IanHubert

Satsop Nuclear Power Plant / SOMA

Check out this weirdness!

The Satsop Nuclear Power Plant is an amazing zone a bit over an hour from me. It was never completed due to budget reasons (I've heard folks cite a shift in public opinion due to Chernobyl as well, but I dunno), and has been sitting vacant for 40 years.

They let film crews rent it out, though, and it's been my dream to shoot there for years, now. It's $100 an hour, which is fairly affordable, all things considered, but also a bit prohibitive for a hobby...

Making a Shot in Blender pt1: tracking/keying/masking/setup

Part 2 - Lighting
Part 3 - Detailing

01:13 - tracking the camera (ctrl+click to add tracking points)
08:15 - keying the footage
10:45 - masking shenanigans
12:28 - exporting pre-keyed image sequence
14:20 - setting up pre-keyed foota...

Modeling a Boat and Dock

This isn't really a tutorial, it's just a screencapture/workflow thing :) I'd really been enjoying modeling quick little boats, so I documented the process. And brought some physics to a net party! 

Also, check out Jan van den Hemel's BlenderSecrets video here talking about a great easy way to make physics cables. 

Rotten Dragon

[edited the pictures to not be the final full-res jpegs. I'd thought patreon automatically resized! It was a big post.]

(more images below)

Rotten Dragon is a small project I've had going for the past few years (not as much lately), but it's kind of a "back pocket" project, where I don't mind dumping lots of random effort into a thing, since I know I can fold it into a future project at any...

More Experiments with Viewport Compositing

Hey guys! Been a minute!   I have a bunch of stuff I'm really excited to upload here over the next week, but starting small with last night's work- more experiments with viewport compositing.  Not much I haven't talked about before, I'm just not over it yet!

The degree to which everything just "works" once you have stuff lined up in 3d space is a little astounding- stuff just feels kind of like magic. One of the major things I'm trying to get over right now is the impre...

Asset: Steam Elements

Alright here we go!  Excited to be putting these out! I tried to get good ones for a variety of situations. I include the words "Diagonal" and "Angle", but honestly you can obviously rotate them any which way.

Right click, "save as":
Steam Elements

All of them loop, and feather off (fair...

Tutorial: Working with Steam Elements/ Adding Drips

Another video from Sleepy-Ian-Attempting-To-Fix-His-Sleep-Schedule!

Here's a couple steam elements I shot with Nate:
(right click, "Save As")
Narrow Steam (good for chimneys and such)
Steam Column (good for random stuff?)

I'll be uploading the rest in a bit here for the tier 7 folks!

I...

Re-Animating a Camera Move in Post

This is one of those things I've thought about a lot but never actually done- it turned out to be really easy! Definitely has limitations, but could also be a lifesaver (Also a great way to kind of stabilize a shot, if you delete the camera tracker constraint and just animate from scratch- could be a bit surreal :D).

If you haven't already seen it, the motion tracking/room transformation tutorial is probably a prereq...

Texture Painting so everything's Tron Now

I was playing around with some new scans last night, and made everything Tron, and I realized that I'm totally into glowing graffiti, so here's a tut (also an introduction to texture painting, if you haven't poked around with that before!)

Also I said "tut" in real life and Kaitlin was like, "that's the worst thing I've ever heard" but honestly it's been saving me a bunch of syllables lately.  

Turning People into Digital Characters with Photogrammetry

Hey guys! Cover a lot of ground (a tad loosely) in this one- but if you haven't played around with photoscanning before (especially of humans), it could have some good info in it! Get into rigging/basic animation towards the end. The process also works (much more easily) for non-human subjects, but that's the focus I was going for here.

I do the workflow with two programs- Meshroom, which is free, and RealityCapture, which isn't (though still isn't much- like a couple bucks per scan, u...

Modeling an ol' CRT Television

You guys!! Thank you all so much for your kind words yesterday! They meant a lot. :D

So this is a random asset I've wanted to have more than once, so I finally just made one! I once again apologize that I seem to never be able to remember to turn on keycasting. 

