Showing category "Tips" (Show all posts)

Let's talk Voice Over

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Saturday, March 30, 2019, In : Tips

Hey all!

I recently got to give my web presence a bit of a face lift - like yay! haha.

I also recently made some voice over demos. I have to say, I absolutely love doing voice over work. To make a demo, you need material that doesn't belong to someone else and the LORD generously gave me a swift motivation to make some demos and over a period of two days, I made 7 demos. 7! I was so tired afterward, hahaha.

You can check them out in this playlist!

So getting back to material you can use. When you...

Removing packed textures

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, April 17, 2017, In : Tips

Hey all!

A friend from Italy asked me if I could make a small video for him that would explain and show how to remove packed textures. I wanted to refer him to a YouTube video, because I had a serious garden day and other stuff, but oh snap, there was nothing! I mean nothing! Even in searching Google you find relatively little information.

I think this may be because it is sometimes something only newer users struggle with, but it seems to be enough of an issue that it warrants a quick tip, bec...
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Make Human Shoe Flex

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, November 11, 2015, In : Tips

Hey all!!

Today I get to share a quick tip for all those Make Human users, who combine it with Blender - Shoe flex! What can I possibly mean? I think the following thumbnail will make it clear:

(Actual video embedded below)

This video comes from GOD dealing with me about finding a solution for this, since a few months ago. Before that, I just kinda resigned to the assumption that I would not be able to fix it without fancy steps that I was nowhere near qualified to deal with. When HE gave me thi...

Toon shading in Cycles

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, September 18, 2015, In : Tips

Hey all!

To save a little time, I posted the video at the bottom, so if you want to just see the how to, scroll. BUT, if you want to how it became, then please read :).

Two days ago, GOD challenged me to figure out how to do proper toon shading in Cycles. When I say proper, I'm talking about flat and sharp shading and no fuzzy edges, except on 'painted' elements. After getting the challenge, I went about trying to do it and I just could not get a hard line. Smoothness was on 0 and I just couldn...
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Quick Tip: Animation Speed Adjustment

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, August 24, 2015, In : Tips

Hey all!

Here it is, under 3 mins!

(Character made using Make Human)

Know JESUS yet?

http://www.crossallegiance.org/knowJesus.html

Have a great one!!!

Thank YOU!!!!!!

Compositing only render in Blender

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, June 1, 2015, In : Tips

Hey all!

What in the world does that even mean, compositing only render? Simply this, you don't want Blender to do anything with the scene, you just want to use it's compositing on a video or an image sequence. GOD laid it on my heart to figure this one out and HE showed me the way to do it as well! HE's so cool!

It's very simple!
Here are the steps:
> Make sure Blender is set to the resolution and frame rate of what you want to composite (before importing anything! Blender does not adjust this f...
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Anime hair tips

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, May 28, 2015, In : Tips

Hey all!

Today is sort of like a supplement to the tutorial, if you will. I want to expand a bit on doing the hair, specifically relating to that light band:

(Click for full-res)

As you can see, we have quite varied results. Depending on what you are going for, you would choose the selected approach. For me, personally, from the results I've seen from anime artists and real life, you have to use contrasting directions for your light band. Meaning, if the hair goes vertical, the band goes horizon...

Monitor adjustment

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, April 24, 2015, In : Tips

Hey all!

Today is a little something different than the usual, ain't all posts, hahaha. We are talking about setting up your monitor correctly, so you nr1, don't see something that the rest of us can't and nr2 that you get a consistent result, no matter what you are working on! Remember, this is not the absolute standard, as everyone sits in different lighting and so, you have to adjust your screen to reflect the right results for your environment, however, certain absolutes do apply when sett...
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Quick tip - Cloth sims

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Friday, March 27, 2015, In : Tips

Hey all!

I'm super pleased with what GOD showed me this morning and I believe HE wants me to share it with you all and I'm sure you are gonna luv it!

When we use cloth sims, we usually have something that we want to have settle before the actual animation starts. It can be a piece of cloth landing on a table. It can be something that has to be draped, it can even be something like curtains. This usually means something in the range of 80 - 150 frames of wasted animation space, and dare I say it...
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Some cel shading tips

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, February 18, 2015, In : Tips

Hey all!

I really need to get back to posting more things here, haha. In the meantime though, I've got some tips for you all on cel shading in Blender Render.

First, we need an image to talk about:

This is a classic example of cel shading that does not get an outline that is pitch black. The only outline here is to the overall cloud-line (only visible super close-up).

Now, cel shading here is something that is very sensitive and needed a ramp option. So tip nr 1 is:
> Do not be afraid of using th...

Sunbeams Node

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, October 27, 2014, In : Tips

Hey all!

I'm sure that most of you know about the sunbeams node, but I wonder how many of you have actually given this little feature a shot and have seen it's results?

Today, I would really like to inform you about this little new feature that actually proves to be a lot more helpful than I thought.

Sunbeams vs Directional Blur
For starters, the Directional Blur node is not designed to leave the scope of the canvas. If you wanted to have your light-source out of the frame, you just ran into a...
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Simple anime hair physics

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, October 16, 2014, In : Tips

Hey all!

Today's video is quite an interesting one. Now, in the past, I've not been really strong in the field of rigging and GOD has brought me a long way with tutorials, but, today was just the cherry on the cake when I got to make this test after HIS inspiration:

Without rotation

With rotation; exactly the same rig

A while back, I knew this was possible, but I did not know how this person whose video I saw, implemented it. Not a clue. I thought it would be some sort of bone constraint and whil...
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Cast approx

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, September 9, 2014, In : Tips

Hey all!

Today I get to share something a little different. Cast approximately in Blender Render. Yes, this seems like this far off feature in the materials settings, and quite frankly, it is, but, it does make a difference:

(none, haha)

Now, ironically, I know this looks like a waste of time, but you and I both know there are features we turn off and on by random, because we think it has this or that effect. While working on an image yesterday, I turned it on and it seemed to give me much bette...

Standing still at compositing

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Thursday, July 3, 2014, In : Tips

Hey all!

Now, a lot of you have, like me, opened the Node editor in Blender, seen the massive grey area and closed it just as quickly, but this, terrifying new thing, should in no way intimidate you more or less than any other feature of Blender.

Compositing is the focused use of this post, and so I won't go into textures, however, I do hope to show you the importance of learning this feature and becoming truly a master of it.

Let's start by naming some things that you can add to your image node...
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Caustics and aberration

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Monday, June 2, 2014, In : Tips

Hey there everyone!

Today I was lead to make two posts, one here and one on the main site, both about a work previously done, but being specific on some valuable tips. In this case, we'll be taking an image from quite a while back, the Blender logo in an underwater environment:

(Blender name and logo TM of the Blender Foundation, see policy on logo use here)

Now, there are a few things to note:
1 - This image was done in Blender Render, which means we have no caustics
2 - No chromatic aberration w...

Fixing reflections

Posted by Marius Oberholster on Wednesday, March 19, 2014, In : Tips

Hey all!!

Shiny materials can be your biggest asset in a scene as well as your biggest foe. Just take a look at this scene:

In this very simple subway scene, we notice that the shiny nature of the tiles really enhance the space and in some instances make it feel a bit more open, but also colder. It's that cold factor we need to watch out for!

Now, take a look at this scene: