chippwalters

SIMPLE SCI FI ships and here's your free version

Hey everyone, as many of you know, GREEZYBEAR and I have been hard at work lately on this new displacement generator to take the place of J-Placement. Once I found out that guy wouldn't allow his generated maps to be used in any commercial way, I knew I had to create my own. And man, is it cool!

A funny thing happened on the way-- I figured out a workflow that got substantially better results, was much faster, and generated true geometry. It's crazy, and fun, and FAST! You gotta try it...

More SIMPLE SCIFI renders. These are all geometry!

Yep, these are all geometry. And they render *much* faster than displacement! Not to mention you can edit them if you like as well.

SIMPLE SCIFI : Displacement and Geometry Generator

Hey folks, here's a short preview of what we've been working on. There's more about it over at the Discord SIMPLE SCIFI channel: http://cw1.me/discord

Andrew (Greezybear) and I have been working hard and we hope to have this finished within a week or so. Lots of video tutorials and documentation, but most of the product is finished. There will be both a FREE version and a PRO version. I'll post some images in another post as ...

HEX displacement decimation strategy

So if you look at these renderings you may not recognize anything of great interest. Then, look closely at the wires and you'll see the hex patterns are fairly cleanly modeled faces in Blender. Included in these images is a tilable hex PNG that I created and used as a displacement map in order to create the hex modeled object. As many of you know, in order to get a really tight displacement like this, you need an extremely dense mesh. So, that doesn't necessarily match with what you're seeing...

Working on a Geometry Nodes Displacement Generator

Hey everyone,

Just thought I would catch you up on the latest goings on. I've been working to create a Geometry Nodes Displacement Generator. It's coming along nicely and it currently has two different models. One is very similar to the existing JS placement displacement generator. The other actually uses models and inserts from KIT OPS.

I'm also working on workflows to help decimate superhigh resolution models into something much more manageable for scenes.

One of the th...

Happy New Year everybody!

2021 was unfortunately a year of ups and downs for my family. That said, I could always count on and enjoy the camaraderie and fellowship of all you in the Blender community. Thanks very much for your support. I hope we all have a great 2022!

I'll see you all online,

Chipp

The Cinematic Render Kit

Part 5 of the Virtualized Displacement mini-course

This segment talks about the 8 post effect traits of Cinematic rendering and how to achieve them in Compositor. The Cinematic Render Kit files are below along with the final blender scene file.

https://filedn.com/lLMW4jXsJqxXkRYjd1UCoKL/3d/compositor-node-group.blend

2021-12-31 02:02:02 +0000 UTC View Post

Part 4 of the Virtualized Displacement mini-course

This segment goes over adding KIT OPS INSERT hero elements to your scene. You can get the KPACK with the elements at:

https://filedn.com/lLMW4jXsJqxXkRYjd1UCoKL/3d/VirtDisp.zip

Install Free or Pro KIT OPS and KPACKS: 

http://cw1.me/installkitops

Part 3 of the Virtualized Displacement mini-course

This segment goes over adding even more details including pipes and rails. Some interesting tips on surface materials as well.

Part 2 of the Virtualized Displacement mini-course

Hey folks,

This is a shorter segment that goes over some issues you may be having as well as a cool set of tips to allow you to add even more detail on the sides of your meshes.

New IDEATION CREATION mini-course

Hey folks,

I'm hosting a new IDEATION CREATION mini-course over on my Discord  where I go over how to create and then render and apply someone cool post effects in the compositor. When we get to the detail section, I'll be providing a number of KIT OPS INSERTS you can use to add more detail to your render-- along with several .blend files you can study.

IDEATION CREATION channel on my Discord: http://cw1.me/discord...

Smoothing issues and how to fix them when using INSERTS

Another quick video showing how to fix smoothing issues when using KIT OPS

How to use a boolean object's material in the target object

Helped out a user on my Discord recently: This works with any Boolean modifier.

Cool new shader

Hey guys been working on this for a while and I'm pretty happy with the way it's turning out.

Wood has always been a big issue as it's almost impossible to create good title photographic wood. You can do it with procedurals but I am not as big a fan of them as I am of photos.

And now, I've added the ability to do mirrored tiling, along with triplaner projection to be able to quickly add photographic non-tiled textures to any object.

And included below are the KPACK items you...

Been wanting to do this one for a while now

Hey everyone,

I've been thinking about doing a video like this for quite some time. Years ago, I was a huge Keyshot user. I even gave a talk at the very first Keyshot conference. And when I started using Blender, when the first things I tried to do was see if I could render the same type of scenes that I routinely did in Keyshot. And the answer was a resounding no.

Fast forward a few years and with the new introduction of Blender 3.0 and CyclesX, and especial...

Why only 1 or 8 segments on a bevel modifier?

Another set of questions asked about why I recommend using either 1 or 8 (or greater) on a bevel modifier. It has to do with normal smoothing and possible artifacts. Hopefully, this video explains it ok. And, on larger bevels, nothing wrong with going over 8, but I like to stay even because if you ever apply the modifier, there's a center edge in the middle of the bevel. 

Using the weld modifier for multiple bevels

I had a few folks ask about why the weld modifier in the last candle video so here's a better explanation.

Holiday Candle in Blender 3.0 with Shadow Catcher

Hey everyone,

I had a question today over on my Discord about how to render glass with liquid. And in explaining it, I thought it would give me a great chance to show how simple it is to create a holiday candle. And I used Blender 3.0 and some new rendering tricks, including using the shadow catcher feature to render reflections and shadows.

The glass is from the KO-FreeMats KPACKS that comes with KIT OPS FREE and KIT OPS PRO. It's a nice universal glass that works great in both E...

Major update to KIT OPS FREE and PRO

Hey guys,

Back from my trip and trying to get things ready for Black Friday. And we have some very good news to announce: There's a major update to KIT OPS FREE and PRO. You can now create INSERTS in FREE with one-click-- and you can also save materials as well. You don't have the full range of INSERT creation that you have with PRO, but there are some features that are much better than the upcoming Blender 3.0 Asset Manager, like the ability to save INSERTS with children and apply mate...

On vacation, Simple Sketch update

Hey everyone,

Sorry I've been missing in action lately, I'm currently on a rather long vacation but will be back early next week right before Thanksgiving.

Until then, I'll share with you the latest version of simple sketch beta. You can download it at:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hzoxh89hwizi3w6/simple-sketch-v0.9.39.zip?dl=0

The documentation is not yet...

Convert your Blender models to Gravity Sketch

Been working more on Gravity Sketch. The Collab feature is really nice as it's fun to hangout with folks like Greezybear and masterxeon1001 while learning the software.

What I'm after are things that can be difficult to do in Blender but are much easier to do in VR. For instance, consider the "hive" render image. While it's nothing at all, it is so easy to position and duplicate various panels in VR compared to Blender. 

For those of you who don't know, Gravity Sketch is free...

Modelling in VR

(Model by Jama Jurabaev)

Hey guys, so I finally got around to getting back into the VR space which is something I've been wanting to do for a while. A friend of mine shared with me some Gravity Sketch videos and that got me wondering about it.

So, I ordered a Quest 2 and set it up and running. Played with grav6ity SKETCH for 5 hours straight. So far, so good. Couple first impressions:

1. Very fun!

2. Definitely need to learn muscle memory. Takes awhile to figure ou...

Amazing walk-thru in Blender

I was really impressed with this video and I thought I'd share it.

At first, I thought I was watching a really nicely rendered EEVEE walkthrough. And it looked like the GI was baked as it typically is in UE or Unity-- so Wow!

Then, as I looked more closely, I saw a bit of lag and some artifacting I typically associate with Cycles-- and then it hit me. This is a CyclesX walkthrough! Running on a single Nvidia 3090. Very impressive. A full pathtracer  being rendered in realtime...

Quick Gizmo Tip

Not sure if everyone knows about this, but thought I'd share it. Something I take for granted, but saw where some others were wondering about it. HTH.

Click on the above link (no thumbnail) or use this:

https://filedn.com/lLMW4jXsJqxXkRYjd1UCoKL/3d/gizmotip.mp4 

Create a perf speaker grill in only a couple minutes

A Discord user wanted to know how to create the perf grill you see above in the boom box, and I created a couple of tiny videos of how I would do it to help him out:
https://filedn.com/lLMW4jXsJqxXkRYjd1UCoKL/3d/Basic2GrillPattern.mp4 
and
2021-10-12 03:04:13 +0000 UTC View Post

KIT OPS PARALLAX launches (and a freebie for Patreon members)

Hey everyone, 

Most of you know I've been working hard lately at putting together a neat workflow for creating your own PARALLAX 3D room objects. The addon is complete and now for sale, and there's an INTRO discount for both it and KIT OPS 2 PRO (if you don't already have it). 

Plus, I'm giving each of you the over 60 objects I use in the video above (and the tutorial video). It's called The Loft KPACK (it's actually 5 KPACKS). Lots of neat INSERTS in there including som...

A quick look at beta PARALLAX the addon and some thoughts...

It's pretty straightforward and easy to create your own 1-plane wonders using this new addon. It will be substantially less to purchase this than the current wParallax offering, which I did not have control over. 

If like me, you study wParallax's design of the "cross maps" (seen above) you'll see he only uses 2 sprite channels, whereas the addon can use 4. Even so, he is a master at positioning elements and geometry to get the maximum effect. His design skill and setup is pretty a...

wParallax: Finally shipping!

Hey everyone,

Finally, these are ready to ship! They took awhile to make sure we had the correct shaders and then marketing demanded we ship them in aluminum ZERO briefcases.

Then marketing wanted to price these things in the couple hundreds of dollars per-- because of the aluminum briefcase. So, that's where I put my foot down and said we're going to stop this nonsense and just ship the software product!

While the full-on authoring package is not yet finished (mostly docume...

Something I've been working on for a bit

Ever want to create a simple webpage? Or create an easily updatable and editable documentation website? Well, as most of you know, I use Google Docs for all my documentation-- because it's really good at that and I can easily get others to help me. The problem is, it all looks like Google Docs...well no more.

I've been working on a simple, easy to use single html page that can read from the web published Google Doc and reformat and add the necessary functionality that I want, including ...

Some new free materials for everyone (audio fixed)

Hey folks, here's a few materials which may be fun to play around with.

As usual, they are KIT OPS KPACKS, so stick them in any KIT OPS Masterfolder and they will work.

Holler at me if you have any questions.