Small meeting of the minds. After some general sharing, and people leaving early for other obligations, Shane and I talked Blender. Several things came up and here are the reference links and information:

There was some discussion of Cel Shading strategies, and I expressed my annoyance that the Materials, or Pynodes that don’t seem to have a reference to Incidence Angle, either for Camera or Specific Light. This is implemented in Lightwave and other programs and makes the construction of CelShading Materials more controllable. This link just showed up on this forum with some great work, so take a look here.

Shane asked about Parallax Mapping as we discussed the use of Normal, Displacement and Bump, to represent Higher Frequency Textures on Lower Resolution Polygon models, sohere is a thread on Parallax Mapping.

Another topic is the process of animating with a full scope of assets on a bigger project, kind of a How To. I had mentioned a book coming out that addressed this and it is now available on Amazon. Here is the link for CGSociety/Blenderhere, and also on this very forum, BlenderArtists, here.

Discussion of the Freestyle project and the thread on that subject just posted that Graphicall.org has a new build available for Win32, here, (Mac and Linux already up) which incorporates the latest changes from Maxime (Thank you Maxime) and doesn’t need the Enviromental Variable to be set. One less bump on the road. Give it a try, works fine, play with it.

Questions about Tree creation, take a look at this thread on the L-System work, here, play with the script, encourage the author. I had mentioned that I have used the Tree Designer as a plugin for Lightwave, worth the purchase, but now I will try this script as I migrate to more Blender use. Take a look at Pawel Olas variety of plugins for Lightwave, all excellent, and here is the Tree Designer page.

I also mentioned that a new program is available for detailing and painting directly on 3D models, called 3D-Coat, here, like ZBrush, but intuitively easier and cheaper. Great coding, and the developer actually answers posts on his own forum and is developing very fast, so check it out, support him. Great program, fun to play with, works well with Blender. Always a great opportunity when I get to talk to others about software tools…. All for now.

EDIT: One more area of discussion, UbuntuStudio. This is a solid Linux distro (Hardy Heron, go figure..) that can be download from here, and then the ISO can be burned to a CD, then you boot from the CD, follow the directions to partition your drive and install UbuntuStudio64 (or 32 if you don’t have the hardware) along with a full suite of software tools that are oriented to artists, including Blender64. You will end up with a fully functioning Linux partition, and a dual boot option to go to WinXP or Ubuntu. Great way to try it out. Allowed me to render Big Buck Bunny scenes using the full 8GB of RAM on my system. If you need help go to the UbuntuForum.org (here) and check in.
Paul

The 2nd meeting of the S.D.B.U.G. will be held at the same location and time as the previous meeting. Check the calendar and click on the title to display directions to the location.

NOTE-POSTED BY CJ: WHAT FOLLOWS IS REPOSTED FROM THE BLENDERARTISTS THREAD.

Good to meet everyone for the first time, great to talk to fellow BlenderHeads. Some of you sent PM with questions about some of the stuff I rattled on about Non-Photographic Render related topics, so here is a “dump” of stuff so others can also benefit:

I mentioned John Popper, Grammy winning band, Blues Traveler laying down the harmonica track for the Short Project. Here is an outtake of the recording session.

The actual site for the Short Project is HERE so check it out. It is Lightwave based, using Maestro, (HERE) an amazing “puppeteer” style animation toolset. They have just shifted into the animation phase and anybody is encouraged to give it a try with the demo version of Maestro and the project files for the first scene.

I mentioned that I am way into Non-Photographic Render possibilities and am very hopeful about the integration of Freestyle into Blender following the development work by Maxime for the Google Summer of Code project. The link to the Blog is HERE, and the discussion on this Board is HERE. They just posted a build on GraphicAll.org HERE but it may need a bit more work

Freestyle as a free standing software tool is located HERE (ShaneNewville note)

Some of the compositing node manipulation efforts I did with the Big Buck Bunny Blender files are HERE of the Bird, and then again some of the opening scenes rendered and then pushed through the node tree as test of a more illustrative animation style. HERE

A discussion of the movie Love Leech Tomato is HERE on AnimWatch.com, using the aquaTree rendering technique co-developed with David Maas HERE

Real-Time Non-Photorealistic Rendering, HERE and a great concept page HERE (Sarah note)

There is a fun article on AWN (Animation World Network) where they interview Sylvain Chomet about The Triplets of Belleville, the outstanding integration of 3D with 2D plates that I mentioned, The article is HERE and a short trailer is HERE.

You can see a short trailer for Spirited Away HERE, by Hayao Miyazaki, which again has both 3D and 2D mixed together. Hayao Miyazaki is amazing and many of his studio’s other animations are award winning.

Both were done with XSI SoftImage and some “hand-rolled” shaders using SoftImage’s built in line rendering technology. One of the reasons I am so enthusiastic about the integration of Freestyle in Blender.

I had forgotten that I made reference to FXGuide and some excellent online video interviews of key “giants” in the industry, including great coverage of the recent Siggraph ‘08 in L.A. The general portal for FXGuide is HERE but the really fine interviews and commentaries are HERE on the same site. The “Low Bandwidth” version are still great and stream very well on most people’s systems.

On the same site is “The Red Centre” HERE which has podcasts of all of the Red camera latest info, but if you go back into the FXGuideTV archives there are some great broadcasts, which include visuals such as Part One of the Red Camera Intro HERE. There is a part Two just above it if you like the stuff. Enough for now, but I was watching this week’s FXGuideTV show about production on Dark Knight and thought about our meeting and my mentioning of the site, when I realized I hadn’t put any of the links up in my last blast. Enjoy

Paul

Well, I’d say we had a successful start! 5 people were in attendance: Myself, Sarah, Shane (Ghost_Train), Paul, and Chris, who found us indirectly through a google search. The meeting was held at a tea house in Kearny Mesa.

Since this was a first meeting, the real priority was just getting to know each other. We compared notes on who did what for a living, how long and under what circumstances we use Blender, and some rough discussion surrounding the goals of the group. So far, Chris & I work in the same industry (video), utilizing Blender as a supplement for After Effects and Non-Linear editing work, while Shane works in the recording industry, Paul does freelance graphics work (similar to Chris and I), and Sarah is a programmer for UCSD.

So we had a lot to talk about. Off the cuff, conversation ranged from discussing Freestyle for Blender integration, workflow within other softwares in comparison/tandem with Blender, rendering over a network, the Red Camera workflow, and camera tracking. Keep in mind, that without an absolute focus, we jumped from topic to topic. This was a purposefully informal meeting to get introduced; all future meetings will be further documented and posted for anyone who misses them.

While not “official”, the impression I get is that this group is really focused on learning from one another’s experiences and using each other for inspiration. Meetings will be held on the first Saturday of each month, at floating locations based on the needs of the meeting. Chris may be able to obtain access to a classroom at Platt college; I may also be able to get us into a CAD classroom. We also have access to the studio I work in, particularly useful when dealing with the Blender/Live Video workflow.

All information about upcoming meetings will be posted on the community calendar section of this website, and a corresponding BlenderArtists announcement will also be made. As always, anyone is welcome to join this group. You aren’t required to sign up or have an invite, just show up to the next meeting.

A personal note: This is the first time I have ever spoken with a Blender user on a face-to-face basis. If your town does not have a users’ group, I highly recommend starting one. I’ve always dealt with the blank stares when I explain Blender to someone; it’s nice to be able to talk with a group of people who already know what’s going on ahead of time. Good fun.

-CJ Maynard

Title: Initial Meeting
Location: Tea N More
Description: 7380 Clairemont Mesa Blvd, San Diego, CA 92111
Start Time: 2:00 pm
Date: 2008-09-06