Blender Drum Sync

During my years of Blendering, I have never ever ever thought of synching a rock beat music (those that make me bang my head over and over) to an animation, probably just because it is soooooOoo difficult to do since it requires you do keyframe (not to mention motion capture) in a tedious way.  But while browsing over on fellow blogger's pages, I found this very awe-strucking and holy s***ing animation of a drum synch.  Yup.  It is.  Found this on digipintura.blogspot.com.  But for readability sakes, I'm embedding the video here as well, courtesy of DigiPintura and Wayne Berry (the creator).

drumsync : an experiment from wayne berry on Vimeo.

Cloth Simulation and Particle Interaction Test with Blender

Whew! What a very lengthy title, yay! ^_^

I was doodling around with Blender last night, reviewing Blender out of boredom.  Things like cloth simulation, particle interaction, forces, node editing, and sequence editing. Below you can see the animation, image strips, and my final scene setup inside Blender.

Animation:

Low quality (faster loading):


High quality (slower loading):

Images (click to enlarge):

Scene setup (click to enlarge):

Chang Kai Shek Blender Workshop

Last November 29 I held a workshop for the students of Chang Kai Shek College in Manila, Philippines. I covered topics from the most basic (interface, 3D view manipulation, primitives, etc.) to some intermediate ones like character modelling, rigging, skinning, and character animation.

I started out with an introduction to Blender and it's current development state with a film viewing of Elephant's Dream just to give them an idea on what Blender can produce at the time. The workshop lasted for 3 hours, half of which were done with hands-on in Blender and the other on theoretical discussions. During every topic, I showed them some of the animations I did with regards to what I'm currently discussing. And lastly, to wrap things up and to conclude the workshop, we watched Big Buck Bunny.

It was so much fun teaching the students of Chang Kai Shek! Not only are they very attentive, but they catch up easily to what I was trying to discuss.

Below are the photos of the said workshop:

Visual Effects Test with Blender

During my past weeks of absence on the net, I have had a couple of adjustments to do, mostly physiological ones and some technical.  One of which is my workflow with Blender. While staying in Manila, I was so boosted up that I didn't notice time pass by and ideas emerge abruptly.

Basing primarily from my boss's idea and the storyboard I came up with, I tried to test my imagination's limits by pushing it further where I haven't tried before. This is for a preload advertisement for iMashups Web Technology Solutions.  All of which were done in Blender (for the animation sequence, models, and scene) and GIMP (for touchups).

Effects include fire, smoke, swirling trails, and gas fumes.  

Here's the initial VFX sequence:

Strips from the same sequence (click to enlarge):

And a screenshot of my scene setup (click to enlarge):

Bolt (Movie Review)

Walt Disney did it again. And this time, it's a whole new kind.

Since the history of film making and 3d animation, many have attempted to release and produce movies primarily intended for kids and family alike. And this has become the trend since then. And I have been one of those fans. But as I grew up, I learned about the technical aspects involved and started seeing things in a different light. Where some of the movies that amazed me before became a point of critique on my part. And up to this time, I can only remember two animated movies that has touched my heart and gave me some real life lessons to live on. "Kung Fu Panda" and "Bolt", both of which are inmeasurable and incomparable. But I'll take this moment to talk about the latter.

Bolt, unlike any other animated films out there, has a heart in its own. Sometimes, there are movies where it kept you laughing because you had people beside you to laugh with, or because you were somehow psychologically obliged to, but I tell you, when I watched Bolt, I was alone, and I kept laughing like a crazy monkey. It exceeded my initial expectation of the movie. On a technical perspective, there had been some glitches on how some characters interact, but that's beyond the point. The whole focus of the movies produced by these animation companies is the story, beyond anything else. And it did work, it did. This is the kind of film that will have you seated and make you cry with joy every minute of the movie.

The sound effects scores 10/10, graphics 9/10, and story 10/10. No movie has ever made me this happy and excited.

To those of you who haven't watched the movie yet, go buy your copy, or better yet, buy yourself a ticket and watch in on the big screen.

Until the next time I see you, Bolt.

Naruto Shippuden 86-87

This episode of Naruto Shippuden is one of the best I have ever watched! It's so packed with action and the scenes are just so unpredictable that probably even the greatest fan of anime couldn't tell what's gonna happen next. I love this episode. I love Naruto! Thanks so much to the creators and to the subtitle artists for providing us with the best subs and translation I have seen.

You can check out this streaming video to see what I was talking about > http://tailedfox.com/page-naruto-shippuden-86-87

New Devices!

I have been net-absent for about 2 weeks already and I'm so glad I'm back to normal. Though those 2 weeks seemed like eternity for me. It's like entering a magical room of learning where two weeks of learning would normally take a year outside.

Getting back home from a 7-hour ride, I'm happy to report some great news. First of which is me having a new Genius G-Pen 340 Pen Tablet, it's smaller than I thought, but I can compensate for the size for now, and I'm hoping my drawing needs would be much easier now since I won't have to carefully and steadily draw with my mouse. I also bought my self a new black a4tech keyboard, just got sick of my old whitish keybooard which ruined my computer dark theme for some reason and I feel much comfortable with this new keyboard, applying only a small amount of force avoiding having repetitive strain injury.

Until my next updates! ^_^

1st Filipino Blender Meetup Successful

Blender, one of the world's most powerful open source 3d application has indeed influenced nations around the globe, and with this regard, I would not forget to mention how this impact affected our country the Philippines. A year ago, we decided to put up an online community/user group just to gauge how much of the 3d artist population in the Philippines are among the Blender circle, and we were surprised to know that what we had initially expected was far beyond the actual data we had. And with this in mind, we started to propagate the user group with tidbits of information and possibly be one of the greatest resource of Filipino Blender 3d artists here in the Philippines.

And just recently, we planned and posted an article on the user group regarding an attempt to meetup with the members of the user group, if not all, at least. And the huge feedback was just awesome. Last 2008 December 26, this attempt of ours had been finally realized, we met some of the members of the community and was very happy with how the meetup went.

We were highly invigorated and energized that every member of the meetup were there to share their thoughts on Blender and open source in general. We discussed topics about the open source community, its history, our involvement in it, Blender as an industry tool, and other future plans which mostly involves Blending.

Until the next time we meet, PinoyBlender members! Below are the photos of the meetup: