Blender Landscapes

efflux · July 26, 2011, 07:02:53 AM

Boulders and rocks in general can look really good in Blender because of the texture. Blender has very good procedural textures which, like lots of things with Blender, you won't see properly utilised.

rcallicotte · July 26, 2011, 10:17:45 AM

Windows 7 is much better than Vista - more stable and less intrusive.

Photoshop CS5 is very nice. As for Gimp, so is it. And Blender is absolute genius. Brilliant package. Just see what this woman has done to see what's possible in Blender - http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/product_info_n.php?products_id=133

Quote from: efflux on July 26, 2011, 06:33:43 AM
I just don't get it. Why can't people distinguish between brilliant software that is cheap and even often free and crap software or extremely expensive software like Photoshop. Photoshop is OK but there are alternatives and Photoshop is not ideal for painting anyway.

Talking of this, how bad is Windows 7 compared to Vista because Vista is dire? I use mostly Linux here which is dramatically superior to Windows but I just need Windows to work on basic level for a few apps and nothing else. I fix computers for people here and every Vista system I get is a complete disaster. Bear in mind that I won't connect Windows to the net anyway so no virus issues. I have a Macbook for that and Linux systems. SAI has issues under wine so it means Windows. My PIV that I can run XP on is old but surprisingly usable with SAI because it is the most efficient painting app I have ever used.

Gooner · July 28, 2011, 06:02:25 PM

Well your not wrong about Blender`s steep learning curve. Mind you the new version is so much better than the old. I tried getting used to the old one several times but just could not hack it. The UI was horrible. Then 2.58 came along and I think it`s great. Totally redesigned UI makes navigating around the program so much easier. At last I can explore this program without getting totally befuddled. Still havn`t made much with it yet though apart from an Earth image using Andrew Price`s excellent tut and a load of balls.

rcallicotte · July 28, 2011, 11:46:17 PM

Andrew Price has some great tutorials. One reason I love Blender is the vast and gracious community.

efflux · August 01, 2011, 05:52:46 AM

One problems with Blender (and I think all similar apps are the same) is that when modelling you don't get a good preview of what you are modelling. If it's architecture then it's OK but if it's something organic you need a better preview while working. ZBrush is probably the ultimate for this but even ZBrush still ends up being mesh before you are finished. The voxel painting in 3D Coat is how most organic forms should be modelled. Another angle is Groboto for boolean modelling. This keeps the forms very editable and viewable in it's preview. The way you can control the the mesh seams between shapes when you go to final mesh is brilliant. In Groboto you can get extremely complex shapes very quickly.

I take back what I said about Corel Painter. I had tested version 11. Version 12 is 64 bit and multi core. This is a huge advance. Painter has every bell and whistle imaginable. However, it is still hard to beat SAI which has become my favourite painting app now but I'll be giving Painter 12 a serious trial. SAI has beautifully smooth brushes, is brilliantly responsive to Wacom pen, has an ingenously simple way of creating brush shapes, has beautiful looking paint blend on the canvas and has a good UI amongst some other very well designed features. Tragically it seems there has been no development for almost 4 years. Even although it is not multi core it still performs amazingly fast. It's a pure quality app and beats all the other similar apps by miles.

It's almost certain I'll be getting Windows 7 mainly due to SAI unless Corel Painer 12 performs well but this doesn't work at all under Linux wine. This means I'll have a quad core i7 2600 3.4 GHz at disposal for TG2. The extra speed may entice me back to some TG2 but I'm not sure.

Tangled-Universe · August 01, 2011, 06:19:34 AM

I hope you will keep your interest in TG2, even though you won't use it anymore for a while.
Will be a long while I guess, since TG2 is similar to SAI in terms of speed of development

efflux · August 01, 2011, 06:54:12 AM

I'll try using TG2 again for sure.

Just gave Corel Painter v12 a go. This is on a core duo Macbook so reasonable amount of power. Even with the supposed 5 times speed increase it is still tragically poor. V12 brought it to just usable as far as I'm concerned. I don't see any hope for Painter. The UI is still horrible.

I am used to apps that develop slow or get ditched. I don't know why SAI hasn't been developed further. It's one developer I think. It's actually great as it is. I am assuming it's not multi core or 64 bit (but the brushes are 64 bit) yet it completely blasts Corel Painter away which is now 64 bit multi core. Painter is badly coded and badly designed app as far as I'm concerned. I've tried several times with it. I'd rather use a standard bitmap editing app like Gimp or Photoshop or something. I just want to shut Painter down after a short period but SAI inspires me to paint.

efflux · August 01, 2011, 07:04:11 AM

Here's why SAI is hands down the best. It provides you with the minimum tools to do any painting including vector layers but the tools are all of highest quality and efficiancy with superb response to your pen. It also has a straightforward UI. It doesn't matter how many bells of whistles these programs have if the paint mark you lay down is poor it's not nice to use. You can lay down a huge brushstoke in SAI at massive res with no lag then zoom right in to 100% and it still looks absolutely smooth.

efflux · August 08, 2011, 05:20:39 PM

Andrew has a new free tutorial on how to build a bridge:

http://www.blenderguru.com/

I watched it and as usual contains lots of info about Blender. This one might be useful for TG2. I don't know how he gets the time for all this stuff. He seems to be racing through what Blender can do when hardly anyone else is.

