Early Christmas Gift to Self

Weeeeee! I'm so excited! I just finished setting up my rig.  Sorry though it's not a character rig or the like - it's a desktop rig.

I wish I could afford more though, but for now, this will suffice my current needs.

Here's what I came up with:

• Fujitsu wireless keyboard and mouse (for Hailey, my laptop) - I'm surprised it works in LinuxMint out of the box!
• The following specs of my new desktop PC 'Pochi' (my girlfriend named her such, I wonder why):
  
• Acer 18.5" LED monitor
• AMD Phenom II X4 840 3.20 Ghz
• GeForce GT 430 2Gb (96 CUDA cores)
• 4Gb RAM
• hopefully more upgrades coming soon! ;)

P.S.

I'm really loving these wireless devices!

-Reyn

Blender 2.61 Released!

Amazing news!

Blender 2.61 is released! Check out the news here http://www.blendernation.com/2011/12/14/blender-2-61-released/

And the release logs here http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-261/

Oh, Blender, you've grown yet again. High five!

P.S.
Thank you so much to Max Hammond for contacting me regarding my art 'Childhood,' for the jury for choosing my piece as the splash screen, and finally to the community for the huge support.  I'm very much humbled and honored.

Cheers. ;)

-Reyn

Merry Christmas!

Title: Merry Christmas

(click image to enlarge)

After a couple of decision fatigues, I finally decided to go for it and join Andrew Price's Blender Guru competition, for the first time! The theme for this month is 'Christmas.'  I originally opt for a linear merry- and warm-themed concept, but somehow the thought of a Christmas spent in desolation and longing suddenly struck me.  I am, for one, not promoting sad emotions, but instead I want to share with everybody the feeling of sadness, longing, apathy, anticipation, joy, hope, and eventually blissful happiness.

On the other hand, this was one of the most technically challenging pieces I have ever worked on, specifically on the modeling and lighting aspects.

Modeling, texturing, rigging, scene composition, and node compositing: Blender
Shading and lighting: Cycles
Post: GIMP
Project duration: approximately 60 hours


Here are some close-up shots:

(click image to enlarge)

And finally, some 'behind the scenes' shots:

(click image to enlarge)

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Wish me luck and Merry Christmas to you all! ^_~

-Reyn

Pyppet2 Update

Pyppet, which was recently updated to version 2 has something new Blenderish (it was from the beginning, right?) to feature.  This tool has been developed by my friend Brett Hartshorn himself.

Here's a video showcasing what he has been updated recently:





Quoting from his post:

The first requirement of this project was to integrate Blender and GTK3 without any compiled Python modules, or modifications to the Blender C source code. To acheive this, only Python and ctypes are used. The GTK3 ctypes wrappers were generated by Rpythonic. GObject Introspection is not used or required.
Rpythonic is also used to generate wrappers to the Blender C API. This allows us to control the Blender main-loop from Python and integrate it with our own custom main-loop.

You can head over to his full blog post at http://pyppet.blogspot.com/2011/12/pyppet2-update.html

-Reyn

Everybody has Secrets

"What one hides is worth neither more nor less than what one finds. And what one hides from oneself is worth neither more nor less than what one allows others to find." -Breton, Andre

(click image to enlarge)

Created with: Blender and Cycles

Happiness-Video

Here's the camera-animated version of 'Happiness'.  You can view the still image here http://reynantem.blogspot.com/2011/11/happiness-cycles-render.html

Music is 'Melancholic Interpretation in G#' by Connum (http://www.freesound.org/people/Connum/sounds/12691/).









Have fun! :)

-Reyn

Blend In

(click image to enlarge)

This has been lurking in my drives for a long time now, I think it deserves an emergence. ;)

And here are some close-up shots:

(click image to enlarge)

And wireframe shots:

(click image to enlarge)

(click image to enlarge)

Made with: Blender 2.60
Shading and rendering: Blender Cycles
Post processing: Blender 2.60 and GIMP

Huge thanks to Blender's Game Engine and Bullet Physics.  I would've placed the jelly beans by hand. ;)

Thanks for viewing! :)

-Reyn

Ubuntu Pirates Wallpaper

I've recently been contacted by Ubuntu Pirates (http://www.ubuntupirates.com) to create a wallpaper for them and I just couldn't resist the urge.  I sat and thought, got ahold of Blender, did some tinkering with Cycles, and here's the end result (I hope you like it):

(click image to enlarge)

-Reyn

Renderosity Artist of the Month Nominee

Weeeeee!

Thank you so much to Renderosity for this wonderful opportunity yet again.  They have chosen me to be one of the nominees for December 2011 Artist of the Month, among with other amazing artists.  I do, however, represent Blender as the category there.  Wish me luck, fellas! :D

http://www.renderosity.com/vote-for-december-2011-aom--cms-15919

-Reyn

Choice

(click image to enlarge)

 "You are who and what you choose to be."

Thanks to my friend and fellow blenderhead Floren Bautista for the render challenge and inspiration.

Modeling, texturing, compositing: Blender
Shading and lighting: Cycles
Post processing: GIMP
Textures: http://cgtextures.com

Scene screenshot:

(click image to enlarge)

Thanks for viewing! ^_^

-Reyn

Childhood

Title: Childhood

(click image to enlarge)

"It doesn't matter how slow you go, as long as you don't stop." -Confucius

Inspired by the thoughts and ambitions of children.

Modeling, texturing, and node compositing: Blender
Shading, lighting, and rendering: Cycles
Post processing: GIMP

Blender scene screenshot:

(click image to enlarge)

Thanks!

-Reyn

Addiction

(click image to enlarge)

Title: Addiction

"Man's greatest addiction are his thoughts."

Modeling, texturing, compositing: Blender
Shading and lighting: Cycles
Image Editing: GIMP
Textures: http://cgtextures.com

Here's a wireframe shot:

(click image to enlarge)

Journey

"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for." -Epicurus

Another test with Blender.  This time using the 'Cloud Generator' Addon by Nick Keeline (nrk).

Rendered with Blender Internal.

Music by Jonathan Geer.

Dreams

 (click image to enlarge)

"Whether you think you can or think you can't - you are right." ~Henry Ford


Here's my latest test with Cycles.  This time to play around with compositing.  I just love how Cycles handle GI and light bounce so well.  The model was a product of a modeling sprint done by me and my friend Floren Bautista, and the closest subject was the wooden persona on top of my desk. :)

Only the wooden persona is CG, the background photo is from Romain Guy and is used here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) License.  You can find the original photo here http://www.flickr.com/photos/romainguy/6068294974/

Problems, challenges, and workarounds:

- Cycles viewport render doesn't match actual Cycles render (some objects appear pure black);
- so I had to manually save a screenshot of the viewport render, then use the actual render's alpha values to mask the viewport render output
- a little selection feathering and 1 pixel increase in GIMP, then delete unnecessary screenshot bg (to create a transparent bg)

Modeling, texturing, compositing, post-processing: Blender
Rendering: Cycles

And here's my node setup:

(click image to enlarge)

 (click image to enlarge)

Blender Mesh Dynamic LoD Test

This test has been sitting in my hard drive for quite a long time now, I feel it must be shared.  I had a discussion with my friend Brett Hartshorn regarding dynamic mesh LoDs (level of detail) and dynamic texture LoDs.  And I just thought, out of curiosity to build upon his idea and try to generate a similar scenario inside Blender's interface itself, harnessing Blender's flexible drivers system.

You can find more about LoD (level of detail) here in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_detail

Another useful link (credits to Jude Jackson) from Pixar http://graphics.pixar.com/library/StochasticSimplification/

To those who are interested to tinker around with the setup, you can download the .blend file here http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9701519/blender_mesh_lod.zip

Finite Human Knowledge

I recently had a discussion with my brother regarding knowledge, the universe, science, etc. and it stirred my dormant brain once again.

