Hungry Computer

Yeah! Go Open Sourceness!

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 19:07:00 +0000

Today is apparently Document Freedom Day which celebrates everything open, free and awesome.

“It is a day for celebrating and raising awareness of Open Standards and formats which takes place on the last Wednesday in March each year.”

Blender is open source, so yeah, go Blender!

Their site: http://documentfreedom.org/about.en.html

Let’s do it Freestyle I’ve not done as much Blender...

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 13:11:45 +0000

Let’s do it Freestyle

I’ve not done as much Blender as I wanted to recently, but finally managed to get Freestyle working!

I have tried to get Freestyle, a cartoon/pencil rendering branch for Blender, to work but have failed many times. Finally one build on graphicall worked (http://www.graphicall.org/693) and following a tutorial on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq1-KoZ7Uv4) took an old baggy shorts running test and applied some strokes!

On the baggy shorts project: Have finished planning the story, just need to make a storyboard now, might use freestyle…

THIS IS AN OMG MOMENT! I am amazed that 1,385 people have...

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 20:47:47 +0000

THIS IS AN OMG MOMENT!

I am amazed that 1,385 people have watched my ‘UFO In The Sky’ video on Vimeo! I looked on it the other day, and found that (on the week of 20-27th December) an average of 40 people watched the video each day!

I’m not sure if this is a glitch, or something like that, but I’m hoping that it was real people who watched my video!

This led me to look at the top URL embeds, and found that most of the views came from http://www.yandex.com.tr/ which appears to be some sort of Turkish portal to the internet. Then I decided to search for ‘a ufo in the sky’ and my video came up almost first!

I don’t know if this yandex thing has actually had people watching the video through it, but nonetheless, even if it isn’t actual people, it looks bloomin’ good!

Stay Happy Folks

Hungry Computer

Baggy Shorts Running Render + Compositing So I’ve delayed...

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 19:32:06 +0000

Baggy Shorts Running Render + Compositing

So I’ve delayed writing this post for some time (I’ve no idea why, it’s not even hard to do). Bit of a shame.

Here is the render of the compositing that I did for a shot of ‘baggy shorts’ short film. Using the compositing from the last post, I made the shorts move, zoomed the camera, and rendered it!

Hope y’all like it!

As always, stay happy!

Hungry Computer

COMPOSITING AND BAGGY SHORTS UPDATE So I recently rendered...

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 20:18:57 +0000

The compositing nodes

Before

and After

COMPOSITING AND BAGGY SHORTS UPDATE

So I recently rendered another test for the Baggy Shorts - Short Film, and I decided I would render it in the Blender internal render instead of cycles, because I feel more comfortable with the settings. I was looking at my render, and it was ok, I’d looked at a tutorial on mist, and added that to my render, but I was struggling to make it look professional, or at least decent. Then I had a thought:

What about the compositor, I’ve heard that it can do some cool stuff. After searching around, I found this awesome compositor tutorial which was an introduction to the node editor/compositor.

Taking my new found knowledge, I did a little experimenting with each of the nodes, to see what they could do, and ended up with a better result.

Above, in the pictures, you can see the node setup I had, and before and after the compositing. As you can see, the overall result is pretty cool, and definitely much better. You can click on the images to make them larger, as they are quite small.

The three main things I used were the projector distortion node, as it adds some red blue and green colours around some of the distorted shapes, some RGB curves, plus this guy showed me how to add some vignette too! I love it all!

As always, Stay Happy

Hungry Computer

via prostheticknowledge: QUMARION Japanese articulate mannequin...

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 12:38:24 +0000

via prostheticknowledge:

QUMARION

Japanese articulate mannequin designed to create poses for 3D virtual models, a sci-fi looking input device in itself:

The news of this came out over a year ago, but it’s company started taking reservations in June this year. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, shipping is limited to Japan only.

You can find out more about it here

Hungry Computer:

THIS IS SO COOL!

This device is really awesome. It takes the pose that the device is in, and translates that into a 3d model working in real time with the device. It makes 3D posing much easier, as you can move it with your hands, instead of moving each individual bone in the 3D program. It appears to only be available to Japan and you can only put in a request or something like that, so I don’t have a clue what the price could be! I hope it’s not too expensive and that in the future, I would be able to get one!

