Tutorial: Faking Stop Motion

In this Blender Cookie tutorial, Dave Ward explains how to properly lower the frame rate of your animation as a first step towards a stop-motion effect.

Dave Ward writes:

In this quick blender video tutorial, I go over a quick easy way of achieving a stop-motion look to a pre-setup animation by adjusting the Frame Rate settings in the Render panel.

To add more levels to this, you could try and adding longer random frames to simulate the error of the human ways. Moving an arm too much in one frame, then not as much the second frame. Have some fun with it! Post any youtube, or examples below in the comments.

In an interesting comment PLyczkowski (maker of the Suzanne Award winning animation ‘Lista’) writes:

Just lowering the frame rate or flickering the light (not a good idea) is not enough to achieve the stop motion look – you just achieve the low fps look. The key to a stop motion look is a little randomness in the character’s position in each shot. There are two ways in doing this – a clever script, which I don’t know how to make, and would be so happy to have it – or this: In Blender 2.49 leave framerate as is, go to curve editor, and ctrl-rmb click each animation channel every two frames, where there is animation, and when you’re done, change the interpolation to constant. Thanks to the by-hand clicking you get randomness, and only the character gets the low-fps (5 or 6 fps is way too low, in this way we get 12 or 15). This is how I made the stop motion look for “The List”. Cheers.

Link

View the original article here

Snowblind Special Effects

Blender was used for some special effects in the movie ‘Snowblind’, a Wreckamovie project.

Hannu Hoffrén writes;

I work as a video editor and a 3d&vfx artist in my daytime job, but the customer base and the projects over there are focused more on the educational side.

About the movie: I think it is a digital reincarnation of spaghetti western – as in those days, European low budget filmmakers couldn’t afford to film in the U.S., so they used Italy instead – today, budget is even lower so Italy gets replaced by a green wall. ;) It has many of the nuances that the old spaghetti westerns have, quite in all aspects of the movie, but I guess the old film looking visual style is the most recognizable for the viewer.

Snowblind used Wreckamovie to gather people to work on the movie and at one point there was a task about rotoscoping and particles and that got me interested joining in the project. At that time I had just started to make myself available more to the movie world instead of my normal freelance stuff, which basically included creating websites and 3d visualizations. Snowblind was a great way to build movie vfx reel as I hadn’t had any experience working in any movie before that. Also, Wreckamovie appeared to be a very good tool for networking and I’ve already met many from there in person, including Kalle Max Hofmann who is such a great person to work with, but also hang around with too.

Even though I didn’t get any salary (but some cool Wii-games!! ;) ) from working in Snowblind I already got a _very_ cool movie contact (which I don’t want to jinx by telling about it as everything is on early stage ;) ) by showing the material I made in the movie.

- Hannu

Links

Watch Snow Blind:

View the original article here

Blender Masterclass in Machynlleth, Nov 27-28

A two-day Blender workshop, by Colin Litster with remote appearances of members of the Durian team.

Lorraine Turner writes:

Film 15  are pleased to announce a special masterclass with the makers of extremely popular animations Big Buck Bunny and Sintel. Using collaborative software to interact with other members of the Blender foundation, Colin Litster (Cogfilms) will train budding animators in the use of the open source Blender 3D suite so that they are able to continue making professional-looking animations at home for free.

The course will provide an introduction into various components of Blender such as 3D modelling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback. It is a great CPD opportunity for both professional and amateur animators, students, teachers and members of the community who wish to expand their skills base.

The course runs 10am-4pm on 27th-28th November at Bro Ddyfi High School in Machynlleth and costs £70.  There is a early bird discount for people booking before 12th November. We also have a limited number of bursaries available. Please contact Lorraineturner2004@yahoo.co.uk for more information and to book your place.

This masterclass is kindly sponsored by The Cooperative Membership Fund as part of the Pink Snowball Film Awards and Festival.

View the original article here

Soft Editing

From the weird-but-interesting department: an experimental mesh editing script by Wahooney:

Wahooney writes:

This is the result of about 30 minutes of python and a loose understanding of Jacobson’s Verlet Integrator. A method that allows for soft editing of organic meshes. Not sure if I’ll take this further, some changes might need to be made to Blender to make this easier.

Link

View the original article here

Work like Pablo Vazquez!

Well, not really, but you can make your Blender theme look like his ;-) Lots of black and pink, great for working at night. Enjoy!

View the original article here

Blender at CAVA 3D Conference, Leipzig, November 25th

Sebastian König will be hosting a presentation on Blender at the German CAVA conference in Leipzig on November 25th. Admission is free, but you are requested to register on the website.

Sebastian writes:

On November 25th I’ll be presenting Blender 2.5 on a 3D Conference here in Leipzig.

CAVA, the “Conference for Animation and Video Artists” is a new bi-annual event to gather 3D Artists and people working with CG in the area of eastern Germany and give them a platform to connect and get together. This time there will be 3 presentations, of which the first one will be about Blender and how you can take advantage of it by integrating it into your production pipeline. Hopefully I can convince one or two people there that Blender might in fact be something to consider as an option for their studio toolset. It takes place in the new Leipzig School of Design, which I can hopefully infiltrate with some Blender courses ;-)

Here’s a translation of what they write on the website (in German) about it:

“By now everbody working in the field of CG art should at least have heard of the open source software “Blender”. But how professional and versatile is this free tool in reality?

After Sebastian König has given you a brief overview over the history of Blender he’ll be demonstrating with some examples how a production workflow in Blender can look like. With the new python interface the ambitious blenderuser has now lots of new possibilities of extending Blender and integrating external render-engines. The graphical interface of the application has been revised and provides more comfort when operating the tool.”

View the original article here

PlainTextures.com: over 4000 textures

PlainTextures.com: over 4000 textures

Here’s a good resource of over 4000 free texures. They’re not tileable but the quality looks rather good.

The terms of use are:

All pictures are property of Plaintextures. You can use any of these pictures for private or comercial use except of selling and redistributing.

View the original article here

Sintel Easter Eggs

Can you find all the guest appearances and easter eggs in Sintel?

Daniel Creese (riftmaster) writes:

Hello All,

I was watching Sintel, and I noticed this: Proog from Elephants Dream in the background. (See Image)

Post any other sightings in the comments!

riftmaster

Fun! Post a link to a screenshot of a sighting and I’ll add the image to this post :)

Gallery so far:

View the original article here

Microsoft to buy Adobe? What do you think?

Rumor has it that in a closed-door meeting between the big shots at Microsoft and Adobe, one of the major topics on the table was acquisition. Specifically, acquisition of Adobe by Microsoft, to create a powerhouse that would offer serious threats to Apple and combine two of the strongest platforms for delivery of web content and animation: Silverlight and Flash. Some have speculated this means the end of Flash, with Silverlight taking the dominant role. Cooler heads have pointed out that it would be fatal to eliminate one of the most popular animation and content production packages on the market. What do you think?

Cool Opportunity: William Shatner Animation Contest

Can't. Believe. How awesome. This is. Can't stop. Typing. Like. William Shatner. Must. Resist. Urge. To say. Denny Crane.

Okay. My jokes aren't funny. I get it. Although now I'm going to have "Rocket Man" stuck in my head for a week. To get a little more to the point: Myouterspace.com, William Shatner, and Toon Boom are partnering for an animation contest that has my little geeky Trekkie heart all in a tizzy. The challenge is to create an animated video based on an audio clip of Shatner, using an animated version of the man himself. The winner will be selected to work on a major Myouterspace.com animation project, with other prizes including free online courses with the Academy of Art University. Rules can be found here, and media for the contest can be downloaded here.

So go forth! Animate! Take a risk! We've got to risk implosion. We may explode into the biggest fireball this part of the galaxy has seen, but we've got to take that one in a million chance.

...

You knew you wouldn't get away without one Captain Kirk quote. I don't know why you even tried to run.

Halloween Costume Doll

Maybe you missed trick-or-treating tonight, but you don't have to miss dressing up. It's time to roll out one of our most popular Flash animations: the Halloween Costume Doll. This paper doll game lets you mix and match costumes - and teaches you how to make your own.

Poll: Do you have a 3D TV or Computer?

I have one of those neighbors: the guy who'll ambush me in the garage of our townhouse apartments and talk for an hour about things no one cares about. The guy who'll pounce on me when I open the front door to sign for a UPS delivery, and will drag me into his apartment to show me his latest tech toy while I grit my teeth and try not to remind him that I've known about his Dolby in-home surround-sound for a week thanks to the small localized earthquakes shaking their way up through my hardwood floors. His latest ambush, though, actually didn't bother me - because he had a new 53-inch 3D TV, and he wanted me to try it out.

It was...okay. I saw nothing but grainy overlays that didn't quite live up to the promise of being able to make anything 3D, but that could just be my weird contact lenses. My partner, on the other hand, wants one so badly I had to mop the drool up off the floor. Even worse, there's screen envy going on and all the brochures littering the apartment are for bigger models. I think it's a waste of money, but at the same time...I was customizing a new Origin laptop the other day and the 3D-capable model tempted me, and not just because you can make World of Warcraft look 3D. I get enough eyestrain in Icecrown without that, thank you. No - for the animation potential, as many animation programs are now coming out with their own homegrown solutions for creating 3D media. I admit, I'm a little tired of the overdone 3D craze, but the ability to develop and view immersive media is entirely too tempting.

How do you feel about 3D-capable hardware? Do you own any?

Blender 3D is a Useful Tool For Designers

What is Blender 3D? It is a very cool open source 3D modeling, rendering and animation program. It is very powerful and comparable in function and performance to commercial 3D applications.

In my opinion, it can be a very useful tool for designers. It is powerful enough to be used in a commercial production environment.

The following are my opinions of the types of creative field that can use this free open source application.

1. Interior design is a field concerned with elements that is found inside a space. This includes spaces within houses and buildings. An interior designer is a person who is skilled in this field. Interior Designers can use Blender 3D to create photorealistic architectural visualizations of buildings, interiors, and environmental scenery.

2. Game design. Blender has an inbuilt game engine. Thus it allows games to be directly created from it.

3. Graphic design encompasses several artistic and creative fields which focus on visual communication and presentation. A professional in this field must know how to use typography, visual arts and page layout techniques creatively to create the final result of the project. Graphic designers can use Blender 3D to create graphic visuals. The Toon shader allows 3D renderings to look more like 2D illustrations. This can proof to be useful for graphic creation.

4. Industrial Design is the creative segment of product creation. In this modern age, the ideation of products are done using 3D software. Industrial designers can use Blender 3D for conceptualization and rendering of product concepts.

As you can see, despite being free, Blender is a very useful tool for creative work. Thank you for reading.

The author runs Idea Cosmo, a website which provides helpful design related articles such as Free game design software [http://www.ideacosmo.com/gencomp/gamemake-free.html] and Free Web design software [http://www.ideacosmo.com/gencomp/webediting-frees.html].

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Shen_Gerald

Sintel - Third Open Movie by Blender Foundation

Feel like doing this yourself? Find out how here:

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Feel like doing this yourself? Find out how here:

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