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Blender Tip: Mesh to curve

Here is a Blender 2.81 tip I had to re-learn today.

I started a new mesh and created a string of vertices. After I bit of work, I realized that a curve would be much better. It is pretty straight forward to convert a mesh to a curve, but the curve is little more than then the mesh by another name. What I was looking for was the vector handles to smooth out the corners.

The trick is to convert the new curve spline type to a Bezier curve. The vector handles then appear. Continue reading “Blender Tip: Mesh to curve”

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Soccer Goal

I created a soccer goal in Blender a while back. Most of the goals I see available on CGTrader have nets that look like they were strong tight and frozen in place. I tried to correct creating a mesh and using the fabric simulator to create realistic slack. I then removed the faces and converted the edges to curves. I also added details like the corner brackets and the nets clips. Continue reading “Soccer Goal”

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Blender Quick Tip – Photogrammetry Lighting

Photogrammetry scans already come with their own lighting. When using these scans in Blender, you can get a natural look and speeds up Blender with a few clicks.

shading-blender-photogrammetry

  1. Put the 3D viewport into the solid mode. You can click the solid circle in the upper right corner or hit the “Z” key and then slide your mouse to the right.
  2. Click the shading option arrow next to the shading modes in the upper right corner
  3. The lighting default is “Studio”. Change it to “Flat”
  4. The color default is “Material”. Change it to “Texture”
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Power Switch Model

A new model has been posted on CGTrader. It’s a rocker switch with power on and off markings. It was modeled in Blender 2.80, but it was rendered in the Blender 2.81. Then new version of blender has a noise removal node for the compositor. It works great.

Render 2.pngThe new noise removal node is not available in 2.80. Go to the Blender download page and scroll to the bottom.  Click the “Get Blender Experimental” button and download. You will get an compressed file. I created a new folder (c:\program files\blender\blender2.81) and extracted all the files there. Then just double click the blender.exe file to run.

To use the node, enable a few render passes that the node uses. Go to the View Panel and expand the Passes section. Enable the Normal Pass and the Diffuse Color Pass.

Untitled-2.png

Continue reading “Power Switch Model”

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Blender Quick Tip – Auto Merge

Update: 5/27/2022: They keep moving auto-merge. In Blender version 3.1.0 while in edit mode, the auto-merge has a convenient on-off toggle and link to the auto-merge settings in the upper right corner. These buttons are visible when the “Tool Settings” are enabled. To enable the “Tool Settings”, click the “Tool Settings” from the View drop-down menu until there is a check mark next to it.

Auto-merge-310

When you move a vertex over another, many times you want the two to become one. There is a tedious way: Move the vertex and then merge. Or the easy way: Enable the  Auto-Merge option and then just move one vertex over another.

In Blender 2.80, the Auto-Merge option has moved. It is now in the Active Tool and Workspace panel under “Options”

MergeVertices

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Photo Real Renders vs Photos

Sometimes it hard to tell if a product shot is a photograph or a CG render. Part of the problem is the quality of modern rendering. But I think there is an overlooked aspect. So many photos are “Photoshopped”. People have become accustom to seeing perfect pictures….no scratches and no dust.

Photographers might want to leave some of the imperfections in their shots.

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CG Models

I created a CGTrader account years ago. My first submissions were all free. I wanted a way to give back to a community that had help me learn Blender. And then one day I saw a post on the user forum. Someone was complaining because the models were under priced. They were seeing a drop off in sales and believed it was because more content was being offered for free or for a very low price. Continue reading “CG Models”

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3″ Check Valve

I posted a 3″ Swing Check Valve on GrabCad today. Within a couple of hours, it got 6 likes and 3 downloads. And if you didn’t know…all downloads on GrabCad are free.

This valve is manufactured by KITZ. It has class 300 raised face flanges and the body is made from cast stainless steel. The face to face dimension is 12.5″.

The KITZ number is 300UOAM3 316SS GRAFOIL C.E.
Link: https://www.kitzus-kca.com/industrial-check-valves.php

The model does not have any internals. You can use it for system design.
Link: https://grabcad.com/library/3-flanged-check-vavle-1

Continue reading “3″ Check Valve”