Weekly Blender Roundup

Every week, I roundup all the interesting things that happened in the blender world.

I also add some tips on freelancing and work ethic. New Post every saturday.

Weekly Blender Roundup is currently paused. I am now working on my other projects.

3 March 2018 (#8)

Interesting video I have been watching:

Not much is known about the man himself, Ton Roosendaal. There was no perfect person to interview him other than Andrew Price himself. A rare glimpse into the life of this man and on the history of blender.

Blender had corporate beginnings with investors and 5.5 millions of dollars in investment.

Blender’s campaign to make it open-source was the first internet crowdfunding campaign. The people funding them had to sign contracts that if the money is raised by deadline, then only they will be charged.

They teach 3D Modeling in schools in Canada. (Not blender, they lost the contract)

Autodesk does not allow other software to support their proprietary FBX format. Older versions of Autodesk software cannot run files made by newer versions. Most of the income of Autodesk comes from its visualization business (Max, Maya form only 5% of their revenue.)

Game engine is ignored as every feature needs to be made for game engine separately.

Really worth a watch.

Tutorial video of the week:

I am so grateful for blender tutorials nowadays, any tutorial which teaches anatomy workflow must be cherished.

Theory video I like:

Perception and emotions can actually triumph the product itself.

The person creates a fake profile of a restaurant and blasts it with positive reviews on TripAdvisor. The restaurant doesn’t exist at all. He creates a simple website and creates a perception of a high class restaurant which serves “Moods” instead of flavors.

Eventually, as the rankings go up. He starts receiving calls from PR agencies and TV shows. He starts receiving reservations in which he declines every customer by saying the schedule’s booked.

Finally, when the ranking reach number one, he goes ahead and opens the restaurant that he perceived. He sells them off-the-shelf food but create an ambience of high class with chairs on the roof and blindfolding the customer to lead him into a secret place.

People are happy with the experience. They felt good, the quality of food didn’t mattered. They rationalized that it was good based on their feelings instead of facts.

Ignore the obvious scam, what we can learn from this experience is to make people feel good (From website design to your actual portfolio). Your product just needs to be above average. But if you make them feel good, that’s it. That’s the principle of marketing. Making people think emotional instead of rational.

Thinking of making your next portfolio piece is daunting. You do not know where to start, it’s like TV static in your brain.

One advice of Gleb Alexandrov was to look at clouds. Interpreting the shapes sometimes give us ideas.

This addon is pretty similar. It creates random shapes so that your mind may interpret as something. Sometimes background assets don’t need to be detailed. This addon helps in creating those assets too.

The shapes are created by specifying a random number and then changing a range of length, scale and rotation parameters of the resulting extrusions. You can subdivide it and model it as any other mesh.

I am retiring this section soon, as I myself have a lot of books to read yet. I will reintroduce this section after I read some more books.

I am reading this book on-and off for the past 3 months. It really is nice. A set of 5-11 questions are asked to each “Mentor”. Some of them contradict each other. Some answers you will find as foolish and some as great.

However, if you re-read sections after a period of time gaining some experience, the foolish answers seem not that foolish. The answers you liked earlier may not seem as great as you thought they were. Some new answers you previously ignored now seem as the greatest.

These “Mentors” are at different stages of their life just like you. Read their answers and test the things they said, sometimes it doesn’t work and sometimes they surprisingly do.

This book and the Tools of titans one have incredible re-reading value. I can’t recommend both of them enough.

What usually happens is that you do not work for a period of time. Then you have an irrational fear of returning to work. You procrastinate and waste your time away.

Suppose you have decided to give 3 hours of your day to work on your personal project. If you failed to work 3 hours as you have decided on a particular day. You do not feel satisfied. You feel that you have done something wrong and you try (and fail) to rectify it.

To combat that, you can use a technique called Non-zero day.

Decide the minimum and maximum amount of work you should do per day.

Allocate a minimum and maximum amount of time you should work.

Now try to do the minimum amount of work first everyday. Never skip a day. It will be done easily. Just completing that work will give you satisfaction. It will encourage you to work tomorrow as well.

Even working 5 minutes per day switches gears of your brain and removes the horrible procrastination mindset.

A string of successful achievements motivates the mind to do more. Even if you could not complete 3 hours of work, you will still return to work the next day. It’s all in the mind.

Quote from a book I am reading:

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” – Marcus Aurelius – Meditations – (Quoted in Tim Ferriss’ Tribe of Mentors)