nemesis wrote:
> Best way to get into Blender is to slowly learn your way through both 
> its 3D space and through its interface, which is organized in panels 
> containing related functionality.  All of it via keyboard, of course.

 From what I can tell, most everything can be accessed without the mouse at 
all, which is nice. When you can't remember the button, you can grope around 
thru the menus until you find something.

My main stumbling blocks seem to center around the system doing the wrong 
thing to be fast by default, in preference to doing the right thing slowly, 
which you have to figure out how to set up.

Otherwise, it seems pretty straightforward. Altho there are a couple (so 
far) of bothersome limitations, particularly in the textures. (Like, I don't 
know how to do checkerboards or hex shapes or some of the other stuff POV 
has built in, and you can't rotate a texture directly, so your wood rings 
are fixed in one axis - just minor stuff like that).

I've played with Hash Animation:Master, so most of the concepts (bones, 
strides, texture stacks, etc) are familiar, at least.

This is an awesome site for the parameters of the simulators:
http://www.pkblender.it/index.html
(What should be in the documentation to start with. :-)

And this guy does a great job of showing how to model something that isn't 
organic, which HAM made exceedingly difficult in my limited experience:
http://www.vimeo.com/groups/9075/videos/812311

Hope that helps anyone else who might be playing with Blender soon.

> I don't know, I'm a single-monitor guy. ;)

It's amazing how helpful it is, altho I don't understand people who put the 
space between the monitors right in front.

I saw one video of a UI idea, where when you're doing drag-and-drop, you can 
peel back the corner of the window you're over to expose the window 
underneath. I think D-a-D is the biggest win with a bigger monitor. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Otherwise, it seems pretty straightforward. Altho there are a couple (so
> far) of bothersome limitations, particularly in the textures. (Like, I don't
> know how to do checkerboards or hex shapes or some of the other stuff POV
> has built in, and you can't rotate a texture directly, so your wood rings
> are fixed in one axis - just minor stuff like that).

Much more powerful procedural textures are coming to Blender soon enough,
completely modifiable via the nodes editor as well.  Anyway, most people into
Blender -- and most other 3D apps as well -- simply use image maps, though
being a povhead myself, I never quite adapted to the whole UV-unwrap thing
either.

> I've played with Hash Animation:Master, so most of the concepts (bones,
> strides, texture stacks, etc) are familiar, at least.

Yeah, I've did any animation either.  I'm a still guy.

> I saw one video of a UI idea, where when you're doing drag-and-drop, you can
> peel back the corner of the window you're over to expose the window
> underneath. I think D-a-D is the biggest win with a bigger monitor. :-)

OTOH, I'm pretty happy myself with the newer monitor that came with my new
q6600.  More available screen estate to the sides.  Though I know some people
who simply occupy the whole screen with a single window, because that's the
standard Windoze way. ;)

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nemesis wrote:
> Much more powerful procedural textures are coming to Blender soon enough,
> completely modifiable via the nodes editor as well.  Anyway, most people into
> Blender -- and most other 3D apps as well -- simply use image maps, though
> being a povhead myself, I never quite adapted to the whole UV-unwrap thing
> either.

I had noticed that. The POV community seems more purist, perhaps because 
POV's procedural textures are more powerful. One of my experiments consists 
of seeing how to get POV to render a texture in a way that I can use it 
easily as an image map.  (Not hard. Just a matter of getting the texture 
stack full of normals and displacements and all that right.)

> who simply occupy the whole screen with a single window, because that's the
> standard Windoze way. ;)

I never understood that myself. Blender makes it easy to work that way, but 
I usually get nuts of windows are under other windows.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Does anyone here use blender?
>

I tried three times to get warm with "Blender".
I try it real serios and try to have no prejudices.
And certainly "Blender" have some nice features.

But the conceptional difference between POV-RAY and
"Blender" is not conquerable for me - at the moment.

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> Oh no, I do believe I said POV-Ray's texture system was superior in many
> ways to Blender's:
>
http://news.povray.org/povray.general/thread/%3Cweb.48fdae14f034d1aa519bbb570@news.povray.org%3E/
>
> Each program has its strong points, so it's all a matter of preference.
>   POV-Ray is a much more *fun* environment to experiment in.
>
> Sam

Okay, I guess my memory's not what it once was, heh! And no, I don't recall ever
seeing a Blender image posted here by you :)

But I'm sure I speak for a lot a folks when I say that your POV insights and
macros are an inspiration Sam; you produce some amazing work :)

