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Metal Shaders

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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Integration is a process

Hey all!!

Larger

Last week we took a pleasant break from the film making posts and we're still kind veering off a bit, but it actually also does relate... confused? Me too, LOL. Anyway, this week I want to share about a recent movie that has made headlines, but not for the reasons we all had kinda hoped.

- JUMPS BACK A BIT -

A short while ago, we spoke about the style or medium of the movie and that applies here. When you're dealing with an established franchise and you go and flip it's medium to...

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A different solution

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

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

Throwback To The Future

For Anime - Post Outlines

For Anime - Motion Smear - Nodegroup Dev

Hey all!

I'd like to share a journey of filmmaking history! Yes, not al history is worth noting, but I think this one might just be the next, uhm, medium to big thing, hehe.

NPR has always been very popular, especially with children, but there are people, like myself and many others, who think of NPR as more of a medium than a genre. In a lot of western thinking, anime is classified as "cartoons" which also says "for children" and let me just say, if you think all anime is for children, perhaps...

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Anime Motion Blur techniques

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:

https://youtu.be/qrPb7b3VEps

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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Be realistic about where you are and how to finish

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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Take responsibility for your project

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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Perform Perform Perform!

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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Audio must make sense

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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Violet Evergarden: The Movie review

Hey all!!

Now, I know what you're thinking!

"OH NO, HE'S GONNA DO ANIME REVIEWS NOW!!!!! NNNNOOOOOOoooooo.........."

No, no I'm not planning on doing that at all, BUT, this is one that I think needs some perspective.

SPOILERS!!!!!

I've read a few reviews about it before it ever surfaced here in South Africa, btw, huge thank you Netflix - I really appreciate getting to see it! No, that's totally serious, not being sarcastic at all.

The reviews were overwhelmingly negative and I was quite taken aback...

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Always start on paper!

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

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

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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1 - Interesting Developments

New Tutorial - For Anime Adoration Sparks

Better Proposals and why it matters

Still here and hard at work

How to ensure quality audio

Rendering - Expectation vs Reality

An approach to shading

New tutorial Smoke and fire

Major Node Groups Update and news

NPR Shaders Update v5 video

NPR Shaders

Common Compositing

Interpreting A Tutorial [Blender]

Blender 2.8 - Eevee - Action Backgrounds

5.1 Surround in Blender - Stereo to 5.1 in Audacity

Optimizing Node Groups

Tutorial for the node groups

Node Groups mean New Features

For Anime - Fountain

For Anime - Garden Sprinkler

For anime - Course sprinkler

Water Surface and Sun Rays tutorial - For Anime

2D to 3D conversion - Proposal

Hey all!

I had the amazing priviledge of being able to write another proposal on Right-Click Select! Shockingly, I didn't actually blog about it, so that is what this is! Yay, hahaha!

So the basic idea is that you use the existing depth information (mist pass) to slice up the scene in as many slices as possible, causing something like this:

This means that you can now shift these slices and create what your eyes will see. I was extremely opposed to it, but it actually does make more sense to do ...

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Epilogue

Hey all!

Don't you just love that title?! Sounds so epic! It was from a concentration standpoint. Goodness! hahaha.

With all the work said and done, we have:

Normal and Bump Mapping

Works with averaging what is there with the map itself. Gives a nicely balanced result. Bump maps are also converted to normal maps, but purely based on a flattened version that is connected to all three axes.

Ambient Light

For this feature, I simply added an emission shader and fed it, based on circumstances, either th...

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Building a formula with nodes

Blinn vs Phong

Happy new shaders

Uploading 3DSBS content to YouTube

For Anime - Defocus

Text ablaze

Quick Tip - VSE Green Screen

Quick Tip for VSE Transitions

Toon Shading - Cycles Caustics

Workflow - Node Groups

Eevee and the coming render

Bible Animations - Exodus

For anime - New Style Candle

Cycles toon shading tips

For Anime - Camp Fire

For anime - Water ripples

Speed Mesh

Anne Frank in color

Hey all!

I'm sure most of you have heard of Anne Frank, even if you don't know who she is. Well, I'm definitely not the Anne Frank expert, but I was really touched by her family's story during the second world war, especially on how she kept a diary and only just didn't make it out of that horrible situation... I wanted to color her picture, but GOD didn't release me to do that, until this morning. Almost as soon as I was properly awake, I was commanded to do so, so here it is in color:

Anne Fr...

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Motion Blur for Anime

SSS and realism

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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Sun glare time

Expressive Elements

Brass

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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Anime style dust cloud

Unofficial Viewport Branch

Clouds

Action lines

Make Human to chibi WIP

For Anime tutorial series 3 - Fixing eyes

Hey all!

(see - the gap is restored to the eye's surround)

Welcome to part 3 of the For Anime series. This one is an appendix to the Make Human to Anime tutorial GOD gave me last year, around this time:

Male version in this tutorial:


Now, the problem I have encountered was nuts - the eye-outline thing annoyed me to no end, because as it would render, I would be like: "YEAH! It looks awesome!!" and when the eyes get outlined, my bubble would mercilessly burst,... hahaha. So, here is how to fix tha...

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For Anime tutorial series 2 - Tree Technique

Hey all!

Yey, second tutorial for the week! hahaha. GOD is awesome!

Today I get to share with you a technique GOD showed me quite a while back and the coolest part about it, is that it turned out to work very well for anime style renders! :D
   Check it out!:

Just to show you a much stronger example:

Made from McLelun's tutorial, which you can check out here.
To composite toons and smooth shadows, check this video.

I have also included another example in the video itself, along with the result from ...

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For Anime tutorial series 1 - Water reflections

ZTransparency Edge fix

Hey all!

A while ago, I posted an article about the edge that ZTransparency (in Blender Render) creates around solid faces in front of it and sometimes possibly even behind it. Just as a reminder, here is the image:

That white line is the background - it's not supposed to be there.

When you are doing a render that does not have many faces in front of ZTransparency planes, this is not an issue at all, but when you're talking trees or even city scapes, you have a serious issue on your hands.

