In my day job I am a database programmer. I love data. The reason I love data is twofold. Firstly, within data there resides stories and I adore stories. Secondly, data offers a challenge in its presentation. How do you present data in a manner that is not only meaningful but also engages and inspires? For work I have been asked to find out more about using Machine Learning to
My health has been a little dodgy recently and, with a minor hospital procedure this week, I cannot say that I had been in a good mood. However with every cloud there comes a silver lining – and I got two! The first was that the magazine Midnight Echo bought one of my short horror stories. Yay! The story is called “Alive!” and examines one alternative for prolonging existence. Apparently
A long time ago I was a teacher. Besides the normal three Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic), I always followed with a second three – Research, Review, Reflection. For me, these were consolidation exercises that deepened my understanding. Each of you will have to do this for yourselves. I just thought that I would share my experience of it in learning about 3D hair. Research I watched several Blender and Photoshop
Hi folks, This post will be very similar to my post about making an opacity map. So if you have read that post then you only need to skim this for salient differences. Just to make it slightly different I have also added an incredibly small flaw into the hair by way of a slight wave. I did this because nothing is truly straight in nature. So our goal is
In my last post (about an hour ago), I commented that while occlusion maps were good, I wondered what the hair would be like if I used a texture that already had transparency. So I quickly cobbled one together in Photoshop that was based on the same two textures that I used in the last post. Here is the node set-up that I used in Blender: Note that it is
Hi folks, the purpose of today’s post is to document my testing of the hair opacity map that I created in my last post. I am doing so in Blender cycles and I will be assigning the hair texture and the opacity map to a bezier curve. Huh! A Bezier curve! Yep. At the end of my post, I shall place a link to a great Youtube tutorial called “How
Purpose In the first post of this series, I made a simple hair texture, demonstrating how similar hair textures can be created in Photoshop, GIMP and Paint.NET. In this post, I shall show how to make a simple hair opacity map using these three applications. It’s remarkably similar. NOTE: In this tutorial, I do not intend to implement the texture in a 3D application, simply to make it. What is an opacity
Purpose The purpose of this post is to show how (more-or-less) the same hair texture can be made using any of the following: Photoshop, GIMP, or Paint.Net. Note that I have not been that particular in selecting the same base colors and I also recommend that you experiment a lot with what I give you. Background As per my last post, mastering hair in Blender (for use in DAZ Studio)
This post is about the top 3 mistakes made and lessons learned in making my recent Starship image in Blender. Hence it is probably not the most exciting of posts. This said, I always feel the need to share such things with others in case anyone cares to learn from my mistakes. So here goes. Failing to plan is planning to fail An oldy but a goody. As anyone who
My goal was to emulate the old-school spaceship art of the 1970s. Hopefully, I succeeded. This post will be a bit of a technical run-down in how I did it. Not too much detail, otherwise it will be super-dull. So you remember where I was at with my last post: I asked for feedback and got some great stuff. I experimented with the suggestions to see whether I liked them
Hi folks, Just a quicky because I have to get myself and the family ready and run out soon. It’s been a busy past few weeks (new job, end-of-year obligations, family etc) and I”ve hardly managed to make it to the PC. Yesterday I did and so decided to use some of the new things I’ve learned in Blender this year to have another attempt at a space scene. The
Hi folks, I was unable to do much door work this week until today. Mostly I worked on the door itself. This meant painting the actual door texture based loosely on the reference picture. So here is the reference picture: And here is the texture I painted in Photoshop: I tried to make it look “used” and also admit to tracing a little bit :) I then turned it into a
Hi all, Despite being tired, I came home and used Photoshop to make a normal map of the brick wall. This is just a filter in Photoshop that I applied to the skin I created earlier. Here is the normal map image: For those of you new to 3D modeling, this will give me some depth in my final image. I had intended to create a displacement map, but I need to
In my previous post in this series, I had unwrapped each of my objects, ready to texture them. Then I had an epiphany: if procedural textures exist, then does a brick one exist? OK – I’ll put that into plain English for the non-modelers or new modelers braving this post. A procedural texture is basically an image that has been created by writing a computer program instead of drawing it
Hi all, this was my wife’s birthday weekend, so I only got about an hour to play in Blender. Just thought that I would show you the progress. So the basic objects are all there. Now to start making it look real. As an aside, I made my first ever Panna cotta today as a treat for Nicole and it was yummy. :) However, I experienced failure with the accompanying toffee
Hi folks, I am delighted to say that I am ahead of this week’s plan as posted on Monday. The final thing I ticked off today was my goal of singing practice. I spent an hour this morning with my mate Jon practicing Dean Martin’s “Sway”, Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” and Elvis’ “Can’t Help Falling in Love”. This left me the afternoon to work on some of
Hi all, as per my weekly plan, here is a rough 2D design of the 3D art nouveau door that I intend to create in Blender. As per normal, my rough design has been completed in PowerPoint. The inspiration was taken from the following door (By Jopparn (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons): My vision is to create 4 elements in Blender: a wall with an appropriately
So you may remember that we started this project with an overall plan that follows the PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) approach to remodel a 3D likeness of an x-ray machine that I first modeled a year ago for a presentation at EuroPCR 2016 – the official annual meeting of the European Association of Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions (EAPCI) and the world-leading Course in Interventional Cardiovascular Medicine. Here is the diagram of the
(Sorry – this is a repost as my database corrupted and I had to do a restore. Annoying as I had been in a hurry and had not done my normal post-post backup. Lucky I had a copy of the text.) I’m a Blender noob, so let me show how I used my simple skills to make the objects. Now the bench was really easy. Essentially it is a whole
Well, didn’t this go quickly? The project is almost complete; much faster than expected. I threw together the medical monitor today. Here it is from a couple of different angles: As you can see it also has a ceiling mount. I have not placed any images on the monitor, but I have created a texture that would easily permit images to be added as suitable for whatever process in being undertaken
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