My How Time Flies...

I can't believe my last post was in 2009. Once again, I'm embarrassed beyond belief. (Well maybe that much!) Still... I really did want to treat this blog as a personal journal.

Believe it or not, I've actually made progress toward my goal of developing my skills in Blender. The folks at BlenderCookie.com produce some great tutorials. It's turning out to be more work than I had thought it would be to learn this product. There are lots of concepts that are completely foreign to me. Still... I grow.

I've discovered that there is going to be no way to avoid improving my skills at digital painting either. One of the techniques used in Blender is something called 'UV Unwrapping'. This is where you identify seams on a 3-D model and then use a UV Unwrap feature within Blender. This causes your 3-D model to be cut along the seams and laid out flat, similar to a sewing pattern. From there the next step is to apply textures and or paint these flattened versions of the 3-D model. It's very, very interesting but carries with it some peculiarities. When 3-D models are laid out flat, they can appear distorted. Imagine a face being having many parts laid out flat... for example... take the nose... cut it out and then cut a seem down down most of the middle of it and then lay it out flat. Won't really look like a nose, but that's what you have to paint.

From there you have a face with seams... and it too can appear distorted. Paint the beard on and bags under the eyes, etc. Sometimes it's even hard to recognize what parts there are to be painted.

When all of this is done, you re-assemble all the parts with the painted textures, apply bump maps and other characteristics and voila, you have a reasonably decent looking model. (Assuming you did everything correctly) :)

It's a lot of work but as I said, I'm progressing. Once concern is that I've been a little inconsistent in my study. You pay a penalty for this. I find that when I am ready to sit down again and study some more, I have to go back and do some refresher tutorials. For example, I was doing pretty well learning and experimenting with the particle system to create hair and/or fuzz. I'm now ready to get back in the saddle and finish up the pictures I had planned for some butterflies and guess what... I don't remember all the details of using the particle system to generate hair. Time for a refresher.

I work a full-time job as a systems technical professional. I spend a lot of time in front of a computer for a living. Sometimes sitting in front of the computer to study in the evenings and on the weekends is hard. I am making progress, but I've learned to be patient with myself. All work and no play can make one a very dull and likely unhappy person.

For now, as I said earlier, I'm ready to get back in the saddle and continue on my quest to use Blender to create 3-D digital art! I'll share more as I make additional progress. Below I'll share a model I made of some Comedy & Tragedy masks.

Cheers!

Brett

Feeling Down...

I'm feeling a little down tonight. Had one of those days at work where nothing went right, then my son told me he didn't want to go to college anymore. He's only been in college for 2 months, but his lack of motivation has not caught me by surprise. Still, it makes me sad.

My son and I have a lot in common. I've always been one of those people that likes to do what I like to do and I don't like to do what I don't like. My son is the same way. I learned how to manage those feelings and it took a lot of painful mistakes to reach that maturity level. It's painful again watching my son traveling the same path.

I'm not very happy at work now either. I just wrapped up a great project that took a year to complete. It was a lot of work and delivering the final product was very gratifying. That was 3 months ago. Since that time I've been spending all my time trying to resolve problems with another software product we have implemented at numerous customer sites. Not fun and not interesting. Hence my dissatisfaction.

I don't know if I will survive in my current position. I need excitement in my job. I need a feeling of accomplishment and contribution. It's not clear if there is any further opportunity for that now.

I feel a loyalty to my current boss. He is the one who brought me back to this company to work on the exciting project that I spent the year on. He counts on me to contribute technical expertise and leadership to our small office. Still, our office is a speck in vast ocean of a bigger company. I feel like we are the ugly step-child that they don't know what to do with. That makes me sad too.

I don't know what to do. I'm older now so I've learned to be a little more patient, but after spending the last few months doing very insignificant activities, I think it may be time to see if my skills could be put to better use. Not a great time in our current market to be feeling this way.

In the last 45 days I've spent about $5300 in auto repairs and maintenance. $3700 of it was on repair work that happened rapid fire in 2 installments on a crappy 96 Blazer. $2500 was spent replacing a rear main seal and a fuel pump that was housed in a gas tank. Then new rotors and brakes. 2 days later the catalytic converter went out. $1100 for an after-market replacement and 4 O2 sensors that should be replaced with it. The other $1500 fortunately was spent on our Acura for a 90K maintenance cycle. I love that car so I don't mind investing it it because I know it will last. I have no confidence that the Blazer will hold up after all this. It's really just a piece of trash.

I've felt depressed like this before. On a positive note, these feelings always pass. These will pass too. Maybe I'm just tired. I usually try to consider how measly my problems are in the big scheme of life and compared to the problems that others have. Even at my worst, I should consider myself lucky. I'll try to remember that. Tomorrow.

