tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32987431910919320012024-03-05T06:11:12.812-08:00Some of My Best Friends are PixelsAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-19745541454215056662015-04-02T08:20:00.001-07:002015-04-02T12:49:56.099-07:00Blender: Save Your Settings Tip<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I bet there is some deep psychology involved in the fact that we all love new stuff (especially when it's free) but hate change. I can't really help with the psychology bit, but I can show you how to get a shiny new Blender installation to still look and feel like your same old friend.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As far as I know, Blender invented this concept of copying your previous settings (add ons, color scheme, plug ins, units, edit functions, shortcuts) to your new installation of Blender. It's brilliant, other smart software makers (like Adobe) have since adopted it and I don't want you to miss this opportunity. It will only happen ONCE. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The first time that you open the new installation, you will see this little blue button shown below. Pressing that button may save you a couple hours fiddling and an onslaught of panic attacks, so act now. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxi_rpJRkpRNqxMPIz_iWFQ3MXLQM0PezK_-IkCcZPmdNC75nFSUYxU5pZVfuNuL5bGud2bzsO-08FZkwDFxFurgb_KXAgSB2vCZiuV35LWqqCUyCabvJ6iqu479xqb1spzp9kDbA63Wk/s1600/save-your-settings-tip.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxi_rpJRkpRNqxMPIz_iWFQ3MXLQM0PezK_-IkCcZPmdNC75nFSUYxU5pZVfuNuL5bGud2bzsO-08FZkwDFxFurgb_KXAgSB2vCZiuV35LWqqCUyCabvJ6iqu479xqb1spzp9kDbA63Wk/s1600/save-your-settings-tip.png" height="640" width="639" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now, don't get me wrong, I think it's good to go back inside preferences and poke around, maybe change some settings, try out a new theme or color scheme, revise your add ons according to which ones you liked and which ones you never used. But that enterprise is best left for when <b>you</b> feel like doing it, not when your new software version plunges you into the unknown.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now go get yourself a new <a href="http://www.blender.org/" target="_blank">Blender</a> so you can see this here cute lil critter and the magic blue button at start up.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-81757634059710859412014-11-11T12:07:00.003-08:002014-11-11T12:07:58.371-08:00Blender Quick Tip: Sculpt Mode for FAST Topology Fix<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ok, so maybe it seems like I was only paying attention to ZBrush & forgot all about Blender. But really that's almost impossible since I make most of my base meshes in Blender before taking them to ZBrush. ZBrush is picky about topology though. It likes quads only, regularly spaced and more or less square please. I'm ok with that and normally I at least try to get my edge flow all nice and clean before I leave Blender. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Blender has improved sooo much over the last couple upgrades! And today I figured out a fast topology fix that means I will never again have a reason not to have near perfect topology on a base mesh. Plus, it's so good and so smart, I thought I should share it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Use sculpt mode to clean topology... before sculpting!</b> (seriously)</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It's only a Tab key away with the new radial menu pop up. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Wire frame works in sculpt mode now (so does mirror modifier btw)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Grab Brush gives far greater control than proportional edit ever could.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You can adjust size, strength, fall off, switch to smoothing all with easy hotkeys or on the tool shelf.</span></li>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgynUVkYdaa5rB30-II8R0_u-rq89K4T3FLctEs84rf2UHMXLld7PuU3dZ7k-Xi00m90kUDdaZ8vzZNozSETdxBfbQsoGHT-ZSnCZCwGQCQqj3IGZEh7ZX3M62X9cPqmhhql0ovuuphJcQ/s1600/Blender-quick-tip-sculpt-mode-01.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgynUVkYdaa5rB30-II8R0_u-rq89K4T3FLctEs84rf2UHMXLld7PuU3dZ7k-Xi00m90kUDdaZ8vzZNozSETdxBfbQsoGHT-ZSnCZCwGQCQqj3IGZEh7ZX3M62X9cPqmhhql0ovuuphJcQ/s640/Blender-quick-tip-sculpt-mode-01.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf5gj_4PODgQjSQbag2gFYOF9fyQ8rGGzIdrQDuuHYHIGep9Yq0PK-M-gRzJzRJQYv2yy797drOk4aNqu_IGQ2twfL7M3t9Ujr4VUE57MDFTT95N9yvrylPDpuIOjIE4NHDznVpaVeJ9E/s1600/Blender-quick-tip-sculpt-mode-02.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="376" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf5gj_4PODgQjSQbag2gFYOF9fyQ8rGGzIdrQDuuHYHIGep9Yq0PK-M-gRzJzRJQYv2yy797drOk4aNqu_IGQ2twfL7M3t9Ujr4VUE57MDFTT95N9yvrylPDpuIOjIE4NHDznVpaVeJ9E/s640/Blender-quick-tip-sculpt-mode-02.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Even if you never sculpt, try this as a replacement for proportional edit. It's just as fast to get there now and with so much more control over the fall off, you'll get what you want quicker. Plus, proportional edit doesn't let you hold shift to switch to a built in smoothing brush now does it? </span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-56652306977894288202014-08-24T19:59:00.000-07:002014-08-24T19:59:13.325-07:00Asymmetrical Symmetry? Really<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So there is this thing about ZBrush and me. I call it an idiot savant program because really it can do things that just have to be seen to be believed. That's the savant part. The idiot part is that you frequently have to put these operations together piece meal from a variety of menus, or find the magic button misnamed and hiding somewhere you would never expect. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I found a great one today, which does something I would never have thought possible. To use it, you must enable symmetry on your model, which is found on the Transform menu and then turn on the Use Posable Symmetry button right under that. Now ZBrush will let you work on the model symmetrically basing its calculations on the topology of the model rather than an axis. What does that mean? That means that even if your model has been moved off center, or posed (!), ZBrush will still let you make changes to 'matched' parts simultaneously as though they were still symmetrical. It's really amaZing. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Lookie here:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisqLJnn1ztJEkR_NqbMra7h_O4S83WsVqBrN78_qLenDumZT5gytVNtl4IA3mAsQEeyPrwDxJaDb0De0saq1UzPjk4gzAq-or0hlGyVtE-L3g1pOQmsm8LUeR-U8BzhSESRG2TlVn39Ro/s1600/ZBrush-poseable-symmetry.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisqLJnn1ztJEkR_NqbMra7h_O4S83WsVqBrN78_qLenDumZT5gytVNtl4IA3mAsQEeyPrwDxJaDb0De0saq1UzPjk4gzAq-or0hlGyVtE-L3g1pOQmsm8LUeR-U8BzhSESRG2TlVn39Ro/s1600/ZBrush-poseable-symmetry.png" height="378" width="640" /></a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-56663563657219857592014-08-11T12:40:00.001-07:002014-08-11T12:40:30.437-07:00My Specs for Berry's Meme<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Well, let's face it, I was overdue for a blog entry, and computer specs are integral to everything I do here and elsewhere - how I run the software I use to make stuff and Second Life where I make believe the stuff I make is real stuff. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">First off gotta say that although I don't regularly <i>do</i> Strawberry Singh's memes, I often think that when they are fact finding missions, they perform a valuable public service. This one I decided I'd follow through with </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">so that there would be at least one person on a pretty good but by no means great computer who can nevertheless report great performance and experiences in SL.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>My Facts & Specs Follow</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>1. Share any of your computer specs (video card, memory, etc..) </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz (3410.06 MHz)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Memory: 16333 MB</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">OS Version: Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1 (Build 7601)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 650/PCIe/SSE2</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">^ It's about a year old, it was also a custom build. I was pretty strapped for cash, so I kept the graphics card from my then burned to the ground computer, but I made sure that I put in a big old power supply in case I get rich suddenly and can go get top top toppest nvidia card. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The extra RAM was the biggest improvement factor for me. I only had 2 gigs before this upgrade, and like you could rarely run more than SL and maybe a couple web pages at a time. Now I almost always have Photoshop and Blender open while I am in Second Life with no problems.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Other stuffs: We have some in common - Windows 7, Photoshop CC, Wacom Intuos also the small one, yes, yes and yes!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Blender 2.71, ZBrush4R6 are frequently tag teamed with SL and I use 2 browsers Opera as main and Chrome for some things, both of which usually have multiple tabs open. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My monitor is at least 6 years old now and has survived 2 different computers and a few random system upgrades. it's an HP w2408 and I have never seen a monitor I thought looked better. It'</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">s wide enough to have 2 programs open side by side, meaning that so far I have not felt the need to have an extra monitor... but some day.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>2.</b> <b>Which viewer do you use most often? </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The default LL viewer is the only one I ever <i>use </i>per se, but I do take other viewers out for test drives to see whether things look different and if so in what way. Also, students and help seekers are frequently on other viewers, so I like to have the answers to where the buttons or menus are for them. And about once every year, I download and try every single not V1 style viewer just for fun.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>3.</b> <b>What is your FPS when you have your graphics on ultra?</b> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I never actually use the slider, instead I select the stuff I want high or low individually. For instance, I might keep draw distance low, rarely turn shadows on, but would not last a second without Advanced Lighting. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Anyway, using the slider and the Ultra setting, my FPS was 30 while running through the woods, and a bit higher when I stopped. Maybe that doesn't sound so high, but experience-wise I felt no lag whatsoever. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With my usual Preference settings that look like this:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQZrW8XhaZmUekHyQx3-wIpDGX1O0nE3bV3Aqd9tULCZMSO8WZ46B8tI8xl-RFwNfwX-zSSPESKJtGgF86YR0lVmQFaWkZEy-Kb8gGm1Wfs2QMoAx6Bp0wyCgOin2mW5yV9jF3Ymskp7E/s1600/graphics.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQZrW8XhaZmUekHyQx3-wIpDGX1O0nE3bV3Aqd9tULCZMSO8WZ46B8tI8xl-RFwNfwX-zSSPESKJtGgF86YR0lVmQFaWkZEy-Kb8gGm1Wfs2QMoAx6Bp0wyCgOin2mW5yV9jF3Ymskp7E/s1600/graphics.png" height="453" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I can run through the woods or rip up The Cornfield (speaking of experience!) and my FPS is in the 50-70 range. So I think the shadows are actually what makes the difference. But as I said, the big difference in FPS number does not translate to any real noticeable difference in felt performance or the experience of lag for me. I hope people are not letting the quantifiable overshadow the qualifiable by convincing themselves that a high FPS means they are not lagged and a drop in FPS means they are lagged, or that place is laggy or whatever.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>4. How often does Second Life crash for you? Is it usually just a viewer crash or your whole system crashes? What are you usually doing at the moment of the crash? </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Really I almost never crash. But the times I do, it is often because I have too many chat windows open in a crowd of people. So even though I almost never crash, I do sometimes if teaching a largish class.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I also sometimes crash when I am all alone on my platform because I have too many chat windows open and in particular if I have too many text fields open and waiting for entries. For example I will be yapping away in 2-3 groups, 1-3 private IMs, typing in search in inventory and editing/renaming an object, when blammo I get disconnected. Really, on those occasions, I think the viewer is trying to do me a favor. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have only crashed to blue screen a couple times. It was in the past and while on the Firestorm viewer. I think it had to do with the fact that my graphics card was not well served by having vertex buffer objects on. At any rate, it scared me, and worse, once it left me with a video card showing as uninstalled in the system hardware list. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>5. Do you know of any tips or tricks in the settings that would improve performance?</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Well, much depends on which part(s) of the performance matters to the person. Draw distance down is my first line of defense and after that if I have a lag spike or whatever I turn off avatars (Ctrl Alt Shift 4.. or corner 4 as I call it). No avatars to render equals huge reduction in lag. But I know a lot of people think avatars, their own included are the most important part of the scene, so maybe that's not the best cure for them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have been noticing more and more lately that keeping my chat windows down to a dull roar also helps with textures staying in focus, which have been a bit of a plague for me for a few months.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm not sure if inventory size affects performance or crashing, though I have long suspected it might. The people I find I say WB to the most often seem to have mega inventories 100K-ish in common. Me I keep a quite modest 20K inventory and I have everything sorted inside system folders generally, which someone told me made losing stuff less likely. If we could rename system folders, and I wish we could, my "Photo Album" could be renamed My Filing System. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ok, that's enough about that. Thanks for the inspiration Berry. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-57314110939906454402014-04-22T08:44:00.000-07:002014-04-23T09:24:51.103-07:00Blender Tip Smooth Operator<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you want, start humming along with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA9gUspn6gc" target="_blank">Smooth Operator</a> since apparently setting something to music helps you remember stuff.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here is a very nice time saving Blender trick I decided to share as a mini one image tutorial. I use the Smooth operator on the Specials menu quite a bit to average out the size of my polys before sculpting, but it was also the perfect trick here to <i>avoid</i> sculpting. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWLEsseLC7cGRyrAI6tC6zReANq3M2l5YU6G9xuen6xmCtrUkd-ybR-oC6vKarjxw-8ARSFU_gpPkcFxabPbmFd0WZEGT3R3PkloM2tWUPeYZ2CS6eUlphJsJvsQxNvNvac0kO8_929qY/s1600/SMOOTH-IT-Blender-tip.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWLEsseLC7cGRyrAI6tC6zReANq3M2l5YU6G9xuen6xmCtrUkd-ybR-oC6vKarjxw-8ARSFU_gpPkcFxabPbmFd0WZEGT3R3PkloM2tWUPeYZ2CS6eUlphJsJvsQxNvNvac0kO8_929qY/s1600/SMOOTH-IT-Blender-tip.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This shows my somewhat patchy patching job after joining the top and bottom half of a body on an imported obj. I am also working on only half the body to save time, then planning to apply a mirror modifier. I could head into sculpt mode to smooth this out with a brush, but my intended use of a mirror mod means this is not quite as straightforward as it sounds. I would need to apply the mirror mod first, then divide the mesh again if I had further work planned. I could also slowly, using proportional edit maybe, move the verts around until this area made a nice smooth transition. puhleeze.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Instead, </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">use </span><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">C for circle select</b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> to quickly grab some faces (smooth works on edges and verts too, but I find Face Selection mode makes it easiest to see what I'm doing on this). </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Then press </span><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">W </b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">to bring up</span><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> Blender's Specials menu</b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">, choose </span><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Smooth</b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">. N</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">ow the super timer saver step is press the </span><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">F6</b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> key to get the </span><b style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Last Operator</b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> pop up where you can control the amount of smoothing (number of times that smooth is applied) using the slider. Bonus, in 2.7 you can also choose which axis to apply smoothing to.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Blender gets better and <b>faster</b> all the time. </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-83372952464637043952014-04-17T14:04:00.000-07:002014-04-17T18:04:53.093-07:00Ebbe Linden & Education In Second Life<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ok, so this is a bit off the topic of content creation, but certainly fits in with the general Some Of My Best Friends Are Pixels thang I got goin', well the pixels part anyway.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So as a frequent reader & long time fan of <a href="http://strawberrysingh.com/" target="_blank">Strawberry Singh's blog</a> I sometimes almost do one of her infamous and usually super clever Blogger Meme Challenges, but then I don't. This time, I am bustin' out, and taking Flat Ebbe on a tour since it's just too good an opportunity to miss.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEhHDFWnX_457HNzXSeObD3z9xyrff6D2Ex7rstJFk77WgaWZVUU4zr3aP-UyOOUsI624BnjR-BQXYQ8D-qJlMTzx1l3u4DwYNBqjwesJY9BV1-NOAIYD6BNnbJOtj1m7fflPujgHIYjw/s1600/Flat-Ebbe-Meme-Garvie-Garzo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEhHDFWnX_457HNzXSeObD3z9xyrff6D2Ex7rstJFk77WgaWZVUU4zr3aP-UyOOUsI624BnjR-BQXYQ8D-qJlMTzx1l3u4DwYNBqjwesJY9BV1-NOAIYD6BNnbJOtj1m7fflPujgHIYjw/s1600/Flat-Ebbe-Meme-Garvie-Garzo.png" height="640" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That's Flat Ebbe & me at Builders Brewery, a school, help group, sandbox and all round educational nexus in Second Life. I knew that Ebbe would like it here since as I understand it from his public statements so far he is pretty keen to reestablish Second Life as a viable forum and platform for education. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Me too! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So in keeping with the meme theme, here are the three things I would like to tell Ebbe:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">1. I was genuinely thrilled to hear that education in SL was on someone's agenda again. I hope that the agenda is broad enough to include support for in world educators and learners as well as attracting brick and mortar institutions and students from the outside world. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now two of my current pet peeves - both related to content creation and specifically to streaming costs and how Land Impact is calculated. Although I realize this is probably way below Ebbe's pay grade, I bet he knows someone who knows how to fix this kind of thing. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">2. First, the Land Impact algorithm for mesh objects could be improved. It doesn't really give a fair calculation of streaming cost based on volume, because as soon as an object pokes outside of a hypothetical cube, the LI goes up as though the object in question is now occupying a proportionally greater chunk of screen real estate. But in the case of a long skinny object for instance, this is a misreading. Specifically, there is no way that a 500 tri tree trunk should cost more in Land Impact than a 5000 tri tree stump, no matter how tall the trunk in question is.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">2b. Second, I guess it probably saved time to make all materials and Alpha Modes invoke a streaming cost calculation, but Alpha Masking, which is super fast and potentially a great lag reducer should NOT raise the LI no matter what surface it is used on. Specifically, as it stands now, changing the Alpha Blend on any sculptie plant (the vast majority of plants in SL are sculpties) would significantly reduce lag and render times in those areas, yet due to streaming costs calculation, would have the effect of doubling the prim allowance required. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">3. Love that you're engaged and engaging, maybe restart the blog as a semi regular what's new. Lot's of tiny stuff changes and often for the better, but goes unnoticed. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-78793825505893854322014-04-16T22:53:00.000-07:002014-04-23T09:41:07.080-07:00Blender Limited Dissolve ~ A love Letter<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I confess I feel a bit like I am revealing a dirty secret, but it's such a recent and delicious discovery for me that I wrote a love letter (illustrated of course) to a Blender operator and I'm going to show you my solution to a workflow problem that has bugged me all week.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I've been sculpting and painting these cute little figures in ZBrush but then taking them back to Blender to get ready for SL. Now I don't know if you know this, but ZBrush tends to encourage some pretty high poly work, certainly way beyond what Second Life is prepared to allow.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdDWDLxFPJ5PGo0vFYnnS7LIbPIF9kfLIiOm7KG1DRFQUNDil7EM-1ZVAQnqQuQnd6s1nGOvjc3oc0Mps30wZEsn5FNDYEbJ022J1FydPHyN5HkfwE2VmycWwBzgxHFQtUnwiE5gJZfmM/s1600/nixie-BOY-character-sheet.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdDWDLxFPJ5PGo0vFYnnS7LIbPIF9kfLIiOm7KG1DRFQUNDil7EM-1ZVAQnqQuQnd6s1nGOvjc3oc0Mps30wZEsn5FNDYEbJ022J1FydPHyN5HkfwE2VmycWwBzgxHFQtUnwiE5gJZfmM/s1600/nixie-BOY-character-sheet.png" height="500" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He's cute, right, but he and his little friends have given me nothing but grief at the finishing up for Second Life stage. I tried exporting subdiv 1 from ZBrush, about 4-5k polys - reasonable for SL, but barely enough to wear their normal maps which are supposed to preserve details such as facial features. Then there were the textures to worry about. I polypainted them in ZBrush, which being ZBrush uses an equation something like 1 texture pixel per poly, so since a 1024 has more than a million pixels, you better have more than a million polys while you paint. But woe to anyone who thinks she can drop that same texture on a subdiv 1 and still expect to see any detail let alone pretty. Subdiv 2 wasn't much better, and now I was spending a significant chunk of time trying to reduce the face count before upload. If he was jewelery or a worn item, of course, SL being SL, I could get away with as much as the uploader would allow... cough. This would not be the responsible thing to do, but desperate times call for desperate measures.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And I think I found the ideal desperate measure - Limited Dissolve in Blender. I am head over heels in love with it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">First let's be clear - this is not exactly sound retopology practice. I'm not even sure some of what I ended up with deserves the name topology. The only way you might end up wanting to use this over say, removing edge loops or doing retopo was if you happened to have some very high poly models that already have polypainted textures and UV maps, meaning it's a bit late for retopo, and a bit dense to be bothering with removing edge loops, and too soon to decimate.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now I know what you're thinking, maybe that whole work flow is flawed, maybe I should give up polypainting textures in ZBrush and go back to texture in Blender or Photoshop <i>after</i> retopo but, but, but sob, I just can't.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So if you can't keep from sculpting and polypainting but you still want to strip away enough geometry to make a viable SL trinket, here's my dirty secret love letter to Limited Dissolve.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfsAY-tahvvqfYPMpIdqaQ23y4UkSW_9KDbmVgEG1ftfUQSswX5NEgfSni28zOd01zine0aDTX5zrb6YousLvzVYSiI6AUR6fw4pQt3A5n8s6w8Po3crzJR4zmiLMeYhmQvMwFnVp-Hwk/s1600/Limited-Dissolve-a-Love-Letter-01.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfsAY-tahvvqfYPMpIdqaQ23y4UkSW_9KDbmVgEG1ftfUQSswX5NEgfSni28zOd01zine0aDTX5zrb6YousLvzVYSiI6AUR6fw4pQt3A5n8s6w8Po3crzJR4zmiLMeYhmQvMwFnVp-Hwk/s1600/Limited-Dissolve-a-Love-Letter-01.png" height="376" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ok, if a one button reduction from 171 faces to 5 isn't enough to make you all tingly, I am truly surprised you read this far. If you are feeling pretty excited try to hang on a bit longer so you'll know some of what to expect on the honeymoon.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnJXoAAf51A2PWXWR8g0k73iHXT9XvgsSNZAojUFxmXBjQS_8z17hhTQqZSrnZ0SaNC_RiYVHld0JtTUXxKevruT8FlFYZr1OujHilInpC2gV7Z3gucszyHwFT_ywNOm9NWrV_YuuNUKg/s1600/Limited-Dissolve-a-Love-Letter-02.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnJXoAAf51A2PWXWR8g0k73iHXT9XvgsSNZAojUFxmXBjQS_8z17hhTQqZSrnZ0SaNC_RiYVHld0JtTUXxKevruT8FlFYZr1OujHilInpC2gV7Z3gucszyHwFT_ywNOm9NWrV_YuuNUKg/s1600/Limited-Dissolve-a-Love-Letter-02.png" height="376" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So far I have no way to predict which areas will work first try, or what sort of angle will produce the desired results. More careful study might answer those questions, but it all happens so fast and it's so easy to tweak, that the only dilemma is what you will say when someone points and laughs at your huge randomly placed ngons.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">whatever</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3PmTF-SG7gUu989fJE9ncB6DCYrxu8ybS0QD1J-aI3Zwh-6nJHkrGM09RXqCA7aIEllbP9eVh_Jl54L3SuLywb-MZc85YgBxynB9gxHhcyX45hypgN0NtD8rSPQej8H685XPCkhfiYdw/s1600/Limited-Dissolve-a-Love-Letter-03.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3PmTF-SG7gUu989fJE9ncB6DCYrxu8ybS0QD1J-aI3Zwh-6nJHkrGM09RXqCA7aIEllbP9eVh_Jl54L3SuLywb-MZc85YgBxynB9gxHhcyX45hypgN0NtD8rSPQej8H685XPCkhfiYdw/s1600/Limited-Dissolve-a-Love-Letter-03.png" height="376" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now you know my dirty secret love of Limited Dissolve.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sign me </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Desperately Seeking Less Geometry,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Garvie</span><br />