As usual, Stay Happy

BAGGY SHORTS - WHERE IT ALL BEGAN This is where the baggy shorts...

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 15:28:17 +0100

BAGGY SHORTS - WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

This is where the baggy shorts story idea all began.

I was bored, and decided to model some trousers/shorts (for whatever reason I do not know) in Blender, and thought it would be fun to make them move. I decided to add a quick armature. After moving it about, it looked quite cool, so I created a simple run cycle.

By now I had concluded they looked like shorts, but the way that the shorts moved gave it a character that I really like. It has now developed from there.

On BlenderGuru’s Facebook page, he posted up an image of someone who had an idea for a material panel in Cycles. Linked to that photo, was the page it came from. However on that page, the person acknowledged there were library tools out there already. One of them was this page. I added it, and I love it. The materials available are limited, there’s not many at all.

However, I decided I would try add a material to the shorts. I found the woven fabric material, and added it to my model. Experimenting with colours, I came to the conclusion that I should just stick with white. I may come to change the material in the future, but this will be sufficient for now.

I rendered it out in Cycles with my new favourite tool; Depth of Field.

There is more on this project to come soon!

RUSTIC GRUNGE BRUSHES After my previous image, using newly found...

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 12:03:11 +0100

RUSTIC GRUNGE BRUSHES

After my previous image, using newly found brushes for gimp/seashore, I created a rustic image with some grunge and scratches brushes.

These brushes create scratches and overall dirt. For scratches, I used the granite texture, (the texture button is next to the brushes button) and the warning lines are just the warning textures on some grunge brushes. I duplicated the title (Hungry Computer) and blurred each layer, some with different colours, leaving the top layer of the title un-blurred.

I’ll try not to post any more, if I can resist it!

Stay Happy

FUN WITH BRUSHES After my recent storyboard test on the trail of...

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 13:31:06 +0100

FUN WITH BRUSHES

After my recent storyboard test on the trail of Photoshop and After Effects, I’ve started looking for free ways to create the same effect. I found out about brushes for GIMP ( a free image editing software). However, I prefer Seashore (the same as gimp but in one window and for Mac only).

So quickly looked up how to import gimp brushes to seashore. Then, the hunt began to look for brushes. I found this site which has loads of top brushes, which I downloaded all of.

Using all the brushes found on the site, I made the image up above. Pretty cool, and it was great fun experimenting with all the brushes I had downloaded! Plus, it’s also on the carousel at the top of the page!

Stay Happy

Storyboard and Concept Test Using a trial of Photoshop and After...

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 12:13:33 +0100

Storyboard and Concept Test

Using a trial of Photoshop and After Effects, I created this storyboard/concept video.

I was inspired by behind the scenes that I see of animations that use moving storyboards to map out the story.

I wanted to have a go, so in Photoshop, I used the brush tool with different brushes and shades of black, while making sure they were on different layers. I used a tutorial on the Adobe website (http://tv.adobe.com/watch/classroom-after-effects-cs5/episode-6/) which showed me how to put a Photoshop image that is layered into After Effects.

With my previous knowledge of After Effects (from here http://www.videocopilot.net/basic/) I managed to put a bit of movement and scale to each of the layers, and rendered the result.

Ta-Da!

Here's a Joke for You

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 14:44:36 +0100

Television: Why was the computer always hungry?

Computer: Because it never stopped for a byte to eat!

IT’S A GUN So here is my gun model I made on a lovely...

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 19:09:00 +0100

IT’S A GUN

So here is my gun model I made on a lovely turntable, all textured and lighted. So as I was looking around blogs of Blender, I came across this guy (http://blenderturkey.tumblr.com/) who likes to do all the blender guru tutorials. I found further down his page, a video of himself modelling a gun. So I thought it looked cool, so had a go myself:

I put a side view of a gun in my background and started with the default cube. Then went into side view in edit mode and did all the necessary extrusions to get the basic shape. After a bit of tweaking, I went into edit mode, hit u and chose projection (while in side view). After, I went into image editor and made the texture fit. I followed what the guy did for compositing and did the same myself, but also with a background. Added movements of the camera and gun and rendered in cycles with ambient occlusion.

