Digital Anthology

Sep 27

[video]

Aug 21

Trying to recreate the AE Plexus trailer, in Blender.

Trying to recreate the AE Plexus trailer, in Blender.

Jul 17

Video Game as Art

Jul 11

[video]

[video]

Jul 10

Uber efficient use of textures for terrain rendering Traditionally, for a terrain this size, one will need an 8k texture at minimum. The landscape is rendered using a single 2028x2048 texture and one 512x512 texture. This post is inspired by Andrew Maximov’s article. In which he explores the limitations of traditional diffuse colour textures, and proposes a shader based semi-procedural texturing approach. This is that method in Blender. Download the Blend file here Here is the texture use break-down Combined.tga R Channel: Dirt texture Combined.tga G Channel: Grass texture Combined.tga B Channel: Rock texture Mask.tga R Channel: Gradient Map (used to control which of the textures (Dirt, Grass, Rock) to use) Mask.tga G Channel: Light Map (Ambient Occlusion) Mask.tga B Channel: Specular Map To see how these textures are being used, take a look at the nodal material setup in Blender.

Uber efficient use of textures for terrain rendering

Traditionally, for a terrain this size, one will need an 8k texture at minimum. The landscape is rendered using a single 2028x2048 texture and one 512x512 texture.

This post is inspired by Andrew Maximov’s article. In which he explores the limitations of traditional diffuse colour textures, and proposes a shader based semi-procedural texturing approach.

This is that method in Blender.

Download the Blend file here Here is the texture use break-down

To see how these textures are being used, take a look at the nodal material setup in Blender.

Jul 04

Blender Game Engine improvements to keep an eye on

OpenGL Mobile Compatibility and Android Port (GSoc 2012) - Alexandr Kuznetsov: This project aims to made OpenGL slightly faster and compatible with OpenGL ES in order to port Blender Player to Android. This would include port of libs, ghost and build infrastructure. At the end Blender Games can be played on Android.

BGE Converter Improvements and fixups (GSoC2012) - Mitchell Stokes: Various improvements such as saving out converted data to disk and allowing for asynchronous level loading. Will make loading of large geometry much faster.

Multitouch Framework (GSoC 2012) - Nicholas Rishel: Extending recognition for multitouch input for SDL for the purpose of navigation, and a framework for future additions. As envisioned, the immediate result would serve as a compliment to a stylus. This would prepare Blender for the incoming Slate form factor machines (see Samsung Series 7 Slate and Asus Eee EP121), and potentially ease ports to Android touch devices.

Adapting the Hive system for the Blender Game Engine (GSoc 2012) - Spencer Alves: This project aims to make a more accessible, efficient, and useful editor for logic systems in the Blender Game Engine by integrating the Hive systems project into Blender.

The above 4 projects are collectively codenamed “SwissCheese Branch”.

Candy Branch - Martinsh Uptitis and ‘mokazon’: General eye candy improvement [link]

Harmony Branch - Daniel Stokes et al: Phase 1 merged into trunk, more goodies coming [link]

May 21

Boston Blender Game Engine Talk -

Here is the slides for my presentation at the Boston Blender get-together this past week.

May 17

Beginner's Blender Cheat Sheet -

This is a cheatsheet I created in collaboration with Jonathan Williamson of Blender Cookie.

Mar 23

Concept Art

Concept Art

Mar 18

Concept Art for yet another project.

Concept Art for yet another project.

Jan 01

[video]

Dec 01

[video]

Oct 22

This article on making CG bokeh was written by me, and first published at DIYPhotography

This article on making CG bokeh was written by me, and first published at DIYPhotography

Jun 26

[video]