Morevna Project

Yesterday, stumbled upon nasty bug in blender 2.48(a). Explode modifier behaves really differently comparing to 2.47. This is the simple example file:

You can see what the parts of exploded object detached not only from object itself, but also from nearest area (which is 1,5-2 times larger than the object). The things become even worse when spin and rotation applied to particles.

It took me some time to figure out the cause of the problem - SubSurf modifier. It was applied before particles modifier, but if we swap their order things will return in place.

Another way to fix the problem - is just to apply SubSurf modifier to mesh. Anyway, in blender 2.47 Explode worked with SubSurf irrespective to their order. A bug? Or bug fix?

It’s time to tell about the way we organizing usage of the same models in various scenes with blender.

Imagine we have a model of… mmm… bike! And as you could see from storyboard bike is appearing on many scenes of Morevna Project demo. We do not want to include the full copy of a bike because every time we will change the original model, we will need to re-insert it into each scene and (sic!) animate it again.

Consider, what it is unavoidable to make changes in the model after it already inserted in the scenes and process of animation already begun. We can’t design the model from start till the very end - there is always something to fix during the usage. Also it could be handy to insert unfinished yet model to the scene to see how it will look, and let one artist to work on the scene and other continue develop model (like we did for truck model in scene 54).

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Marya Morevna’s bike layout.

Denis has managed to assemble all parts of the 24th scene into his first animation for this project. I suppose some of our readers are already saw this katana. The background is kindly provided by Carlos López González.

A 3D model of Marya Morevna’s katana was created for scene 24 of demo storyboard.

Download original model: katana.blend.
License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.

Here’s layout of helicopter. The model is not completely tuned, but it already could be used. Other stuff could be fixed during the animation process.

Helicopter state is controlled by IPO drivers. Watch it in action: ipo-drivers-demo.ogg.