In the steampunk bedtime stories I used to tell my kids, the characters would embark on Earthbound adventures or welcome a visitor arriving via “the gondola.” Serving the same function as the transporter or shuttlecraft in Star Trek, it could conveniently break down when I needed the characters to be isolated, and it could miraculously…
Before CGI, filming a science-fiction story typically involved constructing a physical model of a spaceship or planetscape. In order to trick the eye in to thinking you were looking at something huge, model-makers added tiny random bits of detail, often re-purposing off-the-shelf commercial model kits or using any kind of junk they could get their…
I’ve been using the beta for months, but the Blender 2.8 release has finally dropped. Blender is a super-powerful, completely free 3D design tool. I’ve been playing with it for years, and this summer I ramped up my skills considerably. Here’s an animation of “MoonBot,” a character from the steampunk bedtimes stories I used to…
I had a complex model that I created in Blender 2.79, and imported (with some tweaking) successfully to Unity 2018 a few months ago. When I switched to Blender 2.8 and Unity 2018.2, I found big problems with my model. Blender 2.8b tells me that all the normals are exactly what I expect — the…
Making this illustration in Blender3D was almost as much fun as voicing the role of Electron Jones. This was my first project using the Cycles rendering engine. In the first episode of “Electron Jones,” the narrator describes looking down on a “levi-train” as a lunar transport takes off into the twilight sky in the futuristic…
For my summer project, teaching myself the Unity Game Engine, I’m updating the texture atlas I created for control consoles for the flagship of the steampunk bedtime stories I used to tell my kids. My designs are now a lot less blocky and more visually interesting. When I showed the girl, she was impressed. Then…
EL231 “Digital Storytelling” (Dec 18-Jan 22) Unit 1 (Dec 18-22) mostly experiencing digital stories (reading, watching, listening, playing, whatever), and reading articles & discussing them online. (We take a break Dec 23-Jan 1: no classes, no homework.) Unit 2 (Jan 2-7) trying out 4-5 tools for creating digital stories, and learning two in a little…
For me, summer vacation means spending hours modeling shelves full of antique books in Blender-3D, so that the library adjacent to the bridge in my steampunk ship-of-the-line looks more lived-in.
Here’s a fantasy workspace, that I built in Blender 3D, using various Googled images of old books and this awesome steampunk keyboard. Here’s me in my real office. The books aren’t as neat and tidy. I just took some reference photos of the chair… I’ll add it to my fantasy office the next time I…
We’ve scoured the web in search of the best Blender tutorials out there and compiled a list of 45 of the most epic we could find. This collection includes a variety of tutorials covering everything from modeling and animation, to rigging and VFX. So grab a coffee and savor the Blender goodness! —45 Epic Blender…
Summer vacation means if I am telling my kids steampunk bedtime stories, and the story requires an ether-powered vehicle larger than a life pod, but smaller than the ship-of-the-line where most of the plot takes place, I can visit Wikipedia to look for a class name — I like “sloop” — and then dash out…
I textured the model I created yesterday, and imported into an environment where I was already working on The Griffin. I added the iPad prop to the Griffin’s hand. The railings are the wrong color, the Griffin’s hand needs to be posed to hold the iPad better, and I’ve got to give Griff something to…
[portfolio_slideshow] Last night I used Blender 3D to rough up a model of this stairway, the site of hundreds of group photos over the years.
Yesterday, I sketched a chair I found at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art’s “The Art of Seating” exhibit. I had a spare hour, and threw together this Blender 3D model, and let the simulation render overnight. I only sketched it from one angle, so it’s fair to say this rendering is inspired by the…
I’ve been showing some of my Blender 3D creations to members of my son’s FIRST Robotics Competition team, and several of them asked me to teach them how to make a game. Blender 3D is a fantastic (free! open source!) tool that can model 3D computer-generated scenes and characters, render high-quality videos, as well as…
What started out as random green cubes turned into some kind of shrubbery. I spent too much time fiddling with the bushes. They’re good enough. I’ve cleaned up the Griffin’s eyes, and added some camera motion so we zoom in on his face. His wings waggled back and forth too much last time, so I…
Okay, that’s enough work for one evening. I added a skeleton I had already created for another project, and I added new rigging for his wings and tail. I still need to add the fancy stuff, like having the eyes follow a target, having the limbs move automatically to follow the placement of the feet…
After another couple of hours of work, I’ve added the Griffin logo and a tail (trust me — it’s there). I’ve improved the lighting, and added some very subtle ambient occlusion (the inside of his beak and the inside of his eyes are shaded more realistically). I could probably do a better job differentiating such…