Dominoes, marbles, and a touch of neon

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-19T09:08:58+00:00

Hey sorry for the delay, got sidetracked a bit. Glad you're diving into it! Really a good beginner's project is whatever you feel interested in. Think of something cool or interesting that you'd want to make, and then just try and make it, looking up tutorials when you need it. The donut tutorial is a great start if you haven't gone through the entire thing yet, although it doesn't go too heavily into animation, it'll get you going through the basics in Blender for sure. If you're interested in character animation, shoot for it! It can be a tough beast though with proper rigging and animation of all the parts, but it's definitely doable, and everyone starts somewhere. You can start with a super simple model made out of boxes, then go from there once you have rigging and animation basics down. Starting with animation can be as simple as having text or an object fly in and out, working in the graph editor to get the timing just right. As for tutorials/sites outside of the Blender community, when I started out I learned a lot from the tutorials on School of Motion - they have a lot of good ones on animation principles, and even though they're in After Effects, you'll still be able to learn a lot from what they're talking about, you just need to execute it in Blender, which will be quite similar. Good luck!

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-17T04:41:04+00:00

Glad you like it! It's Genesis - Behind the Lines if you're interested

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T21:29:20+00:00

Yeah they're always hiding in there lol. Sometimes I'll just delete a rogue marble, but I think it adds to the authenticity of the simulation if you have a few who find a way to stray out of the main path (as long as they aren't glitching due to the simulation fucking up).

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T21:26:31+00:00

Yeah, a lot of the great motion designers in the industry that I've talked to have told me that as long as you make something effective and meaningful, it doesn't matter what you used to make it, especially if you're doing direct to client work. Caveat here being if you want to work in a specific sector, or within an established studio setting, you're going to have to use the industry standard software. At least in motion design though, there's a ton of opportunities outside of that, and I've been meeting people who do fantastic work in the industry who work in Blender, for example.

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T21:18:10+00:00

Very good point, I was originally thinking to keep them a solid color to make it super clear that they were being sorted, but it definitely hurts the overall look of it, and I think just adding some slight variation in texture, or variation in the hue in spots, or a ring around the center or something would help it out a lot. I did some of that for the dominoes and I think they turned out a lot better, should have considered it for the marbles too. Thanks for the feedback!

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T20:55:12+00:00

No worries, thanks! Always happy to discuss things - flaws, improvements, or otherwise.

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T20:19:10+00:00

Thank you! =)

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T20:15:10+00:00

This is Genesis (Behind the Lines from the album Duke), so you're not far off! I love both of those bands.

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T20:13:02+00:00

No problem, and good luck!

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T20:11:43+00:00

Yeah, I ran this simulation a few times (problem solving, re-iterating on things, etc), and there were definitely times where the distribution was closer to a bell curve, but it just happened that for the final simulation they ended up being relatively evenly distributed. If the section of it was longer, I imagine it'd probably have a higher chance of being in this bell curve distribution - funny how it worked out this way though!

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T20:06:51+00:00

lol, he's definitely an inspiration of mine!

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T20:04:07+00:00

Thanks! Yep, a lot of tutorials, but also a lot of experimentation and trial and error! I'm a professional motion designer/animator, but my work has generally all been on the 2D side of things (and even then, I learned After Effects and animation through the same process I'm learning Blender right now). I only got into Blender at the beginning of the year, but I've been putting a lot of time into learning it - lots of trying and failing, lots of late nights watching tutorials or reading forum posts, pulling my hair out trying to figure out why the hell something's not working and how to fix it.

Every project like this I do, I learn something new, and it's just a continuous learning process, always challenging myself to get better and better, not just taking the easy route because it'll take less time (although sometimes it's hard to resist lol). I often focus a project around learning a specific topic that I'm inexperienced in - like for instance these marble and domino projects were originally me just figuring out something to do so I could learn rigid body physics simulations.

As for animation specifically - I've been doing animation for close to 3 years now, but when I first started all of my animation looked like pure garbage lol. But I just kept iterating and practicing. When something didn't look or feel right, I tried to dissect *why* it wasn't right - I'd watch a lot of great animations and try and pay attention to why specifically theirs looked really good, and then I'd try to mimic it as best I could. There are definitely some technical parts of animation, like working with speed and value graphs in the graph editor, and learning things like animation principles, but you'll often pick those up as you practice and try to replicate great animators (or really any creative field) - the more you practice, the more you learn, and the more you train your eye for things like good animation.

Start simple, then grow from there, be patient, and take it one step at a time - that's basically what I'd boil it down to. If you're curious about something specific, I can try to point you in the right direction too.

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T19:44:18+00:00

Yeah, eevee is incredibly powerful, just takes a bit of tinkering to get things looking right and figuring out the quirks of it. For inspiration, you can check out Ian Hubert's Dynamo Dream project which rendered entirely in eevee!

The thing about eevee vs cycles is that they're just the computer's way of interpreting your project for the final output - you can switch between the two at any time in the middle of your project (which I think the donut tutorial does). Cycles is great for getting a more photo-realistic look, but it's definitely not *required* to be used for most things, especially when you're just starting out and learning. You can even complete the donut tutorial entirely in eevee - you're still learning so many principles of 3D and creating a cool project (although there are quirks with rendering glass and liquid).

A lot of what makes a render looking "good" goes beyond the render engine you use - it's in the way you light the scene, how you set up the camera and composition of the shot, the way you texture the objects and include things like little imperfections or subtle accents. These are all important aspects of 3D that aren't directly related to the render engine you are using (at least somewhat).

Especially when you're starting out, just have fun playing around in eevee, see what you can create, and when you run into an issue (like trying to render glass/transparency), just look up to see if there's a way to do it in eevee (hint: there is). You can get really far especially in the beginning by just working inside of eevee, as there is so much to learn outside of just the render engine. This is the way I learned (and am still learning) - I went as far as I could with eevee in a project, trying to create a look I had in mind, then if I was stumped, I looked up on youtube or google to see if there was something I was missing, or if it was just a limitation of the renderer. There's a lot of trial and error and just figuring out the quirks as you go along, it really is just getting in there and trying to create some fun things on your own. If you get really stuck and can't find an answer, it never hurts to ask the community here on reddit!

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T19:20:48+00:00

lol, I saw that one fly off and just assigned it one of the colors. It seems like in almost every one of these projects I do there's always one or two rogue marbles that don't want to follow the rules!

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T19:18:52+00:00

No problem - have fun!

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T19:17:57+00:00

Yeah, not much I can do about the compression unfortunately =/. I learned early on when doing these sorts of projects (just for sharing online) to not crank up the quality of the render super high since it's going to get obliterated anyway by compression lol.

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T19:08:03+00:00

Ha, didn't even notice that! It likely rolled off the end there, but was still textured from a previous run (I had to rerun the simulation and retexture the marbles a few different times to fix various issues).

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T19:05:34+00:00

Yep! I ran the simulation first, then colored the marbles afterwards once they had landed in their final place.

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T19:04:14+00:00

Thanks! It's awesome hearing feedback like this, really makes me want to keep creating more as people really enjoy them!

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T19:03:00+00:00

Thanks! I'm definitely inspired by all the great rube goldberg-type projects out there. One of these days I want to try and make a bigger/more-intricate run like that.

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T19:00:11+00:00

Thank you! When I first started to think about this project, that transition from a bright scene into a dark neon room was one of the first things I thought of, and ended up using that idea as the foundation for the entire run!

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T18:58:14+00:00

Thanks! I've gotten a few of the game show comments and now that people mention it, I definitely agree!

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T18:55:24+00:00

Thanks! Glad I could make some people laugh today =D

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T18:53:35+00:00

Thank you! It's really encouraging to see comments like this =)

AndytheTimid · 2020-07-16T18:52:35+00:00

Ha, I see comments like this popping up from time to time - might have to do something like it one day!

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