J_K9 @ Linux

Blender Obsession

August 13, 2006 on 11:56 pm | In Linux |

Blender is a state-of-the-art 3D graphics creation tool, and, although it is 100% free (under the GPL), it is an extraordinarily powerful application. You just have to take a look at some of the finished, unfinished and proclaimed best of the best projects/renders on BlenderArtists.org (an excellent Blender community site) to see how powerful it is.

I am still a Blender newbie, however, I can point you to some useful resources to get you up and running. It’s taken me a while to find them, but they should help you as much as they have helped me

First of all, there are the Blender Video Tutorials. The only problem with these is that they are soon outdated - and, as these were the first tutorials I watched, I couldn’t find the SubSurf feature in the new version of Blender, as its location had been changed since the version used in the tutorial. Apart from this, the tutorials were excellent, as they _show_ you exactly how to use Blender’s interface, create some basic features, and some other neat tricks. However, in retrospect, I do not recommend you start by using these, as you will get into old habits. For the newbie, I greatly recommend this tutorial: Blender 3D: Noob to Pro. A few sections are not too clear (like the puppy/wolf one), but all the others are very well explained, and this will help you to become familiar with Blender’s interface, and to feel comfortable manipulating basic meshes (shapes). Once you’ve gone through a fair amount of this tutorial, then I recommend you watch the video tutorials, as that will help remind you of everything you have just covered and will etch those handy keyboard shortcuts into your memory.

There are many other tutorials available. If you are looking for a specific tutorial, then Google is your friend - for example, if you want a car modeling tutorial, enter “blender car modeling tutorial” into Google and you should get a nice list of tutorials.

That aside, the official and highly recognised tutorials are linked to on Blender’s documentation page; click here to view the list. I downloaded a copy of the Blender User Manual (Guide), which is very useful as a reference. I also recommend, from a non-free point of view, The Official Blender 2.3 Guide book. I have only heard words of praise for that book, and my copy should be arriving some time tomorrow!

Here are some other useful links:

Blender.org Resources;
Blender Materials (like glass, gold, etc) and Blender Material Nodes (creating and layering textures);
Kator Legaz - Blender tutorials (some good tutorials);
CPBarton’s Blender Scripts - extremely useful, especially when you’re trying to do something for which there is not an inbuilt Blender feature. You might just find it on that site;
Yafray, a more advanced rendering engine to be used in conjunction with Blender.

Well, I hope that helps, and I’m sure you’ll have just as much fun with Blender as I have. On Ubuntu, it’s just a “sudo apt-get install blender” away

12 Comments »

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I would like to add that once you move to the advanced tutorials, you used better rendering engines than the internal blender renderer. You can get much cooler effects with advanced ray tracing engines.

Comment by hari — August 14, 2006 #
Using Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.4 on Debian GNU/Linux
That I can agree with - I’ve seen renders with Yafray and the inbuilt Blender Render, and Yafray definitely looks a lot better. It’s also meant to be faster, but I haven’t quite reached the stage where I’m advanced enough to use another renderer
Hari, have you ever modeled a car in Blender? I’m going to use this one, as it appears to be quite comprehensive: http://www.geocities.com/gauravnawani/tutorials/toyota/modeling-toyota1.html
I would have tried it today, but I’ve had my hands completely tied (once again). Who would have thought that I was going to spend 4 hours setting up, configuring and tweaking a Counter-Strike:Source server for a client? Post on its way

Comment by J_K9 — August 15, 2006 #
Using Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.4 on Linux
J_K9, I’ve never tried anything complex beyond a wooden doll
However, i did draw a golden ring and render it usign Yafray. There’s a tutorial for it somewhere and the end product looks absolutely amazing with Yafray and not so nice with the internal renderer.

Comment by hari — August 15, 2006 #
Using Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.5 on Linux
Hehehe! In that case, nothing more complex that what I have created - my cute little glass bowl
I’ll search for that gold ring tutorial… It sounds interesting

Comment by J_K9 — August 15, 2006 #
Using Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.4 on Linux
http://wiki.yafray.org/bin/view.pl/UserDoc/SimpleGoldRing

It’s at the Yafray wiki site.

Comment by hari — August 16, 2006 #
Using Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.4 on Debian GNU/Linux
Thanks for the link! That looks VERY nice! But just the bit at the top of the end result looks good? Is it meant to be resting on something, or is that entire thing the ring? (Sorry, I haven’t read it yet - I’ve been busy with other things lately ;))

Comment by J_K9 — August 16, 2006 #
Using Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6 on Windows XP
Yes, it’s actually resting on a floor. And with a few tweaks with the settings for reflection and refraction, you can get really dazzling effects too.

Comment by hari — August 17, 2006 #
Using Opera 8.5 on FreeBSD
hey guys,
I’ve been using blender for about a year and a hlaf and my friends and I are making a funny movie on it right now (huge project). Anyway I’m just here to agree with all you blender junkies about how good the new blender is and how good it gets every tiem it comes out again.
Toodles

Blender Junkie Joe

cgshowoff.com

Comment by Joe — August 19, 2006 #
Using Safari 417.8 on Mac OS X
It sounds good! Please let me know when it’s done, as I’d love to watch it
If there’s one gripe I have, it’s that there seem to be no video tutorials on how to model something complex, like a car. I’m following this Blender car tutorial, and it is a good one, but it’s nothing like a video tutorial, so I’m having a bit of trouble. I may request one on the Blender Artists forums!

I’m getting accustomed to the shortcuts and controls, so you may (hopefully) see an interesting design from me in the near future!

Comment by J_K9 — August 21, 2006 #
Using Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.6 on Windows XP
I wish could devote time to creativity, but 3d stuff eats up way too much of time and I have precious little free time now that my institute has re-opened.

Comment by hari — August 21, 2006 #
Using Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.5 on Linux
Hello everyone I am new to 3d which software it’s best for me to start with?

Comment by rundeep — July 31, 2007 #
Using Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.5 on Windows XP
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