Category: artists

Posted on

CLASS: Introduction to 3D Rendering with Blender

January 28th, 1-6 pm @ Hive76

Download or create a 3D model of your choice and the free and open source Blender (v2.61 or later, http://www.blender.org/) and I’ll take you through the process of texturing, lighting, rendering, compositing, and post-processing to make a photo-realistic 3D render.

You’ll learn the ins and outs of the interface in Blender, a professional strength, free and open source program for 3D rendering, animation, modeling, texturing, compositing, and post processing.

The class will be broken up into 3 parts:
Part I: I’ll start from the very basics of learning the interface
Part 2: We’ll all go through texturing and lighting a basic scene together
Part 3: Each person will move on to importing, texturing, lighting, rendering, and compositing their own model of choice for the remainder of the class.

Class is limited to 10 people to help ensure you get enough attention.

Prereqs
Hardware: You must bring a computer with Blender v2.61 installed and a 3-button mouse. Any computer that can take Blender v2.61 will work (OS X, Linux, Windows are all fine!), but newer ones will render faster giving you better feedback as you work.
Human: No previous knowledge of Blender is necessary.

Here are a couple links to see some of what you can do in Blender:
rendering:
Soda Cans
Batmobile
OMG Pwnies

Eventually you’ll probably want to do animations and motion tracking (NOT COVERED IN THIS INTRO CLASS):
Motion Tracking on Youtube

Some places to grab legally free 3D models for the class. Smaller file sizes will ensure you will be able to manipulate the interface with zero glitches.
http://grabcad.com/
http://www.blendswap.com/
http://thingiverse.com/
Blender.org

Posted on

My Little Pwnies

Some more fun with Blender. Introducing… My Little Pwnies. enjoy.

My Little Pwnies. Sure, they LOOK cute. But they can frag you like nobody's business.

original pony models are here (no longer available, but i have copies if you want lemme know).

Posted on

Open-Source Photorealism, Blender and the Cycles Rendering Engine

See... rendering is fun!! I downloaded a partially completed batmobile model from Blendswap.com (thanks Xuan!), but it wasn't ready for primetime yet. So I segmented, textured, and lit everything (including the Tron style wheels), before rendering it with Cycles. Everything was done in Blender 2.61 FTW.

Blender continues to be my favorite open-source 3D modeling and rendering software package. It has seen tremendous growth over the last couple of years, moving from a fledgling modeling project to a blockbuster production quality modeling, animation, lighting, rendering, and post-processing toolkit.

It’s snowballing into a truly stunning software package. So, there’s no better time than now to teach you how to use it!

In about two weeks I’ll be offering an Intro Blender interface, rendering, compositing, and video motion tracking class right here at Hive76. I’m looking at a 2-day class January 28th-29th, probably 4 hours each day. The beauty is you don’t need to have any 3D modeling skills… there are a TON of LEGALLY FREE and INSANELY DETAILED 3D models widely available. Pick your favorite model and I’ll help you work with it over 2-days to get you positioning, rendering, texturing, and lighting. Hopefully on day 2 we’ll have enough time to try some basic animations inserted over video recorded from meatspace.

Any questions, come to our weekly Wednesday night open house and see what we’re talking about.

Posted on

Maker Collider Event with NextFab Studio: TUESDAY

Option 1) Lasercut, Laser engrave, and LED-light-up your very own Snowflake
Option 1) Lasercut, Laser engrave, and LED-light-up your very own Snowflake

Join us on TUESDAY, December 20th, 7 pm – Midnight

Meet-and-Make, Hive76 and NextFab Studio Members
@ http://NextFabStudio.com/ @ 3711 Market Street

This “Maker Collider” event will be a great opportunity to make awesome stuff.

We had proposed these projects:
All details are here on the Wiki

After reviewing the projects here and those proposed by NextFab members it sounds like we will be doing some form of the Chess boards, the snowflakes, some robotics, and a bunch of laser-engraving. But what if you don’t like those? Come by anyway and you can rally troops for helping you on your own project(s).

NextFab Studio will have these staff members on hand throughout the event:
Chrinstine : Textile and Industrial Design ( fabric knowledge, product design,cad, sewing )
Ian : Electronics (pcb design/fabrication, coding, wiring, soldering, etc.)
Seth : Mechanical Engineer (handtools, cad, product design)
Brandon : Multi-Media Designer ( 3d printing, graphic design, product design, cinematography, cad)

Anything you want to do, you can do. AWESOME.

Check out all their equipment.

Oh, and there will be food too. Be there at 7 pm!!

To Join in on the Discussion, please join our mailing list

Posted on

Hive76 Open House at NextFab Studio — A very Hacking Wintertime

We are excited to announce a very hacking winter-time Hive76 open-house hosted by NextFabStudio:

Hive76 Open House
December 20th, 7pm – Midnight
@ http://NextFabStudio.com/ @ 3711 Market Street

This Hack-tacular event will be at NextFabStudio and will get us free access for the night to some of their most awesome tools, such as: CNC plasma, CNC embroidery, e-textiles, electronics, 3D printers, shop bots… Check out all their equipment.

There will be food too.

So Awesome.

Now we need to brainstorm project ideas, let’s start things off in this email thread. Please reply-all so the proper NextFab people (cc’ed above) can tell us if this is possible and, if so, the logistics for how to make it happen.

All details are here on the Wiki

I’m proposing the first project (we can have many of them!!)…

A double-set of Hive76 chess pieces and boards. This will make use of their lasercutters, embroidery equipment, and possibly the electronics and 3D printers too. I really want a double-set (4 different colors) so we can play Bughouse Chess (You will love this game)

If we get really creative maybe some magnetics and electronics could be enabled as well.

