Blender Creations: How to Sprinkle Some Fun in Characters

Fox Renderfarm, a powerful but affordable Blender render farm. This article is compiled from 3D artist Leroy's sharing of Cycles for Blender to create pixel style. The focus of the pixel style performance is on the coloring, that is, to extract the required pixels from a delicate picture and make it with a pixelated style. Although in Cinema 4D, the coloring using MotionGraph can be quickly completed, but Leroy wants to achieve it in Blender. And Blender's Cycles renderer is very powerful. Since Cycles comes with a mapping sampling node, making pixel-style things is also very simple. The mapping sampling of the material uses the From Dupli function of the UV Map node. As for production, there are two ways to achieve: 1. Use parent copy, 2. Use particle copy; Two ways, the controllability of particles More, it can simply produce more complex and many effects of changes. The production steps are as follows: Method 1 Create a new plane in the scene, magnify it 5 times, and enter the edit mode for the third subdivision. Return to the object level, create a new plane (the default state is selected after new creation), hold down Shift to select the plane just now, and select Object from the menu, that is, set the large plane as the parent object of the small plane. Select the parent object, in the object properties of the properties panel, set the copy mode to Faces, check Scale, and set the zoom value to 0.4, as shown in the following figure， Select the parent object and keep it selected by default in edit mode, then select Unwrap on the menu. If the model is relatively simple, just use auto split UV, The production of the model is almost complete. The texture part will be started below. Next, you need to select the sub-object, click New in the material node to create a new texture, delete the default diffuse shading, and add a self-illuminating shading. Create a new image texture node (here you need to use the image material to be pixelated), add a UV texture node, check the From Dupli option, and connect it to the texture node, Shift + R preview rendering in 3D view, the effect is as follows, Is it very simple? Of course, you can also use video animation and other materials to create pixel animation. Next, let's look at the method of making particles, or use the above scene and material. Method 2 Select the child object of the scene, then add the parent object, select clear parent in the pop-up menu, and set the copy in the parent object attribute to None, select the child object, G10 will move it to the side, as shown in the figure below, Select a large plane, in the particle properties panel properties, click New, create a new particle system, set the particle type to Hair, and set it to Object in the Render tab, select the small plane, uncheck Emitter, as the picture shows, Turn on the advanced hair, and set the initial orientation to None in the spin tab. The preview effect is as follows, The next step is to adjust the particles: size, distribution, number, etc. Only some important operations are demonstrated below. The default particle distribution is messy and needs to be adjusted neatly. In the emitter, cancel randomization and set the particle/face to 1, so that only one particle is generated on each face, and finally adjust the size of the particles as needed. The plasticity of the particles is very strong. Although the pixels in the above case are all square, they can be made into various shapes such as triangles, quadrilaterals, and circles after adjustment, and they can also increase in size, rotation, and random distribution particle. In addition to using UV map nodes for texture mapping, texture coordinate nodes can also be used, and there are also options from the copy. When copying particles, in order to avoid overlapping of particles, it is best to set the number of particles emitted to the number of faces of the mesh emitter (in edit mode, you can see in the information panel).

As soon as Nintendo Switch launches Animal Crossing: New Horizons, it has been loved by game fans all over the world. Due to the epidemic, many people can enjoy traveling abroad through games during quarantine, which makes the Switch a hit again. And many CG artists eager to create many fan art or amazing creations. Korean designer Seungho Jeong (Neon3D) was invited to talk about his latest work "Miniature style cute character 3d artwork" (Soondol) and talk about the toy model made for the animation of "Molang". Seungho Jeong (Neon3D) Seungho Jeong, from South Korea, is good at product design and 3D printing. Most of them are created in Fusion360 and Blender. He is currently designing toy models for "Molang". He also runs a YouTube channel to share the process behind the scenes. Miniature style cute character 3d artwork (Soondol) Year of completion: 2020 Software: Blender Tell us about the artwork. Seungho Jeong: Recently I was playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and I was attracted by the cute graphic style in the game, so I proposed a series of creative projects, with my original character "Soon-dol" as the main character, and designed a series of The miniature style house in Mori. I use Cycle render in Blender to create. It is worth mentioning that instead of using texture mapping, I changed the color of the object or made some images using Illustrator, and used Blender's Shrinkwrap modifier to place the image on the character's face. The most difficult part of this work is the lighting effect. After all, to create "emits natural light from the outside of the window" is a test of the creator's Lighting skills. At first, I put a glass on the window, but then I found that no glass looks more natural, so I had to take it away. What is your usual job? Seungho Jeong: Mainly making character toy models. For example, the "Molang" series is currently on sale. I designed many different sets of costumes for the character, including Halloween, New Year, Hanbok and other styles. The main creative process is the use of product design software Fusion 360. It has a free-form modeling function, similar to Blender's modeling method. I also made an introduction video for the company's YouTube channel "Behind Molang". First, I redesigned all 2D characters into 3D. Since our company is not an animation studio but a character commodity company, most of the 3D creation process of characters is the process of making plastic models, such as Fusion 360 (some are designed directly in Blender). When creating images in 3D, as mentioned above, instead of using texture mapping, we change the color of the object or use Illustrator to create the image, which is created in accordance with the process of making dolls and doll models. Is animation different from product design? Seungho Jeong: Making animation is very difficult, after all, that is not my major. Although product production and animation look very similar, there are still some system differences. Therefore, I have to learn by myself and complete the animation creation, so I simplified the character movement as much as possible. Can you share your creative tips? Seungho Jeong: If you want to create on a hard surface, Fusion 360 is recommended, which can be modeled for the accuracy of the size, which is very convenient. In addition, the ShrinkWrap modifier is used to attach the image to Blender without any texture drawing. Who is your Favorite artist? Seungho Jeong: Absolutely my boss Hye-Ji Yoon, he is the character designer of "Molang". And Molang's animation is currently being played on Netflix, which is receiving the attention of the global audience! I respect my boss very much and want to be a well-known creator like him. Seungho Jeong’s Artstion: `https://www.artstation.com/neon3d`