The thought that the human brain is capable to contain ideas like quantum physics, multiverses, and just knowledge in general probably all boils down to how we can quantify and observe things as human beings, given tools we can only contain with our basic senses.

We can assert to the fact that deities don't (or do) exist.  But this is only true due to the fact that we can't fathom or quantify the ideas that we have.  The knowledge bias that we gain is true because we have a certain tendency (or influences) to believe so.  Great figures that lived during the great periods and those that are still breathing today may claim that the universe is expanding or that a god is watching over us - that will only be true once we conceive to the idea and we believe that it does.  The facts that we are currently presented now are, for me, illusory perpetuals of what our mind can munch on.  The human brain is a very powerful, complex, and beguiling piece of matter.  It controls you, your reaction to facts, your reaction to the so-called space around you, it controls everything a human can process on.  Everything we say or hear from other people is an opinion and that goes with the fact that everything we see is a perception.

What if all these things are not, cosmologically speaking, real at all? And by real, we then go back to ascribing via the facts we have gathered and experienced.  What if the text (that's what we humans call it) you see on your screen is not there at all? What if the blood that spurts out or flows to your vessels is not reddish in color but is transparent? What if our vision, hearing, and other related senses is a jumble of other things? But these are all possibilities imposed by my gentle brain. And these 'what ifs' are yet again a superimposition by the collective conjugation of my brain's neural activity.  Currently, we are constrained by what we can sense and observe.  We claim that the universe is expanding (or maybe shrinking), because that was what our scientific observations has told us and the traces from the past has given us.  But we don't know what we really know.  What if there's a more profound way of observing the observable than we humans do?  But knowledge itself is an empirical ascription.

We know that dinosaurs once existed, we know that we humans breathe in oxygen to our system, we know that water is liquid, we know that by moving, we can travel, we know that light travels faster than sound, we know that light can bend, we know that there are billion galaxies out there with a quantifiable number of stars and systems.  Why? Because it is what our mind can contain and it is what has been factually observed throughout the centuries.  There is entropy, which can explain (as human understandable as possible) why we're born as babies and die old and the concept of a past, present, and future.  However, it is really impressive how the human brain and understanding has evolved through the millenia and it never ceases to amaze me.

What I simply wanted to share is that there is always a possibility to everything, or probably the impossibility that comes along with it.  I may not live old enough to witness the possibilities emerge but one thing is for sure, the human mind will always be trapped by the thoughts it concurs.


"Knowing is believing."

-Reyn

Big Buck Bunny Sighting

Wow! I was surprised last November 7 to see Big Buck Bunny for the first time used as product video here in the Philippines.

Here are two photos I snuck (just couldn't resist it):

Follow Your Heart

 (click image to enlarge)

Made with: Blender and GIMP
Rendered with: Blender Cycles

Inspired by the late Steve Jobs' philosophies.

Phrases extracted from "What Will Matter" by Michael Josephson
and from Steve Jobs adage.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's
life.  Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the
results of other people's thinking.  Don't let the noise of
other people's opinions drown out your own inner voice.  And
most important, have the courage to follow your heart and
intuition.  They somehow already know what you truly want to
become.  Everything else is secondary."

Happiness (Cycles Render)

(click image to enlarge)

UPDATE:
I have read a few comments on the internet mentioning that this image is disturbing and inappropriate.  I could not blame them for visually judging it as such.  Some have even interpreted the image as it relates to drugs and such.


I am writing this update to clear the concept once and for all.  I, as the creator and my own beholder, should not, in the first place, be elaborating this creation in any of its forms.  But since I published it publicly, I believe I am held responsible in at least trying to convey the message blatantly, though I believe this would somehow stain the very reason that art is interpreted as is.  And yet, everything is an opinion, and I admire what other viewers have in their minds.


