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  1. #31
    Join Date
    Sep 2008
    Location
    Antwerp, Belgium
    Posts
    410

    Default Re: Xara plus Blender questions

    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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    Guy -

    I love these tools

  2. #32

    Default Re: Xara plus Blender questions

    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

  3. #33
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    Sunshine Coast BC, Canada. In a beautiful part of BC's temperate rainforest
    Posts
    9,864

    Default Re: Xara plus Blender questions

    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.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    My current Xara software: Designer Pro 365 12.6

    Good Morning Sunshine.ca | Good Morning Sunshine Online(a weekly humorous publication created with XDP and exported as a web document) | Angelize Online resource shop | My Video Tutorials | My DropBox |
    Autocorrect: It can be your worst enema.

  4. #34

    Default Re: Xara plus Blender questions

    Thanks, Frances

    Re: Explosion effect

    It's actually not that hard to do. Later, when you are interested, I can outline the steps. Now, I'll just comment that one takes an object and adds it to a particle system. (setting up the pieces and how forcefully they are expelled and how strong the gravity is) After that, using the Explosion modifier rips the object apart and makes those pieces be the ejected particles from the Particle System. It sounds complicated, but in reality, is quite easy to do.

    Re: Whetting the appetite

    As far as Particle Systems go, it's a cool feature of Blender. If you had a scene and you wanted hundreds of hailstones to be falling, you model as many different hailstones as you care to have. Make them a group and then add that group to the particle system. As you animate, dictated by the settings in the Particle System, the hailstones will fall and you can have them of various sizes and with various rates of rotation. The particle system is also good for things where you have some objects scattered around. (for instance pebbles on a sandy beach) You just make the Particle System work over one frame and so the "pieces" are all there from the beginning, but all randomly placed about. (Saves much time over going around and manually placing and rotating around a hundred stones in various places.)

    Take care and have fun!

    James

  5. #35
    Join Date
    Sep 2008
    Location
    Antwerp, Belgium
    Posts
    410

    Default Re: Xara plus Blender questions

    Another go at the beachball - improved lighting (thanks James !) and another surface

    Click image for larger version. 

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    Guy -

    I love these tools

  6. #36

    Default Re: Xara plus Blender questions

    Good job, Guy

    It's looking more "at home" with the improved ground surface and more even lighting.

    Something that might help your new ground surface is a tiny bit of "Normal Mapping" being applied to that texture. Just select the ground and go to the Texture tab and click on Normal and give it -0.2 or so and go down and click Best Quality under Bump method. Though it's a small change, it somehow does make the objects in the texture look like objects (of different depths and "protrudingness").

    If you like it in your current work, then use it... if not, (that's cool too), then save the idea for sometime in the future. I use this one a lot to make textures look less flat. [There's no set value that works for all images...you just have to try it and then adjust it.]

    Peace

    James
    Last edited by ODdOnLifeItself; 09 September 2011 at 01:14 PM.

  7. #37
    Join Date
    Sep 2008
    Location
    Antwerp, Belgium
    Posts
    410

    Default Re: Xara plus Blender questions

    Thanks James. I applied your suggestions and they do make a change (for the better )
    Guy -

    I love these tools

  8. #38
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    Sunshine Coast BC, Canada. In a beautiful part of BC's temperate rainforest
    Posts
    9,864

    Default Re: Xara plus Blender questions

    Thanks James, you certainly have whetted my appetite, and your advice to guy re making the textures look less flat will be helpful to me as well. Now if I could just figure out a way to "extrude" the hours in my day!
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    My current Xara software: Designer Pro 365 12.6

    Good Morning Sunshine.ca | Good Morning Sunshine Online(a weekly humorous publication created with XDP and exported as a web document) | Angelize Online resource shop | My Video Tutorials | My DropBox |
    Autocorrect: It can be your worst enema.

  9. #39

    Default Re: Xara plus Blender questions

    Yes, Frances, I can relate.

    Blender can take up a lot of time. I try not to be too hard on myself, but I do have to be mindful of not letting any work slip. Perhaps looking at it as educational time will remove all guilt but I hope you have some luck at this hour-extruding idea, because I've never (even as a kid) felt there was enough time in the day.

    And Frances, I wanted to mention to you, because I know you like to do a lot of "fonty" things; that Blender has a pretty good ability for making various 3D text and things that look really cool alone or if you incorporate them into a scene.

    If you go to Add Text, it will put the word Text lying flat on the x-y plane. If you then rotate that about x 90° (press r, x, 90, Enter), you will see it from the front view. Pressing Tab starts you editing the text. Tab also takes you BACK when you're done editing. If you'll press the F button (over by materials tabs, etc.), then you'll have options for extruding and beveling the text as well as alignment and other normal text adjustments. It is here that you choose the font as well...advised, since Blender's native font is not one of the better ones.

    Peace

    James

  10. #40
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    Sunshine Coast BC, Canada. In a beautiful part of BC's temperate rainforest
    Posts
    9,864

    Default Re: Xara plus Blender questions

    I am trying to create a piece of textured fabric This is what I've done so far I created a 1pix curved line in Xara exported as a svg and imported that into blender. My line has come in as a curve I want to now extrude it to create my piece of fabric that I hope will follow the curve but when I tap E all it seems to do is move the line about it doesn't extrude it obviously I'm missing something what am I doing wrong?? eventually I hope to have a mirrored sphere sitting on my fabric and perhaps maybe a sky to add to the reflections (I haven't decided on that yet)
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    My current Xara software: Designer Pro 365 12.6

    Good Morning Sunshine.ca | Good Morning Sunshine Online(a weekly humorous publication created with XDP and exported as a web document) | Angelize Online resource shop | My Video Tutorials | My DropBox |
    Autocorrect: It can be your worst enema.

 

 

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