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September 20, 2009

Hello all!

Starting October sixth I am working to form a Kansas City blender user group (KC BUG). We will be meeting October 6th at Johnson County Community College in lab 245 in the Regnier Center – 6:30 p.m. – 9:30 p.m

Anyone that is interested please make your way on over for a evening of blender! This first meeting will be a round-table of sorts to throw out ideas for the group. If you have any questions, need directions, or anything else of the sort feel free to contact me with the info below:

email: jonathan (at) montagestudio (dot) org

phone: (620) 200-6383

-Jonathan

Posted in Blender, General | 6 Comments »

Cocktails – Girls – Tuxedo!

September 18, 2009

Secret Agent!

ok ok, we had none of those 3 things I noted in the title of the post, but hey, me and a collegue (Marc Lebuis) from school participated in the ‘Secret Agent’ CGChallenge on Cgsosiety.org Forum, one of the biggest, if not the biggest, 3d animation challenge. We finished right on time, and we are quite proud of our project. We must also thanks Derek McTavish Mounce, our music & sound genius, that did a masterpiece in about 24h before the deadline. If you are ever looking for a great composer, send him an email at d.mounce [at] fouressence.com

Most of the project was created in Softimage|XSI 7.01 but Blender also played an important role in production. I used it to create alot of smaller 2d effects (on the interior of the cockpit’s glass and during the scanning sequence for exemple), but also to generate the first drafts of our animatic at the beginning. I edited all of it in the sequencer. I also used it to re-compress all our video for the final files, because it was simply better than adobe premiere to do that hehe (adding Premiere to our workflow pipelane was a complete mistake on my part. I shouldn’t have used that software at all! stupid premiere!) .

Anyway, here it is on cgsociety:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=292&t=793497

and here it is on vimeo:

Mission 4 – CGChallenge ‘Secret Agent’ from Js Guillemette on Vimeo.

I hope you’ll like it! And if you dare reply to our cgsociety.org link (here) we would be really happy to hear your comments

Js Guillemette

Posted in General | 1 Comment »

$200 in Donations and Counting!

September 9, 2009

I would like to truly thank everyone that has shown their support thus far by purchasing the Blender 2.5 Training! It is humbling to see the phenominal response it has seen so far.

There were a good few people who wanted to see this project supporting the Blender Foundation better, and so we have answered that call by donating $5 USD for every order to the Blender Foundation. In the last twenty four hours we have donated $200 USD! And this number just keeps growing!

Thanks again to everyone!

Posted in General, Training DVDs, Video Tutorials | No Comments »

Blender 2.5 Training, New Tutorials, Book Deal

September 8, 2009

Modeling a lowpoly Alien head with Retopo in BlenderHello everyone!

Man, seems like I haven’t updated this for a long time… but, that doens’t mean we haven’t been busy!

In brief, Jean-Sebastian is still marathoning his way through school. Ben is working away at his studio job and preparing to start on Project Durian. And I have been busy with more than I know what to do with! Rather than spread all of this out over a couple weeks, I am just going to do it one big blog post.

———————————-

Over the last year or so, I have had the honor of working quite closely with Wes Burke from CG Cookie on providing a Blender video tutorials. It has been a wonderful experience and we have had a lot of fun doing it. With the upcoming release of Blender 2.5 we are taking on our biggest project yet! I give you:

Introduction to Blender 2.5 Training Series

blender25 screen1 Blender 2.5 Training, New Tutorials, Book Deal This is a very exciting time to be involved with Blender and we have taken it upon ourselves to be one of the first to show you how to make full use of the new Blender 2.5. I won’t go into too many details here, check the site for that, but I can tell you that it’s going to be good!

Some of the topics you can expect to see:

Modeling a full character, complete with accessories
Modeling a scene, strewn with objects
Adding materials and textures to a vast array of objects
Animating walk and run cycles
Creating smoke simulations
Lighting day and night scenes
Post-processing with the node editor
Using the video sequencer as a video editor

blender25_screen1 And these are just some of the topics. The training is intended to take you through the entire workflow of creating a character and scene; everything from modeling to texturing, animating to rendering. This series is huge! If this blurb has piqued your interest (or if you’re thoroughly bored by it) head on over to the dedicated site here for more info and to preorder!

We hope to release the first part of the series by mid, late October. It all depends on the development of Blender 2.5.

P.S. if you’re one of the first 20 to preorder it you get one of the first-ever CG Cookie T-shirts!

http://blender.cgcookie.com

(more…)

Tags: 2.5, Blender, CG Cookie, cgcookie, cgtuts, jonathan, montage, montagestudio, packt, publishing, studio, training, tutorial, video, williamson
Posted in Blender, Contracts, General, Video Tutorials | 16 Comments »

Kaboom!

August 19, 2009

Hey readers!

