3D Blender Tutorials

Blender Tutorial Series - Part 20 - Rigging the face

2010-12-03T21:15:00.000-08:00

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Blender Tutorial Series - Part 19 - Rigging the hands

2010-12-02T10:12:00.000-08:00

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Blender Tutorial Series - Part 18 - Rigging the body

2010-12-01T08:13:00.000-08:00

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Interview with Colin Levy

2010-11-30T18:28:00.000-08:00

Posted on 05. Oct, 2010 by Andrew Price in Articles, Interviews

Let me start by saying, what an amazing week for Blender this has been!

It’s barely been 5 days since the release of Sintel and it’s already been viewed over 1 million times on YouTube, heavily discussed on CGSociety, hit the front page of 3d world and is still being tweeted every few minutes (even by celebrities!)

So I think I speak for everyone when I say, “Well done Durian team!” You guys sure know how to get the attention of the public ;)

Last week we interviewed Ton Roosendaal, and this week I’m excited to speak with the director of Sintel, Colin Levy!

In this 57 minute audio interview Colin explains:

Why he was choosen as the directorThe biggest challenges that the team facedWhat he would do differently if given the opportunityHow he deals with criticismHis future plans and aspirations

*WARNING: This interview discusses scenes from the film! If you haven’t yet seen Sintel, watch it now.*

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Click Play to stream the audio or download the MP3 file here.

If you liked this interview you may also like the interview with Ton Roosendaal.

That concludes this week’s post! Join me next week for an indepth discussion with Campbell Barton on developing Blender and the upcoming stable release :)

View the original article here

Focused Critique – Episode 3

2010-11-30T00:51:00.000-08:00

Posted on 16. Oct, 2010 by Andrew Price in Focused Critique

Focused Critique is the segment in which I select 10 -15 artworks sent to me in the last 2 weeks, and critique it.

The aim of this segment is not to mindlessly bash the artwork, but to help the artist see areas that could be improved.

To submit your own artwork, go here.

This segment features 11 artworks, including two pieces that were so good I had nothing to critique. Watch the video to find out who :)

PLUS! For the first time ever I have included a critique of my own artwork from 4 years ago. Stay till the end to see it.

Was this critique session helpful to you? How can I improve future episodes? Let me know in the comments below.

View the original article here

Focused Critique – Episode 4

2010-11-29T14:43:00.000-08:00

Posted on 24. Oct, 2010 by Andrew Price in Focused Critique

Focused Critique is the segment in which I select artworks that readers have sent to me, and critique them. This segment doesn’t poke fun at artwork, but instead aims to help the artist see areas that could be improved.

To submit your own artwork, go here.

This episode features 9 artworks that were sent to me in the last 2 weeks. Watch the video below.

Was this critique session helpful to you?

View the original article here

How to Create a Muzzle Flash

2010-11-28T20:58:00.000-08:00

Posted on 14. Oct, 2010 by Andrew Price in Compositing, Lighting, Materials, Tutorials

When I posted the interview with Colin last week, many of you kindly informed me that it had been a while since my last tutorial. And you were right! At least 3 weeks to be exact. So rather than post another interview I’ve decided to revert back to some good ‘ol fashioned tutorial fun. Enjoy! :)

If there’s one thing hollywood loves, it’s muzzle flashes. It lets the viewer know that has gun has been fired and hell is indeed breaking loose.

In fact if you had took a shot everytime you saw one in the Matrix you’d be on the floor before the halfway mark.

One, two, three, floor

The military use flash suppressors to help the soldier remain hidden in night time situations. But where’s the fun in that?

In this 42 minute tutorial you will learn how to:

Use volumetrics to create a realistic fire materialUse displacements to quickly deform a meshRandomize animation using the noise modifierCreate glow and glare effects using the compositor

This tutorial uses Blender 2.54.

Download the starting .blender

>>Download the finished .blend<<

Based in China? Download the video on this link.

Have fun! I look forward to seeing some of your gun animations in the comments below :)

View the original article here

The Ultimate Guide to Buying a Computer for Blender

2010-11-28T07:57:00.000-08:00

Posted on 21. Sep, 2010 by Andrew Price in Articles

Ever since I started Blender Guru I’ve had countless emails from people asking me for advice on what PC they should buy. We’ve all bought PC lemons in the past, so I can see why this would be a common question.

Now before we move on, let me start by saying that your PC is only as good as your skill. If you suck at Blender and buy $4000 computer, you will still suck. The only way to improve your work is through practice, practice and oh yeah, practice.

But now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about getting one a PC specifically built for Blender…

[Click here to read this post in Persian]

Photo by fosk

Everyone has their own preferences in terms of usablity and stability, but for me the winner is Linux. In the past I’ve used blender on both Windows and Linux, and I found that Linux crashes less, handles memory better and generally runs more smoothly than a windows operating system.

However… what most people won’t tell you is that Ubuntu can be an absolute pain in the ass to set up.

If you come from a windows background (like me) then expect to be punching holes in the wall when you find out that you need to type complex commands in the terminal just to connect to a wired LAN. It really is like entering another world. Everything is done differently and tasks that would usually take 2 seconds in Windows to setup could take hours in Linux, if you don’t know what you are doing (like me). A technical savvy person may say that Linux is a piece of cake, but to me it was an absolute nightmare. Go figure.

So for that reason I actually recommend Windows 7. It’s fast, easy to use and comes with 99% less headaches than Linux.

Photo by Friedemann Wulff-Woesten

The faster your CPU, the faster your render times. This is the meat and bones of your PC and will play the greatest influence on how quickly your render will finish.

I recommend choosing a CPU with multiple cores, as this will allow blender to render more tiles simultaniously. My current CPU has 4 cores, which means blender will render 4 tiles simultaneously. This really pays off in render times.

Cores = Like having multiple CPUs and only paying for one.

Other than that there’s really no secret to choosing a CPU. Buy the fastest one that you can afford!

Photo by Heather Greene

Second on my priority list is RAM. Whilst it won’t effect your render times, RAM will set the limit on how “epic” your scene can be. Now I say the word “epic” loosely here, but really I’m talking about memory usage limits. Everytime you use a large image texture or bake a high resolution simulation you use up more RAM. When you run out or RAM, blender crashes.

Thanks for reminding me to purchase more RAM!

The more RAM you have, the more you can push your scene to it’s extremes. If you had only 2GB of RAM and created a fluid simulation, you may only be able to use a domain resolution level of 100 before blender crashed. But if you upgraded to 16GB you may be able to reach 800.

And who knows, in the future you may even reach over 9000!

If you’re a simulation junkie then I recommend splashing out and buying lots of RAM.

Photo by Fred.org

A common misconception by beginners is that you need a super duper awesome graphics card to use blender. This is false.

A good graphics card will only help you when you are navigating around the 3d viewport. It will not effect your render times! For the past 7 years I’ve used a graphics card that was at least a year older than the current leading card (I’m cheap), and my work has never suffered from it.

Unless you plan to do lots of high poly sculpting in the future, then an expensive graphics card is a waste of money.

At least as far as Blender is concerned. Crysis however...

Now when it comes to choosing a GFX card, I always recommend Nvidia. In the past many blender users (including me) have had issues with ATI cards, wherein the menu flickers or some other glitch makes itself known. So for that reason I always recommend other blender users purchase Nvidia.

But! Having said that my last laptop had an ATI card and had no issues whatsoever, so maybe those glitchy days are over? Nope! According to the comments below, the ATI issues are still very much alive. Stick with Nvidia people! :P

Side note: If you follow 3d news, you may have heard about a new, faster method for rendering that uses your GPU instead of the CPU. Unfortunately, this technology is not yet available for Blender, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s developed soon. In the meantime use an external renderer like SmallLuxGPU or Octane if you would like to take advantage of GPU rendering.

Photo by Adamcha

If you’re going to be doing lots of rendering on your PC then I’d recommend finding a PC with adaquet cooling.

My last PC suffered permanent internal damage when rendering my New York Earthquake animation, because I only used a standard PC case. As a result, it overheated and now refuses to turn on.

But hey, at least it didn't catch fire.

Standard cases are suited more for air conditioned office environments, not prolonged rendering sessions in your stuffy bedroom. Take note :)

I’d recommend choosing a gaming case as these generally have better cooling than standard cases.

Photo by Stuart Bryant

In terms of speed within blender, you aren’t going to see any noticeable difference by purchasing a faster hard drive. So let’s focus on stability instead…

The last thing you want is for your hard drive to fail, right? Well unfortunately hard drive failure is a sad fact of life so the best thing you can do is be prepared and create a backup.

And what’s the easiest way to do that you ask? Set up a RAID array.

A RAID array. It’s a system configuration that uses two physical hard drives to mirror each other, so that if one fails you always have a backup. All you need to do is purchase two identical hard drives and set it up in the BIOS settings. I highly recommend that you do this before the inevitable happens! ;)

Since so many people have asked what my specific PC specs are, I’ve created this short video revealing exactly what hardware I use. Check it!

My specs are:

OS: Windows 7 64 BitCPU: Intel i7 950 3.06GhzRAM: 12GB Kingston 2000Mhz DDR3GFX Card: Gigabyte Nvidia GTX 470 1280MBHDD: 2 x 1TB Western Digital Sata 3 (RAID 1 array)Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X58ACase: Antec ‘Nine Hundred’ 750WMonitor: 21? Benq WidescreenKeyboard: Logitech G15Mouse: Microsoft basic optical mouse

If you’re still unsure PC components to purchase, then check out the Blender Render Benchmark. This is a website dedicated to benchmarking PCs with Blender, showing you exactly what rigs give the fastest render times. In fact, I probably could have just started the post with this website and saved myself the trouble of writing it. Oh well :P

Here’s the site again: Blender Render Benchmark – Bookmark it.

Thanks for reading! :) If you enjoyed this post you might also enjoy 5 Worthwhile Purchases for 3d Artists.

Tags: guide, hardware

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Blender Tutorial Series - Part 17 - Eyebrows, lighting

2010-11-28T01:09:00.000-08:00

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Interview with Campbell Barton

2010-11-27T19:03:00.000-08:00

Posted on 20. Oct, 2010 by Andrew Price in Articles, Interviews

This week I thought it would be interesting to hear from one of the quiet achievers of the community: Campbell Barton.

Campbell is a fulltime Blender developer who is working hard to make Blender more stable and easier to use. Most recently he worked on Sintel as the Technical Director, fixing bugs and adding features that the team needed.

He currently lives in Victoria, Australia, working 9-5 to meet the demands of this very demanding community!

In this interview I ask him some of the big questions that the community has been echoing of late. Such as:

When will the final stable version of 2.5 be released?Is BMesh still being developed?How long will you be sticking with Blender?What was the hardest part about working on Sintel?How was the Sintel renderfarm created?How did you first learn Python?Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Click Play to stream the audio or download the MP3 file here.

Campbell has opened my eyes to a lot of issues that I didn’t know about and I hope it had the same effect on you. Join me in thanking Campbell for his hard work! :)

In other news, on Tuesday next week I will be flying to Amsterdam where I will be attending the Blender conference and updating Blender Guru with up to date happenings and hopefully recording a few presentations. Stay tuned ;)

View the original article here

The Big Issues

2010-11-27T03:15:00.000-08:00

Posted on 09. Nov, 2010 by Andrew Price in Articles

With the upcoming release of Blender 2.5, the industry is now watching our every move. But how are we portraying ourselves to the outside world? In this presentation, I highlight some of the problems that are holding us back, and possible solutions on how to fix them.

In this presentation you will discover:

The results from ‘The Great Blender Survey’The #1 frustration with blender as voted by the communityThe average age of the blender communityWhy Blender.org is unappealing to new visitorsWhy new users are unable to learn blenderHow we can make donating more “fun”

Recorded live at the 2010 Blender Conference in Amsterdam.

Not a fan of long videos? No problem! I’ve summarized the main points from the presentation and listed them below. All slides appear exactly as they are in the real presentation.

In this presentation I will be discussing the Big Issues – What we are doing wrong. The point of this talk is to raise some issues that we as a community are doing poorly and to provide possible solutions. The point is talk is not to simply point out flaws, but to bring them to the attention of the community so that we can act on them.

There are four main issues that I will discuss in this presentation.

If you’ve ever been to the Blender forums before you will probably recognize this situation: Lots of people with lots of opinions.

Everyone seems to have the answer for what needs improving and not surprisingly we never seem to get anywhere. The reason for this is that there is no central voice or opinion poll to determine what the most important task is.

Businesses usually track this sort of data by distributing an opinion poll. However, for Blender this had never been done before. So in August 2010, I created “The Great Blender Survey”.

Here’s a screenshot of the online survey:

The survey had one goal: To find out who is using Blender and why.

I think that if you can answer this question, then everything else will fall into place. You can determine what people are doing with blender and then develop the software to their needs.

I wanted this survey to be as accurate as possible so I exposed it to multiple parts of the community, including Blender Guru, Email subscribers, facebook, twitter and BlenderArtists.org.

I won’t claim that the survey is 100% accurate because it’s not, but it’s the closest I could do using the resources and connections I had available.

Over the course of 3 months I received 3,434 submissions.

Thank you to everyone who participated!

I have never released these results to anyone… until now. Ready to finally see them? :D

Let’s begin…

This question was to find out if the cliché that “all 3d artists are male” was true or not.

As you can see, it’s pretty close. Guys, if you’re using blender to find a girlfriend… it’s an uphill battle ;)

This important question tells us what age most people in the community are, and finally speaks on the “maturity” issue.

As you can see, the largest age demographic for blender users are 18-24 year olds. These are the people that have just finished school and are in college or a job.

This question not only tells us which year attracted the most blender users, but also how experienced we are at using the software.

From this graph you can clearly see a surge in new users over the past 12 months. This is a startling statistic as most of Blender’s news, tutorials and training products are geared for experienced users.

This question is aimed at identifying what level of skill users are at in order to cater training and tutorials to their needs.

If I could only ask one question in the survey it would be this. This question will tell us exactly why people are using blender and greatly assists us in developing the software for their needs.

The biggest demographic are clearly hobbyists, but it’s comforting to see that a good 47% of us are using Blender for commercial reasons. And I for one never expected to see so many game artists!

This is a two part question. The first is to find out how many people are outsourcing the render process to other programs.

34% of the blender community have never used an external render engine!

This question helps identify which external renderers people are using, so that we can create intergrated exporters that meet the demands of the community.

Yafaray and LuxRenderer are the two most used render engines are amongst the blender community.

Blender users love comparing blender to commercial alternatives, but how many have actually used commercial alternatives?

Surprisingly a good 74% of the community have! This is good news because it means they decided to stick with Blender anyway. We must be doing something right :)

Finding out which applications people have switched from helps us understand which UI layouts and keyboard shortcuts they are used to.

As you can see, 3ds Max is by far the most familiar app with Blender users.

This question will tell us exactly what advertising methods are working the best.

Not surprisingly the biggest reason most of us tried Blender is because it’s free. What shocked me though was finding that 23% of us were more impressed by seeing what Blender is capable of. This is another reason why artists should post their work on public 3d forums like CGSociety.org instead of just blender specific forums.

With the ongoing development of 2.5, many users have voiced their frustration over the stability of Blender. How likely are we to jump ship to another piece of software?

The good news is that almost ¾ of the community is here to stay! Only 1% are dedicated to switching. >>Bonus! Find out why are they are quitting<<

This all important question will tell us exactly what feature of blender needs the most attention.

As you can see, the internal render engine is heads and shoulders above everything else. This stresses just how important it is to keep the render engine competitive to the industry.

Focusing on the bigger picture, I asked people to decide on the single biggest problem with blender as a whole.

Lack of documentation has been voiced countless times in the past but only now is it glaringly obvious.

This tells us exactly how many people have successfully used Blender for a professional service.

As you can see, only 23% of us have ever succeeded making money with Blender.

From these results we are able to work who exactly is the “typical blender user”.

Identifying who our users are and what they want is the first step in improving Blender. Hopefully this survey will help developers, studios, trainers and other professionals cater their services to the needs of the blender community.

>>Download the survey results as a PDF and Excel file<<

Marketing is all about how we portray ourselves to the outside world and get new users on board. For Blender the first impression that most people have is from visiting Blender.org. What the visitor sees when they arrive on this site, greatly effects whether or not they download the software.

According to the book ‘Don’t make me think’, all visitors are at a website because they have a question and they want it answered.

In the case of new software, it’s three questions:

If you can answer these three questions on the homepage then the website is successful at giving the visitors what they came for.

Before we discuss blender though, let’s first take a look at our competitor’s websites.

An image slideshow at the top proudly shows what 3ds max can do. Underneath that is a brief description telling exactly what 3ds Max is. On the right is a Buy it now button that shows the visitor the next logical step if they like what they see. All three questions can be answered just by glancing at the homepage. Therefore, 3ds Max passes the web design test.

A similar layout: Gallery Slideshow at the top, short description underneath and a buy it now button on the side. Octane Renderer also passes the web design test.

Gallery at the top, description underneath and buy button underneath. Are you noticing a trend? Lightwave passes the test.

Gallery slideshow at the top, description underneatch, buy it now button on the side. Maya also passes the test.

What’s wrong with this picture?

The biggest glaring problem is that the entire middle section is completely irrelevant to new users.

In fact there really isn’t anything on the blender homepage that is relevant to new users.

Blender.org reads more like a hangout spot for experienced users then a doorway for new users. Which is a shame because the whole purpose of a software homepage is to convert a curious visitors into a user. Currently we are failing that.

I’m not a web designer, but I’ve attempted my own mockup redesign of the site, using artwork from the current blender.org galley:

Artwork by Mathias Pedersen, Clement Granjon, Filip Sadlon and Radiance

The whole purpose of this design to answer the three important questions that new visitors have:

The most crucial element of this design is the large image gallery at the top. Users don’t want to be told why a software is a good, they want to be shown. Currently the community is posting amazing pieces of artwork on BlenderArtist.org. But unfortunately, once they slide off the frontpage they disappear forever. What a waste! Why not showcase this art directly on the homepage for the world to see?

Also featured in this site redesign are a short description, two easily identifiable download buttons and links to the gallery and demo reel. All these elements are appealing to new visitors.

In the last 12 months we have seen two new websites emerge that are dedicated to delivering ongoing tutorials: Blender Cookie and Blender Guru.

So you may be wondering… what’s the issue? Surely we have this training thing covered, right?Wrong!

There are two problems. The first one being that training is incredibly hard to find. Experienced users know about Blender Cookie and Blender Guru, but new users don’t.

An obvious solution would be to update the Blender.org tutorial page with new tutorials, but unfortunately I already did that and it hasn’t solved the problem.

Why? Because the tutorial page is almost impossible to find! A new user does not know to click ‘Education & Help’ and then read a long block to text to find the link for ‘Tutorials’.

Without easily accessible training new users will get frustrated with Blender and quit. We need to reference the tutorial page in as many places as possible so that new users can locate it with ease.

One place to start would be the Blender splash screen. This is the first thing new users see when opening Blender and it’s the first place they get stuck. By having a clear link right on the splash that says ‘Tutorials’ they will know exactly where to go.

The second obvious place would be to link to the tutorial page directly on blender.org.

Believe it or not but this also persuades new users to download the software. Why? Countless marketing research has proven that if you can provide free training to a customer they are more likely to buy the product. This is one of the reasons that Adobe products ship with a training disc :)

The second problem is that we have forgotten about new users!

Blender Guru makes advanced tutorials and Blender Cookie teaches techniques and tutorials at a beginner level. But there no tutorials for complete beginners. How is a new user supposed to wrap their head around the concept of 3d without a proper walkthrough?

I’ve decided to volunteer to solve this one. Next year I will be creating a completely free beginner training series, very similar to Video Copilot’s beginner series. Stay tuned!

Receiving donations is crucial to the success of Blender. The more money the foundation has, the more fulltime developers Ton can hire. Unfortunately, the donation system is very lackluster:

“Well it looks like a pretty standard donation page to me. What’s the problem?”

Good question. Whilst donating is fairly simple concept, there are many things that we can do improve the experience and make it more attractive to masses:

In detail:

Only accepts one off payments – This is like shooting yourself in the foot. Dedicated blender users have asked for a way to donate on a regular basis, but currently there is no option to do this.No Recognition – Obviously when people donate money they are doing out of the goodness of their heart and aren’t expecting anything in return. But human beings are still human beings and we crave a pat on the back. If we know that nobody will say “Thank you” for the effort, then we aren’t likely to follow through with the donation.No clue as to where the money goes – If you donated $100 today, where would the money go? A new feature development? Bug fixes? Pay the rent on the blender institute building? If the donator does not have a 100% clear understanding of where their money is going, they won’t donate. It’s as simple as that.

For examples of how to do donations the right way, you need to look no further than World Vision:

Now obviously Blender is not a charity but we are still asking for donations so we should not stray to far from the pros.

World Vision donations are accepted on a monthly basis so as to ensure that the support contines all throughout the year.Novelty plaques are given to the donator so they can “show off” their donation to friends, family and whoever visits their house.Detailed descriptions show exactly how each dollar of your money is spent.

I’ve put together a redesign of the donation system based off these ideas:

In this redesign, people wanting to donate are given three simple monthly donation plans: Bronze, Silver or Gold (an option to donate as a once off is still available)

Detailed descriptions show exactly where each dollar is spent.

The donation plans are visualized as a trophy to make it feel like you are purchasing a product as opposed to throwing money in the air.
For recognition this could be intergrated into the blenderartists.org forums:

A small trophy icon is all it takes to thank the donator for their contribution. Everytime the user makes a post, they can feel good knowing that other users are now recognizing their contribution. This small gesture will also entice other users to contribute because when they click the icon it can route them to the donations page.

You may be wondering, “Yeah but how many people would actually want to donate on a monthly basis?”. Well for that you need to look no further than Farsthary’s blog. He asked his readers “How much would you donate monthly to support the Blender Foundation?”

And believe it not, but 40% said they would happily donate $10 or more on a monthly basis. Now obviously that’s just a poll and not everyone who voted will actually follow through with it, but it shows that the blender community is at least supportive of the idea.

So that concludes my presentation! Thank you for reading :)

What did you think of these proposed ideas? Do you think they would help improve the progress of Blender? I am very interested in hearing your feedback. Please write a comment below!

If you like this presentation you may also like my other live presentation, “How to Raise your Profile as an Artist”

View the original article here

How to Raise Your Profile as an Artist

2010-11-26T11:55:00.000-08:00

Posted on 09. Nov, 2010 by Andrew Price in Tutorials

G’day all! It’s been a long time without a post, but I’ve got a very good reason! I’ve been at the 2010 Blender Conference. Meeting people, getting ideas and giving talks! Today I’ve uploaded the first of my presentations, about ‘How to Raise your Profile as an Artist’. I hope you enjoy it!

Are you looking to find work as an artist but don’t know where to start? You’re not alone.

Every year thousands of students graduate from college hoping to find a job in the 3d industry but land flat on their face.

Why? The simple fact is, most artists suck at marketing. I don’t say that to be mean, I say that because I used to be there before slowly digging my way out.

In this presentation I’ll share with you the techniques I learned through extensive marketing classes, but geared specifically for artists.

In this presentation you will discover:

Why most artists are unemployedThe two big myths that artists followA 6 step guide to fast track your careerSimple steps you can start doing today to increase your exposure

This presentation was recorded live at the 2010 Blender Conference in Amsterdam.

Not a fan of long videos? I’ve summarized this presentation into text format for those who prefer to scan-read. All slides are exactly as they appear in the actual presentation.

Let me start with a story.

A little over 5 years ago I graduated from high school with the goal of one day becoming my own boss and working from home as a freelancer. I envisioned myself waking up in the morning, jumping on the computer and jamming away at what I loved. To me it would be easy! All I needed to do was a make decent portfolio and the job offers would come flooding in. Or so I thought…

I started up my first company in 2006 called Silver Screen Fx. I somehow got the idea that the short film industry was booming and that I could make easy cash doing VFX. Sadly not only is the industry extremely broke, but I also sucked at VFX. That business closed within a year.

I realized I needed to expand my services to include all things 3d and also improve my portfolio. Once I did this I started up my second company called Ironbark Studios, which was a fancy name for ‘lone freelancing artist’. And whilst my work had improved I was still geting no work. And by no work I mean, absolutely NONE. That business also closed down.

It was around that time that I came across this quote:

When I read this quote, alarm bells went off. I finally realised that I had spent many years improving my portfolio, but none on marketing! I simply assumed that being a ‘good artist’ would be enough to get employed.

I realised that if I wanted to make it in this industry then I needed to get educated in the art of marketing.

So I did an internet marketing course by Yaro Starack, David Risley and Dale Beaumont. Although these courses cost me about $6,000 in total, they paid for themselves quickly. I started BlenderGuru.com and am now finally living my dream of waking up each morning and working from home on my computer.

This presentation will be a consolidated, cutdown version of everything that I learned in those course but geared specifically for you, the artist.

So without further ado, let me begin by debunking a myth:

Many artists believe that simply being ‘good enough’ is all it takes. “Once you have a decent portfolio the work will come to you.” It’s sounds good in theory but unfortunately it just isn’t true.

Let me give you an example… instead of 3d artist, let’s say you were a theme park designer and you built the worlds best rollercoaster!

You spent years designing it to make sure it had all the right loops, corkscrews and g-forces. It was hands down the best rollercoaster ever made!

But foolishly you built it in the middle of a forest where nobody could see it:

If you sat by the entrance on open day and waited for people to show up, do you think they would?

No! Because nobody knows it exists! It’s only when you get off your arse, head down to the nearest town and hand out fliers that people will actually see it, acknowledge it and eventually ride it.

The same is true for your 3d artwork. Let’s say you created this stunning piece (Jeff Miller):

But foolishly you left it in your hard drive and didn’t upload it anywhere.

Do you think that if you sat by the phone and waited, that anyone is going to call you up with a job offer? No! Because you haven’t shown it to anyone!

It’s only when you distribute your artwork across the internet that you will people will actually see it and you can start reaping the benefits of all your hard work.

The next myth is somewhat confronting as it’s something we’re all taught throughout school:

“If you didn’t get the job it means someone else was better than you.”

In the traditional job market this is true: When an employer receives 50 applicantions for a job, they choose the best person for the job and give it to them. Unfortunately though, this doesn’t always happen in the online and freelancing market.

To give you an example… 4 months ago I finally decided to upgrade the Blender Guru logo to something more professional. I searched deviantart, logopond, flickr and various design blogs for professional logo designers.

Out of everyone, there was one person that showed up time and time again:

Michael Spitz. It didn’t seem to matter where I looked, his artwork was everywhere:

As a result, he got the job! I paid him $400 and he created the new Blender Guru logo:

Now was he the best person for the job? Probably not. Now I don’t say that because I don’t like the result (I actually do), but it would be foolish of me to think that I had hired the best person in the world that could do the job. I know that without a doubt there is at least 20-50 other logo designers that could have done the same job if not better and for the same money. But where are they? When I was looking to hire a logo designer I found Michael, and as a result he got the job.

Now let me briefly pause for a moment to give you a big fat disclaimer:

Obviously the biggest factor that will impact your success as an artist is your talent. In no way am I suggesting that you should promote your work if the quality is not already up to scratch. I wrote this presentation for people who already have the skill, but aren’t receiving the results they deserve. So with that in my let’s get started.

I’ve taken everything that I learnt at internet marketing courses and re-written it into a cutdown 6-Step master plan to fast track your career as an artist:

If you’re serious about becoming a freelancer I recommed that you get yourself a blog or website. Why? The biggest reason is professionality. Nowadays employers expect you to have one, so if you don’t then you will come across as unprofessional.

Having a website allows you much more customization than a regular portfolio site like CarbonMade and Coroflot does. Because although these sites are easy to create they usually will not let you add videos, tutorials or do anything too fancy. But if you have a blog, the sky is the limit.

If you’re looking to start a blog today, the first thing you need to do is purchase some hosting. I personally use dreamhost.com but there are many other hosters out there on the net that can do the job, just pick one. There are some free services out there like Blogger but I strongly recommend you don’t use them. They won’t allow a custom domain name and they can even delete your site if you do something they don’t like.

Once you have hosting you’ll need to install WordPress which is an awesome Content Management System. It makes updating and maintaining a website very easy. Best of all, it’s open source :) There are a wealth of tutorials out there for setting up your blog from there so you shouldn’t have any problem.

A great example of someone that is doing this well is Marek Denko. Known for his amazing works of art on CGSociety, Marek Denko runs a popular blog where he adds videos, works in progress, clay renders and other behind the scenes work. As well as connecting with fans, the blog allows employers to find him easily and contact him for work. His site is: marekdenko.net

Creating a short film can work wonders for your online popularity, for one simple reason: Not many people do it.

Short films give you credibility as not many people create them. There’s a lot of work that goes into them, so finishing one right to completion is a big achievement.

The second big reason to make a short film is that the internet loves them. Demo reels aren’t likely to be seen by anyone outside of the 3d industry, but create a 3 minute short film about a kiwi trying to fly, and be seen by 23 million people. Short films are the viral marketing of the 3d world.

A brilliant example is Alex Roman who famously made The Third and The Seventh. Not only did it make waves in the 3d industry but also to the general public who forwarded it to their friends. As of today it has 2.4 million views. This film is so popular that Alex will forever be remembered as the guy that made The Third and The Seventh.

You may be wondering what making a tutorial has to do with getting employed. And at first it can seem like two different ends of the spectrum, but let me break it down for you… A website by itself is pointless. Nobody revists a website unless it provides something of value to the visitor. By making a tutorial you are giving people a reason to return to your site. More repeat visitors equals a following. The bigger your following the more chance you have of being seen by a studio.

You may think that most visitors on a tutorial site are beginners, making it a pointless exercise. But you would be surprised at the number of businesses that approach you for work after watching one of your tutorials. The reason for this is that when studios get a job from a client they will sometimes search the net for answers. If they find your tutorial and can see that you already able to create what they need then it’s sometimes just easier for them to pay you instead.

Tutorials will also make you appear like an expert, show that you’re passionate about 3d and lets the employer see how you work. It’s an all round win-win.

The now famous Andrew Kramer of Video Copilot, started making aftereffects tutorials about 5 years ago. Through producing consistently high quality tutorials he now has an enormous following. In an interview he explained that his tutorials attracted the attention of JJ Abrams, landing him a job doing the title effects for closing of Star Trek.

When the internet first started a lot of people were understandably nervous about giving out their real identity online. Security has improved a lot since then and we know that we can use our real name without being stabbed in the middle of the night, but surprisingly most people are still using nicknames and alias’. For an artist this is possibly the worst thing you could do.

When you are trying to build up a reputation for your name, using an alias only backpeddles the process. People who know you by your nickname then have to learn your real name and associate the two when seeing it in the future. And vica versa. It’s confusing, pointless and completely unnecessary.

Another way to let employers warm to you is to use your real photo in your avatar. When you somebodies photo, you feel like you know them and in turn makes them more approachable.

In summary, the sooner you drop the alias and childish avatars the sooner people will warm to you and be willing to approach you for work.

Nick Campbell runs greyscalegorilla.com creating tutorials for the Cinema 4D crowd. Nick’s crazy hair, nerdy glasses and laughable antics have become an icon for his site, proving why being yourself can be a big postive.

In Step 1 I talked about why having a blog is important, but it’s also equally important to be part of other online communities.

Here are just some of the communities that I recommed artists join.

The biggest reason for doing this is to expose yourself to multiple audiences. If someone out there is looking to hire a lighting artist they may decide to only look on DeviantArt. If you’re not apart of DeviantArt then you will miss out on the job for the simple fact that the employer couldn’t find you!

I know it can be a pain to upload your works to all those sites, but if you’re serious about getting hired you need to be active in as many online communities as possible.

A great example of an artist that is killing it on social networks is Freddie Wong. He runs one of the highest subscribed to Youtube channels of all time, but it didn’t happen by accident. His videos are full of pop ups, asking viewers to subscribe, follow him on twitter, find him on facebook etc. He is reachable on a variety of platforms and he makes sure people know it! As a result he has a massive following.

Let me assure you: It’s easier than you think. I’m not talking about book writing, I’m talking about getting in a magazine or newspaper.

The biggest reason for getting your work in a printed form is that it gives you heaps of credibility. The next time you’re in a job interview, and the interviewer asks you about your achievements you can say “I was recently in 3d World mag”, then watch as their eyebrows perk up. When you say that the interviewer realizes that you aren’t just another online artist trying to promote their work, but you have been trusted by a magazine editor to be in printed form.

The best advice I can give is to try it! The worst case scenario is your work doesn’t get picked and you’re exactly where you started. You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

A great example is Blender’s own Andy Goralczyk! His work and tutorials have been published in countless 3d World editions. This gives him layers of credibility and is now known by those in the 3d industry as one of the go-to blender guys.

I hope you found this presentation to be somewhat useful. For those interested I will upload my second presentation: “The Big Issues” tomorrow. Stay tuned!

If you have a personal experiences or would like to add something to this list please leave a comment below! I’m very interested in hearing your feedback :)

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Two Simple But Helpful Changes in Blender 2.5

2010-11-25T18:51:00.000-08:00

Here are two helpful changes the Blender developers have made to Blender 2.5.

We can now remove presets for the Render Dimensions:

And, we can remove Cloth presets:

Also, the "File Exists" popup (you know the one that was easy to miss?) is no longer a part of the workflow. When saving a new file, if the typed filename matches an existing file in the same folder the filename field is tinted red. The tooltip for the field informs you of the meaning of the red tinting. If you save under these conditions, the existing file is simply overwritten.

Since I'm keeping a close watch for these types of changes, I'll be sure to do a quick post to let you know when interesting things develop.

Bye!

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Blender Tutorial Series - Part 16 - Particle Hair

2010-11-25T04:48:00.000-08:00

Not enough?

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DVD update: Bearsly Junior Learns a Lesson

2010-11-25T01:10:00.000-08:00

Here's another tutorial project in development where the character is a simple hand puppet named Bearsly, Junior. Junior is a young, restless cub that learns the important lesson of "walk, don't run", maybe. The modeling and texturing of the character and scene have been kept simple to help keep the length of the tutorial under control. But, the things learned can be easily transferred to more complex projects. The Cloth simulator will provide some extra puppet-like movements.

Here's the set for the animation

Here's the first blocking stage of the animation (no real timing yet, just keys every 10 frames)

Blocking stage 2 (keys are splined, still no timing work, f-curve effects added)

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Wow, Check out the Sintel Movie Poster!

2010-11-24T09:55:00.000-08:00

Well, it kind of speaks for itself.

See the full-size version and more info on the production of the poster at the Durian Open Movie Project blog.

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

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News: Watch the 2010 Blender Conference via Live Streaming

2010-11-23T20:17:00.000-08:00

Check out the 2010 Blender Conference via live streaming!

Hopefully, there will be videos made available for the earlier presentations and the presentations given in other rooms.

View the original article here

Blender Tutorial Series - Part 15 - Eyeball

2010-11-23T13:18:00.000-08:00

Not enough?

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Focused Critique – Episode 2

2010-11-23T00:47:00.000-08:00

Posted on 24. Sep, 2010 by Andrew Price in Focused Critique

It’s been two weeks since the last Focused Critique and I’ve received a whopping 75 entries into this weeks episode!

It took me a while but I narrowed it down to 13 entries and here they are:

Want to submit your own? Go here!

Was this critique session helpful? What things can I do differently in the future to make your learning easier?

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Blender Tutorial Series - Part 14 - Painting the Texture

2010-11-22T21:22:00.000-08:00

Not enough?

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News: Blender 2.55 Beta is available for download!

2010-11-22T14:14:00.000-08:00

Blender 2.55 Beta is about to be officially released from the Blender Foundation! Release notes will be available at the time of the official release.

You can download it, here...

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

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News: Status of the BlenderNewbies Blender 2.5 Training DVD's

2010-11-21T19:31:00.000-08:00

I expect the DVD (actually it's 2 DVD's) to be completed by the end of the month (October). It's been a long and bumpy road, but I can finally see light at the end of the tunnel.

The interesting thing is that there will be far more tutorials on the DVD's than there are on the blogsite (and that took me four years to accumulate!).

If you're interested in purchasing the DVD's, be sure to take advantage of the pre-order discount.

Thanks for your patience!

Kernon

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

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Blender Tutorial Series - Part 13 - UV Mapping

2010-11-21T12:45:00.000-08:00

Not enough?

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Blender 2.55 Tip: Hiding the Console Window

2010-11-20T23:53:00.000-08:00

There's a very simple, but nice new feature in Blender 2.55 that allows you to hide the Console window that appears when Blender first loads (for Windows users). Yay! It still loads, but at least you can toggle it off, now.

The Console Window is a great tool for debugging Blender and also seeing any error messages that get spit out from different functions. But, if you don't need it, it tends to get in the way.

Here's how to control it:

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

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Blender 2.5 Tip: How to Setup Keymaps to Change Transform Manipulator Modes

2010-11-20T10:09:00.000-08:00

This time-saving tip will allow you to setup hotkeys to change the mode of the Transform Manipulator (translate, rotate, scale).

Here's how:

This is the Transform Manipulator when enabled.

These are the button controls for enabling the manipulator and changing its mode. They're located on the Header Bar of the 3D View window.

Before setting up new hotkeys, be sure to start a New scene to load your Blender startup file. This is important because if you want to save these changes as new default settings, you'll want to save them to your startup file.

Now, load the User Preferences dialog from the File menu.

Go to the Input tab.

Locate and open the 3D View, 3D View (Global) section.

Click the Edit button for the 3D View section.

Note that the button's caption changes to Restore. You can use this to restore the factory default keymaps.

Now, scroll down to the bottom of this section until you see the Add New button. Click it to add a new keymap panel.

Open the panel to access its interface.

In the field highlighted, type view3d.enable_manipulator. This is the name of the operator that will get called when the assigned input (keystroke, mouse click, etc.) is performed.

In order to avoid conflicts with existing hotkeys, I decided to create a new modifier key (common modifier keys are Ctrl, Shift, Alt, etc.). Blender can create a modifier key from any regular key that you specify. So, let's setup the new modifier key by clicking the blank button at the right side of the interface.

After clicking the button, it's caption reads "Press a key".

Simply press a key to have it assigned as the modifier key for this particular keymap. I pressed the ESC-key, but you can assign this to a key of your choice.

Now, do the same with the button shown below. This is where you assign the main part of the keystroke.

I chose to assign this to the Number 1 key. At this point, the full keystroke is ESC-1.

Now we just need to assign the desired mode of the manipulator. I've selected the Translate mode to be assigned to the ESC-1 keystroke. That's it! You can immediately test this by going to the 3d view. The new keymap will work in both the Object and Edit modes.
Note that this won't enable the manipulator if it's disabled, so make sure it's already enabled (Ctrl-Spacebar).

Now do the same for the remaining two modes. Start by pressing the Add New button located just below the keymap panel just completed.

Repeat the process for the Rotate and Scale modes.

Welcome to new efficiency bliss! If you like your new setup, be sure to save it to your startup blend file by clicking the Save As Default button at the bottom of the Preferences dialog (or you can press Ctrl-U).

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