[ENDED] BC1-1808 – August 2018 Class Homepage – Getting Started with 3D Modeling & Blender 2.8

[Jake Korosi]

@nekronavt ha!

It’s okay though.  I am NOT a software developer, and I have absolutely no idea how hard it is to develop something as common as Blender.  I’ve never even seen an “open alpha” for a major piece of software before; but it’s awesome that the Blender devs are doing it, and I think it’s just an unfortunate side-effect that that open-ness also means that sometimes we have a front-row seat for setbacks like this.  2.8 is already pretty darn amazing in so many ways, so I won’t let it dampen my excitement.

[Kaj Suominen]

@jakeblended 

yeah, usually it just stays alpha until it changes. 🙂 no biggie for me though, stability is most important factor personally, even though the autosave is amazing  in blender, i still rather not lose work. 2.79 is stable as a rock. Though even that you can crash with viewport cycles rendering when changing shader settings haphazardly 😀

right call to delay it anyhow. personally i don’t need the new ui layout, i work fullscreen mode without t and n panels and only bring those out when there is specific thing i do where i don’t get those from fullscreen mode.

[Aaron Rudderham]

@theluthier Why thank you, you’re very kind, I try my best! Bit of a delayed response but better late than never I suppose.

[silentheart00]

Posting again to keep my place.

[Jake Korosi]

Here is the video I mentioned that I found in the chat for this week’s livestream, about setting up blueprints to use in 2.8.  2.8 has gotten rid of the old “background images” function, presumably because it was very memory-intensive and incompatible with the 3D viewer upgrade they did.

This video explains how to set up background image objects in 2.8, for now.  They may add a more convenient or better system as 2.8 is developed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNf7USRbve4

[Katerina Novakova]

I thought I’d make a post about the video reel and use that opportunity to ask you a few questions.

First, would you like me to do this every week? I’ll be happy to do that, I just want to be sure that everyone is cool with it. And second, do you have any recommendations for improving it? As I mentioned in the chat, this is the first time I made this kind of a video. Also the first time I used Blender’s video sequencer. My whole preparation was to binge-watch a few tutorials from this series and off I went. 🙂 That means there is lot that could be done better – don’t be afraid to let me know in the comments.

For those of you who are interested, here is my current process:

1. Open all homework threads, find the final submissions and download them

– I’ll be doing this on Monday, around 3 pm CEST (that should be Monday for everyone)

– You can help me a lot by clearly marking your final render and making it easy for me to find it.

2. Normalize the size of the images

– The video has its own resolution settings (1920×1080 by default) and all images need to somehow fit there. If they have non-standard size they are going to get distorted. To prevent that from happening I scaled the images and put them against a neutral background.

3. Put people’s names on the images

– I used Krita’s text tool for this part. I think I got a good system going, but it is still very prone to errors. I’ll do my best to avoid any author-artwork mismatches, but… you know, stuff happens.

4. Create set of short animations, 5 images per video

– I’ve added some fade transitions between the images. Using the 5-image format makes it easier to re-render if I make a mistake. I have a template for this, so it goes surprisingly fast.

5. Put the short animations together

– Here I add some extra transitions and fade in and fade out. I also add a music track and keyframe its own fade in and fade out.

That was a lot longer than I thought it would be, but maybe it will help people who are interested in this part of Blender (it doesn’t get covered very often).

[Kent Trammell]

@jakeblended @sadicus I see what you’re asking now about merging within a threshold. The tool you want is in Edit Mode, Vertex > Remove Doubles. That will merge all vertices that are close enough to each other, based on a merge limit / threshold.

[Aaron Rudderham]

@shiennar Personally if you have the time to spare and want to do it I say go for it, it was a really nice surprise and I hope to see it some more.

[Aaron Rudderham]

Also, daaaamn you earn a lot of exp by attending streams.

[Jake Korosi]

@theluthier about linking and Collections – linking does appear to be how you put a single object into multiple collections.  Instead of using M to move it to another collection, Shift-M links an object to another collection.  The link isn’t a duplicate object, it just serves as a placeholder for that object in that collection, that you can use the collection features on (turning visibility or selectability on and off for example).  Think of it like a shortcut in your operating system.  You can also link an object into another collection by dragging it in the outliner to the collection you want to link it in, and holding Ctrl before dropping it.  

Selecting a linked object in a collection is the same as selecting the “original” object, there’s no distinction.  So there is no special need to keep track of what collection the “real” object is in versus which collections it’s only “linked” in.  They are all the same object.

So let’s say you have a Cube in Collection 1, and you want it to also be in a Collection 2.  So you hit Shift-M > New Collection, name it Collection 2 and hit OK, and now in your Outliner, Cube is in both Collection 1 and Collection 2.  Now let’s say some time later on you decide you don’t want the Cube to still be in Collection 1 after all.  In the Outliner just go to Collection 1, right-click the Cube, and choose “unlink”, and bam – now it only exists in Collection 2.

[smurfmier1985]

@shiennar I loved the video surprise! Very well made I would say, couldn’t tell it was your first time 🙂

[smurfmier1985]

@thecabbagedetective Yeah crazy huh?! Answering the forum too I think 

[Jake Korosi]

@thecabbagedetective I think not just by attending, but by making posts in the chat stream too you get some amount of points for each thing you post.

[Alice Hart]

@shiennar 

Missed the early part of the stream but watched it in the youtube playback.

It felt very inspirational, Kate. Loved it!

[Scott McClellan]

I personally don’t get too hung up on XP. When I see my gallery start to fill up, then I know I’m getting it. Until then, I’m just learning and having fun (IN 2.79 mwah haha)

[Author]

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