Blender 3D Art – Updating the metal on a Sword-Breaker

This is a 3D model I created a few years back in Blender, but I could never get it looking the way I wanted.

Just to explain a bit: A sword-breaker is a weapon used apparently to catch a sword in the grooves of the blade, then twist and either break the blade or separate it from it’s pommel, leaving your enemy weaponless.

Daz Studio 3: Animation Travesty of Justice (for Mac users)

maya-3D-test-normal

I’ve been using Daz Studio 3 for a couple of years now, mostly because I’ve been too lazy to learn Blender like I should -but I think I’m finally done. There’s just too much wrong with it and I don’t think it’s ever going to be fixed. Most of the art of my online novel […]

Daz Studio 3D Character Tutorial Part 2

Here’s part 2 of my 3D character walkthrough using Daz Studio 3. Parts 3 and 4 are up on my YouTube Channel as well. In this one I go through changing the materials and colors on your props and models. I had to move kind of quick to get in under YouTube’s 15 min time […]

Daz Studio 3D Character Tutorial -Part 1

This is the first part of a walkthrough showing how I design a character for True Tales of the Soryan Order in Daz Studio 3, then complete the job in Photoshop. I show the props/clothes/model I use, plus a little on installing on the Mac. Part 2 will be on posing and setting the materials, […]

Marie of The Bill Collectors

This is a shot of Marie from my upcoming comic The Bill Collectors: Someone Must Pay. It’s an espionage/action tale I’ve written about before on this site. I’m still working on the sequential art, so this is another promo piece. I render the characters in Daz Studio, then use Photoshop to add the look and […]

Blender 2.5 Beta and the Return of the Nova Helmet

Nova-Helmet-1

This won’t be a true tutorial but rather an overview of my attempt to create this piece. I’ve been working on modeling the helmet of the Marvel Comics character Nova for awhile now, but between my laziness and problems I was having (some similar to those within the Blender Planning Issues article I wrote a […]

Getting your Adobe Illustrator paths into Blender 3D

I’m working on a weapon for one of my characters from my online novel True Tales of the Soryan Order, and I started it as a vector from Adobe Illustrator. I thought I’d write this up because it took me a while to figure out a reliable method.

A Common Blender 3D UV unwrap problem

blender-uvwrap-preview-looks-wrong

Real quick one here tonight on a persistent UV Unwrap mistake I still see people asking about. Sometimes in Blender when you’re ready to do a UV Unwrap on an object, the preview in the UV/Image Editor doesn’t look right.

Blender 3d – Planning Issues

Unfinished fantasy sword 'Nayala's Sword'

I’ve been working on another sword for one of my fantasy characters. It’s not finished yet because I ran into some issues of my own making. You’ve really got to be careful when you start out these models. Normally, when I’m drawing something I don’t plan out too much in advance. I know what it should […]

BLENDER – 3D Printing my Model Strike Two

This isn’t necessarily specific to Blender, but I mention it because it’s the program I’m using to create my models. In a previous article, I wrote about trying to have my sword model 3D printed at Shapeways.com. Long story short they would not do so because the model in question was a weapon and it […]

Figures, Characters and Avatars: The Official Guide to Using DAZ Studio to Create Beautiful Art

Figures, Characters and Avatars: The Official Guide to Using DAZ Studio to Create Beautiful Art

I didn’t even know this book existed until I saw it in one of the weekly emails Daz sends out. Apparently this official guide was written last March (2009) and it covers DazStudio 2.3. Even back then I was probably a little beyond the basics of the book. I spent many  frustrating hours in the […]

3D printing your Blender model with Shapeways

I was checking the news on Blendernation a couple of weeks ago and I found a little blurb on getting your models “3D Printed” at a site called Shapeways. They are a company based in the Netherlands that can create your model in many different materials, some even with color. From the site: “We want […]

Render Filters in Blender 3D

Render Filters in Blender 3D I was watching some of the videos on the Creature Factory DVD I bought from the Blender e-store. The DVD is essentially a a walkthrough of how creator Andreas Goralczyk made a short video form start to finish all in Blender. I’ll do a more thorough review of it later, […]