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Seabug videos

Posted by oscarbaechler on March 7, 2014
Posted in: blender, HDR. 1 Comment

I’ve been running Seabug for about five years now, and we rarely have a Seabug go by with out some demo effect. Sometimes it’s files not working or computer failures, but most repeatedly it’s people requesting recordings, and I can’t get my act together in the 20 minutes before Seabug starts.

No longer! Longtime Seabugger John Wickliffe has been recording them, and this time we transferred the vids soundly. These are from the February seabug, but we should have a pipeline in process now so that future ones are easily handed off and uploaded.

Enjoy!

(PS: If you’re in one of these videos and want a shout-out to your site, or need NDA stuff blocked, let me know.)

Weekly HDR: Seabug!

Posted by oscarbaechler on February 22, 2014
Posted in: HDR. Leave a comment

This was shot during last Seabug, February 22nd. Which reminds me: next Seabug is March 1st! Last month we kerploded with a bunch of experts having a billion projects made over 2 months of wintry cabin fever. This month we should have a chance to aid beginners daunted by Blender, so bring your n00b questions one and all!

 

baechler-hdr-seabug-feb2014-preview

 

BTW, that guy off to the left with his hands in the air is Blender sensei Nathan Vegdahl. Go check his stuff out, he’s a beast!

Belated Weekly HDR

Posted by oscarbaechler on February 10, 2014
Posted in: HDR. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

I’m a week and change behind on my 1/week environment maps. So here’s three! Next Saturday I should be back on schedule.

These were shot along the Fremont Canal under the Aurora bridge, and the weather was insane. A giant cloud of mist came up and bloomed the whole sun, and I don’t know if the light probe truly captured the experience. Look how engulfed the water is in this pic, and this was my lowest exposure photo! The rest were the lil silver ball, plus pure white mist.

Image

This pic also highlights the weird physics-bending nature of HDR. The tripod is about 6 inches behind the light probe, and yet the spot directly under the tripod is about 20% up from the bottom of the gazing ball. This should give you a sense of how the reflection bends light to show what’s behind it.

I experimented with using fewer photos to generate the HDR. What’s better, more info per pixel, or less blurry pixels? Especially the shots on the end of the pier, with the water moving up and down, I erred against blurriness.

Old Crap, part 2

Posted by oscarbaechler on January 28, 2014
Posted in: blender. 1 Comment

As I mentioned in Old Crap, part 1, a blender user creates all kinds of edge projects, experiments, and goodies for clients-who-never-were, and then they just sit around gathering dust. Some are garbage, but some are really cool! I’m trying to dig through the closet, find all those files and give ’em some daylight in the land of Creative Commons.

So here’s a bug monster. When dynamic sculpting came out, I started a lil project to learn it. Much further down the rabbit hole, I realized the practice file served no point, but had lots of hours invested in it. I bequeath it to you now, do what you will with it.

bug

 

As a side note, Seabug is this Saturday! Come learn some 3D skillz and have fun and stuff.

Weekly HDR: The pier at Anthony’s

Posted by oscarbaechler on January 26, 2014
Posted in: HDR. Leave a comment

Grab it here!

baechler-hdr-anthonys01-jan2013
Environment maps shot via light probe have some problems you don’t see with full-on panoramas. The distortion around the probe’s rim will pull away from some detail, culminating in the blind spot behind the probe. This means you have to make hard decisions about what gets distorted. If several things are important, how do you put them in a heirarchy?

I usually try to make the angle from me to the probe to the sun 90 degrees. The pier at Anthony’s is one example where I make an exception. Since half this landscape is a view of the water, you’d end up using this in 3D scenes that also are at a water’s edge. So wouldn’t it stink to jam all those watery pixels into the rim distortion? But shooting parallel to the repeating boards of the pier also appealed as a detail to avoid distorting. I shot a little of everything.

Not that I’m trashing probes. Don’t forget, if you’re shooting a full-on panorama, you’re way more likely to have some jogger and his dog ruin your scene, or have the clouds and light shift over the time it takes to shoot. And who wants to slave over 2 gigs of CR2 files, just to make a single EXR that crashes Blender anyway?