.

Now, not knocking Make Human at all. It is a fantastic program, but it is not yet suited for anime creation natively, but they do want to add it and need all the help they can get. Unfortunately, I'm nowhere close to that. What GOD helped me do here, was simply make a model and modify it in Blender to have the fe...
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