Monday 5 December 2011
Saturday 3 December 2011
Friday 23 July 2010
Note: my contribution to lamebook
A really brief post today, just to note that I saw this on facebook today and thought it was very entertaining... and almost lamebook worthy. I will enter it on the website and see what happens!
Priorities woman!!
Tuesday 13 July 2010
How to: Blender tutorial 10 - Animation
This is the tenth (and possibly final) tutorial in this series, where I'll introduce you to the fun of animation. Might be best to check the others out first!
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one -- introduction to animation
An animation is a series of rendered images which form a movie. The most common way to form one in 3D animation is through the process of ‘key framing’. This is like telling Blender you want to go from A to D and letting Blender fill in B and C for you. (The letters A and D are both separate ‘keys’ – changes you make to your objects and ‘set’. When these keys are played together they form the animation).
Animation in Blender is known as ‘Interpolation’ – or Ipo
Cameras can follow paths as the object moves which saves memory and rendering time.
Movies are saved in .AVI format.
two -- how to produce an animation
Go to the render screen and make sure that frames-per-second is set to 15. This button highlighted below shows which frame your animation is currently in. So this is currently in frame 1:
To change this value you can click on the arrows, shift-click in the box and change the value or press the up and down arrows keys to move ten frames at a time.
(It is important to work out how fast you want your character to do something. If you want a ball rolling across the floor in 2 seconds, and your frame rate is 15 frames per seconds, the ball is going to have to roll across the floor in 30 frames).
Hopefully, these 10 tutorials will have given you enough of a grounding in Blender to continue on your own ^_^... Enjoy!
There are 3 basic things an object can do in animation:
- Move
- Rotate
- Resize
Although you can also change the properties of an object, such as its texture or the intensity of light etc.
three -- creating a "key"
Say I want the pink ball below to slide down the table…
I would change the scene number from one… to say 10..
Then I would select the ball and use the g key to move it down the slope, After I positioned it alittle way down you press the i key to ‘set’ it. An option box will appear. It’s asking you for what change you’ve made. Since I’m moving the object it would be a change in location (Loc), so that’s what I would click.
One key has now been set. Now I’d do the same again, but move the ball out of the camera’s line of sight (note it's out of the dotted lines that represent the 'camera's viewpoint':
four -- view the animation without rendering it
Always worth doing - you don't want to spend ages waiting for a render to complete, only to find it was just slightly out of shot...
To view your animation before you've actually rendered it, put your frame number to the start of your animation and move your cursor over the 3D window…
Then press Alt – A
five -- rendering your animation
There are several things you have to set up in you render buttons screen before you press render. Follow the steps in order and you're fine ^_^:
1 - Select the start and end frame you want it to render. So since my animation is 20 frames long starting from frame 1 these are the settings I entered.
2 - Change the type of render to AVI codec, Indeovideo 5.1, 100% (another options box will appear).
3 - choose the size you want it to render to (for a quick check ‘preview’ is good – for a final render use PC)
4 - Then click render. When it’s finished rendering select play to see your animation.
six -- the IPO window
This lets you view your animation graphically.
You will then see this window:
This shows the location, size etc of your objects on a timeline. You can edit individual keys by selecting a track (one of the lines) and pressing tab. Each dot represents a ‘key’.
If you have changed other things – like materials – during your animation, you can see these by changing select this menu (which says "object" in the diagram above) and select "material".
six -- cycling
If you set up an animation which will keep repeating – like a wheel turning – you don’t have to repeat all the keys – you can do one cycle and let Blender keep doing that cycle.
To do this, create one cycle then locate the path in the Ipo window. Select the "curve" menu (next to the object menu) from the bottom of the window. Then select extended mode then either cyclic (eg walking) or extrapolation (eg a wheel turning).
seven -- animating materials or world settings
This is almost identical to animating objects. However, instead of working in the 3D screens, if you’re changing the material when moving the scenes forward, change (eg the colour) and press i while the cursor is in the button window.
Depending on what your changing the i menu will be different but it’s always easy to guess what means what:
Monday 12 July 2010
Recipe: chicken and leek pie
What do I need?