The re...

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Speed up renders in Blender

Mesh hair tutorials

BibleAnimations

Motion Blur

Advanced Cycles Toon Shading

Faster testing when compositing

Toon shading soft shadows

Vintage tutorials and palm update

Hey all!

Today's post is a bit nostalgic with something a little new as well! :D
Quite a while back (like start and middle 2014), I made two tutorials on using unwrapping to your advantage when texturing. Both of those, GOD did not permit me to upload to YouTube back then, but today I felt lead to upload both of them and here they are:

And the new part of today's post is an update on the palm tree I posted on the 9th:

(Tropical storms are regular around these trees, that's why it doesn't seem pha...

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Palm curves

GOD is awesome!!

Film look in Blender

IndySpotlight

Genesis 1

Background tests

Hey all!

Recently, I was prompted by GOD to look into making stronger backgrounds for toon objects and that meant higher sample rates and smooth shading - none of these are good for toon-shading, because they all produce smooth colors and areas, not hard ones, but through about an afternoon's scene building and a night's compositing, HE helped me get it done, so now you can get a result like this:

Now, this may not look like much, because it seems like a silly example, but you have to look beyo...
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Weird outline

Hey all!

This morning again, I came across a very familiar problem, that typically doesn't bother me, but today it really did bug me and it is an outline that forms when you use transparency in Blender Render. It looks like this:

(Simply scaling up doesn't help - the outline scales too and it's always the color of the sky)

The reason for this, I don't know, but I do know when it does it; when using Z-Transparency. Usually the fastest method and compatible with the mist feature, it does have it's...
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Water

Hey all!!

The theme for the Make Human competition this month (October 2015) is Supernatural. Below is my entry and the post with it :D

Theme:
The entry for October is called "Water". I thought it would be a clever title, because people will definitely wonder "Water?! What did he do?" haha.
This one is of JESUS walking on the water, specifically from Matthew 14. That has to be one of the coolest supernatural things HE did, apart from going to the cross on purpose.

Process:
In the initial render, I ...
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Covet

Color Study 2015

Underwater compositing

File could not be loaded

Quick Tip: Animation Speed Adjustment

Colored photo

Hey all!

Today I would like to share a little educational fan artwork of Jules Verne (Sci-Fi writer from the 1800's).
This is a public domain portrait of Jules Verne that I found on wikipedia. See here. Felix Nadar took it in 1878. The one I specifically used, was cleaned up a little (thanx to Quibik, Centpacrr and Jbcollins13 for all the enhancements!!)

First, the original, enhanced black and white photo:


And my colored version:

By no means perfect, as I don't know his actual skin tone or his eye...

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Channel trailer

Anime Style Sea Tutorial series

Hey all!!

Been working on these for quite some time and I really pray they bless you guys!!

(Click images to watch on YouTube)

Now I am seriously ready for a break from making tutorials! hahaha. We'll see what GOD has to say about the time it takes before I make more, but for now, I am really tired, hahaha. May these bring GOD glory to the utmost!!

Biggest thanx!
Huge thanks to GOD for helping me with this. YOU have helped me put this together, helped me polish it and package it so others can lear...

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Quick tip on video editing

Teeth but no nails

RUN

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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Lip-syncing in Blender

Hey all!

This is the big one that GOD wanted me to make shortly after the Make Human to Anime one. Unfortunately, I didn't do it in a timely fashion, and I am hugely grateful for the help HE gave on the others, but I am happy to say it's here and now and done!

(Click to view on YouTube - opens in a new tab or window depending on browser)

I am very happy with this video for a few reasons. The biggest of which is that this one kinda forms part two and three of the Make Human to Anime tutorial, by ...

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Compositing - Glaring Reflections [TUTORIAL]

Hey all!

I have a tutorial for you today!! This one is on glaring items that are in reflections, using the compositor and material index to isolate, glare and add them to the final image. I know this one you'll luv!

(Click to open video in new window/tab)

A little more info:
    I seem to be making more video tutorials lately. I initially wanted to write it here as a QBT, but really felt lead to do it as a video tutorial on YouTube, so here it is. I was working on a scene where I had to make a ro...
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Comic Style in Blender

Compositor only render

Tutorials_Make it your own

Material Reference

Hey all!

I didn't think people made such things, but eh, haha. Anyway, here is a Material Reference for those of you who would like to study the materials for the Make Human to Anime in Blender tutorial:

Thanx to The Intelligence Division on YouTube for requesting this! I hope this helps you and many others too! :D

Have a great one!

Thank YOU!!!!!!

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Make Human to Anime in Blender

Hey all!

A tutorial covering how to model using Make Human, so your rig and your modifications in Blender are minimal and you still get that anime look you are after. Not only that, I also show you how to composite a background in so you have that painterly feel as well. Go all out with your own art pieces! :D


Check the description for more information
(Advanced tutorial - I go fast and I didn't have screen cast keys, so this does require good knowledge of the interface)

Tutorial result with your...

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Lipsyncing simplified

Procedural wood progress

Hey all!

This has been a challenge for quite a few years now - creating good looking wood with procedural textures. Only these last two months have I really been given the results I wanted. Below are a few exampls on how this has progressed:

While the above ones are not horrible, they still don't quite get the look I really want. No, that is below:


(Fence from a current project)

The grass isn't even close to being done, but the fence is and I am very very pleased with it. GOD is so good!!
The wood...

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Anime with Make Human + Blender

A few compositing tips - Toons

Hey all!

As you all know, I am a huge fan of the cartoon looks out there and especially how the style is approached. After a while, I realized, by GOD's grace, that essentially, you can treat a finished animation as raw footage from a camera. That allows you to get a very distinct look. This is a very very basic scene, but it illustrates my point:

(Everything rendered and composited in one project)

Okay, now, this also works for video, especially if you have access to render layers, like in Blen...
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Underwater Compositing - Softness

Underwater compositing - Sun rays and caustics

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...
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Underwater compositing - Mist

Underwater compositing - Brightest boost

Underwater compositing - Color fringe

Gimp Engrave

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...
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SVG to 3D

Yay, it's up

Finished eagle! Well, almost

Hey all!

Wow! We're really getting quite a few posts this week, hahaha. Okay, so, yesterday I showed you guys a progress on the eagle here and the eagle's materials almost done on the portfolio blog at this post. Now, you get to see it rigged to a useful part (except for the beak):

(made for Cross Allegiance - see more here)

I really like this image, because it was extremely difficult to make, but GOD helped me, but secondly, because it turned out to be a serious image and not cute (which it was...

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Progress a white eagle

A few tips on Freestyle rendering

Hey all!

Firstly, thanx to all those who visit regularly. I hope you find the information here useful!

Anyway, getting on today's post; Freestyle! :D

Just to show you I know a little about it, I put together a collage of renders:

Freestyle, as you all know, is that feature (now in Cycles too), that allows you to add outlines to 3D shapes, like cartoons.

I've been working with freestyle for a while now and have it to the point, where I just adjust line thickness and then that's it, so, today, I wan...

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An earthquake

New video tutorial

Hey all!

Super excited about today! I get to share my second video tutorial for Blender! Just a little taste-test:

I just loved doing this, but as a noob on video tutorials, I only saw after recording it that I didn't have the cursor visible, so sorry about that. Regardless, if you're familiar with Blender, this should not overwhelm you, so enjoy! :D

In this lovely tutorial, I cover how to do grass. Note that this is not typical grass. This is about lawn grass that you can actually zoom in on an...

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Custom brick texture - All procedural

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, ...

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Water caustics in BGE

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...

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2D animation in 3D software

Hey all

Today I'd like to take a look at a previous image I had made, also toon shading, but reveal a clever trick I don't think you may know yet, and if you do, it's a great reminder! :D

First, the image:

This message is paramount to you having a peaceful mind and heart - basically, garbage in, garbage out. What that means is, if you think on sinful things, lustful things and you keep exposing yourself to that, you produce toxicity in your mind and heart. Sin is physically and spiritually bad f...

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A take on toon shading_Compositing

Hey all!

When I saw I hadn't shared this yet, I was really surprised. Must be because I'm so tired, hahaha. No worries, here we go:

(complete scene - Blender Render + Freestyle + Compositing)

When GOD gave me the idea for this image, I really felt fear creep onto me that it would not look good and oh snap! I am very happy with this one's result. It did not come out at all like I imagined it would. It is always such a blessing when that happens, so this one will be making it to the Home page.

Anyw...

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Things

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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Volumetrics in BGE

Animation is fluid

Style watch

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...
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Toon Shading_an improvement

Normal something

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...
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Some news

Some new additions

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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Moving onto video

Compositing solution

Abstract backgrounds and aliases

Hey all!

Last week, Andrew Price, released a new tutorial on creating abstract backgrounds. I followed this tutorial for Cycles, but in Blender Render and I think it's great that there has been one done on this, because there is such a vast use for such backgrounds, especially if you can think outside the box on these sorts of things. Here's mine:

(Didn't finish the tutorial to see his, because most of it was done in Photoshop and
Cycles has better DOF than Blender Render has, but I like this re...

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Old renders are ready-to-use material

Verse images

Hey all!

On Monday, aka yesterday for most, I made a post on the Facebook page on verse images I was given the opportunity to make. Since there are quite a few and you may not have liked our ministry page just yet, I added the images here for you to enjoy!

(All the above was made with Blender)



(The above three were made using Inkscape)
(Some finishing and/or cropping was done with The Gimp)

There are a few more and quite a few more ideas I still need to put to images, but thus far, these are what ...

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Button crazy

Good day everyone!

Today I saw that Yola added a new widget; a button!

Now, considering that this is a new widget, it will be basic, but functional. The catch comes when resisting the temptation to place it everywhere to replace whatever it is you've already done.

I've personally been using the custom panel widget to create buttons and they've worked really well so far; considering of course that only the text inside is clickable, they look like this:

For the time being, the button itself, looks ...
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A little progress report

Hey everyone!!

Today I get to share a little progress shot from something I'm currently working on:

Currently, this looks more like a caustics study, but actually the scene as it sits is exactly that! It's part of prep work. The ocean floor is right (in terms of distance and possibly color) and so is a lot of the compositing. It has an old-style photo feel that I am really really liking so far.

Now, when I post something, I want it to benefit you, so I want to give you some sort of help. Today, ...

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When rain and water meet

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...
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New competition and some news

Lamps in BGE

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...
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Expressions

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...
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A blog post about a blog

Keyboard sensor and controls

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 ...
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Mouse control

UV solution

New tutorial

Hey all!

A special day indeed. A new game engine tutorial:

Particles

As you know, I did a QBT version of this earlier this week, but this is much more in depth than that one. I replaced that one with this tutorial on the game engine page. The scene is of course not included, because this tutorial is about a method, not modeling, or texturing or whatever.

This short 10 page tutorial, cover to cover, is here to tell you how to figure out how to add particles for your particular situation.

I just kno...
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The return of the butterflies

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...
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Volumetric simulation

First Blender video tutorial, yes

Hey all!

This has been on my mind and heart for quite some time and I am very very happy announce that the first Blender video tutorial is up! You can find it and hopefully future ones in the navigation on the far right.

This one is like a twist on the QBT I did a while back on having multiple UV unwraps on a single object. Very simple tutorial, but this one takes it in a different angle; using a UV unwrap to twist your textures to fit your shape's goal.

I hope this video tutorial blesses you im...

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Painting sculptural detail

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...
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Parental Rigging

Keep your shadow on

A new BGE Tutorial

Good day everyone!

I've been working on an amazing tool for the Blender Game Engine; a new tutorial! This one, is on Colours and Transparency in Actions!

- What does it talk about?
Kinda obviously just that, haha. I thought it was impossible to animate anything related to materials in actions until the code was added for it, but nope. It is very possible now!
Thank YOU JESUS for asking me to write this as well as giving a practical example in the tutorial below as well as for the one above! ...
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MercyMe - Shake

Paper and art

A quick tip - progressive scaling

Anti-aliasing with NVidia and Blender

Quick notice and a big something

Good day all!

