Create awesome 3D artwork for DOSBOX with Blender

Note: This tutorial requires Blender, DOSBOX, DJGPP, FreeBASIC for DOS, and LuxRender

Have you ever wanted to create awesome 3D artwork but did not know where to start. Just follow these 55 easy steps and you will be well on your way to becoming a 3D artwork pro.

We will be using Blender version 2.79 and Luxrender version 1.6.0 build 0). The blender internal engine is not that great so, I will be using cycles for the initial mock-up and then final rendering will be done in Luxrender.

  1. Open Blender and sellect everything by pressing the A key twice.
  2. Then press the X key to delete everything. Press Shift+C to center the 3D-cursor and view everything. You now have a clean workspace to use.
  3. Press Shift-A and then click on Camera->Camera to add a camera to the scene.
  4. Press 1 on the number go to the front view.
  5. Press Shift-A and then mesh->plane.
  6. Press S+8 to scale the plane up 8 times.
  7. Next press A to unselect the plane.
  8. Press Shift-A and select mesh->monkey.
  9. Press 3 on the number pad to swich to the right view
  10. Press 5 on the number pad to swich to orthographic view.
  11. Move the monkey head up on the blue z-axis line until it’s chin is sitting on the green y-axis line.
  12. Press R+X to rotate the monkey head on the red x-axis line until the chin and the back of the head is parrallel with the green y-axis line.
  13. Lower the monkey head until it touches the green y-axis line by clicking on the blue z-axis arrow of the 3D cursor.
  14. Press 0 on the number pad to switch back to the camera view.
  15. Press Shift-A and select lamp->hemi.
  16. Move the lamp to the top of the camera view using the blue z-axis arrow on the 3D cursor.
  17. Click on the object data tab in the properties panel and change the the strength of the lamp to 1000.
  18. Now click on the red x-axis arrow on the 3D cursor and move the lamp to the top left hand corner of the camera view.
  19. Press R+Y to rotate the lamp on the y-axis until the light beam goes through the center of the monkey head.
  20. Press Shift+D to duplicate the lamp.
  21. Press R+Y to rotate the new lamp on the y-axis so that the light beam goes through the center of the monkey head.
  22. Click on the monkey head and then click on NEW in the meterials tab in the properties panel.
  23. Under surface click on use nodes and then change the surface type to glass.
  24. Change the color to orange.
  25. Change the saturation level to 0.75.
  26. Change the index of refraction to 1.333.
  27. Click on the plane and then click on NEW in the meterials tab in the properties panel.
  28. Change the surface type to glossy.
  29. Click on object->quick effects and select quick explode.
  30. Start the simulation by pressing Alt+A. When the simulation is done press Alt+A again.
  31. Swich from Cycles to LuxRender and click on use nodes in.
  32. Click on the lamp in the top left hand corner of the camera view.
  33. Click on the object data tab in the properties panel and then click on Add HDRI map and select an HDRI image.
  34. Do the same thing with the lamp in the to right hand corner of the camera view.
  35. Click on the render tab in the properties panael and the click convert cycles scene.
  36. Click on the monkey and then click on the materials tab in the properties panel and select Rough.
  37. Next Click on fender->render anamation. Rendering the anamation may take up to 20 hours depending on your computer.
  38. After rendering has finished go to your /tmp folder
  39. Rename all the PNG files entitled “untitled.scene.x”, where x is a frame number, to a number starting with 1 and ending with the highest frame number.
    (Example: untitled.Scene.00000.png is renamed to 0.png)
  40. Create the /tmp/demo and /tmp/demo/Frames folders.
  41. Place all PNG files that you just renamed into the /tmp/Frames folder. Use an image processing program to convert the PNG files into BMP files.
  42. Delete the PNG files. In the /tmp/demo folder create a file called demo.bas and open it with a text editor.
  43. Enter the following lines of code into the text file:
ScreenRes 640, 480, 32
Dim As Integer Index
Do Until Inkey$ <> ""
For Index = 0 to 50
' Bload "FRAMES\" + Ltrim$(Str$(Index)) + ".bmp", 0
Bload "./Frames/" + Ltrim$(Str$(Index)) + ".bmp", 0
Sleep 10, 1
Next Index
Loop
  1. Save the file and open a terminal emulator.
  2. In the terminal emulator type in cd /tmp/demo.
  3. Download FreeBASIC and install into the /tmp/demo folder.
  4. Download csdpmi7b.zip from the DJGPP website and extract it into the /temp/demo folder.
  5. In the terminal emulator window type dosbox and press enter.
  6. Click on the dosbox window and type mount c /temp/demo.
  7. Next type c: and enter.
  8. Type fbc demo.bas and enter.
  9. Type demo.exe to run your DOS demo.

Thank you for reading Please post what you make in the comments below.

Links:
Blender: https://www.blender.org/
DOSBOX: https://www.dosbox.com/
DJGPP: http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/
FreeBASIC: https://sourceforge.net/projects/fbc/files/Binaries%20-%20DOS/
LuxRender: http://www.luxrender.net/en_GB/index