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 ;)

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!

Skip Frame Interpolation Test (a.k.a. How to Only Render Half As Many Frames In Cycles)

Hey guys - just tried an experiment with a dry scene in Blender Cycles. I wanted to know if it was possible to save time by rendering at 12 frames per second, and then "create" the in-between frames later using After Effects.

Turns out, it works pretty well! Here's a quick video demonstrating the method. I know as the scene gets more complex, it probably won't work as well. But for fairly simple scenes with a slow to medium speed camera, it looks pretty solid and has a minimal amount of "streaking" (that trail-like effect you see on older consumer video cameras).

The only trick is, when you're in After Effects, make sure to use the TIMEWARP effect plugin and set the "Error Threshold" to "0" so there's no weird chunky blocks. I set it to 50% speed which then equals 24 frames per second.

New Tutorial: How To Create Demonic Ink!

Whew! This took a helluva lot longer than I expected. Codec problems, rendering issues (I think this took 12 hours to render - too long?), and the final product is far from perfect, but it's here so I'm happy ;)

Presenting my first foray into making a video tutorial for Blender (Best watched in Full HD):

As mentioned in the video, here's the free background texture you may use for any of your projects:

And finally, feel free to contact me if you'd like to take a peak at the blend file that I used in this video.

Enjoy and Happy Halloween!

Poker Chips Falling - Test

In other news, here's a slow animation I rendered a while ago featuring poker chips falling. Not very exciting, I know, but wanted to play with Blender's different Film looks and how fast Cycles renders on my new comp.

You'll also notices the physics is a bit wonky for the right two chips, who have decided to take it upon themselves to slowly edge away from the other colored chips (racist are they?):

Blender Ink Drop Simulation - High Rez

Latest test, trying out my new PC. Simulation is maxed out at 512x512. Took only about an hour to render 120 frames using Blender internal. Some post-prod in after effects (slight blur, sharpening). It helped that I rendered out 16bit png's so I had a bit of latitude when tweaking the colour.

Updated Rotating Brain Animation

Hey guys,

I realized that for some reason, of all my videos on Youtube, my brain animation turntable has been doing better than all of them based on views. About twice as many as the next closest, to be exact.

It's gotten approximately 976 views, whereas my next most popular video ("Realistic Slow Fire") has only received 455 views. It's probably just because it's in the Science & Technology category.

Therefore, in my infinite wisdom, I decided to upgrade the video. The issue? I realized it was only 10 seconds long, at 360p resolution (tiny) and at low quality. Funnily enough, I had used a social rendering service called Renderweb to render out HD frames of the brain turntable 2 years ago, but had never actually uploaded them. Why? I don't know.

So here in it's glory is the new turntable render at a whopping 45 seconds! In order to make it more interested, I also added annotations to give it some context and facts about the brain.

Flaming Sword (Huzzah!)

Also created this as a concept piece to track fire to a swinging sword (possibly belonging to an invisible swordsman. Used After Effects for the 3D wall texture and a few layers. Also did the motion blur of the fire in post.

Blood Cells Flowing

Here's a recent medical visualization (stylized) I created for a prospective client using Blender Particles and After Effects. I really wanted to create that microscopic shader feel:

A new post finally! Liquid Counter (VFX)

It's been a while, I know. Here's a new test I did with the excellent new wave modifier that comes with Blender 2.61:

Swirling Galactic Energy Vortex

I like the name for some reason. :)

Done with blender "Point Density" particles and some post effects (Glare node)

Brain Turntable Animation Promo

Was designed for a client dealing with brain optimization and personal development. I think the SSS values were too high in this render. Here's a better idea of where the shader is at now:

New chakra animation!

Done with Blender 2.5 and After Effects with Trapcode's Particular.

Chakra Energy Animation

I've always liked Eastern imagery, especially involving chakras and energy. It's cool to visualize, so I've done a symbolic interpretation of what that might look like.

Longer Vortex

This is with more complex music, and a bright light in the center. Also, the domain resolution is higher.


The Vortex from Illusionist on Vimeo.