I haven't been able to make many posts these past week and there are various reasons for it; from weather to connection upgrades. You name it, haha. Currently, I am very very thankful to be able to let you know that there is another BGE (Blender Game Engine) tutorial up! This one, on the toon shading from a few weeks ago.

I was given this name for it: Toon Style Made Simple
Sounds like it has to do with dressing cartoon characters, but I think it's very clever. This is the cover:

Ob...
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A little news

Caves, how are they made

Toons, the conclusion_haha

Continuation: The toons

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...

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2D without freestyle, for the Game Engine

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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Camera object

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...
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New tutorial, a wip

New Blender Guru Competition - Christmas

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

New Blender website

BGE - My actions went MIA

BGE - Overlay scene

Dat Vector Blur

Modifiers in the graph editor

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 ...
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Game Engine - Animated textures

Default project?_huh

Blender UI Proposal

New 3D Tutorial

Hey all,

Super excited to be sharing this with you today! The new 3D tutorial is finally up!!

Just to show you what it can do, I made a little reel:

You can get the tutorial here!

Remember that this is a speed method and far from perfect. It is strictly applied in the compositor and can produce a result in a matter of seconds (depending on your compositing complexity and resolution).

Origin of this method:
For a long time, I was being taught how to use procedural textures and through that, I learne...
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Warning warp

Hey all!

Today I can give you a tip. While I mentioned it earlier, I wanna reiterate this:
- Warping is not a solid state influencer, in other words, as the camera moves, so does the warping. This plays to your advantage, as it can be used for various ice effects without having to use reflections.

Here are two examples:

Waterfall - Best example


Purposeful example


Without warping (see the difference)

Hope this tip showed you the solution to some of your projects' problems, if you've seen some odd stu...

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30 Likes!!_

Hey all!

Today is a milestone for the Facebook page; 30 Likes. If you have liked the Facebook page or have ever shared, subscribed, liked, +1'ed or tweeted anything relating to Panther Dynamics:

It references specifically the Facebook likes, but it is a thanx to everyone who reads, subscribes, shares, +1's, tweets, likes, etc. Thank you!

Hope you all have a wonderful day and like Oliver always says: "Happy Blending!"
PS, he has a new tip online. Check it out!

Thank YOU!!!!!!

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Blender has an auto-save?!

Unwrapping a fountain

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 ...
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Point density, that great miss

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 ...

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My world is showing a message

A little bright I would say

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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Rain can splash

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...
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Black light in Blender

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...
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Boost a render

Hey all!

Writing these tips take a whole lot longer than I thought they would, hahaha. Today's is a quick one, but wow, can it boost a render!

Many times, we have a render that just does not cooperate. Though it looks cool, it still ends up being a bit too dark, like this one:

In these instances, we need a level boost of Brightness and Contrast, but there is a node for Hue Saturation and Value. Value is a great level booster of the Brightness and Contrast. You can find it under the Color categor...

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Some tips for added realism

Multiple unwraps

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...
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Normalization

Compositing is essential

Texture baking, basically

Hey all!

Today I am enabled to bring you yet another tutorial! Who's as excited as I am? lol

I'm gonna let the image intro this one:

That's right! Basic Texture Baking!

Texture baking, what's that?! Simple, in Blender, you have what is known as procedural textures, node textures and a feature called texture painting. These features all have one thing in common; Blender. I can't export a model to another 3D program, unless I bake my textures or make them externally. While texture painting is easil...
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Nasa is being very generous

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):

DSN 70m Satellite Dish, Nasa

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

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That's not snow lol

Wood

Hey all!

Today I want to share with you the background in focus. This has three purposes:
1) I believe GOD wants me to share this
2) To show you that procedural textures look great, even close-up and
3) To show you one of the techniques in the upcoming book

Now, here is the image:

You can't see a lot of knots here, really, but I didn't want really high contrast in this image, however, you can see one and some hints of where there would be. For example, the top layer of planks, big one, lower left c...

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4 Seasons - Spring and Summer

Time will be no more

Blender Guru Competition time again!

New profile pic! A good face lift!

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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C'est un mushroom!

Hey all!

Just practicing my French a bit, lol. Here is a mushroom a friend challenged to me to make! It was such a difficult thing to do and I smugly thought: "this will be easy", lol. Famous last words I guess, lol. The Word also says that pride comes before a fall, so this one put me back in my proper place really quick. Thank YOU JESUS!

Here is the reference image I used.

Anywho, here is the final:

What made this image very difficult came down to a few things:
 - Little bits on the top
 - Colora...

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Glossy Black

Hey all!

A very much requested material (not requested from me, but definitely requested a lot) is a glossy black. And here is how you can make it in Blender Render as well as Cycles Render.

On Cycles Render, it is the easiest thing! Just add a new material to an object or area you want a glossy black and apply this to it:

(Thanx to Bizla from BA and other people who suggested the Mix node)

Blender Render is a bit more complex, since it is not as physically accurate as Cycles. So, I want you to c...
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Polar bear

Blossoms

Turbo Bible

Hey all!

I've been rather quiet lately for quite a few reasons, but one big one is a fantastic offline Bible reader and study assistant. A friend of mine has been working on it for a bit and asked all who could inside and some outside of our prayer group to test it out and give suggestions of what we would like to see and long story short, we have this incredible free tool! Came in handy for me too, so I really do hope it does for you as well.

Here is a screen shot:

To download, you can check ou...

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Remember two posts ago, the sea?

Something different

Hey all!

Yesterday afternoon I wanted to do something different, so I started playing around with the tooning features Blender already has, before Freestyle becomes official. I want to know what I can use to add effects and so on, if it is required initially :). Also, I see many renders don't maintain a solid line scale to decrease detail as an object becomes smaller in relation to the frame. For example, look below at the Suzanne in the background.

So, I tested it with Suzanne:

This combines va...

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Finally back to doing something, lol

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! (^^,)

Edit in progress - - - -

Hey all!

As you know, the book is in it's editing stage and I have to say, I've had some moments where I couldn't follow it, hahaha. Thankfully, when taking the time to go through it, I found that things do work out if you are familiar with Blender. Today I tested the run-off part of a tutorial and I am happy with this quick result:

The above is completely done with Cycles and procedural textures (100 samples) and I think it came out really well. I did however find a flaw in this section that d...

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Blender render still great!

Bricks that go crack

Some new features in Cycles

Two things

The difference

Oh look, stairs!

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

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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Hey there, long time no see

Update on the earlier post

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

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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Feature wall

Hey all!

Been working hard on the tile tutorial and today I can actually show you an example from the tutorial itself. When you go through this one, you'll be shocked at how simple this truly is, but that's later. Here's the sample from the tutorial:

As you can see, this is for a feature wall, but currently it lacks vibrancy, because it is in a limited lighting area. Anyway, you can tell that the tiles don't gloss like they should, but I have an idea of how to fix that.

I hope you are still look...
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Update on tiles - example

Hey all!

Here is a practical example of how the tile tutorial would work for you.

This is what happens if your unwrapping is out and you try tiling:

While the displacement is in such a state that I am fairly happy with it, the tile sizes are most certainly not. Just look at the difference between the hallway leading to the platform. They are almost half the size and that does not work right for what I want in this scene, so I had to unwrap it in a more custom way.

It then came out looking off a f...

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Tiles

Hey all!

I've seen people using tile textures, but some were not properly cropped and created some thicker grout lines and that does not bode well for realism. There are solutions with procedural textures and in the book I explain two of these. This represents the easier of the methods:

As you can see, the floor is almost perfect, but still has some irregularities (examine the grout lines and you'll see they are not perfect, because they shouldn't be).

The second method builds on the first and g...

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A bit later, but still the same day

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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An example

Hey all!

This post is sort of linked to the first in terms of what you can do with procedural textures (quite a bit to say the least). This one, is about a touch of realism mixed with formalism (in the sense of adhering to recognizable forms, not expression through form). Here is what I mean in English: the picture depicts something real that does exist, so it is recognizable, yet it is not photo-realistic, but more stylistic.

In this case, the moon:

This, like the previous posts, is all contain...

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Another peek

Hey all!

I've been working on another part of the book this morning and made this as a demo:

This part is all about art and being creative with procedural textures. So that is a yes, all three are made using procedural textures (^^,)! I like to call this set: Growth.

Remember, you can also go more literal on it:

This set is simply called: Stages (looks like some sort of planet or star in it's different stages of it's life cycle).

Anyway, I am not typically a fan of abstract, but since the photo-re...

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Particles+Collision vs BulletPhysics

Just something fun

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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Hello from 2013!

Christmas 2012 Entry

Hey all!

I always wait until the results before I post my image (since I can't post it in the thread). This year's entry is, imo, quite an improvement on last year's.

Here is last year's:

Here is this year's

Reference for the sharks' shape - NOAA:
http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/species/fish/scallopedhammerheadshark.htm

As usual, the entire scene was done using procedural textures in Cycles and it came out well, but most important was the concept; first Christmas as part of a sea colony.

You can go the ...

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Back to the book

Forgotten tip and something else

Hey peoples!

Forgot to mention yesterday that you can use particle age to define transparency as well as emission and emission color. This what the rocket's flames part looks like:

(left is the birth and the right is the death of the particle).

Back to the something else I mentioned earlier. I wanted to know where there could be rigging and softbody physics and the two work well together, so I made the following:

These are three poles, with cloth stretched between them. A screen if you will, but ...

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A few tips on point density

A rendering tip that can save you hours

Not gone, just working

The main animation has finished!

A little progress

Hey all!

Remember yesterday's post? Well, this is taking yesterday's work just that step further:

I really like it, but I have to admit that it could've used some grasses, stones, possibly even a tree (oh yes, there are underwater trees and underwater lakes). Eitherway, it came out cool.

For this image, I actually used the motion blur in Cycles. On my GPU mode it seems to support motion blur, but since my CPU is stronger, it's a waste trying to render with the GPU. Now, both working together, th...
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Always learnin'

Getting it to not look generated

Hey all!

The title is easier said than done, especially with bad reference, but, I used what was at my disposal and it came out quite well:

If you know trees, you may (hopefully) recognize what I was aiming for here. While I do like the result as a sketch, so to speak, it is by no means a satisfactory result for a tutorial. It still looks too fake, although it does look very stylized.

Hope you like it!

Thank YOU!!!!!!!

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Been busy, but here's an update

Hey all!

It's been a while since my last post, but I am glad to reveal an update on the next tutorial. Hope you all like it!!:

This is not a very complicated scene, but it is one that has enough detail imo to show what the trees will look like in a scene.

There is no tree focal point. In fact, before adding another in the middle, the sky was the focal point; not good. Now, it begs the viewer to look for a spot. Sort of like you would when going to a park. Hopefully that's the effect here, lol.

An...
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A little prep

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

Update

Finished ruin!!!

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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Progress render!

Hey all!

Really jazzed to get this one out today!

The entire list of things has changed a bit, as you can see, but, the main points remain, the most important of which was to get the ruin as the focal point.

The coordinates system is still a bit buggy with the ruin's textures (as you can see the floor's bump-mapping is gone and there are some black bricks), but the rest of the scene I am really jazzed about (though it's still not complete).

The background, makes it look as though there is DOF (de...
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First full render

Hey all!

Happy to share this one with you!
It is only rendered at 50 samples, which isn't much, but apparently more than enough for this scene, so yey! Here's the render, followed by things that need to change:

 - Currently, there is no focal point, because everything is practically evenly lit. So for that I want to use light to set focus on the ruin itself.
 - The texturing is a problem, because sometimes Cycles renders it right, sometimes it doesn't (bug they need to fix). So the goal is not to...
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Test render

Hey all!

I went ahead of the tutorial on this one for now, because I needed to see how this scene could be finished. The below is NOT the finished scene. It is only a test render and looks cheap and nasty (apart from the ruin, but even that is out of focus, lol):

Looks terrible.... lol.

