BlenderArt Magazine Issue 10 | May 2007

Blender learning made easy

Organics Taonui Face Modeling

Managing Metaballs

Modeling And Rigging A Frog

BlenRig An Introduction

Froggy Walkthrough

Extinction Level Event

Animated Castle Effect Walkthrough

CONTENTS 2

EDITOR/DESIGNER
Gaurav Nawani
[email protected]
Taonui Face Modeling 6
MANAGING EDITOR
Sandra Gilbert
[email protected]

WEBSITE Managing Metaballs 13

Nam Pham
[email protected]

PROOFER
Kernon Dillon Modeling And Rigging A Frog 17
Phillip A. Ryals
Kevin C. Braun
Derek Marsh
Bruce Westfall
BlenRig An Introduction 25
WRITERS
Wong Hua
Juan Pablo Bouza
Javier Galán (chronoh)
Jeremy Ray
David Revoy
Froggy Walkthrough 33
Derek Marsh
Erick Ramirez

COPYRIGHT© 2007
‘BlenderArt Magazine’, ‘blenderart’ Extinction Level Event 36
and BlenderArt logo are copyright
of Gaurav Nawani. ‘Izzy’ and ‘Izzy
logo’ are copyright Sandra Gilbert.
All products and company names
featured in the publication are Animated Castle Effect Walkthrough 43
trademark or registered trade
marks of their respective owners .

COVER ART
Enrico Cerica - ' Tomatoes' Meet The Blenderhead - Jonatan Poljo 46

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EDITORIAL 3

Welcome to another issue of as well as other tips and techniques

Blenderart Magazine. In this issue, we he used to complete his project.
take a look at Organic modeling with And since Organic modeling also
a nice variety of tutorials and articles includes plant life, we have a review
covering frogs, humanoid face of both Arbaro (a stand-alone tree
modeling, a meta-snake and Juan generator) and Ivy Generator (a
Sandra Gilbert Pablo Bouza shares with us how he stand-alone program that allows you
Managing Editor created his BlenRig character rigging to grow ivy in your scene).
system.
So grab a favorite beverage of choice,
We also take a look at the ongoing sit back and enjoy.
project “Extinction Level Event” and
their unique approach to setting up Happy Blending!
the project using a point based [email protected]
system for credit/shares of the final
project. As well as a short walk-
through on the creation of their
Pyramid Builder Gunboat Poster.

In the Making of David Revoy's “Little

Fairy” animation, a wonderfully
magical little animation, we learn how
he created the amazing castle effect

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Izzy Speaks - Organics 4

9 A dialog box will pop up and give

1 Open Arbaro (fig 1) you some import options. The
2 There are various parameters default options are good for now.
you can adjust to customize your
tree. For now you can just go Your tree is now in Blender, ready for
with the defaults. textures and placement in your scene.
3 Time to export our tree. Push the Arbaro also comes with a variety of
first tree icon at the top of the preset files for you to quickly create a
screen. tree.
4 An export dialog box will pop up.
5 Choose Wavefront object and 10 In Arbaro, go to File>Open.
choose where to save it. 11 A dialog box will open showing
6 Click start. you all the saved preset files.
12 Choose one, export your tree
Your tree is now ready to import into and import into Blender like
There are those times when you need blender. before.
trees/plant life in your scene, but 7 In Blender, go to
either you don’t want to model it out File>Import>Wavefront (.obj).
yourself or you just don’t have the
time. Not a problem. We are going to
take a look at a couple of stand alone
programs that allow you to create
some amazing trees and ivy that are
easily imported into your scene.
Saving you a considerable amount of
time that would have been spent if
you modeled them yourself.

Arbaro
First up is Arbaro.
Arbaro is an easy to
Fig2 Imported tree in blender
use tree generator
that allows you to set
various tree Here is a sample of black_tupelo
Fig1 Arbaro Main Screen imported in Blender.
parameters, then
export your tree as a Povray, DXF or
Wavefront OBJ file. This makes it 8 Browse to where you saved your You can download Arbaro at: http://
compliment nicely with Blender. tree and select it. arbaro.sourceforge.net/

So, let’s make a simple tree.

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Izzy Speaks - Organics 5

Ivy Generator
Second up is Ivy Generator. Ivy
Generator allows you to grow ivy in
your scene. The creator, (Thomas
Luft), states that while Ivy Generator
does not provide a biological
simulation of growing ivy, it does
provide a simple approach to
producing complex and convincing
vegetation that adapts to an existing
scene.

The Ivy Generator imports and exports

obj+mtl files.

Tim Ellis, (sonix), has written a great Fig1 Starting spot placement.
tutorial covering how to use Ivy
Generator with Blender. The tutorial
can be found at the Ivy Generator
website as well as in the tutorial forum
at www.blenderartists.org.

On the right screen shot show three

step ivy generation inside the Ivy
Generator. Fig3 Generating leaves.
Ivy Generator, tutorials and Ivy
Textures can be found.
http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/~luft/
ivy_generator/

Tim Ellis’s, (sonix), Ivy to Blender

tutorial can also be found here.
http://blenderartists.org/forum/
showthread.php?t=93125&highlight=i Fig2 Generating the Ivy branches.
vy+generator

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3D Workshop - Taonui Face Modeling 6

While at first, box-modeling appears enough talking! Let's assume you

easier, the problems appear when you have reached a point where you know
Taonui Face Modeling start detailing the model. Adding loops the proportions of a human face and
to the already existing box mesh can wish to solidify this knowledge into a
- by Wong Hua be tricky and time consuming for less realistic portrait.
experienced modelers. Most of them
end up with a face that is too dense in I always start by doing the eyes. Eyes
poly count, yet less detailed and/or are the most recognizable and
having strange creases and various important part of a face. Some might
issues. A lot of the best modelers I've start with another part of the face, but
known so far prefer the polygon-to- for me, if I screw up the eyes, I don't
polygon approach. even bother finishing the face
anyway.
Although it is a tedious method, it
offers greater control of the final mesh Edge extrusion will be your work
topology than the box-modeling horse for new face creation, along
method. with merging vertexes and loop
subdivision. Loop subdivision is a nice
Some very useful tools: Loop tool to have, because we essentially
Subdivide, and Proportional Editing. work on face loops.
Proportional Editing is kind of
emulating sculpt but with lower res
meshes ... a must have for organic Modeling The Eye
modeling. To use it, go into Edit mode,
Step1 Add a Plane to the 3D view.
press the O-key and Mousewheel up
Before doing anything, add Mirror
or down to change the radius.
then SubD modifiers to the mesh.

Having good references are really a

plus. For this face (based on no
photography), I used the Marquardt
Beauty Mask to have a lot of attractive
proportions.
Introduction
There are a lot of methods for You can find it here :
modeling a head. Some people like http://www.beautyanalysis.com/
box-modeling, others prefer the more mba_youandthemask_page.htm
tedious approach of modeling the
head polygon-to-polygon. Take the Frontal Repose and the
Fig 0. Starting out with a polygon.
Lateral Repose for a neutral face. But

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3D Workshop - Taonui Face Modeling 7

Start by extruding an edge from your Step3 select the following edges and Step5 Now is time to shape the eye.
Plane and do a rough outline of an eye subdivide them. I subdivided them 3 Move the vertices in such a way that
(Fig 1). times (fig3b). the eyelid covers the Sphere. Retopo
can be put into good use here.
Step4 Now is a good time to add a
Sphere. It will be a perfect placeholder
for the eyeballs. For the size, the
Sphere's radius is roughly the same
than the eye width.

Fig1. Modeling the outline.

Step2 This will serve as a basis for

modeling the eyes. Select one edge
from the outer rim while pressing
[Alt+Shift+D] and extrude the
selection, scale it and move the
vertices until you have a shape like in
fig2.

Fig4. Placing an eyeball.

