The folks at Blender have given me a couple of new tools with which to satisfy my desires to maim and mutilate ragdolls.
Rigid Body Dynamics in the animation system and Cycles Hair Rendering.
So in honor of that or whatever… here’s my first non-game-engine ragdoll (with hair) for your demented pleasure…
http://funkboxing.com/wordpress/wp-content/_postfiles/ragdollRBD-POST.blend
If you’re a Blender user or are interested in Blender and live in South Louisiana (or around) please take a moment to fill out this survey to help the Baton Rouge Blender User Group expand to support and unite all the Blenderers in the South Louisiana area.
I guess I’ve been using Blender for so much for so long that I tend to look for ‘Blender-like’ controls in a/v projects. So inevitably when I started working with LED strips I immediately tried to weasel out of having to think through functions and loops in arduino code to create effects I could do intuitively in Blender.
So after a few bad UI attempts I thought – hey, wish I could just design a light sequence in Blender and run it with ALT-A. So that’s what I did.
On the arduino side it’s using the FastSPI and CmdMessenger libraries for LED and serial communications.
The Blender script just reads the diffuse color in r-g-b from each LED objects material and spits it out to the USB port. Getting the pyserial library hooked up in Blender wasn’t a breeze but the “sys.path.append” line should help anyone having the same issues I did.
Here’s the arduino code and Blender file
(Using Arduino Duemilanove 328 and LED strip with WS2801 chips)
EDIT:
Blendernation article (Thanks Bart!)
I forgot to mention I’m using Ubuntu so the sys.path.append thing wont work for windows, you’ll have to find the pyserial library solution elsewhere (there’s plenty of reference out there)
Also – the script runs on each frame change. Here’s how that works (WARNING: kinda hacky) http://funkboxing.com/wordpress/?p=236
QUESTION: For any API guru’s out there – currently this script opens and closes the serial port on each framechange. I know this is radically inefficient. Any ideas on how to keep the serial port open persistently but to close it when blender closes?
In honor of the SpaceX Dragon’s historic flight to the ISS- here is a render, and a .blend file of the SpaceX Dragon!
http://funkboxing.com/wordpress/wp-content/blendfiles/SpaceXDragonCapsule.blend
Take this! Mr. hasn’t-posted-in-months.
Just playing around with Blender and Cycles.
This is an attempt to merge Blenders Dynamic Paint feature with cellular automata. It started as a python script but then became even more of an educational experience when I realized python wasn’t going to be fast enough to run conway’s life on a 64x grid, let alone a 4Kx one, which was my initial goal. These ended up being 512x grids. I could have gone bigger but I’m using a little netbook for all this so I didn’t go nuts.
After figuring out that python wasn’t going to be fast enough I set out to make a c++ version, not in Blender, just in c++. Long story short it’s an atrocity of loops inside a main function. I didn’t even bother to pass any arguments, just recompiled every time I changed paths. Anyway it ended up being lots faster than the py scripts and I finally had an excuse to write a function I knew very well in a language I’ve been intimidated by for some time (and still very much am).
The c++ code uses the ImageMagick++ library, which made things much easier, but you’ll have to get this lib if you want to compile and use this. Hopefully this whole process has prepared me to get on porting the lighting generator to c++, which really needs to happen if if it’s ever going to be more than a gimmick.
So anyway, here’s the c++ code and here’s the Blender python script that I abandoned in favor of doing it in c++. For the record- this is bad, bad code. Very bad. Also here’s the command line to compile with g++ and imageMagick++, since that took awhile to get past.
user@pc:~$ g++ `Magick++-config –cxxflags –cppflags` conway.cpp -o conway `Magick++-config –ldflags –libs`
Here’s the process for using this to dynamic paint with conways life.
1) dynamically paint a canvas with a brush. This will paint ‘live’ cells onto the canvas
Turn on ‘dissolve’ and set to dissolve in 1-3 frames. Otherwise these become ‘immortal’ cells, which makes for a weird simulation.
I used red channel only for these demos.
2) compile and run the c++ code.
This will run the simulation on the dynamic paint cache images. It runs the simulation from the initial frame, but always includes the red cells from the next dynamic paint frame so they will be used in the next simulation step.
3) use this simulation output as a map in place of the dynamic paint output.
Sounds easy, and it kind of is, and kind of isn’t.
So if you want to do this yourself- if you know c++ it should be easy. If you don’t it will be very hard. If you’re just learning c++ it may be worthwile to try.
Not sure where I’m going with all this, as usual it was just something to do. Hope you dig it.
Here’s a simple script that lets you ‘bookmark’ camera positions.
It’s a little redundant since the same thing can be accomplished a number of different ways but after a discussion with another BR BUG member I thought I’d take a swing. So here’s the script (right-clk>save as)
Just uncompress, then copy the script to your addons folder and then activate.
You get a panel in the 3DView>Toolbar that lets you add, delete, and change marks.
It saves the loc/rot/dofdist/lens to a textblock called CAMERAMARKS. I know this is a hacky implementation but I’m a hack and that’s just what I do. It’s super rudimentary now but it was only about 3 hours of coding and most of that was looking through old code to remember how to setup the UI, which I needed a refresher on anyway so this was a good little project. So tell me what you think, if it’s useful, what it needs to become useful, etc.
PLEASE SEE THE NEW BATON ROUGE BUG PAGE, THIS ONE IS SUPER OLD!
—–UPDATE—–
Another great meeting everyone!
Next meeting will be January 21st, 2012 – at the Cajun Clickers HQ – 3:00pm-6:00pm
—–UPDATE-DEC17th—-
Great meeting everyone. I enjoyed sharing Blender with some new folks, and I enjoyed meeting some local BlenderHeads I didn’t know about and as one 3D veteran offered “It’s good to know you’re not in a vacuum.”
December 17th is the date for the next meeting, at the Cajun Clicker HQ. (See below for link to map.)
I’ll probably make another flyer with the new date and send them out so you can send them to anyone you’d like to share Blender with. Or print them and put them up at your school or work or something if that’s appropriate.
I’ll also be working on scheduling a beginners series, and since we had some interest on Game Engine and Texturing we’ll work on putting together some workshops on those too.
So thanks again for the great meeting and feel free to contact me!
—–ORIGINAL POST—–
On November 12, 2011 from 4:00pm – 6:00pm the Baton Rouge Blender User Group will meet at the Cajun Clickers Computer Club. (MAP)
BLENDER USERS
If you’re a Blender user or are interested in learning to use Blender, the free, open-source, 3D content creation suite, then come to this meeting!
Meet other Blender Users in the Baton Rouge area and find out more about the exiting developments in this rapidly growing software!
MEETING TOPICS
At this meeting we will discuss some of the new features in 2.6 and the Google Summer of Code and other branches that include 3D audio, the new photo-realistic rendering engine Cycles, and camera tracking integration in the Tomato branch. We’ll also check out Sintel, and look at some impressive work from Project London.
Baton Rouge area Blender users are encouraged to bring their artwork and demos to show off! Feel free to send it in advance or just bring a thumb drive with some .blends and/or renders.
We will also discuss plans for another Blender introduction class series for beginners and plans for group projects.
MEMBERSHIP
If you use Blender and live in/near Baton Rouge then you’re already a member of the Baton Rouge Blender User Group!
The Cajun Clickers Computer Club offers a wonderful classroom facility for learning Blender and also offers a wide range of other computer related classes.
Blender User Groups members will be encouraged to join the Cajun Clickers Computer Club and enjoy all the classes and opportunities offered for a very reasonable price of $40/year for a whole family.
RSVP
If you plan to attend please let me know through this contact form, or reply to this post, or email me at teldredge at funkboxing dot com. Also if you can’t attend but would like to know about future events, please contact me.
PC’S FOR BLENDER USERS
The system requirements to run Blender are very modest. If you are looking for a PC to run Blender we can work with the CACRC to provide you a PC to be used as capable Blender workstation. The cost may vary depending on need and availability but I will try to arrange for a workable PC (no monitor) for around $180.00. The CACRC has monitors for sale from $60.00. If you are interested in a dual-monitor setup or something specific we can work on that too.
CACRC Blender PC Specs
OpenGL 2.0 Capable Graphics Card
PentiumD 2.8Ghz
2 Gb RAM
80 Gb HDD
Preloaded and tested with Ubuntu Linux and Blender
A class session at the Cajun Clickers.
A NOTE TO ATTENDEES OF THE 2009-2010 CLASSES
If you atteneded these classes and have not heard from me please email me. I am sorry to say I’ve lost some of your email addresses since then so I’d love to hear from you and to get you back on an email list.
Thanks for reading and I hope to see you there. In the meantime and as usual- keep Blending!
teldredge (Thomas Eldredge)
My Blender Laplacian Lightning Generator has been accepted into the Blender Contrib SVN!
That means it’s an ‘official’ add-on but is not included in the trunk.
I’ve been using and coding in Blender for nearly 5 years this is a very special moment for me. Blender means a great deal to me and this script is the least I can do to show my appreciation.
I am very proud and honored to have some of my code accepted as part of Blender. I am also very grateful for the intelligent and friendly support I’ve received from Blender coders and from the author of FSLG. I sincerely hope this add-on proves useful to the Blender community.
Thanks to the Blender community for everything. I will keep doing what I can.
Thomas
Made a little Orrey awhile back for this render (on the left side in the magnifying glass) so I decided to rig it up with drivers to animate it.
It’s just for looks really, nothing is scaled correctly, orbits are more-or-less arbitrary, I stopped at Saturn, and I only gave Earth and Jupiter moons and Jupiter’s are all wrong. So probably don’t try predicting any astronomical phenomenon with this or anything. Astrological predictions might work though.
Anybody else think those words are too similar? Astronomy, Astrology, also Cosmology and Cosmetology. Darn greek roots…
Anyway- I like clockwork mechanisms, I love space, and Blender rules, so this was pretty much inevitable.
Here’s the .blend file if you want to check it out.