Anyway, the night of, I was working on the trees. Making sure to keep it as simple as possible, but still giving as much detail as possible. It's a juggling act in every project (no matter how powerful your PC is...
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Preview

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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The first tree, sort of, lol

Heya!

Today is a mystery post; the first tree made with procedural textures. While I personally think it doesn't qualify yet as one, since it's just the trunk (it's to add some space to the image and fill the gap in the composition on the left (plus it'll look extra cool once I add more shading and so on):

Soon enough I'll be making more and I hope you like them too and that they are not too stick-figure-like. Here's to making cool, low memory trees (^^,)! lol

Thank YOU!!!!!!!!!!!

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A bit off-topic: Wet bricks

Ivies now have some leaves

Hey all!

This is what the current preview render looks like:

I adjusted the above a bit, because it's lighting isn't finished yet and so it was a bit on the dark side, environmentally speaking, haha. Anyway, just added some brightness and contrast.

The leaves themselves are the most difficult and personally, I have to admit I couldn't get them as close to the real thing as I had hoped, but, I am very happy with the leaf shape:

I've seen this three-point shape not nearly as often as I would like t...
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Started adding some color!

Hey all!

Today's post is more a taste of the final (though merely, if even, a shadow):

The inside of the structures needed to have a different color to indicate a different material.

The Viewport (or 3DView as I prefer) can have different colors assigned. It can help you see, to a very limited degree imo, the overall look your scene may have when completed.
   While the branches of the ivies have been completed, the leaves are just at the starting point. While preparing for this tutorial I had cr...

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Ivy is next!

Bricks now aged with recap

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

Run-off streaks more rough

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

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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Working on its age

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

Bricks in color

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

A bit of what's going on with the book!

An update on the book

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

Complex texture? Displacement? What is that?

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!!!

Quick ruin with procedural textures

Free tip today: Factor versus Color

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!

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 (^^,)!

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

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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Free wallpaper today, yey!

Just had to see if this still works in Cycles; it does!!

Hey all!

Very excited about sharing this particular image. While working on the first part of the book, HE showed me how to add snow, using only the Blend texture. And that is also a tutorial in the first section.

Anyway, on Cycles it is now called the Gradient texture and I wondered if it would still respond similarly or possibly even better. While I wouldn't necessarily call it better, I definitely like the almost stylistic cartoony background approach to how this looks.

Hope you like it too:

T...
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Client of the month certificate

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!

Caustics in Cycles

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

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

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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Digital bread; the only type that does not go stail, lol.

Hey all!!

Here is an update on the toast!
Knocking it back a level from yesterday's color problems, I found it wisdom to make normal brown bread first and then add the toasting to it afterwards (that's what it looks like in real life; the one over the other).

So as a bonus in this update, I included what the node system for this one looks like: a ship (isn't HE the coolest with such surprises!!!!!!!)

Anyway, here's the update:

Looks a lot better than this, doesn't it:

The top image has much less co...

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Toast post (and just in time, lol)

A little something just thrown together

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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Cycles part started!!

Remember the Ogg

Progress on the final stages of the Blender Render section

Blender Render section (almost) complete!!!

Whoohoo!!!! Blender render section of the tutorial is almost complete! It is incredible to say the least. At a practical advice packed level of 130+ pages so far, I am super excited about getting it finished and released!!

And, to celebrate it's almost completeness, here is the result from the flag tutorial when ropes are added. Ogg file as always (^^,).

Thank YOU soo much for all the help so far and especially all the guidance to get it to this point! YOU rock!!!!!!

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Lemon tree is growin'

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!!

Opus Codec

Flag animation is successful!!!

Flag tutorial is almost finished

New method working right!!!!!!!!

The 3D tutorial applies to video too

Another location for the download

Book continueing!!

Missing Person: Erhard Enslin

A friend of mine's cousin went missing on Friday. Though they don't know the details of the how and why yet, they and I do ask for your assistance to blog this everywhere you can and to use social networking as far as you can.
To download the images at full resolution, simply left-click them and they should open the full-res I have available. If it just opens it, you can right-click it and save it.

Here is a flyer with all the info I have available to me:

You can also use this image as you profi...
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Space station getaway

3D Tutorial is finally completed!!! OOOH!!!!

Hey all!

As you can see, I am very excited to announce the release of the 3D tutorial (you know, 3D with a single render). Anyway, you can find it here, under the Free Blender Tutorials section on the home page.

Here is the final cover of the tutorial:

I went for the blue and red line for obvious reasons, but the rest are images from experiments trying to get a good result.

Hope you enjoy the tutorial!

Thank YOU very very very very much for all the help and guidance! YOU rock JESUS!

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Current tutorial image change

Tutorial cover image

Started with the 3D tutorial today!!

Final node systems to be explained in the tutorial

Progress on the output

Hey all!!

I've been working very hard to get some form of good result in depth and thankfully here it is:

Now, while the depth is great, it still only goes so far and then it doesn't go any further. In other words, if the object goes beyond a certain point, there is no more depth to give it and to you it will only be getting smaller.

The ideal is to get double the depth I have currently, but doing a two-step overlay (it helps focus a center of the scene), but there are many issues that still nee...
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3D in Blender using only one render

Updated logo

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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Flag tutorial

I know there are a few out there that show you how to do a flag with procedural textures, but I wanted to take it a step further and do the whole flag (including the side with the rope and two holes) with procedural textures only. And this is the result:

I know as a South African citizen you may be thinking "Why in the world would he make a French flag instead", because I am learning French and it was the first flag that came to mind. After showing my brother this render, he asked me why I did...
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3D Portfolio section!

Wood tutorial almost finished!

Hey peoples!!

Thankfully I had the opportunity to work on the book again this week and managed to finish writing it and finishing the cover as well. It still needs to be checked and maybe more info added, but it's one tutorial away from the Blender Render section being completed!!! As with the other tutorials having a similar cover, this is completely procedural textures (using nodes and directly applied).

So without further ado, here is the cover of the wood tutorial:

It took quite a bit of wor...
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Blender Guru Competition Entry - Photo Realism

Paul Personal Training!

New Covers

It's been a while since I've shared anything creative here (feels like forever and yet it's only been about two weeks at the most, lol). So I've decided to post the new cover pages of the Snow tutorial and the new Orange in the book.
Hope you like 'em!!

The first one is extremely vague on modeling, because that needs to be the artist's job, but it is quite clear on the texturing, which is what it's about. Both include a FullHD render of the cover pic (without cropping) at the end of the tutoria...
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GOD gave my dad a job!

Still here and workin'!

Creating old wood with paint chipping off

I've always liked the rustic look. It's very antique-ish, lol. But getting it to look right using procedural textures only is where the challenge comes in.

Last week I posted here about how the wood alone looks and I showed you a scaled Node system, but today I want to show the progress made from that initial look to the finished product now representin' as my personal facebook cover.

Here is where it was last week:

Looked okay, but remember I felt that most of the lines were too uniform.

I worke...

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New business cards!

1st Car

Wood with procedural textures!

Wood is one of the most difficult textures I've had to try and make with only procedural textures, but I'm glad to announce there's a way to add knots to wood with grain distortion.

Though I only managed it yesterday (with a lot of grace), it looks cool so far and the actual tutorial should (prayerfully and hopefully) have a better result. The node system looks something like this:

This the result of above:

(Full res is HD; right-click > View Image)

I have a few things I would like to change, suc...
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Brilliant Scanner Software for windows; Documalis!!!

Texture painting!

This is one of Blender's coolest feature imo. You can literally paint over objects in 3DView. So cool. Not overtly original or even that fancy, just the knowing you can is cool!

For this part of the book (now becoming a set of books, due to my PC's inability to handle the large file), I used the monkey mesh that comes with Blender. Very simple low res texture, but it definitely shows that you can achieve good results with this technique.

Here's the final:

I really had to up the contrast and brig...
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Blocks in Blender

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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WOW!!

What a day's work!! JESUS really showed up for the mountain snow tutorial to say the least! And here's why:
I posted an image a while back, showing you guys that you can add snow to a mountain using the Blend procedural texture. That was this picture:

Cute, but not very impressive (even back then I knew it wasn't very impressive and only a proof of concept; that it was possible to do), but today really showed what you can do with it, which is this one:

(Full res is FullHD - right click > View Im...

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More fruit! lol

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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Quick tips using the halo lamp

When you use the halo lamp in Blender to create some form of beams or solid light, you need to remember that Blender is still growing in it's alpha support and the halo lamp has only two settings when it comes to transparent objects: visible and invisible.

This means that you have to know that the light-beams are not going to shine through a transparent object, only the light itself:

Another thing you need to be careful of is reflective materials. When a halo lamps shines through a transparent ...
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Tutorials you can expect in the Blender Render section!

These four tutorials will be in the Blender Render section of the book! I just know that these would be instrumental in helping you all achieve what you are looking to!

(For full-res; right click > View Image; on the desired page)

Hope you're looking forward to the book's release as I am!
(^v^)

Thank YOU for all YOUR constant guidance and assistance. There is nothing I can do without YOU!

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Blender Guru competition entry - The Perfect Holiday

My idea of a perfect holiday HE will not permit me to depict for various reasons, but HE did let me make this entry, because second to the absolute perfect holiday, this would be it. Seclusion, ambient noise, calmness and all the luxuries of modern living (^^,).

This also has a link to the book I'm working on, because it was entirely done with procedural textures (even the artwork on the wall you see half-way).

Hope you like it as much as I did making it!!

(the actual size is FullHD; Right click...

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Quick Tip: A cloud texture with a cell noise basis

Pactical example of procedural textures; an Orange

Heya!

You've heard me talk about how useful procedural textures are and how great I think they are and about the new book I'm working on, explaining how to use them well, etc., BUT, I was as yet to show you how useful they truly are. Well, today I get to show you. This orange was modeled and textured (with procedural textures only), in Blender.

(for full res: right-click > View Image)

Now, you can truly see, they are really fantastic and a great tool to work with. And best of all, you don't have...

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An example of one procedural texture

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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Texture reference guide started!!

I believe HE wanted me to give you a bit of a freebie, so here is a page from the texture reference section on the procedural texture for wood, so here you go (^^,).

To download, right click and save the image.
Have a fantastic day!!

Thank YOU!!!!!!!!!!!

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Node texture section almost finished!

The Blender Render section of the book still needs quite a bit of work, but I'm glad to report that the node texture section is almost complete. This is a page from that section, that explains how to layer. Want the writing to be in focus? Buy the book when it comes out (^c ^, ).

(for full-res: right-click > View Image)

(not page 1, but page numbering will be done after everything has written)

Thank you for reading and I will keep you posted on progress (^^,)!!

Thank YOU!!!!! Without YOU, JESUS, ...

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Texture node section started!

Heya everyone!!

I have started working on the Texture Nodes for Procedural Textures (quite a mouth full, lol). Anyway, just to show you what you can do, I made something that you can't do without using texture nodes (when using procedural textures). An old dingy wall with plaster and paint chipping off and the wall itself is cracked.

This is it:

Usually I would use normal for this, but since the normal setting didn't give me the depth I needed, I had to go for an alternate approach: actual displ...

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Pyramids from particles

There are many ways to do this, but I didn't model a single pyramid for this image. I used a texture (not generated, I had to make one), but the technique I used to make this, is in the upcoming tutorial, so keep them eyes peeled:

Just a cool way of messing with the particle system. Hope you like it and after reading the book, making it!!
Thanks for reading!

Thank YOU!!!

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Moon scene

I really enjoyed making this. It wasn't one of those 'this is taking forever' projects, just something quick. I've wanted to make something like this for a while now, because I can never seem to take a photo of the moon at night (over here in SA we have some of the most beautiful moon shots to be taken I've ever seen), but I just don't have the equipment to do it. So, I made one, only because HE enabled me to do so btw.

