Xara plus Blender questions

**gnurf** · 06 September 2011, 08:45 AM

Nice work! Next thing to learn is lighting: Put one (or two) additional lights to achieve greater realism, even with simplistic designs like this.

**angelize** · 06 September 2011, 04:42 PM

Thanks to you both. Last night I watched a tutorial video, where the guy did some balloons it seemed pretty cool, though at the end he went into the node based editor to make adjustments to his rendered layers and I couldn't help thinking how much easier that part would be in Xara!

I don't know if I will have much time to play today, work (the paying kind) beckons, but maybe this evening I'll have something to share or more questions to ask or both!

**Hwy101** · 08 September 2011, 08:05 AM

(( worst part is, I keep switching back & forth between Blender & 123D [Autodesk added a bunch of new stock shapes] Make Learning 'Interesting' ))

**ODdOnLifeItself** · 08 September 2011, 12:29 PM

There's always more to learn in Blender...

Today was playing around with the Explode modifier. Here is a quick example... (literally done in minutes)

Pardon the subject matter, there's no hidden meaning...just a quick knock-off.

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Peace

James

**guyke** · 08 September 2011, 01:00 PM

Originally Posted by ODdOnLifeItself

There's always more to learn in Blender...

Couldn't agree more...

**guyke** · 08 September 2011, 04:44 PM

Here's a beachball - The lighting is not what it should be, but I still have to study that chapter...

Click image for larger version.

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**ODdOnLifeItself** · 08 September 2011, 07:33 PM

The beachball looks perfect, Guy

Re: "The lighting is not what it should be..."

As you look further towards the background, it gets dark quite fast. (ie. the front lights falloff well before the end of the plane) Since you're doing a beachball, they make you think of daytime, so to get more of what you want, you'll want to not use point light sources, but rather a Sun lamp or an Area lamp (with the intensity turned down a lot or it floods the whole scene).

Another (secondary) option is to go in the World settings and give it a very small amount of Environment Lighting to compensate for the lights.

James

**angelize** · 08 September 2011, 11:21 PM

There is so much to learn in blender, that beachball looks good Guy,

@ James I love the explosion effect, when I get a bit more practice under my belt I'd love to learn how to do that.