[UPDATE] I shot the blog, and it felt good to see it die.

In case you've been looking for awesome new content, I'm afraid you are looking in the wrong place. No no no, don't worry, I'm not quitting, or dying. I may be guilty of 1st degree murder to this blog, and writing propaganda all over it with it's own blood, but I finally moved to a real website.

This blog was starting to become something that blogspot couldn't handle anymore, so I moved it to a nice fresh, clean, and very smexy Wordpress site. So if you want to see some new posts, follow me down the rabbit hole to 3D Esprit's new website. I promise you, that it won't hurt, and that you will have zero regrets.

See you on the other side!

Sculpting in Blender: Crash Course

Working with a lot of 2D artists each day, there is a lot of talk about 3D helping with proportion, lighting, and of course concepts overall. Now if you are a 2D artist, you may find that 3D modeling software to be very daunting. For this reason alone, I created a Blender Sculpting Crash Course, allowing anyone without any knowledge of 3D modeling, to jump right into it in about 30 minutes. There is no reason to learn a lot about 3D modeling if you are simply wanting to use it as a resource to help guide your 2D art. Anyways, you can start learning by watching the video below:

For those that want to get even more, and learn a few tips for much more intricate sculpting, feel free to watch Part 2 of the crash course.

Blender's New Official Pie Menu Addon

Since the release of 2.72, we have seen a plethora of great new additions to Blender, but one great addition is one of the new official addons now packaged with Blender, the Pie Menu addon. Many may not see this as too great of an addon, but for new users, and people without hardware that caters to some of the most used hotkeys may find this to be extremely helpful. So without futher adieu, let's start using the awesome addon.

Blender ATI Cycles Support!

If you know me, you know that I'm very attached to my ATI cards. Unfortunately, since Blender's Cycles Render Engine came along, only nVidia GPUs have been able to truly harness it's power. The problem was AMD's ATI kernel, that would crash on rendering. It was very bleak for ATI owners, and the only hope was to switch to nVidia, and I myself was not about to drop a bunch of money on a new card. Near the end of 2014, AMD finally fixed the ATI kernel, so development continued for the ATI Cycles functionality. Here is what is happening....

Where and How to Learn Blender

I've seen many people in the community try to find a place to learn Blender, and ask what to watch to actually learn. Almost everyone is directed to CGCookie, as it is by far the best hub for Blender tutorials. I know many will argue that Youtube, or their Udemy course is a better solution. Let's be honest here, you want to learn Blender, not learn how to create a single object, and then get lost when creating something else. Not only that, you don't want to pay more than you should have to accomplishing that goal. So in this article, I'll give you a list of videos to watch when visiting CGcookie to find exactly what you need. 

Using Blender For Precise Models

Not long ago someone mentioned that Blender was not good enough to create precise models for printing, and that it lacked the ability of exact measurements. Since then, I've been very confused as to why someone would say that. Sure, it's not a CAD program, but the entire properties panel has lots of precise information about an object.

Blender 2.72 - The Pinnacle of Change

I remember back in 2000 when I found Blender 0.9 alpha in my Debian ports, and I could not believe there was an open-source 3D modeling application. When I came back to Blender earlier this year, I could not believe all of the functionality that had been integrated into it since then. It feels like I returned to Blender at the perfect time, since the 2.70 release, it has been nothing but non-stop amazing additions. In 2.70 they added cycles volume rendering, with the start of the new UI changes. Then with 2.71 they added Cycles baking,  as well as more additions to functionality. Now, as 2.72 is upon it's stable release, we see a whole new group of added features.

[Resource] Sculpting in Blender with Dynamic Topology

For the past month, up until the start of Concept Cookie's concept art workshop, I was sculpting in Blender every day, as much as I possibly could. If you have worked with Blender's sculpt tool, you know that there is a lot to learn in terms of methods for getting great sculpts. At the same time, being a new user and starting to use it, is extremely simple.

Full Color 3D Print Models with VRML using Blender for Shapeways

So not very long ago, I presented my first full-color model to Shapeways. Unfortunately, the process wasn't as painless as I hoped. To keep anyone else from having to deal with such an ordeal, I'm creating a simple tutorial on how to assemble your model for Shapeways submission.

Blender Cycles: How To Mimic A Game Engine

In the past week, I was working on a really nice game asset, and for the first time making my bump maps by hand. To preview my model, I was using p3d, since I couldn't find a good way to view my model in Blender Cycles as if it was in the game. Once I realized that I couldn't use my fresnel map on p3d without upgrading my account, I sought out advice on creating a node setup for Blender.

Hardware in Blender and Cycles

One of the most asked questions from new users of Blender, is what hardware is best to get the best results from cycles. So many people have been lead to believe that their hardware seriously impacts their use, but do not understand that it does not impact them near as much as they think. A lot of professional artists use pre-built systems, or even laptops to create most of their models. There are only a few hardware changes that can benefit Blender, but a lot of performance comes from knowing how to configure Blender.

Blender Cloud

Yet another resource that is almost mandatory for a new Blender user, is the Blender Cloud. In my situation, I wanted to help the Blender Foundation, but at the same time I couldn't justify the $25/month donation, at least not at the time. It's almost as if they knew new users experiencing this dilemma. Blender Cloud was introduced earlier this year, giving users the ability to pay a subscription to gain access to a large library of tutorials, and open projects.