This is the 10th post about me learning 3d animation using Blender software…My first post is really right at the beginning, so if you want to try to learn Blender, start there, it might be helpful…(Believe me, you’ll need all the help you can get!)(Youtube is a great resource too-make sure to use the word “tutorial” in searches as well as the version of Blender you are using…This one here is version 2.66a)…Sari Grove

http://www.blender.org/ Blender 3d animation software is available here for free…(Also just so much more!)

Ok, so Blender has Sculpt Mode, go there:

Within Sculpt Mode at the far left is a big menu, from that menu Find TOPOLOGY, & click the box to ENABLE DYNAMIC…

To help Blender work click the word OPTIMIZE below that…

Now you can Sculpt! The brush I used to make the image above is called “Snake tail”…I thought that was a pretty neat brush…

Now, SOMETHING Important…

Blender crashed a few times while running Sculpt Mode…The little wheel shows up & starts spinning & you can’t do anything, but maybe wait or Force Quit if you get bored waiting & lose all your stuff…

So, I found a neat little program you can download for free called CPU Speed Accelerator 6.2 …I tried it & though Sculpt Mode again tired out my Mac, I wa able to get my job done…Which is a big difference from losing the whole thing!

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/13308/cpu-speed-accelerator Here is the link to CPU Speed Accelerator…If you decide you want to use it all the time you can buy it for about 40 dollars Canadian…Which is alot cheaper than a new computer, more RAM, or just about anything else…It worked for me!

Note about the Graphire4 pen & tablet: I really noticed that using a pen in Sculpt Mode was nicer than using a mouse…The lines flow better with a pen…

Notes about Sculpt Mode: While in Sculpt Mode if you open the Properties Panel (the extra one where you have to click the + button at the top right to open it up), not the default panel: Look for the Word “DISPLAY” & click the arrow to open up that menu…Look in there for the word “Shading” & choose from that menu “MULTITEXTURE”…Ok then check the box below that says MATCAP…This brings up a wonderful picture which if you click on opens up other wonderful pictures of textures you can overlay on your sculpture…

*Another neat thing you can do is go to Textures at the far Right panel & choose something there, then go back to the far left Sculpt Mode panel & see that texture in that texture panel too…This means you can brush on your cool texture onto your sculpture…

Below are two different selections from the MATCAP menu…Neat eh?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5HIOhmLZAc This is the tutorial that taught me Sculpt Mode…Ignore the fact that it is in German…Just follow along the pictures…credit goes to: Tobi Lijsen, Blender Tutorial – Sculpting mit Dynamic Topology ab Blender 2.66 (on Youtube)

Last words: Clean out your computer if you really want Blender to work well…

I use these Apps:

Sponge (looks for space hogs & helps you get rid of them),

AppCleaner(finds all things attached to an App that may be hidden somewhere & helps you delete them),

MainMenu (clean your computer like once a week using this great app-cleans all sorts of things you don’t know how to do yourself!)…

TidyUp is for major cleaning(It removes duplicate files including similar files like 5 versions of the same song with slightly different titles, as well as image files that are similar or duplicates)…

I also have a Lacie Rugged External hard drive: a small orange thing that sits under my desktop screen & plugs into the usb port…This is where I store all my files & where I back-up my Time machine files to…

About Time machine: I do a major back-up with Time machine maybe once or twice a year, but the rest of the time I keep it OFF…It uses up alot of energy if you leave it on automatic backups…

Update on Thursday April 4, 2013: I feel somehow that maybe the Wacom tablet being plugged in all the time to the back of my Snow leopard iMac Desktop computer 10.6.8 version around, is draining energy…I am not sure…But in the Sculpt Mode in Blender, energy becomes really really crucial, the more the better…So for today, I have unplugged my Graphire4 tablet to see if I get more juice into Blender sculpt…Early indications are yes…

Which means that purchasing or using a tablet with a pen is maybe not the best idea if you don’t have one yet…Ok, like if you are wanting to draw in another program, go ahead…But for Blender 2.66a 3d animation software, maybe it’s better to just use your 3 button mouse, so you are not draining energy with the tablet part…

Which means I have to take back alot of the positive stuff about using a pen & tablet…Cause if the program crashes more cause your tablet is stealing juice then who cares if you can draw better curves anyways?

p.s. not a total loss though- the tablet came with Corel Painter & Photoshop elements, which I have yet to look at…Plus, I am sure drawing is fine in smaller programs…Which I will do…Soon…

Nope: Well, nope…The Cds need a serial number which is supposed to be on the sleeve of the CD, but I don’t have the Cd sleeve because they didn’t come with…However, this is probably a GOOD thing…Why? because GIMP,(Update: NONONONONONO http://gimp.lisanet.de/Website/Download.html -this download turned out to be a 32 bit download & it said in the text that I should use a 64 bit download version…SO GO HERE INSTEAD http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/14597/gimp This is for Mac snow leopard 64 bit version 10.6.8 & up computers…GIMP)This is the link to GIMP download pages…GIMP is a FREE software for image creation type stuff, more detailed work you cannot do as well in Blender…You create your images then animate them more in Blender…GIMP is recommended by someone who just published a book called BLENDER MASTER CLASS (Ben Simonds, NoStarch press)…I think I may buy this book…Can’t decide…But reading the reviews, I saw that he used GIMP as his image creation program…Plus it’s free again…So I might as well download GIMP because it works well with Blender…To heck with Corel & Photoshop, especially since I don’t have the serial numbers I won’t even bother installing the CDs…Sometimes good things come in funny ways…(Had I had the serial numbers I may have tried to cowboy it with either Corel or Photoshop & for sure would have failed to get them to handshake with Blender)…(so good thing the guy didn’t send the Cd sleeves with the serial numbers!)

Note again:because I downloaded the 32 bit not the 64 bit GIMP first, I had to delete the first one…Didn’t want to delete…So I used a free (donate though) program called TRASHIT for that…You drag offending software that won’t delete onto the Traschan icon, & follow the steps…Bam, deleted!(that is so annoying when things won’t delete isn’t it?)