Looking for cool organic Blender materials? Check out this thread on BlenderArtists.org. It’s a golden oldie that started almost three years ago. It contains lots of samples and quite a few .blends for download. Some of these materials are not easy on the stomach if you just woke up which is a big compliment to the creators! ;-)
Here’s a resource you may know about already, but still definitely worth a mention! The Blender Open Material Repository is a site with over 200 native Blender materials available for download. Subjects range from typical (Car Paint) to the downright bizarre (Brains).
Cellstorm has been collecting all kinds of Blender-related information in a FreeMind MindMap, which he has now published online.
Do you remember the article, about mocap files? Where PlantPerson talks about motion capture technology and point to us a tutorial, showing how to use mocap files with Blender? Well, in this tutorial a very large library of free mocap files is used. We just found another huge mocap library, with a lot of files to download for free.
Motion capture is a special animation technique that allows human actors to define the movements of an animated character. Special cameras track the actor’s movements and can then transfer them onto a CG character. The result is a simple yet realistic method of animating. Unfortunately, however, motion capture systems are very expensive, far too expensive for the hobbyist. That’s where this great resource comes in!
If you ever needed a good texture for a scene, you probably know that good texture library is very important for any 3d artist. Even if most professionals recommend not using pre-made textures, we need something to get started. A good place to get started with textures is a website called Texture Archive, which offers a lot of free textures.
Finding models to use in our scenes created in Blender sometimes may be a bit difficult, since most 3D libraries use the 3ds file format. When we import these models in Blender, in most cases we have to work with triangular faces and some other artifacts. But now there is a very good model library called Scopia`s resources, which is a 3D models library with models available in the “.blend” file format, and with textures!
A new resource for artists that use Blender to create architectural visualization is available, with downloads of furniture models, tutorials and scripts. All this is provided by a site called LineDstudio.
Here are some more interesting facial expression reference sites.
This site is is 2D which I think makes it easier to see the facial movements. You can also select combinations such as the eyes up or down or the mouth – smile, sneer etc. You’ll need Java to run this one.
This game allows a player to experiment with the different effects of moving separate facial parts. In teaching someone how a face conveys emotion, you may choose to isolate one part, such as turning brows down to indicate disapproval, or up for surprise.
Can you see the difference between a fake and a genuine smile? This small test on the BBC Science and Nature website lets you test yourself with 20 different persons smiling. This is not just a fun psychology test – for an animator it’s a little gem of reference material.
