playing with add-ons

I was reading about some of the Add-Ons in Blender-Art magazine and thought I'd give them a try.

what's incredible to me is how simple they all are.

fun too.

Cloud generator (from torus, monkey and zyzzy text):
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sappling (with a generated cloud):
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Ivy Generator (played with this once before it was bundled with blender...much easier now!):
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Fracture:

Wow! I really like that Ivy.

A couple of weeks ago I finished a tutorial from Blender Guru's Nature Academy. He had us using an external program for the ivy generation. Was good but I was never happy with the stems, too many right angles, looks fake
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Not sure if tha upload has worked, never tried putting a picture on a forum before. Sorry if it's gone wrong!

The stems on yours look excellent. I presume it's the Add Curve: Ivy Gen plug in you used? Very nice mate!

Both of your renderings are looking nice.

Strangebloke, how long did it take to complete that project? The results came out pretty good. The vines do look a bit angled; is there a way to control that, or is it mostly automatic?

Z: How long did it take you to set up the cloud and fracture settings? I haven't played with any new features since the bump-map upgrade in 2.57.

I can't really claim the credit I was just following a tutorial Take a look at the video here and you'll see that scene in the opening sequence [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

You can't control the shape of the stems in the program I used, but once it's imported back into Blender it bocomes a 3 part mesh. Adult leaves, juvenile leaves and the stems. I think you should be able to edit the mesh and smooth out the unatural looking parts. I didn't because I wanted to try the Blender Ivy generator sometime and compare the results. Haven't tried it yet but definitely will soon after seeing the screenshot Z has posted.

How long? About three days I think. It would have been much quicker but I was off work with a badly sprained ankle and couldn't sit comfortably at the PC for more than half an hour at a time. No laptop so had to keep stopping resting and going back when I could.

I had played with the old ivy generator a couple of years ago, maybe the same thing you used, where you exported your mesh as an obj. file, grew the vines, then imported the vines back into blender...i even used the same materials from my old blend file.

@strangebloke...that is an awesome render, but i agree, the stems are kinda funky looking.

@bunny....for the cloud settings, honestly, about 30 seconds. you've got to turn these add-ons all on in the user settings screen, then once its on, add a mesh, for example the torus, then select it, got to cloud generator and press "generate cloud" and that's it. mind-blowingly easy. seems like maybe the cloud has to be moved around and rotated a bit as it defaults to "flat", but its really that simple. I'm guessing for realistic clouds i'd use metaballs, convert to mesh and then generate clouds from it. i didnt' try it.

as for the fracture, its a couple more steps, but basically just as easy...i did find a quick (seems like less than 5 minute) tutorial on how to set that up. probable spent 30 minutes on it, but after you know it, probably 5-10 minutes if that long.

as a test (and for fun), i created a more "real" cloud. I used a uv sphere with 6 longitudes and latitudes (or whatever they're called), and then duplicated it 5 or 6 times to create a basic shape, then generated the cloud. less than 2 minutes from the time I clicked the icon to open blender to pressing render, and that includes changing the sky color. the cloud material is even already pre-done. it took about 5 min to render around 950x500 more or less, but my machine is pretty slow.

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Those are beautifully poofy clouds Joel! Nice work!
They look like the clouds shown in the DreamWorks intro, or the clouds in How To Train Your Dragon.

Nice cloud there z. Thanks for the kind words too. Yes that sounds like the ivy gen I was using export to .obj. Written by Thomas Luft.

Metaballs does work better for the clouds I played them a while ago for another tutorial, lets you get a more cloud looking shape before you convert it. It is heavy on render times. Try making it a darker colour then animating a light inside to simulate lightning flashes. It looks great if you get it right. Light must be quite close to the cloud surface though if I remember right or it just gets muffled.

But the spheres look good too. You're right Radial they do look like Pixar clouds! Anything that looks like it came from a Pixar film is good enough for me

But has anyone played with the Ocean simulator from the modifier stack? Another tutorial from Blenderguru done. Took a couple of hours to produce this.

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I like the Ocean simulator

I've been wanting play with the ocean sim for a while...i've seen tuts 3 or 4 places but haven't yet.

Yours looks awesome...that may be my next project.

But again Mr Price deserves the plaudits.

Let me know if you want my settings.

Finally got a chance to play with ocean sim a few days ago, and blender crashed right in the middle of rendering. I was wanting to do an animation to see how the ocean "moved". I had left it to render overnight, and when I discovered it the next day, i also discovered i hadn't saved my blend before spending a pretty long time in the compositor.

So, i tried again today using the BLENDERBOOT that I just tried for the first time today...from here...[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]... I saw a post about it from its creator on the blenderunderground forums. and I LOVE IT.....anyway here's what i've got.




it's incredible the motion the sim gives, although, I like your render much, much better strangebloke.

Z that looks great! I must go back and animate mine later. You're right the movement is terrific. Nice camera bobbing too. And I like the sound effect added, works for me

Just one comment it looks like you've got a bit too much pinching on top of some of the waves. I think that is usually caused by too much Choppiness setting. Or it may be a combination of that and the wind velocity.

For reference if you want to compare my settings are
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What did you have set? Great stuff though Z I really like it.

thanks.

yeah i didn't notice the pinching on the waves until i had rendered it. i followed the tutorial that was on blendernation a few weeks back...i think my choppiness is around 20 and scale is about 4, i don't remember exactly...but i think my settings are exactly what he had...i need to go back in and play with it some,,, but it is an awesome tool!

same sim, different perspective:

Now maybe add some wildlife?

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Wow this is awesome oO
More and more reasons to get back into Blender again..
I want to ask about the Ivy Generator render. What was it rendered with and was it lit by you? It's looking way too good for what I remember the internal renderer being hahaha