Trying Blender for the First Time

Well here's my first fluid animation and simple scene that I did with Blender. The software is efficient and quite speedy too but it lacks the intuitive modelling capabilities and the easy navigation system of 3ds max or maybe it's just that I'm using my small laptop. Anyway whichever it is I have to say I'm impressed with this free piece of software, it's just really good and now in comparison to 3ds max I have to say that in some respects Blender is a good compromise and gives autodesk a good run for its money. Here's the first thing I did. I was going to do a tutorial on the shielding effect but unfortunately I don't remember exactly how I did it and when I tried to reproduce the results let's just say it was ugly. So now my plan is to make a tutorial on how to model GLaDoS from Portal 2 and that will be in several small videos since YouTube limits me to 15 minutes (urrgh...). Anyway check this out and I'll be bringing you a tutorial hopefully by this Thursday or at the very least a simple introduction.

Physics in 3ds Max 2012

The real purpose of this simulation/animation was to determine whether or not the cloth modifier in 3ds max could emulate rigid body dynamics when set up correctly. Well the result was thus:

I think it is possible and with further tweaking would make the physx plugin obsolete in some manner but that's stretching it I guess. Anyway as you can see it clearly is possible to some degree to make rigid body-like simulations using only the cloth modifier. The simulation on the right is physx and the left is cloth. Enjoy!

Fractal-like Structures

So I got into fractals a few days ago and so from structure synth began an idea about animating and using fractals. Then the other day I discovered that I could create structures similar to fractals using the array tool. I hope you guys like it. I animated it and then rendered it in Mental Ray.

A Snowy Lamppost

So I guess this is another new post. Straight to business, don't want to wander around that much so as not to bore you. Well it snowed like crazy here for the past few days and during that I decided to take some photos and one photo just made me want to design something in 3ds max, anything as long as it was based on the photo I took. That began three days of rendering, refining, modelling and designing of this:

So the image on the right is the photo I took and the one on the left is the render.

PFlow + FumeFX + Krakatoa = Awesome

Having to be secretive about my 3ds max "excursions" I can't add much here as frequently. Anyway so I took the opportunity and built a scene with 3ds Max and added a PFlow particle animation and a FumeFX animation. Then I created several partitions for the particles generated by PFlow and FumeFX and using these partitions I rendered it in Krakatoa. There aren't that many particles, I'm guessing it's not over 1 million but if it is, just wow. Anyway I hope you enjoy watching! Cheers! :D
This is the original:                                                                                   This is the version with a soundtrack:

Physx and Krakatoa

I think I've become obsessed with Krakatoa. I mean the endless possibilities with the particles make it seem like the very world is at my fingertips. Oh and I was testing out how to do a ball and chain simulation using the physx simulation engine. I learned the strategy from a tutorial but it is quite interesting the way he made it work. I am not going to make a tutorial on how to do it but I might in the future so stay tuned. Here's what I made:

I apologise for the low quality. Thank you!

Krak + PFlow = Particle Heaven

Ok. So I was thinking that I'd make an animation that would be a sort of hyperspace effect. Rendered using Krakatoa and made using 3ds max pflow. It turned out pretty good but it needs a bit of polishing and all that but overall it's pretty nice. See for yourself:

Project Stardust (Yep! Once again!)

Well I finally finished rendering this beauty and now I just uploaded it. I hope you like it. Post a comment, like it, do something! Someone please find this blog! I'm done whining. Enjoy!

Glu3d

Now this is a worthwhile plugin, although not as amazing as RealFlow it certainly is much cheaper! Check out this Mental Ray rendering.

Back to some old-fashioned modeling

Well yesterday morning I was reading on Tomshardware.com and I saw this very interesting picture of something called a Nixie Clock. Being intrigued by it's design I went on the internet and researched about it trying to figure out what the hell it was. I saved some reference photos just in case I needed it. Then I returned home later that afternoon and decided to start making something for my girlfriend based around the concept of a Nixie Clock. Although not exactly the same, in an hour or so I came up with this.

I'm quite proud of it since it was only an hour or twos work and so far it's been my best attempt at recreating something from reference photos. Later, I will post a tutorial on how to make it yourself.