Hope you enjoy it!!

(All done with procedural textures [nodes], except the ...

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If you can sing, take proper care of your voice

A proof of concept taste for mountains

Here's another little something I'm including in the book (calling it that, since it covers all the educational terms that can be used in relation to the project).

And yes, all created with procedural textures and Blender features. The mountain was generated using the Landscape add-on. The mountain's snow was done using only procedural textures. Wanna know how? Wait for the book (^^,)

Thank you for reading!
Thank YOU!!

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A bit of a sneak peak

This is one of the finished pages of the guide/tutorial. If you wanna know what's written, you're gonna have to order it when it's finished (^^,).

Have a blessed day peoples!
Thank YOU for all YOUR help!!!!

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Finally getting some time!

Yey! Back at CA (Cross Allegiance) full-steam and working on the tutorial/guide!

Just wanted to pop in and say hi before getting to the rest of it.

Here's something to bless you with today. Earlier this week was another birthday and since he likes architecture, I made him this:

Happy Birthday Rikus!!!

Thank you for reading!
Thank YOU!!!!!

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Blender Render VS Cycles Render

Sneak peak at the next possible tutorial's work

I really want to start with a massive commercial tutorial for Blender Render and Cycles, focusing on procedural textures and what you can do with them. Like the one already done, except very very much expanded.

So, as I said, this is something I want to do, but can't make any promises yet.

Here is an image I made with Blender Render (aka Blender Internal) that I would like  to use as a title page for the Blender Render section:

(for full res, right-click and 'view image')

This image took a day's ...
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Can Blender do a glitter material? You know it can!

A world mapping tip.

Brand New Free Tutorial!!!

Heya peoples!!

Great news! I just finished a new free tutorial on Procedural Textures in Blender:
Procedural Textures - An Introduction

It features details on the cloud procedural texture as well as two tutorials on how you can apply them to create things you'd normally need to buy textures for or find online. This way, you can get smart, make your own and stand out. This is the cover:

Currently, it is only available through e-mail order due to it's size (~12 MB PDF), but absolutely worth it. You...

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Update on the business warrior project!

Sorry I didn't update you guys on this project as often as I did the music room.

Here we go. After not being really active on this, I modeled a lot on one day (the shirt and the jacket or it was just the shirt, I don't recall). Anyway, but the next day I did the pants and posted that online, but the overall compositing didn't quite suite what I wanted the image to be like, but this is how it looked:

(Right-click > View Image for full size)

It was like the glow was just too much. I like the look ...
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JESUS short-film in anime!

A bit of an announcement

Business Warrior update (landscape addition).

This is a rough post to show the overall composition in HD at 50% resolution. The clouds are gone, because of layer masking.

My brother (the one for who I'm doing this project) wanted me to add lightning so I watched Andrew Price's tutorial on lightning and here it is adapted for this project:

(the bolt is also cut on account of layer masking for the character sketch)

I have a problem with the lightning in the scene and I'm sure most of you will agree (feel free to comment via the Facebook page...
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Business Warrior landscape!

New project on at BlenderArtist.org

My brother wanted me to portray him as some sort of business warrior. I asked HIM how that would look and these sketches was the result:

I've also done a few things including the sword:

This is not the final sword, because I edited it and added a handle. For more info check out BlenderArtists.org in the Business Warrior thread.



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Cartooning in Blender

Top shelf completed!!!

Yes!!!!!!!! Finally completed!!!!! The bookshelf is finished!!!! 86 books total!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank YOU!!!Without you I would never have been able to come up with 86 different titles. Yeah, some are series that made it a bit easier, but still!! WOW!! Thank YOU for not letting me be lazy and pushing me to go all out on this project! To YOU be the glory for the design work of every cover, the materials, the skill, everything!!!
Thank YOU!

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Getting to that top shelf! (^^,)

Yes!! We're getting there peoples!!

Yesterday I got to work on the top shelf. Only did a handful of covers, then the weather came rumbling and I had to shut down for the evening (I need to rest too you know, lol). So anyway, yesterday's few, with today's current progress, brings it to 23 covers!!! The green book 3rd from the left doesn't count, because it's not UV'ed yet; still as cubular as ever, LOL.
Here's the current progress:

I like the fact that the order is reversed on the GRADE books. On...
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Bookshelf is progressing!!

Super excited that only the last shelf remains on the bookshelf! It's the part that is the hardest, due to volume alone, but HE already gave me many titles to add to the backs and covers. It's just a matter of finish and application! Then the room will be almost complete.

There are still a few things that need to be added, like side tables and 1 plant and a few other things. Here are the shelves completed so far.

So see full resolution, right click and find the closest option to 'View picture'....
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Many adjustments later

A lot has happened since the last Blog Update!!!!!! The bottom two shelves' books are finished!!

On the thread a user commented that the titles on the spines looked too big. We have a lot of books and I double checked and decided to show him that the smoothing enhances and amplifies rounding. The below shows how the medium book looks like in 3DView with flat shading. As you can see the title sits nice and snug.

(3DView)

Here's the bottom two shelves in close-up:

(all titles a...

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Finally getting to the books.

Here is how the books would look UV'ed. These are just the first two and they were modified:

See, the original books didn't have that almost separated spine indent, but I added it, because the smoothing didn't look right on the cube. It was faaaaar to sharp. The lettering was almost what with specularity and one side was completely black and that just does not fly, so here's how the old and new books compare:

Left: New book. Right: Old Cube book

It's interesting and worth mentioning that in cop...

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Music progress 006-007 and a close-up!

Music room update!

Oh, this is a project and a half, lol. This is a partial render of today's work. I am super jazzed about how the guitar came out!! Just see how it looked in the previous post and you'll see the difference, but for the sake of ease, here is how it looked before:

Before:

After:

Thank you for all your continued reading and support!! Hope these inspire you to go do something spectacular!!

Thank YOU!!!

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Music room (not a studio, there's a difference, lol)

What a week!! (^^,)

Jaw-dropping Blender animations!

Ronel's birthday

Welcome! Whoo hoo! First post! lol

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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