I created this image to portray 'Happiness' as how I see it around me.  I did not interpret it as the cheesy cute cuddly smiling teary eye type of happiness, that would be too obvious and senseless.  This emotion that I am depicting is the happiness that surfaces amidst pain, fear, and the like (shown through the syringe, since it's an object that some people fear from childhood to adulthood), amidst indiference, misery, and dogma (indicated by the monotonous uniform sad faces around our subject).


The image is trying to imply that no matter how difficult life gets, no matter how everyone else judges you for who they 'think' you are, no matter how painful your experiences have caused you, and no matter how bitter your entire life has been, you still smile and stay happy because that's the only sane thing left to do; to live a positive life and treat everything you're going through as just challenges and trials.


I am hoping I made everything clear now. ;)









"Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident.  It's not a matter of circumstance, but of choice."

Yay! This is my first Blender Cycles render ever. It is so much fun to play around with, probably summarized by "joy > frustration".

I hope you like my latest artwork and as always, I'd love to hear your opinion on the image.  Thanks in advance!

Created with: Blender 2.60
Rendered with: Cycles
Post-processing: Blender 2.60 and GIMP

Sunshine Featured at Aniboom's Channel

Yay yay yay! Huge thanks to Aniboom (http://www.youtube.com/user/aniBOOM) for featuring 'Sunshine' in their Youtube Channel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bspc3l0tc4&feature=channel_video_title).  I really have to work harder on story development next time I create my short. ;)

Regards, everyone! Thanks again for the inspiration!

UPDATE:
I believe someone just caught what I really wanted to imply with this short.  One user commented on this video over at Aniboom's channel and by far, is the closest to what I have originally envisioned.  To quote:

"this is what i think of the meaning:

you where given a heart (love).. but you will just kick it away like nothing.. (avoid,throw it ect).. and.. when ur about to do it.. something struck u.. more like a realization.. that.. what ever happens.. even if u hated it.. that love will always be there.. to calm u down, or even to guide u.. :)

in an easy way... its hard to live without love.... like... its hard to live without a companion.. :))

ganda100filipina"  

-Reyn

Blender Viewport Shading Question

UPDATE:


Build used: http://graphicall.org/45


I recently noticed that this option only appears whenever I have Cycles Add-on enabled (using a Cycles build).  What I think it does is it shows you a material preview on your viewport instead of just seeing the default 'Viewport Color' as shown under the 'Settings' subcontext under 'Material'.  As far as what I can see, the 'Material Viewport Shading' reflects what you have as 'Surface Color'.  However, I am not 100% sure if this is really the case.  If anybody could confirm, I'd appreciate it. :)

(click image to enlarge)

Hi, everyone!

I noticed recently this new (or was I too outdated to even notice?) 'Material' viewport shading (see screenshot below).  Clearly, what is this used for? I regularly use Textured, Shaded, and Wired, and was wondering if 'Material' has a better option elsewhere.

I'd love to hear your opinion. ;)

-Reyn

Memories

Non-Blender related

The past may have been history, but the memories it left behind remains for eternity.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!





This is my first experiment at a
2D-ish style with Blender. :)

Length: 52 seconds
Tools: Blender, GIMP
Music and Sound Effects: http://soundsnap.com
Modeling, Texturing, Animation, Lighting, Compositing, Sequencing, Sound Design: Reynante M. Martinez
Contact: reynantem@gmail.com

Blog Template Updated

It's been a while since I last touched my blog's design.  It feels great to see something fresh, and yes, I made it a bit wider too, makes it feel a little less claustrophobic. ;)

I'd probably post my Halloween present in a few hours, so stay in touch.

-Reyn

Blender 2.60 Released

*I'll join the traffic*

Ni hao! ;)

Weeeeeeee! Another milestone for Blender 3D has been set! In preparation for Blender 2.61's goodies, 2.60 presents a handful of niceties that you should pick up.  One of my favorites is the animation improvement.  For everything else, I'll definitely tinker around and get blown!

To the Blender Community, Blender Developers, and Blender Artists - CONGRATULATIONS!

Links you don't want to miss:
http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-260/
http://aligorith.blogspot.com/2011/08/gsoc11-end-of-summer-report.html

Have fun and happy Blending!

-Reyn

Sunshine-Breakdown

Hi! Still in relation to my previous posts, I made a quick breakdown of the steps involved in achieving the final look of my recent short film (I still don't feel comfortable saying that).







Again, you can watch the short at http://vimeo.com/30351826

Some descriptive paragraphs at http://reynantem.blogspot.com/2011/10/sunshine-blender-short.html

And the still image that I rendered along with it at http://reynantem.blogspot.com/2011/10/sunshine-still.html

Sunshine-Still

(click image to enlarge)

This is a follow-up post to my "Sunshine" short.  Here's a still image version of the video.

C&Cs would be greatly appreciated.

Made with: Blender and GIMP

You can also view the video here http://reynantem.blogspot.com/2011/10/sunshine-blender-short.html

Sunshine, a Blender Short

Hi, everyone! I'm back again after a tad blog absence.  I'm happy to present you my latest 'sort-of-short', created entirely with Blender 2.5, with help from GIMP and Audacity.

I definitely learned a lot during the production of this short, much of which I could've done differently.  But    like any other projects I do, I realized it too late and couldn't go back; I could, in fact, but it will definitely eat up my time.  So I called it quits and moved on.  I'm hoping you will all like it.  And as usual, I'd love to hear what you think of it, the more constructive, the more I'd appreciate. ;)

Thanks so much to my girlfriend, with which I dedicate this to, for inducing me with the creative juices that had me hooked for quite a long time (or so I felt).

I'm hoping I could be fueled by the same, if not better, creative juices again, and come up with another short (with a better story this time).  But who knows.

For now, I'll take 3 minutes of your life.  Fullscreen highly suggested.  Enjoy!







You can also view the still image version here http://reynantem.blogspot.com/2011/10/sunshine-still.html

And the breakdown video here http://reynantem.blogspot.com/2011/10/sunshine-breakdown.html

Thank you so much to Aniboom for the feature http://reynantem.blogspot.com/2011/11/sunshine-featured-at-anibooms-channel.html

Vote Blender as Open Source Multimedia Software

Our beloved Blender has been nominated and made it to top 5 in Packt Publishing's 2011 Open Source Awards, under the category Open Source Multimedia Software. Let's get on and vote Blender on the Packt voting page here > http://www.packtpub.com/open-source-awards-home.

Good luck, Blender!

;)

-Reyn

6th Anniversary and a Year Older

(fullscreen please)


Created with: Blender, GIMP, and Audacity

Oh my, time flies by so fast! Last time I remembered, I was at a different desk reminiscing on the same thought that I do now.  It's been a great year for me and with the people who have been a part of it.

Thank you so much to everyone who has influenced and affected me one way or another.  It has also been a great Blender year for me, so many great things have happened since.  To my future wife, friends, my family, and to the Blender and CG community, my huge thanks to you all! I'd never be where I am now if it weren't for you.

I don't feel older though. ;)

-Reyn

Tomorrow, 6th Anniversary and a Year Older

Yay! Tomorrow, I will turn a year older and it'll be me and my girlfriend's 6th anniversary! Weeee!

In advance, thanks to everyone who has been part of our lives.

I'm hoping I could make it in time to finish this small present for my girlfriend,
of course, all thanks to Blender as my authoring tool.

;)

See ya!

Logo Concept with GIMP

Last week, after a Blender pressure from work, I was able to somehow extract my creative juices (just like how you would a ripe orange) and fulfill something I could at least be happy about.  Great timing that one of the groups over at Facebook that I am involved in had this call for a logo concept.  In an instant, I had this sudden burst: got a piece of paper and drew with my pen.  I didn't feel time pass by then, when I realized I was already exporting my final image with GIMP.

Anyhow, enough talk.  I just wanted to share with you this quick doodle I did and I'm hoping the Facebook group I submitted it to would appreciate my concept too.

"Lapis", by the way, is the Tagalog (Filipino) word for pencil.

The concepts I derived out of this was mostly letter-based and directly interpreted in our local language.

Let me know what you think. ;)

-Reyn

(click image to enlarge)

Compiling Blender 2.5x SVN with Ffmpeg Using Scons

I did this in a Linux Mint 11 64-bit machine (Ubuntu 11.04-based).

At long last, my struggle is over.

Huge thanks to Campbell Barton and to Davis Sorenson for the patience and tips while I was in IRC at the #blendercoders channel (such a friendly place, btw!)

However, I wouldn't have made it through without the user who goes by the alias Cobe571.  Without him linking his guide, I would be stuck and would have to probably wait for better seamless support in Blender and ffmpeg.  It can really really be a pain to set all these up.  The last minute, I almost gave up and just decide to use the premade builds available at Graphicall (which are really handy if you want something out of the box).

Thoroughly, I followed Cobe571's guide over at http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User_talk:Cobe571.  However, I had to do few modifications on my own since my system didn't recognize or was not able to execute some of the commands mentioned.  Namely, under the section "- Compiling FFMPEG in a non default path", I had to remove "--enable-libgsm" and "--enable-libdc1394".  Don't ask me what they are for, I personally don't know.  Then finally, when I executed Blender (from the /install/linux folder), it couldn't find certain library dependencies, in this case "libavfilter".  So I went ahead and did a "sudo apt-get install libavfilter-dev", and that did the magic! Now I'm able to run a Blender with ffmpeg support compiled on my system.

Many many thanks to you guys!

Again, I highly suggest you go over this page > http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User_talk:Cobe571

Steady

"Steady movement is more important than speed, much of the time. So long as there is a regular progression of stimuli to get your mental hooks into, there is room for lateral movement. Once this begins, its rate is a matter of discretion."

- Corwin, Prince of Amber

2011-Aug-07 Photography

Memories taken last 2011_Aug_07 during the "It's a Doll Thing" Openshoot held at La Mesa Ecopark, Quezon City, Philippines.

Snuck out from the crowd and shot these. ;)

Hope you like them.  I'd love to hear your constructive criticisms too.  Bring it on, please.

-Reyn

New Compositor Nodes Patch for Blender

To those of you who likes to play around Blender's Compositor Nodes, this is good news (well, it was great news for me at least!).  BlenderArtists user -efbie- has recently made a patch that adds a few compositor nodes, some of which I'm very eager to try out myself.

My top two favorites: Vibrance and HCL. :)

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?229238-User-testing-needed-New-compositor-nodes-patch-Vibrance-HCL-Pixelize-...

-Reyn

Blender 2011 Siggraph Demo Reel

At long last, Mike Pan was able to post online the glitch-free version of the Blender Demo Reel that was presented at 2011 Siggraph.  It contains works from fellow Blender artists around the world.  I'm very happy that Blender is slowly moving in to the industry and is being recognized for.

Thanks so much to Mike Pan for the inclusion. ;)

Watch the video below:






Credits go to (in order of appearance):

• Andre Baran
• Ian Hubert
• ProMotion Studios/RedCartel
• Ethan Luo
• Sylvain Moisset
• Blender Foundation
• Olivier Amrein
• Ovni VFX
• Mike Pan
• Mariusz Kaczmarek
• Alexander Zubkov
• Oscar Baechler
• Rogerio Perdiz
• Lee Salvemini
• Pudu Pudu Studio
• Jesus A. Olmos
• Angela Guenette
• Oliver Villar
• Mox Studios
• Martins Upitis
• Vitor Balbio
• Miklos Falvay
• Milk Animation and Design
• Daniel Widmann
• Andrew Price
• UBC Fisheries Centre
• Institute of Clinical Physiology (ICN)
• George (Dong Hoon) Kim
• Martins Upitis
• Pepe School Land
• Endre Barath
• Anniina Pykari et al.
• L. Gogol
• Reynante Martinez (yours truly ^_^)
• Erik Jansson

Have fun!

