Hey all!

About a week ago, I got some comment on YouTube from a user called: CNR Games. He was very excited about the Node Groups I was using in the Compositing: Toon Shading with Soft Shadows tutorial. As many of you know, Node Groups are a way of putting together sets of nodes that just make your setup look cleaner and function better. You could say it is a form of logic visual programming.

Anyway, in my projects, I usually use a very specific set of nodes that I use in pretty much every rend...
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Hey all!

There is a website out there that markets independent (aka, unsigned) Christian Artists of various trades in multi-media. It's called IndySpotlight. The lady who is the steward thereof, posted in Christian Animators (a facebook group) on Sunday about this website, but I basically glanced over it. Later that night, I felt GOD wanted me to share this video on that same group:


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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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Hey all!

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

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

There is, however, a solution. When you composite, you typically us...
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Hey all!

Feels like forever since the last post, but it seems that I'm only going to be able to do weekly posts for a while. Long story, but, for today, I would like to share a secret with you. A very very big one that the lecturers go on about when you study design.

That secret is: The more work you finish, the more work you have to fall back on for later projects; a library of free material if you will.

For example, you all know I've done a series of images based on the 4 seasons by Vivaldi. N...
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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!

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Hey everyone!!

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

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Hey all!

Recently I was working on a tile example and I found something weird (this is in Cycles). I'm very used to Blender unwrapping well and having no problems with it's unwrapping, but there is one:

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Hey all!

Let me just clarify that simulation here is literally meant. The game engine so far, does not contain volumetrics, but it does contain some things that can help you fake it, if you will, ie, simulate it.

I'm currently working on clouds and it looks great so far, but I think it can stretch far beyond just clouds. I would say that this method does require either a time lapse for a new scene or manual inserts to close the gap, at least initially.

For the moment, I only have this to show yo...
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Hey all!

Looks like we're 5 for 5 this week!! Amazing!! Huge blessing! Only 3 posts on tooning though.

Now, today is a really special day in regards to tooning, because, we have been working on this fantastic topic all week. With a lot of grace and teamwork, we got a spectacular result and learned quite a bit. So, let's recap.

When we started the week, I shared a very comic-like style with you all, focused on normal influence of the ramp in both Diffuse and Specular options. It looks fantastic, ...
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Hey all,

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

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

Anywho, hope you get ...
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Hey all!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

> Clean up your unwrap. Usually, in ...
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Hey there!

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

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

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

This one developed in a funny way. Not like ha-ha, just different than most works, which are planned pieces, not just growing into something.

I experimented with rigid body physics in Blender yesterday and while I got some okay results, I need to learn about the constraints for these kinds of physics options. While they are extremely useful, I don't know how to use them just yet, lol.

Anyway, after trying this and trying that, I just didn't get anywhere, until GOD suggested I use what I...
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Hey everyone!

Missed posting and really thought about the blog a lot, but I finally have the time to get back to the book again.

Had some big projects unrelated to Blender or visual stuff and it has really taken up a huge amount of time, but the last project was wedding pictures for a friend of mine. I was not the official wedding photographer and I would really like to say thank you to him and his team for a smashing job of directing them. Without their hard work, my pictures would probably ha...
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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:

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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:

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Hey all!

Been playing around with point density a tiny bit these passed few days and it has been fun, but the main goal was to get a sense of what you can do with it and how to set it up, so today I bring you some of those findings:

Working tips:
 - You can have more than one particle system working in the same volume shape without them all adhering to whichever one's color rules (still fuzzy on how customizable they are. For now, I just worked with grey.).
 - You have to make sure that the parti...
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Hey all!

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

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

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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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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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Oh thankful am I!!!!!! lol

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

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

Hopefully it surprises you how flexible proc...
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Hey all!

I was working on the tutorial and the test scene was really not doing the effect justice, so I decided to add the method to an old, highly detailed scene I did a while back; the music room.

You can see the depth the clearest along the sofa on the right, the piano's cover over the guitar and on the music stand next to the wall.

It clearly shows that the effect does work and works well in a scene, but as it goes, the final image will always be darker in this case, because the anaglyph's b...
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