[IQis222]

Hey there, any of you ever heard of the 3D program called Blender, my mom's friend's husband gave me a copy of it on a floppy disk, very small, but a very need program, very hard to master though, I am still stuck on it, any one know of nay good palces that I could go to find some easy tutorials?

[elam]

Yo , yo

Blender is a sweet 3d program. The newest version has excellent animation and sub-d features.

I did this in Blender...


and this



There website has tons of tutorials. I also have there book that I got from Borders.

Blender is on par with a number of animation programs, most notably 3d studio max, in terms of out of the box animation and modeling. Also has a game engine and python scripting. The learning curve is a bit high in terms of the interface, but once you learn it, you fly.

You got any questions, drop me an email.

[ November 13, 2001: Message edited by: elam ]

[IQis222]

Yeah, thanks a lot, those looks really cool. How long did it take you to do some of those?

[elam]

The woman, took a couple of months, working off and on.

The troll, about 8 hours.

I also use Animation Master quite a bit, and am currently involved in a project for it, so I haven't had time for Blender lately, but I will soon.

AM is quite cheap as well. If your a student, it can be had for around $150.00. Has THE best animation tools available. As well as many tasty texturing and rendering features.

[ambient-whisper]

elam.. your the only one who has had this kind of success with blender.

[IQis222]

yeah, I log in and about pass out, my eyes hurt looking at that stuff. Will also check into that other program

[elam]

Hey AW, don't I see you at Spiraloid?

I think that Blender produces less-than impressive results because of the talent level using it. Not a lot of traditionaly trained artist, or artist in general are using it.

Most people at the Blender forums are into posting particle effects and explosions.

It's a comprehensive program too. Has the game engine, a compositor, full animation tools and recently, they came out with a web production portion that cost around 300.00 bones, but the "Creator" is still free.

The interface is the hardest thing to get used to.
Try this tut, if you get a chance. Explains the interface and what not.

The only reason I began using it is because it runs in Linux, but I've come to respect that program.

[IQis222]

Wow, Thanks a lot for the info, Am asking for the Blender book for XMas

[IQis222]

Elam, could you do me a favor by any chance? Could you send me a 3D picture or whatever in a blender format so I can go through it and disect it and look at it. I tend to learn by that a lot, If you could do that, that would be most excelent.

My E-mail is [email protected]

[[Shizo]]

blender is awful for beginners learning 3d i think
elam's pieces look fine because he's already a good modeler
i bet he didnt start in blender =]

3dmax/LW are the ones i would suggest to learn, and once you're ready then go maya

[[Shizo]]

well.. hehe they're not free, but for educational purposes they should be free i think
so.. you know

Although there is a program (gmax) which is a stripped down version of 3d max4 and its free. It's excellent for learning though because most of there things stripped from it are useless crap anyway.
I suggest you try this out: http://www.discreet.com/products/gmax

[IQis222]

ok, How much do those cost though? The only porblem with those I bet is the cosr, I like blender so far because it is free, that is all I like about it so far. hehe.

[SatoriGFX]

ambient-whisper said:

"elam.. your the only one who has had this kind of success with blender.
"

Why do you spew this garbage? I have seen a slew of extremely good work done in Blender. The fact that you have not suggests you didn't put much effort into it.

Is there the same quantity of quality work out there done in Blender as in Max or other commercial packages? Of course not. The reasons are obvious, such as:

1) Blender is not quite as good as Max , Maya etc... But considering how good it is relative to these commercial packages it's amazing that it is completely free. What other freeware 3d app do you know that offers particles, metaballs, IK, radiosity, post production and on and on...? And so what if it's not quite as good? Lightwave is cheaper and less powerfull than Maya or Houdini but I still see incredible work done in Lightwave. I see incredible work done in Animation Master too and while it is damn good for the price it isn't Maya.

2) The Blender community "tends" to have more tinkerers who can't afford expensive commercial packages. That does not mean there aren't any truly talented people doing excellent work with Blender. There are simply fewer of them and there is more crap posted in their forums than quality work.

3) People who are learning 3d at school tend to use whatever expensive package(s) they are learning to do all of their work that you see on the net.

4) People who are now out of school and have purchased a 3d package or use one at work are using an expensive commercial package.

An "artist" accomplished in 3d, once he learned Blender, could produce excellent work.

I suspect that you took a quick look through the forums and gallery and assumed that because you didn't "see" any impressive work Blender was incapable of impressive results. Bad assumption.

SatoriGFX.

[ December 02, 2001: Message edited by: SatoriGFX ]

[Jyashuwa]

It seems to produce some really nice stuff, but I REALLY hope it doesn't become an industry standard. I took me long enough to figure out Maya and 3d Max.