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<a data-pin-do="buttonFollow" href="http://www.pinterest.com/pinterest/">garvie garzo</a>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-25046377297936269232014-04-10T15:43:00.000-07:002014-04-23T09:38:51.726-07:00Blender First Steps Tutorial<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is a class I wrote for Builders Brewery School in Second Life last summer. It's been popular and it's been tons of fun to teach. I am putting it and the slides on line now for easier access for me, for current students, and for anyone who for whatever reason was unable to attend the inworld class. I hope it's useful for beginner Blender users.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidw5zfHGdxf4nkUV-jpD6rrZo6FkCqKwEzqpo1tPDRVX9TEgPLzBRoyeCCJCGKyzoTBTH_dgZxn-_D1m1Orm4iPTi56N6EqQX9FIyMRnDJF7qZk1JNs_XGCpx76OCyu74VlTltBEdXv1M/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-00.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidw5zfHGdxf4nkUV-jpD6rrZo6FkCqKwEzqpo1tPDRVX9TEgPLzBRoyeCCJCGKyzoTBTH_dgZxn-_D1m1Orm4iPTi56N6EqQX9FIyMRnDJF7qZk1JNs_XGCpx76OCyu74VlTltBEdXv1M/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-00.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The point of the class was not to teach Blender per se, but just to provide enough familiarity so that students could start box modeling as soon as possible. So many people I talked to while getting ready to do this class told me that they were planning to learn this program or that program so that they could start making mesh for Second Life. I think that's a pretty bad approach myself. Better to just start using a program and learn to do by doing. Anyway, that's what I told the BB students in SL, and these are the slides I showed so that they could get to know their new tool as a tool for beginner modeling.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRZBDwEAlcnpzd5yAY5BuGM9rYUj6IvFFYqFMIydx2UJ2uxItoesDdUorSz0IZWHxu5ehsO-5axHxzGZEi_7X3VcyHyqcIV6EfvRpsEgukSjFPXcGXQH4EardhaDrtxm8oCZ-dw7kcMTc/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-02.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRZBDwEAlcnpzd5yAY5BuGM9rYUj6IvFFYqFMIydx2UJ2uxItoesDdUorSz0IZWHxu5ehsO-5axHxzGZEi_7X3VcyHyqcIV6EfvRpsEgukSjFPXcGXQH4EardhaDrtxm8oCZ-dw7kcMTc/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-02.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Allow me to introduce Blender's opening 3D scene (everything inside the orange dotted line). It's not that exciting really, the infamous default cube, and some black stick outline thingies. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Two things worth noting here: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">First, T is a Typically brilliant Blender shortcut, using the first initial of the item or operator it is a command for. In this case typing t will open the Tool shelf. Pressing T again will close the tool shelf. A single easy to remember letter to toggle open or closed. Blender also usually <u>underlines</u> the relevant shortcut letter for each operation on menus as I have done on the slide.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Second, That tiny icon indicating that the main window is set to the 3D viewport conceals a bunch of other icons for other window/editor options. In Blender you can change the contents of <i>any</i> editor window to any other kind of editor. So you can rebuild the UI to suit your style, your eyesight or your current project. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKzcqBnbS6-wtrv2p9ayZZfLRKT-tQ1U88BqLgWOuMYqGQhmiooNwl2hNC7CizZWSqdEoy_aTyMwvWqogy5OlMhC9-tTMtv7Q-QWpYui8aMlplB7nINjQvkZxLxcltmhJGKfM1yWlZ6hs/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-03.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKzcqBnbS6-wtrv2p9ayZZfLRKT-tQ1U88BqLgWOuMYqGQhmiooNwl2hNC7CizZWSqdEoy_aTyMwvWqogy5OlMhC9-tTMtv7Q-QWpYui8aMlplB7nINjQvkZxLxcltmhJGKfM1yWlZ6hs/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-03.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Outliner window looks and sounds a bit technical, but it's really very useful. It will always list everything in your scene even when the object is hidden from view or on a different layer. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Right now it lists the 3 things we have in our scene and it highlights the word Cube because the cube is currently selected.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Our first mission is to select the camera and the lamp so that we can move them out of the way. This is a frustrating moment for new Blender users, because a left click seems to do nothing but move that irritating little target around.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In Blender, you <b>right click to select</b>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To select the camera, right click on it, to add to that selection, hold shift and right click the lamp.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You can also select things from the list in the Outliner window. In this case, a regular left click will highlight them, and holding shift will add to the selection.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And you can select things by press <b>a to select <u>A</u>ll</b>. A is another toggle style shortcut, A to select All, and a again to deselect All. That last is very handy when modeling, to make sure you don't accidentally have something selected that shouldn't be.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0dREG3nkXFz8wXYZPO5dX9Y_5a0lJF7x4TSHCkYevTGj5tD6nC12Oqe3QYkYFBZORMD8PAXhaeb88TfjcIgIFdjtvdMK35KxuiGbkfW9e5mmw-r-rWsJjtADr6_C6GP_TPUfRj6_E3yE/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-04.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0dREG3nkXFz8wXYZPO5dX9Y_5a0lJF7x4TSHCkYevTGj5tD6nC12Oqe3QYkYFBZORMD8PAXhaeb88TfjcIgIFdjtvdMK35KxuiGbkfW9e5mmw-r-rWsJjtADr6_C6GP_TPUfRj6_E3yE/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-04.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But we don't want all selected, we only need to move the camera and the lamp, so select both the camera and the lamp, by right clicking and holding shift.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Then type <b>m to <u>M</u>ove selected objects to a different layer</b>. A pop up will appear wherever your mouse is, to select a different layer, merely click on one of the small grey boxes in the pop up.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Note that layers in Blender are really more like storage lockers or folders and not like layers in graphics.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhztxYmOswqRkt08n9TnKdObpqCJ1chnhozZPfNxHECs6vk08LcRbkbP8WsU5MPdHRMIspfNMNSRf9T4MoCU09Uz2VRQB3HgNfNDj1cM0tNZxCZnFOJyjyZwlM8zCkq4YhSL1xEoaUKFy0/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-05.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhztxYmOswqRkt08n9TnKdObpqCJ1chnhozZPfNxHECs6vk08LcRbkbP8WsU5MPdHRMIspfNMNSRf9T4MoCU09Uz2VRQB3HgNfNDj1cM0tNZxCZnFOJyjyZwlM8zCkq4YhSL1xEoaUKFy0/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-05.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The 3D View Header is a really useful collection of icons, operations and settings - </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">a sort of command central for Blender operations and manipulations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">First you should notice that we are in <b>Object Mode</b>. Object mode allows us to deal with objects as objects, but not to edit their parts individually. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We can move or scale or delete this whole cube, but we cannot do anything to just one of its faces or just one vertex for instance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Next to it is an icon that shows what 'shading view' of our object we are looking at. The default starter view is solid. Have a look at some of the others, but for now plan to stay in solid view</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You will find wireframe very useful in modeling, but since the shortcut for wireframe is so easy (z), I tend to ignore the icon alone and just press z when I want a wireframe view. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Next to that is the Pivot Point. We will discuss and use and abuse the Pivot Point quite a bit in later project classes. For now just leave it as is.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Next to that is the control to display or turn off the 3D manipulator widget. I keep mine off mostly. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You don't actually need it to move things around in Blender, the way you do in SL but if you find it makes things easier, then leave it on.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Under that is a 2-part Tooltip. Like many programs, if you hover over an icon, blender will pop up a little tool tip window telling you what that thing does. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As a bonus, it also gives you the relevant commands to use in the Python scripting language in case you want to learn that and possibly become a Blender developer. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Personally I mostly find the python stuff almost frightening, so I will show you where in preferences to turn that off if you want to. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3vnKU3RmLx7LqpqpYdIluUfg9C-4ptpaVLra28qq1HUHmGJjB_lCcNRBAZXe3TCvB4189MoKVzEGOYgyuEI4oNyo5F-mjvlhLRHsqHDV7yszmCZrPyNBIqQn_84RP9Dbjl4QRDUcbRek/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-07.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3vnKU3RmLx7LqpqpYdIluUfg9C-4ptpaVLra28qq1HUHmGJjB_lCcNRBAZXe3TCvB4189MoKVzEGOYgyuEI4oNyo5F-mjvlhLRHsqHDV7yszmCZrPyNBIqQn_84RP9Dbjl4QRDUcbRek/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-07.png" height="250" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj0eNfPD_SR6Ibk7TCnEkoAk1HUypjHuxd4_W-lzcHDiEsnwBSmF6jFQRs6KlW1MDz5HeA_NzOuVGVXf_7le0o6N3tcoYSGUKhTxCOWuih7VhynDngwCpYh9WoH44kOVfKxWLXFga7lZQ/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-08.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj0eNfPD_SR6Ibk7TCnEkoAk1HUypjHuxd4_W-lzcHDiEsnwBSmF6jFQRs6KlW1MDz5HeA_NzOuVGVXf_7le0o6N3tcoYSGUKhTxCOWuih7VhynDngwCpYh9WoH44kOVfKxWLXFga7lZQ/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-08.png" height="250" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Look for preferences under File menu > User Preferences.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I suggest you think of Blender preferences as settings to try now and again for different projects. You might want to turn the number of undo steps down,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">especially if you are on an older computer or a bit short on RAM. You definitely should allow yourself several hours to explore the possibilities in the Add Ons tab. Above are 2 optional settings, the first to turn off the Python scripting tips in tool tips, the second to turn down the number of undo steps.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwkCTi_H5E0kBGfydgmFT_fenFMTjJn49O_am5ty1FlyMHbb95c6ZuoGsUgceHJDSLyddxJa5miAFa0t-1fbaM0JDVInisrb7-KWoiVsSXHaLGtLGREwtNPW5uC_ovIQJBc7BSURw4cYs/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-09.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwkCTi_H5E0kBGfydgmFT_fenFMTjJn49O_am5ty1FlyMHbb95c6ZuoGsUgceHJDSLyddxJa5miAFa0t-1fbaM0JDVInisrb7-KWoiVsSXHaLGtLGREwtNPW5uC_ovIQJBc7BSURw4cYs/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-09.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I think that slide speaks for itself, though students regularly seem to balk at being told they must do something. Fear not, nothing will be overridden by having these on, you won't notice that your mouse or Numpad behaves as though you are not giving them credit or something.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Most people only ever see the default grey factory settings for Blender, since people who make tutorials seem to think you will want your interface to match the one in the tutorial exactly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In case you want to match mine exactly for later classes, or maybe think grey on grey on grey is a bit depressing, check out some other Blender Theme presets.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">mmm eye candy</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZcIuXwflBVmWMYFkG6Ef3XXM0QAG25k5jjqfFjXXGxp5kenxw7unocuNYGlL-IIUS9BmJamFnQdn1Avhqbzb6ITUApJvtboTa8zmXsaKeaX6j4CwIE-DxW11rGLv_QU73o5Djodze-W4/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-10.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZcIuXwflBVmWMYFkG6Ef3XXM0QAG25k5jjqfFjXXGxp5kenxw7unocuNYGlL-IIUS9BmJamFnQdn1Avhqbzb6ITUApJvtboTa8zmXsaKeaX6j4CwIE-DxW11rGLv_QU73o5Djodze-W4/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-10.png" height="200" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To uncover all the color options shown, under the Themes tab, first choose a theme, then choose an editor or window from the list you would like to make adjustments for. In the slide I have selected the Ubuntu Ambience theme, then decided to see how things look in the 3D view. You can see that 3d view is selected because it is highlighted in purple.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHNJutmoK1xo0GyKzgf1qzieF12X3ZNS0s1Rir861BlPM8Iiu1n-fOBpgUvTBPTms_OKB-ehFyLHHtBBEfKiRPyRtCk1gwGiaQzuitRJStJENojn2uT2c7sYbaZHUhU8xZetCyAcTSqJc/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-10b.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHNJutmoK1xo0GyKzgf1qzieF12X3ZNS0s1Rir861BlPM8Iiu1n-fOBpgUvTBPTms_OKB-ehFyLHHtBBEfKiRPyRtCk1gwGiaQzuitRJStJENojn2uT2c7sYbaZHUhU8xZetCyAcTSqJc/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-10b.png" height="200" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The main thing I'll be worrying about is the background color of the 3d window. I think black is too dark and too reflective to stare at for hours at a time, and I like to have enough contrast with the floor grid and backing to be useful.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Figuring out which setting affects the bg took some poking, so I have circled it in orange in the image to the left. Look for "Gradient High/Off"</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU4SWUJNNGCIAs_RGBm4aJ83QqEypTqHe-NaCySfL6eU9Xj5hoiKd5g7o3PZbZeekMmK4-mFmSH7t_EwVJS-vkHw8j7GVaH2pKE5xw9VLqaAvCnPIrDh9JdfqgIp9LBAmQYA9Bv-1UiJE/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-11.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU4SWUJNNGCIAs_RGBm4aJ83QqEypTqHe-NaCySfL6eU9Xj5hoiKd5g7o3PZbZeekMmK4-mFmSH7t_EwVJS-vkHw8j7GVaH2pKE5xw9VLqaAvCnPIrDh9JdfqgIp9LBAmQYA9Bv-1UiJE/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-11.png" height="200" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Another thing that really counts for seeing clearly in Blender is making sure that the text can be seen clearly. You will find this setting on the System tab, on a button called DPI:72 (what they were thinking on that one is beyond me). Anyway, press on the button and you can slide the text larger by moving your hand to the right, or smaller by going left. Much better! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now Save your new User Settings so that when you start Blender you will get an interface that feels a bit more like home. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You can keep improving and changing the look of Blender as you spend more time in there. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN3_A0UqpPZcr7ssFQKEnewBO7O04LVBNtrisjNv2rM8HQ9bHGB_WUIP9LIV3oOPCP7_Z2GznLsje98u_sncmbM35ggkwG6GufSnpAo1H5_OEJgQbvxU7vSwnpXma8w4AXwbQDkCMvp-c/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-12.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN3_A0UqpPZcr7ssFQKEnewBO7O04LVBNtrisjNv2rM8HQ9bHGB_WUIP9LIV3oOPCP7_Z2GznLsje98u_sncmbM35ggkwG6GufSnpAo1H5_OEJgQbvxU7vSwnpXma8w4AXwbQDkCMvp-c/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-12.png" height="200" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some things to think about are making face dots or vertices larger, improving contrast between selected and unselected elements, making sure you can quickly and easily see whether a button is on or off. As you make changes to the UI or your preferences, save them each time here.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Time to go back to the 3D view and see what our cube is up to.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Remember the 3 ways to select things (there are others, but this is plenty for now):</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Right click, select from the list in the Outliner window and A to select All.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Select the cube. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you have already watched some Blender Tutorials, you will have heard the phrase,"Tab into edit mode" that's because pressing the Tab key will switch between the 2 main modes (usually Object & Edit), </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Things look different in Edit Mode. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAtEhdpSqHHa0gaKFVb1hCr-AYsbgq-8icgP2Dh75XsjXlgja-3sDS6Va-KtnJcAeQJ4vCC6fJwfm4DUxtm5I2z6La2c3unLt14Z6s_HUUymYXtBigGN8X2nFHBVSqwBRAnOyifi18WBg/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-13.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAtEhdpSqHHa0gaKFVb1hCr-AYsbgq-8icgP2Dh75XsjXlgja-3sDS6Va-KtnJcAeQJ4vCC6fJwfm4DUxtm5I2z6La2c3unLt14Z6s_HUUymYXtBigGN8X2nFHBVSqwBRAnOyifi18WBg/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-13.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Also some new buttons have appeared on the header bar, because we can do things in Edit mode that we couldn't do in Object Mode.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We'll use these icons for a kind of crash course on the fundamental structure of mesh. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Mesh is defined or created first of all by points or Vertices in 3D space, Edges run between 2 points, and Faces form the surfaces in between.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Blender like most 3D editing programs allow you to edit mesh at any of these 3 levels. A simpler way to put that is we can do stuff to edges, to verts and to faces. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Right now according to the icons, I am in Vertex selection mode. But since every vertex of the cube is selected, the whole cube appears orange.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Type a to deselect All, then right click on a corner to select just one vertex.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg45bLSh-sS0K8PLSEg8jJryZlrqxiesbxBceiqvnY3eDyGcvEMmH-HQi_iwwvCHkR_KQHdSxHwaMT0nabBi1rGm4ULB3ZwMs3TJs4zTJgPMFVsYKH16VHdJnxJlwAKhMpAx1ITEbPtC6A/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-14.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg45bLSh-sS0K8PLSEg8jJryZlrqxiesbxBceiqvnY3eDyGcvEMmH-HQi_iwwvCHkR_KQHdSxHwaMT0nabBi1rGm4ULB3ZwMs3TJs4zTJgPMFVsYKH16VHdJnxJlwAKhMpAx1ITEbPtC6A/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-14.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now you can pull just that vertex around and your cube will change shape as the edges and faces connected to that vertex also get dragged along.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If like me, you have turned your manipulator widget off, you might be wondering how to move this vertex or anything around. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In Blender to move something you press <b>G for <u>G</u>rab</b>, then just move your hand/mouse. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now right click to select all 4 vertices on whichever side is facing you. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><u>S</u>cale (to resize) is S</b>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Scale can seem a bit tricky. If you start with your hand back from the element your are resizing, you will find it easier to control. You can pull all the way back until the indicator arrows go off the screen and they will come in from the other direction. That is the continuous grab preference in action.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Since I like to point out Blender brilliance and especially its logic when and where I can, I usually encourage people to guess what the keyboard command to <u>R</u>otate a face is. Since <u>G</u>rab is g, and <u>S</u>cale is s, in a perfect world, <b><u>R</u>otate </b>should be <b>r</b>, and it is! Happy dance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Press A to deselect All. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now let's look at face selection mode.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQtK9wL2y_sDUhw5RWe3p2phCIs2bCJ6mFvEfMGXBJzI8Dw8h-24m8wdDurjft0koM6WwfSGhv7AyNPUOs3D9i73TJttsl0iFKvVlK1IpXOGC6sVulhyphenhyphenV7FlWZSK5rRYUsOBJySzRilkw/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-15.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQtK9wL2y_sDUhw5RWe3p2phCIs2bCJ6mFvEfMGXBJzI8Dw8h-24m8wdDurjft0koM6WwfSGhv7AyNPUOs3D9i73TJttsl0iFKvVlK1IpXOGC6sVulhyphenhyphenV7FlWZSK5rRYUsOBJySzRilkw/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-15.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You can use the buttons on the bottom Header to change selection modes, but you don't have to. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You can just press <b>Ctrl Tab</b> to bring up a pop up menu to change <b>Mesh Select Mode</b>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Menus like this pop up wherever your mouse is when you call them, which makes for a very fast workflow. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In face selection mode the view of our mesh changes slightly. Now we see little square dots on the faces of our mesh. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In edge selection mode you won't see anything unless you right click to select an edge or two.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So you can manipulate mesh at the vertex, face and edge levels. Most basic operations work at each of these levels. In most projects in Blender you should plan to use different selection modes based different operations you are doing to your model. But for now, just get comfortable hitting Ctrl Tab to quickly change selection modes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As important as learning how to make edits to things like cubes, is learning how to navigate around inside the 3D space. You need to be able to see what you are working on from all angles at all times quickly and easily. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Typically in 3d applications, the object never actually moves and instead the modeler or sculptor is changing her view of the model as she works. This can become so fast and seamless that you may feel you are actually holding the object in your hands as you work on it. But that will only come with practise. It literally takes time to develop the muscle memories for how to navigate inside a 3D program. Think of it as similar to learning the moves in a video game. With enough repetition and some <i>time</i> you wioll eventually get the moves down so well, they will become second nature. Blender is like this, just don't expect a high score the first time you play.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvFWhGv_-qI4kITNlGPdHtKsJgWGtU_X9NKeTbBib8ghkAYFAOhRRk1IvmEj7sg1q6YvUoedV5S_yJTe3Rddff_xtZAk4xeNQfQsbR8jvTwW1FlGQifEIbn8M107BGhRjHinUGzSUW7q8/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-16.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvFWhGv_-qI4kITNlGPdHtKsJgWGtU_X9NKeTbBib8ghkAYFAOhRRk1IvmEj7sg1q6YvUoedV5S_yJTe3Rddff_xtZAk4xeNQfQsbR8jvTwW1FlGQifEIbn8M107BGhRjHinUGzSUW7q8/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-16.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you have a scroll wheel on your mouse, that is what Blender means by the 3rd or Middle Mouse Button (MMB). Just press on it to treat it like a button instead of a wheel.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you do not have a 3rd mouse button, good thing you turned on Emulate 3 Button Mouse in preferences, now you can use these <b>substitute commands</b>:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Ctrl Alt together to zoom</b> in or out by moving your hand.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Alt key + left click to toggle or rotate</b> your view.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Alt + Shift + left click to pan</b> the view side to side or up and down.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Panning feels especially like you are picking up the object and moving it into position, but you're not, you are navigating or changing your view. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By the way, I use a Graphics Pen & Tablet in Blender, and I love it. How to set that up if you have one is on an earlier <a href="http://someofmybestfriendsarepixels.blogspot.ca/2013/08/using-pen-tablet-with-blender.html" target="_blank">blog post</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But best of all, and completely required for accurate building is how easy it is to snap to a particular view in Blender. This is where using the NumPad or just plain numbers since we turned on Emulate NumPad, will come in handy.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK76DQ3p-8KwoCZmfyWXWvgnQv3-1C52ga-RmOhBCe8f9XS9e8OZ8iRYiAx5e2v0FtjWDsvNbDBxjK60ir3Kt0FuqPnD-XUtU0_g9jFLsTJ__1i_POrwB0XGQFJgAGHrfLS6E2QGcsb3I/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-17.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK76DQ3p-8KwoCZmfyWXWvgnQv3-1C52ga-RmOhBCe8f9XS9e8OZ8iRYiAx5e2v0FtjWDsvNbDBxjK60ir3Kt0FuqPnD-XUtU0_g9jFLsTJ__1i_POrwB0XGQFJgAGHrfLS6E2QGcsb3I/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-17.png" height="200" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">First off, note that there are 2 main ways of viewing 3D space. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the upper left corner of the 3d viewport you will see either User Persp or User Ortho. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Perspective view in 3D applications is an attempt to make things look naturalistic by imitating the same kind of distortion we would see based on vanishing points. Orthographic views attempt to display objects without this distortion to give a more geometrically accurate representation of the model or scene. As a general rule, plan to work in orthographic view and maybe occasionally toggle over into perspective to see how things look.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Press 5 to switch to ortho</b>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Secondly there is apparently more than one entity determining the view. I am referring to the word "User" in User Ortho & User Persp. Blender is pointing out that YOU determined this view. You dragged some stuff around and zoomed all over the place and arbitrarily landed on some view or other and then just left it that way.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It doesn't have to stay this way. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijZn94mq4amKMfbys6q-KGH0CZtmZB7SqJGDK01xcp_-V4b3SSmrn89w3N50oC7YmU0G0NF2cTJopnC1P0HME-qRixHaltYFhrPQLlFyayYxrCGoafHVMOv_74nipPF6elFMTQTq0HXEI/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-18.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijZn94mq4amKMfbys6q-KGH0CZtmZB7SqJGDK01xcp_-V4b3SSmrn89w3N50oC7YmU0G0NF2cTJopnC1P0HME-qRixHaltYFhrPQLlFyayYxrCGoafHVMOv_74nipPF6elFMTQTq0HXEI/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-18.png" height="200" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Press number 1.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Blender snaps to a Front view. Now press 3. Number 3 is to the right of 1 on the NumPad. Blender snaps to the right side view.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">7 is on top of 1, pressing 7 will snap to a top view.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You can explore the other numbers to change your view in stepped increments, but knowing only these 3 will probably be enough. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>1 is front; 3 is right; 7 is top</b>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Adding Ctrl to these will show the opposite view</b>. So ctrl 1 (front) is back. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you want to see things from the left side, since you know that right view is 3, then the opposite of this will be ctrl 3, and since you know top is 7, then the bottom view will be ctrl 7. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">How sweet is that?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">These snap to views are extremely useful as constraints for operations such as extruding on only one axis. Used with the background grid the snapped ortho views are ideal for easily achieving precise alignments and sizes while you model mesh. You'll get to that as soon as you feel ready to start trying to model something. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Last step and last shortcut for this introduction is how to get rid of the default cube and leave a nice clean scene to come back to. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW84B-IqtybJ7oHiWcG0CgGzm1SXjtwGJPirTNIdmDZGEN5Db6nNo68yzLdq3ADZFKvjGai6SEbJbwqAmKOJsLcxBF65081vzpEZXvq0ViDjSTHJ-J8A1jOeguoOrCPLPrnbrtNeF6VB0/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-19.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW84B-IqtybJ7oHiWcG0CgGzm1SXjtwGJPirTNIdmDZGEN5Db6nNo68yzLdq3ADZFKvjGai6SEbJbwqAmKOJsLcxBF65081vzpEZXvq0ViDjSTHJ-J8A1jOeguoOrCPLPrnbrtNeF6VB0/s1600/FIRST-STEPS-19.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>X to delete</b> the default cube... or whatever weird shape you are now looking at.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You can see that x brings up a whole list of possibilities. Deleting vertices will wipe out the mesh entirely, which is what we want. You can experiment with what the others do and ways to make use of them later.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Lastly go to <b>Front Ortho</b> view by pressing <b>1, 5</b>, </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and <b>press Ctrl U</b> to save this empty space as your <b>Start <u>U</u>p File</b>, so next time you open Blender you have a nice clean scene to mess around in.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In closing some general advice - don't worry and try not to panic. You probably cannot actually break Blender, though it will crash now and again. Save often. You can get a new Blender anytime for free if you do somehow manage to break it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Try not to think of this as a task to memorize shortcuts or menu locations. No one, (except maybe you) thinks that you just sit down and learn Blender the way you learn the contents of a brochure or study for a test. No one was born knowing how to model in 3D software. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The best thing you can do is just make yourself comfortable in there, and the way to that is spend as much time as often as you can trying to use Blender to do simple little things. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Go on, pretend it's a game that lets you make anything you can imagine. And h</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">ave fun!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here are some <a href="http://www.pinterest.com/garviegarzo/blender-tuts-beginner/" target="_blank">tuts & links & stuffs</a> that I think are really good for total Blender beginners, collected on a Pinterest page for easy access. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Other things I think I should mention:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Expect to have to watch most videos several times, pause as often as you like, make notes or whatever. I mention this because I have noticed that the same people who seem to think that they will learn a program and <i>then</i> make something with it, seem to also think they will watch a video and then know how to do whatever was demonstrated in the video. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Maybe it's me, but I think that's being a bit unrealistic. Seeing may be believing, but it is not knowing, and definitely not knowing how to do something. If you watched a video of someone playing saxophone, would you expect to open up your new shiny sax and belt out a tune? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Not likely. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As I said, it will take time for Blender to soak in. You will learn the commands and how to navigate gradually simply from using the program. Eventually these bits and pieces of info will become muscle memories, and Blender will become a fabulously flexible (and fast!) modeling tool that you can manipulate at will. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All the best,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">garvie </span></div>