-Reyn

Realtime Preview of Procedural Textures

I've been thinking about this for over a year already and haven't found the right words to explain it, I do hope now I do.

Since I started with 3D years ago, I haven't been able to find a way to preview in realtime the procedural textures that are mapped to a surface.  To those of you who are not aware, procedural textures are mathematically-computed textures that represents some elements like cloud, marble, wood, etc.  I do not have the super accurate technical description of them, so I guess this Wikipedia article might help you a bit > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_texture.

I would like to pose this question to the entire CG community, or if I may, to the Blender community as well.  So far the only methods I have found to show the procedurally-generated textures is to bake them into an image and map them consequently to your object's surfaces.  However, if you wanted to make quick and often random changes to your procedural textures, you have to rebake the textures and save them to disk and view them on the viewport, and this will go on and on.  It would be nice to see a feature whereby as you tick some values like scale, rotation, depth, contrast, turbulence, etc. the results are being shown to you in realtime, which would make more sense instead of trying to guess everytime and relying on the small previews alone to visualize how this texture will affect the surface of an object, which could have several contours and weird shapes for example.

Another option I have thought of would be (if the above case is not possible) would be to "fake" it and tell the program to generate images from the procedural textures, something like an on-the-fly  baking of textures in the background then sending them to a fake mapping of some kind thus viewable on the viewport.  Though I am not entirely aware how this could affect processing and memory issues on the system, but I'm confident there would be ways to speed up the process using some kind of emulation techniques or some code hacks (I think I don't know what I'm taking about there for a sec). ;)

I would like to directly ask the developers themselves if there was a way to implement this but I don't have access to some of their contact details.  Hopefully they'll be able to comment on this post and let me know their thoughts on this topic.

On a sidenote, I'm not sure if this, in any way, is related to the Infinite Detail technology that has been recently developed.  Though I would not want to directly relate this to voxel data and what not.  What I would love to see would simply be procedural textures being viewed on the 3d window (be it DirectX, GLSL, OpenGL, etc.).  I know it sounds too simple but might be harder to implement.

This is just my two cents and please let me know if you have any wild or constructive thoughts on this that might clear things up or benefit someone or something in the future.

Also, let me know if this technique was already implemented in some packages like Blender, Maya, 3dsmax, Houdini, Cinema4d, Lightwave, and XSI (I know I missed a lot, pardon me for that).


Happy CGing, everyone! ^_^

-Reyn

Constraints (Still and Video)

Howdy, everyone! The busy world is starting to creep on me.  However, I still, as much as I could, to find time to doodle around with some CG stuff and what not.

I present to you my latest Blender test, something like an exercise.  Just something to feed my urge for some personal and self-decided artwork.  This was initially inspired by The Thinker by Auguste Rodin.

The music in the video is by Maya Filipic.

Modeling, rigging, shading, texturing, compositing,
and sequencing: Blender 2.5

Post-processing: GIMP

BlenderArtists Thread: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?228783-Constraints 

The Good Side of Everything

I recently received a text message from my dad and I thought I'd share it to you as well.  Probably something to start your day with.

"Life is hard because we see the obstacles not the geals.


It is painful because we see the tears not the smiles.


Many are rejected because we see their faults not their righteous deeds.


They are also weak because we see their failures not their success.


It is the way we look at things that makes the journey worthwhile."