Let’s get hacking!

To Join in on the Discussion, please join our mailing list

Posted on

Pass Me Another One of Those Hive76s

Desktop Background, Pass Me Another One of Those Hive76s
Rendered Hive76 Desktop Background/Wallpaper

Well as we all know I’m completely infatuated with Blender, the open-source awesome-o 3D modeler, renderer, animator, and general all-around nice program. I’ve been making tons of high-res schematic diagrams for work related stuff, but it’s been so much fun that I’ve been exploring the intensely excellent Blender 3D interwebs community of fantastic artists and professional nerds.

So when I saw this tutorial video and instructional on an Energy Drink Ad by Andrew Price at Blender Guru, of course I immediately saw an opportunity for our favorite friendly local Maker Space to star in it’s own desktop background.

The Hive76 Can Label
The Hive76 Can Label

Adjusting the available .blend file and related stuff took a couple of hours, adjusting the rendering took a couple hours, and the final rendering took over an hour (2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, not the fastest kid on the block anymore).

As you may know, the original Blender rendering engine is being deprecated, in favor of the new hyper amaziness that is the Cycles Rendering Engine. But before we leave behind the Blender Internal renderer for good, it’s nice to have one last Hurrah.

If you want to make your own version, here’s a package of all the source files (56.4 MB), they retain Andrew Price’s Creative Commons Non-Commercial Non-Ported Attribution License and I apply the same to my files that are in there. Rendered with Blender 2.60.0 build 41438.

Enjoy!

Posted on

Monthly Monday Microcontroller Madness: Motors!


After speaking to a few folks that expressed an interest in the MMMM workshop, it became apparent (a) most folks were newbs who want to learn the basics and (b) everyone wants to control motors.  Excellent!  We’ll do that.

Although motor control is potentially a vast and complex topic, with highly specialized branches, the basics are fairly easy to learn — and they’ll take you pretty far.   So … we’ll be prepared to present the following items:

  • DC motors
  • H-bridge circuits — these let puny microcontrollers run fairly powerful motors
  • Stepper motors — just a little more complex to program than DC motors and they use H-bridge circuits too
  • Quadrature Encoders — these are a  simple and accurate way to read the position of something

We’ll also try to discuss some organizational items — like the logistics of future workshops and the use of the MMMM GitHub, so that we can build up assets collectively, share them with the world and manage changes and contributions in a free-and-easy-but-organized way.

If you are coming , please bring:

  • Yourself — If you’re a newb, welcome — If you’re an MCU Yoda, then attend you must and wisdom to newbs impart
  • Some ideas
  • A laptop if you have one
  • You may want to install VMWare Player or VMWare Fusion before you arrive
  • An MCU development kit if you have one or …
  • Some money if you don’t.  We’ll have some development kits that you can buy.  Plan on at least $10 for the kits and some parts that you can use for small learning projects.
  • A bread-board if you want to build some live circuits to keep.  We’ll have breadboards to loan, but if you want to take one home, it has to be one that arrived with you.

    • That’s about it — see you all Monday.  To whet your appetite, there is some prototype code below for reading a quadrature encoded position detector (not really elegant enough for a final effort, but it’s a start).  We’ll have you writing stuff like this in no-time.

    Continue reading “Monthly Monday Microcontroller Madness: Motors!”

    Posted on

    Art at Hive76

    It’s not all about circuits and microcontrollers and chemistry at Hive76; we love art and we love making art in an incredibly dynamic environment that has become a second home for many of us. With the hustle and bustle of an active workshop, not a lot of people notice the artwork scattered around our humble space. Some is from our members, some is from artists in our building, and all of it is a delightful expression of the duality of art and engineering that makes us what we are: hackers.

    Background: photo of statue at Hoover Dam. Foreground: our stereo for all da beats.
    A note left by some friends
    A bad joke. So bad, it's wonderful.
    The origin of this print escapes me at the moment, but I definitely love it.
    A few prints of Philly's own City Hall
    A colorful selection of whimsical 3D printed objects.
    Even a piece of cardboard is art in the right context.
    An unfortunately blurry of an intriguing concept. Samples of textiles as if they are samples of microbes, or insects.
    Urban abstract, from our favorite neighbor, the one we know as "G"
    Electrically conductive painting with surface mount LEDs. Unfortunately, the lights no longer work.
    Another conductive ink print, an earlier prototype for the previous print.

     

    Posted on

    Get Grossed Out This Thursday!


    Update: Online ticket sales are closed. A limited number of tickets will be available tonight to PAFA members and those who want to sign up for membership.

    The other day, Sean mentioned that we’re helping with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts’ After Dark event this Thursday 3/31, called “Grossed Out”. Here’s another teaser.

    PAFA has been opening up their beautiful, cavernous spaces on North Broad Street so people can get down with music, drinks and hands-on diy projects, all surrounded by super classy art. This Thursday’s event, Grossed Out, celebrates the famed “Gross Clinic” and PAFA’s new exhibit Anatomy/Academy. The exhibit examines “how Philadelphia’s dynamic art and science communities… fostered knowledge of the human body… transformed the attitudes of the public towards mental and physical health, and challenged conceptions about beauty.” Music and body-bending entertainment are courtesy of the Olde City Sideshow. Yes, glass eaters at the Academy!

    Hive76 and The Hacktory are building four (!) different activities for this Thursday’s event. The Hacktory has posted some updates on our progress. Here are descriptions of the activities:

    Continue reading “Get Grossed Out This Thursday!”