Category Archives: Blender 3D

The great think about having conversations is that new ideas come out that help to transform projects. One such conversation happened this week, while Lenny Niblock and I were preparing digital videos for this year’s student film festival in Newry. The subject we were discussing was the front cover for ‘Hidden’. Lenny, a lecturing colleague, has previously attended launches of my first novel, ‘The Fall’. The new novel is science-fiction and the first cover version, Lenny felt, conveyed more of a nostalgic world from the past with the sepia tone image.

Over a cup of tea, we browsed the Internet for images of George Orwell’s ’1984′, which was a strong influence for my novel. We came across two novel front covers and the DVD cover for the 1985 feature film. The original seemed two dated and the more recent one came across as ‘too high art’. The DVD cover had strong blue tones and portrayed the cold perspective of the story.

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Another suggestion, Lenny made, was that I should emphasis my name and put it at the top of the cover as this is a way successful authors are promoted. Having discussed that numbers and text were a theme in the novel, he also thought a good idea would be to have text streaming down the side of the cover, also shown in the ’1984′ DVD cover, white words on the blue skin of big brother’s face. So, taking Lenny’s ideas on board I went home to spend the evening working out a few of his suggestions based on ‘eyes’, ‘imposing powers’ and the concept of ‘clones’ as portrayed in the story.

To start the process I began by sketching out a few idea using a pencil. The first was an ideas for a silhouette of two figures, to be used as a reflection on an eye. This concept was further developed into a glass pod used to cultivate human clones.

Something I wanted to explore in Blender 3D was how to produce tubing, so I added this element to my design. Though I am more familiar with Carrara 7 Pro, a 3D application I have been using since it was introduced about a decade ago, I have been learning to use Blender 3D to teach student on a range of courses. The advantage is that the software is Open Source and the students can download the software freely. Carrara 8 Pro, just released, costs around $459.99 so can still be a bit too expense for many students. However, most students would prefer to use AutoDesk’s Maya, SoftImage or 3D Studio Max, each costing over $3990. This is not necessarily a practical option, though there are educational versions of these packages they embed a watermark on everything rendered. With Blender 3D the software can still be used for professional purposes to generate an income, and then, when you can afford it, if you still prefer to use the more expensive software that’s your choice.

So, to start this project I used Carrara 7 Pro to open a figure of Victoria 4.2 to set the pose for my cover’s character. Once the figure was set, I then exported the model as a .3ds file. This seems to be an ideal file format for transferring figures between Carrara and Blender 3D and retain the texturemaps.

At this point in time Blender 3D is morphing from 2.49 to 2.50. The former is more stable, allowing a greater range of file formats to be imported. It has been a little confusing working between the two incarnations so for this project I have stuck firmly with 2.49.

Inside Blender 3D I created the glass pod and adjusted the figure to fit inside. A second pod was added to create thickness to the glass. I also attempted to use the fluid system to fill the pod but things didn’t quite work. Instead I used lights to create the illusion. After this, a base structure was built using the pod model to cut out a Boolean shape. A metal texturemap was used on the base.

From here I constructed a room for the scene and then used a Bezier curve path and a Bezier circle to ‘loft’ out the thickness of a tube model. The set of tubes were then given different colours and attached to the base and wall. A fluorescent tube light was created with an emitter surface to generate the glow and a shadowless light was used to produce the appearances of the model light’s illumination.

There are still a few problems but it is a work in progress. For instance, there is a shadow on the ceiling indicating that light is coming from below the pod base instead of it being set on a floor. Also I need to add the reflection silhouette of the two shadow characters, to add the sense of threat. The floor and walls need a better texturemap. There’s a lot more research to be done but the one thing I began to realise as I worked away, was that we are often made to feel that everything is to be hurried instead of enjoyed. Well, on this project, I’m doing things the other way round. I’m taking my time and enjoying learning the process. This research will be used to help develop the animation for ‘Monty’s Quest’ and I’ll begin to produce a few tutorials on how this project and others were created, in more detail.

In the meantime, please come back and see what progress is being made.
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