Clone tube animation test 3

Today I expanded my scene with my own designed gate and furtherly a basic wall and floor tile. I am quiete sure it is the blender animation with the most clone tube count, namely in the scene are completely 72 clone tubes amd each one is individually animated.



Here are the facts:

Length: 800 frames
Render time: ca. 3h @Full HD
Poly count: 670k (each tube around 8k polys)
Number of clone tubes: 72
Number of animated clone tubes: 72
camera used: 70mm
Render settings: no mirror, no raytraced tranparency, no subdivion surface, no edge split, no AO

Here's the 3D viewport view from blender. The complete light comes from 2 giant spotlights (selected objects) and 1 small spotligh parented right behing the camera.

Clone tube test animation 2

A second test from today, now with a reduced polycount version of the clone tube (the flickering panels seem to be a problem with youtube, they are not on the rendered out version):




some facts:

Length: 200 frames
Render time: ca. 30 min @Full HD
Poly count: 98k (each tube around 8k polys)
Number of clone tubes: 12
Number of animated clone tubes: 12
Render settings: no mirror, no raytraced tranparency, no subdivion surface, no edge split, no AO

Clone tube test animation

A simple test animation with my clone tube I just rendered out:




some facts:

Length: 125 frames
Render time: ca. 70 min @Full HD
Poly count: 1.7m
Number of clone tubes: 12
Number of animated clone tubes: 8
Render settings: no mirror, no raytraced tranparency, no subdivion surface, edge split, no AO

Warning sign/label generator

Today I stumbled over this interesting webpage which you can use to generate your own warning sign textures. Unluckily the version I was looking for was not generatable...


http://www.warningsigngenerator.com/
http://www.warninglabelgenerator.com/

Here's a version I created:

Modeling a clone tube: Modifier setup

Currently I am in the process of modeling a high-poly sci-fi cloning tube to further advance my modeling skills. Yesterday I started with a simple, blocked-out setup to test the modifier setup. The method to flip an array around an empty looks very promising. You can learn s.th. e.g. in Blenderguru's car rim modeling tutorial: http://www.blenderguru.com/how-to-make-a-car-wheel/

Here's my blocked-out setup with modifier setup. The base tile was created from a circle (here with 8 vertices) from which later on 7 parts were deleted. Array rotation in Z is 45° (360°/8). For better modeling it makes sense to set your outer edge of the tile parallel to the Y or X axis (rotate tube&empty around curser at center)

Another improvement, if your tile is mirrored, would be to add a further mirror modifier around Y or X as the first modifier:

New model: Oriental pearl tower

Yesterday I finished my recent model, a medium detail version of the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai. Currently the complete texturing is missing, that's why actually it looks really CG like. Here's a bottom to top zoom:



A very useful tutorial I used is this parfum bottle tutorial from BlenderNewbies. It teaches you how to effectively use Blender's array, simple deform (blend mode) and shrinkwrap modifier. The only change I made was that I used on the simple deform (blend mode) the value of "2*pi" which gives you an exact complete 360° circle.

Shape Modeling Exercise #5 - Wrapping an Object with a Lattice-style Mesh: http://www.blendernewbies.com/tutorials/25/net_wrap/netwrap.html

Fun with matcaps

This evening I took an indepth look at matcaps - and asked myself if I ever will need HDRI maps again.

Result of this evening (license is CC BY SA, matcaps by SEspider):

 There is actually no lamp in the scene, all light comes from the matcaps. Model is suzanne with three levels of subdivision.

Great resources that I used:

- Tutorial: Use of matcaps in Blender: from blendernewbies: http://www.blendernewbies.com/tutorials/25/zbrush_matcaps/zbmc.html
- Ben Simonds' matcap generator for Blender: http://bensimonds.com/2010/07/30/matcap-generator/
- Matcaps from SEspiter: http://sespider.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d2vixyb