Issue 24 | Oct 2009

Blender learning made easy

COVERART Bonding - by Terence Gomez

Tutorial - A quick little Whale

Tutorial - Realistic Water Environment

Making of - Kaldewei

Making of - Sea Anemone

EDITORGaurav Nawani gaurav@blenderart.org

MANAGING EDITORSandra Gilbert sandra@blenderart.org

WEBSITENam Pham nam@blenderart.org

DESIGNERGaurav, Sandra, Alex

PROOFERSBrian C. TreacyBruce WestfallDaniel HandDaniel MateGaurav NawaniHenriël VeldtmannJoshua LeungJoshua ScottonKevin BraunMark WarrenNoah SummersPatrick ODonnellPhillipRonan PosnicScott HillWade Bick

WRITERSSandra GilbertSpewBoyChristoph Aka DracioArland B. Woodham IIIThomas SchlüterCOVER ARTBonding - by Terence Gomez

CONTENTS

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Tutorial - A quick little Whale

Tutorial - Realistic Water Environment

Making of - Kaldewei

Making of - Sea Anemone

vSwarm - An open distributed render farm

Now where's the "Under Water Lighting" button?

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"From out of the Deep..." conjures up im-ages of all types of sea creatures, from thesimple to the beautifully exotic. Dancingbeams of light bouncing off of underwaterlife and hypnotic light patterns shimmeringon the sea floor.

But the phrase also brings to mind thebeautiful and unique creations that risefrom the deep pools of our own creativity.And this community has an overabundanceof creativity and talent.

Over the last four years, (and yes, it reallyhas been four years) we have seen some ofthe best our community has to offer. Fromthe insightful tutorials to the explanationsand discussions of the numerous and variedpersonal and professional projects. And noissue of Blenderart Magazine would becomplete without the amazing images thatmake their way into our galleries.

It is thanks to all these amazing artists andtheir willingness to share not only theirknowledge, but their artwork, that our

magazine has become so popular amongBlender users worldwide.

So here is a big thank-you and an even big-ger hug for all you have contributed andgiven to Blenderart Magazine and to thecommunity at large.

And just a final note before you all dive intoour latest issue. Users young and old, newand experienced learn from and enjoy theunique blend of articles, tutorials and im-ages we publish. So let's keep the momen-tum going ever forward with continuedsubmissions from all of the talented mem-bers of our community. We are waiting tohear from you. :)

sandra@blenderart.org

Sandra GilbertManaging Editor

EDITORIAL 3

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IntroductionI recently received an email from Shaskank Sondiasking if I could do an article on what it takes to cre-ate photo-realistic renders in Blender. Specifically hewanted information on:

Various tools used

Minimum system requirements

Techniques for rendering

Now I am not overly known for producing photo-re-alistic renders, I have a somewhat unique style of myown, that falls somewhere between toony and what-ever I am in the mood for that day. But with just alittle searching I came up with a number of usefulresources for all you photo realistic artists out there,as well as some useful tips to keep in mind.

Let's start with system requirements. Everyone hastheir favorite operating system, and since the differ-ences in final output are so minimal, honestly itboils down to what are you most comfortable with.

As for your actual hardware, that one is a bit trickier.But general guidelines would be to have the biggestprocessor and as much RAM as you can afford.

That being said, Blender, itself runs on just about anysystem you might have and you don't have to havethe most amazing computer to take advantage ofBlender's capabilities. Here is a list of minimum re-quirements as well specs for middle and high end:

Operating Systems

Windows 2000, XP or Vista

ac OS X 10.2 and later

Linux 2.2.5 i386

Linux 2.3.2 PPC

FreeBSD 6.2 i386

Irix 6.5 mips3

Solaris 2.8 sparc

Minimal specs for Hardware

300 MHz CPU, 128 MB Ram

20 MB free hard disk Space

1024 x 768 px Display with 16 bit color

3 Button Mouse

Open GL Graphics Card with 16 MB Ram

Good specs for Hardware

2 GHz dual CPU, 2 GB Ram

1920 x 1200 px Display with 24 bit color

3 Button Mouse

Open GL Graphics Card with 128 or 256 MB Ram

Production specs for Hardware

64 bits, Quad core CPU, 8 GB Ram

HD 1920 x 1200 px Display with 24 bit color

3 Button Mouse + tablet

Open GL Graphics Card with 768 MB Ram, ATIFireGL or Nvidia Quadro

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Blender, itself runs on justabout any system you might

have and you don't havehave to have the most amaz-ing computer to take advan-tage of Blender's capabilities.

External Renderers might require more power socheck their websites for system requirements.

Its all in the Details

Photo realistic renders look convincing because theartist took the time to make it look that way. Beforeyou even open Blender or worry about which renderengine to use, you need to do research. Make sureyou gather as much reference material as you can.Then sit down and really think about what you aretrying to achieve. Planning is the most crucial stepfor a photo-realistic render.

Things you might want to think about and consider:

Materials

What materials are needed?

Can you create it with procedurals or do youneed images, can you paint it in GIMP or Pho-toshop?

Wear and tear, dirt.

Modelling

Do you need to model every detail?

How many details?

Can you fake parts of it with UV mapping andgood images?

Camera

What angle are you considering?

Are you mimicking a specific camera shot ortype?

Lighting

Where is the light coming from?

What type of tight is it?

The Science of CG is a must read when you arelearning how to create photo realistic images.

The Science of CG is a comprehensive article on CGlighting and material properties with

great advice on achieving great results for both pho-to-realistic as well as non-photo-realistic images.

Various Tools

There is no one (or several) specific tool in Blenderfor creating photo-realistic renders. Modeling is donewith the usual tools, extrude, scale and grab. Youcan use multi-res and the sculpt tool to add extradetail.

Probably the most useful tools in Blender for photorealistic work are the UV mapping tools and the rela-tively new Texture cloning tool. Using one or both ofthem will allow you to add/create realistic materialsto enhance your models.

A beautiful example of the power of UV Mapping andTexture Cloning can be seen in MESCH973's Colibriimage.

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Which Render Engine?

There is always an ongoing debate concerning thebest Render engine. I have no intention of adding tothat debate.

The Blender internal Render engine has seen manyimprovements over the years and continues to im-prove with every release. In fact, I do believe thereare current test builds with new goodies that youcan test. Properly set up, Blender can produce somefairly nice photo realistic renders.

If you would prefer to use an external Render engine,there are quite a few to choose from. They are allpowerful and capable of producing visually strikingimages. But of course each has its strengths andweaknesses. So choose the one that meets yourneeds.

The current popular engines are:

Yafaray

Kerkythea

Luxrender

Sunflow

Abhishek Gupta has written a great comparison arti-cle on how several of the most popular engines stackup for features and ease of use.

Kitchen tutorial by Karan Shah on CG Tuts.

If you are curious to see how you can actually createa photo realistic image/scene, I encourage you tocheck out the in depth Kitchen tutorial by KaranShah on CG Tuts. He takes you from modeling all the

way to rendering in Yafaray to produce a highly real-istic kitchen scene.

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Durian UpdatesOver the last few weeksthe Durian team has beenbusily getting settled intotheir apartments and run-ning various tests onBlender 2.5 for usabilityand missing features.

Nathan has updated hisSimple bi-ped rig to testthat the rigging featureswere present and working.Ben has been playing with various methods of pro-ducing fire. This includes the use of volumetrics andsimulation for the bulk of the fire where appropriate.Soenke has been creating faces and testing for bugs.Angela has modeled a very nice character to test thatthe 2.5 modeling, rigging and animation functionsare present and working.

And of course all this testing has been keeping Bre-cht and Campbell very busy indeed. Not only puttingfeatures back, but tracking down bugs that the oth-ers are reporting.

Looks like things are rolling merrily along. For cur-rent updates on Project Durian you can follow thenews on their project site and even keep up withthem on Twitter.

Don't forget, you can still pre-order your DVD copyof the Durian Project.

Blender Conference 2009The eighth annual Blender Conference took placeOctober 23-25 at "De Balie" in Amsterdam and was a

fun filled 3 day adventure in Blender education, in-formation and good times. The highlight of everyBlender conference is of course the Suzanne Awards.This year's nominations were excellent and wellworth checking out if you have not already done so.Congratulations to this year's winners. Go towww.blender.org for further information. Bart hasset up a BlenderNation Flickr stream and is invitingall conference attendees to share their photos.

Best Character Animation

Dragosaurio - by Claudio Anduar

Best Designed Short Film

Evolution - by Alex Glawion

BLENDER NEWS 7

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Best Short Film

Memory - by Ryusuke Furuya, Junichi Yamamoto

New book: 3D for iPhone Appswith Blender and SIO2

Tony Mullen announced his upcoming book on iPhonegame development with Blender and the SIO2 game en-gine.

Tony Mullen wrote:

Hi Everybody,

I'm very pleased to announce that my latest book is avail-able for pre-order at Amazon! The book is titled "3D foriPhone Apps with Blender and SIO2: Your Guide to Creat-ing 3D Games and More with Open-Source Software"and you can pre-order it here.

As you can see from the title, the book deals with usingBlender and the powerful SIO2 Game Engine to create 3Dgames and apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch. I can tellyou first hand that it's a blast! The book does not assumeany specific background knowledge, so in that sense it'sintended for "beginners". There's even an appendix givinga quick and dirty basic introduction to Blender itself.

However, you should be aware that the material is chal-lenging and the pace is pretty brisk, so any backgroundyou do have in Blender or graphics programming will bevery helpful for you. It does assume some basic under-standing of programming, so if you're new to program-ming in general, then you should be prepared to turn tosupplemental resources to get you through any difficultpatches.

Blender 2.50 material libraryMany users have wanted a material library to shipwith Blender and it looks like Blender 2.50 will con-

tain one. A call for materials has been posted on the fo-rums.

LetterRip writes:

A material library will be added to Blender for 2.5, wewould like to invite the community to participate in thisby donating material settings. In order to facilitate this,please provide a link to a blend file with a single materialin it.

Link - BlenderArtists thread

BLENDER NEWS 8

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A Quick Little Whale

IntroductionI thought it would be fun to create aquick little whale. Our whale isn'tgoing to be overly realistic, but willgive us some fun modeling practice.We are aiming to create a fairly cleanmesh without a lot of unneeded verti-ces, and we are going to use theGrease Pencil to sketch out a very ba-sic outline for reference.

So I have this idea for a cute littlewhale, but my sketching skills are so

rusty as to be useless, and just jumping into Blenderand getting to it will likely end in frustration.

This is where the grease pencil excels. It will allowus to draw a very basic shape with just the impor-tant details, for us to use as reference.

To open the Grease Pencil dialog box go to View>>Grease Pencil. There are a few options we need forthis exercise. Select:

Use Grease Pencil: This lets us see oursketch/drawing

Draw mode: This activates the Grease pencil (ittoggles it on/off)

Sketch in 3D: This allows us to see our sketcheven when rotating view

Note: Because everyone will end up with a some-what different sketch, the following steps are somewhat general in nature and you may need to dosome adjusting of the instructions to match yoursketch.

Note: I actually madelife more difficult bycreating my GreasePencil sketch in frontview, while of coursesketching a side viewof the whale. I sug-gest drawing in sideview, then yoursketch and views will match up without complica-tions.

Step1. Okay, so I justdrew a very basic out-line of my little whale(1 & 2) and changedthe color of my linesto red for better visi-bility. You'll notice,that as of yet, I onlyhave the body drawn.We will add side finsand the tail fluke when the body is done.

Make sure to turn off "Draw mode" when you arefinished with your sketch.

Step2. Add a cube andsubdivide smooth (W>Subdivide Smooth).

From the front view,delete half the cube.We will add a mirrormodifier later.

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Step4. Scale the cubeup so that it fits theheight of our drawing.

Step5. Move the cubeslightly forward andstart moving the out-side vertices to matchthe whale outline.

Step6. Start extrudingthe tail section fromthe back of the cube.

Step7. Scale and rotateeach tail extrusionslightly to fit our out-line.

Step8. Creating the eyeopening (socket). Therecurrently aren'tenough vertices to cre-ate a nice opening. Sousing Control + R,make a Loop cutthrough the eye.

Step9. Move vertices tomatch the eye outline.

Step10. remove the ver-tices in the center ofthe eye.

Step11. Add anotherLoop cut in front of theeye and just start ad-justing the vertices tomatch the image.

Step12. Add anotherLoop cut just inside theouter rim of vertices.

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Step13. Now we get todo a bit of adjustingand eyeballing it fromall angles. The Propor-tional edit tool can berather useful to helpmanipulate the verticesinto a softer, morerounded look. Whileyou are adjusting makesure to start movingthe tail into a slimmerprofile.

Step 14 & 15. Now is agood time to add yourMirror Modifier, so youcan start seeing how itis looking overall. Con-tinue to fine tune theshape.

When your model issufficiently whaleshaped, go to the tailsection.

Step16. Delete the 2faces and the tip ofthe tail.

Note: It might beeasier to work onthe tail if you selectall the vertices ofthe body and hidethem (H)

Step17. Using theGrease Pencil, sketchout an outline for thetail fluke.

Step18. Now start ex-truding the vertices outto match the fluke out-line.

Step19. You'll noticethat the fluke looksreally flat and straight.

Step 20 &21. We'll usethe Proportional Edit-ing tool to create amore natural curvedlook.

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Step22. Using the sametechnique we used forthe tail fluke, we willmake some side fins.Add a Loop cut underthe eye.

Step23. Remove a fewfaces below andslightly back from theeye and then drawyour fin reference.

Step24. Extrude the finout, following youroutline.

Step 25 &26. Depend-ing on how you drewyour fin and then ex-truded it, you mightneed a Loop cut or twoto get it to look right.

Step27. Use the Pro-portional Edit tool torotate and curve thefins back towards thetail a little.

Step28. Okay, nowyou can go aheadand add a SubsurfModifier. Look atyour model from allangles, and smoothand adjust vertices asneeded.

Step29. Dependingon your sketch, yourwhale should lookmore or less like this.

Step30. At this point Iadded in an eyemodel that I keeparound just for thisreason.

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Note: There are manyPixar style eye tutorialsonline, that you canuse to create a smalllibrary of ready to useeyeballs for projectslike this.

Step31. Now I don'tknow about you, but Ialways end up needingto adjust eye socketsonce I place the eye-ball. (31)

Step32. And here is myfinal little whale. Ihope you had fun cre-ating yours

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Realistic Water Environment

IntroductionThis is my first proper tutorial, itaims to guide you through the stepsof making a realistic water environ-ment in Blender 3D. This water setupis for real-time use, great for games.In this tutorial I will show you, howto make the water reflective, how toadd ripples, how to add underwatereffects and much more. I hope thatyou will like it :).

What you will need

Blender 2.49 or later.

Some understanding of the game engine and gen-eral Blender knowledge. If you are confused byanything in this tutorial, you may need to acquiremore Blender knowledge before following it.

An animated water normal map (more on thislater)

Let’s begin!

Open up Blender and delete the default cube.Change the viewport shading type to “Texture” andin the Game Settings click “Blender GLSL Materials”.

Press “Space” and select “Plane” to add a plane.Press “S” and then “Ten” to scale the plane up by tentimes. This plane is our water surface, so press “N”and rename it to “water_surface”.

Once this is done, add a material to the plane andname it “water_surface”. In the material settings

activate “ZTransp”, to allow the plane to have trans-parency.

Okay. Now we will set up the logic and python forthe water. In the logic section add an always andlink it to a python controller. Add a property called“material”, set it as a string and enter“water_surface”. Split the 3d viewport in half byright clicking on the bottom edge and selecting“split area”. Change the new viewport to a text oneand click add new or select the script called

“Text”. Now open the mirror.txt file included withthis tutorial. Open it with notepad or somethingsimilar. Now copy the text and paste it intoBlender’s text window. Rename the script to“mirror”.

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In the python controller we added earlier, type mirroras the python script. Go back to the always sensor andclick on the button with the three dots. This meansthat the sensor will trigger every frame.

Go to the texture section of the water surface materialand add a new texture. Set it as an image and click“load”. Now look on your disk for the texture includedwith this tutorial called “water.png”. Every reflectiveobject in the game must have a unique “mirror” tex-ture. The resolution or colour of the texture is not im-portant, that’s why the one included is very small. Imade it blue so it looks a bit like water in the viewport.The textures should have useful names like “water” and“water_n” for the texture explained bellow.

Now add the texture included called water_n.jpg. Thisis the normal map. It is what provides the ripple ef-fects. In the texture’s settings activate the “NormalMap” setting. OR Look online for a tutorial on how to

make an animated normal map texture yourself. Thereis a very good one here.

Now change the text viewport to a UV/Image editorviewport. Select the normal map texture and click“View” -> “Real-time properties”. Set up the real-timeproperties like you see in the picture bellow:

Now go to the “map to” tab for the water_n textureand deselect “Col” and select “Nor”. The “Nor” valueunderneath where it says “Mix” can be put up to 1.0 ordown depending on how strong you want the ripples tobe. Note that this is only for the ripple’s specularity.The actual distortion comes later and is done by usingnodes.

Add a new texture to the water material. Browse forradial_alpha.jpg (included with this tutorial). Give it thename radial_a, and then delete it again.

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This is just to get it registered as aproper texture. We will use it in thenodes for the water fresnel.

And speaking of nodes, I believe it’stime for the node part of the tutori-al. This isn’t a section that I can de-scribe in great detail, as there are somany steps to making it all workand if one section isn’t done quiteright, the whole thing won’t workproperly.

So, in your water’s material settingsclick the nodes button. Once this isdone a little red selection box willappear further down. Instead ofadding a new node, click the arrowsand select “water_surface”. Nowchange the UV mapping window toa node window. This is the trickypart. You will see two “windows” ornodes so to speak. The one we wantto keep is the one on the right. Thisshould always be to the right. Theother one can be deleted for now(select it and press delete). This nextpart I can’t explain, so I have in-cluded a large picture of just howall the nodes should be set out(node image is included in the blendfile download).

The picture is called“node_setup.jpg”. You will need tolook at this picture and try to copyevery node and every setting withinit. To make it easier I have put anote at the bottom of them to saywhat each node is, so you can find

them easily when adding that typeof node. You can look at the finalblend as a reference too if you getstuck. To link two nodes drag fromone circle to the other. To delete alink between two nodes, click anddrag across the link. To add a newnode click “Add” and select thenode type you think is appropriate.The explanations in the imageshould help you find the necessarynode type.

Once this is done, press “P” and giveyour water a test run. Hopefully youwill see animated ripples in the wa-ter (don’t panic if you’re not, justcontinue), but what’s this? The wa-ter appears completely blue! To fixthis, press “TAB” while the water isselected and press “A” to select allfaces. Change the node window to aUV window again and you will see aplane with four vertices. Press “A”again in the UV window to select allthe vertices and press “M” to mirrorthe mapping on the X axis. Oncethis is done, you may need to rotatethe mapping too so press “R” andtype “180”. This will rotate the map-ping 180 degrees.

Now add a cube somewhere nearthe water and press “P”. Hopefullynow, the water will be reflectingthe cube and you should be able tosee ripples. If not, look at your nodesetup more closely, or if it’s reflect-ing wrongly, look at you UV map-

ping setup and mirror it some moreor rotate it etc. Note that the wateris still mostly very blue. We willsoon fix this.

I won’t tell you how to make a skydome or anything, or it will makethis tutorial very long, but basically,the water is blue because it hasnothing to reflect in the blue areas,so you need to make a skybox or skydome and give it a sky texture.There is one in the final blend if youwant to use that.

Now would probably be a good timeto add a seabed. To do this just adda plane under the water and give itany old sand texture. One is includ-ed. Now when you play the game,you should be able to see the seabedunderneath at close range, andwhen you play from further awaythe water appears opaque. Thismeans that the fresnel texture andcamera depth data is working.

Add four more planes around thewater for walls. Once they are posi-tioned around the water, and looklike walls select them all and press“J” to join them all together. Thenpress “U” when all faces are se-lected and unwrap it using a cubesetting or something similar. Add anew material and texture to thewalls. A brick texture is provided.

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Now when you press “P” youshould see the walls being reflectedtoo. This is basically where the out-side work stops and the underwaterwork begins.

Select the camera and press “Shift”+ “S” and select “Curser -> selec-tion”. This will snap the curser tothe camera. Now press “Space” andadd a cube. Scale the cube byaround 0.1. Parent the cube to thecamera (select cube, then cameraand press “Ctrl” + “P”. Now createan empty in the same way, but in-stead of parenting it to the cube orcamera, we are going to parent it toone of the cube’s vertices. To dothis, select the empty, then thecube, press “TAB” and select a ver-tex and press “Ctrl” + “P”. We needto parent the empty to a vertex sothat it follows the camera but doesnot rotate with the camera. Normalparenting affects rotation, but ver-tex parenting doesn’t for some rea-son. We need to keep the rotationeven because the empty must al-ways be facing the same way, as itis measuring where it is in relationto the water’s surface.

Now select the water and add anew property in the logic panel. Callthe property “water”. Select theempty again and in the logic paneladd a property called underwaterand make it a bool. Now add a raysensor that points in the –Z direc-

tion (downwards) and a sensor thatpoints in the +Z direction(upwards). Make both the ranges ashigh as they will go and enable thex-ray option. In the property area,type “water”.

Add two controllers and two actua-tors. The first actuator should be aproperty actuator that changes theunderwater property to true, andthe second should change the prop-erty to false. Link them up accord-ingly. All this means that when theempty detects the water under-neath it, it sets the underwaterproperty to false. If it detects thewater is above it, it will set the un-derwater prop-erty to true.

Now add twoproperty sensors,two controllersand four actua-tors. The first twoactuators will ac-tivate the under-water effects; thesecond two willdeactivate theeffects. So thefirst sensorshould sense ifthe underwaterproperty is true,the secondshould sense if itis false. Once the

sensors are done, open up the filecalled “blur_radial.txt” and copy andpaste the contents into Blender’stext window. Name the new scriptas blur_radial. Do the same with thefile called “fog_underwater.txt”, ex-cept call it fog_underwater. In thefirst actuator, set it as a custom 2dfilter and type blur_radial. For thesecond do the same withfog_underwater and make the pass,pass 1 instead of pass 0 (as 0 istaken by blur_radial). Now for theother two actuators, make themremove 2d filter actuators and setthe first one to remove pass 0 andthe second to remove pass 1.

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Link them up so that the first two new actuators arelinked to the third controller, which should be linked tothe first property sensor. It should be clear how to linkup the rest now. Oh, and make the cube invisible in thephysics settings. Now we need to get the camera tomove. Look at the screenshot bellow to see how thelogic should be set up:

The highlighted names MUST be like they are in thepicture. Now add another script in the text window,this time from the “mouselook.txt” file. Name it“mouselook”. Now write “mouselook” in the emptyscript box you now have in the logic panel. Press num-pad 0 to go into camera view and press “P”. You shouldnow be able to fly around using the W, A, S, D keys anduse your mouse to look around.

If you fly underwater, everything should go foggy andthe edges of the screen should be blurry and when youexit the water the effects should disappear. If not,something has gone wrong in the empty’s logic. Thelast step is to add another plane just slightly under thewater, facing downwards. Make a new material for itand give it the water_n texture, tiled 20 times. Applythe texture as “Nor” (not “Col”). Colour the textureblue-ish and play the game. When you look at the sur-face from underwater you should see ripples. If not,mess around with the map input settings some more.

That’s all folks

And that pretty much concludes this tutorial. If youhave any questions, email me at:etphonehomeplz@hotmail.com

Now all you need to do is make a game world and afunctioning game and you’re on your way to becominga Blender pro like me xD (kidding, I’m not a pro. I’vegot a long way to go yet).

Thanks goes to martinsh for the 2d filters

-SpewBoy

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IntroductionHow I get to that monster between atank, some armor and an owl, I amreally unable to tell you. I just tried tocreate designs that looked unique.Fairy tales, legends, myths and folklorearound the world influence my work,but so do artists like Brian Froud(DarkCrystal), Alan Lee (Lord of theRings), Tony DiTerlizzi (Spiderwick),Jim Henson (Muppets) and MikeMignola (Hellboy).

I also develop characters with storytelling in mind.The story of Kaldewei is simple and you are able tosee it on Kaldewei himself.

He was once a humandoctor, an alchemistand a wizard. He shallget the death penaltybecause he's torturedpeople to death, but hewas able to bind hissoul to this armor.

I made the armor in anowl shape because theowl is a symbol ofknowledge and a crea-ture of the night at thesame time. He also hasno lower jaw. This is alittle allusion to zom-bies and the fact that he is undead. For his lowerjaw, he got the long wild beard that reminds that hehas been a human many yeas ago.

I always want to create monsters with personality,character and big piece of fantasy. Kaldewei is avery good example of when all those strange ele-ments link very well together.

What's it all about?

I had made Kaldewei for a short movie I am goingto make. I want to make a really good movie. Forthis project I wanted to use multiple characters andsets.

The Model

To translate the ideasof Kaldewei into amodel, I created avery coarse model ofKaldewei's body. Itdidn't have any de-tails; just the form ofhis proportions. NowI am able to build thearmor.

The mask is a majorelement of the wholeset of armor and tooka lot of time, but agood sketch helps alot. After finishingthe mask, I made theshoulder strap andthe belt. They are notleading pieces in thefinished model, butthey are importantpieces, because they stabilize the armor and splitthe plate-armor into 3 parts.

MAKING OF: Kaldewei

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Cricket and Friends See a Comet!

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Kaldewei

What is missing are theplates. To pose and fiteach plate on its own isvery awkward and com-plicated to change at alater time. So I modeledone plate, prepared it forUV mapping and split theborder from the rest byusing two materials.

This plate is the base for all others in the model. I hadmade the plate-armor in strips. I used a plate, a “curve,"the array modifier, the curve modifier and some lattices.

I placed the curve on the coarse model at the placewhere the strip has to be.

Array modifiers are ableto make plates alongthe length of the curve.The curve modifier putour plates in the formof the curve. To finishthe job we use a latticeto put our plate strip inthe right form.

MAKING OF: Kaldewei

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Texture and the UV

The variety of details in the wood is from the textures. Atexture has to fit three requirements. First, it has tohave a huge resolution (2500 x 2500 pixels); second, a lotof details like knotholes, cracks and so on; and third, itshouldn't have perspective blur or compromising blur.

I set up the UVs in two layers. The first layer is made forthe texture images like the wood or the rust. It is usualthat unwrapped UV elements will overlap.

The second UV layer

The other UV layer is for pre calculations like"Normalbump" or “Ambient Occlusion,” and because ofthat the unwraped UV elements are not able to overlap.

Of course, I could use “Texture Bake ” or "ProjectionPainting “ and change my texture to fit in one UV layerbut this has 3 drawbacks:

1 You get a lot of texts very fast

2 Many textures make mistakes

3 You alwayslose detailby chang-ing a tex-ture thatmuch.

The Rig

I haven't started rigging the character. Because I havenot finished the model completely and I need to makesome more tests. My requirements for the rig are thateach limb is able to extend and to shrink, and that thebehaviour of the plates is physically correct. I want tomake a sort of ragdoll system for the plates that letsthem swing around.

You will find my project thread here with the latestnews. And thank you for all your submissions and yourgood advice

MAKING OF: Kaldewei

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IntroductionThanks goes out to the guys atcgcookie.com for their video tutorialon “Painting” with Instanced Particles,from which this tutorial drew its inspi-ration.

Object instancing using particles canbe a powerful feature in Blender thatis often overlooked. While not asstrong as something like Maya’s painteffects, you can still quickly accom-plish things that would take many

hours of tedious hand placement.

For this scene weare creating a seaanemone growingon the ocean floor.Lets start by creat-ing a basic planeand subdividing oruse multi-res. Thenuse Blender’s sculpt-mode to build up avery simple sea floor.

Now we need a stalk of the anemone to duplicate.This is a simple boxthat has been ex-truded and twisteda few times withsub-surf thrown ontop. The importantitem to ensure hereis that the originpoint is located at

the base of the stalk. This will ensure that the baseof the “hair” particles we create will be at the baseof the stalk. Don’t worry if your rotation is off. Youcan still edit the base object after using it in the par-ticle system.

So let’s get to the fun part, painting the particles.First we need to apply a particle system to our seafloor. Use a hair type system with the amount set to0 as well as a Normal and Random of 1.0. Also setthe visualization mode to object and put the nameof your particle in the OB field. I just left the defaultname of cube for mine.

Now switch from object mode to particle mode andpress the “N” key - this will bring up the tool box forparticle editing. Select the Add button and setStrength to 1, then you can paint your particles ontothe surface of your object. To delete particles simplyswitch to the Cut button.

MAKING OF: Sea Anemone

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Sea Anemone

Just have fun here andcreate what you wantyour image to look like.The final result hereincludes a secondplane in the back-ground to remove theopen feeling of thecamera shot.

If you want more vari-ety of shapes, then youcan apply what we aregoing to do now withthe fish. Here we havea relatively simplemodel of a fish whichhas been given thename of fish.

Now for the scenewe want fish of dif-ferent colors, sosimply duplicatethe fish and apply adifferent texture toeach one namingthe duplicatesfish.001, fish.002,etc. This would alsobe a good time tomodify each mesh slightly, although I have onlychanged the texture. For the emitter object we create anicosphere and use the sculpt mode to deform it.

This is to create the feel of a school of fish, so theyclump together. The particle system is a very standardsystem. The only real difference is that the visualization

is now set to group mode and the GR field has the nameof the first object in the set “fish”.

The lighting con-sists of a hemilight situatedbehind the cam-era which givesthe underwatercamera light ef-fect. Basic ambi-ent occlusionand mist to en-hance the shad-ows with the AOset to a blueclouds, give theunderwater feel.Then two spotlamps with acaustic texturemap to create the feeling of light coming through theocean surface. Finally a few low level lamps to lightenup a few areas.

All of the textures are pretty much just a color map anda bump map with the exception of the stalks of theanemone. The stalks are many layers of procedural tex-tures with subsurface scattering turned on. This part isvery much a trial and error procedure until you get thelook you want.

MAKING OF: Sea Anemone

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Finally the image is rendered out using nodes to en-hance the edges, create a slight depth of field effect, andsome tint adjustment.

The image was then rendered twice, once with the fishand once without. This was done so that the fish couldbe easily masked out in photoshop, because some willend up overlapping or looking too similar. The onlyother post-processing was to paint some light highlightsand shadows on some of the stalks.

Hopefully this gives a bit of an insight into my processfor creating this scene and motivates you to try out theparticle instancing in Blender. I think it is an overlookedfeature that allows you to create scenes that would takehours in much less time

MAKING OF: Sea Anemone

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Arland B. Woodham III aka Barry

I am a Graphic Specialist for a company that creates mili-tary training courseware.

Website: http://www.cartoon-combat.com

IntroductionEver thought of how nice it would beto have a render farm for processingyour animations? Or maybe you triedto set up your own small render farm?We did. But the farm was too smalland too slow, upgrading it was too ex-pensive and managing it was too timeconsuming, so we thought about abetter solution and finally came upwith a virtual render farm as a com-munity project.

After some months of development we finallylaunched vSwarm - a community-based distributedrendering project. It's free and all of you are invitedto participate.

Back to the beginning of the story: Why did we startvSwarm? To solve a problem many of you mighthave. The need to handle capacity peaks while ren-dering Blender animations. As we are two guysworking a lot with Blender doing animations, it hap-pens regularly that we need a lot of computingpower all at once. But the rest of the time our CPUsare just twiddling thumbs (you know that, don'tyou).

Looking at the problem in detail, we realized that theroot cause for it was our inability to handle capacityfluctuations.

vSwarm solves this problem as follows: As a memberof the vSwarm community you can give spare capac-ity to the community (i. e. share our CPU powerwhile it is idle) and ramp up our CPU capacity (i.e.use other client's CPUs) when you need to by sub-mitting your jobs to the community.

Users sharing their CPU will receive priority points.The priority influences the number of CPUs availableto a member when submitting a job to the vSwarmcommunity.

Right now, the project is still in an early stage, butgrowing and developing fast. We just included Lux-Render into the client. And the next steps will be tobuild a Linux and a Mac version of the client.

One other goal for us in the near future is to gener-ate some cash from the project ,as we are almostworking full-time on the development of the project.To secure future development we have to find a wayto cover the expenses of the project otherwise wecannot dedicate our resources almost full-time to it.

The first proposal for financing the project we wouldlike to discuss with the community, is that compa-nies, freelancers and everybody else who wants, canbuy priority credits to get their jobs done faster. Af-ter paying for infrastructure and development, therest of the money will be given to users running theclient and to selected Open Source projects. But wewon't stop the free part of the project.

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Sea Anemone

ARTICLE: Introducing vSwarm - An open distributed render farm

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If you have any other ideas or comments about the fi-nancing of the project feel free to contact us. As this is acommunity project we invite you to influence theproject by commenting on all aspects of the develop-ment of vSwarm.

That's it on why vSwarm was developed. Now, we wantto thank everybody already active in the vSwarm com-munity for their feedback and in the following we giveyou a first glimpse on how you can use vSwarm for yourproject.

How vSwarm works

vSwarm consists of two parts: a client and a web-basedback-end. The client is installed on your computer anddoes the rendering. The web interface is used to submitjobs to the community.

The client in detail

The client is based on a Java GUI which controls the ren-dering. The rendering is done in a Linux environmentrunning in VMware Player. Within this virtual machinewe are running version 2.49a of Blender at the moment.The client also handles the up- and download of files toand from our servers.

vSwarm's Web Control Center

Via the web-based back-end the upload of the sourcefiles and job control is handled. In the back-end you alsofind statistics about your jobs and the participation ofthe community members.

Getting started with vSwarm

1 . Register

Create your account at www.vswarm.com.

Now you have to decide whether you want to submit ajob or download the client first.

2 . Submit a job and get your blend file processed

After registering you can start using the back-end andyou can submit jobs to the community.

Step-by-step instructions:

Make sure your animation meets the requirements

Minimum RAM for clients is 256MB, so your anima-tion should use a maximum of about 200MB. If theanimation requires more RAM, you can start the jobbut will likely have failed frames and you will haveto restart. We will change this soon.

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Maximum processing time is 60 minutes for oneframe. So make sure your frames finish within thistime on a not too powerful computer. If one of yourframes takes more than 60 minutes it will time out.

Set up your Blender file

Select the camera for rendering as active camera.

In the render panel set the resolution you wouldlike to use for rendering.

Set the options for your output format, e.g. JPEGcompression or EXR bit depth.

Set "xparts" and "yparts" in the render panel toabout 5. This helps to utilize multi-core CPUs betterif one or more parts take a longer time to render.And it allows the client to track the frame progressmore exactly.

Pack all your textures and other stuff into the file.

Select "compress" from the file menu.

Save the file to your HDD.

Upload your file to the vSwarm Server by using one ofthese methods:

FTP: This is the best choice. It allows you to resumeinterrupted uploads and does not have a file sizelimit. You can find your login data for FTP at thebottom of the Manage files page.

For small files it is possible to use the web upload.The size limit is 10MB per file and if anything goeswrong you have to start this again.

After you have uploaded your file create the job inthe vSwarm by submitting the following fields:

1 Job name: A nameto recognize thisjob.

2 Application: Selectthe Blender versionyou would like touse.

3 Filename: Select thefile you just upload-ed.

4 Start frame:number of the firstframe to render(e.g. 1)

5 End frame: lastframe to render (e.g. 3000)

6 File Format: Select the output format you would liketo get your results in. If the format has any optionsthese are read from the blend file.

Wait for your job to finish.

If any frames have errors you can inspect theBlender output in the work units view and restartthem.

Download your result data.

If you have rendered more than a few frames youmust use FTP to download your files. Memorize thejob id from the Web Control Center and login to theFTP server. Change to the directory "results" andthen download all files in the directory of your job.

Combine all frames to a movie with the applicationof your choice. I use Virtual Dub for this step.

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Download the client and share your CPU

If you want to help other members of the community,you can share your CPU and process their blend files. Inorder to do so, just download the vSwarm Client(around 400 MB as this is a full Linux-based virtual ma-chine, the VMware Player and the Java GUI; it only sup-ports Windows,we are workingon Linux andMac).

After the down-load is finished,start the in-staller and fol-low theinstructions.Finally, reboot your system and then run the vSwarmClient. After you click the “Start working” button youwill be asked for your user name and password. Nowsupply the credentials and you are part of the activelyrendering vSwarm community.

Links:

www.vswarm.com thevSwarm Website.

Control.vswarm.comthe Web Control Cent-er.

Support.vswarm.com/wiki the on-line docu-mentation

ARTICLE: Now where's the "Under Water Lighting" button?

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At somepoint wehave allwantedjust sucha button,but justlike the

fabled "Make my Render Beautiful"button, it's just not possible. Thereare way too many variables. But justbecause there isn't a pre-builtbutton/option, doesn't mean youcan't create some beautiful under-water scenes. Like most things inlife, it just takes a little work.

First let's discuss water itself. Youwould think it would be as easy asjust building the scene itself, wateris after all clear. Yeah, you guessedit, its not that easy at all. The thingabout water is that it is usually notclear at all. It often appears to havea slight color, and depending on thewater in question, can appear murkydue to sediment, plankton, algaeand other microscopic debris. Theremay also be bubbles present depend-ing on what else is floating about inthe water. Luckily, most of this canbe easily created in the material set-tings themselves. And any number ofinteresting bubble effects can be cre-ated with a creative combination ofparticles and soft bodies.

Note: A number of great materialshaders can be found at:

1) Blender Open Material Repository

2) Blender 3d: Noob to Pro

So now we have realistic wa-ter, right?

Nope, not yet.

Now we have to tackle the wholelighting issue. Water has this annoy-ing habit of reflecting, bouncing anddiffusing light, producing of course,caustics and volumetric light. In anutshell, volumetric light is pro-duced by the light rays bouncing offall the microscopic debris floating inthe water. The patterns of light(caustics) are created when thatbounced, diffused light falls on ob-jects in the water, such as rocks, fishor the sea floor, riverbed etc.

Now of course, we could export ourscene to an external render engine,that handles volumetric light andcaustics. The results would be as youexpect and as a bonus, you wouldhave plenty of time to go find some-thing else to do while you waited forit to render. :P

But where is the fun is inthat?

Instead, we are going to fake it.There is always a way to fake an ef-fect. First we have to decide justwhat we are trying to fake. So whatare we going for? Well, we need soft,

fuzzy light beams and some prettylight patterns. It can't be that hard.

Now I know that fuzzy soft lightscan be created with spotlights andhalo options. But here I always runinto problems. I don't know aboutyou, but whenever I attempt to usehalos, I end up with a huge fuzzycone of light that completely blowsout my image. Not a good underwa-ter look, and we haven't even ad-dressed the caustic part of theproblem. This just might be harderthan I thought.

I may not have a lot of luck with ha-los, but I am Queen of Googlesearches. There is a wealth ofBlender information online, butoddly enough it took quite a while tofind just what I needed. Eventually Ifound my solution in the form of anexcellent, in depth tutorial atwww.dnapixels.com, the tutorial notonly covered underwater volumetriclighting but the underwater causticsas well.

Well there you go, step by step in-structions on how to achieve thatmagical underwater lighting. Usinga rather ingenious combination ofspecial rotating discs and procedur-als, the tutorial covers how to goabout setting everything up, and as abonus even covers the trickier sub-ject of animating those light beamsand patterns dancing on the seafloor

Now where's the "UnderWater Lighting" button?

Rich & Dead - by Philippe RoubalGALLERIA

30www.blenderart.org Issue 24 | Oct 2009 - "From Out of the deep"

Hays - by JeepsterGALLERIA

31www.blenderart.org Issue 24 | Oct 2009 - "From Out of the deep"

Butterflyfish - by Davide MaimoneGALLERIA

32www.blenderart.org Issue 24 | Oct 2009 - "From Out of the deep"

MonsterFish - by Jeremy CoxGALLERIA

33www.blenderart.org Issue 24 | Oct 2009 - "From Out of the deep"

Pirana - by Davide MaimoneGALLERIA

34www.blenderart.org Issue 24 | Oct 2009 - "From Out of the deep"

Wreck - by JG LoquetGALLERIA

35www.blenderart.org Issue 24 | Oct 2009 - "From Out of the deep"

Helicoprion - by Osman AcasioGALLERIA

36www.blenderart.org Issue 24 | Oct 2009 - "From Out of the deep"

Ichthyosaur - by Alfie UrencioGALLERIA

37www.blenderart.org Issue 24 | Oct 2009 - "From Out of the deep"

Cooss - Lubomir LopusekGALLERIA

38www.blenderart.org Issue 24 | Oct 2009 - "From Out of the deep"

Cracken - TenchikenGALLERIA

39www.blenderart.org Issue 24 | Oct 2009 - "From Out of the deep"

Donkey Kong - by André RubioGALLERIA

40www.blenderart.org Issue 24 | Oct 2009 - "From Out of the deep"

1. We accept the following: Tutorials explaining new Blender features, 3dconcepts, techniques or articles based on currenttheme of the magazine.

Reports on useful Blender events throughout the world. Cartoons related to blender world.

2. Send submissions to sandra@blenderart.org. Send us a notification onwhat you want to write and we can follow up from there. (Some guidelinesyou must follow)

Images are preferred in PNG but good quality JPG can also do. Images should be separate fromthe text document.

Make sure that screenshots are clear and readable and the renders should be at least 800px,but not more than 1600px at maximum.

Sequential naming of images like, image 001.png... etc. Text should be in either ODT, DOC, TXT or HTML. Archive them using 7zip or RAR or less preferably zip.

3. Please include the following in your email: Name: This can be your full name or blenderartist avtar. Photograph: As PNG and maximum width of 256Px. (Only if submitting the article for the firsttime )

About yourself: Max 25 words . Website: (optional)

Note: All the approved submissions can be placed in the final issue or subsequent issue ifdeemed fit. All submissions will be cropped/modified if necessary. For more details see the blend-erart website.

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COPYRIGHT© 2005-2009 ‘BlenderArt Magazine’, ‘blenderart’ and BlenderArt logo are copyrightof Gaurav Nawani. ‘Izzy’ and ‘Izzy logo’ are copyright Sandra Gilbert. All products and com-pany names featured in the publication are trademark or registered trade marks of their re-spective owners.

42Upcoming Issue ‘Theme’

Issue 25

Disclaimer

"Winter Wonderland"

Winter characters and scenes.

Winter sports and activities (**scenes, images, animations, games*).

Winter holidays (scenes, images, animations, games).

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