My old laptop has been showing its age recently (or so I thought). Every thing I tried to do in Windows XP seemed to take forever – especially once I started to use multiple applications. As a result, I’ve not used it for a while.

I recently wiped the whole thing by using the factory restore DVDs that come with the laptop but that installed so much Sony bloatware that it didn’t really feel any faster at all. Just a whole lot emptier! ^^

I’ve been thinking of trying to use Linux for a while but the one thing that’s put me off is the fact that there are some Windows applications that I still have a need for (and a couple of games). It was a few months back when my interest was re-kindled by Haz’s laptop running Linux. He showed me that he’d got some windows applications running natively on the laptop by using Wine and it actually seemed to work!

So… I’ve downloaded the latest distro of Kubuntu (I prefer the KDE environment) and I’ve installed it on my laptop. I even destroyed the hidden restore partition on the HDD to make more space. I’ve downloaded packages useful to me (networking just works without any hassle at all) and I’ve installed Wine.

The result is amazing – it feels like I have a new laptop again. The speed is amazing, I can switch between various running applications with ease and I LOVE the 3D task selection view. I’ve fallen in love with my old laptop again because it works as it’s supposed to.

Now I’m just trying to install the Windows applications that I need. I installed Internet Explorer 6 earlier and that runs without any problems at all. Fun, fun, fun!

The trouble with working with 3D graphics is that, in spite of all the advances in 3D rendering techniques, the calculations of light in a scene are mathematical approximations of how light works in the real world.

I was thinking about this when I was playing around with a standard lighting set up for a project that I’m working on in Blender. One example is how, in the real world, you rarely get truly black shadows beneath objects.

I quite often see 3D work that would look that little bit more realistic if this simple fact had been taken into account and steps taken to fix it.

In my standard scene setup (top-right) I have a sphere primitive placed on my studio object (just a smoothly curved floor to wall object). It’s lit by a lamp and a spotlight. The underside of the sphere is unnaturally dark.

By adding an area light beneath it at a low energy setting (bottom-right), the darkness can easily be corrected to make the scene look and feel more realistic.

After a solid evening of modelling, writing about modelling and getting distracted by Charlie the cockatiel I’ve got to the stage of adding the toilet seat to the toilet for my bathroom.

The back of the toilet isn’t as perfect as I’d like – I need to reshape it to make the pipe come out of the bottom of the toilet rather than a mysterious tube that just grows from the back.

Having said that, I’m still really pleased with the progress so far.

I’ll continue to update the Toilet WIP page as I work on the model.

I’ve finally started to feel the return of my creative mojo so I thought I’d return to a shelved 3D project – the real bathroom.

The bathroom walls and form are already in place with rudimentary materials so I thought I’d start to focus on the individual objects in the bathroom, starting with the good old porcelain throne. :)

I will be showing WIP steps on the toilet project page. Wow, I never thought I’d ever have a “toilet project” :)

On Saturday I woke up with the idea of modelling a football in Blender and it was bugging me so much that I had to get up and get it done. The technique was simple enough – The ball started life as a Icosphere that I then Subsurfed. The only part that worried me was that Blender doesn’t like triangles but fortunately it didn’t cause a problem.

I created an alley scene using displacement and multi-textured materials and then fiddled with the lighting for hours trying to get it to look right in the render. I guess you could say that lighting is my least favourite part of creating a 3D scene. I’m too much of a perfectionist when it comes to lights.

Anyway, here’s a WIP shot of the scene. I’ll probably get it finished at some point (just like the bathroom…)

To the right is a test render of the work in progress. As you can see, the textures are all in place. I’m just fiddling with the lights trying to get them to look right. Maybe I’ll add some litter or something. The scene looks like it’s a little empty.

As usual, click on the images for a larger view.