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<a data-pin-do="buttonFollow" href="http://www.pinterest.com/pinterest/">garvie garzo</a>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-18417303056555703922014-02-16T17:12:00.000-08:002014-04-11T17:41:25.083-07:00What Do You Mean I Should Make My Own LODS for Upload?<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This might have been the subject of the first post for this blog, since it is at least once a week that I find myself trying to explain the process for making LODs for upload to SL. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I dwell on it in my Blender project class(es) at <a href="http://www.buildersbrewery.com/calendar/index.php" target="_blank">Builders Brewery</a> (back soon really) so If you want more detail on what LODS are or methods of face reduction, see me there. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdfOvaPPffBAimFsIVreZY9blkQC0DfX1TZp_en7IzPgbFqaY1C9_Pp1LKve5H4JHFZQ4OMAlD4G-mSCG1UmpfK-a4The3HDQq1SBKUDesdFd_0ZFv02Fes_57loMI-rheY4VO-eaBdqo/s1600/What-Do-You-Mean-Make-LODS.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdfOvaPPffBAimFsIVreZY9blkQC0DfX1TZp_en7IzPgbFqaY1C9_Pp1LKve5H4JHFZQ4OMAlD4G-mSCG1UmpfK-a4The3HDQq1SBKUDesdFd_0ZFv02Fes_57loMI-rheY4VO-eaBdqo/s1600/What-Do-You-Mean-Make-LODS.png" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Each of the rabbit models shown will be exported from Blender as an individual collada file with a name that indicates which LOD that model is intended to represent. So the upload process is a matter of NOT choosing the "Generate" button and instead selecting "Load from file" on each drop down and then browsing to the relevant collada. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I hope this quick look at some screen captures from the rabbit sculpture helps to demystify the process. Please do not think you must copy this exactly, figure out the math I used for the reductions or take what I am showing as a prescription for every mesh. Even I do not follow exactly the same process each time, since each mesh is different. But this is a good example of how to take a low poly medium sized object and get great Land Imact (1 LI), optimal physics and good LODS with NO loss of detail or quality in the finished mesh.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you are brand new to making mesh for SL, you should look for as many examples of how to optimize and possibly retopologise higher poly meshes as you can find. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And if you are so new to making or buying mesh you have confused High Poly with High Quality or using Higher LODs than you need as a quick route to a perceived high quality mesh, well then you ARE just confused. But maybe this will help you get over it. </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-72287694224697631502014-01-28T08:53:00.000-08:002014-01-28T08:53:14.770-08:00Grow Your Own Tree in Photoshop CC<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Photoshop CC continues to update and toss in features almost faster than I can discover them let alone learn what they do, so I usually just try to keep moving when something unexpected pops up on a menu. <br />But sometimes, straying off the path leads to great new discoveries.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So there I was going on my way trying to find out what was up with getting patterns to follow paths (which is great!), when I discovered that the bottom of the new "Scripted Path" menu had something called "Tree".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I think I expected some way of organizing paths in a hierarchy, maybe a mind map kind of thing, Windows style directory tree. You know, pretty much anything except a tree.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Nope.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Photoshop CC now has a pretty amazing tree generator. Like wow.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here's how you do it:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBKUbCOTZAQE3t5vk-Ewib_iQl7PPSAoO8prGP1N-Fmk68KujUVdpm44qsOOc289JwIScveXxyl6HHIMJshpPiCROmURYN3jBlO9OpF2tr8cxWr6tjntyRqIBaKYLvyDjMeTJj3GwBbHA/s1600/grow-your-own-tree-02.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBKUbCOTZAQE3t5vk-Ewib_iQl7PPSAoO8prGP1N-Fmk68KujUVdpm44qsOOc289JwIScveXxyl6HHIMJshpPiCROmURYN3jBlO9OpF2tr8cxWr6tjntyRqIBaKYLvyDjMeTJj3GwBbHA/s1600/grow-your-own-tree-02.png" height="640" width="350" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I can't wait till there are more options to this. For instance, maybe it will allow you to generate and mess with 3D trees, maybe you can separate branches and leaves on their own layers, substitute your own textures for leaves and bark and so on. But this is a really cool new feature, perfect for quick background content for games, illustrations and 3D renders.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-33079625436534941512014-01-06T15:54:00.000-08:002014-01-06T16:04:37.589-08:00Alpha Modes & Alpha Channels <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So, there I was finishing off the notes for a new class on what's what with SL materials and the new edit window when I realized I didn't have that much to say about Alpha Modes. I mean I kinda knew what they were there for and what they do, but why I would care or how I might actually <i>use</i> them was beyond me. In fact I didn't have much to say about them because I didn't know much about what the Alpha Modes could do.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Time for science and mad experiments then, right. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Step 1 make a tester texture with an alpha channel.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo26bvTuzx-EfWfZ70H7igZIj9wI98_2G4zkBIh6UpYaG4NWgv6Tghv_6z3TVA1gRofcMlEqgbIja6MPbq0nWNKlsOfW6dLbR8SjpmSTDyzETd6qLgf5wP8xnCl5DBzXf8Jk3dIr8FUuI/s1600/ALPHA-MODES-01.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo26bvTuzx-EfWfZ70H7igZIj9wI98_2G4zkBIh6UpYaG4NWgv6Tghv_6z3TVA1gRofcMlEqgbIja6MPbq0nWNKlsOfW6dLbR8SjpmSTDyzETd6qLgf5wP8xnCl5DBzXf8Jk3dIr8FUuI/s1600/ALPHA-MODES-01.png" height="640" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">First discovery was the fact that with a texture saved in .png format, Alpha channel or no, transparency on or off, I couldn't get even the slightest rise out of the Alpha Mode button, not so much as a nod of acknowledgement let alone an engaging conversation.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbGFYvgr5RxfXJQ3XSILkTM1aZpjJRUOu3nMAwWPkGIQ_G77D8rO9Z_rSI2DUM4JYSR2hLUJYe0IELSlgLGOrn6lEa66GTlswlHC6LiJ9ySYhOABv_LqSTk0ecIEjZwTXCTPG3pTbPoYY/s1600/ALPHA-MODES-02.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbGFYvgr5RxfXJQ3XSILkTM1aZpjJRUOu3nMAwWPkGIQ_G77D8rO9Z_rSI2DUM4JYSR2hLUJYe0IELSlgLGOrn6lEa66GTlswlHC6LiJ9ySYhOABv_LqSTk0ecIEjZwTXCTPG3pTbPoYY/s1600/ALPHA-MODES-02.png" height="640" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So if step 1 was to make a texture with an alpha channel, step 2 was to save it as a targa. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I don't usually use the TGA format, I even advise other people not to bother</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">with it since the file size is so much larger and it's slightly harder, well more technical anyway, to actually create an alpha channel. BUT there are advantages to extra data sometimes, and I think I am going to make </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">experimenting with 32 bit tga and alpha channels a regular gig for awhile.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxiDWzYyvG0G7ycHlTqmyzuCtvHXEWirWaXKbkrZf7mADkaJYxKurOJ4IKFqb3DSJDCUjPDrrHklWcC5pO8wWyqskuOQMaiGffalXeMwri59kX9XjOXtzZPV0qmZMXZnpY8G6u9rzVbLA/s1600/ALPHA-MODES-03.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxiDWzYyvG0G7ycHlTqmyzuCtvHXEWirWaXKbkrZf7mADkaJYxKurOJ4IKFqb3DSJDCUjPDrrHklWcC5pO8wWyqskuOQMaiGffalXeMwri59kX9XjOXtzZPV0qmZMXZnpY8G6u9rzVbLA/s1600/ALPHA-MODES-03.png" height="640" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ok, first thing you might notice is that the invisibility or secrecy of the alpha channel only lasts until upload time. SL right away pegs this texture as an 'alpha' texture and uses Alpha Blending as the default Alpha Mode.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Wait, wait, wait WHAT is an Alpha Mode you ask?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Well, Alpha blending is what SL has been using all along, at least it's what we mere residents have been using. As for what Alpha blending is, think of there being two basic ways to understand transparency. Either it is see-through or it's not is one way, that's the Alpha Testing or Masking mode, which we will get to in a minute. That's also what Linden plants use, ever notice those nice crisp, but oh so jagged edges? And there is another more common, more usual way to think of transparency, which is a blend of see through and not, to produce a surface that is partially transparent. Think gradients, sheer stockings, or whatever. What it means in computer graphics is smoother transitions between transparent and opaque pixels for smoother edges on low res images. But it also means an increased problem with alpha sorting (which surface is in front is hard for a computer to figure out if it can see through the front one/s).</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> And it can be hard to figure out how to make lighting and shadows work across Alpha blend surfaces.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The <a href="http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Alpha_Modes_Do's_and_Don'ts" target="_blank">SL wiki entry</a> says, "..</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.890625px;">alpha blending should be used very sparingly, and avoided wherever possible." </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18.890625px;">Uh yeah, as soon as I quit making meadows and plants, I will dedicate myself to helping others remove trees, plants and hair textures with alpha from the grid. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18.890625px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18.890625px;">But seriously though. Now that we Alpha Modes in edit, we can use Alpha masking for faster renders, fewer problems with alpha sorting and some other nifty tricks.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18.890625px;">This time I am focusing on the nifty.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBkqHfJNzJ9M_euapYLOPwjjZ8llPtiz_xFY8EQalix397d6LBZF58_Otv8c3O2eYooG3BYizczjYQIednh0kMSZtntclkwNmzVn5LFh2lnc10SqE2c8PJh8FLNnwseKwws9_HzqotziY/s1600/ALPHA-MODES-04.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBkqHfJNzJ9M_euapYLOPwjjZ8llPtiz_xFY8EQalix397d6LBZF58_Otv8c3O2eYooG3BYizczjYQIednh0kMSZtntclkwNmzVn5LFh2lnc10SqE2c8PJh8FLNnwseKwws9_HzqotziY/s1600/ALPHA-MODES-04.png" height="640" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18.890625px;">Ok, notice that with the alpha mode set to None, the alpha channel is disabled and the texture goes back to being it's dull fuzzy blue self. This would be a handy trick for the people with accidental png transparency issues maybe. I guess there might be sometimes where it would be interesting or could save 10 lindens to have a single texture be trans and not trans (?) </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18.890625px;">otherwise it's just odd.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18.890625px;"> But whatever, future plans maybe?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18.890625px;">Anyway, here's where we get to Alpha masking. I think this is easier to understand under its other name, Alpha <i>Testing</i>. The test in question is whether an alpha channel's pixel meets a certain level of brightness and if it does, that pixel will be treated as fully opaque or visible and if it does not, it will be discarded, or at least not be rendered. Now that I think of it the whole notion of a fully transparent pixel is a bit of a brain cramp, even IF you get past wondering where discarded pixels go. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18.890625px;">But what's important for us is that Alpha Masking is a yes or no, on or off kind of transparency. It's fast, even with values between 0-255, which is what the Mask cutoff is for. Textures using this kind of transparency are easier to light and they do not have the alpha sorting bug.. at all (!). But you will get jagged edges.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18.890625px;">In a later experiment, I will take some old plants textures and redo them using Alpha Masking mode to see if the performance over appearance trade off is worth it.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18.890625px;">I might even have gotten around to that today if I hadn't nearly lost my mind playing with Emissive Mask. I fiddled a bit with this when Materials were in beta, but I really did NOT get it. Now I think it is just the coolest thing since err fully transparent pixels.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitNMUKK4a-zu7u1iiCjb1E6sBHrDAYVdYy98sjTXrpGGFpkH_0GEqiZYTmHLgpyUhtPmbtnEgzBLxJF2qww78S7i6tkKQ7omIryuPqnuycaKgUWuSt7GY_0A6Q2JZeDW5Ep1g_TJeoBK0/s1600/ALPHA-MODES-05.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitNMUKK4a-zu7u1iiCjb1E6sBHrDAYVdYy98sjTXrpGGFpkH_0GEqiZYTmHLgpyUhtPmbtnEgzBLxJF2qww78S7i6tkKQ7omIryuPqnuycaKgUWuSt7GY_0A6Q2JZeDW5Ep1g_TJeoBK0/s1600/ALPHA-MODES-05.png" height="640" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18.890625px;">So here's the deal (I think). Emissive Mask is an SL invention to control the Full Bright <strike>yuck</strike> effect (or something). At least it <i>COULD</i> work this way people. I have frequently wished for a semi-bright or a full bright divided by half. Like little brighter but not so fake, please, and I think the answer is in this setting. Though all you will really see me doing here is turning it on or off, I hypothesize (I mentioned science when we started right) that a grey alpha channel and Emissive mask as the Alpha Mode is our ticket to a subtler shade pain. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18.890625px;">SL treats full bright as an absence of lighting effects, saying in effect, treat this surface as though it is noon no matter what. Can be handy and saves on prims creating lights maybe. I confess, I certainly use it for signage and boxes of sundries for sale, but let's face it, SL would have been less fugly without fullbright. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18.890625px;">Anyway never mind my opining, here's what the <a href="http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Alpha_Modes_Do's_and_Don'ts" target="_blank">wiki</a> says on Emissive Mask:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.890625px;">Diffuse alpha channels support the concept of an “Emissive Mask”, a special kind of mask that defines which parts of the surface that are capable of having their own lighting that’s independent of the renderer’s lighting pipeline.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18.890625px;"> </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18.890625px;">Allow me to translate. The fuzzy blue texture I have been using is now more properly referred to as a "<i>Diffuse</i>" texture, and it indeed has an alpha channel -- the words, fish and flowers combo design you can see applied as an alpha channel in the first slide. Using only the Emissive Mask setting on the fuzzy blue surface, the outline of the otherwise hidden alpha channel appears as a brighter version of the texture. In fact, it's a full bright version of that same fuzzy blue texture where the design is at its whitest. The bold face type and stronger white lines in the fish will now be impervious to external and environmental lighting. (yay n stuff) </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18.890625px;">But when I hear the word emissive, I think in terms of glows or glowing not a special kind of mask, so it would only be natural that I would have to see what happens with the Glow setting.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18.890625px;">Here's a cool fact. Or maybe it's lots of cool facts lol. I had noticed interesting things with editing transparency in world and the persistence of the formerly not transparent pixels as glowing pixels before, but it never occurred to me to use an alpha channel to control the glow amount or whereabouts of glowing pixels.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18.890625px;">This was an oversight!</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8a7Sg45gqygW35elgSCcGhJcYekuS-j0YWJ54A_ThWZl2uG_8xU_8NWGa6FRP4vxda5q8xmUQ_L1pe2OUAieE03z5tY6K_jerZuIDpoxu8UL9j3Kf-X3v9qoi-2zDG1FpbHsCz10zdlk/s1600/ALPHA-MODES-06.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8a7Sg45gqygW35elgSCcGhJcYekuS-j0YWJ54A_ThWZl2uG_8xU_8NWGa6FRP4vxda5q8xmUQ_L1pe2OUAieE03z5tY6K_jerZuIDpoxu8UL9j3Kf-X3v9qoi-2zDG1FpbHsCz10zdlk/s1600/ALPHA-MODES-06.png" height="640" width="640" /></a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-64249267299738442742013-12-31T10:17:00.000-08:002014-04-23T09:43:18.690-07:00ZBrush Addendum - Which way is Front & The Thin Blue Line<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Well, I guess sometimes it makes sense to air your little pet peeves and complaints about a program. There is always a slight chance that someone listening will be glad to fill in your blanks, tell you you're wrong etc. That's not only new information, it's one less thing to complain about right?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I just got one of my blanks filled in. Yesterday in a post about adding a reference image to ZBrush, I found the time to make a wise crack about how it's practically impossible to tell which way is front in ZBrush. A, by request remaining anonymous, fellow pinner on Pinterest was delighted to point out my oversight. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I stand corrected and happily share the evidence and new info in the illustration below. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPRx3fujId57rLy2rhocXxZeTdiwcb1UiQVC71ZrQH9n3Eog18AqrG2u99evOW90ksacfz7FY5-RhKraPFQh7XzTMA5Mis2a4d8IBg8K3sqy-GwRAUz_YPk3r4g5K-VkqjqWN5A-lLbf8/s1600/zbrush-front-indicator.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPRx3fujId57rLy2rhocXxZeTdiwcb1UiQVC71ZrQH9n3Eog18AqrG2u99evOW90ksacfz7FY5-RhKraPFQh7XzTMA5Mis2a4d8IBg8K3sqy-GwRAUz_YPk3r4g5K-VkqjqWN5A-lLbf8/s1600/zbrush-front-indicator.png" height="640" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Click to see the image at full resolution (my monitor is 96<span style="font-size: x-small;">dpi</span> and 1920 x 1200 btw) and look for a thin blue line.</span>
<a data-pin-do="buttonFollow" href="http://www.pinterest.com/pinterest/">garvie garzo</a>
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<script type="text/javascript" async src="//assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js"></script>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-8771404288695993112013-12-29T10:42:00.003-08:002013-12-29T10:42:59.021-08:00ZBrush Tip - How to Load a Reference Image<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ok, I admit it, the main reason my blog posting has been a bit thin is I have been pretty much in a frenzy of trying to learn Zbrush.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now, no doubt I am even less qualified to teach ZBrush than Blender, but that's hardly going to stop me from sharing little helpful bits as I find them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This weekend I learned from a Shane Olson tutorial how to add a reference image to ZBrush as part of his <a href="http://www.digitaltutors.com/tutorial/753-Speed-Sculpting-a-Cartoon-Head-in-ZBrush" target="_blank">Speed Sculpting a Cartoon Head Tutorial</a>. The nicer interface and colors are also largely a result of Shane's instructions in the same tut. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbWzJ2A66cgw3nKAOxZdRWXcundFoMK2bnvHdogeM2NvmpNIjtNkeOXs-bICKIXzwAM1ufuJfqf24OR1GMYfoQg1fvOtAs0BT7WsUnHGRikXUHD53vsdE57HP1j9vO91YWj6d-cMnmtn4/s1600/ZBrush-tip-Loading-a-Reference-Image.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbWzJ2A66cgw3nKAOxZdRWXcundFoMK2bnvHdogeM2NvmpNIjtNkeOXs-bICKIXzwAM1ufuJfqf24OR1GMYfoQg1fvOtAs0BT7WsUnHGRikXUHD53vsdE57HP1j9vO91YWj6d-cMnmtn4/s1600/ZBrush-tip-Loading-a-Reference-Image.png" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Since the ability to add a reference image was a game changer kinda moment for me in Blender, I think it will be in ZBrush as well. Prior to this the closest I could get was using the See Through (yes, it is what it sounds like) 'feature' while running ZBrush over top of Photoshop (i mean honestly, where do they come up with these ideas?!). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I think this will be better.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://shaneolson.blogspot.ca/" target="_blank">Shane Olson</a> is a fabulous teacher by the way, though he seems to only have tutorials on <a href="http://www.digitaltutors.com/" target="_blank">Digital Tutors</a> and it's a paid subscription site. If you do spring for a monthly subscription, and are in need of ZBrush enlightenment, do NOT miss his courses. </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-12050956007409875692013-11-19T14:56:00.002-08:002013-11-19T14:56:37.975-08:00Question: How Do I Make Mesh Rounder & Smooth?<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Answer: The fast way is using subdivisions or subsurfaces. In Blender this is a modifier called Subdivision Surface.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Caveat: the geometry adds up fast.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">See the pictures:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4-a9bZK1GJvS4J0XDNPowYBlxC8TJC1CVEyPpumxGVXOnGBZhdSu_MeKxnD-VfsDWaHkHfNps3QJEcfIn16_fqvBkrnA37uS-46yOxDYGM53fH9pMxSlsql1gLmKtmTxLEcuLEeBQIJk/s1600/curviness%252C-subdivisions-%2526-Land-Impact-01.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4-a9bZK1GJvS4J0XDNPowYBlxC8TJC1CVEyPpumxGVXOnGBZhdSu_MeKxnD-VfsDWaHkHfNps3QJEcfIn16_fqvBkrnA37uS-46yOxDYGM53fH9pMxSlsql1gLmKtmTxLEcuLEeBQIJk/s1600/curviness%252C-subdivisions-%2526-Land-Impact-01.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOiGZRgGkYLGN80YavA5s78sI5ztaFjEObxh4GotUvNQQIXDSH-HZQT85zsoRvbUAXswrZ2q9NRajGzPfzLoQG6K3DyKoJ7GqkvqYYzXKnUgQdJeqNWVCtMDz8AFy3hgFlJHabUn9KN8U/s1600/curviness%252C-subdivisions-%2526-Land-Impact-02.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOiGZRgGkYLGN80YavA5s78sI5ztaFjEObxh4GotUvNQQIXDSH-HZQT85zsoRvbUAXswrZ2q9NRajGzPfzLoQG6K3DyKoJ7GqkvqYYzXKnUgQdJeqNWVCtMDz8AFy3hgFlJHabUn9KN8U/s1600/curviness%252C-subdivisions-%2526-Land-Impact-02.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzJKFabOOkNHt-41cgL6dUJewqDTG4OwXIGcy1CgHOVvbN16Rk9GaiA8v93k03ie-O73Gj2KarC91NOAg6nJviQ1Y1BO5p91nSEN3m5tbiBaBUAy2bes-CuXF2zs8kz9oxSi-OT4I4MPA/s1600/curviness%252C-subdivisions-%2526-Land-Impact-03.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzJKFabOOkNHt-41cgL6dUJewqDTG4OwXIGcy1CgHOVvbN16Rk9GaiA8v93k03ie-O73Gj2KarC91NOAg6nJviQ1Y1BO5p91nSEN3m5tbiBaBUAy2bes-CuXF2zs8kz9oxSi-OT4I4MPA/s1600/curviness%252C-subdivisions-%2526-Land-Impact-03.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">More could be said, but never better than this 2008 explanation <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckOTl2GcS-E" target="_blank">video</a> by GuerrillaCG: </span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-43227568636267205902013-11-01T12:40:00.001-07:002013-11-02T11:32:43.718-07:00Materials - A Mini Lesson<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">First let me say, this truly is a mini lesson. Maybe lesson isn't the right word either. It was a heads up note card that I wrote and sent out as a notice to the Builders Brewery group in SL. Why would I do such a thing? Well partly because I really like materials and have spent quite a bit of time trying to figure them out over the last few months, but mostly because I also spend quite a lot of time in the BB group answering questions. In fact the original inspiration for this blog was to use it as a repository for oft answered questions about content creation in SL, and more detailed explanations than are possible in chat and classes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So when Firestorm puts out a new <a href="http://www.firestormviewer.org/downloads/" target="_blank">beta viewer</a> with materials and GASP a funny looking texture tab on the edit window, I just know there are going to be lots of questions. Questions in group, questions waiting as IMs, and note cards that begin with "maybe you'll know"....</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Well maybe is right, I feel I should warn you that I don't know much about materials (yet), but since that has never stopped me before, here's my attempt to anticipate the first couple rounds of questions about the arrival of materials in your SL viewer.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Likely the first thing people will notice is that the texture tab looks different.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Don't panic, the same functionality is there, plus a few new capabilities.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There is now a tab called Materials, and the Texture tab can be used to apply 3 different kinds of texture information. The first one we are all already familiar with, though the name "diffuse" might sound a bit foreign, it's the basic final surface texture we have all been calling just texture.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfQ-TqWGRJBJNuh0I09FkZIt4gHTVaItXHx7Rof8IGj8915g6ll3rfFSGhJziHYSO5Ke4zNhVmQwCzfdaIwTJlHmWgjdup_Zn8RvJj5QndUJfpiUjfJHKWnl_90-TALebd7wTQwbMKziU/s1600/materials-mini-lesson-01.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfQ-TqWGRJBJNuh0I09FkZIt4gHTVaItXHx7Rof8IGj8915g6ll3rfFSGhJziHYSO5Ke4zNhVmQwCzfdaIwTJlHmWgjdup_Zn8RvJj5QndUJfpiUjfJHKWnl_90-TALebd7wTQwbMKziU/s1600/materials-mini-lesson-01.png" height="640" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The texture tab works the same as it always did. If you are just applying a regular texture, use this tab which will be on by default, then apply the texture the same way you usually do. Yes, local textures also work the same way.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_W9WA_k8gOAAwHIQVxhcUg2rpijbJJ_aOxJr4AiEYhk8Df09aPcyTg2db-GAkHKefFPI8D2jk11G9oq5BDoNjwSYlPq9anZrXmrkecXRPThwTvn7QUEu_8Y9lnV6w0rhwgMIm7_rUd24/s1600/materials-mini-lesson-02.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_W9WA_k8gOAAwHIQVxhcUg2rpijbJJ_aOxJr4AiEYhk8Df09aPcyTg2db-GAkHKefFPI8D2jk11G9oq5BDoNjwSYlPq9anZrXmrkecXRPThwTvn7QUEu_8Y9lnV6w0rhwgMIm7_rUd24/s1600/materials-mini-lesson-02.png" height="400" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Under the Texture (diffuse) tab you can now add 2 other kinds of texture information. The first is (in SL) called Bumpiness (normal). It can be used for a normal map if you have one. <a href="http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap/" target="_blank">Normal Maps</a> are commonly used to add more realism by making a surface appear raised or 'bumpy', or by preserving small sculpted details from higher resolution models. If you click the link, you will see there is a whole lot more to normal maps than Bumpiness</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjovYRv5AQHe8uGrViAr62Xm-7t7_akBeTFn0F1ojhIThRc-FsWtGUTz2UWV0Shc4-RiCRo6pF9RLIuC1D406FUmybU-gl2noEFUVlAxYMuMKkipZDkSRlxbKgQUXyKGnCUlGIuM11IWxw/s1600/materials-mini-lesson-03.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjovYRv5AQHe8uGrViAr62Xm-7t7_akBeTFn0F1ojhIThRc-FsWtGUTz2UWV0Shc4-RiCRo6pF9RLIuC1D406FUmybU-gl2noEFUVlAxYMuMKkipZDkSRlxbKgQUXyKGnCUlGIuM11IWxw/s1600/materials-mini-lesson-03.png" height="640" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2zv2tJ2Hn2J2v_mKiFfcZrlTo2qWc4kmV81Nk5rTkmDMyviQj7aWjeweyxwJ8bjoC7-f5CcS-9vQ09pYRx63SiLPbST28udDP1Qpu10LxAdD7ih23OHVn209wA9A79d5Z4I1A5s0WgxQ/s1600/materials-mini-lesson-04.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2zv2tJ2Hn2J2v_mKiFfcZrlTo2qWc4kmV81Nk5rTkmDMyviQj7aWjeweyxwJ8bjoC7-f5CcS-9vQ09pYRx63SiLPbST28udDP1Qpu10LxAdD7ih23OHVn209wA9A79d5Z4I1A5s0WgxQ/s1600/materials-mini-lesson-04.png" height="640" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The other choice on the drop down tab is called Shininess (specular) and it is designed to read specularity maps, sometimes just called spec maps. A <a href="http://wiki.splashdamage.com/index.php/Specular_Maps" target="_blank">Specularity Map</a> determines the shininess of a surface but also the quality of the shine. Polished wood surfaces have a softer edge to their highlights than hard plastic for instance. Metal is not only shiny and quite reflective, but the quality that we call metallic refers to the fact that metal often has different color(s) in its reflected highlights. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgADSxPUT0qsOIFECrwwkZLMtmdgCuE01NyjC7kkGYhNAZzyELQrqtLtJWEQfBqS9D8MYjUbWBt30DIDXor2k3Kxld1KsDiyH0gFnfax3EpABnZPzf-vUYnnOjcOh4frk1L4ufpqUjbkLE/s1600/materials-mini-lesson-05.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgADSxPUT0qsOIFECrwwkZLMtmdgCuE01NyjC7kkGYhNAZzyELQrqtLtJWEQfBqS9D8MYjUbWBt30DIDXor2k3Kxld1KsDiyH0gFnfax3EpABnZPzf-vUYnnOjcOh4frk1L4ufpqUjbkLE/s1600/materials-mini-lesson-05.png" height="640" width="640" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On the texture tab you can now assign as overall color to the reflected light or leave it white. You can also control how shiny the surface is (Glossiness), whether it reflects colors from the surrounding environment (Environment).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">No, you can't make a mirror, but I did try. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgThms0fQnCsYq82X3uB7wnvSKMKMALu3eGqk7OmoRrfIK-hW2W7THkz5j3P3BCe4C-GjkzIJWZ028VDpa4UlDQwLkI80UwA1i2198Gycas2bbeJugbcZs4ig1IzLHc2zsStUaV_XY6tUs/s1600/materials-mini-lesson-06.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgThms0fQnCsYq82X3uB7wnvSKMKMALu3eGqk7OmoRrfIK-hW2W7THkz5j3P3BCe4C-GjkzIJWZ028VDpa4UlDQwLkI80UwA1i2198Gycas2bbeJugbcZs4ig1IzLHc2zsStUaV_XY6tUs/s1600/materials-mini-lesson-06.png" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Materials can be really pretty in dimmer light conditions, and they look especially good as you move around or if lights are moving near them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I should apologise for having used a black texture for this demonstration lol. It was an accident born of the moment, an IM about fabrics and Photoshop pattern possibilities, and a freehand with gyazo.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you would like to pick up the box with the sample textures inside, (since I hardly need say that the still photos above do NOT do materials justice), please visit the <a href="http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Builders%20Brewery/125/174/23" target="_blank">Builders Brewery</a> Main building in SL, where these are available as a freebie. I will be adding to the selection regularly as I continue with my mad materials experiments.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Wish you knew more about materials? Me too! There's the <a href="http://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/Materials-Normal-and-Specular-Mapping/ta-p/2034625" target="_blank">knowledge base</a>, and watch the <a href="http://www.buildersbrewery.com/calendar/index.php" target="_blank">Builder's Brewery Calendar</a> for upcoming classes on both using and also making normal and spec maps. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now for those anticipated first few questions:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Q. Can everyone see materials?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A. No, most likely not. Right now you need to have a viewer that can read them (Exodus, Kokua, UKandDo, LL viewer , the new FS Beta, some versions of Cool VL).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Besides having a viewer that sees them, materials also require Advanced Lighting Mode in Preferences> Graphics.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By the way, it is NOT TRUE that you need to use Ultra or even a High graphics setting to enable Advanced Lighting Mode. It can be turned on, and works just fine on lower graphics settings. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But materials do seem to require the settings shown below: Hardware skinning, Basic shaders, Atmospheric shaders, Advanced Lighting Model. If you are not sure whether your computer can handle these see my <a href="http://someofmybestfriendsarepixels.blogspot.ca/2013/09/materials-alm-are-you-ready.html" target="_blank">previous post</a>. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg57skqG6vNb_DchIC3-9Zs6eWn2HS9saqDAoPfv_4B0XBQLFUgNQImOhdr9OuDtKFz1OURljycyx-iQEvJ63cRuk-v9k7tZ5JuplVju4nQFaOv1zBf9E1dPbwdLDbEFwlium4VF7oY7-4/s1600/materials-graphics-settings.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg57skqG6vNb_DchIC3-9Zs6eWn2HS9saqDAoPfv_4B0XBQLFUgNQImOhdr9OuDtKFz1OURljycyx-iQEvJ63cRuk-v9k7tZ5JuplVju4nQFaOv1zBf9E1dPbwdLDbEFwlium4VF7oY7-4/s1600/materials-graphics-settings.png" height="280" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0IK-oWYM7ze4zCsn9AJer8gOGB-Ntl4XyrG93Gow9I_xsQ5tnN54ph2ae9IF867FBFQdB3KvpANHu7tV20carf4MHSJnpA4BkvveQbUNbnlCvY25cEWWDLfnrleT8hnknmmghS5vWrqA/s1600/about-second-life.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0IK-oWYM7ze4zCsn9AJer8gOGB-Ntl4XyrG93Gow9I_xsQ5tnN54ph2ae9IF867FBFQdB3KvpANHu7tV20carf4MHSJnpA4BkvveQbUNbnlCvY25cEWWDLfnrleT8hnknmmghS5vWrqA/s1600/about-second-life.png" height="320" width="228" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In particular, you might want to find out how your graphics card stacks up for life in SL. Not so long ago Oz Linden explained how the viewers decide what graphics settings each account starts out with based on a system to classify graphics cards. You can check how your card measures up on this </span><a href="https://app.box.com/s/jeph4v6xffc16i6qfs8i" style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;" target="_blank">table</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Not sure what graphics card you have? In SL go to the Help menu on the top bar of your viewer, and look inside About Second Life. That will give you a full account of your system and graphics card.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Q. Do I have to use materials now for texturing?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A. Of course not. You might never have any reason to use either a normal map or a specularity map.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Q. Do materials effect the Land Impact of objects?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A. Yup. Looks like every new feature from now on will be subject to a streaming cost calculation. That can mean materials will be bad news on tori and sculpties, but good news on plain box prims. In case you don't know what I mean, adding a material will have a similar effect to setting one prim to convex hull.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Q. What's the point of materials anyway?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A. Short answer is greater detail from fewer resources. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Longer version is vertices - the points that determine surfaces in 3D space are complicated and expensive (resource -wise) to calculate, but texture information is relatively cheap. So 3D designers replace as much sculpted or modeled detail as they can with texture maps that the render engine (SL for us) will read. Meaning materials have the potential to give us more eye candy with less land impact and less lag than we would have without using them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> To be continued....</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-63979491087007445132013-09-30T09:34:00.000-07:002013-09-30T12:50:10.806-07:00Materials & Advanced Lighting Model - Are YOU Ready?<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Daily almost I find myself in conversation with someone about whether materials will catch on. Coming from a creator (of usually mesh but not necessarily mesh) currently using materials as part of her work, the chat will normally wend its way around just how many people can see them anyway and what one should or shouldn't say in an ad for an object that includes materials. E.g. What exactly is "Materials </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ready</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">" supposed to mean?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Coming from a creator of mesh not currently using materials in her work the conversation will also revolve around just how many people can see them, but focused around a different sort of concern, which is whether the conversant needs to switch to a materials viewer yet or can afford to stall a little longer since apparently no one else can see them either.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I only ever guess that the number of people who can see materials is still very low, since on any given free sample giving day, I can rarely scare up more than a handful of people on a materials capable viewer (so far these are: the LL viewer, Kokua & Exodus). Add to that the fact that according to LL, the adoption of ALM (Advanced Lighting Model) is also still shockingly low, and the second kind of creator/conversant mentioned above (the one not yet using materials) has for now no real rush to switch viewers or get busy baking normal maps. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I should maybe clear up a possible confusion. You need a materials capable viewer to apply the material textures to an object. To see the effect produced by materials on an object, you need the materials capable viewer as well as ALM turned on. And this means that even some of the people using a materials viewer still aren't seeing materials because they may not have turned on ALM. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I just don't get that myself. From my view ALM even without materials in the offing is a whole lotta lovely to be had for no more than the flip of a switch. Add material textures into that mix and you get a whole lotta lovely, PLUS potentially a big reduction in LI and rendering resources. Seems to me like this shouldn't be that hard a sell.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But some people experience performance hits with ALM turned on, some people might be worried by the word "advanced" and some people have never actually used anything but the slider bar and graphics settings by category (Low, High, Ultra etc), so have no real idea what individual graphics settings are or do. Add to that the fact that not all viewers left ALM in the same category of graphics settings (everything from med/high to Ultra last I looked) and you have a recipe for peeps holding back based on fear or confusion or simply overlooking the issue altogether.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr2C3lzOF35UNumSr8l76MwafHl-dbCJvWoA1mJ0O1Q3Q4hmqgYojsZf0V5e47lgtPHM4lJDQgW4TL7d8XWX2nq-3UNBydMDYQ1VVnUtAoVBSw1FQifylmmscmDZwLMgiPXIBBKKdXQTA/s1600/graphics+settings+ALM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr2C3lzOF35UNumSr8l76MwafHl-dbCJvWoA1mJ0O1Q3Q4hmqgYojsZf0V5e47lgtPHM4lJDQgW4TL7d8XWX2nq-3UNBydMDYQ1VVnUtAoVBSw1FQifylmmscmDZwLMgiPXIBBKKdXQTA/s1600/graphics+settings+ALM.png" height="281" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you thought ALM was too advanced for your graphics cards, or worse a setting that requires Ultra Graphics, maybe it makes sense to approach this cautiously. No one wants a fried GPU right?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And how are we supposed to know what our graphics cards can handle?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Nalates' Things & Stuff</b> to the rescue!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I was delighted to find that her latest <a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/frame?post=1667768141&group=0&frame_type=a&blog=10305961&link=aHR0cDovL2Jsb2cubmFsYXRlcy5uZXQvMjAxMy8wOS8yOS9zZWNvbmQtbGlmZS10cHZkbS1uZXdzLTIwMTMtMzkv&frame=1&click=0&user=4311267" target="_blank">blog post</a> offers excellent lengthy reportage from the most recent TPV meeting at which who can see materials was discussed. Scroll down to the last subheading<b> "ALM Stats"</b> for the discussion as well as Oz Linden's tip on how to find out if your graphics card can handle ALM. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Oz told Nalates where to look for the txt file in your viewer's installation folders to find a table that breaks what looks like all known graphics cards into <i>classes</i>. These classes are then used to determine what sort of graphics settings are suited to individual installations of Second Life based on system. In case that's not clear it means that when we download and fire up a fresh installation of Second Life, the viewer predetermines some graphics settings for us, based on among other things our graphics card classification as determined by LL. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I was pretty pleased with this info, but I found the table almost impossible to read or decipher in Wordpad. Indeed, I could not even find my own graphics card in the blizzard of bits and pieces of data. So I copied everything out of there and into InDesign to recreate the data as a table that regular humans can read. (No reformatting, and no changes were required - making tables based on weird typesetter symbols and codes is just something InDesign happens to know how to do - go figure.) </span><br />
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<span style="color: #741b47; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Graphics Cards by Class Table</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Warning this small text file became a 22 page pdf so rather than copy it into this post, I have made it available <a href="https://app.box.com/s/jeph4v6xffc16i6qfs8i" target="_blank"><b>here</b></a> for preview or download.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So as Oz explains and Nalates relates, <b>if your graphics card is a class 3 or above, you should have no trouble using ALM</b>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My suggestion is turn it on just to see what you've been missing and you'll be, as they say, <i>Materials Ready</i>. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> :)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-65161618463238658112013-09-14T09:04:00.000-07:002013-09-24T07:03:51.106-07:00Texture Baking VS Texture Making Experiment <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So this week I tried to talk 3 different people out of bothering to learn how to use nodes in Blender to bake in specularity and to try to make a spec map in graphics instead. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There is no point, I said in faking what we can do for real, I said. Nodes are a bit advanced, I said. Even if you want to add a highlight effect, it will be easier to do it in a graphics program, I said. The less you give Blender to do with textures, the better I said. They didn't listen.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm not sure I blame them, because I wasn't all that sure I knew what I was talking about either. It was after all just a semi-educated guess. So I decided it was time for some science. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">First off I confess that lately I have been overstating not using Blender to create textures to make a point. The truth is Blender is not that bad and it lets you do texture stuff in really an amazing variety of ways. That said, it's also true that I have a pretty large bias towards Photoshop. I have it and I'm pretty comfortable in there. The same cannot necessarily be said for the 3 Blender users I was trying to persuade away from using Blender to create textures, or for many more Blender users that show up in classes. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So this experiment uses a texture that was painted entirely in Blender</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> texture paint using sampled photos. I did not even resize or adjust the photos before taking them into Blender. They came straight from <a href="http://www.cgtextures.com/" target="_blank">CG Textures</a>, to the tip of the texture draw brush in Blender.