By Blender is the top of the line FREE 3D modeling and animation program. Once again the open source community shows us that free doesn’t mean worse.
At the moment Blender can emulate with expensive programs such as 3DMAX and Maya.
You can download Blender for free on the official website.
Moving along here are few of the most useful tips for beginner Blender users (not novices though)hoping to help you with your projects.
Rendering part of the sculpted scene
Sometimes when sculpting a complex object you will want to make some adjustments to a part of it. Here’s how you render just that exact part: Go into camera mode and press Shift+B. This allows you to use the cross hair to simply select the portion of the sculpt that you wish to edit, press Shift+B again and drag the portion you just rendered outside of the camera window.
Getting an alpha mask of your object: in your render window simply press “A” : by doing this will reveal the alpha mask. From here you have 2 options.
Option 1: Just take a print screen and edit it in any image editor
Option2: Enable the Do Composite button (you can find this in blender buttons), go to the note editor and switch to composite nodes then enable using nodes, connect the alpha with the composite and then just render the image. From this you can proceed to save it as usual.
Mirror Correctly
Often ,when mirroring an object you will find that the mirrored object is not where it should be. This is why: Blender’s mirror modifier works relative to the center of the object you are mirroring.You can see the center of the object as a small pink dot. If you move mesh far from the dot and then try to mirror it you will end up with 2 far apart objects.
How can you fix this?
1. Go in object mode
2. Click Object > Transform > Center New.
The center has now been adjusted and you can move on to mirroring it with good results.
Saving multiple versions of the same object by adding a number to the file name
If you want to save the same project but in multiple versions here is an easy way to do.
Save the first version adding the number “1″ at the end of the name , for example BirdSculpt1.blend. Then when you have made changes and you want to save the next version, click on Save As and hit the “+” button. This will automatically add 1 to the previous version and save it, using the previous example you will end up with the file BirdSculpt2.blend.
Comparing changes easy
When you want to compare changes that you have made to your project you’ll be happy to find out Blender allows you to do that in a fast way.This is done by storing a render in a temporary buffer.
How it’s done: render your object then place your mouse cursor above the render window, hit the key “J” . Go ahead and make the changes that you want to your project and re-render it. When you wish to compare the changes hit the key “J” again. Doing this will allow you to switch between your “before changes” project and the changed one.
Filling a “hole” in your mesh: to do this simply press Shift+F.
Selecting an object that is “masked” behind another: to do this, simply press the Alt key and click your right mouse button.
As of April 16 the official Blender Conference has been announced on the official Blender website. It will take place in Amsterdam, Netherlands on the last weekend of October(29-30-31).
A great opportunity for both beginner and advanced users to meet, share tips and party. As usual Blender developers get free tickets. To qualify as a developer, you only need to have 2 patches submitted that have been applied.