OTOY Forums

rofthorax wrote:If you want to learn blender, best way is to create a project like an animation and see if you can do it in blender.

Keep in mind that everything is stored in the blend file, your scenes, screens, objects, materials, textures, render settings, everything.. So all one needs to do is give a blend file to a friend, and the friend load it into their blender (note blend files are basically, not completely, forward and backward compatible).. Why MSWord is not backward compatible? Microsoft wouldn't make money, this is open source, there is no reason not to have backward compatibility as well as forward.

Somewhere on the web, you can google for it.. But there are pre-made animation rigs for characters like Big Buck Bunny and such.. Get that and go into the dope sheet, turn on record button which keyframes anything you change in blender.. put the bunny into a pose with "g" (grab) and "r" (rotate) and "s" (scale).. Type "t" and "n" keys in 3D view to expose more controls, "t" is for object operations like smooth/flat and vertex smoothing, vertex merging operations, etc.. "n" is for precise modifications of movement, scale and rotation.. "i" sets keyframes, but since anytime something is changed its settings are keyed, no need.. Shift-S+3 = Move cursor to object, Cntrl+keypad "." re-orients the camera to the target cursor in red and white. So select bunny hand, S3 Cntrl+KP".", scroll zoom in, "r" on the cyan colored rig control for hand, there are controls for fingers, there is elbow alignments, etc..

Turn on cycles? At top of screen there is a renderer select, change it to cycles. Find toolbar for 3D view, locate "object mode" button, next to it is a solid white sphere, select the colored orange sphere, that sets realtime rendering to cycles. Go to "properties" window which is usually on the right, below the tree view.. Select the "camera" .. well you can just watch me fuddle around on youtube.. I've been using blender off and on since 1.18 in the late 90s on the SGI's... Before there was a blender manual..

I don't know half of what is in blender, but it only changes a little bit with each new version.. But you can always get an older version if you don't like the current version.. The thing I like about the current version is the Space-bar menu with command search capability.. The Node editor is new and fun but kinda brainy, but you can package up the shaders into shader group modules and distribute them like blender materials.. You can also keyframe attributes of the shaders, like you could animate the displacement texture to change with the orientation of the camera by using a Input, Vector Math modes and input to a texture module.. Then route the color output of the texture into the displacement output..

I came by here to see if someone was using the cycles rendered with a NVidia 570.. I've got a Phenom2x6 and a Ati card, but I can't use the ATI with blender as a GPU.. Oh check out "graphicsall.org" they have custom compiled versions of blender with various configurations.. I'm planning to try the All CUDA version.. Do you have to have two 570s to use for CUDA or is that not a issue anymore?

abreukers wrote:hi Cath, this looks great. it would be cool if we can put some of these on the main site pages, would that be ok? cheers,