3D Fun!

Well, I've recently downloaded Blender and have been taking a stab at learning how to create 3D images (and possibly animations).  I have always had somewhat of a creative side; finding joy in drawing and painting quiet a bit in my younger days.  Due to time constraints and limitations in working space, breaking out the old paint set and easel isn't that feasible for me.  Plus the cleanup, nope.  Takes too long.  Ok, so I'm lazy.  Don't judge. :)

Anyways, I have been playing with digital painting in Gimp and have always been interested in what goes in 3D design and production.  Seeing as how I am a huge proponent of 'Open-Source' software, I figured I would try and learn in an open-source environment. 

The tools I use are: Blender 2.5 Alpha (has a nice new interface, and works pretty well too), The Gimp, and a program I stumbled on by accident: MakeHuman.  So far I have modeled some very basic things in Blender, but have been very proud of my accomplishment of adding fur to the pre-modeled monkey head that comes with Blender using a great tutorial site at: http://www.blendercookie.com/

I have yet to attempt modeling a human (they were always my weak spot in illustrating).  A long time ago I had tinkered with an old version of Poser; which did a great job creating and posing 3D models of people.  However, lacking $250 dollars to purchase a recent copy of Poser to help in my learning process, I found MakeHuman.

MakeHuman seems to do a lot of what Poser does.  It allows for quick and simple creation of human 3D models.  It allows pretty easy customization using sliders and toggles to configure the model the way you would like.  MakeHuman also allows exporting the models for use in other 3D packages such as Blender, 3D Studio Max, Wavefront, etc.  The setup reminds me a lot of character creation tools employed in video games.  But you seem to have quite a bit of control over the final outcome.  The models generated are pretty high-poly count models as well; so they should look pretty good when imported into your editor of choice.

The great things about MakeHuman: it does everything I need it to do at this time quickly, easily, and for free.  MakeHuman is Open-Source Software and has cross-platform support for Windows, Linux, and Mac.

There are other alternatives for people looking to break into 3D modeling and design.  If you're interested you should check out: Daz 3D Studio and Caligari TrueSpace (which are both free 3D software packages with great support).

Happy Surfing!