Remembering How to Use Blender

Way back in 2008 or earlier I spent a few weeks teaching myself the basics of how to use the awesome open source 3D modeling program, Blender. My thought process was that it might come in handy when trying to demonstrate product concepts. I spent a bit of time making a bunch of parts and even rendered out a rough robot with a rocker-bogie suspension.

Anyone who has fooled around with Blender will know that it can be a bit difficult to get started as there are a lot of keyboard shortcuts. I had forgotten all of them, but when fooling around with textures this evening, they all came back to me as quick as a flash of lightning. I scanned a piece of the material I am using for my recent project and applied it to what is supposed to be a rough pillow. Obviously the pillow probably wont reflect anything, but its hard to see the contours in a single frame.

I also familiarized myself with the Collada file format over the weekend. It looks like I should be able to swap out textures on the fly by modifying the images that create them. The next few weeks should be pretty fun.