If you sometimes have trouble getting the creative process started, it often helps to look to outside sources for inspiration. There’s nothing wrong with browsing through works that others have created and keeping your mind free and open for when that little spark of creativity ignites. Just be careful – under no circumstances should you directly copy someone else’s work!

That said, I recently discovered a great site for viewing some very nice website layouts: www.thebestdesigns.com. These guys review thousands of submissions worldwide every year and only select the most impressive designs to be included on their site.

Whether or not the websites chosen to be included in their list are the “best” is subject to opinion – but there is certainly a lot of really nice work there to inspire you and get you moving in the right direction on your own design. So go get inspired!

www.thebestdesigns.com

You know those 3D modeling contests that you occasionally bump into while surfing CG websites? Stop ignoring them. If you usually pass them by, you are missing out on a great learning opportunity and one that can really help to increase your profile as a 3D artist. Here are a handful of reasons why you need to jump in head first:

1. Contests force you to think creatively (and competitively)
2. Continued practice makes for better modeling, texturing, lighting, etc
3. They teach you to work to an established deadline (real world stuff)
4. Exposure
5. Free critiques

Contests are a great way to force yourself to sit down and create something that you might not otherwise. If the above reasons aren’t enough to convince you, remember that you may actually win something too. So stop waffling and get your work out there!

Here are a few websites where you can find regular contests.  (If I’ve missed any big ones here, and I’m sure that I have, please e-mail me a link and I’ll add it to this post.)

• CG Society: http://challenge.cgsociety.org/
• 3D Total: http://forums.3dtotal.com/forumdisplay.php?f=102
• 3D World: http://www.3dworldmag.com/tag/competition/



...and here are a few that are specific to Blender users...

• Blender Cookie: http://cgcookie.com/blender/category/articles/contests/
• Blender Guru:  http://www.blenderguru.com/category/competitions
• Blender Artists: http://blenderartists.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?5-Contests
]]> http://www.aeristech.com/2011/10/dont-overlook-3d-modeling-contests/feed/ 0 http://www.aeristech.com/2011/10/the-nature-academy-complete/ http://www.aeristech.com/2011/10/the-nature-academy-complete/#comments Sun, 16 Oct 2011 19:51:00 +0000 jeffbayer http://www.aeristech.com/?p=654 If you're a 3D artist and you've ever tried to model a realistic tree, or a bush, or grass... then you know how tall of an order this can be. Luckily for Blender artists everywhere, Andrew Price (a.k.a. the Blender Guru from Australia) stepped in and offered the solution - a 9-week course of video tutorials covering many aspects of nature modeling. The entire course was extremely valuable. Andrew has a lot of tips and tricks up his sleeve to really make your renderings shine, including use of Blender's built-in compositor for image post-processing. If you haven't used the compositor yet, you really owe it to yourself (and your audiences) to learn this tool as soon as you can.

Although the first run of the course is complete, it will open up again in approximately 6 weeks for a second run. Don't miss it this time. (Keep an eye open for the next sign-up in November at http://www.blenderguru.com/).

The desert image featured in this post was my submission to the final competition at the close of the first course. It was one of 108 entries submitted and although it didn't win, it was one of six images chosen by Andrew as "honorable mentions". Thanks, Andrew! See you in the second run of the course.

]]> http://www.aeristech.com/2011/10/the-nature-academy-complete/feed/ 0 http://www.aeristech.com/2011/08/blend-yourself-a-city/ http://www.aeristech.com/2011/08/blend-yourself-a-city/#comments Fri, 26 Aug 2011 02:40:08 +0000 jeffbayer http://www.aeristech.com/?p=633 I thought I was going to need to create a 3D cityscape for a project I've been working on, so I did a little online searching and found a nice Blender plugin that does just that!  If you're not looking for a lot of detail, the "Suicidator" City Generator built by Arnaud Couturier can generate a nice background city for your 3D projects.  I found it worked well as a starting point for generating a basic city (see image above).  Of course, for a final project, you're going to want to do a lot of fine tuning including adding some custom low-poly buildings to break up the "field of cubes" effect and some highly detailed foreground elements.

The current version of the plugin only works with Blender 2.49.  So if you want to try it out, you're going to have to install the old version of Blender - yeah the one with the ugly interface.  At the very least, it makes you really appreciate all the GUI changes that have been made for Blender 2.5.  I only spent as much time as I needed to in 2.49 to generate my city, then appended the objects into Blender 2.59 for further tweaking.

A new version of the plugin compatible with Blender 2.5 is currently under development.

]]> http://www.aeristech.com/2011/08/blend-yourself-a-city/feed/ 0 http://www.aeristech.com/2011/08/evolution/ http://www.aeristech.com/2011/08/evolution/#comments Sat, 13 Aug 2011 17:00:18 +0000 jeffbayer http://www.aeristech.com/?p=418 I've been working on several WordPress sites for one of my clients lately and have come to really appreciate its use.  WordPress has proven itself to me, not just for setting up a site with a ton of built-in functionality, but also for keeping a site current with regular content updates.  I know there are a lot of naysayers that balk at the widespread use of WordPress for websites because it is technically not a true content management system (CMS), but with each new release, the line between "blogging platform" and "CMS" blurs even further.  Whatever you choose to call it, it really doesn't matter... it just works... and it does its job well.  If you're not afraid to delve into a little PHP code and CSS styling, you can really deliver a high level of custom polish to a website.

So with all the new WordPress goodies under my belt, it was time to raise the bar on AerisTech's website.  I had been thinking about a blog-inspired site for quite a while - just hadn't gotten around to implementing it until now. Sadly, I did say goodbye to my old custom 3D Flash cube rotator... but change is good. Maybe I'll rework the old rotator into a stock component in the near future... maybe.

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