Working with Blender..

[Gandolf50]

Used Blender for a long time but never really used it for anything but modeling before, spent the last few weeks teaching myself how to get some decent renders out of it using imports from other projects. Here is one of the first...



I am doing this as I have re-written some old programs for paper modeling and need them to work well with the textures as well as flattening and converting to SVG files.. so far it is working about 80% ..still need to tweek the code to get to 100%!

 

[bigpetr]

Great render

 

[Revell-Fan]

WOW! This is an awesome result. I desperately failed with Blender. That was before they changed their look. However, I have never gotten back to it.

 

[zathros]

Wow, it seems that you can work with anything anyone throws with you. I bet you used a toothpick, string and a ruler for your first works. At two years old though, for most those could be dangerous.

 

[Gandolf50]

Wow, it seems that you can work with anything anyone throws with you. I bet you used a toothpick, string and a ruler for your first works. At two years old though, for most those could be dangerous.

Actually you are almost right...I did use string and pencil for circles, but was lucky I had an old pen nib for ink drawing, all my early stuff was in pen and ink, learned, not to screw up as you don't get much of a second chance with ink.

WOW! This is an awesome result. I desperately failed with Blender. That was before they changed their look. However, I have never gotten back to it.

I sort of shied away from it myself as it started to use the insert and drop the plugin render interface that 3ds max has , which I really do not like. Just never got the hang of it.. but now using it in both program as well as a lot of programming in Grasshopper in Rhino which has the same interface, I am starting to get a better feel with it...that and watching (capturing) many tutorials on how to use them!

 

[Revell-Fan]

Maybe that was my problem. I wanted to achieve fast results with a minimum of work, so I never really got into the more sophisticated stuff. SketchUp delivered very fast results whereas Blender always wanted to crash and freeze up the PC whenever I tried to render anything. I DID succeed once, however. This is the only Blender render I have managed to produce in the last ten years:



I still have no idea how I did it, every try to reproduce the result failed.

 

[zathros]

Wow, that's really nice. My pockets are too empty to get any Rhino plug ins, especially since a lot of them are more than Rhino!!

 

[Rhaven Blaack]

I too have Blender but I have not learned how to use it yet. I need to sit down and watch a few tutorials and see what kind of damage that I can. :Computer:

 

[zathros]

Not that many years ago, ships were designed with strip and very long thing strips, an inch wide or so, and very flexible, to "loft" hull lines. Half models, then scale models were built, then the final ship. Some of these ships changed the world as we knew it. With a compass string and ruler, you can loft virtually any hull you have the line "Lofting" study of. It's amazing actually. This goes for virtually anything else. Learning that method when I was in my single digits, too poor to buy models, and things that did not exist, started me on model making, and allowed me to understand C.A.D. when it was new, and even Top Secret" in the first defense plants I worked in.

 

[Gandolf50]

Wow, that's really nice. My pockets are too empty to get any Rhino plug ins, especially since a lot of them are more than Rhino!!

Blender is FREEWARE... https://www.blender.org/download/
There are also TONS of FREE plugins for Rhino out there for a myriad of things from rendering to adding tabs and such to paper models all free! Grasshopper is a Plugin that allows you to Plug-and-Program various routines as a bridge to Rhino ... Warning...Large Learning Curve! but there are also hundreds of companies that are developing plugins for Grasshopper that cost the same or more than Rhino ? Wish I were one of them!!

 

[zathros]

I have used free Rhino plug-Ins, and you are right, there are a lot. I have found though I can usually get through with what I am making without them. I think my lack of artistic ability is what screws me up with Textures. So anything I make looks like it's new, fresh off the assembly line.

I don't think my mind can curve like that any more. ;

 

[Gandolf50]

I have used free Rhino plug-Ins, and you are right, there are a lot. I have found though I can usually get through with what I am making without them. I think my lack of artistic ability is what screws me up with Textures. So anything I make looks like it's new, fresh off the assembly line.

I don't think my mind can curve like that any more. ;

It is a struggle... I have to FORCE myself to learn this new fancy-stuff, but then again it is basically the same as Blender Cycles Render and 3d studio Max Render, interfaces so it's not to bad ( though I still hate it! ). That and I have always been fascinated by Geometry so leaning that leans towards that takes away the sting somewhat! Things that DO for me also helps!

Penrose Diagram on a Sphere , Buildable... and with a few numeric inputs!

 

[zathros]

Definition of a Penrose diagram
A Penrose diagram is a kind of spacetime diagram arranged to make clear the complete causal structure of any given geometry. They are an indispensable map for navigating inside a black hole. Roger Penrose, who invented this kind of diagram in the early 1950s, himself calls them conformal diagrams.


In a Penrose diagram:

• Light rays move at 45o from the upward vertical;
• Points at infinity (at infinite distance, or in the infinite past or future) are contained in the diagram.

I have read a few books by Roger Penrose. The way he describes light going through slights, and "How the light knows to do that" had me banging my head against the wall for quite some time. Those books, along with Relativity by Einstein, and A Brief History of Time", by Stephen Hawkings, and Mandlebrot's book on fractals. They make for some good reading, and can allow one to see the world a little clearer.

Penrose converted to Christianity later in life, from what I read, stating the order was too convincing to be random (conceptual phrase). I am not sure of what his epiphany way, but this happens to a lot of physicists, or they end up believing in t least a causal reason for existence. Hawkings has of late gone a different direction, he seems on a search of discovery, a bit all over the place, which with his age and condition would be prudent. I've been doing the same thing for most of my life. Don't have any answers I could share though, just stuff I know to be true, but couldn't prove.

p.s. Really cool by the way!!

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