Saturday, October 8, 2011

Modeled a head in Blender


I sculpted this head in Blender :) It's rough in a few areas like the eyes and the ears. The polygon count got so high that my computer was really choking on it. If I'd had more power I might have done something about it. I'm rocking a pretty old Dell here at home.

I've been itching to try Mudbox or Zbrush for a few years now, but couldn't justify plopping down some cash just to play with those expensive programs. Of course, most expensive software packs usually offer a short period (usually 30 days) as a trial. I'm never quite satisfied with that experience...30 days sounds like a long time, I'm pretty busy in my free time. So 30 days isn't usually enough for me to feel like I've fully explored any given program.

Then three weeks ago I discovered Blender 3D on the Internet by accident. I had actually heard of it before. To be honest, I kind of ignored it because I assumed it was another open source program that was generally awkward to work with (I won't bad mouth any particular programs. How can any one badmouth free software?). Previous to Blender the only open source programs that I found very useful was FireFox and somewhat useful OpenOffice. Blender 3D is pretty much awesome. I haven't finished exploring it. Supposedly it isn't as good as Mudbox or Zbrush, but I've heard it's pretty darned close. Since it's free, I won't need to feel guilty about plunking down thousands of dollars for hobby use. Though I can see how this may be useful in my professional job. Fortunately my computer at work is a bit more powerful.

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