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
