Guest Blogger | Brande H, on 3D modeling, and her experience with Blender

I'm not exactly an expert when it comes to 3D modeling; my personal focus is more towards traditional illustrations and graphics. Brande H has much more experience with these things, so I've asked her to help write a blog entry concerning her experience with the free 3D modeling program Blender. She also runs her own blog detailing the specifics of learning 3D modeling.

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My experience with an older version of Blender, 2.3 to be exact, was easy for me. I never worked with a 3D software before so for me, this was an exciting time to learn. Plus I was inspired to look into Blender after I saw the animated shorts and Elephants Dream (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFQxRd0isAQ&feature=player_embedded) was such awe-inspiring to see created from a free to use software. Granted I was not a professional, I thought it was done quite well. At first when I started the program, everything looked intimidating because there were so many buttons and I did not understand what all parts of the interface did. However, I was determined to learn and figure out how to create something in this software. I didn't even understand any of the words or buttons found on the panels, such as subdivide. I learned about shortcut keys and what the mouse allowed me to do through a mix of experimentation and using the Blender website. I picked up on the basic camera view hotkeys instantly, which were on the num-pad, and a few of the simple shortcut keys, such as extrusion which was the E-key, to create polygonal models. I then shortly began understanding what certain words meant and what they did, like vertices were points and edges were lines and faces were the filled in grey spots between edges. I remember I googled up some tutorials on creating a 3D model of a human face. At that time, there were not quite a lot of tutorials for blender, so I took tutorials for Maya and converted the actions to work with Blender. It took me about one week with two to three hours per day working on this finished piece of work, my 3D model female head (http://coolacu.deviantart.com/art/3d-Model-Head-66156144?q=gallery%3Acoolacu%2F5996563&qo=34). I am quite proud of it. I planned on modeling a female body, and began doing a roughly created model. The body did not look that great, so I began looking up tutorials or tips on how other people created their human bodies. Then life issues arose halfway through my project and I have not touched Blender since.
Recently, however, Sintel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsGyueVLvQ) was released in 2010 and I fell in love all over again with Blender. I was excited to see just how much the program has changed on what it could accomplish. It inspired me to want to do my own projects. I started reading up on the Blender website and there was talk on a completely new Blender being launched in 2011 that dealt with a new interface change among other features. In 2013, I picked up the software again and was shocked at how much of a change they created to the free software. It appeared less intimidating and had almost a similar look to Maya in my opinion. Now the user can customize layouts to their own desire and save them for future usages. There is even a Maya preset option when the program is launched. Of course, due to the changes, I felt like I had to relearn the program all over again to some degree. There were still common shortcut keys like the num-pad numbers dealing with camera views. There were other changes though, such as using subdivide is done in a different way now than what it was in the older version I was use to. I feel like this software is a lot more user friendly to newer users than what it use to be. Yeah, the interface and shortcuts may appear intimidating at first, but every program will have that feeling. It just takes time and dedication to learn something in order to feel comfortable using it. Granted Blender may not be for everyone, it is definitely something everyone should at least try. I personally think it is a pioneering software that is not given enough credit to. Plus there are so many tutorials now from how to work with the interface, to how to create a model, to how to animate, etc. It is so much more easier to learn Blender today, than what it was five years ago. I am actually using Blender for my projects and I plan on posting all my projects for others to see in hopes that others will find the software interesting enough to try out. Please take a look at this amazing software and give it a chance to shine. There is so much it can do if given the chance.

The East and the West? Pixiv and deviantART?

The focus of the creative industries between the eastern and the western cultures are almost polar opposites; the western creative industry places high emphasis on technology-assisted production and technical perfection to bring spectacular effects, while the eastern creative industry remains very appreciative of traditional illustrations and animations done primarily by hand. Because of the differences in what each culture finds valuable, art as a whole have become notably more commercialized in the western creative industry compared to its eastern counterpart (Perkel, 2011).

The differences in culture is readily apparent when we look at the differences between to major art community websites, deviantART and Pixiv.

The site known as deviantART was founded over ten years ago in 2000, and is still going strong today. Admittedly the site began as a community of software modification enthusiasts, but it was the implementation of allowing users to upload and share their own art with each other which defined deviantART. Key features of the site include the ability of a user to build a gallery of their own works, start collections consisting of other user's works, and being able to leave commentary on each other's pieces (Perkel, 2011).

In contrast, Pixiv is art community website launched in 2007 and based in Tokyo, Japan. In its four to five years of existence, Pixiv has enjoyed massive popularity, such that the site has attracted major followings from all around the world. This popularity also lends its influence and presence to overlap in the western creative industry, for better or for worse (which I will comment more about later) (Pixiv Inc., 2013).

Much of Pixiv's architecture is similar to deviantART in the sense that it is built as an art community site, but at the same time there are several key differences which define them.

deviantART seemingly places a great amount of emphasis in capitalizing on artwork; the site has developed its own currency, known as "points", in which users can use to buy commissions from other artists or pay for premium account services. But the biggest innovation in this aspect is how deviantART allows users to sell prints of their work through the site itself. Users have the option to allow other users to buy prints of their work through deviantART's print shop, which nets them a margin of profit for every print sold. Of course, such a system also means that deviantART receives a portion of every print sold (deviantART LLC., 2013).

With the influence of the western creative culture overlapping with the east, Pixiv has actually picked up a few of the capitalization features as well, namely the "point" system. Art sharing as a philosophy has split into different branches due to the polarization of community interests (Perkel, 2011). Currently, Pixiv has launched a new branch of their own site, Pixiv (beta) which as "resimplified" to only focus on the original core art and illustration community aspect of the site, omitting the many extraneous features of the main Pixiv site generally sponsored and supported by third-party groups (Pixiv Inc., 2013).

Insight into the culture of the creative community next door, coming up next.

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1. Pixiv Inc.(2013) Pixiv. http://www.pixiv.net
2. deviantART, LLC. (2013) deviantART. http://deviantart.com
3. Kantar Media Company. (2013) Complete | site analytics. Retrieved from http://siteanalytics.compete.com/deviantart.com/
4. Perkel, D. (2011) Making Art, Creating Infrastructure: deviantART and the Production of the Web. (Doctoral dissertation, Berkely, 2011). Retrieved from http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/etd/ucb/text/Perkel_berkeley_0028E_11934.pdf

A Painting Tool from the East

Despite the reputation of Photoshop as the almighty, all-inclusive, universal digital art software program, the truth is Photoshop does not necessarily meet the needs of everyone in the creative industry. Because of the way Photoshop is built to process raster-type graphics as smoothly as possible, many users do find it notably difficult to use Photoshop for drawing sharp, crisp, and smooth lines (Larc, 2013). With the shortcomings of Photoshop dully noted, SYSTEMAX software created a solution known as PaintTool SAI (SYSTEMAX Software Development, 2013).

The advantages of PaintTool SAI come from the fact that the program was built with only one purpose in mind; facilitating digital drawing. In contrast to Photoshop, which had to cover everything from filter effects to frame-by-frame animation, PaintTool SAI was built only for digital illustration, and as a supplemental program to be used side-by-side with Photoshop instead of as a replacement. This is made apparent in the program design which allows users to export their works in multiple different file types, including Phtoshop's ".psd" file format (Larc, 2013).

PaintTool SAI itself is a very lightweight program, especially compared with the bulky Photoshop. For users with systems that may not have abundant memory or processing power, this can be an important deciding factor. Completely installed, Adobe Photoshop CS6 takes up 2 GB of memory by itself, not including any plug-ins, files, or active memory. In contrast, PaintTool SAI only requires a humble 512 MB of free space to function. In addition to its small size, PaintTool SAI is a completely portable program, requiring no installation at all; only the application file is needed, and it can start running wherever you unpack it (Yang, 2008).

The greatest asset of PaintTool SAI is the program's dedication to being a specialized drawing/painting program. All of the tools in the user interface is very simple and intuitive, and they function exactly as they are made to function (nothing like the three to five different variations of every tool Photoshop seems to have). As an illustration program, PaintTool SAI allows the user to build and save custom brushes in a similar way Photoshop does, through the tweaking and arranging of several brush traits and options (Larc, 2013). The flexibility of PaintTool SAI does allow for more "traditional" brush effects when painting, and the program fully supports the use of graphics tablets such as Wacom tablets (Yang, 2008).

While SYSTEMAX's PaintTool SAI is not freeware, it is definitely much more affordable and competitive in price at slightly over 50 USD, compared to Photoshop CS6's near 1000 USD price tag (SYSTEMAX Software Development, 2013). Add in the free 31-day trial period (PaintTool SAI does not require purchase for the trial duration), and there is absolutely no reason at all not to try this program.

SAI is quite popular and affectionately praised by many illustrators in the industry; this tool definitely has among some of the best to offer to the creative industry.

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1. Larc, R. (2013) Photoshop VS PaintTool SAI. Rizian Larc. Retrieved from http://rizianlarc.blogspot.com/2013/02/photoshop-vs-paint-tool-sai.html
2. Yang, A. (2008) Paint Tool SAI Review. The 8th-Circuit Network. Retrieved from http://8th-circuit.com/node/285
3. SYSTEMAX Software Development. (2013) Easy Paint Tool SAI. Retrieved from http://www.systemax.jp/en/sai/
4. Adobe Systems Incorporated. (2013) Adobe Photoshop Family/Adobe Photoshop CS6. Retrieved from http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html

Quick Timeline | Photoshop CS generations: Change over time

Transform a white background into a transparent background!

A lot of digital illustrators do their work completely digitally, from start to finish. This includes the everything from the very early sketching and composition to the last final color-balance adjustments an illustrator may conduct on a piece. There is rarely any issue with coloring or painting in a digitally-drawn piece, because usually only the important lines have colored pixels, while the non-essential background remains transparent, allowing the user to easily work with multiple color layers "behind" the digital drawing.

However, there are some illustrators who begin a lot of their work traditionally, and finish it digitally. A traditional pencil-on-paper drawing can be scanned into the computer as a digital image file, but there is no way for a scanner to recognize that "white" should be "transparent". It would seem as if traditional-to-digital illustrators are burdened with having to color around a permanent white background that is near-impossible to remove.

In my years of working with this hybrid traditional-digital technique, I've learned of a way to essentially "transform" white pixels into transparent pixels with Photoshop. The method takes advantage of Photoshop's ability to make selections based on Alpha channels, picking pixels selectively based on their black-to-white quality.

Here's how you do it.

*I am working in Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 in this walkthrough. However, this technique should work for any version of Photoshop CS2 and above.

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1.  Scan in a traditional drawing into the computer, saved preferably as a ".BMP" or a high-resolution ".JPEG" file.

2. Open the file in Photoshop. Note how in the layers panel the image is labeled as "Background".

3. Double-click the layer "Background" to change it to "Layer 0". This unlocks the image for further editing.

Dialogue box will appear after double-clicking the layer "Background".
Select "OK" to proceed.

Notice the change to the layer name from "Background" to "Layer 0".

4. This is the time you will want to improve the clarity and cleanliness of your scanned image. For general purposes you may use the "Auto Contrast" function, located in the "Image" section of the menu bar at the top of the screen. This will automatically balance the white and black contrast of almost all images to a decent quality.

Select "Image > Auto Contrast"

Linework becomes much clearer.

5. On your keyboard, select "Ctrl + A" to select the entire image.

6. On your keyboard, select "Ctrl + C" to copy the entire selected image.

7. Now, click on the Channels tab to switch the panel to view panels instead of layers.

Channels tab is located right next to the Layers tab in
the same panel.

8. The channels display RGB, Red, Green, and Blue. However, they are NOT important, so ignore them. Instead, click on the icon for "Create new channel".

"Create new channel" button framed in red.

This is what you should get after clicking
"Create new channel".

9. If you did the procedure correctly, your canvas will become completely blank. But you will also have a new channel called "Alpha 1" in your channels panel, as shown in the image above. At this point, on your keyboard, select "Ctrl + V" to paste the previously copied image selection into the new channel Alpha 1.

The image will re-appear in the "Alpha 1" channel.

10. While holding down the "Ctrl" key, click on the "Alpha 1" channel. This is the core of the trick; Photoshop selects all pixels here based on their black-to-white values. If you did it correctly, you will have selection marquees all around the images selecting the lines.

This is what the Ctrl + Click action should look like.
Don't worry if it doesn't seem as if all lines are selected;
Photoshop will grab them too.

11. Proceed back to the Layers panel by clicking on the layers tab.

Layers tab right next to channels.

12. Create a new layer with the "Create new layer" button, which is similar to the "Create new channel" button used in step 8.

"Create new layer" highlighted in red.

13. Once the new layer "Layer 1" has been created, select "D" on your keyboard to reset the current color selection to black.

14. On your keyboard, select "Alt + Backspace" to fill in the new layer by the selection only. You have finally created Layer 1 as a line-only layer with all white values transformed to real transparency!

Create and fill this layer with "Alt + Backspace"

Remove visibility of "Layer 0" to see only "Layer 1"
which is now truly transparent!

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With a traditional drawing with truly transparent backgrounds, you are free to create and color layers behind it and form a coherent image without worrying about an obtrusive, solid-white background hindering your work. Having a truly transparent line work layer also allows you to color your lines, further increasing their flexibility in any illustrative work. Essentially, you can make the lines eventually disappear by blending their colors into the rest of the illustration.

Free to color with true transparency, I can blend
the colors in with the lines much better.

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1. alucinarae (2012) expectations. alucinarae.deviantart.com. Retrieved from http://fav.me/d5ina4h 

Bungie's Secret Weapon: Grognok???

Apologies in advance; this post might be slightly short. But I promise, it's interesting.

The last few weeks or so I've been keeping more tabs on Bungie since they just announced their latest intellectual property, Destiny. Now, the reason I keep tabs on Bungie is mostly because I've been a big fan for a very long time, since their rise to fame with the Halo franchise. Bungie is very well known to be quite open and active within their own community, often releasing tidbits of information here and there about their work (thesirchelios, 2013).

Last week, I found one of the most interesting tidbits I have ever come across from them; a ViDoc highlighting their presentation at the 2013 GDC (Gamespot, 2013. Youtube link). In this presentation, there was one particularly interesting and relevant section I would love to share with the rest of you!

Grognok.

In the 2013 GDC presentation video I just linked, Bungie demonstrates a custom-made proprietary game-environment building engine around 29:00.

Youtube screencap - Grognok logo

The art director of Bungie pointed out that in the video game industry, there were multiple vectors of approach towards the concept of "creativity", and one of the biggest challenges in their sector of the creative industry was efficiently unifying multiple ideas of multiple forms from multiple people into a single, coherent, breathtaking and worthwhile product. They had searched high and low in their quest to find a tool that would aid them in such a large endeavor, but did not find any existing creative software suitable. So instead they made their own.

The most impressive demonstrated abilities of this environment-building engine appear to be rapid terrain generation and easy transition between two-dimensional and three-dimensional workspace. 

Youtube screencap 29:39 - Rapid terrain generation

Youtube screencap 30:02 - 2D~3D hybrid work technique.
The developer is literally "painting" pebbles into the terrain.

Of course I could go into endless speculation over what the Grognok development engine could be and make a completely uninformed article over such assumptions. In fact, there are several active forum threads right now still heatedly discussing the revelation of this privately-developed creative software, both in the Bungie.net forums and elsewhere (Multijirachi, 2013).

What I really just wanted to do was to share with you something amazing I found. Bungie's own little secret home-made game-development engine that was the result of a need in the industry that was not fulfilled by available commercial creative software products.

Just because a creative tool is popular and used by almost everyone doesn't necessarily mean it is the right tool for every job!

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1. thesirchelios. (2013). GDC 2013: Bungie's Brave New World. DestinyHub. Retrieved from http://destinyhub.net/content/63-GDC-2013-Bungies-Brave-New-World
2. Gamespot (2013) Bungie's Destiny Panel - GDC 2013. Youtube video. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUxRTCTr7ic
3. Multijirachi (2013) Forum Thread: "So About Ragnarok...". Bungie.net. Retrieved from http://www.bungie.net/7_So-about-Grognok/en-us/Forum/Post?id=3592446

The Features of GIMP! With Quattrochi

GIMP, otherwise known as the GNU Image Manipulation Program, is an open-source graphics editing software that is available to the public for free. As a program under the GNU development license, this means that the public is also free to contribute to GIMP's perpetual and continual development as they will to the best of their abilities. This highly successful system of "give and take" has resulted in one of the most valuable resources freely available to anyone in the creative industry.

The software is absolutely free, and there is no risk in trying it out at all. I've provided the link up above to their official website, where you may find more information from the developers themselves.

I thought it would be nice to have a few thoughts from an artist who was familiar with GIMP, however. Quattrochi of the art community website deviantART is well experienced with many different creative software programs, GIMP and Photoshop among them.

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We were introduced by a friend in a chatroom

Between Photoshop and GIMP, which program do you use more often?

<Quattrochi>
Gimp pretty much all the time
the only thing I really use photoshop for is animating

What are some of the advantages GIMP offers over Adobe Photoshop?

<Quattrochi>
Well for one thing gimp is free
photoshop is really expensive
Gimp's a bit bulky but Photoshop's a heavyweight
it has an issue with my graphics card or something
it's worked better on my computers than Photoshop in general
it gets REALLY fussy when I try to use transparency
...and I'm also recalling that, where Photoshop has the "open stuff as layers"
as a script, Gimp has it as a regular feature

What version of Photoshop do you have?

<Quattrochi>
CS6

What is one of your favorite things about GIMP?

<Quattrochi>
Oh, also, do you know about Gimp's Color to Alpha function?
Ok
Turns whatever color you declare into transparent pixels
and declare "white" to be the color
boom, white is instantly gone, you're left with beautiful lineart.

Quattrochi probably became busy at this point as they became less-than-responsive.

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Although I appreciate Quattrochi's input about their experience with GIMP, my interview intrigues me enough that I'd like to go do a little more research on my own. Perhaps try out the software myself someday? Again, if any of you would like to try the software out yourself, the program is absolutely free, and there is no risk, especially if you download from the official website in the link I provided. Besides my most recent conversation with Quattrochi, I have heard many other positive comments about GIMP in the past. If any of you would like to offer me more insight to this open-source creative software, feel free to leave a comment below. Perhaps I might even be able to arrange an interview with you!

On a side note, the little trick Quattrochi was explaining at the end--the trick to translate white pixels into transparent pixels via GIMP's Color to Alpha function--is also applicable to Photoshop. And it just so happens that I know how to do it! The trick is especially useful for those wishing to retain the lines of an actual traditional image scan in a digital format as lineart.

Stay tuned, I'll explain more in the near future.

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1. Quattrochi. (5 April 2013). Online real-time correspondence. Her deviantART site at http://quattrochi.deviantart.com