Kitchen Stuff:
- 3 saucepans
- casserole dish (about 18x6cm across)
- frying pan
- masher
Ingredients:
- 2 chicken breasts (diced)
- 2 medium leeks
- a can of cider
- 2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced
- bayleaf, thyme
- 5 potatoes, peeled and halved
- 275ml milk
- 20g plain flour
- 20g butter
- cayenne
- 25g mature cheddar
-10g parmesan
- nutmeg (if you want something special)
- acouple of tablespoons creme fraiche
- some butter for mashing
(makes enough for 2)
Preparation 20-ish minutes, Cooking time 20 minutes
Step 1 -- Preheat the oven
Pre-heat the oven to about 200oC.
Step 2 -- Boil the potatoes
Half the peeled potatoes and add them to a pan of water. Boil for 20 minutes.
Step 3 -- Simmer the 'marinade'
Add the cider to the saucepan, along with the carrots, bay leaf, thyme and some salt and pepper. Bring to boiling point, then add a lid to the pan and simmer for 5 minutes.
Step 4 -- Prepare the leeks
Take the top end of the leeks off, and half the stalk, running them under the tap incase there's still soil inside them. Then chop finely.
You don't have to - but I would then fry them in butter on a low heat for about 10 minutes until they are golden. This really brings out the flavour. Put them onto a piece of kitchen roll to soak off excess butter before going onto Step 3.
Step 5 -- Add to the cider 'sauce'
Add the leeks and the diced chicken to the pan with the cider-esque marinade. Cover the pan again and simmer for another 10 minutes.
Step 4 -- Make the main sauce roue
In another saucepan add the flour, butter and cayenne pepper and heat slowly, continually stirring until a paste is formed. Then add the milk gradually, until the paste gradually develops and thickens into a sauce-like consistency. Add all except a couple of handfuls of the cheese and continue to mix.
Step 6 -- Drain the chicken and the leeks
Drain the chicken and the leeks to remove the bay leaves, but keep the liquid. Return the liquid to the pan and reduce until there's only about half a cm or so left in the pan.
Step 7 -- Add everything together
Stir the cheese sauce made in Step 4 into this liquid. Simmer, and stir in the chicken, carrots and leeks. Add everything to the casserole dish.
Step 8 -- Mash the potato
Drain the boiled potatoes and add alittle milk and butter. Mash until smooth and add acouple of handfuls of cheese and a decent grating of salt and pepper.
Step 9 -- Put it in the oven!
Smooth the potato across the surface of the dish, and sprinkle the potato with the last of the cheese. Put into the oven for about 20 minutes until golden on the top.
Saturday 10 July 2010
Note: Coma, the game
This blog post is dedicated to the little flash game "Coma". It's perfection is in it's simplicity - so I'll keep this short...
It's beautiful, ridiculously atmospheric and very well done. You must all go and play it... right now!
Friday 9 July 2010
How to: Blender tutorial 9 - The brilliance of raytracing
3D animation may seem to be the realm of big budget movies, and certainly major companies like Industrial Light and Magic use big budget software. Thankfully, the if you want to try 3d animation as a hobby, you can do an impressive amount of work using free software such as Blender. Alot of the principles are transferable across animation software in general.
This is the ninth tutorial in the series. Here I'll introduce you to raytracing. But for those of you who want to skip:
Raytracing is an excellent tool; it allows objects to reflect other objects and appear transparent. However it should be used sparingly as it is both time and memory expensive.
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Raytracing is an excellent tool; it allows objects to reflect other objects and appear transparent. However it should be used sparingly as it is both time and memory expensive.
one -- to enable raytracing
Go to the Render buttons and click ‘RAY’
All the raytracing settings are kept in one section of the material buttons. Click on "Mirrortransp" to display the options:
There are two main aspects; Ray Mirror (ie reflection) and Ray Transp (ie transparency).
two -- ray mirror
For RayMirror to work it’s button MUST be depressed.
The RayMir slider affects the amount an object is reflected.
The Fresnel slider affects the amount of distortion.
three -- ray transparency
For RayTrasp to work it’s button MUST be depressed.
The IOR (Index of refraction) slider creates a lens affect and bends light.
The Fresnel slider controls the amount of transparency of an object
four -- ray shadows
Ray shadow lets every lamp make a shadow – not just spotlight. To activate it go to the lamp buttons with your lamp selected and click the RayShadow button. This should be used sparingly however, as it affects render time.
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