Free is good and I've always been a geek.:biggrin:

I've had Blender on all my machines since NaN open sourced it, but I never really tried to understand it. I toyed with it and basically used this monster of a program as a file converter.. I guess I was just waiting for 2.5 to take things seriously and I caught the Blender bug. I keep hearing myself say "I didn't know it could do that". In the long run I thingk waiting was a good thing since I didn't have to over-write anything I knew in 2.4 to a 2.5 way of doing things. That's alot harder than learning from a blank state.

theres almost nothing that cannot be done in blender and its getting better every day while keeping a small resource footprint

and just a quik peek at what im working on for a freebie

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2232909

I think I'm aiming pretty high for my first project. But I figure I can learn a lot with just this one figure I'm working on. Be warned it's really rough right now and I'm sort of winging it to get the hang of things. Later I'll watch the Blendercookie tutorials on figure modeling to see where I went wrong. But right now I'm really having a lot of fun!!:biggrin:

so far the basics are there id add loopcuts above and below the knees and elbows to get it to deform and rig well

for a first try its ambitious but sometimes its sink or swim and when you know that the possibility of failure will be public you work 10 times harder to get it right

i stay away from soft bodies myself because theres too much to go wrong

Thanks for the suggestions fighter.

The loopcuts and some detailing are in the works after I get the basic shape I'm happy with. It's about 80% there.. I think.

I figured I'm going to aim high right from the start, because I'll learn the interface, modeling, uv mapping and rigging in this one project. Besides I just wanted to see if I could actually do it.:biggrin:

eClark,,, did you check if the normals are forward? In edit mode, on the sidebar click recalculate normals or in the mesh menu navigate to normals> recalculate outside.

eClark - well done! thats looking good cant wait to see it textured, normals can be a pain and that happens in most modelers at some time or other but now you know how to fix it ;-)

amanda nice looking doll!! u used the scuplt tools or just extruding??

Agree with AmandaGirl: looks like your normals are facing in and out. One of the weird things with Blender is that there's no simple way to get the normals all facing one way: normals -> recalculate outside should work, but sometimes doesn't.

easiest way is in face mode choose draw normals

select all incorrect faces and flip

if you raise the nomrals draw size it makes them easier to see but anything over 1 level gets annoying

test render in blender and reversed faces will show as black

I corrected all the normals except for one wedge in the lampshade. I've tried several times and just can't get it.

I'm thinking  I may have to trash the lampshade and start over.

Thank you for the comment hedheld:biggrin:

Just Plain old extruding on the body. The head was modeled by extruding single edges to get the facial topography I wanted. I tried sculpting in Blender, It's not working out so good for me yet. I do sculpting with my hands, by sight and touch and trying to repeat the process digitally is a whole new area. Trying to sculpt without that feedback from my hands is making it more difficult.

Blender needs a feature thats pretty useful  in Hexagon. It shows which direction the normals are facing. It would really help in the workflow for exporting objects.

It has that feature, Amanda... but you sort-of have to turn it on. In that main properties thingie (the one that has Transform right the top) when you're in edit mode, below Grease Pencil, View, item and Display is Mesh Display. There's overlays: and then Normals: ... I usually go with Face Normals. Because Poser mesh is so tiny, the normal wire is huge so I turn Normal Size down from .10 to .005.

Oh wow!! There it is. That will make things so much easier. There's definitely alot more I need to learn.

Cool, we'll learn it together, Amanda. I'm learning heaps myself atm... and having an absolute ball. I work in recovery - I'm an RN - waking patients (well, they sort-of wake themselves, i just make sure they're breathing okay and not in too much pain) and we're putting together some manuals and competencies and I want to create some decent illustrations to replace those shocking drawings in the manuals - I mean, valiant effort, but jeez, we have Poser, don't we? We can do all sorts of cool stuff.

So far, I've taken the scrubs outfit I found at Daz and made it dynamic (had to take the pockets off and the collar off since they basically fell off anyway during the sim) so that I could make my nurse avatarette do real nursing stuff like hang IVs and do chest compressions and keep thrashing patients from banging their heads against hard objects (males like to do stuff like that when they first wake up - no idea why! :biggrin:) so conforming cloth just wasn't going to do. And yes, did this in Blender. Now I'm converting this really cool hospital bed prop I found on 3DXtras to something that will move and side-rails will go up and down as will the head, just like a real bed. Bedding will be dynamic cloth. It's all a very big project but it'll be ever so much fun to put together!

I'm pretty much making everything that I can find dynamic these days. Wouldn't/couldn't be without Blender!

Robyn you can weld the pockets on hun or add them as soft decorated in cloth room, I scale the dolls up out of poser (they are way to small) then scale back down before exporting, on your hossie thing I made this when I had to go for an anigram thing (not real accurate I wasnt in the best position to see the stuff lol ) the sheet shown was dynamic and the "arms"(orange colour) are ajaxs mechanicals (found in free stuff) so I cant send them but your wecome to the rest if u want it, see pic

sculptris and bleder 2.55s sculpt properties were developed together

in blender make a lowpoly base duplicate on a new level  use the subdivide surface and divide as much as you need as long as poly count doesnt change   then bake as a normals map and apply

i will still never figure why people are so afraid of poly counts        i render 200,000,000 in 5 hours on a dual core

didnt know sculptris an blender tool was same just find sculptris much easier to play  with, maybe it does the subD on demand lol

poly count depends on what your doin at the mo I'm doin some stuff for my bro to use in unity an under 10 thou is my limit but can cheat a lot with normal maps now just got to work out how to make them in blender rofl

Attached Link: sculpting in blender 2.5+

and there is a tutoral on sculpting in blender on blendercookie in the archives that was done by jonathan williamson for 2.5 versions using a lowpoly base mesh

Wow, Hedd, that's an amazing model of a cath lab. I did cath-lab nursing for 25 years, so to see a c-arm here on Rendo rather took my breath away.

