Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on March 06, 2005 02:38 AM
This article does a good job of hitting most of the high points of blender, as well as several of the short-comings.
As for the introductory statement, one poster replied that the comparison was false: that you couldn't make a Pixar-caliber animation with blender. I don't think that's so, or at least it's misleading, for two reasons:
The first is that you (and I, for that matter) are _not_ Pixar. Pixar is made of dedicated, talented professionals that have honed their craft for years. They could probably use any tool and produce something impressive. Still, with time and practice, you or I could use blender to create something impressive, too, and for free, both as in speech and as in beer, which was the real point. If you or I put in as much talent, dedication, time and practice as the Pixar crew does, we could also produce animation every bit as good as Pixar's with blender, free and freely. The tools are up to it if you are.
The second reason is that, as yet another poster pointed out, most high-end professional FX and CGI houses use custom software to work their art. Blender provides for that posibility by providing both the open and extensible native code base, and also by providing a Python API. Python is particularly powerful stuff. LucasFilms used Python extensively in creating the CGI for the Star Wars films (including, I'm sorry to say, Jar-jar). Whatever your opinion of the appropriateness or usefulness of those effects, you have to admit they looked good...
Anyway, the point is that blender can allow you to create to the best of your ability, with creative, intellectual, and financial freedom.
One significant feature that the article didn't mention is support for creating and using normal maps. Normal maps are a new technology used extensively in recent games like Doom 3, Riddick, and (I think) Half-Life 2. I don't know of any movies that use it, but then the turn-around time on feature films is much longer, and this is relatively new stuff. A normal map is a texture with extra information embedded in it for creating "pseudo-geometry", increasing surface detail without adding polygons. It's like a bump map, but explicitly detailing how reflections will go, and it can really increase realism dramatically.
As for the interface, I had a very hard time with it myself at first, for a long time. I cut my 3D teeth on Caligari's trueSpace, widely known for it's excellent interface, so I gave up on blender at first. Then, after several years with trueSpace, then 3D Studio MAX, Amapi, and a little bit of Maya, I came back to blender to find it greatly improved, as was my general understanding of 3D gestalt. I became proficient fairly quickly with the (sometimes odd) hotkeys, once I mapped out in my mind how their functions matched to those in other 3D suites. I've found that 3D programs pretty much all do the same things; with differing degrees of ease or efficiency, perhaps, but there's only so many things you can do to polygons, and as each product incorporates a new operation, the others are likely to do something similar.
From using 3D MAX, I'd gotten kind of used to just using one hand on the mouse to do my work, so I could definitely see where MAX users would be uncomfortable at first with blender, because you really do need to use both hands to use blender at full speed. trueSpace had extensive hotkey support, which I used a lot, so I was kinda used to it, but I could see where some would have trouble adjusting.
For those trying blender out for the first time, I'd suggest paying attention to the tooltips, which were conspicuously absent when I first tried blender, but are quite helpful now.
All in all, an excellent article for those new to blender, and blender itself is an excellent program for those with some experience with 3D.
Another interesting link, for those who want to know more, is <A HREF="http://www.blender.org/" title="blender.org">http://www.blender.org/</a blender.org>, where you can watch and/or get involved with blender development.
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Good article, good points.
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on March 06, 2005 02:38 AMAs for the introductory statement, one poster replied that the comparison was false: that you couldn't make a Pixar-caliber animation with blender. I don't think that's so, or at least it's misleading, for two reasons:
The first is that you (and I, for that matter) are _not_ Pixar. Pixar is made of dedicated, talented professionals that have honed their craft for years. They could probably use any tool and produce something impressive. Still, with time and practice, you or I could use blender to create something impressive, too, and for free, both as in speech and as in beer, which was the real point. If you or I put in as much talent, dedication, time and practice as the Pixar crew does, we could also produce animation every bit as good as Pixar's with blender, free and freely. The tools are up to it if you are.
The second reason is that, as yet another poster pointed out, most high-end professional FX and CGI houses use custom software to work their art. Blender provides for that posibility by providing both the open and extensible native code base, and also by providing a Python API. Python is particularly powerful stuff. LucasFilms used Python extensively in creating the CGI for the Star Wars films (including, I'm sorry to say, Jar-jar). Whatever your opinion of the appropriateness or usefulness of those effects, you have to admit they looked good...
Anyway, the point is that blender can allow you to create to the best of your ability, with creative, intellectual, and financial freedom.
One significant feature that the article didn't mention is support for creating and using normal maps. Normal maps are a new technology used extensively in recent games like Doom 3, Riddick, and (I think) Half-Life 2. I don't know of any movies that use it, but then the turn-around time on feature films is much longer, and this is relatively new stuff. A normal map is a texture with extra information embedded in it for creating "pseudo-geometry", increasing surface detail without adding polygons. It's like a bump map, but explicitly detailing how reflections will go, and it can really increase realism dramatically.
As for the interface, I had a very hard time with it myself at first, for a long time. I cut my 3D teeth on Caligari's trueSpace, widely known for it's excellent interface, so I gave up on blender at first. Then, after several years with trueSpace, then 3D Studio MAX, Amapi, and a little bit of Maya, I came back to blender to find it greatly improved, as was my general understanding of 3D gestalt. I became proficient fairly quickly with the (sometimes odd) hotkeys, once I mapped out in my mind how their functions matched to those in other 3D suites. I've found that 3D programs pretty much all do the same things; with differing degrees of ease or efficiency, perhaps, but there's only so many things you can do to polygons, and as each product incorporates a new operation, the others are likely to do something similar.
From using 3D MAX, I'd gotten kind of used to just using one hand on the mouse to do my work, so I could definitely see where MAX users would be uncomfortable at first with blender, because you really do need to use both hands to use blender at full speed. trueSpace had extensive hotkey support, which I used a lot, so I was kinda used to it, but I could see where some would have trouble adjusting.
For those trying blender out for the first time, I'd suggest paying attention to the tooltips, which were conspicuously absent when I first tried blender, but are quite helpful now.
All in all, an excellent article for those new to blender, and blender itself is an excellent program for those with some experience with 3D.
Another interesting link, for those who want to know more, is <A HREF="http://www.blender.org/" title="blender.org">http://www.blender.org/</a blender.org>, where you can watch and/or get involved with blender development.
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