Hi, this is my first post, so if these are complete newbie questions, please bear with me. I was searching for a free 3d modeling and animation program in which to learn as a hobby, and found it a difficult choice. However, once I saw the capability of Blender, and its huge community, Gmax, Maya PLE, and others went down the drain. Anyways, I just have a few simple questions.
1.I bought a book about Blue Sky, and their making of Ice Age and Bunny. They used Maya, and seemed to build all of their characters with NURBS. Is this the right eay to go?
2.This book also describes how they created fur, by a system of layered cards for short hair, and particles for long hair. Are these possible in Blender? I’ve seen the great result of Ripstangs(sp) Fiber generator, but it seemed to add an excessive amount of polygons when used densly,
well, I will try to answer them quick and easy as possible:
1:
different 3d tools has different way of getting the best results, I wouldn’t recommend using Blender’s NURBS which is way behind…it would be Much Better to use Blender’s Polygon modelingtools, called “Mesh” and the activate a button called “SubSurf” which you then can set different resolutions for, even in 3D view or only for Rendering part (which saves lots of memory and Graphic Card usage when working). So my suggestion would be to use Organic modeling with MESH as base (hit SPACEBAR–>ADD–>MESH–>and pick what you want to start with), and then go to Edit Buttons (F9 as shortkey) and push a green button lower left named “SubSurf” and then you can play with the settings below: [ Subdiv: 1 ][ 1 ] first number: 3D view setting, letting you view the total subdivided SubSurf mesh in 3D window. The 2nd setting is how many subdivisions you wants to use for the rendering. Some nice settings might be (depending on graphic card): 1st setting: [ 2 ] - for low and fast working in the 3D window and 2nd setting: [ 4 ] to [ 6 ] (depending how great computersystem you have or not), meaning: you need higher resolution for the renderingpart rather to have it for the work/modeling process, and it saves RAM and worktime…quicker!
heh, not very short but indeed detailed !!
2:
yes, I have seen it and some have even used such system, but not the fiberscript I guess, but layered materials on several layered meshes, using proceedual textures…but as a newbie you are, I wouldn’t start off with that at first. Though it is great to have Huge inspiration for such place, I would try to start with easier tasks!
Cheers!
I hoped it helped you a lot, but if you have any Questions, don’t hesitate to ask!!
I’m hardly an expert but I’ll have a go at answering some of these
You can model with NURBS but in my experience it’s a bit fiddly. I generally prefer using subsurf modelling. I’d start by creating a plane or a cube and extruding bits.
For hair you could do the plane-with-an-alpha-map, which is perfectly possible in blender. You can also use static particles. I don’t think this works perfectly for animation but I haven’t really used it that much.
well…right now I don’t know…their might be, but how large, I don’t know, I think JamesK is making some stuff, but as he got Cinema4DXL for free, I think he switched most of the stuff for Cinema…
Sorry about the confusing language. I asked because I believe that Blender can produce results just as good as Maya, but the results are being compared differently. Computer Generated films like Monsters Inc. were created by hundreds off pro’s working many hours a day for years. That can’t be compared to what someone does in a few days. I’m definitely not saying that these solo works are inferior, but it isn’t a multi-million dollar feature film. If people saw Blender at its full potential, it might be more widely recognised.
!!