Blender Art Magazine #7
Sandra Gilbert writes: We have come full circle and are proud to present our 1st Anniversary issue of Blenderart Magazine. We have worked hard this year to bring you the best of our community’s talent and knowledge.
In an effort to keep the file size of the magazine smaller, we have made the blend files used in this issue a separate zip file for those who wish to download it.
Also be sure to check out our gallery of wonderful images submitted by very talented members of our community.
Table of Contents:
- Artistic Glow Using Blender’s Compositor Nodes
- DOF Using Blender’s Compositor Nodes
- Creating a Realistic Environment for BGE
- Blender and Displacement Mapping
- Blender and Vector Blur
Available Blenderart Mag Mirrors:
Mirrors available shortly:
I want to personally thank you for all the hard work you people do on this magazine in not only continuing with it (Congratulations on your first year!) but also the high quality of every edition. You are an asset to Blender and its many users. Keep up the good work and I look forward to next year’s issues!
Brilliant!
woow, and Mathias’ image is on the front page! Great great :D
Wow i cant wait for this to download
stupid dialup
Ouch! Typo on the front cover! (“An Realistic Environment”).
But seriously, thanks very much. I think Blender Art is a first rate publication and I always look forward to a new issue. You guys ought to consider someday collecting what you’ve put out so far and offering a print version. I would certainly spring for that and I’m sure many others would also.
As a matter of fact, you might consider doing something like that through this service:
http://www.lulu.com/
They will take your .pdf files and create actual books, which they will then sell online for you. I haven’t used the service but it seems very reasonable. It seems like it might be a perfect venue for a Blender Art Compendium to celebrate the first year…
Nice project.
A bit of criticism, like always: ;)
The displacement mapping tutorial is a bit wrong. It states that displacement mapping creates additional geometry according to the displacement map’s properties. Have fun watching the newbies trying to displacement-map their default cube, and getting desperate ;)
I would also suggest using much more leading throughout the magazine. Right now, it all looks like character soup and is pretty hard to read.
BTW: The scribus guys publically made fun of DTPBlender on their mailing list, emphasizing the “professionality” of their tool… Looks like they need to be more careful ;) http://pub.instinctive.de/scribus.png
Or well, maybe it’s just my stone-old Acrobat Reader ;)
@Tony:
Yeah, I see that! I wasn’t given a file to proof for that…
Another typo is the two R’s on the end of Blur.
Thanks for all the nice comments.
And I just saw the typos on the front cover. I fixed them once, wonder why it didn’t save. Yet another example of “Murphy’s Law”. We reach our anniversary issue, take extra care to have no typos, and … BAM right on the front cover for everyone to see.
Sigh, proof, proof and proof again.
404 Not Found
The requested URL /BA-Magazine/blenderart_mag-7.zip does not exist.
Hmmm…
You might have ctried to download as I was uploading a corrected version. Try again.
The http://apollux-designs.com/BA-Magazine/NewsStand.php mirror has an updated/corrected version.
http://www.blenderart.org will be updated shortly as will the other mirrors.
Yeppers, that did it. Thanks!
Yeah the first guy’s right – I’ve been kinda taking these for granted but when I saw the link on the screen I was like ” gasp! Yes!”
Congrats for the first year – looking forward for the 10th aniversery ;-)
I find this is a fantastic version of a paperless magazin and
I am very happy to see this node-storys!! Hope that are coming more about nodes!
The info is good, and the tutorials are for the most part easy to follow. Nice.
Trouble is, the magazine suffers from an overall lack of proofreading. Personally, I find the numerous spelling and grammar errors in each article very distracting. It also makes it look less professional overall; you’d expect this kind of English on a forum, maybe, but not in something calling itself a magazine.
I have to agree with frr. The overall style does reveal that this magazine is authored by more-or-less 18-year-olds who don’t have a lot of experience with writing. Added to that the not-so-perfect layout (esp. the ‘character soup’ – see my previous post), there’s much room for improvement.
However, let’s not expect too much. After all, these guys don’t have the ambition to be a full-blown print magazine. It’s nice to be able to download a little PDF every now and then and have a nice read anyway :)
Lol, as usual, we have proofing errors. But we are constantly trying to improve. Eventually we will get it to the point where there are no errors when released.
Until then keep in mind, while you are learning blender from the magazine, we are learning how to make magazines. :p You wouldn’t think it was that hard, but you would be surprised.
Oh, I don’t doubt for a second that a lot of effort goes into it. All you need to do is hire a good proofreader and most of the problems will be gone.
@Alexander Ewering
I wrote the article on displacement mapping and I wasn’t sure what you meant in your post:
“The displacement mapping tutorial is a bit wrong. It states that displacement mapping creates additional geometry according to the displacement map’s properties. Have fun watching the newbies trying to displacement-map their default cube, and getting desperate ;)”
In other software programs (Maya, Max, etc..) displacement maps create additional polygons, so I assumed Blender 3D does the same. Am I right?
Also I’d like to say that somewhere along the line my article became very deformed compared to my original design submission. If you are interested in seeing it, here’s the link:
http://www.mikewach.com/additions/mapping.pdf
@frr:
Please don’t insult the hard work of others, thank you.
There are proofreaders for the magazine. In fact, we now have about three or four. The fact of the matter is that many of the articles are written by people whose first language is not English. Blenderart magazine is an international publication so, that is to be expected. Also, like you said, with proofreaders “MOST of the problems will be gone”. I can assure you that, had you seen the original articles, you would agree that “most of the problems” are gone. We also don’t want it to read like a thesis, nor do we want to be in the business of rewriting articles.
@frr:
BTW, the door is always open for you to participate as one of the proofreaders…put your expertise to work.
Kernon:
I’m sorry that you took my post as an insult; I was merely giving my opinion on the strengths and weaknesses of the magazine.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean with your ‘thesis’ comment, but if you’re saying that you like the result as it is, then that’s up to you. I was just using the comments box to . . . well, comment.
And yes, I’d be glad to proofread an article or two for you.
Mike: No, Blender does not create additional geometry. Not trying to be harsh, but if you write a specialized tutorial on a particular topic, please be sure that you *know* what you’re writing about. Anyone can guess that “Disp” means “Displacement”. The important piece of information – how to get the additional necessary geometry – would just have been the thing that would justify a tutorial at all.
Nice Tutorial Mike W. I haven’t read the mag. version yet, guess I don’t have to. This was great for me. Thanks
PS. I would buy the Mag. Also.
@Alexander Ewering
You’re right. I never tried displacement mapping on something as low-poly as a cube. You need to subdivide your polygons manually if the geometry isn’t already at a high enough resolution.
I will revise the article.
I personally think we should make a revised version of the entire issue, it needs a little love… I’d be more than willing to help
@Gary Kurtz
Thanks for the support!
why dont U have stuff about using DarkTree Simbionts
w\ Blender.