Hey everyone,

I'm starting a column at Renderosity Magazine where I'll share my learning experience with Blender over an 8 week period. I'd love to add any contributions you might have. Anything from a short tutorial to tips and tricks. Will be happy to give you credit and share links to your site or gallery.

I'm not quite a beginner in 3D, but since I mostly write I haven't had a lot of time to work in Blender. But after the community meeting at Siggraph I want to get my hands dirty.

Please share any comments or insights you may have about Blender (positive and negative). Again, I'll be sure to credit you.

Ricky Grove Managing Editor

Hi Ricky Nice to see you drop in and really looking forward to seeing the column my one tidbit that I think everyone will recommend is learning the hot keys Blender is allot easier to grasp when you know going in that learning the hot keys is perhaps the most important skill you have to develop. There are allot of free keyboard images and pdf's on the web the one I have found the most useful and is perhaps the most up to date is the one offered by Andrew Price of Blender Guru but you need to sign up for his newsletter this is the link Here LuxXeon our Coordinator has done several outstanding tutorials for Blender. And any help or anything I can do to help just ask if I do not know how to do something usually know where to find an answer

I wrote up a tutorial on creating mesh hair from particle hair at my own account space at DeviantArt, but I have no problems sharing it (or just the link) with others in Renderosity Magazine. It's something I do for the community, not a commercial endeavour.

Thanks infinity10. Yes, happy to share just send me a link or download. Will certainly credit you all over the place

Yep. Plan on covering hotkeys in depth. Thanks for the download link. I hadn't seen that one.

I"m also thinking of doing some Blender profiles. Anyone here like to be profiled? Answer 4-5 questions, post some of your work and provide links, etc.

Ricky

@gToon - here's a link for you to review, and decide if what I've written is relevant for your magazine section on Blender3D.

My objective was to use Blender3D as a production tool for Poser Pro 11 content (in my case, hair geometry). Hence, at the end of my write-up, I refer Poser users to my other notes on hair shaders inside Poser (which may not be relevant to Blender3D users who don't use Poser)

https://ibr-remote.deviantart.com/journal/Outline-of-steps-for-hair-fibre-to-geo-mesh-690599173

I perfectly understand if you decide not to use this material in your magazine section for Blender3D, no worries.

Cheers

Hi Ricky

Here is link to a PDF tutorial I wrote how to run multiple Blender Instances it is a work environment I have set up for myself which is pretty useful especially when follow tutorials from the web that use different version and has other uses as well. Here I would be up to being profiled think I already was about 3 years ago but would love to see more of the members being profiled

Thank you. Thank you. I'll include both in future chapters of the Blender series. Will contact you both once I start working through the instructions to get comments, etc.

Quick question for everyone: what can Blender do that most people are unaware of?

Also, finished my first coffee cup. Not too bad, I think. Problems with rendering, but that's another whole chapter I think. Please let me know where I can improve. I'm not sensitive, so fire away. (PS is picture too large?)

Looks like the perfect cup, but it needs more coffee!

Hehe..you are right. Perhaps the next step is to work with liquids!

BTW, bad news for me as my cpu fried on my workstation. Using a macbook pro for the next week to do Blender learning. Should be interesting.

My first Cycles tutorial was for a coffee cup like yours, and I still can't seem to get the inside of the cup to render cleanly. Since you mention having render issues, if you ever figure out the proper Cycles settings to render it as clean as the outside of the cup, I'd love to hear about it.

Might just be me, but the cup looks a little thick, doesn't it? Other than that, not bad. Personally, Handles always give me trouble. Oh, there are some Blender links and tutorials over at the Hivewire forum that might be beneficial to you. You can thank Miss B for setting the thread up.

Yes, it's more like a mug than a cup. I'm going to create another now that I'm working on a Macbook pro and will make it thinner. Handles are not well positioned. I think I can fix that. Thanks for the tip on the Hivewire forum. I will definitely check the out, EClark1849.

I remember that tute, think it was my first one as well. And my render looked like the handle had creases in it and was broken at the bottom lol. And turned out more like a one handed sugar bowl. And mugs are better gToon they hold more coffee :)

Incantrix

I seem to remember I also had problems with the handle, but I just decided to attach it "my way" instead of as stated in the tutorial.

Miss B posted at 6:14AM Tue, 29 August 2017 - #4313147

I seem to remember I also had problems with the handle, but I just decided to attach it "my way" instead of as stated in the tutorial.

I just cheat and use half a torus. Why reinvent the wheel if you don't have to.

gToon posted at 11:30AM Tue, 29 August 2017 - #4312911

Thank you. Thank you. I'll include both in future chapters of the Blender series. Will contact you both once I start working through the instructions to get comments, etc.

Quick question for everyone: what can Blender do that most people are unaware of?

Also, finished my first coffee cup. Not too bad, I think. Problems with rendering, but that's another whole chapter I think. Please let me know where I can improve. I'm not sensitive, so fire away. (PS is picture too large?)

To answer your question "Quick question for everyone: what can Blender do that most people are unaware of?" You can do video editing in Blender, You can do texture painting in Blender and Motion Tracking so Blender has a unique tool set that are out side of the normal modeling UV mapping and animation

EClark1894 posted at 1:44PM Tue, 29 August 2017 - #4313157

Miss B posted at 6:14AM Tue, 29 August 2017 - #4313147

I seem to remember I also had problems with the handle, but I just decided to attach it "my way" instead of as stated in the tutorial.

I just cheat and use half a torus. Why reinvent the wheel if you don't have to.

Actually it wasn't the handle itself that gave me problems, but the way the tutorial suggested attaching it to the mug that I didn't like, so I did what I showed in the screenshot I posted above.

Excellent solution to the problem, EC. Thanks a million. I'll try that out.

Side note: I replaced the cpu on my workstation and everything is back to normal. In addition to moving the workstation out of my garage (no AC and hot) I also had a 20% overclock. Not good judgement on my part and it cost me $300. Well, I won't make that mistake again.

Thanks for the note, Lobo. I'll add it to my next article.

Here's gToon's most recent column. 8 Weeks with Blender: MakeHuman

Thanks, SchelleFire. This column was about bringing MakeHuman models into Blender and then altering them. Not as easy as you might think given that both Blender and MH are OpenSource programs.

ricky

nice to know some one cares ;-) but is an add on for blender ......lets you build your model in blender link to thread at BA I hope that's allowed https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?391401-Addon-Manuel-Bastioni-Lab-turns-Blender-in-a-laboratory-for-3d-humanoids-creation

Amazing. I'll be sure to try it out and write about it in an upcoming article.