Fig2. Extruding the outer edges. Fig3. Subdividing for detail.

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3D Workshop - Taonui Face Modeling 8

However, note that the vertex moved Continue subdividing and tweaking to
with Retopo will be too close to the obtain a shape like in the fig below.
eye's surface. So, you will eventually
have to move them again after
Retopo.

Now you should have something close

to this:

Fig5. Basic mesh for the eye.

Fig6. Obtaining basic lip shape.
Now you have nice looking eyes :) Now that we have these basic lips,
We are done for now. Let's move to let's put them in good shape. Loop
the mouth. subdivide the lower lips and start
tweaking the shape as in fig7.
Modeling The Mouth
Step1 From the Side view, add a
Plane, suppress all but one vertex,
select this vertex and start extruding
a profile like the one on eye modeling
step1.

Once you have your profile, select the

edges and extrude them to obtain
something close to fig6b. Fig7. Tweaking the lip. Fig8. Lip shape progress.

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3D Workshop - Taonui Face Modeling 9

Okay. Now we have decent lips, let's Images below show the nose extruded Now extend the facial features by
get to the nose! from one edge of the upper lips. following these guides as shown in
fig12.
Right now, this is what we should Use edge extrusion to create
have: prominent nose features (see the
image next).
Modeling The Nose

Fig9

Step1 Who knows where the nose is? Fig12

Start extruding the nose from the
upper lips, like this:
Modeling The Ears

Step1 People often have trouble with

ears. This tutorial doesn't pretend to
be right, but to show obvious ear
structure that you have to include in
order to make your ear feel real. Once
the mains structures have been
outlined, you see the ear is pretty
basic. One big lobe and some kind of
a Y shaped bit of cartilage. See the
Fig11 fig13 for reference.
Fig10

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3D Workshop - Taonui Face Modeling 10

Ear structures are underlined here and Step3 Here is the next step. Start
you can compare them with with ear poly filling the ear. Note the Y shaped
reference in fig13a. thing, and the earhole (yes, the place
where you fit you iPod earbuds)
Step2 Extrude the lobe you shaped in
step 1 and start building the Y shaped
bit, see the fig14.

Fig15

Step4 After a while you should have

something like this:

Fig13 Fig14 Fig16

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3D Workshop - Taonui Face Modeling 11

Step5 Finish by extruding the outer Finishing the ear. When you are Finishing the head...
edge of the ear. Subdivide. From there done, radiate from the ear to model
we will work up to the head. the rest of the head (face not
included)

Fig20
Fig18 And voilà...

Now you have a face that is

presenting desirable features like :
relatively low poly count but enough
poly density where it is needed.

If you need to build a higher

resolution mesh, this face is easy to
modify and work with.

For the specific case of the Extinction

Level Event project, a higher
resolution face was required in order
to add finer facial features (dixit
Jeremy Ray)

No sweat. Using multires and

Fig19 tweaking with sculpt tool, this is what
you can do.
Fig17 .

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3D Workshop - Taonui Face Modeling 12

new mesh sculpting tools and the

Blender News brilliant compositor. For users
familiar with other 3D packages,
there are separate indices that
reference topics using your
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yourself a solid foundation in the
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Blender, 'Essential Blender' is there
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Order your copy today, sale prices

New Blender manual "The end June 5th.
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The new Blender manual, ‘The
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upgrade release, mainly to clear up
Fig21 no later than June 12th. bugs and ensure a clean stable
version before the big push to 2.5,
Notice that this mesh has twice the 'Essential Blender', the next book but the developers couldn't resist
poly count compared to the previous from the Blender Foundation, is putting in at least a few interesting
head. But, due to its correct topology, your official guide to learning the new features for us to play with.
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Sculpt tool is a walk in the park used as a step-by-step guide for compatible, new Cast and Smooth
people new to Blender or new to modifiers were added, a couple of
Thanks for reading. the latest changes in Blender. This Composite Nodes were added, and
book is the ideal companion for the a revamp of the old mesh
previous 2.3 Blender guide. primitives was done adding new
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animation, and rendering. In
addition, there are chapters on the Grab your free copy today.

www.blenderart.org Issue 10 | May 2007- Organics

3D Workshop - Managing Metaballs 13

when scaling a mesh object. Meta selected is a meta pattern you can
object deformation is around their select the meta-objects in edit mode.
Managing Metaballs original axes. The handles deform as
you scale, if you scale non-uniform,
- by Erick Ramirez the handles will deform non-uniform
and it will affect the influence of meta
sub-objects. You cannot separate
Meta sub-objects but you can
Introduction duplicate the original sub-objects and
The pros of meta are they work very delete the ones you don't want. For
nice with snap, to make a single better management you must link this
mesh, they respond with proportional meta object selecting its handle and
edit, depending what you are working then selecting any helper object that
on, they can quickly build models, isn't a meta object, and press
among a few other things. [Control+P key] to parent.

A pattern created by a group of meta

objects can change through Object
Mode and Edit mode. The advantage
is better than a pattern created by
sub-objects, even the objects can be
sub-objects patterns. The handles can
move to the twenty layers known and
do a better performance. But the
meta objects should be linked to one
that acts as a meta leader. At the
same time you should add a helper
object to
this group
A pattern created in one single object. A scaled non-uniform meta pattern. and link
The meta object handle is selected Note the influence of handles is the meta
(individual handles are highlighted, a stronger along the horizontal and leader to
pattern is created in one single object. weaker along the vertical. Meta object the helper
The meta object handle is selected selection is different, if you are that isn't a
(individual handles are highlighted selecting the meta object directly, you meta
together), it means meta sub-objects are selecting the entire meta clan. If object for
can only change their pattern through you select the handle of any meta better
edit mode. In object mode you can object except the first one, you are manageme
scale this pattern but it doesn't scale selecting the sub-selection of the nt.
similar to the way you would expect meta object. Yet if the meta object

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3D Workshop - Managing Metaballs 14

If you select Unfortunately management of meta With enough settings I added a meta
the first meta objects leaves a lot to be desired, but, object [Add>>Meta Tube] for creating
object I have made an effort to create the first meta object. To start with, I
through its effective managing methods. I started wanted to create geometry that fit
handle, the with a armature (I took and edited it enough for fingers
whole meta from the frog armature). .
clan is
highlighted
indicating
they had a
life link with
this one, and
if you delete
it, the whole meta clan will disappear.

Rotating the first meta object will

change the structure for the
remaining meta objects even if you
scale or move this. This is an
important feature, you must protect
the life of this one and separate it Meshes created by
from the other metas. meta objects.
I created cubed geometry for
boundaries.The idea is to create an I created a mud
Making A Mudman influence reference about features of
This tutorial demonstrates how I've pattern with a group,
cross sections (wider, thinner, etc.). then I linked this
learned to manage metaballs and how Newer geometry is supposed to fit into
this can help to create very complex group to a
this boundary. box mesh. I
patterns used for some exigent
details.....But metaballs are extremely created
difficult to manage and require a lot of several copies
time. So metaballs features need a lot of this by
of practice and training in order to get selecting the
wonderful features. A powerful PC is box and
required to create with metaballs [Spacebar]
because the program needs to Select>>Grou
calculate the coordinates for the ped>>Immed
crescent number of meta objects, so iate Children.
the more meta object you have, the
more your PC starts to slow down.

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3D Workshop - Managing Metaballs 15

The body Result after several experiments.

The set
Face flow resulting by converting
The conceptual design for my meta-objects into mesh. The decimate
mudman. modifier for reducing vertex quantity
didn't work in this case , so I had to
use python scripts (to use them you
must have python 2.4 installed for
newer Blender's versions). Select the
Poly Reducer
while in Edit
mode, Mesh
Menu
(Header)>>S
cripts>>Poly
Reducer and
a pop up will
appear.

The result wasn't exactly what I Well,

wanted, so the metaballs must be redesigning
Wrapping the armature. I had several the concept a
problems wrapping, it seemed the managed with better methods.
little like
mud would never fit the space. Darth Vader.

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3D Workshop - Managing Metaballs 16

Not finished yet, here is my mudman.

In this case I applied the multires
mode for the mesh, then Sculpt mode
for creating a mud texture and meta-
objects for details.

Conclusion
The main feature and advantage that
meta object give us is creating a fast
union, or a subtraction without much
effort, not exactly for creating large
geometry.
Perhaps it is a lot more helpful in
creating superficial patterns, and
some very complex patterns

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3D Workshop - Modeling And Rigging A Frog 17

Select the second link and [Shift+D Create the shoulder blade using the
key] to duplicate the link and move it same procedure, but now move over
Modeling And Rigging to the right side. In front view move it the blade area, duplicate the bone to
to the right side to create a leg. create a clavicle and relocate in to its
A Frog respective area. Name them Blade_L
and Clavicle_L respectively
- by Erick Ramirez

Introduction
This tutorial will show you how to
construct geometry reference knots
for building an animal like a frog, and
show the problems that I had to face.
Create the leg limb by extruding this
Setting Knots (Rig Creation) bone as above.
In front view Add>>Armature to
create the first link. Go to right view 'Fuse' the clavicle with the blade.
and modify as above and extrude 4 Select the bones shown above and
times to create the neck bones and press [Shift+D key] to duplicate the
the head. Try to create similar bones. Move them forward.
proportions.

Create the fingers by duplicating

finger links.

Align the new bones with the clavicle.

Select the arm bone and on the
Armature Bones Panel change the
parent and select Clavicle_L, then
press the connect button to connect it
to the clavicle.

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3D Workshop - Modeling And Rigging A Frog 18

Now select the frog hand shown above primitive shape for wrapping the
and move it forward. femur bone. Duplicate the cube to
wrap the bottom leg.

Go to pose mode for the armature and

parent the cubes to their respective
bones. How?. Select objects in this
order: Select the femur box and
[Shift] select femur bone (pose mode)
and [Control+P key] a dialog box
displays and select 'parent to bone'.
Then select bottom leg box and [Shift]
Go to pose mode and press M to move select bottom leg bone and parent.
the bones to another bone layer. Back You can see the result in the
to edit mode [TAB key] and on the Frog.blend.
Armature Panel
[F9] select the Reverse Engineering
next layer Move the fingers a little to adjust
At this moment the knots seem fine,
where you them.
but a frog's living style is frenetic
moved the
because in evolution the frogs are
bones.
intermediate between water and
ground, then they're excessively
Select this bone and press E key to dynamic. Hunters and hunted. Their
open the specials dialog box and means of defence are their rear limbs
select subdivide. as springs always ready to act in
danger situations. As the figure shows
above, the back legs don't have
enough of a power spring form, the
pelvis is quite high, so we must adjust
this feature.

Create a cube and select the subsurf

modifier for it and move it to the frog
femur. Select pivot 'bounding box
center' and move the vertices to get a

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3D Workshop - Modeling And Rigging A Frog 19

Note that as you move the bone pivot actually acts like spring too, similar to little. I tried to resolve this problem by
positions the boxes adapt to new cats when they want to jump high. creating the bone curvature for the
forms. femur and bottom leg. The resulting
new bones helped me to improve the
box forms.

The knees perhaps have to be a little

high like hoping insects, but these
Move the bones low enough that the legs are not only for jumping. The
pelvis almost touches the ground for a form of the boxes doesn't matter now.
full crouch.

The head seems to be a little big, so

let's adjust that.

The legs have a little problem because

they overlap themselves, the
Octahedron form helps to see this
problem acting as primitive form. The
Subdivide the bone shown and adjust femur and bottom leg are too tight. In
it to get a curved spine. This spine top view try to move the knee over a

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3D Workshop - Modeling And Rigging A Frog 20

Modeling the Frog levels set to 2 to get the head shape adjust the head if it is too big. You can
Continue the last session or open shown above. see the result in Frog3.blend.
When the head form is OK, apply the
subsurf modifier to get this form.
Apply the subsurf modifier for the

Adjust for frog's head as needed and

for smoother results try proportional
body when you are done. You can see edit.
the result in Frog2.blend.
Frog1.blend Join both meshes, delete some
Create boxes for other parts of the
frog. In top view create a cube and
rotate it 45 degrees and adjust the
vertices to create the body, add a
subsurf modifier to it. Remember to
set 'pivot bounding box center' to
scale faces and manipulate vertex
groups....To get the head, create a
cube with a subsurf modifier with
Add a UV sphere to main mesh, then
add a subsurf modifier.
vertices, and then create a bridge to Add some adjustments to the head,
join them into one single mesh. that is about half body length.
Adjust as
needed
and
attach
other
shapes
like a box
for the
chest,

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3D Workshop - Modeling And Rigging A Frog 21

Add a mouth splitting the mesh and Adding More Features

merging some vertices.

Finish the model by wrapping more

subsurfed boxes to the bones that are
left. subsurf modifier to it and scale it a bit
to get a finger cross section.
Hide the eye sub mesh (H key), and
make some adjustments over the ear
section (frogs don't have ears, but
holes where they can hear).

Apply a subsurf modifier to this mesh

and adjust it to get 3 faces, Extrude Relocate this shape by positioning the
them to form the base of the fingers.. cursor ([Shift+S key]
Cursor>>Selection) over the pivot
Now to create the fingers, go to front shown above. Select the circle we
view [1 numeric pad] and [Space Bar] created and in object mode [Shift+S
Add>>Mesh>>Circle>>6 vertice key] Selection>>Cursor to snap the
Add some vertices over the ear area circle to get a hexagon shape. Add a circle over finger.
to create a depression.

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3D Workshop - Modeling And Rigging A Frog 22

Make the needed adjustments to get lives in a bathroom hanging over the
this shape for the finger. The tip may walls and ceilings like spiderman.
Still, attach each finger to the next
mesh to get a single mesh.

Mirroring Limbs
Now, in Front view create a plane
mesh at the center. Join each box limb
one by one with the plane, select any
box and select the plane (object
mode)
and
[Contro
l+J key]
to join
With the PIVOT options set to the
'Bounding box center' go to Top view meshes,
and extrude the hexagon forward to be a suction device to stick on walls or select a
create a frog finger, for the knots something like that. You can see the plane
extrude, position and scale a little, result in Frog4.blend. mesh
then you must get back to the original Make several copies of this finger and vertex
width and finally create a umbrella adapt them to create others. Make a and
shape. To close the umbrella, with the press L
latter vertices still selected, [Shift+S] key to
Cursor>>Selection and press E key, select linked vertexes, press P to
then Esc key and W key>> merge>> separate. Next, the next mesh to
at cursor or at center or collapse. plane mesh......until complete for all
meshes except the body mesh.
To get
the rear This procedure is for moving the
knot center mesh (actually the mesh pivot
you can in object mode) to the center. You can
duplic achieve this by [Space
ate this similar mesh for the rear hand.
Bar]>>transform>>Center Cursor,
knot Actually the frogs have different rear
and [Control+A key]>>Apply scale
and hands that serve as flippers,
and rotation, but in the next step we
merge umbrellas, etc, so in this case I
going to mirror these features and we
some preferred to make my frog reflect that
need assure that all meshes have
vertices. fact, perhaps it is a mutant frog that
similar relative UCS (Universal
Coordinate System).

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3D Workshop - Modeling And Rigging A Frog 23

Now, start to apply a mirror modifier Go to Object Mode for the armature
to each limb mesh and when the and duplicate it. Move the duplicate to
mirrors have been applied, select another layer. Select the original
each mesh again and detach each armature and on Draw panel [F7]
linked mesh. You can see the result in select Wire option.
Frog8.blend.

So when you are done, you can add a

mirror modifier to each mesh to get
the symmetric part. Select the arm
mesh and detach some of the palm Go and Select the duplicated
mesh in the forehand area. Do the armature and enter pose mode.
same for the rear hand. You can see Rotate the femur in Top view and
the result in Frog5.blend and rotate the bottom leg to get this pose.
Frog6.blend. In the Frog6.blend I Save your file with another number or
started to give names to the bones. name.
Oops!!. It seems that the rear hand is
Advance Editing actually -the ankle!!???....-If you did all
the exercises, select rear hand bone
Open Frog7.blend. This file contains
and in edit mode W key to subdivide.
the entire armature of the frog. If you
Now we have an ankle and a rear
take a look you can see why the
hand. Finish by parenting the meshes
mirrored bone objects have mirrored
with their respective bones. You can
editing and how this setting can help a
see the result in Frog9.blend.
lot in avoiding and correcting errors.

Changing Pose
[Shift] select the layer where original
armature is.

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3D Workshop - Modeling And Rigging A Frog 24

Go to edit mode and select the weird method perhaps to create

following bones and move them to simple geometry but, rather easy???
where the duplicated bones are.
Select the duplicate armature and in This model is not finished but it has
pose mode select the bottom leg and enough information for you to
[Shift+S key]>>Cursor>>Selection to experiment and improve on your own
locate the cursor over knee.

Select the original armature and

select the knee pivot in edit mode and
[Shift+S key]>>Selection Cursor. The
legs will occupy the new position, go
to Object mode and un-hide the other
layers to see the meshes updated.

You can see the result in

Frog10.blend.

When you are happy with the actual

pose, you can start to join all the
meshes as you wish. You can add
extra limbs or more heads to get our
era touch. Sometimes I need extra
arms too. But, being serious, this
model has potential to create other
living forms and geometry references
by evolving into new structures. A

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3D Workshop - BlenRig An Introduction 25

Fantasy, Science Fiction and special (Manual is available as well). And the
effects. results are definitely worth it.
BlenRig An Introduction Besides, I have never been fond of
As a kid I had always wanted to be creating hundreds of shape keys to
- by Juan Pablo Bouza able to get my hands on one of those correct bad mesh deformation.
puppets. But then, one day, the 3D
world came into my life. Well, this is BlenRig: an armature
capable of preventing a character’s
It took me years to learn the crafts of skin from shrinking and from having
3D, and the more experienced I got, those awful glitches we usually see in
the more technical problems arose. 3D. Furthermore, it comes with a
Specially when it came to the complete set of bones for Facial
character animation process. I used to Animation.
see how the proprietary programs
expanded their capabilities and It’s worth mentioning that I designed
became more and more expensive, BlenRig with myself, as an animator,
and dreamt about buying one of in mind. So, I didn’t use fancy
those. But I never had the money to controllers or hidden features. There
do so. is absolutely nothing scripted or
action based. It is all about
Then I discovered Blender and most of constraints. I personally like the feel
all, the Blender Community. These of the model as you animate it, I think
guys are really nice people. of it as a clay model, so, if I want to
move the character's cheek, I’ll move
So, one day, not so long ago I said to the bone that is over the cheek and
myself, "What the heck, I’m not gonna that's it. I tried to keep everything as
spend my life waiting for someone to straight forward and intuitive as I
develop a muscle simulation feature could.
for Blender!", I sat tight and started to
figure out how to do that with the A clay model...that’s a good way to
tools I had at my disposal. So I started describe how I like the animation
BlenRig. process to be.
Introduction
I remember being a kid and spending Getting a little bit more technical
There are some who say that this rig
my weekend afternoons watching TV.
has too many bones, I must agree As you may already know, one of the
Oh, I loved it when they transmitted big issues of animating a 3D character
with that. And this fact may frighten
Star Wars documentaries on how they is that the skin of the model tends to
you at first glance, but once you get
did the stop motion shots, or Jim
the feel of the rig you will see it is not bend inwards at the center of the
Henson,s movies, I used to become
that hard to start working with it
immersed in that world of puppets,

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3D Workshop - BlenRig An Introduction 26

of the joints, as if it was loosing mass. Besides, envelopes seem to be much

Another big issue is that you can’t slower than vertex group deformation.
easily simulate skin sliding.
In order to achieve the deformation I
With those two topics in mind I started was looking for, I knew I had to
to figure out a bone based mechanism develop a kind of "Pull up"
that would let me achieve my goal. At mechanism.
the same time, I did a little bit of
research through the web and found a First I constructed a sort of hammer
few 3D artists that had gone through like armature that would rotate along
the same path I was going. And that with the limbs and pull the skin up at
encouraged me to carry on with the the articulation point.
project.

So, I grabbed a dwarf-like character I

was working on, which was actually
based on a humanoid mesh I had
modeled long ago, and started
rigging. Blender's new Sculpt Tools
and MultiRes modeling are amazing.

I decided to go for the vertex group

technique because I knew I would
need to have much more control over
the deformation than what the
envelopes technique could give me.

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3D Workshop - BlenRig An Introduction 27

Finally it came, the day I reached for that I play around with Blender when I Anyway, it was worth it. And so this is
the shoulders ... should be doing something else.) BlenRig today.

Shoulders, a rigger’s nightmare BlenRig, How it works!

Everything was perfect, the legs were The rig is organized in 5 different
entirely rigged and beautifully moving, layers. The main controllers are in
the torso was done and the head was layer 1 (body) and layer 4 (face). All of
doing a nice job over that little dwarf’s the other layers contain the auxiliary
neck. But then, I started setting up the or "helper" bones and the "stretchy"
bones for the shoulders. or "muscle" bones.

It seemed just impossible to achieve These two types of bones are not to
proper deformation, nothing I tried be manipulated when animating, as
was working, when the arm rotated they are automatically driven by the
fine in one direction it didn’t on the main controller bones thanks to all of
other one, skin was shrinking, the constraints mechanisms assigned
I had conquered the shoulders. And I to the rig.
shoulder rotation was disastrous, the had developed a mechanism based on
chest as well as the back were full of "stretchy bones" guided by little
glitches when the arm moved, I was "helper bones". This mechanism
starting to get really desperate. simulated the behavior of actual
muscles in the shoulder and chest
I spent three entire weeks trying area. After all it was not that difficult,
different approaches, and nothing but I really had a bad time figuring the
seemed to work. I was about to give structure out.
up, but my wife encouraged me to
carry on and on. Everyday, when I Unfortunately for me, I discovered
came back home and told her that it that this kind of stretchy structure
was impossible, that I couldn’t do it, could do just fine with all the other
she would tell me to keep up with the parts of the body. Actually it would do
project. -"If you’ve come this far, you much better than the hammer-like
will surely make it with those armature I had set up for the rest of
shoulders" - she said. the body. Layer 1
Well, then the day came when I could So, and this gives the reason for the
finally achieve good shoulder name of the article, I had to rebuild all
deformation. I was at work, and I of the deforming mechanisms of the
called her and I was so excited!! (yes, whole body according to this new
I was at work, but don’t tell anyone technique...and that took me a while.

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3D Workshop - BlenRig An Introduction 28

the inwards movement produced by

the joint’s bending.

The best and most intuitive way I

found for doing so is by creating some
"stretchy" bones and placing them
over the surface of the mesh. I repeat,
over the surface of the mesh.

This way, you’ve got a helper bone

linked to the bone that is root of the
Layer 5 articulation, and another one linked to
the rotating bone. These two little
Layer 2 All of the rig’s functionality concepts helper bones will drive the action of
are fully described in BlenRig Manual. the stretchy bone. In order to make
Here, I will try to make a brief this happen, the stretchy bone must
overview on how the rig achieves the have a Copy Location constraint
goal of producing realistic deformation targeted to the first mentioned helper
on the mesh, in order to give you what bone, and a Stretch To constraint
I think is useful information for your targeted to the other helper.
rigging work in general.
Now, you may say that the first helper
The basic concept is what I was bone is not really needed, because
talking about when I mentioned the you could just link the stretchy bone
"Pull up" mechanism. The thing is that to the articulation root bone, and that
you have to get the vertices is true. But having this little extra
influenced by a force that counteracts bone will allow the stretchy bone to
Layer 3 move in space separately from the
articulation bones.

So not only does this bone stretch

with the rotation of the joint, but it is
also capable of transforming its
location and achieving a different
deformation effect (this is seen in
Blenrig’s chest muscles).

Let's see two examples of stretchy

Layer 4 bone actions.

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3D Workshop - BlenRig An Introduction 29

One/Two axis rotating joints After trying many different constraints This same procedure applies to the
This kind of rotation is most commonly combinations, I finally found that the forearm in relation to the hand
seen in the knees, elbow, finger and best solution was to parent these twisting, to the Thigh bone in relation
toes joints. They are the least difficult twisting bones to the upperarm, and to the Calve, and to the Calve bone in
types of joints to fix, as they mostly then applying an IK solver and a Copy relation to the Foot twisting
require just one stretchy bone in order Rotation constraint targeted to the movement.
to achieve proper deformation. forearm. The reason why I used an IK
solver instead of a Track To constraint Now, concerning the bending of the
is that with the IK solver you can arm, we have to make use of the
In this example we can see the arm.
easily lock and limit the axis of stretchy bone.
The basic structure consists of two
rotation of the bone. As I said before, this type of bone has
bones, Upperarm and Forearm. As you
may know, this joint can have two to be placed on the surface of the
different kinds of movement, the mesh in order to achieve the "Pull up"
bending one and the twisting one. effect I mentioned earlier. Its correct
The deformation of the twisting length greatly depends on the limb’s
own length and on the character’s
joint thickness or mass.

But what’s most important of all is

that when the joint rotates, the
stretchy bone must rise over the
surface of the model. Keep that in
mind, because that is how the "Pull
up" effect is achieved.

movement is easily solved with some

extra bones placed along the
upperarm. These bones follow the
rotation of the forearm gradually. The
closer to the forearm the more
influence they get from its rotation.
This way, the twisting bone that is at
the shoulder point has practically no
influence from the rotation of the
forearm .

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3D Workshop - BlenRig An Introduction 30

Three Axis rotating bones, Ball As you can see, I've placed three
different stretchy bones, one at each
Joints side of the shoulder. This prevents the
skin from shrinking when the shoulder
Well, these are by far the toughest rotates.
joints to solve, mainly because
deformation occurs at the four sides of
In addition to this, I've placed a set of
the limb. This kind of joint can be
bones that roughly simulate the
found at the shoulders and at the
muscles of the chest and of the back.
point where the leg and the hip
These bones are fixed to the torso of
connect. You can also find it at the
the character, and their tips stretch as
neck, at the spine, at the wrist and at
Stretchy bone the ankle, but in these cases the
the arm moves. In other words, these
stretchy bones have a Copy Location
maximum angle of rotation is not such
constraint targeted to a helper bone
as for having the need of using
that is parented to the spine, and a
stretchy bones.
Stretch To constraint targeted to a
helper bone that is parented to the
I will take the shoulder as an example Upperarm bone.
here.
As I said earlier in the article, the
good thing about having the stretchy
bone copying the location of a helper
bone is that the bone can move in
space as it stretches. This mechanism
is used in the chest and in the back
Pull up effect bones, in order to simulate some kind
of muscle bulging and skin sliding.

I found that having the chest bones

stretching when the arm moved was
not enough for getting a good and
realistic deformation at the shoulders
area. Therefore I implemented some
secondary motion constraints to these
"chest muscles". This mechanism
makes the chest bones lean forwards
as the arm goes forwards, and go up
when the arm raises.

Blending with no pull

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3D Workshop - BlenRig An Introduction 31

The basic concept of this linked Repeat this procedure changing the
structure is to have a helper bone restriction Axis in order to have bones
parented to the Upperarm bone and going upwards and downwards, etc.
placed near its tip, in order to give this
bone a wider angle of trajectory when About IK's and other movement
the arm moves. Let's call this bone
"trajectory bone".
issues
Finally, I'm going to talk a little bit
about BlenRig's IK system.
Next, you need to have another helper
Getting proper IKs to the legs gave me
bone that copies the location of the
a lot of headaches, but here's how I
trajectory bones but restricting the
did it.
constraint to the Z axis. This will make
this bone move forward and backward
as the arm moves. Let's call this bone Basically, BlenRig has a double IK But now, here is the "not so easy to
In Out bone. system that allows the rig to raise its figure out" constraint. In order to
legs when raising its feet, but also to make possible that the ankle raised
be able to raise its heels keeping its while keeping the toes on the ground,
Now, you have to parent the stretchy
toes on the ground. it was necessary to add two extra
bone helper to this last In Out bone
and you have it: the tip of the chest bones. The first bone I added was a
bone moves forward and backward as Here's the basic parenting chain. continuation of the foot bone. Then, I
well as it follows the arm movement. copied this bone and parented to the
Master bone.

Finally, with these two bones ready, I

added an IK solver to the first one,
and I targeted it to its copy. This IK
chain ended at the knees, not at the
hip of the rig.

Thigh - Calve - Foot

The calve bone has an IK solver
parented to the Heel bone. Thanks to
this IK solver the leg can be lifted by
moving this Heel bone. There's
nothing strange about this one.

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3D Workshop - BlenRig An Introduction 32

Afterwards I added another bone for

controlling both the Heel bone and the
Foot IK bone at once, and that gave
me the possibility of moving the foot
as a whole.

Thanks to this IK setup it is also

possible to make the character crouch
by moving the hip down.

Summing Up
Well, I hope that this little article was
useful for you. There are a lot of other
BlenRig's aspects I did not cover here,
as for example breaking parenting
chains in order to allow the
independent movement of the
shoulders from the clavicle, but it is all
in BlenRig's Manual and in BlenRig's
.blend file itself!!

Furthermore, there's a complete guide

on how to weight paint your character
using BlenRig!!

So, If you're interested, go ahead and

get BlenRig at
www.jpbouza.com.ar.
Juan Pablo Bouza
If you have any doubts, questions or
suggestions please contact me at Juan Pablo Bouza is a self taught
BlenderArtists Forums (jpbouza) 3d Artists living in Argentina. He
studied Film Making at the
University of Buenos Aires, and is
currently studying Music at the Art
Conservatoire.

[email protected]

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3D Workshop - Froggy Walkthrough 33

Initial vector rendering

Froggy Walkthrough
- by Javier Galán (chronoh)

Solid modeling in 3d

Design
After doing different 3d experiments
with old tin toys, (Zoomer and
Awesome monkey), I decided to put
aside the idea of modeling from a real-
world toy model and design my own
3d toy. Searching for some doodles in
my sketchbooks, I found a little froggy
that I wanted to model in 3d. Mesh Disassembled

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3D Workshop - Froggy Walkthrough 34

Texturing
To create the texture, I used the
classic UV export script and I painted
the texture in GIMP using a Wacom
tablet. The texture style is very
spontaneous and loose, rather than
elaborate, because I decided to see
what would happen after the render
and post-pro phase.

For the bump mapping tests I used

the same texture, desaturated
(grayscale) and the RGB curves to
crank up some values. This, in
conjunction with the Nor channel,
allowed to me to model the intensity
of the bumps with precision.

Texture map

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3D Workshop - Froggy Walkthrough 35

RenderBlog Blender internal renderer and YafRay, humble opinion, it's important to often
In each scene or project, I often create that gave me different styles. check this "renderblog" directory,
a directory called "renderblog" where I because we'll have a more global
put each render. Spending our time staring at the vision of our progress that will let us
screen, modeling, texturing or extract the best of our tests
How many times have we lost an rendering isn't a warranty that our
interesting situation in our project is necessarily evolving. In my
scene?

Every time that we launch

a render, we're investing
in a time where our
machine is working to
generate a render. This
fact becomes critical when
we use external renderers
such as YafRay, because
GI is a time-consuming
process.

Sometimes while working,

we tend to dislike our
render tests. But, when
watching them at a later
time, we start to
appreciate unseen good
points and other
interesting results.
Javier Galán
Another good practice
Javier Galán, is currently
consists of writing down
working as freelance 3d artist
the render settings of the
and illustrator from Barcelona
interesting renders in
(Spain). He tries to focus his
order to reuse them later,
activities in artistic and
if needed.
creative matters.
For the concrete case of
the frog, I experimented a
lot with different shader http://www.efedoce.com
settings, both in the [email protected]

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3D Workshop - Extinction Level Event (Project) 36

I've been asked to comment on what thing almost all, (if not all), these
it takes to make a project like this attempts have in common is lack of
Extinction Level Event happen. I'll talk about the preparation/poor presentation. They
organizational aspects, walk through usually get shot down pretty quick
- by Jeremy Ray the creation of our first movie poster, and don't go anywhere.
and then let a couple of the other
guys talk about things on their end. A good pitch requires demonstrating
that you personally are capable of
The Project Initiator doing, and have already done, work of
There's been discussion on the quality the project requires.
BlenderArtists.org about how Open a Present a strong portfolio. If you want
Blender movie project can or should people to join your team, you need to
be. Some argue for a total Openness, demonstrate that you yourself have
where even the script would be a already put massive amounts of time
community project. I can agree with into the project. There are lots of
the ideology of that stance, but am people who have a Big Idea, but don't
unsure whether it can produce an understand how difficult the execution
actual finished movie. In my opinion is going to be. And some who want to
it's more likely for a project to succeed succeed by being the boss and having
if it's initiated by a single person with others do all the real work. You need
a clear vision and a high level of to show potential team members you
dedication to seeing it through. are not one of these, and the only way
to do so is to show you've already put
One other quality needed is the ability out.
Managing and Making a to fill as many creative roles as
possible, and to do so with a high level About scripts - in artistic circles it's
realistic CG movie with of competence. There are going to be generally considered good advice not
Blender tasks no one wants to do, tasks no to get involved with a project that
one can do, and art turned in that doesn't have a script.
Extinction Level Event, (XTIN Project), needs a little more work to get there.
is a project to do the impossible. The Project Initiator needs to be able XTIN Project didn't have a script when
Making a realistic CG movie with to step in wherever needed to keep it launched, (it does now), and it
Blender is a task of great difficulty and things flowing smoothly. survived, but there were artists who
perhaps greater unlikelihood, but that were not comfortable working that
only makes it interesting. Although The "Pitch" way. And possibly more who didn't
the project has a very long way to go During the time XTIN Project has been join because of the lack of a script. It's
to achieve its goal, it has been active, there have been numerous better to have one than not to have
steadily producing art for 9 months attempts to pitch other movie/game one.
and continues to make progress. We projects on BlenderArtists.org. One
might just make it.

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3D Workshop - Extinction Level Event (Project) 37

The "Die-Off" Financing over to discuss our revenue sharing

Not surprisingly, most of the people XTIN Project started out as a non- plan:
who join a project under non-paying paying collaborative effort, but it isn't
conditions will not stay. intended to remain so. I'll let Sam take

This is not necessarily a bad thing. In

the beginning the XTIN Project team Sam Rose: My name is Sam Rose. I'm an In this system "points" are given for each task
had so many people that getting them Internet social entrepreneur, interested in completed in the construction of the Extinction
organized was a full time job in itself. virtual communities, and innovative ideas Level Event movie. The amount of "points" a
With a smaller team, I have more time related to collaborating around open task is worth is determined by how difficult the
to develop the creative side of the technology, and "commons"-based economies. task is. These "points" become revenue
project. It's taking longer to achieve I met Jeremy Ray on the Open Business blog "shares". They are translated directly to a
our goals than it would with more (http://openbusiness.cc). We were discussing percentage of the total revenue earned by the
people, but the product should be different issues related to creating and project.
better for the extra time put into the distributing collaboratively-created movies and
story/art. other similar content. For instance, a person who does a modeling
task, say, drawing a ball, earns one project
Jeremy mentioned that he was starting a point for the task. So, if the whole project only
Achievable Goals project to create this amazing science fiction consisted of that one task, then that person
XTIN Project is broken down into four, movie using Blender, the open source 3D would receive 100% of the revenue earned by
progressively more difficult, stages. modeling and animation application. We both the project. If there were only two tasks, and
The idea is that completing each stage had talked online about the possibilities of they were each worth one point, and
will advance the credibility of the sharing revenue generated from a project like completed by two separate people, those
project and make it possible, through a collaboratively-created movie. Jeremy people would each earn 50% of the total
the increased skills of current mentioned that he wished that someone could revenue. However, of course there are a
members and bringing on new create an open source set of tools that multitude of tasks to be done in reality. Project
members, to tackle the next stage. resemble some of the functions of tools in positions, and tasks are not limited to Blender
The four stages are - emerging "crowdsourcing" projects, like animation, but also include eventual
Cambrian House (http:// community marketing, accounting, and other
www.cambrianhouse.com/). Jeremy was infrastructure support. All positions and tasks
30 sec teaser trailer
looking for online applications that allow a will share in the revenue generated by the
collaborative project to create "tasks" and project.
• 1 minute short "roles", and allow people to share revenue
from the sale of the final creative product, I realized that it might be possible to create a
• 10 minute short based on the work they contribute. I contacted flexible accounting application for this project
Jeremy directly and let him know that I thought using an Open Source online co-editable
• 2 hr movie it was possible to make a simple infrastructure spreadsheet application called wikiCalc (http:/
to support this revenue sharing, using existing /www.softwaregarden.com/products/wikicalc/
tools and technology. ).
The plan may be changed to
incorporate more steps if needed. Jeremy put together a "project point system".

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3D Workshop - Extinction Level Event (Project) 38

Section II From there I made top and side views

WikiCalc is very much like a normal for the modeler. I used a perspective
spreadsheet, except that it is web-based. transform on the top view to create a
Being web based allows you to export parts of First Product - Pyramid base for the detailed painting. The
the spreadsheet as HTML or other types of Builder Gunboat Poster perspective ends up a little off this
code that can be embedded in different pages way, but it's fast and fools the eye
online. This would allow us to create a "live well enough.
view" of the spreadsheet, which could be I - Concepting the Gunboat and
used as a report of revenue earned for project Dragons
participants. wikiCalc can also export a tab- One of the things I've been keenly
delimited text output, which can incidentally interested in developing is the visual
be imported into PayPal to "mass pay" look of the XTIN universe. In recent
revenue to project participants (using PayPal's years I've become increasingly
Mass Pay function). In fact, this is how our dissatisfied with the design work being
current revenue sharing system for Extinction
done in movies. Although XTIN Project
Level Event actually works. We will be selling
doesn't have the manpower to build
content through a Drupal (see; http://
drupal.org) web store, and then exporting truly intricate models, I feel like we
data about revenue from the Drupal website can gain an advantage by having a
and into wikiCalc. unique style and designs that are
superior in their broad shapes (if not
For the long term, in collaboration with open their details). II - Modeling
banking and finance think-tank BarCampBank After this I passed the art to the
( http://barcampbank.com), we are I usually will go through dozens of modeler, Zach Goldstein. I asked him
developing a "peer to peer" revenue sharing chicken-scratch quality sketches to make a rough version of the model
and money pooling application that is less trying to get the overall shape of a first, so I could check the proportions
dependent on gateways like PayPal, that can design right. Details are easy, coming before he detailed it. It is something
use as many different payment gateways as up with an appealing overall shape of an eye opener to see how many
possible. This is unfolding at http:// can be difficult. Luckily this was one ways a piece of concept art can be
www.wikiservice.at/fractal/wikidev.cgi?EN/ that just popped into my head.
BarCampBank/P2PMoney in collaboration with interpreted.
people all over the world interested in
developing an open set of web tools that can
let people easily and directly pool money, and
share revenue. Lessons learned from the
research and development of this application
will be applied directly to the revenue sharing
in the Extinction Level Event project.