As for drawing apps. I think I'll be using Corel Painter now that I have Windows 7. I railed against it but after some time (bigger learning curve) I've come to the conclusion this is the best Painter ever. Previous versions were bad but not so much this one. This one flies due to 64 bit brushes and multi core. You can do everything in Painter and no other app needed. It also supports rotation of Wacom art pen brush. This is super cool. Never thought I'd ever use it but then I railed against Les Paul guitars for years, now I almost excusively use one. You won't ever catch me saying Windows is great though.

If the cost of Painter is too much then SAI is best. For free Gimp is great. The new Gimp (not the one in distributions) is pretty cool for painting due to reasons that would take too long to explain here. Mypaint is very cool but doesn't have all the features of Gimp. The new Gimp does ora which Mypaint saves to so you can move all your layers between the apps. This is a cool setup.

efflux · August 08, 2011, 05:28:17 PM

Andrew Price never uses procedurals though. Niether does anyone else. This mystifies me because Blender's procedural textures are brilliant and it's simpler than messing with UVs if procedurals can do the job i.e. anything landscape based. My rocks have procedural textures.

Henry Blewer · August 08, 2011, 09:05:30 PM

I like Blender's Materials and procedural textures also. There needs to be a way to export them as UV images for the models.

I have not done too much with Blender in over a year. The interface change threw me off also. I spent a lot of time learning the 2.49 and older interface. I'll pick it up again sometime.

efflux · August 11, 2011, 12:56:08 PM

OK backtracking again.

Painter 12 on Windows is USELESS. Every time you do something that uses more RAM it stays that way and never frees up even when you are finished with the tool. Eventually you are running at slugs pace. Painter is generally terrible on Windows but OK on Mac. My Macbook isn't powerful enough though. Sad because the Painter brushes are cool. Mypaint running on Debian can do the same res as Painter 12 multi core 64 bit but Mypaint is single core. JOKE.

As for Windows 7 in general, that's another joke. I'm back om Debian and Windows will be for TG2 and possibly SAI because SAI just needs a single Wine fix to work on Linux eventually.

I was prepared to forgive the ludicrous install size of Windows 7, even the ludicrous RAM usage but it goes futher. Memory handling is dire as expected. Apps crash in the usual Windows way etc etc. Can't go on the net - always fatal eventually for Winblows. This OS has no chance. My Debian system is so superior it is not funny. I'm using Gimp and Mypaint development versions and they never crash just normal bugs at this stage of develoment.

Lightzone is also useless on Windows. Linux version flies. Anything involving large files, large RAM usage etc is useless. It's tragic that good apps are stuck on this joke of an OS.

Everyone I know is moving to Linux. This is due to me of course. I could have hundreds moving at the rate I'm going here and nobody else around here knows anything about Linux. If I was in this for the money I could be rolling in it. I'm supporting people via phone or email. it's that simple to sort things on Linux. However many of these people I have never heard from again because they have no problems.

efflux · August 11, 2011, 02:03:12 PM

Way off topic from intial thread reason but never mind. Maybe this info is useful to some people here. Don't bother with these crap commercial apps. There is no point anymore.

I've spent months going through all these painting apps. Now I'm implementing almost everything they do in Gimp and Mypaint by building brushes etc that do generally the same thing. SAI is dead because I've looked at how it's brushes achieve the efficient results and I've created the same thing in Gimp except for the fact that Gimp can only mix paint by using primary and secondary colours. It works. It's not actually crucial to have canvas mixing to be honest. Photoshop users dealt with this until very recently and created great work. Mypaint can do it anyway. I'm also creating various textures to use as alphas for paper etc.

I've got hundreds of brushes for Gimp and Mypaint now.

Corel are having a laugh. £274.80 download costs for a broken application.

I'll have to get a website soon for all this material. I could fill an entire website with the findings I now have to basiclly do away with these commercial app painting jokes. I've had a cool domain name for the last ten years that hasn't been used.

Here's some experiments in Mypaint utilizing various textures and alpha techniques:

efflux · August 11, 2011, 02:12:55 PM

OK Guys. Gimp 2.8 is going to be great for painting if I have anything to do with it. You can save the entire tools now. Too complex to explain this but the default brushes in Gimp are terrible and the way things are currently handled as far as paint brushes is concerned is bad but not in the development version. It needs new brushes especially for the new version. I'll have to get a website soon.

Kadri · August 11, 2011, 02:21:42 PM

Efflux , any news for HDR images in Gimp ? What do you use for EXR for example?