With the development of computer technology, it has been widely used in the field of graphic design, so that ordinary people also have the opportunity to come into contact with Computer Graphics technology referred to as "CG technology". Computer Graphic Image is also computer 3D animation technology, referred to as "CGI". Whether it is "Toy Story", "The Lion King" or "1917", the success of these world-class blockbusters can not be separated from the establishment of models in 3D software, and then to visual effects, post-production software composition, Editing, and more. Image via blendercn.org As a new star in 3D software, blender integrates modeling, sculpting, binding, particles, animation, etc., and is a software that supports commercial creation for free forever. So how do we use blender to output high-quality images? Blender has 2 renderers that can convert a 3D scene into a 2D image. - Eevee is a physics-based real-time renderer. - Cycles is a physically-based ray-tracing renderer. Use plugins to add more third-party rendering engines. Each renderer has its own rendering settings to control rendering quality and performance. And the rendering effect is determined by the camera, lighting,and materials, which also determine the quality of the output images. Image via blendercn.org Here is the Cycles renderer that comes with Blender as an example. As a GPU-based rendering engine, rendering effects have become more and more mature, and its speed is much faster than the CPU renderer. So where does it affect the output image quality? Sampling The sampling method determines how the light is calculated. The light is emitted from the camera into the scene and bounces back and forth until they find a light source, such as a light object, a glowing object, or the ambient background light. Number of light path traces for a single pixel in the final render. The more samples there are, the less noise there will be in the result and the more accurate it will be. Path tracking The rendering attribute is the amount of light emitted from the camera to each pixel. The view attribute is used for scene rendering in the view. A value of 32 means that each pixel will be tracked by 32 rays.) Noise Noise in the image will greatly affect the image quality because 32 beams of light per pixel are not enough to produce a high-quality image (To reduce the noise by 50%, double the number of lights, so the rendering time will also double, depending on the computer configuration to set the value, at least 1024 if you want a better effect. Rendering properties The rendering properties greatly affect the rendering quality, try to adjust to the maximum value that the view can reach, and adjust the view back to 32 to maximize the quality. Optical Path Length It refers to the value of the number of bounces to track the path of each beam. The difference between 0 and the maximum will be very large. Camera Properties Camera size: It needs a proper ratio and size, and the focal length needs to be adjusted according to the content of the image. The appropriate size can display the details of the Depth of field. Depth of field: The choice of lens will affect the depth of field details. The depth of field determines how far away the object will be displayed clearly. Aperture radius: determines how far the object in the radius is clear, and it will become blurred Focus: Focus needs to be adjusted. Set important objects in the image as axes and adjust the appropriate aperture radius to show the correct object to the viewer. If you want to improve the quality of the images, you can try some of the suggestions above. Improving the quality of images is not something that can be improved by reading an article. Continuous learning and practice is the best way. Cycles is undoubtedly a young renderer. Blender is also constantly improving some of the features of Cycles, and it has a lot of room for development in the future. As your TPN-accredited cloud render farm, Fox Renderfarm supports most mainstream 3D software, renderers, and plugins, including Blender, 3ds Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, Clarisse, and more. We always provide fast, secure and affordable cloud rendering services to reduce your rendering time. Welcome to the blender render farm get a $ 25 free trial.