my little steam train

[acc24ex]

nice stuff.. how did you do the rivets instanced along the parts of mesh? You did the whole model in blender?
so tell me Kubo you're a max user switching or trying out blender ?
I went from c4d to 3dmax, testing modo along the way and rhino.. but still blender looks great, although every time I start learning it I get a bit demotivated fast so I leave every time - I hate lelearning the basic steps again and just want to jump and start doing something, it was pretty hard switching from c4d to 3dmax, cause max really isn't that user friendly and a heavy and expensive bastard of a software, but cause absolutely everyone is using it as primary I decided to learn it as well.. but blender pops around with new stuff all the time, and the fact it's free and portable, and seen some stuff that's pretty advanced..
still it would be great for someone to suggest the fastest workflow to switch from 3dmax to blender, I tried doing a custom keyboard setup to reflect the keyboard shortcut mapping in 3dmax since there wasn't a preset one for some reason - only maya, I mean max is the most popular tool, even though it isn't the most advanced, but because it was here first, and most of the 3d companies have developed custom scripting for 3dmax, and a cost of switching to something else would mean years of work gone to waste..
sorry for switching the subject there a bit, this could go inside off topic, since I would like to find out something more about blender, cause I'm too lazy to search for relevant information since I already know a few softs and why should I bother with blender (apart from being free), everyone I know didn't even touch or mention blender, but still there's a big community going on and it works and looks great..

[matej]

since I already know a few softs and why should I bother with blender

If you already own, know and can do the job with Max, there is no or less point in learning Blender. If you were just starting out I would suggest you to try Blender first, before you throw a few $k for others. Still, if you have time & will you can check the learning resources at blender site & video tutorials at blendercookie. Blender artists is the best forum to ask for help. There is learning material for a few months on this sites alone.

As for the differences why Blender is good/better, I can't say because I don't know any other 3D package. As I gathered around, people are saying that Blender interface is "unconventional & difficult". I don't know for the first, but the UI is certainly not difficult, because all you have to do is learn a few shortcuts and then you can work very fast. Actually the (new) GUI is the most awesome interface I ever used in any program; it's logical, fast, neat, very flexible, good looking... it really shows the power of an opensource community.

(sorry for offtopic )

[kubo]

yeap, I am mainly a max user, althou lately I've switch to sketchup for the speed in architecture modeling combined with max and sculptris (this last one mainly for fun). I wanted to learn blender, there is a nice comunity, plenty of resources to learn from and I had seen great things done in it (mostly from people in this forum ;P) but learning a new soft is never easy, and blender 2.4 (which is the first I saw) was "ugly" as hell. So when I had the chance to get in this 2 days introduction to blender I jumped on it. I have to say I was gladly surprised. We were using crappy computers yet blender was running smooth, modeling, once you learn a couple shortcuts (which is the thoughtest part of learning blender for me) is even faster, you don't have to learn how to model if you already know it from other soft, just where everything is, also blender is a whole ecosystem by it's own, so as I said for this project I could use only blender (and octane, but that was a given) where usually I would have used other packages.
My idea is to switch to blender+SU+Octane in a near future, Max is fine, yet is too expensive for what I need, and not so friendly at times, plus at some tasks is a pain. But I don't plan to totally leave max behind, as an example I'm planning on buying the max plugin for Octane, 'cause for comments on the blender subforum I don't see a similar integration any time soon, and my first love nowdays go to Octane, so a faster integration would be great. The thing is max is a great tool to know, 'cause out there most medium-small studios use it, so if you have to work there it is something you might need to learn, yet since I'm a freelance is too expensive being other tools that do the same job as fast and in somethings even faster.
About the bolts, I modeled the base mesh and once I had everything in place I did a duplicate, deleted the vertices I didn't want and position some extra ones adding loops and subdividing and added a particle system where I instanced a bolt I had modeled previously which was just half a box with a subdivide modifier.

[kubo]

well I've been adding stuff to the scene, but since is instance dependant I'm testing it by itself. I did a tree in blender, much faster than in max and using the same technique, then I redid the rose I had from scratch also. the scene is 3M polys and rendered in PT for 30 minutes, no retouching besides a little saturation play. The rose is a little stiff yet, but I'll play with it a little more. hope you guys like it.

[t_3]

well I've been adding stuff to the scene, but since is instance dependant I'm testing it by itself. I did a tree in blender, much faster than in max and using the same technique, then I redid the rose I had from scratch also. the scene is 3M polys and rendered in PT for 30 minutes, no retouching besides a little saturation play. The rose is a little stiff yet, but I'll play with it a little more. hope you guys like it.

looks nice already! and i will of course not mention the use of sss regarding the rose
by the way, how long did it take you to create that stuff with blender?

ps: i just happen to notice your logo-thingy at the bottom. somehow i connect it with something away from the octane forum - just have no idea what it could be. must have seen some of your work earlier/elsewhere already...

[kubo]

the tree couple hours, the procedure is quite straight foward, you can follow this tutorials, http://cgcookie.com/blender/2010/12/16/ ... in-part-1/ http://scotchtapeworm3d.wordpress.com/2 ... poly-tree/ is the ones I used for the max version and now I've redone in blender so I could figure some things out. The rose roughly an hour, again many things I had to learn back.
I'm guessing once you are fluid with it you can do both twice as fast (althou I did found out on the process that blender has a nice tree generator built in from 2.6, but since my plan was learn how to do it...)

[acc24ex]

have you seen this app for ipad, treesketch, http://www.cgchannel.com/2011/08/get-tr ... -ipad-app/ ( maybe it was under shares in the forum)
free.. unbelievable, but this is the most intuitive easy software for creating trees EVER
Push onto the red dot via your finger and draw out accross the screen a basic spline and it fills in the leaves and branches, you change color texture of the leaves and rotate and manipulate a lot of variables very simply, and can be exported in fbx..
Man, try to compare that to onyx tree, it's even simpler than speedtree that costs like 10k.. some ipad apps are really showing the revolutionary way you can now use a gui, can really prove worthwhile.. i got the PAD a month ago
Now I just wish for the future of software development, the same ease of learning a new GUI, some apps have virtually zero percent learning curve, it works on the first try.. anyway just thought I mention this, if you own the padd or know someone just install the app you will be really impressed

And anyway, tell me you mentioned like a getting started tutorial for blender - could you please post information or something on it.. so I can jump into in when the time to learn new stuff becaomes avaliable..

[kubo]

yeap, I saw that app in the OT subforum, some member posted and I felt total envy for you lucky IPAD owners (never felt the need to own one till I saw that app ;P ). I'm in the process of adding some other stuff to this mini-scene, just for some further test, but when I'm done I'll play with the inbuilt tree generator which seems awesome also, check out this tut to see what it can do http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCHj5Ltint0.
About introduction tutorials, well there are plenty in http://www.blender.org/ and http://cgcookie.com/blender/ and I'm sure there are many more places I don't know about. But what I did was I got in a 2 day introduction course here in Madrid that covered some basics about general blender, and modeling in day one and yafaray and lightning in day 2 (not so much interested in this second part, but it was good just the same). It was enough to take the "scare" out of me to start learning blender, and we got to see how really powerful it was thanks to Pablo Vázquez who showed us some behind the scenes of Sintel. It was great fun and a great way to get to learn a software, or at least to sparkle an interest in learning it.

[kubo]

a small addition, the background is an almost black rgb, stars, moon and fog are all modeled in the scene, the fog is a great addon to octane tools, so many things you can do with it. In this case is a dome surronding the scene with the normals in, the stars and moon are both behind. 3 lights, one inside the moon (which I redid using the fracture tool in blender) another one to light the moon and a third one to light the tree. Since this scene is topping my vram I'll have to wait till 2.6 to add more instances, and meanwhile I'm going to center in learning the skills to add the rest of the scenes so back to youtube ;P
PT for 30min 3M polys no retouching besides logo and some desaturation. I'm a total fog-addict. Btw in the last one I added a float3 to the turbulence scale to lower the z value and get a more horizontal clouds effect.
Hope you guys like it.