Patrick Noland's Blog

A blender wip

noreply@blogger.com (pnoland) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 02:33:00 +0000

I decided to fire up Blender this afternoon for a quick modeling session. I'm trying to get comfortable with Blender as my main modeling application. So far I'm diggin' it.

I photoshoped my render...I know, cheater.

Sunday fun

noreply@blogger.com (pnoland) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 02:59:00 +0000

Soooo.... I was bored and hung over from the holiday weekend on Sunday and decided to fire up some apps to do a little project. I decided to make a rotten apple...Silo for modeling and UV mapping, Mudbox for sculpting, and Cinema4d for texture painting (Love thy BodyPaint) and rendering.

I'm not 100% done nor happy with the result but for an afternoon quickie I'm not displeased so much...

Post for the sake of posting

noreply@blogger.com (pnoland) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:39:00 +0000

Sorry for this blog being so dead, I am getting back on track on updates. I took some time out to work on some thangs but I plan on working on some projects soon. Mainly in Blender since 2.46 is slick...depending on if my current game addiction will let me. Damn you Dungeon Runners!!!

Random note: Week 1 of not smoking complete. Hooray for me.

An update? No way!

noreply@blogger.com (pnoland) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 20:18:00 +0000

So I was bored and needed to model something in Modo so, yeah here it is! Back to work I go...

Blender sculpts?

noreply@blogger.com (pnoland) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 14:58:00 +0000

Well, taking a break from Houdini tutorials I fired up Blender last night to poke around with it's sculpting tools. I'm suprised really but it's a fantastic tool for sculpting. It can -almost- compete with the likes of Mudbox. This isn't complete as I want to learn the tools more before I dive back into it but I'm fairly pleased with the direction it's going for only have worked on it for about an hour and a half last night.

No, not the magician.

noreply@blogger.com (pnoland) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 20:25:00 +0000

Well, it's 2008 and while I made no resolutions I've decided to at least make some changes. First was my change from Windows to Linux and now since I've limited myself on 3d applications a bit I'm learning a new beast. I do use Blender a bit but with the release of the new HD Apprentice version I will be doing my best to learn Houdini. I'm getting into visual effects these days, particles are just fun to use, and why not learn to use one of the best particle systems out there? I'm interested in learning Houdini's modeling tools as well as just he package as a whole. It seems like a powerhouse and having a native Linux version why not take a stab at it! I hope to share my progress here so keep an eye out. :)

Ubuntu effing rocks

noreply@blogger.com (pnoland) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 07:54:00 +0000

Well, it's been almost a month and I have not been in Windows once. I got bored one night and installed Ubuntu Linux after a few friends at work were raving about it. I love it. It runs a hell of a lot smoother on my computer then Windows XP and Vista...forget about it. With the Compiz effects Ubuntu makes Vista's Aero look like a toddler designed it and promptly shat on it.

One hurdle is getting a few applications to run with the windows emulation program Wine. Namely Modo and Cinema 4d, but on the plus side this will give me the push I needed to fully dive into Blender and make that one of my main applications. I picked up the latest book "The Essential Blender" so hopefully soon I will be whipping things up in Blender to share here.

To recap. Vista = The suck. Ubuntu = My new permanent OS. Slick.

Read on, I rand about Vista but this post is like me stomping and squashing those posts haha...night kiddies

It's been a long time since I ro...er, posted here!

noreply@blogger.com (pnoland) — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:55:00 +0000

Sorry for the lull in my posting for those who actually look at this piece of sure greatness. I have been busy finishing a couple software reviews for subdivisionmodeling.com that took up some o' my time. I will be posting some 3d work shortly as I have more free time these days. Thanks to Lee for gettin' on my ass (not in a bad way...) to update my blog. I didn't forget about it I swear! Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket...

Until next post.

It's way too early...

noreply@blogger.com (pnoland) — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:17:00 +0000

Welp, it's 4am and I'm getting ready for work so I thought I would update this lil site 'o mine. Recently I have been tinkering with XSI/Mudbox so here is the first sculpt I have going from that combo. It isn't finished but I figured i would at least share something new.

Speed sculpting

noreply@blogger.com (pnoland) — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 04:57:00 +0000

Well, it was a slow day today so I fired up Mudbox for a quickie.

Pillars!!

noreply@blogger.com (pnoland) — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 19:40:00 +0000

Started another project last night...nothing fancy as of yet just some pillars. I'm going to finish modeling the scene elements before I take anything into Mudbox for detailing.

noreply@blogger.com (pnoland) — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 20:33:00 +0000

Started a new model with Modo and Mudbox. I wanted to test the work flow between the two, so far so good!

Sweetness

noreply@blogger.com (pnoland) — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 23:59:00 +0000

Well I'm sure you all have seen the zbrush3 video...I caaaaan't wait for that! Since I'm still on a vista kick I thought I would share a freakin' sweet feature I read about and tested. Readyboost. Readyboost is the ability to take a USB 2.0 Flash drive and use it as virtual memory. You may say "But Pat, hard drives are faster for storing information!" True but flash drives excel in transfering smaller bits of data so for this purpose it's ideal. So when you plug a thumb drive in and use it for readyboost memory you will notice a little snap in vistas step. I was skeptical but it worked out pretty well. Tried running applications with aero turned off and on with and without readyboost and it makes a difference. I'm getting myself a nice 4 gig flash drive for Zbrush and Mudbox :D

I thumbed through the zbrushcentral.com forums and noticed Aurick talking about Zbrush 2.5 and vista (older post obviously) but he mentioned 2.5 being developed for x64 and Vista and said it sees Readyboost as memory so how sweet it will be to crank up those polygons!

Me and Vista...

noreply@blogger.com (pnoland) — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 19:44:00 +0000

No fancy images here just wanted to talk about how I'm finding Vista (home premium) since I installed it.

From what I can tell OpenGL was botched but updated video drivers (I'm using ATI) have seemed to do the trick for the most part. I use Modo 202 and Mudbox with no issue, they run as smoothly as they do on XP. Silo on the other hand is kind of choppy but still usable just slightly annoying. Messiah Studio won't run because the HASP drivers supplied aren't the Vista supported drivers so hopefully pmG is on the case. Blender didn't work at first, it was slow and unresponsive but after turning off the Vista GUI (I'm talking switching to 'classic' mode) it works like a charm. If you want the fancy pants Aero then dual boot with XP because all it does is make your desktop pretty and slow down your applications, it serves no real purpose for us just the average joe/jane internet surfer. I recommend using basic vista mode or just using the ol' faithful classic mode which still gives your your side bar for gadgets and things. All in all I enjoy vista and how easy it is to do tasks without having to reboot every two minutes and it's very stable, no crashes no issues for me yet *knock on wood* ...oh and yes, world of warcraft is totally vista compatible so don't worry! :P

First Post

noreply@blogger.com (pnoland) — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 10:12:00 +0000

Wee! Ahem...sorry. Well as you can tell this is my first blog entry at 4:13am so I don't have much else to say then I'm tired.

I've been learning Modo 202 lately so I made a little statue model to go along with our weekly challenge over at www.subdivisionmodeling.com posted by Glen so check that out...here's my 20 minute disasterpiece.