I work in recovery now, and wouldn't go back to cath-lab and those infernal lead aprons for quids, but I must say, I almost felt at home again, seeing that. Hope your angiogram went well and they didn't have to do anything.

well waiting on a bypass at the mo Robyn

will have a look at that tut m8 am working my round Bcookie now but not seen that one yet biggest prob I got at the mo in blender is the curve modifier but I think I missed a step lol haaaaa so much to learn so small a brain ;-)

what about the curves is confusing you?

im actualy looking in to making a .pdf for 2.5+ for noobs that starts from day 1 and works into all details of modeling for daz/poser with blender

every question i can find an answer to is 1 more step to being able to help others get more out of the program at a cost that we can all afford          free

as to the bypass good luck with that i remember when my dad had his and that was the worst ive ever seen him hurt except when i told him id joined the marines

oh just sumat I'm doin wrong hun , if I do the tut using a horizontal cylinder it goes whacky but if I dont rotate the cylinder (leave it vertical) it works (rotate by R Y 90 not using the widgit lol )

not over worried about bypass bit of tubing an some jubilee clips! shame they have to do it with the engine running ;-)

Semper Fi ehh same ideas dif army rofl

where are you located it almost seems if you are aussie

but probable brittish royal marines

we trained some anzacs in 96 on how to shoot over 1000 yards with a .308

please link to the tut you were using for the curves so that i can see what might have been missed and rewrite it in english

link is to one of gryllus vids

http://www.screencast.com/t/ZTUwMmY5

not marine lol but nearly was in Artillery we have a regiment for the marines(an one for the paras lol ) same training but we dont have to swim  ;-)

ok i watched most of the tut and its as vague as trying to look through mud

but i went into 2.5 and found 1 major issue with the tut

he gives no details on how to do it on any other axis

ill rewatch and .pdf the results asap because that cat couldnt teach a monkey to poop

so far i have the basics of using the curve modifier wrapped up as a .pdf if anyone wants test it for me. i can upload to a filehost and post the link before i post it on any site

I'd love to have a look, UnbrokenFighter...

Attached Link: http://http://www.mediafire.com/?00v3fh9hme5d7hi

also please tell me what needs to be done to make it better

The link's broken. It looks like your link is incomplete ;).

Laurie

Attached Link: http://www.mediafire.com/?nhwisya67e4yd8l

heres a new repaired version

if the link will not worl i can email it as well just need a few to verify that the instructions are viable prior to posting it publicly

downloads fine has helped me (but not sure why lol ) did do it in ortho mode and it worked so sorta thought that was the answer but can do it in any view now so I dont have a clue what I was doing wrong before lol

thanx for taking the time to do this I am looking forward to the next ones

it wasnt the perspective/ortho it was his method     for the most part it was correct but he missed something          the end point does not have to be set as U

also there were some minor steps missing from the original   namely the orientation of the cylinder to the path

as long as they are centered to each other you can make it work

and yes you are part of the reasoning for the tut but truth be told its long about time for this irishman to give back

please relay any comments or questions to me here as well as suggestions for future tuts

can never be too many tuts, some one may say the same thing in a dif way and it all clicks

as too what tuts I want/need lol at the mo I'm tryna learn how to bake/apply normal maps from a hi res to a low res figure (my bro needs some models for unity) can bake the map ok but it wont "stick" to the low poly one think I got something wrong when uvmapping but will get it one day

one quick question ? I use 2 monitors, is it possible to drag some windows onto the second, do it all the time in poser and carrara but haven't found a way in this

I also have two monotors and have Blender 2.5x spread out on both ;). You have to detach the palattes from being docked. And since I haven't even had coffee yet, I can't remember how to do that....lolol.

Laurie

Thanx Laurie xx once I knew it could be done I found it lol

unbroken-fighter...the tute is good and my only critique:

Make the images larger. I'm a middle aged lady and my eyesight isn't all that great anymore ;). Maybe one or two per page perhaps?

Laurie

Attached Link: http://www.mediafire.com/?7zc6ezvawb06yrs

heres the new link

SPAM!!!!!!!

Attached Link: http://www.mediafire.com/?hz0vpm44piasf85

i am new at Blender i use 2.59 but what is the best to use?

no idea which is best lol I have about 4 dif copys on my comp, using 2.57 the most at the mo' but only cos its set up the way I like and all the plugins I use work in it! quite a funny proggy to get into but its sooooo addictive rofl

have fun an if you need help one of the experts in here will steer you the right way

ya its fun and can be funny i made lily in make human and then moved her to blender so we will see how this goes 

does anyone know what the easiest way to make a 3d skull and crossbones with blender would be?

sculpting and trans maps

trace the basic shapes and model it from a plane

then use loopcuts or subsurf to add verts

go to the sculpt room and make it your desired shape

then use the uv unwrap to make a .tga save it take the .tga to a photo editor and paint it the way you want  then save it with a transpearant background

set it as uv color and render

also for those interested i am working on a .pdf tut for modeling a female mesh from base cube to final render

the first part is almost done and needs to be tested,  as before i will start from the basis of kowing anything about blender and since i just got 2.58 2 days ago you will learn as i do

or if like me you have too many thumbs to sculpt ;-)

just box model them, use a mirror modifier and a subd

hed has been peeping into my modeling tuts before they are done

seems to eerie

not had a peep yet mate ;-) but am waiting lol

been using hex since it came out an still think its the fastest modeler I have ever used, but am enjoying blender!! is something new to explore around every corner, just so bloody much to learn rofl