The Blog

About Me


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 "Quick Blog Tutorial" (Show all posts)

Underwater Compositing - Softness

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, February 9, 2015, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!!

Today we cover the last in the series on underwater compositing! There may still come future posts on certain features that still apply, but as far as compositing goes for a basic underwater scene, we're ending today :D.

As you've seen, we're covering softness today. While this is not always required, there is a certain presence to water that to most often presents itself as a softness. You'll find it even out of water in very humid conditions, but really makes most underwater scenes ...
Continue reading ...
 

Underwater compositing - Sun rays and caustics

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, February 6, 2015, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

Now, recently, we've been talking about underwater compositing and today's example will show you just how much compositing it takes, at least in Blender, to really get that look.

Here is today's final:


As you can see, it looks nice and fuzzy, has a shallow water type feel to it, yet still quite deep as you can see the water surface and the beams stop before hitting the bottom.

This is what it looked like before any compositing was done:


Let's get on point for today's post - caustics and...
Continue reading ...
 

Underwater compositing - Mist

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, January 28, 2015, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

Been a while since the last post, but this one is something I've learned a little bit on, so I hope this helps you tons! :D

Something that can easily be missed when it comes to underwater compositing is mist or a cloudiness. This comes from the way light bounces in the water, as well as other particles in the waters. Just think of a misty day. You can only see so far. Depending on the kind of water you are in, you will have varying decrees of clarity.

BUT! This is not a white mist. Ther...
Continue reading ...
 

Underwater compositing - Brightest boost

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, December 11, 2014, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

Now we're on to part two of the series on underwater compositing. Obviously, I'm no expert at this, but what I do know I do like to share, so I hope you find this helpful.

Personally, I used Blender Render a lot. It is the old render engine in Blender and it does not support caustic light. I remember when I started out with Blender, I really really tried to figure out how to make it make that light, but nothing, haha.

In compositing, you have, in situations like Blender, values that go ...
Continue reading ...
 

Underwater compositing - Color fringe

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, December 3, 2014, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

Today I want to share a little trick with you that GOD taught me on compositing for underwater. Now, granted, this may not be anything new to you, as you may have done something along these lines before using the lens distortion node, but using lens distortion has some draw backs which is why GOD taught me this method.

Problems with using the lens distortion node:
- Firstly, it is a great node and it's very useful for adding that special imperfection to a render, but its dispersion is n...
Continue reading ...
 

Gimp Engrave

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, October 14, 2014, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

Now this is one I am really glad to share with you all. I am working on a project that requires some seriously old printing techniques and when I found this filter in gimp, it was like yey!

What filter is that? It's the one that looks like this:


Why is this so important? Well, in the late 1800's there were already various printing techniques, but for the most part, to my limited knowledge, you needed engravings for images. In a lot of cases even today you still do, but there was t...
Continue reading ...
 

Custom brick texture - All procedural

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, July 4, 2014, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

Quick Blog Tutorial time again!

Recently, I saw someone having done their own brick texture and immediately I was wowed, because they did not use the typical brick texture, except maybe to color, but, the bricks were nicely rounded and so, yesterday, GOD challenged me to make one for the verse image below, showing a before and after of compositing for a post on the portfolio blog:


(recent verse image for Cross Allegiance, stop by our Facebook page too and give us a like)

As you can see, ...

Continue reading ...
 

Water caustics in BGE

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, June 13, 2014, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

Yey for another BGE tutorial, I would say, haha.

Today, like the title says, we're talking about caustics in BGE. As you all know, there are some incredible projects for this, and one that particularly stands out, but these, at least for me, has never been an option without scripting, so, I needed to find another way and this is it:

(Focus on the back wall and on the floor)

Doing this is incredibly easy. In the same way that you would add an animated texture to a plane for water, you add...

Continue reading ...
 

Volumetrics in BGE

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, May 12, 2014, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

Yesterday, I went looking for a post I thought I had done on volumetrics in the game engine and I was shocked to see that it is nowhere to be found! Nowhere!!! I did find that I had included the volumetrics example in a different post, which you can check out here.

