Digital Cross Hatching

I have finally gotten around to creating some custom cross hatching brushes for GIMP. I am quite happy with how they have turned out. The process is quite simple. Using a technical pen I covered a sheet of paper with various types of cross hatching and scribbles. Then the paper was scanned as a grayscale image. Editing the image started by using select by colour to convert the paper to transparent. To create a new brush select an area of cross hatch copy it; paste as a new image; move the selection area to select the next section of hatching; copy and paste as a new layer; repeat as needed. Save the brush with the .gih extension, a dialogue will show up allowing you to set the brush spacing and how each image repeats.

Materials for my scene.

I have added more details to the scene. The objects now have basic materials added to them. Of course they will require more tweaking as time goes by. The next stage is going to be UV unwrapping the objects so that texture images can be applied. UV unwrapping is the process of applying the 3d coordinates of an object on to a 2d plane. This allows an image which only has 2 dimensions to be wrapped around a 3d object. Other details need to be added to flesh out the image and create a realistic looking scene.

New 3d image.

I have started a new scene in Blender. Here is a rough draft I started. I plan to create a workspace based on my previous post about an ideal creative space. My is to create a photo realistic image with the textured details such as a can of "Creative Juices" sitting on the desk and a framed copy of an Artistic License.

This scene will also allow me to practice my texturing and provide a test scene to use for playing/experimenting with lighting and rendering.

Blender Boids Demo.

I have been experimenting(playing) with Blender's boid particles. Boids are particles that have a low level intelligence or rule following behavior. The best known example is the armies in Lord of the Rings movie were boids. A soldier model could be given a rule such as charge the castle or a flock of birds could fly through a scene. It is a powerful feature but is not well documented or used. So of course I had the urge to explore it. No keyframes were used to create animations, they are completely boid particle effects.

Some of the uses that I want to explore are creating realistic looking traffic that reacts to the environment, creating realistic pedestrians, and using RGB textures to control boid movement.

I am back. I have been enjoying the last of the summer and also learning to use the Blender 3d modelling software. There are so many good video tutorials on Blender that learing the software is relatively easy. I have managed to get up to level of confidence where I can produce a reasonable model and render it. Now the challenge of practice, practice and practice begins. So the focus of this blog may shift in that direction.

This is a render of a 3d model of a wall fountain that I created. At first glance it is photo-realistic, but it still could use some improvements. I am pleased with the result however.

One of the nice things about open-source software is the level of support available in various forumns. Model files are freely shared and improved on. The level of ingenuity and creativity displayed in the way Blender is used is truly impressive.

Robots and more.

I have been neglecting my digital art lately due to the purchase of an 89 Bronco that has turned into yet another project (in a good way). Anyway in order to get back in the swing of things here is my latest entry to the Worth 1000 photoshop contest. The site is a great way to force yourself to create an image within 48 hours for a specific theme. It also provides good feedback to new users and can push you out of your comfort zone into new techniques that you normally wouldn't try. Also the inspiration provided by seeing just how others interpret the same idea is invaluable.

Oh what a tangled web.

To create this semi-realistic spider web I used Inkscape. First I created a background layer consisting of a radial gradient from green to black and a few blurred green elipses to create the effect of some out of focus greenery. The next layer was the main spiderweb. I started by using the Bezier draw tool to spell out the text. This was made twice as thick as the rest for emphasis. Then the rest of the web was drawn. All the paths had Add Nodes and Jitter Nodes applied. The raindrops were created by following this screencast at screencasters.heathenx.org. The raindrops were added only to the text portion of the web. Finally the web opacity was reduced to 50 percent.