Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Blender Foundation: Remilia Skirtless Model




This is actually my first try on using a different software for 3D Rendering/Modeling and all I can say is... Wow! There's so much difference between an actual 3D Renderer vs CAD Software with 3D rendering features. Anyway, if you're wondering, she's Remilia Skirtless... sorry for the horrible pun...? The two low profile characters from behind are Shizuha Aki and Minoriko Aki and as a fan of the later series (TH6 and so on), I should at least know that they are from Touhou 10: Moutain of Faith.



I didn't have any better thing to do this past few days so instead of letting my brain rot without learning anything, I decided to study a freeware 3D Modeling software called Blender Foundation. It's much similar to those famous and branded but highly costed one like Autodesk softwares and etc. I accidentally found this rare(?) gem as I was browsing the net for best 3d software and thought I should give it a try. But actually, the real reason I got interested is when I saw a 3D game in youtube that was made by Blender's game engine. Yup, I'm not really a professional programmer despite having a course of Information Technology but I thought maybe I could use some basic skills here. If there's an "Off Course" course, that would probably my course. A friend told me I should be an architect or an engineer because of the type of work I do but what the heck... I'm going off course again, even in this post. Anyway, back to topic...

I've watched a lot of tutorials about how to use Blender and they're all very helpful. From setting up Blender, Inputting and Manipulating Objects, Good texturing, Basic Animation, and the Frigging Rigging (took a lot of hours out of me to memorize the basics but it was really educational). The thing above is the result of my five days of self studying Blender (that is, if you don't count the video tutorials and manuals as teachers). I'm not really a modeller so I'm not sure if I made a shoddy job. Oh, before I forget, I didn't make the model. I just took that one from Love Death 2's Touhou Mod, played with it a little, put colors here and there, put *that* there, partially boned and rigged the legs so that it would just well... bend a little? Result? A 32000+ vertex, 38000+ face model.

The things I liked about Blender are:

1: Super Fast Loading! Unlike those gigabyte size ones, this one is less than 100mb whether you believe it or not. Loading files doesn't take forever at all.
2: There are a lot scripts available to make things easier for you or you could make yours if you want and if you can.
3: A lot of formats are supported including the ones from the big business and if you can add other export format script, you can.
4: Since it's community based software, you'll probably find a lot of help in the main forum (I'm just assuming).
5: Very fast graphics performance and rendering.
6: Updated regularly since it's open source SVN or whatever it is.
7: It's Totally Free!

The settings I have is very much similar to what I do in CAD. Maintain Z in 3D view (turntable), Left mouse select, Middle mouse Pan, Rotate while focussing on objects, etc. I'll see if there's actually a script that lets me use console inputting for making commands in Blender, much like in CAD. I mean, if I want to input a cube, I would just type in the command or the shortcut command in the console to draw it (cube 0,0,0 5,5,5 where 0 0 0 is the designated position and 5 5 5 is the cube's value), or if I want to drag a vertex to a certain coordinate, I just click the vertex while in edit mode then input the coordinate for its destination. I also want to a script that shows the coordinate where the mouse is pointing. It would totally rock my world if there is because I memorize things by abbreviation and not by keyboard shortcut or icon position in toolbar or clicking menus in menu bar.

By the way, I'm not sure how would I rate this software since this is basically the first one I really studied well but if you're going to force me to say it then, I guess this is probably one of the best if not, the best freeware 3D software in my opinion.

Links you'll definitely want to go in regards to this post

Blender.org (The main site)
blenderunderground.com (Have some very nice video tutorials, the main site should have some very nice video tutorials too)
www.python.org (Language software required for Blender Foundation)

1 comment: