The Game Begins!

Hi all,
Few days ago I learnt to move my camera and it turned out to be great! Some questions popped up in that regard, whether I could draw something according to a particular camera angle, what if I need more elements inside the shot, adjust the tilting angle of an object, etc. which we all should look for them in the Manual but unfortunately I could not find them comprehensive. Shame on me.

A colleague of mine let me know that I could add more objects inside each 'Collection'. Go to 'Object Mode' and look for 'Add' button. I'd have a lot of options, including for 'grease pencil' that allows me to create a totally blank layer to draw.

I added another camera with the same way, so I'd have two of them: one default-still camera and a moving camera.

What are those?

I decided to have a small exercise, where The Cat is having The Rat as his opponent in a badminton game. This exercise allows me to learn adding objects, adjusting objects in front of camera, and animating both objects and cameras.

In a matter of fact, previous paragraph is a cow-crap. I just wanted to show off my new pen-tablet: XP-Pen Artist 12"! I was so excited to have it, after seven full years using a small Wacom Intuos in both hard and happy times. Epic companion. The Intuos is still working, though. I would keep it just in case my XP-Pen frustrates me somehow in the future.

LOL

It's not... it's not what you think it is...

 
I made 4 objects in the shot: the shuttle, cat, rat, and the court. That way, we could adjust and shift each one with ease and allows us to animate them as well. I resized, shifted, tilted the rat and the cat and the shuttle to have them stand in their proper places in front of camera.

Those grids, right? They make you dizzy, right?

I felt a bit dizzy here, perhaps I miss-drawn on the wrong plane, I couldn't exactly control the perspective with my mouse LOL.

Then I adjusted the new camera, tilting around so you'll get a bit of unease and action feeling in this shot. I tried to truck the camera into the rat of the opposite court and it turned out cool.

The new camera view

There were two additional shots for this exercise, they are of simple one camera shots. I was quite comfortable with the result, although there were a lot of things I could improve in the next one.

Well, well...

Meet Koffie Cat (Part 4)

Hi everyone,

I watched Sociamix's tutorial and excitement filled my head all at once! I rushed to draw a not-so-quite-simple object to reproduce steps that was being conveyed in the video. There were a lot of things I learnt from it and well, apparently my assumptions of trial-and-error was quite a bit close to this tutorial. At least I didn't make dreadful things that could embarrass me after.

Previous trial

Basically, Blender allows you to draw on ALL 3D axis of x, y, and z. The drawing would be on the 0 (zero) position by default on each axis.

Draw in X, the default 2D Animation mode

Draw in Y

Draw in Z

Right click on the colourful buttons, or the 'preset viewpoint' (the x-y-z thing you see on top-right corner of viewport) to see and draw on different axis. Press 'camera' button to return to original position.

You can also zoom or drag with
these tools

Now, all of the drawings should be on the 0 positions which, sometimes it wasn't meant to. 

All of them are in default 0 position

Use tools in 'Edit Mode' to shift the strokes to any referred position in the drawing.

Do you notice the three arrows?

Well? Sounds like fun!

Do you think it's actually a 3D object, technically speaking?

Now Blender has astonished me with its hidden timeline right under the Grease timeline (in Grease, we call it as dope-sheet). I had no idea of its existence untill a colleague of mine told me. LOL! Look for tutorials before you jump into any drawings! This timeline allows me to see the objects' keyframes inside the scene anytime I move, rotate, or resize.

There! See?

Next post is about controlling camera of which I would have a bit of struggle to properly adjust.

This is the look of the drawing I made!

But, there was a just small-tiny-little mistake I made, at least this shouldn't be the efficient way to draw a 3D object with 2D technique (drawing, naturally), within a 3D software.

Meet Koffie Cat (Part 3)

Hi all!
This is another progress from me. I could finally draw slightly faster in Blender and adding up a bit more poses without getting confused which key frames went to what drawing/pose. I think it's a good progress!

Looks cool, right? Actually those key frames are just repetitions

I had difficulties on shifting key frames from one place to another with my click-and-drag action. Most of the time the diamonds would not be shifted like I wanted to. Or it wouldn't be clicked at all. That simple action once had me quite frustrated.

But Blender has apparently an effective button to move them in the timeline. The button 'G'. Everytime I wanted to shift key frames, all I had to do was to select the diamonds and then press G. That way, I could move them without pressing the left-click-and-drag.

Neat.

Blender also prepares another 'Grease Mode', 'object interaction mode' - or whatever you'd want to call it - which I could switch any time during my drawing. We can find the switching among modes on top-left of our viewport.

What do you call that? 'Modes'?

The default mode we're working at should be 'Draw Mode'. Our pencils, pens, brushes, erasers, paint tools are in the 'Draw Mode'. I used to work in that mode only. I needed to draw key frames one by one, I had no idea there were other modes to shift line work (which, Blender calls it as 'stroke'), for example.

Edit Mode aand... selected

The Edit Mode allows me to shift outlines, or strokes. I found out that I had to shift the strokes in one visible layer only. Otherwise, other strokes in other layers would be affected. Should there be options to set the properties, I wouldn't know LOL. Later, perhaps, let me enjoy the sketching in a cool- 2D animation - opensource software. What a time to be alive!

I could also adjust the camera whenever I think the scene's composition wasn't good enough by switching to another layer in the 'Editor Type', it's the things you see on the top-right-corner of the screen.

The default look

It actually look like this. The stroke-and-camera layers are in the 'Outliner'

We should be working in a layer called 'Stroke' by default. Pick the 'Camera' layer to shift the camera and change the interaction mode to 'Object Mode'. You should see things like in the image below.

Shift the camera

I should be able to animate the camera but, I needed more time to learn it. So far, let's just shift the camera and see how it affect the whole scene.

Sketches and keyframes

I love drawing his balls.... Wait what?

But then, I watched this tutorial by Sociamix. That guy's tutorial is both awesome and comprehensive. Go check it out!

Meet Koffie Cat (Part 2)

Hell-ooo!
Welcome to the second part of my baby-step tutorials understanding Grease Pencil in Blender! I'll explain all the setup I needed to make sketches and keyframes. I'm not a Blender native, I used to work using other 2D drawing or animation softwares (and papers!) so, there would be a looot of miss-clicks, miss-understanding of the tools or settings, miss-named, miss-scrolls, or any other unexpected things.

Let's take a look at the four items I needed in order to sketch something in Grease Blender.

First, is the white-screwdriver-and-wrench or "Active Tools and Workspace Setting". All I could see is just 'Drawing Tools Options' as I wrote in previous post. Maybe there are other settings that I could pick or use from this tab in different Blender mode but, I would go with the first priority in mind: sketch.

Oof! Pencils! And pens!

I could pick the tools I'd like to use as well as its opacity and thickness. I used F Pencil as sketch and decided to use F Ink Pen as clean ups. Pretty handy and there are other settings below that I could scroll down then leave them as it was since I couldn't comprehend them at all. LOL.

Next item is the green-rope or "Object Data Properties". I could see layers I've been working on.

Pretty much comprehensible :)

I would now have two layers by default: 'Fills' and 'Lines'. I already renamed the 'Lines' into 'sketch' by double-clicking the layer's name and changed it. There is blending options, opacity, onion skins, visibility, etc that I could browse through quite easily.

Third item is the red-ball or "Material Properties". I'd have four initial colours: black, red, gray, and black dots. Each of them counts as 'material', which  I could change the 'Surface' setup. I could see 'Stroke' which stands for the line or outline and 'Fill' which stands for the filling for each stroke.

Colour settings

Those default colours have different Stroke and Fills setup. I think this is how a new Grease user learns how to set their colours to sketch, to clean up, and to paint the object. Things were quite interesting since Blender has different concept to paint. Or so I thought.

Well, I added a new colour and picked blue for my sketch.

Wait... no cats? Where did it go?

The fourth item is the white-printer or "Output Properties". This is where I could setup my address and format for render, scene's duration, resolution, etc.

The default order of your scene

Well then, let's get back to the sketching the keyframes, how do I draw keyframes in Grease Blender? Should I look for it in tutorials? Should I refer to one of great How-to-Blender videos in Youtube? Should I read the Manuals before I sketch something?

Those diamonds are keyframes!

I was too lazy to Google or read Manuals for tutorials. I miss-clicked [Spacebar] while drawing and it turned out, the next miss-drawn was my new keyframe.

Getting hotter

Meet Koffie Cat (Part 1)

Hi,
I've been unavailable for a looong, long time, apparently. 5 years! There were a lot of things going on those years. People came and went on so quickly. Lead a team of 60 people, have been working overtime for so many occasions, romance drama (well, finally I experienced the twists and turns of being in a relationship LOL), etc. In fact, those are the things excite me a lot, at least made me want to jot and share things happened these years.

Around January 2019 was the time I found out about Grease Pencil in Blender. I used to use it to do some simple video editing (although I do not highly recommend it) few years before. The Grease promo video was AWESOME! The future of 2D animation wouldn't be so expensive! I WANT it!

But I was too lazy to learn.

Then here I am, a year after, trying so hard to learn this thing after I watched Jeremy Clapin's "J'ai Perdu Mon Corps" on Netflix. The animators team drew the animation in Blender! The uncanny and unexpected Grease Pencil!

What.

So I decided to download the newest, the most updated and stable version of Blender here. Then I dragged myself to learn it, fully-determined trying so hard mastering this open source-hidden-gem...

...later on the next few weeks, of course. I gave up in the grasp of laziness.

But hey, I sketched a cat. A lazy cat.

Eventually I had my hands on it, after some fights with my bed and pillow, naturally.

It was quite trouble, of course. I'm not a native Blender or any expert of using it. Newbie-er than all noobs of the world, apparently. The user interface/experience concept is a whole different thing with other 2D softwares. I just knew I could draw something in the '2D animation' section (or whatever you call it) that you could easily find it in the opening dialogue.

YAY! We can draw in Blender!

After a lot of miss-clicks and head-aches figuring out which one is what, I could remember that [Alt + Ctrl + right click] means zoom in/out, [Alt + Shift + right click] means slide the canvas, and somehow find out that those fancy icons at the right side of frame are your tools properties. Also, [Spacebar] is to play the timeline. Well, splendid!

These are Tools Properties, I guess

These four items are most important goods for drawing in Grease.

1. The white screw driver-and-wrench shows you your 'Drawing Properties'. I picked pencil as my sketch tool and ink-pen as my clean ups.
2. The green rope-like shape is your 'Object Data Properties', which allows you to see layers that you're working on. Well, or so I assume.
3. The red ball is your 'Material Properties'. It pretty much is colour properties.
4. The last one is printer icon, the 'Output Properties'. You need it to render your work into .avi.

With those things in mind, I was ready to draw something! I was thinking to animate a simple thing before I could jump to action-packed, thunderclaps, and explosions everywhere.

Birthday

Birthday - page 1

Birthday - page 2

Happy birthday, y'all.... And Happy Mother's Day to countries that celebrate it.

Mangoes and Mangosteens

Mangoes & Mangosteens, May 2015

Well, actually, this is about a fair punishment.

We perhaps don't like of being punished someday and in any way we could think of, or we don't want to be in that particular situation but, fair law-penalties are necessary for many people's better future.