Impressive Software...

Blender is amazing! I've just finished learning about linking, parenting, and grouping objects. As I consider the complexity of the underlying support for these functions, it amazes me that software like this is available for free. When you use these functions, it provides the animator with the ability to share characteristics like color, texture, transformations, and many other traits between the objects. Just thinking about the code required to manage the user interface in design mode for these functions is daunting, let alone the code required to support the rendering of the objects.

I've had numerous people tell me how smart I am throughout my career. One thing I can say with confidence is that no matter how smart I may or may not be, I'm still in awe of people who I consider really smart and there are plenty of folks that are a lot smarter than me.

The developers who have written Blender are brilliant! And to think that they have contribute their intelligence and talent to create this type of software for free is mind boggling to me. They are truly in a class of their own. I am thankful to them for giving me the opportunity to learn about something that interests me, without spending a dime. One day I hope I will be able to give back to the Blender Foundation by using this tool to generate some income. If and when that happens, I will be more than happy to contribute to this foundation both to show my appreciaton for what they have given me and as a matter of respect for the talented individuals that have created this fine software.

Slow Progress...

I continue to progress into the Blender For Dummies book. I'm finding that it's hard for me to stay focused on the content. I feel like I want to get to something more concrete. Still, I feel like this is the path that I should probably be taking.

As expected the book is focused on basics, such as understanding the various windows and where tools/features can be found. Unfortunately, some of the features that are referred too are still foreign at this point.

I just completed an exercise that taught the 'extrusion' function. That's a function where you take an object and stretch it. The exercise also showed other functions like sub-divide, scale, and how to constrain movement to specific axis too. It was pretty cool. I started with a simple box and ended up with skyscraper.

At this point the comments I've read about keeping one hand on the mouse and the other hand on the keyboard are proving to be true. There are a lot of good shortcut key combinations in Blender.

It looks like the book is going to get into some more interesting things in Chapter 5. It just introduced what is referred to as a 'generic semi-complex primitive' which it says every 3-D modeling program appears to have. In this case, the generic primitive is the model of a monkey head. The monkey even has a name, Suzanne.

It turns out that there is an annual Blender conference where they give out awards across a variety of categories, similar to Emmy awards or Tony Awards, but in the case of Blender they call them the Suzanne awards.

I did a Google search on the Suzanne Awards and found a link to the nominations for the Suzanne awards over the past several years. The nominee videos are available for download so I checked a few of them out. Once again, I am truly amazed at what can be done with this tool.

At this point it's hard for me to fathom gaining enough skill to be able to use Blender well enough to be able to create anything like the videos that I've just viewed, but I suppose if I just stay at it and I can get through this book. It will then just become a matter of continuing to practice. I can say with confidence that while this tool is very capable, the magnitude of new terms and concepts makes it pretty difficult to learn. I think the word for this month is 'patience'. :)

Blender Basics...

So I bought a couple of books about Blender at Borders. 'Blender For Dummies', written by Jason van Gumster, because of course only a dummy would ever take on learning how to do 3-D modeling. Actually I looked through the book at the bookstore and felt like it had a pretty good explanation of all the things that seem like basic building blocks for using Blender. On the other hand, how would I know what basic building blocks those might be. After all, I'm just a dummy.

The other book I bought was named 'Introducing Character Animation With Blender', written by Tony Mullen. This book looks REALLY good and I REALLY want to stop using the Dummies book and move over to this one. Nevertheless, I'm exercising restraint and forcing myself to focus on the basics first.

This second book is very much like a tutorial style project. It walks you all the way through creating a super-hero type character using Blender. I can't wait to dig into it. It looks really well written and I think when I've finished going through the process of creating the character that the book teaches you to build, I'll be able to safely say that I know how to use Blender.

So being the well disciplined soul that I am, I've stuck to my commitment and have started reading and practicing from the 'Blender For Dummies' book. It's actually doing a good job of walking me through the things I need to know to get around the basic application. I've learned about the different panels, how to move, rotate, and scale objects. I've learned about the 3-D coordinate system at both a global level and an object level. The book is just now taking me into an area that teaches me how to modify what are referred to as primitives using a technique called extrusion. It is very cool. In order to extrude a portion of an object you need to know how to select a sub-portion of the object and when you go down that path you discover that these sub-areas are made up of vertices, edges, and faces. Cool stuff that I'm sure any dummy understands. LOL!!!

