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ISSUE 16 | MAY 2008
Blender learning made easy
Skin Shading using multi-layered SSS
Realistic Smoke in Blender
Burn Them All
Making hair for Wolf
- ‘Hans Schwaiger - Mice‘
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CONTENTS
2
Gaurav Nawani gaurav@blenderart.org
Sandra Gilbert sandra@blenderart.org
Skin Shading using multi-layered SSS
7
Nam Pham
Gaurav, Sandra, Alex
Realistic Smoke in Blender
17
Kevin Braun
Phillip Ryals
Bruce Westfall
Joshua Leung
Lynda Schemansky
Eric Pranausk
Noah Summers
Joshua Scotton
Mark Warren
Wade Bick
Patrick O'Donnell
Brian C. Treacy
Scott Hill
Henriel Veldtmann
Twirl of Smoke in Blender
28
Making hair for Wolf
31
Gone with the waves
33
Burn Them All!
38
Slavoljub Pantelic
Victor Malherbe
Georges Mignot
Daniel Salazar
Jean-Sébastien Guillemette
François Grassard
Jack Harris
Procedurally Driven Scene
46
Making - Meet the Eye
49
Hans Schwaiger - Mice
Issue 16 | May 2008 - Wow Factor
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EDITORIAL
3
In a digital world where most everything is
faked or is a work around of some kind, the
desire for ever more realistic effects and mod-
els, faked or not, has CG artists always wishing
for more. Especially when it comes to hair/fur,
water simulation and a realistic cloth modifier,
just to name a few.
modifier will herald a new age of test images
filled with nicely draped clothes, blowing flags
and all manner of fluttering cloth.
And who can resist setting up a massive flood
or tidal wave scene with water crashing every-
where. Or better yet, create a beautiful work of
Fluid art.
And while a great many great animations and
images never make use of high end tech-
niques, tools and effects, at some point all CG
artists wish to play with these concepts and
tools, if for no other reason than "it's cool!"
Managing Editor
In this issue we cover how to use some of
these great tools as well as how to set up
some very cool effects. So go find your favorite
chair and settle in for a great read.
CG artists do understand that not every feature
wish is possible, but luckily for us the blender
coders are very talented at giving us as many
of these wished-for features.
Happy Blending!
Yay, us!
The Peach project (Big Buck Bunny) gave us
some very nice improvements to the particle
system allowing for some truly beautiful
hair/fur. When set up right, it looks so soft,
you just want to reach out and touch it.
After years of development, our long wished
for cloth modifier has arrived. The new cloth
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Issue 16 | May 2008 - Wow Factor
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IZZY SPEAKS : DVD's, New Releases, Oh My!
4
All the animals looked
so soft and furry that I
Just wanted to reach
out and squish them.
Big Buck Bunny:
Oh My! It arrived so fast. I hadn't expected my copy to
show up for a few more weeks. I had other things I
planned for that day, but it wasn't too long before I was
watching BBB. I just couldn't wait!
I'm not going to spoil the story line for anyone who hasn't
seen it yet, but I will say that I found it to be very funny.
The characters had great personalities and it was great fun
to watch their expressions change as well as how they
moved and interacted with each other.
The look and style of BBB was just beautiful. All the ani-
mals looked so soft and furry that I just wanted to reach
out and squish them. The colors of the environment were
soft and dreamy. You can be sure that I will be digging
through the production files in order to find all the textur-
ing and material secrets.
In fact, I will be studying the production files (as I'm sure
everyone will be) quite thoroughly to see how they got not
only the great materials and fur, but the lighting as well.
I haven't yet had time to look through all the files and
extras on the DVD's, but a quick look assured me that
there is a lot to see and play with. If you haven't ordered
your copy yet, I encourage you to do so as a soon as pos-
sible. You won't regret it.
plore features as I need them for projects. And lately my
projects haven't really needed any cool features to work.
Double bummer (note to self: think of better projects so
you can play with new features)!
The arrival and release of Blender 2.46 didn't increase my
free time, but the fun new tools were too tempting to re-
sist. So after a quick browse through my old files for a
suitable model to experiment on, I sat down for a bit of
'blending' fun. Shhhh! Don't tell anyone, they all think I'm
actually working on something productive.
Here are some of my impressions. I don't often just sit and
push buttons to see what they do, so this might take a
while.
Some time later . . . okay, 2-3 hours later (I was having
fun!).
