UFO Sighting: Blender & Painters Studio Exercise
Hooray, long-awaited vacation starts today, and I’m looking at two weeks of super-fun time. To kick off, I experimented with compositing a rendered object onto a real-life scene. UFO sighting in my own neighbourhood!
Using Blender to create vector drawing quality images for use in infographics was one of my recent goals. Here’s the initial result. I’ve used toon shaders, and edge drawing (post processing tab under render settings) to achieve a drawing-like quality. Key is the lighting. For the key light (upper left) I’ve left the specular component on. However, the main fill light (directly behind the camera) has specular turned off to give flat-looking objects. Idea is to keep the overal contrast low and avoid ‘realistic’ highlights. A test with orthographic camera was also successful, and I’ll be posting more images during the next few days.
Modeling Citröen 2CV in Blender (Intro)
When I was a kid, Dyanes and 2CVs were all over the place, along with cardboard Trabants, Sharks (Citröen DS), and, of course, Yugo Korals, that Yugoslavia has produced after all. But then the country became poor, and it was ages before most people could afford a contemporary vehicle. The classics like 2CV remain in my memory as the vehicles, still. As my very first car modelling exercise in Blender, I chose Citröen 2CV.
image credit: Wikimedia Commons, uploaded by Pinkdylan, CC-BY-3.0
I was sitting at one of the many bus stops in Belgrade, trying to think of a new project for my 3D graphic practice. I decided to think of a way to improve the bus stops, and fix many of its flaws, as well as try and inspire new ideas.
The result was a bus top that features a separate non-smoker and smoker areas, yellow strip for people with visual impairment, back-lit display with the bus stop’s location, increased number of seating, and better resistance to elements. On top of that, this 2 by 7 meters structure features more space for advertisers as well, with one 1.3 by 1.6 meter panel on the outside, and one 3 by 1 meter panel inside the waiting area.
Separation of smokers from non-smokers on Belgrade’s bus stop is an issue that is far from being addressed properly. While a ban on smoking in public spaces is being planned in future, as a smoker, I implemented a somewhat less extreme approach by introducing a smoking area within the bus stop, separated by a glass pane from the non-smoking part. The ash box used by smokers is placed on the farther end of the smoking area as well. The two parts are also clearly marked with back-lit signs so as to encourage proper usage.
