It recently came to my attention that all of the links to my CG Cookie tutorials were no longer correct due to the move to Blender Cookie. All of the links have now been fixed and are active once more!
I would also like to draw your attention to http://blendercookie.com where I have many, many new tutorials that I have not gotten around to posting here. You will find tutorials on everything from modeling a car to a topology overview of the human head and much more. If you have liked my previous tutorials here on Montage Studio then I think you will like a lot of the new ones. So far I have published over 30 tutorials with Blender Cookie and so you can obviously see that many of them are missing from here.
I have not done a very good job of updating this blog recently, but I did want to point you all towards part 01 of my latest tutorial Blender Cookie on modeling a Porsche 911 GT3 RS!
This multi-part tutorial I take a close look at how to model a Porsche 911 GT3 RS. Due to the nature of the car the tutorial encompasses a lot of techniques from both organic modeling and hard-body modeling styles. A particular emphasis is placed on creating good topology that will enable you to easily modify the shape but also to accurately create the details.
Part 01 of the this tutorial details how to create the base of the front end.
I hope you like it and as always I love hearing your feedback!
I am pleased to announce that www.blendercookie.com launched mid-last week! Over the last year I have been working very closely with Wes Burke from www.cgcookie.com on training material for Blender. Starting out Blender represented only a small portion of the site, but almost over night it exploded, taking over more than 50% of the daily traffic. It soon became clear to us that Blender deserved it’s own home within the cookie family, thus Blender Cookie came into being.
What is Blender Cookie?
Blender Cookie is a site dedicated to supplying consistent, high quality, blender education materials produced by certified trainers from around the globe. By offering high resolution streaming videos, written education, developer interviews and featured resources, we aim to be the central hub for blender education.
OUR GOALS OF THIS SITE.
To offer blender education to artists around the world
Participate in community events, contests and give back to the community
Support the foundation and further development of blender
Have a bit of fun.
I for one, am very excited about this whole project. We have very high hopes for the site and a lot of plans with where we would like to take it. If you watch closely you will see a few of those plans materializing over the next few weeks!
Speaking for both Wes and myself, I truly hope you enjoy this site as much as we have enjoyed creating it. There are a lot of exciting things in the pipeline and I would like to thank all of you as none of it could have happened if it weren’t for all of your incredible support. Thank you all!
Enjoy and I look forward to hearing your comments.
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!
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.
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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
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
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!
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.
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.
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:
I am pleased to announce that cgcookie.com is now offering a downloadable bundle of all of the blender modeling tutorials I have thus far producded for them! However, that’s the boring part… the exciting bit is that the bundle includes three exclusive blender tutorials that aren’t available anywhere else! These three tutorials take an in depth look at modeling a organic plant, a full creature head and a pair of retro headphones. I won’t blabber on too much but here is a list of what all is included in the bundle:
Creature Head (3 part series) EXCLUSIVE
Create a Flower Plant EXCLUSIVE
Model a set of headphones (2 part series)EXCLUSIVE
Complete Head Modeling Series (6 Parts)
Model a rope
Create a burlap teddy bear (2 parts)
Model a wooden barrel
Create a telescope
Learning the shrink-wrap modifier
TIP: Create a wire render
TIP: Using the mirror modifier
TIP:Setting up a background image
TIP:Splitting the workspace
TIP: Using the loop cut tool
Plus we threw in 4 timelapes videos
All in all there is over 7 hours of training, all in high-resolution (1280×960), .mov format. It also includes all of the source files for each tutorial. If this is of interest to you, head on over to the new CGCookie Shop to check it out!
This tutorial is actually a few weeks old now but I hadn’t gotten around to posting it… and so here you are!
This tutorial introduces you to how to setup a three-point (+) lighting rig within Blender. It also gives a few tips on evening out your lighting, using negative lamps, and a trick that gives you more control of your lights and camera.
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, 
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 
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.
Hello everyone!
This tutorial is actually a few weeks old now but I hadn’t gotten around to posting it… and so here you are!