We’ve all heard statements like,

“Most Blender users haven’t even used commercial 3d software before…” or “Most users are teenagers…”

But are they based on fact? No.

To my knowledge there have been no formal surveys or research of any kind regarding the Blender community. This is shame, because how else are we to hear the opinions of a large group of people at once?

That’s why I’ve introduced…

>>The Great Blender Survey<<

This survey will help us understanding the the average age, level of experience, field of expertise and above all the views and opinions of the community at large.

The data from this survey will be reveald on the 1st of November.

I will present this data at this years Blender Conference in Amsterdam, as well as right here on BlenderGuru.com.

The survey will take you less than 4 minutes to complete, and in doing so you will benefit the community as a whole.

Here’s a short video from yours truly

>>Take part in the survey<<

Everybody has heard such pearls of wisdom as ‘be yourself’ or ‘be different’. But frequently these words fall on deaf ears, and they have every reason to. In a world where bosses and professionals seemingly want you to fit in with the industry and follow the norm, it’s very easy to become jaded and less motivated to break the mold.

In this video I’ll show you why it’s not only a good advice for your personal life, but why being yourself may be the best thing for your career.

What are your thoughts on Keeping it real? Do you find that you are more motivated when creating things you truly believe in? Join the discussion below!

If you enjoyed this post you may also like How to stay motivated during long projects.

What that means is you are going to be seeing a LOT more tutorials posted. In fact, I will be posting a new tutorial every Tuesday.

Watch the full story:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hate watching my face? Here’s the main points:

Thanks to YOU I have now quit my daytime job!

• TONS more tutorials!
• Everything will remain FREE
• I will be releasing a line of books & DVDs in the near future

New theme each month

• At the start of each month I will announce a new theme
• Each tutorial I create will be related to that theme
• June’s theme is: WEATHER!

New segment: The Makeover

• A video demonstration on how to improve the look of a scene
• Each month, one user submitted image will be selected for the video demonstration
• Everyone is welcome! Click here to enter an image into The Makeover

I’m really psyched to start making more tutorials for you guys! Here’s what’s in store this Tuesday:

What else do you want me to create? Suggest tutorials in the comments below.

Here’s a sneak peak at what’s in store:

Click here to view the embedded video.

To make cool shit? Nope. Think bigger.

Give up?

Whether you realize it or not, the sole purpose of all 3d art is to make something look believable.

That’s it. There are no exceptions.

If your image doesn’t relate to the real world in some way, the audience will feel disconnected and become disinterested. It doesn’t matter if your rendering an architectural fly-through of a house or an orc warrior fighting his way out of a volcano, you are still taking something that exists in your mind and producing it as a picture and hoping the audience believes it.

You’re doomed, unless…

Let’s say you spend hours intricately modeling each and every nail of a door frame, you piece together textures to create flawless materials, and you spend a solid week on the lighting setup.  Well guess what? If you hit render now your scene is still going to look fake. The reason for this is simple: You haven’t added camera imperfections.

It sounds like a joke, but it’s absolutely true. Photography is the single most important thing to understand when it comes to learning 3d, but for some reason most artists choose to ignore it.

Do I have your attention yet?

When you take a real photo with a real camera, do you realize how many flaws are being built into the photo?

Just to name a few:

• Chromatic Abberation
• Vignetting
• Soft Glare
• Light rays
• Reflecting glare
• Bloom
• Lens Flare
• Glare burnout
• Ghost glare
• Depth of Field
• Motion Blur
• Lens Distortion
• Lens dust, scratches, sweat, fingerprints
• Film developing artifacts
• Color grading

Now guess how many of these flaws occur when producing a computer generated image?

NONE. ZERO. ZIP. NADA.

When you hit F12 you will produce a perfect still. Every. Single. Time.

For example, take a look at this image by the talented artist, Marek Denko:

Aside from the perfect lighting, flawless modeling and impressive materials. What else has he incorporated?

Effects. And lots of them.

• Depth of field
• Chromatic Abberation
• Lens scratches, dust & dirt
• Color Grading
• Bloom
• Reflecting glare

These are all things are done outside of the 3d viewport and added in post production. That means that after he slaved over every piece of detail in the scene, he flipped to the compositor and continued working. That is what pushed this scene over the edge.

Have you ever wondered how Pixar achieved that authentic film look in Wall-E?

This was actually the result of many months of work. Before they began working on the meat of the production, they focused entirely on trying to replicate the look of live footage in their 3d software. They even went as far as to consult the Director of Photography from No Country for Old Men, on tips for creating real camera and lighting setups.

“We rented some equipment and used the live-action DP [Marty Rosenberg] who eventually shot some of the live-action elements. He helped us do some lens tests. Our depth of field, our cameras never look as we expect them to.

“Life is nothing but imperfection and the computer likes perfection, so we spent probably 90% of our time putting in all of the imperfections, whether it’s in the design of something or just the unconscious stuff. How the camera lens works in [a real] housing is never perfect, and we tried to put those imperfections [into the virtual camera] so that everything looks like you’re in familiar [live-action] territory.”

-Andrew Stanton

(source: AWN)

The result was a very slick, very believable environment for Wall-E to explore.

Why using the compositor is crucial to your success

The most common question people ask is, why would I want to incorporate camera flaws into my renders? After all camera flaws are exactly that, flaws. So wouldn’t an image that is clean from these flaws look better?

Nope. Let me explain why.

When you look at a white car sitting in the hot sun, your eyes expect to see a reflecting glare. When you look closely at your spoon during breakfast, your eyes expect the bowl of cereal in the background to be out of focus. And at night time when you look at a street lamp, your eyes expect to see rays of light.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

Our eyes have become so accustomed to seeing these imperfections that they have become apart of the object. And when they are missing, the viewer spots a fake.

Now don’t get me wrong, lighting, materials, textures and lighting are all important and I’m not pretending they aren’t, but until you learn how to replicate the look of a real camera in the compositor, you can kiss believability goodbye.

If you are interested in exploring this topic further, I am writing an eBook called The Wow Factor. It’s not available yet, but you can register your interest here: http://wowfactorbook.com

I love cars, I love fire and I love ice fishing sheds (kidding).

But up until now I have never asked for your input. Which is stupid.

That’s like driving a bus full of people around without asking them where they want to go. I might get you there eventually, but it’s going to take a long time. So I’ve realized that unless I start asking you questions, it’s going to be a loooong trip.

Today, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

I want you to tell me what you want to learn.

So to track your responses better, I’ve put together this simple, survey:

>>What do you want to learn?<<

A quick, painless 4 question survey.

I am currently writing my first commercial product on blender’s compositor called ‘ The Wow Factor’. So this survey will help me find out which topics you are struggling with and what tutorials I should make in the future. Your voice will be heard.

I’ll leave the comment section open for discussion, but please make sure that your tutorial requests are in the survey. Otherwise they will not be tracked.

Put on your party hats people, ‘cos I know you’re as excited as I am!

So today I thought I’d write a special ‘get to know me’ type of post, where you can take an inside look at the man behind Blender Guru.

Who am I?

My name is Andrew Price and I run Blender Guru. I am 21 years old and live in Brisbane, Australia.

As well as updating Blender Guru, I fill my days working as a debt collector for Toyota. My job entails calling customers who haven’t paid their bills and trying to convince them why they should

In the lobby at work

In my part time, I also serve as a Reservist for the Australia Army. I train on Tuesday nights and some weekends.

When I’m not talking on the phone or shooting guns, I’m lighting weights at the gym. My dream is to one day weigh 90kg, but I can’t seem to break 80!

In August last year, I went to a party of a mutual friend and met my now girlfriend, Chloe Lim. She knows all about my obsession with blender, but doesn’t mind as long as it doesn’t cut into our “together time”

When did you start using Blender?

I started using blender 8 years ago, because I wanted to learn how to make cool looking 3d cars.

I queried google for “free 3d software” and came across this image on blender.org:

So sexy...

I was hooked.

Upon seeing this image I made a silent vow to learn the software well enough until I could one day create my own car.

How did you learn Blender?

My first week with Blender could best be described as embarrassing. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. In fact, if you check my post history on blenderartists.org you can see what a true burden I was to the community:

*groan* Another thread by redbyte.

My learning style was the very definition of “play it by ear”. I randomly floated from tutorial to tutorial, finishing some and abandoning others until I could finally make something on my own. As I recall it was a cube man.

Through constant practice and learning new things I eventually nailed the basics and moved onto bigger projects and finally developed my own art style.

4 years from when I started, I was finally able to accomplish the dream that I set out to achieve:

Why Blender Guru?

I started Blender Guru in April last year as a way to raise my profile as a freelancing artist. I had heard that creating tutorials was the best way to get work so I registered the domain, blenderguru.com and started writing.

However it wasn’t until I attended the Blender conference in 2009, that my goal changed.

I was overwhelmed at the response I received. People who I had never met before were coming up to me, shaking my hand, and asking me when the next tutorial would be released. I was flabbergasted!

So from that day forth, I decided to make blender education my primary focus.

I am currently writing my first commercial eBook called, ‘The Wow Factor’, which you will hear me mention more of in the coming weeks.

Other Hobbies

As well as Blender, I also enjoy…

Going to music festivals:

At Big Day Out 2010, watching Lilly Allen perform

Exploring the outdoors:

In a wheat field with my friends

Climbing a mountain in South Korea.

Enjoying a swim at Fraser Island

Today Blender Guru has over 4000 email subscribers, 1000 RSS subscribers and receives over 240,000 page views a month.

Have you subscribed yet?

Email:

1. Welcome to Blender Guru! Could you start by telling us how you originally got involved with Blender?

Hi Blender Guru!

I started using Blender around version 2.11. Back then, like many other high-school students I had too much time on my hands. Instead of getting drunk on a regular basis though, I chose to draw and shoot little crappy movies with my Hi8 camera.

It was always my dream to become a director and work on my own movies. Having shot a lot of those stupid little special effect tests with dinosaurs and exploding models, 3D was yet another way for myself to venture into a reality that existed only in my head. At one point I did an internship at a company who also had an old copy of 3D Studio Max installed, which instantly captivated me. When the internship was over I found a free alternative in Blender.

Back then, tutorials were scarce. There was only scanline rendering and a very limited number of tools. But the whole 3D thing had a very mythical air around it, there was still a lot more ground to break, which made it very exciting to me.

2. A lot of the community regard you as the one of the best blender artists. Your work has been published in books, you’ve been interviewed on German television and you now write regularly for 3d world. Can you explain your rise to fame and how you got here?

That sounds a lot more glamorous than it actually is. A lot of times that was just a coincidence and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I think the reason why a few of my pieces stuck out back in the days was probably because whatever wasn’t possible in Blender, I painted in 2D. As weird as it seems, people couldn’t get their heads around this. “It’s 3D, but it’s not… huh? Oh my gosh how is that even remotely possible?”

Those (relatively) few images kept on buzzing about, and even though it’s not such a big deal, people suddenly call you “Blender Master”. This internet thing is weird. Sometimes getting too much attention can be irritating. Nowadays I pretty much quit showing stuff on the forums and people finally stopped pointing at the old stuff. I’m quite happy now that the buzz of ED, BBB, etc. has died down and I can focus on the actual work and exploring new territory. I don’t know what the future will bring. I just hope there’s gonna be more robot monsters.

3. A lot of your work is geared heavily around the sci-fi theme, incorporating alien creatures and robotic elements in your designs. Can you explain your attraction to this genre?

I guess that’s just a general attraction to things that the eye doesn’t usually see. I admire people who achieve a perfect copy of something that’s real in their computer, I’m just not the right person for that particular flavor of 3D. Mind you, I’m not talking about making something look real that isn’t – I just think there’s not much of a point for me to re-create something that exists already. I guess it’s perfectly fine for training purposes, though. Also it seems that for me it’s significantly easier to model monsters and ugly things. I have yet to lift myself up to the artistic level to create truly beautiful stuff.

The motivation is just my genuine interest in advances in technology, and the general question of where we all might end up. I’m a huge fan of classic sci-fi books and movies as well. Having said that, I love nature, I couldn’t live without trees, grass and air. But somehow I view technology just as an extension of nature.

4. Before starting a project, do you sketch it on paper first or do you like to play it by ear?

I sketch a lot, usually I take my sketchbook wherever I go. I tend to think and express myself in more visual terms, so conceptualizing an image (or even a movie) purely in writing does not work for me. For most of my pictures I like drawing a few thumbnails to make up my mind about the composition. Since I do a lot of character related stuff, all of those usually originate from a drawing. Usually the final 3D model is more an interpretation of the sketch rather than an exact copy though, to there’s still a lot of freedom in the execution. Sketching out the image before you “transfer” it into 3D helps getting the overall flow right. In CG it’s very easy to get lost in the details. Of course, sometimes I also like to completely “freestyle” in Blender, which also can be very liberating because a lot of the work flow is very close to sketching.

5. In your opinion, what’s the single biggest mistake a lot of 3d artists make that stop their work from being great?

Generally people tend to forget that there’s hundreds of years in principals of composition, light, color, etc. that also apply to 3D. The biggest mistake I find myself making is to fumble stuff together too quickly, just to get done with it. While I don’t think it’s good to linger on something for too long, it can also be good to step back for a bit and let it sit for a while. But in my opinion, there isn’t really one big mistake, it depends on the case I guess.

6. Tell us about your current project: Omega. It’s stop motion, but it also uses Blender? What is the motivation behind this short?

Getting my hands dirty with practical work is something that I absolutely love. It’s great to be able to work with this amazing group of people here who’s so passionate about puppets and model building. Omega is a challenge to see how far we can push ourselves in terms of visual complexity, creating the depth and detail of an entire living and breathing (artificial) ecosystem. And while this world not supposed to look entirely real, the ultimate goal is to create something that looks tangible, a world that you can immerse yourself in.

We shoot everything in digital 5K still frames. Blender is used for fusing the final frames together. That means mostly chroma-keying, compositing and color grading. On top of that, we use it for generating virtual environments and characters. Most of the movie is created by manually chopping photos into depth layers and then putting them back together in CG. The last half of the movie features an epic transformation and destruction scene which is mostly CG with a bit of model work as basis. The whole piece is meant to be a hybrid of state-of-the-art CG and traditional stop motion animation.

7. I know a lot of people are dying to see it. Do you have an expected release date?

Because of its complexity we had to postpone the release a few times. We’re hoping to have it finished by next Winter. First it’s probably gonna run through a few festivals around the world. I don’t know yet when it’s going to be released on the internet, or in which format.

8. You’ve been with Blender for a little over 10 years now! Have you ever considered switching to a commercial application? What made you stick with Blender?

In those years I worked on both, personal and commercial projects using Blender. I’ve considered switching at a few occasions actually. Mostly when I was frustrated with Blender’s limitations, its interface, or just my own stupidity. While I am familiar with quite a few other 3D applications, I found Blender to be the most efficient for my purposes. That’s why I ended up sticking with it every time: I really got used to Blender’s work flow, which shows in the speed I can come up with new stuff. More importantly, the people I had the chance to meet who work with Blender show so much dedication and passion for their work, that’s the main reason why I like it so much!

9. Blender 2.6 is just on the horizon! What feature or improvement are you most looking forward to?

The work that went into the interface redesign is really a huge step forward in so many ways, the workflow itself feels much more fluid and focused. The thing I’m really dying to see now is a better modeling system (i.e. B-mesh), the current/old one – while I’m aware of the fact that it isn’t fully ported yet – feels terribly dated. For Omega I’m also anxious to get the whole compositor functionality back again. There’s little things here and there that need patching up, but that’s just a matter of time.

10. If you could offer one piece of advice to an aspiring blender artist, what would it be?

That’s a difficult one to answer, especially since that’s been done to death already. Personally I think it’s important to look beyond your computer screen. There’s so many things that aren’t digital that are worth looking at and living for. It’s absolutely vital to not put your own work on a pedestal. Results matter, yes, but what matters more is what you learn and experience during the process of creation. And if one particular piece doesn’t meet your expectations, no big deal, move over to the next one! For me these were hard to let go. I spent a great deal of the past years to separate myself from the reign of the almighty computer.

In more general terms I also found it to be a mistake to think too much about “your art” and why it’s important that everyone knows that you’re an “artist”. The nature of the internet and the fact that the majority of the people on the forums have too much time on their hands easily lend itself to such conversations about “the art”. (In contrast I also regularly come in contact with art historians and the like, so outside the internet it’s not much different, except that people wear suits)… Who cares what kind of name tag you give it, just do whatever you enjoy. But who am I to give advice, being about 25, I’m still relatively young and inexperienced.

Thank you so much for your time and on behalf of the community, thanks for your amazing contributions to Blender.

It’s been a pleasure likewise! Thanks a lot for giving me the chance to express my thoughts with this interview.

As a bonus, Andy has been nice enough to share two never before seen shots from the Omega project. Enjoy!

Follow the progress of the Omega project here.If you liked this post you might also like my interview with blender legend Robert Tiess.

