Endikos

Photorealistic 3D Earth Blender Video Tutorials!

Endikos — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:17:14 +0000

This is the last in the “What I’ve been up to lately” series. This first video tutorial shows you how to make the Photorealistic 3D Earth I created, whose textures and blend file are available in a previous post. Be sure to watch it full-screen, it’s in HD!

And as a bonus feature for the above video, I did a second video to show how to go from the whole-earth place we ended up at, to a render of North America’s west coast in the morning, also including the Lens Flare rig I built. Actually, I built the Lens Flare rig to work with exactly this type of shot! Enjoy!

Photorealistic Earth and Lens Flare 3D models for Blender

Endikos — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 17:42:54 +0000

I’m a big believer in open source philosophy and giving back to the community. Some of my best work lately has been in my 3D photo-real Earth with its accompanying textures as well as my lens flare rig. I’ve already posted all of these files to Blendswap (a creative commons Blender file sharing site), but also wanted to make them available here, so here you go! These are released under a creative commons license (CC BY – the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License), so you are welcome to use these in whatever way you choose, so long as proper attribution is given. These files were created in Blender 2.62. Enjoy!

Earth + Textures Download (31.5 MB)

Lens Flare Rig Download (715.6 kB)

Now in Threeeeee Deeeeeee….

Endikos — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 18:28:29 +0000

In the second part of my “What I’ve Been Up to Lately” series, I wanted to show you some 3D work I’ve been doing as well. First up is a project that’s actually been years in the making. Okay, this particular revision only represents somewhere in the neighborhood of 24 hours or so of work, but the *concept* has been around for years. This is G-BOT. “G” in this case stands for “Gabriel”, the name of my oldest son. I eventually plan to make a whole family of 3D robots. Gabe and David, myself and my wife, and two little dog-bots.

For the curious, this was modeled in Blender, rendered using the Blender Internal engine, and some textures and final compositing was done in Photoshop.

Next Up, a couple of renders of the planet we call home. For what it’s worth, it is stunningly difficult to get the colors on these right :-)

Both of these images were rendered using Blender’s Cycles render engine.

Photographic Endeavors

Endikos — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 21:58:19 +0000

I promised you an update on what I’ve been up to, and decided to break it into a few sections, mostly because I have pics to show, and didn’t want to make a single five-mile-long post. So I’ll give you three two-mile posts instead (yeah, the math is a bit weird on that one). I haven’t been able to get out and shoot anywhere near as much as I’d like, but I’ve been able to make a few decent photographs as of late. Here are a few of my faves:

First up, a tree I call the “Old Guard”. This tree is completely dead, most likely due to a late-season snow storm we had a few years ago. It’s the single largest tree of any that are around it for a few hundred feet, and so reminds me of an Tolkien-esque Ent with a responsibility for the younger trees around it. The morning this photo was made, it was very foggy out, and I knew that it was the right time to point the camera at this particular tree, as I’d had an eye on it for a while. A few days after this photo was made, we had a really nasty windstorm that stripped this tree of most of what it had left, aside from the trunk.

Next Up, our church’s annual “Fall RefresHer”. I was kindly asked to walk around and make some photographs while the ladies in our church enjoyed an evening of fellowship, a good meal, some music, and some teaching from an excellent speaker. Here are a few of my favorite shots:

How Time Flies!

Endikos — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:15:31 +0000

I’ve not been idle! But my poor blog certainly doesn’t reflect that. I’m sure that by now the little bits and bytes that together form my blog feel abandoned and have tiny pixelated sad faces. Cheer up, my little binary friends – there are things to write about! I’ve got a few photographs I want to share, as well as some 3D-related stuff that I’ve been working on lately, and some of it will probably be hitting later today. Here we go again…

A Non-Serialized Non-Time-Specific Photo, Number 1

admin — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 22:49:44 +0000

So since the regular photo effort sorta fizzled, I just wanted to post something sort of random. The boys and I went to the Museum of World Treasures yesterday while my wife and her cousin went to a musical downtown. This Jade statue is on display there. This place is an excellent way to enjoy a few hours!

A Year of Photos – Week 7

Endikos — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 01:04:51 +0000

Week 7 – Yup, I’m afraid I’ve had to go from a once-a-day to a once-a-week. Hopefully this will keep me from getting bogged down between a full time job, side projects, family time, and hobbies :-) So It’s official… Spring has sprung and life is once again filling the Kansas plains and our nostrils with sneeze-inducing pollens.

A Year of Photos – Day 44

Endikos — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 02:51:52 +0000

Time to break out the strobes again. The shots of David a few days ago were just too Flat. Today I’m trying to emulate a shot my friend Justin Cary took recently. While this isn’t near as good as his, it’s got more depth and is a better shot than my last one… so we’re getting there.

A Year of Photos – Day 43

Endikos — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 02:49:22 +0000

Finally Starting to get back into the photo of the day! The family and I went to the Oklahoma Aquarium over the weekend and enjoyed some time together looking at the wonders to be found underwater. Jellyfish are remarkably interesting to look at, so that what I’ve chosen to show you for Day 43. Check out all the Aquarium photos I liked on my flickr page.

Time Warp

Endikos — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:24:14 +0000

Similar to the college student that fits four years of college into six years, it looks like I’m going to fit a years worth of photos into a year-and-a-half. My apologies for being unable to pick up the camera as of late, external commitments have been keeping me so busy I couldn’t take the time to shoot something. I’m hoping that this weekend I’ll have some chances to bring you some awesome stuff! Stay tuned…