Blender 2.46 rocks! Last night I played with new particle hair in Blender 2.46, and I have to say it is awesome! Adding particle hair to a character is really easy, and Blender provides a way to comb it using the mouse. The combing takes a little getting used to, but still, it’s sooooo coool. Here are some example hairstyles:
I finished the first version of my character model “Jeanette” this weekend. I am particularly satisfied with the hair texture (though it could be improved by adding more layers and transparency) and the material settings of the lip gloss. Maybe the next thing I am going to do is give the eyes a makeover with some painted textures and a dual-layer eyball. Anyway, here she is:
After an introduction to materials and links, chapter 3 gets right down to the texturing business. The first thing that was new to me was using an Empty object for scaling and resizing the logo texture on the superhero’s suit. Quite useful technique.
Next, the book explains how create a UV layout for texturing the face – and how to use Blender’s Mark Seem and Pin Vertex features to make the UV layout more easy to work with. The example is really quite simple and all the texture painting you have to do in your 2D program is to fill the picture with some skin color and draw the outline of the mouth and eyebrows. But if you have never done a texturing using UV layouts, or have been confused by the layouts you got, this description is sure to get you started.
The texture is then made a bit more realistic by applying a bump map, so the eyebrows won’t like painted on the surface (which, in fact, they are).
For the eyes, a procedural texture is used. I didn’t bother to do that yet, and decided to just give the model sunglasses to hide the untextured eyes. It does look however, like procedural textures will give you quite realistic eyes with a minimum of effort (and I might try to do just that tonight).
Following the eyes, the book turns to the hairs. This part introduces working with particle hair, and the results can look quite realisic (honestly, particle hair is as close as you can get to reality). Then, how to shape the hair is explained (not done in the picture below).
As for my own version of the model, I did not do the eye textures yet, and didn’t shape the hair. I did however apply a self-made logo to the suit, and added sunglasses and a belt of bullets. So here he is, Captain Blender disguised as another well-known computer game superhero (“Someone’s gonna pay for making me wear these gay gloves and pussy pants!”):
If you stay up to date with current versions of Blender, some of the descriptions in the book are no longer valid. That’s not much of a problem, since the book came with the Blender version it was based on (version 2.42a). But if you choose to use a later version, the settings for the particle hair will require some trial and error to figure out. To help you get started, I included a screenshot of the settings I used for Blender version 2.46 below.
I just received my copy of Tony Mullen’s book”Introducing Character Animation with Blender” and made it through chapter 2. Chapter one gives a quick introduction into Blender. It’s quick and to the point, and contains a reference to the most frequently used keyboard shortcuts.
Chapter 2 teaches starts by showing how to model a face, and then cuts right to the chase: This chapter introduces the superhero character “Captain Blender” and the proceeds by showing how to model it in Blender. Reference images for both the face and the “Captain Blender” character are included on the CD.
At times, I found the pictures a bit confusing, but I made it through the chapter in about 2 or 3 days. You can see my results at the bottom of the page. Anyway, this looks like just the book I have been looking for. I am already looking forward to get into chapter 3 – “Texturing” – soon.