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">After Painting the texture, I saved it as an image, and also baked an <a href="http://someofmybestfriendsarepixels.blogspot.ca/2013/08/how-to-bake-ao-in-blender.html">Ambient Occlusion</a> map and saved that as well. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For the fake bake spec version, I loaded up the texture, the ambient occlusion, and a normal map (for more smoothness on this low poly pot) into a material assigned to the pot. Then I set up some lights around the pot. I really did NOT spend enough time on the lighting, and I am sure my highlights suffered because of it. A bit more thought and time spent on lighting would doubtless have made this a closer contest. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Next I needed a material node set up that would allow me to include specularity in the output - shown below:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXHB3s9XaXHvgT94eqbYKeEfOWq8rsrJhVfbXzXuWURG83s275RKcWlA-ISgoMk-3T8jKmm2QVkR1y43MjmFUD3lc9rzJIrpDJ_ggHgBUhVpFezsqfKttd_IfiWMYZtGSiic7rc5aRbIc/s1600/specularity-experiment-02.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXHB3s9XaXHvgT94eqbYKeEfOWq8rsrJhVfbXzXuWURG83s275RKcWlA-ISgoMk-3T8jKmm2QVkR1y43MjmFUD3lc9rzJIrpDJ_ggHgBUhVpFezsqfKttd_IfiWMYZtGSiic7rc5aRbIc/s1600/specularity-experiment-02.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To be fair to nodes (Compositing in Blender), they are not all that complicated, just something we're not used to (yet). I try to think of them as a diagram of the interactions and blends of pixels, kinda like layers and their operations and blends without the layering. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So having saved the fake baked specularity texture as an image, I got busy doing things my usual way in Photoshop. As usual, I combined the ambient occlusion map with the texture I painted and saved from Blender, added a solid background layer and saved the image as a 512px png for upload. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But since this is a contest of specularity effects created in Blender vs a spec map created in Photoshop using relatively familiar skills, I also needed to make a separate spec map. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now if there is some right or wrong way to do this, I would love to hear about it, or even an average over all grey scale value range would be helpful. For now, I just try to come up with maps that I think will work based on whatever texture I happen to be using, and then I experiment with the settings in on the edit window in SL. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">All I know for sure about this process is that the lighter the value is, the more specular the highlight can be in SL. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So for this texture, since I wanted the rubbed metal bits, to be the ones that reflected light, and since they are a different color than the more oxidized bronze, I decided a Black & White Adjustment would be the way to go.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT-nv-rAm2GhZJA9N5M3_rVNS5rWUTmUc6jHcQwxVO4_SmpdD3A8Y-34gXn0Q_ojZv-oD2ettyWO0l6tahZF6BL_ZSKQ_WyjhacwMMBeJn-iE0OKen8XvaKQHmYQlGH94PNhaiVw9Bja8/s1600/specularity-experiment-03.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT-nv-rAm2GhZJA9N5M3_rVNS5rWUTmUc6jHcQwxVO4_SmpdD3A8Y-34gXn0Q_ojZv-oD2ettyWO0l6tahZF6BL_ZSKQ_WyjhacwMMBeJn-iE0OKen8XvaKQHmYQlGH94PNhaiVw9Bja8/s1600/specularity-experiment-03.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It wasn't dark enough over all.. specularity in SL is really shiny (or maybe that's me lol. again, I don't know what I am doing with this). So I added a levels adjustment to heighten the contrast and make the overall map quite a bit darker.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnoKn_Zz_fXtHMDwq45hUtCxW6nFKXuyBRaKRLRIOP5TAZNMcp_yZVr9O0TN8bs91IuYo7qoaLPeJ6FYrHz-4J19z6T0byZGze5VDWI52AdmPGpCsAc01FkDKE3TiXpN2INj-p5iWz3QQ/s1600/specularity-experiment-04.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnoKn_Zz_fXtHMDwq45hUtCxW6nFKXuyBRaKRLRIOP5TAZNMcp_yZVr9O0TN8bs91IuYo7qoaLPeJ6FYrHz-4J19z6T0byZGze5VDWI52AdmPGpCsAc01FkDKE3TiXpN2INj-p5iWz3QQ/s1600/specularity-experiment-04.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Then I saved the texture in the image above as a 512px png to use in world. Here's how they looked at the finish line:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5ksv86Wv2LS_fbHRAXIq4o9mHJxGR1QaiFOpkKeykpLtkgQIpklf35Dw6rAMVgcPhbNorTkJGyDsd4vjiXSR2yKmGf8Gu3L4a3Vhc4pFjL41AfPax8kU0I7Ohjz8Ku1Un174ma3pk5ME/s1600/specularity-experiment-05.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5ksv86Wv2LS_fbHRAXIq4o9mHJxGR1QaiFOpkKeykpLtkgQIpklf35Dw6rAMVgcPhbNorTkJGyDsd4vjiXSR2yKmGf8Gu3L4a3Vhc4pFjL41AfPax8kU0I7Ohjz8Ku1Un174ma3pk5ME/s1600/specularity-experiment-05.png" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I was surprised there wasn't more of a difference. In fact I was hoping that the difference would be so striking, and the pot with the spec map (on the left) to be so clearly superior, that not only would people stop bugging me to show them how to bake specular highlights into a texture in Blender, I would no longer need to bug them to go get a viewer with materials and start working on them. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Maybe next week.</span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-12794524784930165782013-09-11T13:00:00.000-07:002013-09-24T07:05:07.568-07:00How to Combine Ambient Occlusion & Texture in Blender 2.6<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Okies, so at first I didn't even plan to do baking an AO in the Blender 12 Steps Chair Class, but since everyone is doing sooo much better than I thought we would, I have been revising as I go along.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">First I added an Ambient Occlusion bake to the end of Part 7, even though my own personal demo chair never got one, and has to live with the shame of the world's craziest ever UV map lol.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I guess I might have known that after the AO Bake, people would want to know how to combine the shading texture (AO) with the woodgrain texture into a final diffuse map (aka "<i>texture</i>" in SL). I always do this in Photoshop and in general I think you can get more options and better results using a graphics program to finalize your textures. But this can also be done in Blender with not too many extra steps after the Ambient Occlusion bake.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So I made is a video showing how you can do this in Blender and save the final image as the texture (aka "<i>diffuse map</i>" everywhere outside of SL).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnIF7Wii2U4">Here you go</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-82980204857874011932013-09-03T12:40:00.000-07:002013-09-03T13:26:32.112-07:00Zen & The Art Of Seams in Blender<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So this week I launched into Part 6 of the Box Modeling A Chair saga by introducing everyone to seaming a model in preparation for unwrapping. It was a crappy introduction. I should have said more to get the conversation started, explain that each side has a common goal or something. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Anyway, here is a very brief guide to all the things I should have said just to get the party started. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Texturing is important. And a UV map is a requirement, not an option. You don't absolutely have to make your own UV map from the ground up by manually adding all the seams. But the more control you take at the UV mapping stage, the more control you will have over your final texture. Besides that, the more you understand about the relation between your model, its seams and its texture, the more you will understand about making mesh objects. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So let me briefly introduce you to seams in Blender, I think it might be the start of a beautiful friendship.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgiHa-tQJClbL09cHHBbedM1JsYDSQgNdJcPtpnkx53uzW4IQUDiQgjQBXs2pRIR2M9ZyG7TkMTdjmIk6CQVkvAQ8xB5n5IUp8C6Gyvp0KjRKe6XTfSqHiwDVijLrbF7VvcNVYhHXSSFc/s1600/zen-seam--01.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgiHa-tQJClbL09cHHBbedM1JsYDSQgNdJcPtpnkx53uzW4IQUDiQgjQBXs2pRIR2M9ZyG7TkMTdjmIk6CQVkvAQ8xB5n5IUp8C6Gyvp0KjRKe6XTfSqHiwDVijLrbF7VvcNVYhHXSSFc/s1600/zen-seam--01.png" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOwKfjOhi-OVo-dQBQD86cYEr-FA3qq5QoYBJLiemDOax12wVBHwpPb0eOmQWHM0gZ325nOqpnT8GL00k3p9qCMVDTuVxKhn8WElT0VJBAq1rxmHB1PcIiI8OfLzX00KfUO3wWFc0kf7Q/s1600/zen-seam-02.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOwKfjOhi-OVo-dQBQD86cYEr-FA3qq5QoYBJLiemDOax12wVBHwpPb0eOmQWHM0gZ325nOqpnT8GL00k3p9qCMVDTuVxKhn8WElT0VJBAq1rxmHB1PcIiI8OfLzX00KfUO3wWFc0kf7Q/s1600/zen-seam-02.png" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKKzdtkEWTLJEYuAUsuxVtaDJ0OYlSFnq3GZg_znt7ZYLuEg-gz5jQt1bLiWDYMGRDsD-0hDDNIjyMAFFpjzTe0h4bQOKOZs7OEgLLM03CaVFgZRJdL9lxbIYKB43HbCQqP7a5tb_H7Vw/s1600/zen-seam-04.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKKzdtkEWTLJEYuAUsuxVtaDJ0OYlSFnq3GZg_znt7ZYLuEg-gz5jQt1bLiWDYMGRDsD-0hDDNIjyMAFFpjzTe0h4bQOKOZs7OEgLLM03CaVFgZRJdL9lxbIYKB43HbCQqP7a5tb_H7Vw/s1600/zen-seam-04.png" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaVanYmrjCSFpov1sHaDtcPPDCGSxfj4vNpJ10OLHj7RZP8ZXDTSFzHp6RLEeAY5ZbRwmZsrAZPFA90r2l7A0RtJx1g13IVdNA6rqXFDZ6dDPhYAaliCswb4uk8_1RXkMnQIzBCVt-RSQ/s1600/zen-seam-05.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaVanYmrjCSFpov1sHaDtcPPDCGSxfj4vNpJ10OLHj7RZP8ZXDTSFzHp6RLEeAY5ZbRwmZsrAZPFA90r2l7A0RtJx1g13IVdNA6rqXFDZ6dDPhYAaliCswb4uk8_1RXkMnQIzBCVt-RSQ/s1600/zen-seam-05.png" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil467wMFN1yvDrDx2sAvX2BfY3vUf0boJ8Dq3-RQJ8X2GJ05Tz9j7PTiL9ABXt18YLcmLG5PApGrWtYYFHVxBgbL0ylKz6bww9tWV82C10gy9_tPzyN9Et8T4lUvllrhtKG0URh3Vmj2w/s1600/zen-seam-06.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil467wMFN1yvDrDx2sAvX2BfY3vUf0boJ8Dq3-RQJ8X2GJ05Tz9j7PTiL9ABXt18YLcmLG5PApGrWtYYFHVxBgbL0ylKz6bww9tWV82C10gy9_tPzyN9Et8T4lUvllrhtKG0URh3Vmj2w/s1600/zen-seam-06.png" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTANSbr9erQSrJxAAuvpQqUR5YqVM_vZQZiRHLn2XtTPoF80-OADn-s6psc-BOxvrgkx4EUMCUFP8bdBPNUkklZ6qLofEhs3NUekQZzvhGYTbQp21skN25ZmbRKP-EyU-fU3jq09z0CRw/s1600/zen-seam-07.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTANSbr9erQSrJxAAuvpQqUR5YqVM_vZQZiRHLn2XtTPoF80-OADn-s6psc-BOxvrgkx4EUMCUFP8bdBPNUkklZ6qLofEhs3NUekQZzvhGYTbQp21skN25ZmbRKP-EyU-fU3jq09z0CRw/s1600/zen-seam-07.png" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-49205531150805323692013-08-31T10:23:00.000-07:002013-08-31T10:23:42.558-07:00Retopolgy Quickie<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have been spending so much time studying retopology techniques and tricks and tools, that the subject is going to warrant its own Pinterest board soon.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Anyway, this is a great simple solution to a problem that I frequently have and am often unsure how to fix. I just gleaned this little gem from a Ryan Kittleson course on lynda.com.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I am posting it here so I don't forget and because eventually I am sure some of you will want to practise retopology, especially after I convince you how much fun sculpting in Blender is.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKa3b5VTX95JmZdgehra-KKowsHGxd6EsdLyvnuHTzvVBwv0in6Bcayj2GitvBzb58Dz4762KfOaFVvf5STCqhF8Scgn7pBWfCfolSuLm-7sAO4YRV7E3TzKKZGdeuoVOsz-Cnum9OYMM/s1600/mesh-face-reduction-retopology.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKa3b5VTX95JmZdgehra-KKowsHGxd6EsdLyvnuHTzvVBwv0in6Bcayj2GitvBzb58Dz4762KfOaFVvf5STCqhF8Scgn7pBWfCfolSuLm-7sAO4YRV7E3TzKKZGdeuoVOsz-Cnum9OYMM/s1600/mesh-face-reduction-retopology.png" height="411" width="640" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Find more from the guy I learned this trick from on his <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/squirc">You Tube</a>. His name is Ryan Kittleson, he is a brand new discovery for me, but I already know there is lots more he can teach us.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-34318724795091131012013-08-28T09:22:00.000-07:002013-08-28T09:25:26.633-07:00Drag & Drop in Blender<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So yesterday, I ran across this great looking theme (he calls it a Format) for Blender on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mW77xUK_G8">Sensei Blender</a> on You Tube.
One aspect in particular just struck me as so brilliant I simply could not believe I hadn't seen it done before - by anyone! I wish I had thought of it. Best I can do now is just share it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You know that animation timeline window down at the bottom of your screen? Handy if animating or running simulations, but otherwise, kinda wasted real estate, so I usually keep mine squeezed shut. But a better idea (borrowed from the Sensei Format) is to turn that window into a File Browser. It's easy, it's fast, and it means you can DRAG & DROP textures and models into the 3D Viewport or UV Image Editor.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I already don't know how I lived without it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-91457532035498287522013-08-27T17:37:00.001-07:002013-09-24T07:05:57.953-07:00How To Bake An AO in Blender<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By request, and frequently asked in Blender groups & Builders Brewery, here is a very basic How to Bake an Ambient Occlusion Map in Blender, (starring the chair of course). If you need info on how to unwrap and where to put seams and stuff, either go look that up first, or just use Smart UV Project as your unwrap method for the first one :)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298743191091932001.post-2114773244927210862013-08-27T13:43:00.000-07:002013-08-27T13:53:40.133-07:00Using a Pen Tablet With Blender <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6FhpDpPQQeXnuJtKqWwmSDRTeQN5AAx6YdLHpn3wDoRkQKWFr-ANOAyRRPa2QHArgN12GWdTPqd6WbB583Qig68JxfUqyvwROw5be8wwJIPz9rgpQh9yH1f52fzR-gB-kbsZSFROQLIQ/s1600/BLENDER-TABLET-01.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6FhpDpPQQeXnuJtKqWwmSDRTeQN5AAx6YdLHpn3wDoRkQKWFr-ANOAyRRPa2QHArgN12GWdTPqd6WbB583Qig68JxfUqyvwROw5be8wwJIPz9rgpQh9yH1f52fzR-gB-kbsZSFROQLIQ/s640/BLENDER-TABLET-01.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWv-5ozy6l1FRpgZYsXjcfEftM4sru5iUnIuX1OzicW7MHd_33pL_26NHOG9Z1BdY5a7DSYc1jNwXUhOowfv-u8mBCTmR88GJTwpF0dApnHldxLpUMlRE2UAkBBuCP0Wm11c53Yskb0Ts/s1600/BLENDER-TABLET-02.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWv-5ozy6l1FRpgZYsXjcfEftM4sru5iUnIuX1OzicW7MHd_33pL_26NHOG9Z1BdY5a7DSYc1jNwXUhOowfv-u8mBCTmR88GJTwpF0dApnHldxLpUMlRE2UAkBBuCP0Wm11c53Yskb0Ts/s640/BLENDER-TABLET-02.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It might be a bit hard to make out those settings, but they are the same I recommended pen or not: Emulate 3 Button Mouse, Continuous Grab & Emulate NumPad. You can find them in User Preferences under the Input Tab.</td></tr>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01567541165245536309noreply@blogger.com2