Tadd Mencer

Posts Tagged ‘Good Tutorials’

I’ve had a Zune for several months now – bought it off a co-worker. I love it. However, the software that it uses .. well, seems a bit bloated and limited. It’s not horrible – but just seems to add too much.

So I tried the ol’ faithful – Songbird. Took an addon to do it, but yes … it is true – you can sync them together!

It works really well – I have to admit. Fast, easy, quick .. I don’t know why I didn’t try it before!

So .. in order to do this you need:

1) To download Songbird – http://www.getsongbird.com

2) get the MTP Support addon – http://addons.songbirdnest.com/addon/172

3) Plug in your Zune.

That’s all I did! It was fast and easy!

If you need MORE proof it works (seems a lot of unbelievers ..) go http://wiki.songbirdnest.com/Docs/Device_Support/MTP_Device_Support

It says that yes … you can get Zune support.

Here is the image of my Zune (.muzak.) synced with my Songbird 1.2.0

Post your experiences! Did your Zune work? How about your iPod or iPod Nano? Anyone try a Zen or other manufacturers?

Ok … so I was going to try and use SmithMicro’s Poser Pro 7 for my rigging and posing of 3D characters in Deadland Chronicles. I was also hoping I could use it to easily model out side characters and background characters without breaking a sweat. Sadly, for whatever reason, the demo crashes without warning or error message.

So, I’m back to working with Open Source programs such as makeHuman and Blender.

The sad thing is – i can’t really find a really easy to follow tutorial on how to rig in Blender.

For those who are not aware what ‘rigging’ means, this is where you take a 3D character (such as the NeoTech soldier) and add armatures (or bones) to the model. Then, you can use the bones to move the body and pose him/her in various ways (walk, run, punch, jump, etc.). Poser has a slew of present poses so I was really hoping to use that program (despite the price) for posing.

So, if anyone out there can point me to good tutorials or show me how to rig/pose in Blender that would be amazing! I know there are a lot of Blender users out there .. so come now. Help a brotha out! Go to the contact page and drop me an email – I would forever be in your debt! Or at least really thankful!

Sidenote: I have figured out how to move characters and objects around a scene for rendering. Which is a huge deal for me. *crosses fingers* Hopefully Blender will end up the modeler of choice as well as the rigging and posing software. Would make life easier – and it works great with Silo (my modeler of choice).

One of the only things I did over the week (other than baby things, errands and helping take care of the wife) is a bit of work on my soldier guy. Aidan and I added a few things to the fray such as a breather and a tube – which very much adds a Steam Punk vibe. I did some work on the chest plate, though I’m not that excited about it. Feels too generic, so I may redo it again. For the 10th time. Literally.

Modeled it Silo
Rendered in Blender

I need to redo the gloves because they got screwy for some reason. But that’s easy enough to do.

If anyone has any good tutorials that aren’t uber-basics please let me know. I have the "The Creature Factory" and "The ManCandy FAQ" but those are beyond me at this point. I need more just above basics. I don’t need to know how to split the viewports and such. I need more how to do the extrudes and all that jazz.

I’m on a "post tutorials" kick. I know I always appreciate finding good tutorials for Photoshop (or 3D Studio Max or .. or .. or) so I figured I’d throw some good ones out there.

This one is pretty need, details and fairly easy to follow. I haven’t gone through the whole thing myself yet, but the general ideas are there. And very cool.

Here is a description from the site:

"I have seen something really interesting on the net a few days that was made by Nik Ainley but I found the tutorial too small. So here is a more detailed one for those who think of using this great technique."

Water effect photo montage

Or as I like to call it "Water man effect".

I’m a fan of Photoshop, and therefore I’m a great fan for tutorials! They’re an easy way to learn tricks that will help you transform your designs from ‘eh’ to ‘ah!’ in no time!

Smashing Magazine is probably a great place for me to find quality tutorials. Of course, you could always sift through Good Tutorials or Pixel2Life, but to be honest they’re more quantity than quality. You have a slew of tutorials – but well over half are rubbish.

So I’ll give you all a slew of tutorials .. and not a small slew .. but a SLEW SLEW!!

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