9/7/2024 - Picking Blender back up again

Hey, I decided to create a blog on a whim to keep track of my progress (hopefully) to serve as a sort of motivation to keep on getting better with Blender. I'm technically not starting from zero since I have picked up Blender before, but it was very sporadic and didn't really have a drive to create anything. I also thought it would be fun to have a sort of way to look back on just how bad I was so here I am! If there are actual people reading this, welcome! I'll try to link every resource I've drawn from if anyone wants to follow along (this is mostly for me to reference back).

So my current goals are to learn how to set a scene, lighting, posing, and rigging. A lot, but its all necessary in making what I want to make. I want to be able to create beautiful scenes of neon lighting with dynamic posing and camerawork. Eventually I want to do animation too, but that's for later.

Some examples of what I want to strive towards!

https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/4094653

https://www.youtube.com/@snowtenkey118

https://www.youtube.com/@DevilArtemis

I started out today by first getting models. I'm really into the series Miraculous Ladybug so I decided to try and get a model for those characters. I was in luck since there are video game rips of models already uploaded online. Biggest mistake yet. I sifted through a handful of downloads, I'd say more than half were completely useless to me since I didn't know how to get FBX models to be properly imported in with rigging and the textures as well. Eventually, I found a good enough model to work with and it seemed to have rigging and materials right off the bat, but that was simply the beginning of the torture, it was a barely working model and it was the best one I have. I spent a lot of time trying to make these model work, hours, and I eventually got it to work. Barely. I'm not very happy with the end result especially the rigging on the model. Since it was a video game rip, the rigging was a mess especially since its not meant for Blender, causing the skeletons to be very wack. I will revisit and completely re-rig these models to my liking, but for now. I need some progress. After watching a couple of tutorials (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt3-mHBCoQk), it came back to me on how to do IK for easier manipulations of the models. It still wasn't ideal since the bones were vertical instead of connected (you'll see in the pic), but it works, and I'm able to use the model. To be honest, I also spent a lot of time googling basic shortcuts and basic navigations for Blender as well so not everything was just me trying to get rigging to work. Bored, I decided not to finish rigging all of the models just yet, I did manage to finish rig Marinette and Adrien, not their superhero forms.

Rigged up with basic IK, I was finally able to go ahead and go forth with my second goal of the day. Figure out basic shading and lighting scenarios. Oh boy, I was in for a big, big wakeup call. Thankfully I had tried to figure out shading in the past making it somewhat more manageable to relearn everything. The first type of shading I looked towards was toon shading, lets just say, I wasted a bit too much time experimenting. 

Toon shading was really simple. It went a little something like this.

Magic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfOxZjKM56c, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BXweyv6XIY, Without any of these tutorials. I would be drowning really BAD! Honestly after messing around with toon shading, it became pretty straight forward. Essentially, the toon shading took away any gradual light with the COLOR RAMP and made for harsh shadows which could then be used either as highlights or actual shadows on the materials. Just make sure to Color Mix Multipy the Materials and the Shaders together, otherwise there's no point in trying to toon shade anything. With a little bit of lighting, and posing the model. I finally have my first render. I ACTUALLY MADE SOMETHING IN A DAY!

I accomplished this by separating different colored lights from each other using shader nodes, pretty proud of myself, but this only utilized 2 lights of two different colors. I hope to ramp it up with a 3rd or even 4th. Definitely feel the lack of any sort of any complimentary colors and lights in this one, I need to study some more examples of lighting!

What it looked like without the shaders. Honestly, I like this version more. It is much more faithful to the renders of the actual show and the soft lights make much of the detail of the model pop out, something the toon shader actively hides underneath. However, I'm here to learn and experiment!

 

By no means this is anywhere near what I want to do, but it is a DEFINITE START! I used a grease pencil to create line art to make it really pop otherwise, it fell flat with the toon shader. I want my art style to reflect harsh lines and more importantly correct lighting and colors. Taking away from my first little project, I was able to remember how to rig IKs, add shaders correctly, and have fun with lighting.

What I want to improve next time is the color theory. I don't know anything about it, but I know that it is quite seriously one of the most, if not the most important thing to focus on to really get a beautiful result. I relied heavily on the evee engine to generate this sort of result, but in the future, I hope to be way more flexible with lighting and dance outside of the bounds of a simple placed light. On top of all of this, I will definitely need to understand the body anatomy way better in order to create correct poses and believable stances that doesn't look wonky and actually convey emotions (Face rigs are going to be scary)!

That's all for today! BLENDER FOR ALL!!!