::feeblemind.org::'s list of tutorial (updated 11/06/2006)

[olivS]

Hi all,

it took me some time, but finally ::feeblemind.org:: has enough content for it to be shared more publicly. Basically, I put ::feeblemind.org:: online in order to celebrate my 500th post on Elysiun. I thought it would be better for a so-called "forum Guru" to have a good webpage for sharing ideas and experimentations, especially with beginners who could feel lost with some features.

So here I go for my tutorial list, I'll update it as often as I'll be able to (in order of appearance):

• Material indice: This short tutorial aims at showing you how to give many different materials to the same mesh (up to 16 different indice)

• Making rain: Simulating rain for still images or for animation is a frequent topic from beginners. This tutorial will try to show a simple way for getting good looking results.
• Raytraced reflections: In the past, Blender used EnvMaps (environmental maps) in order to simulate the reflectiveness of objects. But this way was quite difficult, needing the use of Empties (null objects) and layers when a simple reflecting plane was needed. Fortunately, including Raytracing into the renderer eased the whole process and helped to achieve a greater realism.
• Raytraced transparency and refraction: Transparency and light refraction within a transparent material are key parameters in order to get a realistic rendering of a material like solid glass. This tutorial doesn't help with getting caustic spots, which is beyond the reach of the actual version of Blender (v2.36) without using an external renderer like Yafray.
• Working with Area Lights: The main usage for area lights (in order to answer to a very frequently asked question by many beginners) is achieving shadows with soft borders. But they are also useful for simulating the lighting of a supermarket, a computer screen or a cloudy outdoor.
• Working with Ambient Occlusion: Global illumination is a very popular method for lighting three dimensional scenes. Unfortunately, most of the methods are very slow and requires lots of ressources. Ambient Occlusion is a method for simulating global illumination, while keeping a respectable ration between results and computing times.
• Using texture Stencils: Stencil is one of the most useful tip when you want to control finely the way the shader changes from one texture to another, on the same object, and with the use of a single material index.
• Simple animations: Making animations can sound very intimidating, but it is often easy, even for beginers to make their very first animation without great harassment. This tutorial is there to show you how to do it.
• MH Tutorial: modeling a new target: This article offers some hints and help for the easy modeling of new targets for the MakeHuman project.
• MH tutorial: using the Superficial Scattering script: This tutorial aims at showing how works the Superficial Scattering Script of the MakeHuman project. The script is a different version of the SSS script still under development, specific to superficial scattering, and is refered to as the Quick SSS script. It's called "Quick" because it is optimized for skin and other things without translucency. When translucency is needed, then the regular MHsss script is required.
• MH Tutorial: using the SubSurface Scattering script: This tutorial aims at showing how works the SubSurface Scattering Script of the MakeHuman project. The script is a different version of the Superficial Scattering script already featured on ::feeblemind.org::, and, as it can simulate the translucency of the material, it gives more realistic results for such materials needing transparency to be taken into account.
• Blender and Normal maps: Bump mapping is a well known but old technique for faking 3d reliefs. The relief information is stored in a gray-scale image. But a new and very popular method in the 3D game industry offers to store the relief information in a RGB image, increasing the precision and, obviously, the realism of fake reliefs on your 3D models: Normal mapping. This short tutorial is about showing you how to build your own Normal maps without expensive tools, and of course how to use them.
• First steps with python: The first article of a serie published in a french magazine. It is intended for n00bs at programming and n00bs at python scripting. This content is copyrighted. If you'd dream to learn python scripting, this tutorial is for you. If you are already a knowledgeable python user, then you could post useful comments there.
• Creating a GUI for your Python scripts: This article is fully intended for programming n00bs and Python scripter n00bs who got their way through the previous tutorial but actual python scripters are welcomed to post comments in order to help other readers. In this tutorial the reader hopefully gets himself more easy with the creation of GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces) for his python scripts.
• Blender and the Vector Blur: Vector Blur is an interesting solution to go beyond the limitations of regular Motion Blur. It relays on the Composite Nodes Editor to perform. But even if the Nodes Editor could look intimidating at first glance, it's in fact very easy to set up. This short tutorial will go through the basics steps for enhancing your renders (both stills and animations) with good looking motion blur.

Beware: choose between english and french languages in the top right section of the side menu.

::feeblemind.org:: is updated with a new tutorial once or twice a month. For those interested, there's also a RSS feed: http://feeblemind.tuxfamily.org/dotclear/rss.php

All the comments and ideas are welcome, you can post them directly on the website.

I hope you'll find it useful and that you'll enjoy its content!

Cheers,

[mjordan]

Nice work olivier.
But what about having separate pages for both languages?

[Opus]

Thanks much Olivier. This newbie appreciates the tutorials.

[olivS]

OK,

to answer popular request, all the tutorials previously written both in english and in french, on the same page but with english in italics have been split in two: english and french.

Now whan accessing to http://www.feeblemind.org, all the posts show in double: english and french. Top right of the navigation menu, you now can choose your preferred tongue: fr = french, en = english

Please tell me if this new way of browsing the website is simple enough. I still have to polish some details, though... the website is not yet truly bilingual.

BTW, I updated the tutorial list of the first post of the thread, I added the MH tutorial for building targets.

Cheers

[mjordan]

Thank you Oliver. This highly improve navigation.

[olivS]

Hello,

a tutorial about the usage of the Superficial scattering script (MHssss) is available here:
using the Superficial Scattering script


Edit: french version now available

Comments are welcome

Enjoy!

[olivS]

::feeblemind.org:: has been updated with two new tutorials:

MH Tutorial: using the SubSurface Scattering script

Blender and Normal Maps
hope these are useful!
Cheers,

[Arabian Outlaw]

kool thanx 4 the tuts

[olivS]

you are welcome. Since then, there were two tutorials (in PDF format) for learning how to make pythons scripts for blender:

First steps with Python: http://feeblemind.tuxfamily.org/dotc...ps-with-python

Creating a Gui for your Python scripts: http://feeblemind.tuxfamily.org/dotc...python-scripts

They are written for total n00bs in python programming, so the audience could be quite large.

More tutorials will be available in the next weeks (11 tutorials has been written in french, 2 are translated in english to this day, but more are on the way).

I hope everyone will find these helpful.

Cheers,

[olivS]

Please, could a moderator or an admin move this thread in the tutorial section?

It will be updated more in the short-term future...

Cheers,

[olivS]

One more update, after a quite long time, due to the time took to write my french Blender book.

Blender and the Vector Blur: Vector Blur is an interesting solution to go beyond the limitations of regular Motion Blur. It relays on the Composite Nodes Editor to perform. But even if the Nodes Editor could look intimidating at first glance, it's in fact very easy to set up. This short tutorial will go through the basics steps for enhancing your renders (both stills and animations) with good looking motion blur.


Click a thumbnail to enlarge

[animatinator]

Thanks for the tutorials, they're very helpful!