Marble Toy

[ODdOnLifeItself]

Hello

I was playing around, learning the ins and outs of Blender. For subject matter, I created this marble "toy" that consists of four buildings with rods going from building to building (for the marbles to run on). It all sits on a slightly concave wood panel with a hole in the middle. Once the marbles run the last course of rods, they then roll out of the buildings and spiral into the hole in the middle. Yeah, too much time on my hands, but Blender is quite complex and so, needed something to "practice" with...

Enjoy!






James

[wizard509]

Very nice James.
I also would like to learn Blender but it seems too much for me.

[ODdOnLifeItself]

Hello Larry,

Thank you!

Re: "...too much for me."

I was intimidated too! I've only been messing with it for about 10 days or so. (that scene took two hours to make) My approach is divide and conquer. LOL

You should check it out, taking your time learning and keeping it enjoyable while doing so...

If you decide to check it out, I'll certainly help any way that I can.

Even if you don't do full scenes, simpler objects can be texture-mapped and creatively illuminated and then brought back into Xara for further compositing.

I had originally looked into TrueSpace to play around in, but it was so counter-intuitive it was only frustrating to me. Blender has been different. Certain functions are quirky to bring about, but make perfect sense once they are learned.

With version 2.5, there was a major interface overhaul. Even though it's a Beta, I would recommend using the newest version as I see it as pointless to learn the old interface, only to eventually have to unlearn it.

Take care!

James

[Mike Bailey]

I created this marble "toy"

Nice job.

[Big Frank]

Nice one! Considering you modelled and texture mapped it all from scratch it's a pretty durn good image for just two hours' work - I know from experience that you can lose yourself and be oblivious of time passing whne messing with 3D apps

[ODdOnLifeItself]

Thanks, Mike

It was fun to do! Glad you liked it.

Peace

James

[ODdOnLifeItself]

Hello beretgascon,

Thanks!

Re: Losing time in a 3D application

That is true, but it IS a lot of fun. One thing that I find especially cool is that a "world" can be created and then seen from different angles, with different lighting, different textures, etc. (In other words, a lot of work going into creating a world, but then MANY images can flow from that without too much effort...)

You are certainly right, though... For a few days (while the kids are in school) I started after I dropped them off and then was still going at it when it was time to pick them up. As I mentioned, I am still working hard at learning the various parts of the program. The woodshedding is fun though!

One thing about Blender that Xara users can relate to is the use of modifiers. If you don't apply the modifier to the object, then it is completely non-destructive, the modifier is a property of the object, much the same way that a drop-shadow or contour is a property of a vector object in Designer Pro...

Peace

James