Book WIP - Blender Foundations - DONE!

[Fax]

Hey guys,

I should have opened this thread long ago, but somehow only thought of doing it now. As you may have noticed from my sig, I have a blog where I’m documenting my learning process with Blender. The backbone of that learning process is being Roland Hess’ Blender Foundations book, so I’ve been posting my results as I work through it.

Hoping to reach a broader audience of newbies like me who could be motivated by my progress, I’ll now update this thread every time I publish a new Blender Foundations -related post there.

Since I’m already half-way through, you can check the base post which has links to every post I made on each chapter:

http://faxonblender.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/blender-foundations/

The last few days I’ve been working on UV unwrapping (the hard way) to surface the character. Here’s a picture of how that turned out:

And here’s the link to the blog post with more info: http://faxonblender.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/chapter-7-episode-iv/

Next in line: painting textures directly in Blender.

[Modron]

great character. is that a spec map? looks good.

[Fax]

Thanks Modron Yep, the book guides through getting front and side pictures of someone for projection painting onto a UV map, and then using that painted UV map as a base to quickly generate simple bump and spec maps with GIMP. Cool stuff :yes:

[Fax]

Chapter 7 is done! Covering painting textures directly onto subjects and camera projection.

Here is the final surfaced scene, before we start animating:

and here are the links to the last two blog posts, with more info and pics:

Chapter 7, Episode V
Chapter 7, Episode VI

The next chapter is actually an introduction to sculpting, so rigging, shape keys and then finally animation itself will have to wait a bit more.

[Fax]

Chapter 8, on Sculpting, was a quickie Just a quick introduction, but pretty informative. And something awesome: despite many months of revisions, the sculpting UI changed a lot and had a lot of additions, but the instructions from the book are still incredibly accurate, with only one key binding being different now. Talk about working hard to make it future-proof!

Our character Sith-ified (my own playing around, the book had nothing to do with that :P):

Blog post: http://faxonblender.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/chapter-8-sculpting/

[Fax]

Done rigging! Man, that was a lot of work. But unlike the author, who immediately confessed he hates rigging, I kinda think I liked it :eyebrowlift2:

Part I, building the armature: http://faxonblender.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/chapter-9-part-i/
Part II, skinning: http://faxonblender.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/chapter-9-part-ii/

[Fax]

Last chapter before I dive into Animation: Shapes and Morphing. His eyes are finally open and he’s looking less grumpy, but I got so used to his old Benicio-del-Toro-look that I’m sure I’ll use it

Blog Post: http://faxonblender.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/chapter-10-shapes-and-morphing/

[Fax]

Animation chapter done! Getting really close to the end now. Here’s the rough animation, will iron it out before the final render:

Blog post: http://faxonblender.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/chapter-11-animation/

[natholas]

nice animation!

[Fax]

Thanks Natholas! This afternoon I’ll be tweaking some things here and there (I’m particularly not happy with the small steps), and experimenting with camera movement.

[Fax]

It’s done! I got from start to finish! Awesome book, fantastic introduction to Blender :yes:

Here is the final result:

Last blog posts (on the book of course! The Blender learning journey carries on!):

Chapter 12, Rendering and the Compositor: http://faxonblender.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/chapter-12-rendering-and-the-compositor/
Chapter 13, Simulations: http://faxonblender.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/chapter-13-simulations/
Chapter 14, VSE and Final Output: http://faxonblender.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/chapter-14-final-output-its-done/