Hey guys,
I downloaded Blender yesterday and was very impressed with what i could produce within a few hours of never using it before. I started playing with the sculpt tool and pretty much got hooked right away. Good work Blender team 
(Apologise if youāve already seen this over at CGtalk.)
Cheers - Dave.
ha, dude, you got skillz! What app did you come from, if its not too inquizitive(sp?)
Great work, especially for your first project(regardless of past experience, blender is a bit tough to get used to)
Cool stuff (saw it on cgtalk :p)
You mentioned you couldnāt render it in blender. If youāre still having problems/whatever, there are plenty of tutorials, or I can always run you through it (itās really simple )
Hey Cheers mate. Iāve been using Max for around 6 years and zbrush for around 18 months on and off, though never felt very comfortable with Z. To be honest i downloaded blender after seeing the promo thread on cgtalk with interest in the sculpting mode. Didnāt take too long to find the tools and after creating a simple box everything i needed was in that little sculpt panel. What attracted me so much was the fact it was so simple and just ā¦ worked.
Well iāve just picked it up again and iām going to see what else i can create.
Someone over at CGtalk suggested using the Partial Redraw in the sculpt menu to improve speed, which it does however my mesh always turned black. Any ideas why this might be?
Cheers again - Dave.
Cheers Ian, iām just looking over the render options now, How do you change the blue background?
its in the world settings
under the little earth icon
youll find AO settings in there too
Hi Everlite! (also saw this at CG Talk) a.k.a CaptainBarbosa
Very impressive sculpt, Iād love to see it/him with textures and materials. To change the background color click the materials button and then click the little globe icon. Change the world color. You can apply a horizontal gradient if you want by setting the horizon color and zenith color, then click the blend button next to the preview.
Hey thanks guys, got the background changed to nice gradient and playing around with the AO, My next question, if i may ask, is it possible to just render from the current viewport position, it always renders through the camera. (which at the moment is facing the back of his head Silly question, but how do i select the camera? I canāt seem to pick it?
I promise iāll download the manual tonight
How does the texturing work with blender do you have to unwrap the mesh UVs, into photoshop, paint then apply? or does it have a paint tool of some kind?
Cheers again, really appreciate your help.
Dave,
You should be able to select the camera just like any other object without any problems, what exactly are you doing? To position the camera exactly where you want it, go into perspective view with the 5 key on the num pad and navigate to the view you would like. Press ctrl+alt+num pad 0. (Oh yeah, num pad 0 puts you into the current camera view. to get out just hit 1, 3 or 7 to go into front, side, or top view.)
You can use the preview windows (Shift+P) but it doesnāt support AA as far as I know. could also align the camera by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Numpad 0.
BTW how many polyās is it on and what level is it on? And i really liek the fact that u just downloaded it and created such a nice model
It says on Blender.org that the Partial ReDraw does not work with all graphic cards.
EDIT: Damn you LotR Junkie! 
Very nice sculpt! I was considering buying Zbrush but now I donāt think I will. Would it be possible for you to write a short tutorial explaining the various techniques you used? I am still struggling to figure out how to effectively use the sculpt mode.
Re: Selecting and moving the camera. Blenderās default select tool is the right mouse button, which is a bugger if you come from years of working with the left button. Still though, if you know how to get to the preferences menu, you can set left mouse to be the norm.
The menu bar at the top of the screen is also the user prefs, just click and drag down on the borderāmuch like scaling a windowāto pull the options down. In the āview and controlsā settings, you can change to left button. Then itās just a matter of transforming the camera. G(rab), S(cale) and R(otate). That should get you the render camera pretty much anywhere you want.
Also, for the 3d view cameraāin case you didnāt knowāthereās āturntableā mode, which gets rid of the annoying z-swiveling that comes with blenderās default ātrackballā mode.
Nice sculpt, by the way. :]
EDIT: Hey, also, wow. I checked your gallery on CGTalk, thatās some nice stuff. I like the Cold Morning in China one. Thatās a great matte, there.
How does the texturing work with blender do you have to unwrap the mesh UVs, into photoshop, paint then apply? or does it have a paint tool of some kind?
You can unwrap and work in photoshop, or you can unwrap the UV then paint on the model directly. The paint tools, though good, arenāt as good as a real image editor like photoshop or gimp.
Camera has been covered, but also try using shift-f. Itās a fly around mode, you can fly to where you want, click ok and hit ctrl-alt-0 to place the camera there.
Another invaluable keystroke is when you are looking through the camera, select it by clicking (right click/left if youāve changed it). Grab it (G) and press z. This constrains the motion to the global z axis. Press z again for the local z axis. Now move the mouseā¦ camera dolly!
Oh, and for rotating things, press r twice and you have a free trackball like rotation.
Ian
Cheers for the feedback guys 
BlackBoe:
Got the cam selected, didnāt think to hit the right mouse key, silly me
Cheers glad you enjoyed my CG gallery, i love matte painting.
Yeah iām clued up with the interface, luckily in the thread over a CGtalk a guy laid out the basic setup just after i downloaded the program, this is what he wrote:
- load up blender
- put your mouse cursor on the edge between the main 3D viewport and the top menu bar
- click and pulldown to reveal the options panel (who designed this?)
- MOST IMPORTANT CHANGE FOR ME : change āview rotationā from trackball to turntable!!!
- Also put on auto perspective
- Now try click dragging with your middle mouse button in the 3D viewport. Much better huh?
- P.S. shift MMB to pan, roll MMB to zoom
- In the option panels menu bar click āedit methodsā, then bump undo steps upto 64
- If you have a laptop, go to āsystem & open glā tab. Turn on āEmulate numpadā
- (now you can use your normal number keys instead of the number pad - for choosing viewport directions)
- push the menu bar back up to the top of the screen
- press Ctrl-U and click āsave user defaultsā
That really did make all the difference, cheers mysterious blender user , you rock! 
Pink Mesh:
Cheers. Zbrush is still a very powerful piece of software but the interface would make blender seem like a breeze in the park, it took me a few months to grasp the basic navigation and still feels a little strange to use, blender on the other hand, granted iāve only touched the sculpt mode so far but it was very easy to pick up, within minutes with very little knowledge i was able to concentrate on artistic choices and not held back by technical constraints or configuring strange tools. Stripping similar programs down, namely zbrush and mudbox they both provide a lot of options but at the base have the same simple concept, the ability to edit high resolution geometry with easy to work tools, and that is what blender provides for me, the same simple tools but far cheaper and with a far easier means of navigation. It feels more like a brush and less like a jackhammer
You want a tutorials? watch this space iāll see what i can do. Though Iām sure i could learn more from you Iād recommend using a wacom stylus if you have access to one.
mariolink:
Not quite sure what the poly count is at, can i check this? though iām up at level 9, i could push to 10 put the stroke starts going a little slow and jumpy. My graphics card is a Nvidia Geforce 7800 gtx. It doesnāt go completely black, itās like the shaders inverted itself, shadow areas are now light and the light areas are now dark, hard to explain.
Lord of the Rings Junkie:
Cheers, got the cam figured
Cheers again guys.
- Dave.
you can check the verticeĀ¦ face count etc at the top left
It doesnāt go completely black, itās like the shaders inverted itself, shadow areas are now light and the light areas are now dark, hard to explain.
Ahh, the classic. Itās a normals problem, they are inverted, not sure how to fix it though.
Not quite sure what the poly count is at, can i check this? though iām up at level 9, i could push to 10 put the stroke starts going a little slow and jumpy.
In the preferences, if you turn off global undo and turn the steps down to 0 (though you will lose your undo) you can sculpt at even higher resolution.
Also, you can delete lower multires levels. Still, 9 is a lot. If you started with a cube, thats about 1.6 mil, something like that. The count is in the top right hand corner of the screen, along with other general information.
Awesome work dude!!! This kind of work shows how powerful Blender is!!!
To fix the normals, select all and hit Ctrl - N.
Basically Iām wondering what brushes you use for specific tasks and how you go about sculpting it. From the video I have seen on mud box, you āsimplyā rough the details out, then up the multi tree, smooth out the rough details, sculpt more details, ect. The hardest part for me is figuring out what brush to use and how to use it properlyā¦ I appreciate your willingness to create a tutorial.
Do you plan on making a body for him also?
poly count is upper Right hand corner, on the User Preferences window header. It has Blender version, Ve:rtice count, then | Fa:xxxxxx for Faces or polys
Incredible sculpt, what was your starting mesh?
Donāt forget for max speed have partial redraw activated.
I also saw this on CGtalk, Iām not registered but I read parts of the site, welcome to Blenderartists:yes: