IanHubert posts
Posts: 303
Files: 339
Thoughts on Optimizing Your Cycles Renders
[This is written specifically for Blender's "Cycles" path tracer, but I assume a lot of the same logic applies to other path tracers? Also, I mention below, but if you have a render with crazy fireflies, feel free to post a link in a comment, and maybe we can identify the problem area]Hey hey! So- I keep seeing folks using the Cycles path-tracer with, like, 2,000-3,000 samples (or more??), and personally I rarely go over 200 or so, an...
Texture Paint Street-Markings in Blender
(Right click, save as- preview below)Road TexturesThis is a simple technique, I just also get distracted with tweaking the shader (although, the part at 22 minutes about making the different symbols/graphics could be kind of fun if you don't normally use Blender in that capacity?)ALSO! The bit at 9:10 is important! I probably don't talk about saving enough, but blender will often not try very hard to save your painted textures! I recommen...
Asset: 33 Low Poly Crowd Figures
Low poly crowd figures as a dime a dozen online, but almost none of them seem to have any textures??This is mostly just a test from this evening (version 1), but it gave some handy results until I can do better. Ideally this would be done with more than 3 people, but! Quarantine! What'ch'a gonna do?Thanks as always to Sean and Kaitlin for being very accommodating models :DI'm working on the HyperBowl sequence, and I wanted to have cro...
HyperBole Engine Crash - Narrated Screencapture
Jet Engine asset available below if anyone wants!Here we go again! Sorry to everyone who got a notification email about this post last night- I forgot that deleting the post would create Infinite Confusion. The techniques in this video are pretty darn basic (straightforward physics sim, shape keys, particle system), so I felt bad having a 40 minute video of me just tweaking physics and creating particle systems, but re-creating it more efficientl...
That Greenscreen Tutorial (Finally)
Okay! Sorry I've been quiet the past while! I was forcing myself to wrap up this guy! Only took me 6 months, but here we go! I ended up not including a ton of things I probably could have, but I wanted it to get people jazzed at the thought of doing something like this, and I felt like including a bunch of additional hotkeys/options might be a bit overwhelming. I think this is a fairly happy medium?? Thanks again for all the support, you guys...
A quick Grocery Store and Rando-Building using fSpy
I guess the title shouldn't necessarily be "using fSpy", since the fSpy part is only like 4% of the total process, and the rest is in Blender, but it's a great way to get the camera aligned to a photo, and makes the rest of the process way easier, since once you have it lined up, you can just extrude faces out along the various axis!If you have an image of a building (or an interior), and aren't sure how to start modeling it, ...
Hairbrained Virtual Production Schemes
Just some stuff I've been thinking about! I have all these shoots I want to do, but we're still probably a ways off until I can do a proper one (Covid-wise). I dig the potential, though. In some capacities I think it could totally work (in terms of projecting different views on different places, rendered in realtime in eevee), but it still might be trickier than I think (ex: I can use a white wall as a projection surface, but then I might...
Making a Shot pt3: Detailing
Previous Parts:Part 1: tracking/keying/masking/setup Part 2: Lighting("Deleted Scene": Making the Hallway)Hah! So! I mention (at length) in the video, but I had a little trouble with this one, because when you go from the blocking stages to the detailing stages, you really start to feel the diminishing returns. Like, to me this part is the most fun, because it's all about brainstorming how people actually live in the space, but a lot ...
Retargeting Mocap (and lil' dude)
Woooo!!!! I wish I had this thing months ago! Here's a link to the free Rokoko retargeting addon.The bit about how to use it to apply Mixamo (or other) data to the characters is at 4:40 (and for more info, check out Sam's video explaining it better). Mostly I can't wait till quarantine's a bit more lax and I can scan a wider variety of people using the stuff I've learned! I have it down to a bit more of a solid workflow now, a...
Tutorial/Asset: Getting Neoclassical
This is one of my favorite types of modeling, tons of extruding and insetting! Maybe not technically a tutorial, since it's just me talking as I do stuff- but maybe some useful tips in there for cylindrical/spherical workflows? I got the inverted-profile bevel trick from a YouTube video, but I can't find it now :/ Here's the dome I make in the video if you want to use it for anything:(Right click save-as)Dome Town
Asset: BROIL restaurant
Zachary asked if I could upload this, so here we go! A lot of it you already have (pipes-n-burgers), but maybe it's nice to have it all assembled like this :) And the lighting fixture could be useful! I had to recreate a couple textures that I probably didn't have permission to be sharing (not the Taco Bell menu, though. That stays) but it should still render the same. I'm not sure if it keeps the baked indirect lighting, so you might...
Timelapse: Modeling the BROIL restaurant
Hey hey!! I've been working on a bunch of stuff, but gotten a little behind on posting about it here. Mostly working on editing for the Dynamo Dream episode. I'm SO close to picture lock, and once the edit's locked I can send it off to the sound team :D Editing is hard, though. I'm kind of having to "find the scene" in the edit, which it turns out is a thing I don't enjoy at all. Okay well maybe a little. But I much pr...
Asset: 13 Photoscanned/Rigged Characters
[edit: cleaned up a bunch of the models since upload (weird little geometry bumps and such). Super easy to do with the sculpt tool!]Woooo! You guys would not believe how much time I've spent on this over the last 6 months. I'm excited :D It took a ton of trial and error (so so so many wrong turns) but I finally have the workflow figured out, and I can actually generate these pretty quick now. The video explains how to hook them up with an...
Asset: Big Mossy Rocks
So I make lots of cyberpunk work, and maybe you join the patreon like "yeah alright let's cyber-go" and instead I just do nature photoscans forever- but hot damn sometimes you how to follow your momentum (Alsoooo look an appreciation of nature's shenanigans is going to legit help your cyberpunk sensibilities (look at the vine distribution in these images- so cyberpunk). Nature's fantastically good at balancing that whole big/s...
FutureProof Studios Tour
Hey! I wanted to share a bit of what you all are helping support by being here!! Pardon all the messes!
Environmental Graphics in Blender Timelapse
At some point I'd love to make an Actual Tutorial with some techniques I find the most helpful (I have a project in mind that could be pretty fun, I think), but until then here's a timelapse of putting a couple graphics together- I recommend scrubbing around to any bits you might be interested in. Graphic Design is like a whole friggin' craft with a whole friggin' skill set- a skillset I don't really possess. But if I can make...
Asset/Screencap: Waterfall River
So not really a tut- just a screencapture, really, but this is one of those things I've been thinking about for like literally 5-10 years and finally decided to try- worked out better than I expected! It's nice that flowing water's fairly random looking.Here's the waterfall texture video if you want to use it for anything! You can watch the video, but I ended up using these settings. You could just use an emission/transparency mix...
Asset: Foxglove
First of all- thank you so much to everyone for your comments on my previous post! I'm afraid maybe I came across too strong?? I've been absolutely delighted by the attention the clip's getting, the responses just gave me a lot of thoughts. Thanks so much for listening :D It's foxglove season!! Weird flowers- they always remind me of the meadow scene in Howl's Moving Castle. They're maybe my favorite Summer Bloom. We have ...
Viral
Posted a new lazy tutorial! Nightmare Men! I forgot how much fun making those tuts were. In most of the lazy tuts I'm trying to secretly introduce folks to some new feature of blender, but this one was just for fun (well- maybea quick into to texture painting).But meanwhile! Hot damn! Never had anything like this happen before.That before/after clip has been posted sooooo many times over the past few days, it's a little wild. 20 million v...
Asset: Environmental Plants
Whew! These were hard work! Very excited to share this one with you guys! It's the result of the first stage of the backyard photoscanning shenanigans. Learned a ton doing these guys, although I keep feeling like this technology is going to be totally revolutionized any day now with AI and all that, haha! Here's the blend file (right click, save as)And here's an FBX (sorry, I can't use my node setups for the FBXs, so they're ...
