Showing Tag: " text" (Show all posts)

Text ablaze

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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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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Yay, it's up

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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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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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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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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Paper and art

A little news

Game Engine - Animated textures

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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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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Bricks that go crack

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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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!

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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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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Node system art

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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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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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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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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Progress on the final stages of the Blender Render section

Flag tutorial is almost finished

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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Paul Personal Training!

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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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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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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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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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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Music progress 006-007 and a close-up!