One of THE BEST UI Improvements in Blender by Bassam

Oh, wow, this is verrrrrrRy exciting! It made my day.  Right before my eyes, it "flashed" how flexible, programmable, and powerful Blender 2.5 is in the right hands and the right mind.

This demo was done in Siggraph 2011 as a proof of what I just stated above.  And surprisingly, it was presented by none other than Bassam Kurdali himself, all hail. ;)

Oh, boy, gotta love Blender.  Weeeeee! Check out the vid below by Colin Levy.

Blender 2.59 Splash Screen Selection

Ben, Hjalti, and I have almost come to a conclusion, well, a top two from the huge amount of selection. And did I mention we've had couple of headaches? Man it was very very difficult to choose and decide which ones go in and out and why.

Anyhow, we're happy that it now comes down to two choices, much easier (or not) to choose now than before.

I'll keep you guys posted which one we declare the winner of the Blender 2.59 Splash Screen Contest.

:)

-Reyn

Unlimited Detail Real-Time Rendering

During the past months, I came across this interesting technology which presented unlimited detail on polygons for real-time viewing, just like you would in games.  All I thought, this technology naturally died due to the long absence.  But just recently, the same group which presented the mind-boggling tech has returned with some announcements.  I really couldn't tell how this would go, but see it for yourself.

What Will Matter

The CEO and President of the company I'm working with lent us this bond paper with a scanned page on it containing an article (probably from a newspaper).  And it contains the words by Francis J. Kong which you'll read below.  I thought I'd share the same experience I felt and realized after reading the words and hopefully, you'll find the messages worth imbibing.

"What will matter is not what you bought, but what you built;
not what you got, but what you gave.

What will matter is not your success, but your significance.

What will matter is not what you learned, but what you taught.

What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage,
or sacrifice that enriched, empowered, or encouraged others
to emulate your example.

What will matter is not your competence, but your character.

What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how
many will feel a lasting loss when you're gone.

What will matter is not your memories, but the memories that
live in those who loved you.

What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by
whom and for what.

Living a life that matters desn't happen by accident.

It's not a matter of circumstance, but of choice.

Choose to live a life that matters."

- Francis J. Kong

Blender 2.59 Splash Contest DEADLINE

You might have read my previous post last July 22 about the Blender 2.59 splash screen contest announced a few weeks ago.  If not, you can head back to http://reynantem.blogspot.com/2011/07/blender-259-splash-contest.html.

Sooooo, to those of you wondering, the deadline is already announced and we're expecting to see all entries by that time and probably announce the winner a day after that.

The deadline of submission is on AUGUST 2, 2011.

I, Hjalti Hjálmarsson, and Ben Simonds will pick the winner and we'll announce it then.  Good luck, everyone! May the best image win! :)

More info can be found on the BlenderArtists thread > http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?225288-Blender-2.59-splash-contest

-Reyn

New Dilation for Texture Filtering

Weeeee! Check out this cool new feature recently implemented on Blender's texture baker; now I won't have to really really have to hide my marked seams just to work around the not-so-seamless textures (before) that were baked.

Thanks to Sergey for the post on the Blender Development Blog.

Here's the link to the post itself:
http://code.blender.org/index.php/2011/07/new-dilation-for-texture-filtering/

2011 48 Hour Film Project Commencing!

It's this time of year again (why do I keep saying this?) and the Richmond 48 Hour Film Project is back.  This time, to shake again the film-making industry, with a bit of twist.

For more info on this, check http://www.48hourfilm.com/richmond/

Led by some guys crazier than me, we as part of the Hand Turkey Studios is joining in this blast! I will be joining in as one of the artists from Team International, including Blender personalities like Bassam Kurdali, Sebastian Koenig, and Jonathan Williamson to name a few.  Kudos to Jason Van Gumster for organizing the team and giving us something to deviate from our own sanities.

Below is a link to the blog post from Jason Van Gumster himself:

http://www.handturkeystudios.com/archives/245