Thursday, August 25, 2011

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

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

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

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

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 









Wednesday, August 17, 2011

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."

Thursday, August 11, 2011

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.




Wednesday, August 10, 2011

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

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

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.




Tuesday, August 2, 2011

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