Here's the TV texture, if anyone feels like trying it out for themselves. Honestly some of that random plastic vent stuff could be...

Asset: Diner Scene

Hey guys! Here's the diner scene in case you want to experiment or raid it for parts!   

Right click save as:
Diner Scene

In terms of useage, I wanted to give some heads up- all the posters are from pictures I took at a local teriyaki/burger place, and while I usually gamble that this...

Asset: Modeling Signs / Bumper Stickers

Woo! You guys- the last week's been... a bit of a doozy! One of those times where everything seems to be breaking at once: a pipe exploded in the kitchen, the van died, the internet's been out, and I juuuust got diagnosed with skin cancer (not the particularly dangerous kind, but still a drag). And, y'know, just kind of being depressed.

Honestly I filmed like 7 different things with the thought up uploading them up here, but I just kept phasing out about half way through. 

S...

Friday Update!

Hey everyone! I just rebooted my computer for the first time in a month, which means I closed my browser for the first time, which means all the dozens of tabs I've had open as a sort of "to-do" list have all been swept away. In most ways, it feels amazing.

But unfortunately most of those tabs were full of in-progress messages to you fine folks! I've been working hard on getting back to everyone, but I'm running into that "number of hours in a day" limit- thank you so much for your pa...

Asset: Office Ceiling

This is just something I've wanted to try for a minute- I think I'll get a lot of use out of it!

I'm totally just a beginner with nodes, but if you've never really worked around with nodes and want to, I talk a little bit about using the random input to create self-randomizing assets in this post here. That said, I didn't use that technique in this asset, because that technique only works if...

Assets: All The Street Boxes

I modeled all these guys last summer with the thought of maybe selling them as some sort of model pack (and I guess I still might??), but you guys have been so great to me that I want to put them here.

Feel free to use them for anything. They're all modeled on boxes in my home town (based on the textures I posted 2020-04-20 02:01:30 +0000 UTC View Post

Quick Collaborative Film Idea: Global Black

So you guys are a shockingly global bunch, which brought to mind a very silly old film idea that I want to try doing:

It's filmed all over the world, but it's all totally black. Authentic black from all over the world. Ideally some place kind of interesting (think "Broom Closet in Sistine Chapel") but it could also be something just random, ("Under a bed in Sweden"), or kinda ironic ("Grand Canyon at 3am" or "In a Shoebox in the Forbidden City"- stuff like that.)

I'd su...

Asset: Crappy Cowboy Video Textures

Blarghe- internet's been out like 90% of the time this past week! But! Been getting a lot done! Wrapping up a few gigs, and got some really great work on Dynamo Dream (animated some of the robot stuff based on Alan's great voicework, and a few other shots (below)). BUT my big goal for next week is definitely tutorials! I've gotta finish up the greenscreen one first, but there are a pile of other little ones I should probably get out of my system for my own sanity. 

2020-04-18 07:44:33 +0000 UTC View Post

Assets: Small mechanical bits, Books, Head in a Jar

Releasing this scene here! Pile of books, surprisingly useful little mechanical bits (all hand-modeled off some photos I took), and Andy's head in a jar.

Andy has very generously donated his head to the publi...

Floorhead

Spoilers* (I suppose?) for Dynamo Dream:

Jumped back into this scene the past few days! I know I need to be finishing up the keying tutorial, but gosh darn I want to keep momentum up on this, too. Also figured I'...

Asset: Rain Textures (for real this time)

 Whew! 13th time's the charm!  Finally got this recorded, haha

So huge thanks to Cassie Jones for showing me that you can independently offset the timing of video textures- I have a new optimized blend file ready for download, and a new little explanatory video.

Blender doesn't let you pack video files (which I just found out), and I wasn't able to get relative paths to work- but it's super easy to link them up. Just go File, External Data, Find Missin...