So, today's QBT is on, you guessed it, volumetrics in BGE! :D

Okay, so just for example's sake, go check out the post linked to above -- it'll open in a new tab or window, so you won't need to click back and reload. Also, thi...
Continue reading ...
 

Style watch

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, April 29, 2014, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

I totally encourage you all to check out this post.

When you do research on how anime's are made (and any old cartoons), you find that the backgrounds are almost always hand painted. As far as Blender work goes, there's no way (unless GOD tells me to), that I'm going to hand paint every background for a project I'm currently working on. This is a test of an environment with a painterly look to the background and foreground that would make up part of the same elements:

Now, Picture to pe...
Continue reading ...
 

Toon Shading_an improvement

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, April 25, 2014, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey there everyone!

Firstly, I want to say thanx to the people from the Blender Facebook group here and more precisely, here.

I found out a lot about toon shading here, though it did not produce what I wanted - it did however bring me a heck of a lot closer, haha. I would never have thought of using full oversampling nor about turn the auto ray bias off, so huge thanx there!

Though these methods are great, there are issues here. If you leave on the auto ray bias, you get this (see the collar are...
Continue reading ...
 

Normal something

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, April 23, 2014, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!!

Finally back with another QBT and today's is about a topic that bugged me for a while. Nothing wrong with Blender, I just didn't get it until today.

Now, I've been a huge fan of node textures for a while and I've noticed that on node textures they don't always come out right in the normal department. For those who don't know what normal maps and normal influence and depth maps are, here you go:


These are created for the simple purpose of not having to use physical detail, while the sur...
Continue reading ...
 

Compositing solution

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, March 24, 2014, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

Been a long time since I've put up a QBT and I think we're due for one!

Today's QBT is about compositing and finally, saving that result. See, recently, Andrew Price, from Blender Guru, reported what he and possibly a lot of other users, thought was a bug. Honestly, I didn't, but I did think it was odd. Basically, it does not refresh the compositing results to the UV/Image editor, unless you keep it open the whole time.

There is, however, a solution. When you composite, you typically us...
Continue reading ...
 

When rain and water meet

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, February 13, 2014, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!!

Today I made something I've been wanting to make for quite some time and that is water with splashes on it, in the game engine. Granted, I could not get it to react the way I wanted it to, but, I got very close to what I wanted, and I'd like to show you:

Making this is very simple. All you need to do is make rain like in the tutorial already posted and just duplicate those fast moving planes and place them on the water surface with actions for both a ripple and a splash. That means yo...
Continue reading ...
 

Lamps in BGE

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, January 28, 2014, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

Today we talk about lamps in BGE. Now, for all intensive purposes, this does cover some functions of lamps, but this is about what you can accomplish with lamps in BGE.

Now, you will find that I've already done a post on making sure that you don't lose your shadow in game and this you can find here.

In games, you see the following on lamps:
 - Point Lamp, no shadow projection


 - Sun Lamp, limited shadow projection

 - Spot Lamp, shadow projection and no volume yet (hopefully the improvement...
Continue reading ...
 

Expressions

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, January 20, 2014, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!!

Yes, expressions, but not as in:
:-)
[^^,]
('c ',)
or even
q^_^p

No, we're talking, the expressions we use in programming! Oh yes, we're going to get to grips with some of it today!


An expression is something that acts as a filter. It can be explained as follows:

I want something to go through, only when it is in a certain range, for example:

I have a speedometer, but the steering should have no effect on movement below a certain speed. Now, I'm going to write something like this in the expre...
Continue reading ...
 

Keyboard sensor and controls

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, January 15, 2014, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Good day all!

Hope your week is going really well! Today's QBT is on using keyboard controls in BGE.

It is super simple and you're gonna luv it if you don't know it just yet:

(Pardon bad grammar, it is a very quick and rough example)

In order to control an object with the keyboard, you use the Keyboard Sensor and you set it up like this for example on a cube and add some things around it, so you'll be able to see motion:
Keyboard > And > Motion

Keyboard: set it for the up arrow
And: leave it as per ...
Continue reading ...
 

Mouse control

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, January 13, 2014, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Good day there everyone!

Today I'm coming at you with another QBT! Still on BGE; that page is really growing! JESUS is so good to us with all this free content! Just amazing!

We are covering, mouse control!

This is a bit of an off-topic of what I thought I was going to do, but this is also quite crucial to some games, so this may just surprise you.
   When using the mouse for control, we can do pretty much anything with it with logic bricks, except use it as a looking point. In other words, there...
Continue reading ...
 

The return of the butterflies

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, January 7, 2014, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

Yes indeed, they are making another appearance, but this time in QBT form!
You may remember them from an earlier post, but today I used them for one purpose; particles! Check out these simple examples:




As you all know, this is what you see in BGE when you click on particles:



Not very fun to see, but, there is a way to make particles happen in BGE and it is so simple, you are going to luv it. Of course it goes broader than below, but for the sake of letting you know, I want to post an adv...
Continue reading ...
 

Painting sculptural detail

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Sunday, December 29, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

I was given the idea for this one, but I wasn't sure if it was going to work. Experience should've eased my mind on this one already. GOD has never shown me anything to write here that didn't work.

HE showed me that you can literally paint in your normal influence and I was like: "Really?! No..." and tried it on Saturday night and sure enough! You can!

Here's a video of what it looks like in action:

(~89 MB, Ogg)

Now, basically, you do exactly what you would, when you want to paint a text...
Continue reading ...
 

Parental Rigging

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, December 27, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

Back with another QBT. Possibly the last one for the year, but we'll see what GOD decides on this.

Okay, so, if you're new to the Game Engine, but not Blender, you would've probably done rigging using the armature modifier. Unfortunately, most of the modifiers, have 0 effect or influence as soon as you press P to start the game.

I was wondering then, well how in the world do people then rig a character if you can't rig a character, until I was shown in a tutorial how to do it. It wasn't...
Continue reading ...
 

Keep your shadow on

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, December 17, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Good day all!

Coming at you with another QBT today and yes, we're sticking to the BGE theme! Hey, soon we may have all the stuff set-up to make an entire game, front to back! haha

Now, I know a lot of you are very familiar with texture baking and have learned that you can even bake other things, like shadows and ambient occlusion, but this is not always practical. For example, if your game requires real-time shadows, then you need a sun lamp with shadows enabled, in order to have them.

This pres...
Continue reading ...
 

A quick tip - progressive scaling

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, December 4, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Good day everyone!

Before I get to the tip, I'd just like to remind you guys that shared and liked the BGE page (which I really appreciate btw), that the URL to it has changed. So if you'd like to share the knowledge there and help others get started, just go here and share.

Thank you again!

Now, onto the tip. In the Game Engine, you have what is known as an action actuator. This tool allows us to trigger separate animations on characters, like crouching, ducking, rolling, etc. But! This tool ca...
Continue reading ...
 

Anti-aliasing with NVidia and Blender

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, December 2, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

This post is a bit more toward the game developer than the gamer and that is anti-aliasing in Blender's Game Engine.
Nvidia has in it's control panel, something called: "Let the 3D application decide". While this may work for exe games, I found that on my PC, this does nothing with Blender and keeps it as aliased as the day is long, haha.

In order to fix this, you have to make the card's control panel decide the quality level, and from there, Blender can turn it off or on, however it is...
Continue reading ...
 

Continuation: The toons

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, November 21, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!!

Today is a bit of a follow-up / QBT post based on yesterday's with the tooned monkeys. After yesterday's post, I worked on doing a final monkey (no textures, so the lines are limited) and this was the result:


(there are three lights in the scene, the monkey isn't crazy, haha)

I like the result a lot! I do rather which that around his ears the lines were more prominent and that anti-aliasing actually responded on my PC (I think it's something set on my graphics card that is preventing i...

Continue reading ...
 

Camera object

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, November 18, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Good day there everyone!

Coming at you with another QBT. This one, is also on the Game Engine, but specifically, how to you make the camera follow a character, car, etc.