Rainy Night by Morteza Najafi

Goldie by Maurice Panisch

Morning by Morteza Najafi

Porsche Speed by Daan Pol

Dirty Car by Jiwoong Chung

Power by Morteza Najafi

Green Snake by Ahmed AL Barazengi

Nissa Skyline Gtr 34 by Alessandro Baldasseroni

Honda Civic by Alexander Neskoromyuk

Mantis Burn by John Kearney

Crash Kiss by Nicolas Crombez

Snow Buggy by Marek Denko

HH-60G PAVE HAWK MEDEVAC by Andre Cantarel

Okay that last one’s not a car, but can you blame me?

If you liked this post, you might also like 20 Architectural renders that break the mold.

Have I missed one? Post a comment!

However, as artists it’s our job to tell the client how much time it will take to complete a project and how much they can expect to pay. But how do we predict the unpredictable?

To get more practice in this department I like to create deadlines for personal projects, regardless of whether or not there’s a need for one. I find this prevents laziness and endless test and adjustments.

My most recent project was a New York city earthquake animation. So before I started the project I wrote down a list of everything I would need to model:

• A bedroom (chairs, desk, bed, bookshelf)
• Detailed building (multiple floors, smashed windows, broken walls)
• A camera mapped city
• Smoke
• Falling debris

I didn’t have the luxury of working on this full time, so I estimated the project would take 3 weeks to complete.

And how long did it really take?

3 months.

Where did I go wrong? The biggest problem was failing to predict certain issues.

Here’s a list of the most time consuming tasks that completely skipped the planning stage:

1. Learning Time

I had never modeled a destroyed anything before, so it goes without saying that I would need to learn a few things. Learning takes time, a lot of time. When you don’t know how to do something your entire production grinds to halt whilst you stumble around the internet trying desperately to find an answer.

2. Software Issues

I was using Blender 2.5 Alpha. That last word there should have been a neon flashing billboard that spelled TROUBLE. However, this completely overlooked this fact. As a result, I had to deal with dozens and dozens of unpredictable bugs. The most noteworthy bug was a ‘segmentation fault’ that caused the software to crash during rendering. I spent over a week trying to find an answer. The worst part is, I never got one. It was in Alpha stage. Nobody knew.

3. Over-estimating my skill

Everyone knows how fast they work. Or at least they should. But when I was estimating on how long certain tasks would take, I severely overestimated my skill. Tasks such as modeling the inside of the bedroom took a mere day in my head, but when I sat down and actually started working on it I realized a week was more realistic.

4. Video production

Model, Texture, Light, Render = Finished! Right? No. There’s also, re-rendering problematic frames, compositing passes, buying sound effects, exporting in various formats for different media, uploading and distributing. They are all crucial tasks, but they never entered the planning stage.

5. Being a perfectionist

After I spent a week detailing rooms of the building that the audience would only see for a split second, I realized that I was being a little OCD. Every artist wants their work to be perfect. After all, that’s what makes great art. However, there comes a point when you need to step away from the computer and and accept that it’s not perfect, but it will pass.

The project was an enormous learning experience for me. It made me wonder:  Is determining a realistic deadline a skill that can be taught? Or is it something that only comes with experience?

At completion I jokingly thought that perhaps in the future I should just triple my original estimate. But on a second thought, maybe that’s even such a bad idea?

I put the question to my twitter followers and facebook fans. Here were their suggestions for determining a realistic deadlines:

@r3dp_01: I breakdown the layers of the project, 3d , matchmove etc. then the level of the artist(s)

@francoisgfx: The first thing they teach me when I started at Ubisoft: Always triple what you think

@DarkCellar: Complexity, team size, commitment, experience, skillset.

@OscarMopperkont: Realistic planning.

@Laxy: I work out roughly how long it’ll take then double it. But that’s me dealing with my optimistic calculations

Renato Sousa: Multiply by two…

Brian Knezevich: By figuring out how the project is coming along. Of course you determine it by the time and the work you all ready have done.

Mark Walder: Depends on the desired outcome, Time, detail, texturing lighting, placement and strength of lighting, HDRI background as part of that lighting and Ambient effects, In my experience it is hard to follow real world lighting so to keep rendering and adjusting has been the key for me, and that can make determining a deadline difficult at times.

So how do you create realistic deadlines? What methods have you found that work for you? Share your experiences and lessons learned in the comments below!