The butterfly represents the landmark achievement of learning basic UV unwraping and materials in Blender. I started with looking at specularity and eventually added a normal map though I do admit that at this stage it is trial and error. One problem that became apparent only after I rendering a sequence was that the noise channel seemed to be moving. Since this was mapped to specularity it meant that when the wings bent into the like they looked like they were sparkling film grain.
Archive for October, 2008
Butterfly Materials
Sunday, October 19th, 2008Animation edit of the music
Sunday, October 19th, 2008I finally have a good version of the music mixed and edited for the animation. This is meaningful because my storyboard timing will have to change slightly.
Useful rigging points
Thursday, October 16th, 2008Taken from:
http://www.geneome.net/2007/08/07/thoughts-on-rigging/
1) Using bones to control vertex groups (I cover that in animating box flaps)
2) Using weight painting to control how bones move vertices (I cover that in the fake muscle video)
3) Using envelopes to control how bones move vertices (and in the SVN, heat weighting)
4) Using constraints to make bones do different things under different circumstances (IK solver, limit constraints, etc.
5) Making use of the bone layers in the Armature panel
6) Using the ipo/action/NLA editor to make your life easier
7) Using drivers to make controllers for your rigs.
Mesh to armature – old or new way?
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008Seems in Blender that there are 2 ways to attach an armature to a mesh: the “old way” being parenting the mesh to the armature and the “new way” being adding an Armature Modifier to the mesh. There seems to be confusion over the benefits of using the new way. I have been confused not so much that the new way is cleaner and suits the overarching workflow of Blender better but with all the facets that rigging encompasses (weight painting, vertex grouping etc). For instance eyeballs as a separate object could be parented to a bone whereas, as far as I can see, if you apply the Armature Modifier to the eyes you then have to link the vertices to the bones – many more steps.
The “new feature” of Bone Heat Weighting has only confused me more as the workflow for that seems to include using the “old method”. So if they are shifting paradigms why are there new (and attractive looking) features for the old method.
New Blender release – 2.48
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008I always welcome an update to any software but what has this new version of Blender got to offer that is immediately relevant to this project?
- The shrinkwrap modifier looks like it will be useful for modelling the lil-boy’s clothes
- The sun lamp considering I have many outdoor scenes
- The sky parameters, again because all my scenes are outside.
Butterfly weight paint issue
Monday, October 13th, 2008I see one reason now why in Big Buck Bunny they chose to have th butterfly’s wings as flat planes – the deformations are very difficult to control when the mesh has volume as the outside of the curve needs to stretch around the inside otherwise it will intersect causing issues. I still persevere with my model having volume in the wings as, considering I have a lot of close shots, it might add detail. (more…)