New blender sculpting is coming soon.

mwm5053

Thanks all

michaliszissiou

This is a good one, latest mac build. (more advanced on cycles renderer section than the official)
http://graphicall.org/856
You won't find sculpting - dynamic topology though.
It's experimental build. So, try this one
http://graphicall.org/979
You may have as many builds installed as you like. They even share same preferences.

Learning curve in blender may take long, as Pilou explained. More than a year. But think otherwise. Blender is a massive app, a sculpting tool, an editor, an animator, a renderer (two or more renderers actually), a compositor, a video editor, camera tracking. Almost everything. In professional quality. Take one at a time. I would suggest for sketchup users to install the free TIGs obj exporter and start importing and learning Cycles render engine. How to navigate, set up scenes. Then, it's about time LOL, learn UV unwrapping. You gonna love it after all we have seen in SU. Don't forget to ask for help. And login in blenderartists.org (blender community forum)

andybot

michalis, this is amazing! Really wish I had more time to tinker, but paying work comes first, and family, so the only thing left is sleep I am getting my head around the nodes though, it's not as complicated as it seems

Bryan K

I first experimented with Blender years ago. Loved it! But yes, the learning curve is very steep. Due to time problems (as usual) I was very happy to find SketchUp and become productive must faster than Blender.

But I hope to eventually go back to Blender because it IS so versatile. It can even make games!

pilou

@unknownuser said:

I know nothing about blender maybe someone can tell me the difference in freestyle ,and others on this website

For the prog itself ?
It's the most amazing polygon subdivision modeler prog at this day!
He can makes quasi all from a cube to a Movie and games and like Sketchup a plugin or a new function born all the days!

And it's free!

But there is a little "but"
The learning curve is not in minutes like Sketchup, or hours or weeks or months ; Minimun a year if you fall in love with it!

Of course it's free and that is also one reason of its success like Sketchup

pbacot

Great sculpting. I thought I asked before but curious why do you use the computer for this? You obviously can do this by hand. I would think it it more direct by hand in clay or wax. Or is it?

pilou

Maybe the CTRL + is not the same and more light (not heavy) than marble
And less problem for the health-enhancing!
And some times won if you want make some serial editions, you have yet the file!

And no need some tools

michaliszissiou

@unknownuser said:

I thought I asked before but curious why do you use the computer for this? You obviously can do this by hand. I would think it it more direct by hand in clay or wax. Or is it?

Not that simple. I'm a lazy artist.

for real sculpting, you need a studio, far away from neighbors, especially if you work at night and on stones.
I'm a 2d artist, in 3d sculpting, I found a nice tool for studying drawing.
Yeah the tools, funny, because such tools exist in digital form too. ha ha

Anyway, computers is just another medium. Some people asked me once, why watercolors? You can do better in oil painting. (and ask for better prices actually )

@ Bryan K
It's about blender sculpting, which is much different than modeling. It's not fair to compare it with SU, artisan for instance, we're talking about huge meshes, retopology, UVs and baking workaround.
After all these last years, blender became a much better app than it was. I don't see any reason to be more productive in SU. After all, blender 2.6x has pushpull and inset tool (F) as well. LOL (it also supports ngons which I, personally, find it a little useless).
We also have two fine artists on this forum (french, je ne l'oublie pas, pilou ), who use both SU and blender.

pilou

Alas no I don't use very much Blender, I would like but this prog don't loves me!
I know how it works but every time I open it, I have all forgotten!

Rich O Brien

@Pilou

Blender and wine don't blend

pilou

@michaliszissiou
It's exactly my case : so I put the stone on the bottom's mountain and use more funny progs!
Maybe a day on some years some friendly UI will be appear

@ Rich
But with this particular Wine Yes!

michaliszissiou

"My" blender involvement isn't so far different from what you describe.
After spending a peaceful year with SU I started learning zbrush and blender.
A love story
No, two love stories.
We should say Eros stories.
(since Eros was the child of Night (Nyx)
Like his mother he still blossoms at nigh, he also doesn't care about money.
From his fisherman father he also learned how to use nets.
Sorry, unable to recollect correctly, (from Plato's symposium)

Now, think about the language barrier.
Eros and love are two quite different words-meanings in greek language. Ancient or modern.
How can I translate them? Love and love?
Don't even dare to translate Eros as sex or something. It's quite irrelevant.

michaliszissiou

@Pilou
This image of sisyphos... describes blender better than a thousand words. No jokes, it's so true.
Maybe I'll try it on the next blender splash-screen contest. What an idea!

Bryan K

michaliszissiou, you have caused me look at blender again. I see they now have better tutorials than ever before. (yes, it's been a few years)

Dang it! Not enough time in the day!

michaliszissiou

@ Bryan K
Always download latest version of blender 2.6x from graphicall.org. The trunk builds, except if you like to experiment with sculptring dyntopo branch.
And a small addon to all users. My favorite UI skin. A little modified from an existing preset. Just copy it to application support/blender/2.63/scripts/presets/interface themes
Open blender prefs and under Themes tab enable it (upper left pulldown menu). Save prefs if you lie it.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/24090090/michalis.xml

Another fast one doodle. If byzantines where sculpting... how it could look like?

stefanq

Michalis, I admire your talent and dedication, but I keep ask myself why you still have that avatar and not one of your amazing "doodles" .
And by the way...if that is a doodle, we all should grow corn.
Regards,
Stefan

Rich O Brien

Mick's avatar was done in Artisan. His favourite sculpting tool

michaliszissiou

Thanks for the kind comments.
I call them doodles because this is what they are.
I don't have any particular concept in mind when sitting and sculpting.
I may do some boolean operations first, then sculpt on it, then translate it to something else.
As for the avatar, I like it. It's a bit funny. Made by artisan and rendered as a SU raw export.
I like all the sculpting tools-apps I tested so far. All of them. It's a bit irrelevant to what I prefer to work with.

michaliszissiou

Testing Oli's hdris. A blender/cycles render. 30 secs. 300 passes, 1600x1200 px (before cropping)
I used a very wide lens for testing possible distortions. Great work from Oli!
This produced quite out of scale effect, but it's a test.
There's a trick to use jpgs as hdri lighting. I made a second image 32 bit, lot of contrast. This is is invisible to cycles camera and only lights the scene. Another node for the original jpg background.

pilou

Auguste Rodin ?