Blender Feature Showcase

This isn’t anything spectacular, just shows off different Blender features. Our school is offering an advanced multimedia class starting next semester (end of January), and I’m helping teach the unit on Blender. So I made this to introduce people to some of the different possibilities for modeling, texturing, animating, rendering, as well as the physics and fluid engines.

Enjoy - and let me know where I could make it better. :slight_smile:

http://streamserver.mtsd.k12.wi.us/student/computerdepartment/data/Movies/FeatureShowcase.mov

nice. it’s simple but it shows a lot in a very effective way.

what about changing the shading for part of it - doing everything with toon shaders perhaps?

what if the ball passed through a softbody “curtain” at the end of the ramp to show off some cloth effects?

try adding a shape key to the ball so that it looks like it’s eroding as it streaks through the atmosphere. ie: add a shape key with some craters in it, and a little lumpiness.

add some static particles - some grass clumps on the rock in the background.

there’s my 4 cents’.

Looks good, but it stops downloading for me at about halfway.

Hmmm. Try some ambient occlusion, and if you think ambient occlusion will take too long, try a low-powered hemi-light shining opposite the sunlight. The flames look a little bit off, so try… I dunno, try more particles, more varied colors. Maybe an adapted version of the fireball tutorial.

I’m at work so I didn’t get a chance to see your work but I LOVE your signature bro! Rock on Christ…Rock on…

Thanks everyone for your comments!

nharron - Thanks for the 4 cents! :slight_smile: I’ll definitely try playing with the softbody idea - I’ve never actually used softbody, so it’s worth experimenting with. And I’ll add some grass to the final scene if I can. The first scene is supposed to be on Mars / some extraterrestrial place - I should change the sky color to make it slightly reddish…

BlackBoe - Thanks. As far as rendering and AO, I rendered everything except the space scene with YafRay - for render times of ~15-20 minutes/frame on my (school’s :smiley: ) Intel Dual Core iMac. I’ll try AO - like softbody, I’ve never actually used it. :o

As far as loading, I don’t know where the problem is - our server is pretty solid, and not very heavily used.

You might be better off with blender internal, cause you could get the same results you have now rendering in half the time.

I guess I’ll start learning ambient occlusion then… :slight_smile: