I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Community Lead at n8n.
I second to Gryphon’s tutorial wish. In fact, making anything flow on the surface of another mesh would be great. Would help in making clothes or any other such stuff. How do you achieve that?
As of the tutorial in question, thanks! It looks useful.
@Rattle, ruhroh:
The tutorial and the model are certainly not flawless, but this is still a helpful introduction to the new particle system. Remember, some of us are still only tinkering with 2.46, and using 2.45 for everything important. If you know Blender well enough, you can take the info in this tutorial and apply it to much more complex hair setups. I didn’t know I could explicitly place individual hairs, or work with control points in each strand; now that I do, I’m going to have some fun with this.
Thanks Dave!This is great and I was hoping someone would explain how to use the new hair feature. I can hardly wait to play with it. It looks so much easier than the old way.
PS Dave I enjoyed hearing your bird in the back ground. I have a greenwing macaw and 4 chihuahuas and figured I could never record anything with out being drowned out by one or all of them. ;-)
wow, featured AGAIN! thanks! :D perhaps ton will give me a job, eh? ;)
@Byron Kindig: I haven’t messed with feathers at all yet, but if you play with the shape of the strand material settings, you may be able to get a feather-shaped type of thing. I played with it until i got a relatively decent leaf shape, so I’m sure it would work for feathers, as well. And then just make a nice texture for it.
@KritikAll: i would like to oblige you in this request, but unfortunately the original video was lost in an unfortunate hard drive malfunction. any future tutorials i do will be on my website (in addition to the youtube versions), and i’ll try to remember to set an option to download the FLV file.
No, a lot of tutorials are for advanced users.
I just wanted to mention it because it’s a bit strange to make a 20 minute video about eyebrows… you’d expect to get a full hair tut in this time ^^
My eyeslids dont overlap Gryphon. Im not sure if you are animating cartoon style or realistic eyes, but mine were realistic. I gave it its own control bone, weight painted it, and position it so that the base of the bone is at the center of the eyeball, and the tip is where the eyelis is….so when it rotates it follows the curve of the surface.
@hummm, gryphon, joat: that sounds like an easy way to animate the eyelids; my technique is to use shape keys to close the upper and lower lids separately, and then (recently learned) i use the IPO curve drivers to control the motion. this does work with realistic eyeballs, as they’re perfectly round, but as far as cartoonish eyes go, i’d just try out using the lattice deformer to give it the exaggerated skewed shape.
David Ward (we featured his animations here last week) has published a 19-minute video-tutorial on adding and eyebrows to your characters in Blender.
This is very helpful. Definitely useful information. Thanks, Dave! Thanks, Bart!
Another tutorial topic I’d like to see: How to model eyelids that won’t overlap the eyeballs when animated.
I second to Gryphon’s tutorial wish. In fact, making anything flow on the surface of another mesh would be great. Would help in making clothes or any other such stuff. How do you achieve that?
As of the tutorial in question, thanks! It looks useful.
Well, I’ve looked it through and it’s rather for noobs
After I go to particle mode hitting n I get:
System isn’t editable
Dave is cool your advise and link were i can learn in how to use blender really help me – A big thanks.
Aleksander:
You have to “Set Editable” in the Particle System Panel.
The model has a lot of triangles. It needs some better edgeloops…
@Rattle, ruhroh:
The tutorial and the model are certainly not flawless, but this is still a helpful introduction to the new particle system. Remember, some of us are still only tinkering with 2.46, and using 2.45 for everything important. If you know Blender well enough, you can take the info in this tutorial and apply it to much more complex hair setups. I didn’t know I could explicitly place individual hairs, or work with control points in each strand; now that I do, I’m going to have some fun with this.
Thanks Dave!This is great and I was hoping someone would explain how to use the new hair feature. I can hardly wait to play with it. It looks so much easier than the old way.
PS Dave I enjoyed hearing your bird in the back ground. I have a greenwing macaw and 4 chihuahuas and figured I could never record anything with out being drowned out by one or all of them. ;-)
One more. Is there a way to do feathers with the new hair system?
Downloadable movies please, fellows. I -hate- all that Y-Tube sh*t! I want to view this Offline!
@KrikikAll: come on, it’s not that difficult to find a solution for that, is it?
wow, featured AGAIN! thanks! :D perhaps ton will give me a job, eh? ;)
@Byron Kindig: I haven’t messed with feathers at all yet, but if you play with the shape of the strand material settings, you may be able to get a feather-shaped type of thing. I played with it until i got a relatively decent leaf shape, so I’m sure it would work for feathers, as well. And then just make a nice texture for it.
@Rattle: Um, aren’t MOST tutorials for noobs?
@KritikAll: i would like to oblige you in this request, but unfortunately the original video was lost in an unfortunate hard drive malfunction. any future tutorials i do will be on my website (in addition to the youtube versions), and i’ll try to remember to set an option to download the FLV file.
Thanx Egan!
No, a lot of tutorials are for advanced users.
I just wanted to mention it because it’s a bit strange to make a 20 minute video about eyebrows… you’d expect to get a full hair tut in this time ^^
My eyeslids dont overlap Gryphon. Im not sure if you are animating cartoon style or realistic eyes, but mine were realistic. I gave it its own control bone, weight painted it, and position it so that the base of the bone is at the center of the eyeball, and the tip is where the eyelis is….so when it rotates it follows the curve of the surface.
@hummm, gryphon, joat: that sounds like an easy way to animate the eyelids; my technique is to use shape keys to close the upper and lower lids separately, and then (recently learned) i use the IPO curve drivers to control the motion. this does work with realistic eyeballs, as they’re perfectly round, but as far as cartoonish eyes go, i’d just try out using the lattice deformer to give it the exaggerated skewed shape.
dave: your solution over ipo drivers doesn’t work with advanced rigs…
Gryphon, have a look at Mancandy, Bassam has done a good job as always
Very nice tutorial. Eyebrows are hard to make, but this will help me.