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nemesis wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Otherwise, it seems pretty straightforward. Altho there are a couple (so
>> far) of bothersome limitations, particularly in the textures. (Like, I don't
>> know how to do checkerboards or hex shapes or some of the other stuff POV
>> has built in, and you can't rotate a texture directly, so your wood rings
>> are fixed in one axis - just minor stuff like that).
> 
> Much more powerful procedural textures are coming to Blender soon enough,
> completely modifiable via the nodes editor as well.  Anyway, most people into
> Blender -- and most other 3D apps as well -- simply use image maps, though
> being a povhead myself, I never quite adapted to the whole UV-unwrap thing
> either.
> 
Well, I don't get how they do it anyway. I mean, you "unwrap" your mesh 
to a pattern which is either a) sort of like the original, but not 
really, or b) a lot of squares, where you can't tell the original 
geometry. Then you paint it, reimport, overlay it into the UV pattern 
then how the frack it works. Think the guys with.. deep paint, or what 
ever its called, have it right. Lose the idiot, "make it some place 
else, then glue it on like a label", BS and just paint directly on the 
object, like you would in the real world. If you can't precisely control 
the texture, its position, etc., or get an "accurate" mesh layout to 
draw into, what is the point? And, even if its "may" be accurate, 
technically, it takes a very different mind than mine to "get" how the 
two correspond, without having some way to "see it" as I am doing the 
drawing.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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In Blender it is possible to paint directly on the model using texture 
paint. Works best if it is a low-poly model with subsurf that can be turned 
off while painting. It isn't something that I've completely mastered but I 
have been able to get it to work pretty well. That is how I created the 
texture map for this model http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqmRT87HhtE

I created a grid pattern for the uvmap, unwrapped the head and applied the 
map, and then used texture paint to block in the colors, like the eyebrows, 
eyeliner, lips, and blush. The image at that point shows the features well 
enough to figure out what-goes-where and then I added details in photoshop. 
Takes quite a long time so I've been putting it off for several other models 
in the works. I find the hardest part is remembering all the steps involved 
in using the uv editor.

Mike


"Patrick Elliott" <sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote in message 
news:4998e2a7$1@news.povray.org...
> nemesis wrote:
>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>> Otherwise, it seems pretty straightforward. Altho there are a couple (so
>>> far) of bothersome limitations, particularly in the textures. (Like, I 
>>> don't
>>> know how to do checkerboards or hex shapes or some of the other stuff 
>>> POV
>>> has built in, and you can't rotate a texture directly, so your wood 
>>> rings
>>> are fixed in one axis - just minor stuff like that).
>>
>> Much more powerful procedural textures are coming to Blender soon enough,
>> completely modifiable via the nodes editor as well.  Anyway, most people 
>> into
>> Blender -- and most other 3D apps as well -- simply use image maps, 
>> though
>> being a povhead myself, I never quite adapted to the whole UV-unwrap 
>> thing
>> either.
>>
> Well, I don't get how they do it anyway. I mean, you "unwrap" your mesh to 
> a pattern which is either a) sort of like the original, but not really, or 
> b) a lot of squares, where you can't tell the original geometry. Then you 
> paint it, reimport, overlay it into the UV pattern then how the frack it 
> works. Think the guys with.. deep paint, or what ever its called, have it 
> right. Lose the idiot, "make it some place else, then glue it on like a 
> label", BS and just paint directly on the object, like you would in the 
> real world. If you can't precisely control the texture, its position, 
> etc., or get an "accurate" mesh layout to draw into, what is the point? 
> And, even if its "may" be accurate, technically, it takes a very different 
> mind than mine to "get" how the two correspond, without having some way to 
> "see it" as I am doing the drawing.
>
> -- 
> void main () {

>     if version = "Vista" {
>       call slow_by_half();
>       call DRM_everything();
>     }
>     call functional_code();
>   }
>   else
>     call crash_windows();
> }
>
> <A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 3D 
> Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> ever its called, have it right. Lose the idiot, "make it some place 
> else, then glue it on like a label", BS and just paint directly on the 
> object, like you would in the real world. 

That's one of the things Animation Master got right. You could just stamp an 
image down. Especially nice if you modeled something based on orthographic 
views, because then you could just slap the image down.

I saw another program where you could draw the geometry, then hand basically 
a frontal view to an artist who would paint on the view you'd see from the 
camera, and then you could import that right back onto the model. Find spots 
you couldn't see, get the artist to fill them in, reimport, lather rinse 
repeat. The examples used buildings in game levels, so I'm not sure how good 
it would be for faces or something. It helped that you could put some basic 
texturing on the buildings and let the artist fill in details like dirt and 
rust and signs and cobwebs and doorknobs and stuff.

The UV mapping in blender lets you do other stuff, tho, too, like 
automatically baking shadows into the images so you can turn the ray-tracing 
off for drawing animations, and stuff like that.

It's a very complicated program.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

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> Does anyone here use blender?

Glad you seemed to have fixed your problem yourself - sometimes the last 
resort is to make a post somewhere in the hope of getting an answer!

Personally I've mainly used Blender for mesh generation and simple UV 
texture mapping (for export for use in a game), but I did dabble a bit with 
the bones and animation features.  I do remember a couple of things about 
that where, like you say, doing seemingly exactly the same thing would 
sometimes work and sometimes not (to do with getting an animal walking).  To 
this day I don't think I ever figured out what it was, and the tutorials I 
was following seemed to be based on a previous version of Blender.  I just 
lost interest in the end.

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Am Sat, 14 Feb 2009 13:08:53 -0800 schrieb Darren New:

> Does anyone here use blender?

I'm using it. Not for rendering mainly, but for designing cardboard 
models (ok, not the best-suited program for that task like for example 
Rhino, but Rhino isn't free as in beer). Modelling, constructing and 
scripting basically.


OOC, does anybody here do cardboard modelling (or papercraft, whatever 
you call it)?

Micha

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