Blender

3D Model Spaceship with Interior in Blender 3D

By The Illustrator  |  2009/11/14 19:03 Posted in 3D, Blender, Technique, illustration, problems, spaceship  |  Comments (0)

There is a huge amount of exterior art depicting spaceships, but a relatively limited number of examples of illustrations showing interiors, and I have decided – to even things up a bit – that my latest work in progress, “The Packard”, should have some interiors. Some detailed spaceship deckplans for role-playing games would be cool too, like these nice spaceship deckplans. But first I’m going to concentrate on creating some images of the interior.

This spaceship bar room needs furniture, and a biggger window.

 

I wanted to curve the edges of this mesh, but how?I zoomed in on my spaceship mesh and the first thing I decided to do was punch a hole in the wall so you could see the planet outside. I immediately came across a problem however, I wanted big friendly windows with circular edges to the 3D mesh, but  how would I make the edges of the mesh a perfect circular curve. I was Googling around thinking that weight painting might be the answer, when I encountered this great idea of simply using a guide and moving the vertexes by hand in 3D Model – Sports Car – Alex Salters Profile. I immediately gave it a try, and it worked like a charm, although it was quite fiddly and time consuming, it got good results.

Just follow the guide, one vertex at a time.

I like the view. With the new improved windows, and raising the floor of the spaceship mesh the room started to look a little more like the sort of space where player characters in a science fiction role playing game, or strange little space monsters might like to spend some time. There would be some places to play strange alien card games and listen and dance to alien music only just heard at the edge of human perception.

70s-influenced spaceship bar

And it hasn’t deviated too far from the original concept sketch either, at least not yet, and that’s pleasing because it’s often very difficult to get a collection of 3D meshes and textures to produce just the effect you’re looking for.

I’ll be posting the completed Packard spaceship here, both interior and exterior, as soon as it’s done. And probably a few more in-between stages as well.

Blender 3D: Adding depth to my spaceship – with Wikibooks

By The Illustrator  |  2009/10/24 18:56 Posted in 3D, Blender, Illustration, Technique, spaceship  |  Comments (0)

Blast Off, wow! 

As I was trying to turn a 2d sketch of a spaceship into a beautiful 3D image I ran into a couple of problems. One problem was that the mesh I was projecting my 2d image onto was becoming more and more complex as I tried to distort it – to add interesting lighting to the finished render.

Look at all those polys. Not good, not good.

So I looked for a way to make the poly count on my 3d shape lower. And I think I found one…

The Decimate modifier will do two things for us. Its primary job is to reduce the poly count of a mesh. A pleasant side-effect for our purposes is that it will begin to rearrange the topology into a more manageable heap of triangles and quads. Keep reducing the Ratio slider below 0.5 until it becomes as coarse as you can stand. You want the lowest polygon base you can have that still maintains enough detail in the limbs and shapes you made…

Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Making Your Creation Smoother – Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks

Oops, I bent my spaceship!But as I simplified my 3d shape, and then made it more complex again in a repeating cycle of faffing around with the image my the renders got stranger and stranger. The mesh seemed to disintegrate.

First it twisted like it was going through a space warp, and then it broke apart all together.

I decided to go back to a simpler shape as Whoops! Wrong button. the base mesh for the spaceship sketch to be projected on. It worked pretty well, but it still looks like a 2d image floating about in a 3d space.

I’m losing faith in this whole process and might go back to sculpting a 3d spaceship, and only using these 2d elements as decoration. I could use this technique to add airlocks, logos and such like to the 3d model that eventually gets produced.

I’m actually quite looking forward to sculpting in Blender again. It’s the most enjoyable part of the whole 3d process.

Fast like a 3d spaceship hyperdriving through a shaft

By The Illustrator  |  2009/10/23 20:01 Posted in 3D, Blender, Illustration, Illustration Friday, Spaceships, Technique  |  Comments (0)

here'is that spaceship sketch

I’ve been experimenting at the interface between 2d black and white sketches, Lights, action, spaceship! and full-colour 3d images again – this time with one of my cute little spaceships. I had had a sketch of a small elegant little spaceship hanging around for a while, here’s that spaceship sketch as if first appeared on Spiralcat, but when I saw that the word on Illustration Friday this week was “fast” I decided to work on it a bit more – and maybe turn it 3d.

darker meener spaceship On one of my many photosafaris I had taken a picture of a corner of a train corridor which I thought would look very nice as a high-tech background to a 3d image. The spaceship sketch cut out and made 3d by laying it on a mesh in Blender was already starting to look more effective – but I wanted it to look even more 3d illustration like.

I spent a few hours messing with the placement and intensity of the lights and sculpting the mesh that was supporting The corridor already look futuristic, doesn't it? the spaceship sketch. I think the image is going in the right direction, but it’s far from complete yet.

I need to add a lot more 3d detail to the corridor that the spaceship is flying through and to the spaceship itself. Then the final touch will be using Photoshop to add some motion blur to the action in the background of the illustration. The whole thing has already come a long way from it’s individual elements though.