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3D Workshop - Extinction Level Event (Project) 39

After a few changes I sent the lo-res

model back to Zach for final modeling.
Along the way Zach asked for
additional concept art, which I
provided by taking screen caps of his
model and painting in the new details.

And I added few more details.

Zach finished the models.

III - Texturing
Texturing and materials have been a
big problem for XTIN Project. While
XTIN Project has had no problem
finding modelers, nobody wants to
texture. Since I'm the only texture
artist, I've fallen back on using
procedurals as much as possible.

You can download a sample model

here. Gunboat shader .blend file

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3D Workshop - Extinction Level Event (Project) 40

distorted. I used unwrap (smart With a new image applied to the

projections) to quickly generate UV object, (in the UV/Image Editor), I
coordinates for my gunboat sections. used the "bake" options in the render
section to extract the AO information
To automatically generate my dirt to texture.
masks, I put each section into a
spherical emitter and gave it a quick
ambient occlusion pass. It isn't
necessary to let the full calculation
run, a few seconds will do the job.

The big problem with procedurals is

the lack of area-specific detailing,
such as dirt gathered into corners or
worn edges on paneling.

I found the solution to this problem is

to use a mask for additional layers of Under the
dirt procedurals. UV mapping is ambient
usually time consuming, but in this occlusion
case it wasn't necessary to eliminate tab, select
all the texture stretching. All the "both." This
visible dirt detail comes from the should give
procedurals, which don't stretch even more
though the mask controlling where contrast to
they appear may be stretched and the mask.

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3D Workshop - Extinction Level Event (Project) 41

This is just the beginning - there's not The smear tool is useful for wind- Faces can't be lit by consoles because
enough contrast. The next step is to swept dirt streaks. the clipping start for the lamp is on
take the AO texture into Photoshop/ the other side of the head.
GIMP, increase the contrast and
enhance the shadow/dirt areas. This is For this scene I was able to solve the
a slightly involved process which could problem by reducing the scale of
use its own tutorial. things that would be in the distance
and putting them closer than they
would be.

The last step was to use Texture Paint

for a final editing of the AO texture, IV Scene Set Up As this is a still image the solution
and to add additional dirt areas. Scale is a problem for XTIN Project for works. If the shot were animated, with
which there does dragons swooping in from the
not appear to be a distance and their color affected by
good solution. atmospheric haze, it wouldn't.
Between the values
of "clip start" on the V Compositing
spot lamp and "clip The scene has over 10 million faces. It
end" on the uses three Blender scenes, seven
camera, it's not render layers and one image layer for
possible to have the matte painting.
objects ranging
from people size to Blender's compositor was used
pyramid size all in primarily for distance blur and
one scale. Aerial layering the render layers together to
battles between create the final image. It was very
capitol ships vanish useful for adding glow effects,
beyond the range of although a dedicated glow node
clipping planes. would be a nice addition.

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3D Workshop - Extinction Level Event (Project) 42

Most of the actual compositing work

however was done in Photoshop. At
5400 x 2433 resolution, Blender's
compositor crashes often. At a lower
resolution it might have been possible
to add more nodes to the scene and
use Blender's color nodes

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3D Workshop - Animated Castle Effect - Walkthrough 43

1) How did you create the castle 3) With your

castle mesh
Animated Castle effect?
Here is a tutorial to explain it from A
selected, toggle
into Edit mode
Effect Walkthrough to Z. Upon completing this, everybody
will have knowledge of halo material,
(Tab-key), and
subdivide 4
and will be able to animate a nice times. (W-key,
- by David Revoy magical appearance for an object. subdivide, repeat
the process 4
Model And Material times)
1) Building a simple castle with some
primitives:
• A cube with a door simply 4) Keeping your
extruded model selected,
• 4 cylinders for the towers go to the Edit
• Customize a cylinder to make a panel and change
roof by selecting all the top the "Remove
points and welding the vertices Doubles" value to
together with a high value of 300. Press the
Remove Doubles, don't forget to Remove Doubles
re-center the center point. button; it will
remove vertices
leaving a
beautiful noise
pattern. Press the Smooth button 4
times, and Remove Doubles again.

5) Now with Paint Selection (press the

B-key 2 times ),
Introduction select the zone
with too many
square polygons.
After finishing my ‘Little Fairy’
Remove Doubles
animation, I received a lot of
with a value of
questions about how I created this 2) Join all of the primitive objects two 400, re-subdivide.
animation. This little walkthrough by two with Ctrl+J, (i.e. - select two You can continue
answers to the most commonly asked objects, the tower and a roof, press this process until
questions. Many thanks for all the Ctrl+J, and they're joined) you arrive at a
comments and e-mails!
good fractal point
on your object.

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3D Workshop - Animated Castle Effect - Walkthrough 44

6) In order to prepare the animation 8) Before rendering, go to the World the castle, create an Icosphere with a
effect, divide your shape into objects. tab to change the default blue subdivision setting of 2. Give it the
In wire frame mode, select each background screen. Replace it with a same Halo material as the castle. Go
tower from the Top view, and press nice Paper/Blend combination using to the Physics Buttons and add a
the P-key to separate the selected desaturated violet to Black. Particle Effect. In the Particle Motion
object from the mesh. panel, increase the Normal attribute
9) Done! A beautiful castle. to 200, add a Random setting of 1,
Now, you should have 5 objects. and change the Particle Number to
(See the picture below) 500. Make the Start of this animation
at -10, and the End at 80.

Render the frame with your chosen

video format settings.

Note: In order to fully appreciate the

volume and depth of the appearing castle,
this effect is best viewed from a camera in
motion.

1) How did you make your water

effect?
During rendering, water was the most
time-consuming part of my animation.
Typically, my water is just a 100%
7) Add a material to one part, pure raytraced mirror with a cloud
configure it as shown in this screen: texture applied on the Nor channel of
Assign this material to the other part. the material. It was animated with an
offset in the Map Input panel.
FX for Animation
For each part of the castle, add a 2) How long did this animation take
"Build" Modifier with the Randomize
option selected and a length value of to render?
200. You can now control the start and At the start, I tried to render my
the end of each part of your building. elements as fast as I could,(I only
(If you break your model into more work with the internal render engine,
parts, with more parameters, you can because I have gotten to know the
have the result of your choice.) quirks of the internal render engine
and how to achieve fast renders). I
For faking the explosion of particles limited myself to a 2 min. max/frame.
that builds the castle, at the center of

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3D Workshop - Animated Castle Effect - Walkthrough 45

I rendered my scenes during the 4) How did you make the

night. None of my scenes exceeded
300/500 frames, so it was possible to ray of mist from the top
work on the animation during the of the grotto?
evening, render through the night, It's a fake mist; just a
and repeat as needed. Cylinder with a big white
Halo material, with an
Alpha. I have produced
clouds with this technique;
it is simple, easy and fast
to render.

