Author: Apollos | Date: 5.3.2008 | Category:
News

While going through my access logs I noticed a link from the CarveWright user forums. A user there had posted a tutorial showing how to use Blender for CarveWright patterns. If you don’t know what CarveWright is, it happens to be a bench-top woodcarving machine that automatically mills images into wood based on a 2D height map…
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Author: Apollos | Date: 28.2.2008 | Category:
General
I’ve been toying with Blender’s particle system and this is what I came up with. It makes use of dupliverts and xsort, and a wind effector.
UPDATE: I added another version of the effect…
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Author: Apollos | Date: 9.2.2008 | Category:
Tutorials

Time running forward and reverse with the Time Ipo
There was a question on the Blender Artists forum today regarding how the Time Ipo works. I answered briefly, but figured it would be good to go just a little more in-depth in a post. Here is a brief tutorial on the Time Ipo and how to use it. Keep in mind that the applications of the Time Ipo probably go far beyond what’s presented here, but if you’re unsure about it, this should serve as a good introduction…
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The fifth part of the Blender Basics series is finally here. Part 5 attempts to educate in the fundamentals of the materials panel. Now this is a huge tutorial, timing out at 1 hour and 45 minutes. Hopefully you’ll find it worthy of its length…
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Author: Apollos | Date: 11.1.2008 | Category:
Tutorials
If you’ve played around with Shape keys, you know that they are basically vertex key frames. They’re very handy for animating organic models in ways that are more difficult to accomplish with bones. They are especially useful for aspects of facial animation, or for augmenting weighted deformations, which are difficult to achieve perfection with. What may not be immediately obvious is their use with Curves…
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Author: Apollos | Date: 3.1.2008 | Category:
Tutorials

Probably the best way to make a spring mesh is to use the Screw tool – but what if you want to compress and expand the spring for animation? It’s possible to rig a dynamic spring with an armature, and then animate it with Ipo curves or the Action editor.
There was a question posted on the Blender Underground Forums about how to make a spring in Blender. If you don’t need a dynamic spring, just use the Screw tool. If you need more than a static mesh spring, i.e., something that appears to function, the answer isn’t so simple…
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Author: Apollos | Date: 25.12.2007 | Category:
General
Author: Apollos | Date: 19.12.2007 | Category:
General

The above model was created by Blender Underground Agent Coyabbit, and was impressive enough that I wanted to share it with the blog. We’ve been following its progress for some time on the forums. Coyabbit has been a BU regular for some time and he frequently shares his work, but this one I wanted to feature because its coolness rating is off the charts. I asked some questions about it and he was kind enough to answer…
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Author: Apollos | Date: 4.12.2007 | Category:
General
I wanted to post an update on the upcoming Materials tutorial (Blender Basics Part 5). This has been a long time in coming, for a number of reasons. Firstly, I’ve been busy with miscellany, from work to family events. I know this is no excuse but…
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Author: Apollos | Date: 21.11.2007 | Category:
Products

Chapter seven bounces right into covering your first skeletal animation with the Action Editor: making Captain Blender jump. Building this animation involves developing key poses, then filling in the “tweens.” Key poses, or “key” frames, is a concept that carries over from traditional animation, when the lead animator would draw the primary action poses, and another animator would fill in the “in betweens.” This is how the term keyframes gets its name…
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