Also, I discovered depth of field in Blender. I just experimented around, and found that I could move the distance away from camera to set focus. With an aperture radius of 2, I rendered out my gun

Here is my lovely result!

Any questions? ask me anything at the top of the page!

MAKING A GUN! So I followed this guy...

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 18:47:47 +0100

MAKING A GUN!

So I followed this guy (http://blenderturkey.tumblr.com/) and he had created a video showing him making a gun, so I thought I’d have a go! I didn’t use it as much for the modelling, but more so for the texturing, which was very useful.

More detail about what I did on the video that will be posted soon!

THERE’S A UFO IN THE SKY So I wanted to merge Blender with...

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 18:45:08 +0100

THERE’S A UFO IN THE SKY

So I wanted to merge Blender with a real life video. So I decided to do a UFO in the sky. So went and filmed some trees, and built a UFO in Blender with some shape keys for the legs and antena to move.

Rendered it out with indirect lighting and an alpha channel so that the back ground would not apear in the video editing software. Then in the video editing software created another layer in which I used a greenscreen tool but set it to the colour of the sky, so the trees remain on top of the video of the UFO so it seems like it goes behind the trees.

Hope that makes sense, you can always ask me a question by clicking ‘Ask Me Anything’ at the top of the page!

Last July is now September So I uploaded this video on July...

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 22:22:43 +0100

Last July is now September

So I uploaded this video on July 16th, but kept forgetting to post it up here, so finally here it is. I used Vue ple but for more details, check the last post with pictures of this video as that has more details and I am feeling lazy!

So I haven’t been adding as much as I should be to my blog, but that is due to the fact that...

Sat, 01 Sep 2012 17:21:00 +0100

So I haven’t been adding as much as I should be to my blog, but that is due to the fact that my internet is down and I am currently using a temporary setup, so no uploading for me :( , but at some point there will be a rush of posts as I update all the stuff I’ve been doing in the meantime when I get my full internet back!

Oh yeah: Pinch punch, first the month…

via andrewprice: When I see an awesome render online then find out it was made with blender

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 11:42:02 +0100

via andrewprice:

When I see an awesome render online then find out it was made with blender

THE EXPERIMENTS WITH VUE 9 So a while ago I downloaded the...

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 13:18:00 +0100

THE EXPERIMENTS WITH VUE 9

So a while ago I downloaded the public learning edition (or ple) of a great professional piece of animation kit called Vue by e-on software. I used Vue 9 ple, but as it has been a while since I downloaded that ple Vue 10 has now been released, but you can still download the ple here: https://secure.e-onsoftware.com/try/vue_10_ple/

So following a tutorial on Youtube (http://youtu.be/tqbaW3pw-2U) So I tried rendering my first video and even though the renders on screen looked fine, in the final result, the sky was missing and had been replaced with black, so after looking on some forums I found that it would be better to render my result into frames instead of letting vue 9 compile it into an mp4v for me. So I was pretty annoyed having waited 5 and a half hours for it to render to find a useless result. The results are pretty amazing and realistic. You can see in the picture that it looks pretty cool. A shame it takes so long to render even at 480p resolution at 15 fps at low quality! Time to wait another 5+1/2 hours for it to render again!

Stay Happy

Hungry Computer

"People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing - that’s why we recommend..."

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 17:10:04 +0100

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing - that’s why we recommend it daily.”

- Zig Ziglar (via andrewprice)

A TREE (COULDN’T THINK OF A BETTER TITLE) So I used the...

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 21:04:08 +0100

A TREE (COULDN’T THINK OF A BETTER TITLE)

So I used the sapling add-on with Blender and a particle system of hair for this lovely scene I set up. The add-on created the tree, the leaves, and the wind that made the tree flow in the wind. Then a bit of tweaking and a render, and we have our finished result!

Stay Happy

HungryComputer