This is so simple, you're gonna luv it!

On your game-play scene, where the game takes place (haha), add to the camera there a setup like this:
Always > And > Camera

The Camera Actuator looks like this:
Nice and big, haha

- The Camera object, is what it will focus on (remember, you have to be in the camera view in order for this to w...
Continue reading ...
 

BGE - When falling, and falling, and falling and falling

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, November 7, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

This is a seriously common problem and one that could definitely use a QBT. I honestly thought I needed a script for this, but oddly enough, without panicking, haha. But, you don't need a script for it!

So, today, I'm going to tell you how to restart your scene, if your character falls off an object, passed the point of no return. I am including a finished Blend at the end of this post (some prefer it and I know it has helped me to look at a finished file). Here's what it looks like, t...
Continue reading ...
 

BGE - My actions went MIA

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, November 5, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey everyone!

New week with a new QBT (Quick Blog Tutorial)! Yes, I know it's Tuesday, but a post a day is a bit intense, haha.

Anyhow, coming at ya with another QBT on BGE (Blender Game Engine) and today we're talking about Actions, yes.

Actions is a way we can use preset or predone animations sequences in games. A character doesn't crouch for a crouch modifier, no, it has to be animated so you can stick that animation to the sensor (like a key press or an event of some sort). But, in the newer...
Continue reading ...
 

BGE - Overlay scene

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, November 1, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

Coming at ya with another QBT relating to the Blender Game Engine. This time, we're discussing a scriptless solution to the information mismatch we get when we have more than one scene on-screen. So here is something you may have tried and found out it didn't work (please let me know if this is a bug we can report).

In order to use a text object to display information, you use the property actuator to copy an attribute to the, writing space, if you will, of the text object, but, while ...
Continue reading ...
 

Dat Vector Blur

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, October 29, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

What is Vector Blur? Simply stated, it is quick way of adding motion blur to your Blender projects. When you move your arm quickly, you basically only see a blur, you don't see the pores, fine hairs, watch (if you wear one) etc. If you do see those details (in a video), it is because there is no motion blur. It behaves like a single high-speed photograph.

Back on point though, I was given the idea for this one while working on the tutorial from the other day; the one on camera shaking....
Continue reading ...
 

Modifiers in the graph editor

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, October 28, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

First off, have a fantastic new week!
Secondly, I'm coming at ya with another QBT! Modifiers in the graph editor!

I like exclamation points, haha. Anywho, there are various uses for these modifiers, like looping a short animation sequence, like a walk cycles or editing one like making a camera shake as-if handheld, like in the examples below.

This one is of the camera animation without the modifiers:

(I added a little compositing just to enforce the camera-ness of the example)

This one is ...
Continue reading ...
 

Game Engine - Animated textures

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, October 22, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

This is just so much fun! I was so surprised to find this out and I am super jazzed to share this QBT with you today!

These passed few weeks I've been blessed to be able to learn more about Blender's game engine or the BGE (Blender Game Engine) and on thing in particular that fascinated me. Also fairly puzzling, but cool nonetheless; animated textures. Basically it enables you to have constant movement throughout your games for things like water, grass, lava, etc. and even beyond that,...
Continue reading ...
 

Default project?_huh

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, October 18, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

Today I bring you a QBT that I find incredibly useful and yet it works for you, passively; the default project in Blender.

When you open Blender, it opens with "factory" settings, which is usually a camera, cube and a light with either Cycles Render or Blender Render as the default engine. Also, most of the Add-ons are turned off, so your functionality is a lot less varied.

Here's where it becomes helpful; you can change this default project.

It is very simple and here's how:
- Open Blend...
Continue reading ...
 

Blender has an auto-save?!

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, October 8, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

I've seen that Blender has this option in the File button, but I've never known how to use it, until Andrew showed it in his second video on Blender's interface (please answer his surveys in the video descriptions on YouTube).

By default, from what I recall, this feature is turned on and does an auto-save every 5 minutes. These are, according to Andrew's video, stored in either your temporary files or the Blend1 and Blend2 files you see where you store the original project.