I've always had an artistic side to me and though my professional career has been spent in the technology sector, I've always wanted to send more time using technology to explore my creative side. I am completely amazed at the capability of the software that is now accessible to us for free. Oh... did I forget to mention that Blender is an 'open-source' tool? Well it is. That means it can be downloaded and used for free. Of course if you find that you really like and will really use the tool for anything meaningful, certainly you should make a financial contribution to the Blender foundation.

If you wonder if Blender is really as good as I think it is, visit the Blender website and download the 10 minute Big Buck Bunny animation. There is a version of it that can be viewed with the Microsoft Media Player that comes with Windows. The video was developed by a group of very talented individuals and it was contributed to the open-source community for free. It truly demonstrates that Blender is professional quality tool that can be acquired at no cost, learned based on your own ambition, and prospectively lead you down a professional path you may never have thought you could pursue because of the cost of the traditional tools of the trade.

Obviously I am very excited about Blender and I encourage you take a look for yourself. I don't get excited about too many things. Cheers!

Thinking About The Future...

In my last blog I commented that I was going to start preparing for the next stage of my life. I'm 53 years old and I've been an IT professional for about 25 years. That said, I've seen a lot of changes in the industry and it continues to move at a pace that is unbelievable.

In the past several years I've asked myself on numerous occassions whether I want to continue spending my time keeping up with technology and trying to compete against youngsters for those rare and coveted decent paying professional jobs.

Don't get me wrong. I love technology and I've been very fortunate to enjoy the projects I've been involved with over the past 25 years. At the same time, the level of effort required to stay current and maintain a skill set that allows me to compete comes with a price. I continue to pay that price because technology continues to be interesting to me.

So why would I consider doing anything else? The answer is that with the improvements in technology, the tools that are available to exercise ones creativity are numerous and robust. I've always felt like there was an artist in me wanting to get out. I love art and in particular 3-dimensional art.

Over the years I've dabbled with tools like Photoshop, Ray Dream Designer, Detailer, Asymetrix 3D FX, Painter, Adobe Flash, and the like. As I became more acquainted with open-source systems and tools, I played with the GiMP and more recently stumbled onto a software package named Blender. As I've started take a closer look at this tool, I've discovered that Blender is probably one of the most exciting tools I have seen in a long time.

Blender is a 3D Animation & Rendering tool. Or at least that's how I perceive it today. Recenty I was walking around the Danville Art & Wine Festival and as I perused some of the art that was displayed, it caused me to consider again what I might do if I just put my mind to it. To that end, that's exactly what plan to do.

Now learning how to create 3D renderings is not a walk in the park. There is a whole new terminology associated with this area of study. Learning to use the tools also takes some commitment and patience. I'm not particularly concerned about either of these issues because I know what I want to achieve over the next few years.

So... I've started my journey by purchasing a couple of books about Blender and I plan to spend the next year developing my skills with this tool. As my skill improves, I already know what I want to create using this 3D rendering tool. I'll give myself a year to develop a portfolio of 3D renderings and during the 3rd year, I plan to start displaying some of my works at the art festivals and see where that takes me.

I'm very excited about what the future holds for me. I see this activity as my transition from being an IT professional to being an artist. I feel like it's time to pursue a dream I've had for a very long time. The tools are there, my mind is there and my heart is there. The rest is up to me.

I'm going to document my progress in this blog. If anybody happens to stumble onto this blog and finds my journey interesting, please feel free to write a comment and/or follow my blog. I'll try to post about once a week.

Speaking Of Procrastination (The Sequel)...

Well as I look back on some of my posts, it's clear that my flair for procrastination continues to thrive! I've been thinking about blogging again and in doing that I've been wondering what the hell I have to talk about that would be of any interest to anybody?

Being the type of person that spends a great deal of time contemplating life, I've come to realize that as I've gotten older I see myself becoming more cynical. So I asked myself, is that really all that unusual? I think not. Seriously, look at what's going on around us. Executives going to prison, scam artists taking advantage of the elderly, ads in the media by lawyers whose mission in life is to 'help you', other advertisements telling us about ways we can avoid paying back money we promised we would pay back.

I can't be the only person that listens and looks at everything going on around me and finds myself being both disgusted and embarrassed about what we've become as a society.

With this in mind, I again wonder what it is that I should blog about. People don't want to be reminded about everything that is wrong in our society and I'm sure people have better things to do than read a bunch of negative comments, even if most of what is written is true. To that end, I've decided that if I'm going to start blogging again, I'm going to refrain from negative. I don't really have any solutions to offer anyway. I've decided that best thing I can do for society is to improve myself so that's what I'm going to do.

My next post will be more postive and will start documenting a journey I am starting to prepare for the next stage of my life. A stage where I expect to have a lot of fun and enjoy life to it's fullest.