Cosmos VFX Clips - FREE Giveaway Video!

And as promised, here's the video, explaining about the free download what you get, and what you can do with the clips! Keep in mind, there are 11 image sequences, each 144 frames long, so the whole file is just over 1 GB in filesize.

I didn't mention how the nodes are composited together in blender, but hopefully the example .blend files shows that. However, if it's still not clear, feel free to ask me in a comment for more clarification!

Happy New Year!

New Section: FREE STUFF! - Final Day of 2014 Giveaway!

I know that no one can resist the allure of free stuff, so I thought I'd start a section for anyone to come by and grab some of these tasty offerings.

I'm starting off by giving everyone a chance to download the render passes from my composite entitled "Cosmos VFX". Explainer video coming soon!

In the meantime, check out the original video here.

Midas Touch - Turning Objects Into Gold

Here's something I created entirely in After Effects. I used some CC filters and colour grading mostly. I know it's not Blender, but there really are some great things in After Effects.

Cosmos VFX: A Blender Odyssey (Recreating a Space Shot)

Hey gang,

I've just spent the last few days working on tweaking this visual effects shot I created. Initially inspired by an fxguidetv episode that covered the making of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey", I eventually wanted to create my own rendition that depicts the surface of the sun.

Most of the elements were created in blender. I used Cycles to render the spaceship interior, and then rendered out a noise texture mapped to a plane for the sunspots and warping texture. I also rendered out black and white versions of the solar flares as smoke simulations.

In Nuke, I took all the elements, tweaked their colors, added film grain, lens effects and some subtle camera shake and voila! Here's the result:

Let me know what you think!

The Spiritual Pilgrim - 3D Render

Today, I wanted to try something cool. I took a 16th century woodcut illustration of an alchemist, and used the black and white image as a displacement map on a subdivided plane.

Here's the original image:

And here's the new displaced image in 3D using Cycles' gold texture and an HDRI reflection map.

Ruby Talisman Final!

Alright. Here's the last version, ready for sale! I modified the pattern on the surface of the metal to make it more appealing to customers. Also tweaked the geometry and applied the modifiers. Finally, I ran it through the compositor for some small glare additions. The modelling is really simple. Most of the time was spent tweaking the shaders and creating the normal maps in photoshop.

I've included a wireframe below the final image:

Ruby Talisman version 2 (Now With Chain)

I probably should have used the chain add-on that comes with blender, but ah well. Used a curve deform modifier instead.

Ruby Talisman First Render

This is the latest project I'm working on. Creating a red shamanic talisman that people can hopefully use. Also testing out materials and normal mapping in cycles.

And here's the normal map that I'm using to render the metal decorations:

I'm Back! (With Looping Snake-Biting-Its-Tail Image)

Well, it's been a while since I've posted and a lot of changes have occurred! I've been busy with schoolwork, so haven't had a chance to properly test some concepts for my new idea in Blender until now.

Anyways, this is a rendering of the "ouroboros" the mythical symbol of the snake biting its tale. I took it from a google image search, used Image Trace in Illustrator to turn it into a path, then exported to blender as a curve. Added some materials in Cycles, animated the looping eye animation and some slight turbulent displace in After Effects to give it a slow, ethereal quality in its movement.

Finally took it into Photoshop, exported as a .GIF and voila! Hopefully more of these to come (I can just stare at this animation forever!)

Here's a link to the original source image on Photobucket.

Poor Suzanne!

She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time! Thought I'd polish up my animation skills and tell a brief but important story. One of blender's other infamous objects makes an appearance ;)

Psychedelic Flags - Now in .GIF form!

The Great Psychedelic Experiment

Hey guys,

The title might seem pretty bold, but that was kind of the feeling I'm going for. I want to create a series of trippy visualizations, showing how the effects of acid and other drugs might be perceived. For years, movies and technology have tried to capture the experience that many drug users have talked about, but with marginal success.

I think the closest that come to mind are "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas", and "Enter The Void."

So my entry into the fray is this first attempt. Granted, it's probably a little bit cheesy and retro, but that's what I was going for. It's unmistakably "trippy." Hopefully these videos will improve and get more realistic and subjective, depending on your point of view. In the meantime, enjoy:

"Save-the-date" Wedding Invitation

Hey guys - I know I haven't posted in a while. I've been busy doing other things. This is a video template I created last November. The idea is that people can have their personal information submitted, and they receive their very own wedding invitation which they can email to all of their friends.

It's created within Blender, and the music has been added in After Effects. Took me a long time to get the timing worked out, and then sync the music to it afterwards.

Enjoy!

Playing With Sketchfab - Global Illumination With Cornell Room

Hey everyone. Happy new year!

Just thought I'd bring in the new year by tinkering with Sketchfab, the cool 3D model hosting site without plugins.

This is my first foray. I'm not, obviously, a modeller nor a gamer, so this is not to show off any skills other than my competency in uploading this ;)

I basically wanted to recreate the global illumination with cycles, but make it real time. To do this, I had to bake a light map for the environment. Unfortunately, there's no easy way in blender to bake a lightmap in Cycles (feature request!), so I basically had to cheat, unwrap the objects and back using orthagonal projection. After a long process, I finally got all the lightmaps working and in Sketchfab.

Take a look!

GI Cornell Room Test from Blender Illusionist on Sketchfab.

Blender User Pyroevil's Blog (Creator of Molecular Script)

Hey - I just discovered user Pyroevil's awesome blog and amazing new particle script, Molecular. It basically creates finely generated particles with true hard collisions!

Awesome stuff:

http://pyroevil.com/