Thankfully, ...
Continue reading ...
 

Unwrapping a fountain

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, October 4, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!!

Today is a bit more lengthy, but it's still a very very quick technique; unwrapping a fountain!

This is a very quick example of what you can do with this:


Note: The entire scene is comprised of procedural textures, even the fountain and the water's animation


Now, let's get to it:
> In order to unwrap our little fountain (the water spout that is), we insert an open Cylinder mesh, pres NumPad1 to go to front view and unwrap (U) it to Cylinder projection:


> Clean up your unwrap. Usually, in ...
Continue reading ...
 

Point density, that great miss

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, September 30, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

I'm sure many of you have heard of this feature, but you have absolutely no clue as to how to use it. I was there and I'm still learning some cool stuff about it; even today (the day I started writing this post; yes, sometimes it takes more than a day per post due to render times for examples)!

Now, just to show you some examples (click on them for the videos), I rendered some more practical projects and listed them below:


(ignore the cliff material's moving; it's caused by the texture ...

Continue reading ...
 

My world is showing a message

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, September 26, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

That message is a distinct "Ooo". What does Ooo mean? Out of order, haha! There are two solutions, but first some background.

Since a few official releases ago, the world in Blender Render has gotten real squirrely for my projects and I don't know whether when it worked right it was a bug or whether they want it to do this? It'd certainly be strange if it were broken before, hahaha! I set up a basic scene to deal with this problem, which, to my surprise, wasn't a problem at all; my met...
Continue reading ...
 

Rain can splash

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, September 23, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all!

I was given this assignment and I did not know how to approach this. I had an idea of how I would've like to do it, but that didn't workout at all the way I wanted it to. What am I talking about? Check this out first and I'll tell you:


(Click image to see animation; opens to new tab in FireFox)

That's right!! You can make rain drops have a splash in Blender without having reactor particles. How? Dynamic paint!
Unfortunately, this is a feature that is a bit much for an easy QBT, so for th...
Continue reading ...
 

Black light in Blender

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, September 20, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey all,

Coming at you with another Quick Blog Tutorial on black light in Blender Render! Here is the result:


Click the image to see it in motion; opens in a new tab on FireFox

I don't know how many know that you can actually do this in Blender, but I only found out while writing the book. GOD wanted me informed about where the textures apply and how to make them visible, but for this specifically, HE hadn't given me any practical application apart from possible caustics on stationary objects, l...
Continue reading ...
 

Multiple unwraps

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, September 13, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey everyone!

Comin' at ya with another Quick Blog Tutorial, or QBT :).

I've been sharing a little on the compositor, but this one is part of texturing, so you don't need the node editor to test this one out! Feel free to, but you don't need to.

Here's just a little example that it works (a plane with 5 faces):



I don't know if you knew this or not, but you can have more than one active UV on a single object in Blender Render too. I didn't know it and I'm sure most of you didn't think it impossibl...
Continue reading ...
 

Normalization

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, September 11, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey there!

Good day and welcome to this Quick blog tutorial! (will make a logo later, so they'll be easily identifiable by more than just category)

Now, today's little tip applies again to the compositor (a place everyone seems to luv chromatic aberration, haha).

I'm sure many of you, if not all, have used a digital camera.
   Everyone who has used one, knows that it's light sensor can adjust it's sensitivity to what it is seeing. For example, if you put it's focus on a lamp, it will darken the i...
Continue reading ...
 

Compositing is essential

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, September 10, 2013, In : Quick Blog Tutorial 
Hey everyone!

Today I give you another freebie :D! This one is on compositing, but specifically making hot metal glow an react to heat. I actually made this for a friend a few nights ago, who didn't know how to separate one material out of everything for compositing and I made this for him and he showed me a great way of making electricity or bolts (however you want to phrase it).

Just to show you what the file makes, you can check this animation.

But for the sake of speed, here we have composit...
Continue reading ...
 
 
Social
(+27) 073 104 2834   |   marius.oberholster@gmail.com   |   Contact

Make a free website with Yola