Throughout both years of my HND, I've been able to learn and experiment with different modes in Blender. In one of my first projects, I needed to create basic 3D models which would be exported to After Effects as part of an animated Infographic piece. I hadn't previously used Blender for longer than a 10 minute 'mess around' practice so it was a pretty steep learning curve!
My two 3D elements were a Coca-Cola can and a Moon, I was able to storyboard my infographic sequence and understand in advance how detailed the models needed to be, I was also aware of the style of the piece and the models had to fit in with the rest of my work (which was hand-drawn and animated).
Within the default workspace, there is a panel of tools to the left, a menu/properties panel on the right and above this a list of assets in the workspace viewer. I found it helpful when starting a new 3D model to have a reference image nearby, this is easily imported to the scene and scaled up.
I attempted to follow a few different YouTube tutorials which used a keymap to show hotkeys used for different tools.
Once I'd managed to model the basic shape I needed to create the indentations of the top view, this meant that when adding a UV wrap later on, it would sit nicely and give the illusion of a detailed lid.
To UV wrap I decided to edit a generic Coca-Cola label in Photoshop to include my own 'Hidden Mickey' (the infographic was about consumption in Disney World Florida). I highlighted the area on my model that needed wrapping and imported my PSD file to lay over the top. Due to my lack of expertise it took a little while to get the desired end result but overall I was happy with it. I then proceeded to try and light the model correctly for rendering. You'll be able to see my first render result is actually quite dark and gloomy!
Next I needed to animate the model to travel down an imaginary pipe at a specific rate of speed, this mode in Blender was really simple to get into but I am still learning a lot about efficient keyframing and how to get a good render.
I positioned the virtual camera and set up lighting for my shot before starting keyframing; it was important to make sure I set the background to transparent otherwise my PNG sequence would have a black square behind it (this is under the Film tab in the properties panel). The finished render ended up lost in the void (tmp storage) so I learnt to set the output location correctly for the next result. With the finished PNG sequence I was able to open After Effects and create an MP4/MOV export to be used as part of the larger animation.
Next up was the moon, I had already learnt a lot from my first attempt so this model was a little more straight-forward to create.
This is the basic first render of my moon model. I was careful to improve my lighting for this model and create a more dramatic end result that showed off the craters. I was able to download a texture map from Nasa's website to add to my model, I applied this through the Node area of Blender's texture paint/shading tab. I then added a basic spinning animation and rendered out the result. I learnt that using Cycles render as opposed to the basic Eevee setting gave me a more detailed result which I preferred.
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