Asset/Tutorial: Dust and Bugs
Hah! So- making tutorials for physics-based stuff is always a little daunting because it invariably comes down to "just tweak stuff till it looks right for your specific situation". With that in mind, I also wanted to put out some pre-made video textures that I think can be super useful for environmental scenes! Download Dust/Bugs video files and Blend You can use them in AE or blender or whatever :)I recommend using the "Import Imag...
Making a Shot pt 2 - Lighting
Part 1 - Tracking/Keying/Masking/SetupPart 3 - Detailing0:20 - setting up the lighting0:48 - Fishing shot breakdown1:46 - Creating depth9:15 - setting up HDRIs11:15 - Blocking in the environment geography19:13 - Making Eevee rad with Irradiance Volumes30:37 - Adding textures quick33:44 - Adding a mural to the wall43:30 - Building kitchen appliances from a photo48:30 - Raiding a previous blender file for parts49:32 - Re-linking texturesPart two of...
Quick Update and Camera Motion Tut
This is just a quick tutorial on how to start creating a library of real-life camera movements, so you don't have to emulate stuff with noise modifiers. Maybe useful to someone out there!ALSO you can super hear the GPU grinding as I tweak the eevee renders. Gotta see if there's anything I can do about that :/ I'm in a weird state where I'm working on a ton of stuff I'm excited to share, but not sharing any of it- I think I'...
Asset: Two Succulents
Hey! So- I just uploaded 10 of these guys to the tier 7 folks, but I wanted to share a couple here, too, just because I think they turned out pretty gorgeous. I'm excited to stick them on shelves/along walkways and such (or put 'em in a vending machine maybe? heh)right click save as:Two Succulents Blend FileTwo Succulents FBXRight Click Save As:Two Succulents Blend FileTwo Succulents FBX
Asset: 10 Succulents
Man, compared to scanning people, small inanimate objects are a piece of cake, haha!So- I've got my more practical big-ol-plants collection coming soon (very excited about that one), but I spent this afternoon scanning/cleaning/optimizing a bunch of succulents, and wanted to share them first. Could work great for a desert/outdoor scene, or just on shelves/desks/markets! One fun thing about these: they're fairly scaleable, so you can make ...
Asset: Burger Scene, Mechanics, and Animations
Alright! Took me a sec to get it up here (had to figure some stuff out), but I think it's all ready! The issue is that while the mocap data is super small (like, 7mb for all of them), once I import it into blender the file size balloons to half a gig(???)- SO, I'm giving you the mocap data separately. This is actually rad! Because it means I can show you how to apply mocap data to these guys. Over the next few weeks I'm going to be up...
Making a Monumental Burger (w/ burger asset)
This video talks about photoscanning, and a little sculpting, and all that fun stuff! Not really a tutorial, just thought it might be fun to document some burger-scanning shenanigans. =========Also hey hey! I gotta get caught up with all the stuff I should post on here! It's been a wild week. I'm working on part 2 of the "making a scene in blender" series. I actually recorded the next video the morning after I posted the first bit...
Weekend Update
So after a particularly aggressive bout of social distancing, Kaitlin and I finally hung out with some friends for a weekend. It felt great! Nate and Selena have been good friends for a while now (I've known Nate since 2008 or something??), and we've worked on a ton of stuff together (going back to Project London days). First we had to play around with photoscans- slowly figuring things out! Photoscan discoveries from the weekend:1.) Shoo...
Photogrammetry Madness - nature stuff
Hey hey!! :D So I took like 3000 pictures around my yard yesterday (and a few out in the mountains on the Olympic Peninsula today), and I've been trying to optimize the resulting photoscanned models. I've been really pleased with how it's turning out, but I'm also learning a ton about what works and what doesn't (I kind of half-assed a dry riverbed, and it turned out perfect whereas I took like 200+ careful pictures of a fern ...
Asset: Industrial Greeble of Love
So- this is admittedly a little thing, and I wasn't so sure about this bit when I first modeled it, but I've ended up using it in every scene everywhere in the past few months, and now we're basically in love, so I wanted to share.You need a walkway? Railing? Rooftop bit? Robot part? Vending machine back? Air conditioner support? Fire Escape? Garbage? Sign frame? Overbuilt doorway awning? Industrial Greeble's got your back. It als...