5) What was the most

useful thing you learned
while making this
animation?
Render animations using
JPG files set to 100%
quality. Sometimes the
3) Why did you choose a Fairy computer crashed,
because of electricity
theme? going out or just because
I chose to do an animation on fairies, of the rendering itself. By
because I really like little fairy's. They rendering individual
are everywhere in my galleries. When frames, you don't lose a
I started this project, I wanted to whole night's rendering. Also,
create a fairy animation to show two rendering individual frames allows you
little girls in my family. Originally, I to make corrections to frames that
had a story with a moral, but I finally contain artifacts. Additionally, having
decided to just show it as actions, a all the frames in the JPG format is
suite of beautiful scenes without economical for disk space
trying to really tell a moral. Stories
that say what should be or not on TV
always bore me. The result was a Voilà :-)
documentary type look at a fairy, but
with an intimate view, as if we were David Revoy
sharing how her morning starts. http://www.davidrevoy.com
[email protected]
A Scene from the movie

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Meet The Blenderhead - Jonatan Poljo (aka Eldron) 46

poly are then taken into 3DStudio Max

for normal and lightmap baking. Hello again and welcome to our second
installment of "Meet the Blenderhead".
I have been trying to get back into
regular high-poly models for rendering In this issue, we meet a user who utilizes
inside of Blender though, since I find it Blender in his daily workflow for low-poly
character modeling for the game industry.
quite interesting and I love seeing
You know him best on the forums as
what people create with Blender, but Eldron. Jonatan Poljo's mastery of low-poly
never get the time to actually make a modeling and his awesome skills in
whole rendered scene. sculpting and texture painting have made
his work instantly recognizable throughout
2) With your experience using Zbrush the Blender world.
Jonatan Poljo and Mudbox, do you see the current
Enjoy!
Sculpt Mode being usable in the near
future for high levels of detail and Derek Marsh (BgDM)
1) You have been using Blender for normal/displacement map generation?
some time now. Can you describe how
it fits into your daily workflow? The sculpt mode in Blender follows creating high poly assets for normal
closely to the ease of that in Mudbox, map generation with it, hopefully it'll
Well, using Blender at first was high- which makes it very easy for anyone be a completely seamless process
poly modeling for me, which later to pick up. when Blender gets proper normal map
progressed into low-poly modeling and baking, and with the tool itself
then, the game art I've done now. However, I think that sculpting is becoming faster.
really an area of its own, just like how
Fortunately enough, knowing high- making textures is, and even though
poly is exactly the thing needed to do Blender is quite a good tool for a lot of
what you do with game art today, things, I don't think it can beat a
normal map generation. specialized tool like Mudbox, Zbrush,
or Photoshop in the case of texturing.
I build the base mesh that I sculpt
from, can be a simple cube to a more It mainly comes down to how fast
complex mesh depending on what the Blender can be at pushing polygons
high-res is supposed to look like. when you want as many as possible
when sculpting something big and
The sculpted high-poly is then detailed, and it doesn't come close to
imported into Blender and decimated handling the insane amounts you
to a workable poly count. I create the reach when sculpting something in
low-poly model around the high-poly Mudbox. However, speed aside, it is a
and unwrap it. The high-poly and low- great tool, and I see no problems with

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Meet The Blenderhead - Jonatan Poljo (aka Eldron) 47

3) Being an artist employed in the there anything that you can share with keep updated, learn new tools, learn
gaming industry, have you had any people looking at getting into a gaming new methods, be flexible.
success in converting anyone using house or professional CG house?
6) Where do you see Blender
other commercially available
Practice, a lot, but that's a given. progressing over the next few years?
applications over to Blender? If so,
what has their reaction been? More importantly, never be I see Blender slowly but surely
completely satisfied with what you do growing in popularity as it has, and
People like to stick to what they enjoy more users becoming experienced
because then you won't see where
the most, and in the end have to learn you have to improve, always look for enough to get jobs in various
what they are required to use at work. ways to get critique, and to have the industries while using Blender, thus
So, if some guy sits with Maya and feeding the promotion of Blender
things you work on be seen by as
enjoys it, he's not going to be easily many eyes as you can get them to. If even more.
switched over to Max or Blender, nor
it's game art, spend a lot of your time
the other ways around. at the Polycount forums, With Blender itself, we'll probably
(boards.polycount.net), many there start seeing it gain features faster
They are all equally strong tools and it are brutal and honest industry than most professional applications
all comes down to what people prefer. professionals and can give you the can add them
most valuable feedback you'll ever
I have, however, always experienced find anywhere. And besides, if you do
that people have heard about "this behave nicely and not act like a
Blender application", so it has jackass on the multitude of CG-related
definitely left its mark. forums around the web, you might
actually get to know people in the
4) Is there a feature that you would industry, and that is usually the one
like to see added to Blender? break a junior artist can need to get
his foot inside the industry.
As far as I know, lots of the features
I'm looking for are being worked on Take in what you learn, keep doing
right now. But one thing would be a new stuff, redo the old, it takes time
faster viewport, since Blender to get a hang of it, but when you do
development has always felt to me learn new things you'll enjoy the
like having faster rendering in mind, feeling of it.
but as a game artist, I'd just as much
want to have faster handling and Drawing or taking up sculpturing when
viewport realtime rendering of you don't feel like modeling is also
models. another thing that helps you improve.

5) From your working experience, is And when you do get in, remember to

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Meet The Blenderhead - Jonatan Poljo (aka Eldron) 48

www.blenderart.org Issue 10 | May 2007- Organics

Meet The Blenderhead - Jonatan Poljo (aka Eldron) 49

www.blenderart.org Issue 10 | May 2007- Organics

Interested in writing articles for BlenderArt Magazine? 50

Here is how!
1. We accept the following:
• Tutorials explaining new Blender features, 3dconcepts, techniques or articles based on current theme
of the magazine.
• Reports on useful Blender events throughout the world.
• Cartoons related to blender world.

2. Send submissions to [email protected]. Send us a notification on what you

want to write and we can follow up from there. (Some guidelines you must follow)
• Images are preferred in PNG but good quality JPG can also do. Images should be separate from the text
document.
• Make sure that screenshots are clear and readable and the renders should be at least 800px, but not
more than 1600px at maximum.
• Sequential naming of images like, image 001.png... etc.
• Text should be in either ODT, DOC, TXT or HTML.
• Archive them using 7zip or RAR or less preferably zip.

3. Please include the following in your email:

• Name: This can be your full name or blenderartist avatar.
• Photograph: As PNG and maximum width of 256Px. (Only if submitting the article for the first time )
• About yourself: Max 25 words .
• Website: (optional)

Note: All the approved submissions can be placed in the final issue or subsequent issue if deemed fit. All
submissions will be cropped if necessary. For more details see the blenderart website.

www.blenderart.org Issue 10 | May 2007- Organics

Galleria 51

Silent Killer - Mathias Pedersen

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Galleria 52

Thirsty - Mathias Pedersen

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Galleria 53

Cartoon - Pedro Augusto

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Galleria 54

Dwarf - Marc Klooz

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Galleria 55

PunkyJones - Al-Haitham Jassar

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Galleria 56

Schnecke -Thomas Kristof

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Galleria 57

Turtle - Marc Klooz

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Galleria 58

Klaus Kinski - Thorsten Schluter

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Galleria 59

MC- Pedro Augusto

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Galleria 60

Monster - Pedro Augusto

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Galleria 61

They Have The Power -Enrico Cerica

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Galleria 62

face_hair_armor (Extinction Level Event) - Jeremy Ray

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Disclaimer 61

Issue#11 July 2007

Theme: Mechanical
Any thing mechanical, bad ass robo,
Heavy Duty Machinery.
Tanks

Disclaimer

blenderart.org does not takes any responsibility both expressed or implied

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expressed permission from the authors/owners.

This PDF magazine is archived and available from the blenderart.org

website. The blenderart magazine is made available under Creative
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