Last week we finished our third project at school. By ‘us’, I mean myself (Jean-Sébastien Guillemette) and two other student at the NAD Centre in Montréal (www.centrenad.com) that aren’t part of Montage Studio. I was in charge of some modelling (building, alienship, artillery canon

It was an intense 6 week of production. Some stuff still need to be done on it, but we had to move on to another project. I’ll come back to it in a few week just to tweak a few things here and there including the lighting, motionblur and a few color correct. Oh and of course add sounds to it! But well, I wanted to show you guys

(make sure to follow the link to see it in hd on vimeo!)

Demo 03 – Centre NAD from Js Guillemette on Vimeo.

Hope you like it!

Js Guillemette

Posted in Artwork, Blog, General, Projects | 3 Comments »

Tutorial: Animating a Gear Train in Blender

August 15, 2009

geartrain screenshot Tutorial: Animating a Gear Train in Blender Today’s video tutorial looks at something a little different than most of my tutorials; this time I’m going to show you how to animate a gear train in Blender with constraints, such that all the gears follow the lead of a single empty. This technique offers a much cleaner system with less margin for error.

Check it out!

Enjoy!

-Jonathan

Tags: animate, Blender, cgcookie, jonathan, montage, studio, tutorial, video, williamson
Posted in Video Tutorials | 3 Comments »

New Drawings

August 14, 2009

Hello all!

Aside from my Blender work, I have been trying to make a better habit of drawing a lot. Be it random sketching or putting together a polished drawing, it doesn’t really matter. After not being in school for a bit I’m starting to feel a bit rusty on my traditional art skills and so here are some drawings I’ve been working on to get back up to speed!

Enjoy!

-Jonathan

Tags: Drawing, jonathan, montage, studio, williamson
Posted in Drawing | 4 Comments »

Durian and Game Cinematic

August 13, 2009

Hi All! Most Durian related news will be relayed via the Durian Blog, but occasionally I might make a mention about it here. At any rate, the presale campaign is well underway.

Currently however I am making use of Blender as well as 3ds Max, Zbrush and a few other toys on a Game Cinematic. Because it is part of a studio contract I am still not sure what I can share at what point, but it might be a nice surprise to simply share the finished product (if I can) when it’s done. It’s a sci fi game cinematic (as a piece to apply for more work, not for a specific game) and I am having a whole lot of fun with it! Using the .obj file extension to switch between Zbrush, Max, Blender and even Poser – it’s just quicker for facial blend shapes to make a start there. With the displacement and custom uv textures you can’t really recognise the base character. Of course, there are more than just humans in this project…

Happy blending!

Ben.

Tags: Blender, durian
Posted in General | No Comments »

Tutorial: Modeling a Light Bulb in Blender

August 11, 2009

lightbulb screenshot Tutorial: Modeling a Light Bulb in Blender Hello everyone!

Today I have a fun video tutorial for all you modelers: modeling a light bulb, inside and out, in Blender. The tutorial makes use of all the usual modeling tools, such as translate, extrude, etc. But it also takes a look at using the infamous “Screw” tool to model the threads. However, keep an eye out as I’ll be following up this video tutorial with part 2 on texturing and rendering the light bulb with Blender.

Check it out here!

Enjoy and stay tuned!

-Jonathan

Tags: Blender, bulb, cgcookie, jonathan, light, lightbulb, model, Modeling, montage, studio, tutorial, video, williamson
Posted in Video Tutorials | 2 Comments »

Mavenseed: Going back to school Sale – Save 33%

August 10, 2009

Register today and save

In the spirit of going back to school, Mavenseed is offering 33% off their standard hourly rates for private one on one cg tutoring. A savings of 20USD from our standard 60USD hourly rate.

This is a limited time offer and will expire. To take advantage of this discount please visit Mavenseed today and register with your instructor.

What is Mavenseed?

Mavenseed is a CG private tutoring education website. We help connect artists in need of help with respected instructors in the topics of need. We understand that there is a place and time for a full online course, or education materials, but realize that some projects, or sole determination to improve ones self worth require an on demand private tutor.

The benefit of private one on one tutoring is that you are able to address your personal concerns, questions and goals immediately. There is no running through topics you already know in software manuals, or course requirements. Our instructors work with your schedule as best they can and are available to you for the requested time. Example: If you are interested in learning how to do an scene that requires a water shader with mental ray, you could find the instructor that covers those areas and ask those specific questions.

We are constantly trying to improve our end user experience for our students and instructors so please feel free to send us feedback, or suggestions on how we may improve our technology or presentation. Thank you for stopping by Mavenseed!

More Info:

For more info about Mavenseed, topics covered, available instructors, etc please visit it directly at the link below:

http://www.mavenseed.com

Tags: Blender, jonathan, mavenseed, training, tutorial, video, williamson
Posted in General, Training DVDs, Video Tutorials | No Comments »