Spaceship artist out…

I always like these behind the scenes shots

Guardian inspiration for my 3d CGI illustrations and…

By The Illustrator  |  2009/10/21 12:58 Posted in 3D, Blender, Editorial, News Story, Review, Technique, illustration  |  Comments (0)

Big 3d eagle smash Tory, grrr... The Americans (not just the Democrats, the Republicans have voiced similar concerns) have told off the Tories here in the UK for embracing European partners with views that are a little too worrying, a little too closely. The Guardian comment piece that inspired this editorial illustration.  I immediately wrote a little something for my blog Dragonbat when I saw this comment piece and of course, I would need an illustration.

I decided on something simple that told the story as directly as possible. So America’s anger is represented in the illustration as a big nasty 3d eagle with red eyes. As Europe is the backdrop to the story, we have the simple blue flag with stars in the background of the of the image, actually it is more accurately an image texture on the floor of the 3d space of the illustration. But…

scribble, doodle, scratch, ah.. done. How to represent the Tory party was a little more problematic, their leader David Cameron is a bit bland and hard to caricature, but I couldn’t think of a better option. I gave him a very dubious looking arm band in the European colours to signify the bone of contention in our story and there you have it, done.

From initial sketch to completed illustration the whole image with 3d elements added in the ever reliable 3d workhorse Blender and a few tweaks done in the more jittery and expensive, but still useful, Photoshop took about three hours. The picture isn’t perfect – and there comes a time when you just have to call it done – but the huge advantage of this illustration technique is speed, it allows you to add colour and interest even to something as fast moving and ephemeral as a blog post, and that can’t be a bad thing.

3d editorial illustration for article on internet piracy and copyright article

By The Illustrator  |  2009/10/20 10:49 Posted in 3D, Blender, Editorial, Illustration, Technique  |  Comments (0)

Lord of the files This is my latest editorial illustration for Dragonbat (my illustrator/Guardian reader rants and sketches blog). I’m writing an article about copyright on the internet, and as usual I wanted a cool illustration to accompany it. The article itself isn’t finished yet – pressures of actual work that brings me real cash money, rather than the dribbles of virtual money these internet shenanigans bring, so I guess I got to prioritize it – but the article is shaping up to be about my half-baked theories on files sharing and other internet copyright issues.

original pirate laptop sketch, coolThis is the original sketch I did, well not quite in it’s original form, it has been scanned into a computer and I used Photoshop to colour it and turn it into a png 24. I wanted the sketch to have a really raw hand-drawn feel because I knew it was going to be part of a 3d illustration produced with the Blender 3d suite and that would add a nice counterpoint of glossy mechanical accuracy.

I think this comes across very nicely in the completed illustration, it looks like the sketches jumped right off the page of the sketch book and started hopping about in an empty studio as a photographer tried to capture the action on a really fast camera setting.

Looks a lot duller before it's rendered doesn't it? This idea of action really fits the feel of the image, which is to do with all those tempting files out there almost downloading themselves onto your computer. I mean even if you watch an episode of your favorite show on YouTube, in theory, your computer has to download the file – and some people even capture these files and keep them.

This one is about half done.

I don’t think this is particularly the type of  file sharing that is always making the news as the industry futilely tries to stop it, but it’s probably just as illegal, and I think this dangerous tempting territory is what is invoked by the illustration. I wonder how many of us can claim that there are no pirated files of any type on their computer?

The illustration was quite quick and easy to make, with the usual png on a mesh plane technique, but I really like the results. Now I’ve just got to finish writing the article.

Speeding Up My Animation | Blender Underground’s Video Tutorials

By The Illustrator  |  2009/08/25 20:58 Posted in 3D, Animation, Blender, Tutorials, problems  |  Comments (0)

 look at that fantastic ipo curve window

The titles of my animation were moving a little slowly, see last post, they should jiggle, not sway. I’ve noticed that the graphics in a lot of cool edgy stuff jiggles about as though it is on an old-fashioned reel of film going through a badly adjusted movie projector. I can’t actually think of an example right now, but it’s still a cool effect.

But because I hadn’t the slightest idea about how to go about this – except perhaps to delete the frames I had already done and start repositioning the mesh anew – I as usual turned to the internet for advice, via my trusty steed Google, and found > Animating the Time Ipo | Blender Underground’s Video Tutorials. Very interesting, apparently I just have to add a time curve to the blend file.

I gave it a try and it does work, now my titles flicker like butterfly wings instead of swaying about like a pendulum. Here.

Much nicer I hope you agree. But it is a little complex to use. While I was experimenting in the ipo curve window I found I could resize them in the x axis just like a mesh, and that sped things up nicely without having to do the mental gymnastics required with a time curve.

Now the next step is to get that cat doing interesting and fun things.

I’ve settled on the idea of getting the cat to blink and keep time with the music by tapping its paw. The eye blinking is simple, but getting the paw tapping to keep time is proving to be a giant headache. Well, nobody said it would be easy.