The Cloth Modifier: Even though I am not a fashion design-
er, I had great time playing with a very basic poncho (a
simple circle, subdivided and shaped just a little). It wasn't
a fancy test by any means, but it was great fun to play
with the defaults and watch it drop and fold around my
little character. I was able to get nice results with little to
no tweaking; just using the supplied presets created a
nicely draped poncho.
It was interesting to see how the different presets acted
and varied from one another. My poncho was fun, but
even I am entertained by a falling poncho for only so long.
So I moved up to an ugly robe-type outfit and added some
wind. That entertained me for quite a while. I was able to
view the robe fluttering in the wind from any angle (yes, I
am very easily entertained). Silk was my favorite to watch.
It has a nice sliding quality to it, that let the cloth just flow
over the character. The rubber was quite entertaining
when wind was added, as it bounced off my character's
belly and flapped around a bit.
New toys to play with:
Although I keep up with Blender's progress and develop-
ment, with my schedule I don't often have time to play
with test builds. Which is something of a bummer consid-
ering the sheer number of new and/or improved features
that seem to get added almost daily. To make matters
worse, even when I get my hands on the latest official
release, I still don't have time to really sit down and just
play with new features. Like many of us, I learn and ex-
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Issue 16 | May 2008 - Wow Factor
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IZZY SPEAKS : DVD's, New Releases, Oh My!
5
There are options for custom cloth, but honestly I think
most needs would be adequately met with the presets.
Especially if you are just messing around as I was.
Fur/Hair (Particle system): On to hair and fur. Since most
of my characters are animals of some sort, I was looking
forward to playing with the newly improved particle sys-
tem. A quick search for instructions led me to a WIP tutori-
al. It gave some nice tips on getting a fur system going;
then I just played from there. My model ended up looking
like a cousin to Big Foot, but he was definitely furry. Great
fun! The hair editing brushes kept me busy for some time
as I kept restyling his hair. I obviously need to take a few
hair styling classes . . . my little guy was surely having a
bad hair day.
I had actually meant to play with and explore more of the
new features, but I spent so much time entertaining my-
self with watching cloth fall and styling hair, that all too
soon it was time to get back to all those other things I was
supposed to be doing.
There were other features I really wanted to try out: UV
Editing, Render Baking, Bone Heat weighting and the Ar-
mature Drawing improvements . . . but I'll have to return
to these tests later and play some more when I have more
time, or when no one is looking.
the DVD into my computer to take a sneak peak. Big mis-
take, even just poking around the DVD to check things out
left me wanting to sit down and devour the entire thing.
But, I really, really had other things I needed to be doing.
Bummer! Big bummer!
Sigh . . . so I proceeded to take care of all the things that
needed to be done. One week passed, and then two. Still
no time to watch my new DVD. This really sucks. At this
rate it will never get watched.. Then all of a sudden I had
an amazing idea. I grabbed my DVD, my old laptop and
took them both to my craft room, where I promptly set it
up and started the DVD. I have been listening to the DVD
while working on my projects. Problem semi-solved.
I still haven’t watched very much of the DVD (just bits and
pieces here and there), but I have listened to the whole
thing numerous times. Like I said, not a perfect solution,
but I am learning quite a bit. Granted, I still have to actu-
ally watch it all, but this will do for now.
I have long admired Bassam’s skill and creative vision, and
after watching the DVD, I am pleased to discover that he is
also quite the teacher and rather funny too. His teaching
style is akin to having a long in-depth conversation with a
friend. He explains everything in an easy going, casual
manner. One thing I have really enjoyed is how he not
only shows you how to set things up properly and why,
but what happens if you set it up wrong or forget to set
something up. He even left some mistakes of his own in
the videos and then showed how to correct them.
Bassam packed an amazing amount of information into
each video. And while they obviously all go together, they
also stand alone as full lessons within themselves. I have
already listened to the DVD many times and will listen to
and watch it many more. Every time I “watch” a segment,
I learn something new and my understanding of rigging
increases, which can be only a good thing.
The ManCandy FAQ DVD was well worth the money and
the wait. Now, if only I can just find the time to actually do
something with all my new-found knowledge.
ManCandy FAQs:
Over the last several months (okay, probably longer than
that) I have been trying to learn about rigging and anima-
tion. I would really like to expand my animation skills from
moving of simple objects to character animation, so I was
really excited about the ManCandy FAQ DVD. I saved up
my pennies and finally ordered it. After waiting for the
usual 2-3 week delivery time, (it would appear that I live
on the ends of the earth when it comes to deliveries) it
finally arrived. Yay!!!
I was so excited, even though I really had way too many
other things I needed to be doing, I couldn’t resist popping
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