David Revoy

Blend & Paint (B&P) is my second DVD after Chaos & Evolutions (C&E). It's a DVD featuring 2 main parts : a quickstart to learn vital function to use Blender 2.5 ( especially written for 2D artist ) , and a complete making-off commented ( with text label over video ) about my 3D paint-over techniques.

On this DVD training - with over 2 hours of videos - I explains step-by-step my 3D paint-over techniques. The training starts with an introduction to Blender 2.5, to provide 2D artists with not much 3D experience a quick overview of the key features of Blender. It introduces the basics of the UI, modeling meshes and setting up light and rendering. This render is then taken to MyPaint and GIMP for further processing, importing and setting up several layers and showing how to efficiently add detail, texture and more dramatic lighting with manual paint-overs and layering techniques.

The main theme of this training is to end up with a big high-detail 6K picture of a science-fiction environment, with space ship, a city, plants and trees, and several characters. By using the example files on the DVD you can fully recreate this artwork, but the real goal of the training is to understand the workflow, to train techniques to make efficient changes in visual appearances, learning to redo steps continuously.

For this training, a basic knowledge of Gimp and digital painting is recommended. It is an ideal DVD for 2D artist to spice up their workflow with a bit of 3D, and for 3D artist to stimulate them to paint more often, as an efficient design tool.

Over 2 hours of videos of 1280x720, 30fps
Short, concise steps, commented with english labels (no voice-over).
Uses Blender 2.5+ - Gimp-painter 2.6+ - Mypaint 0.9+
Licensed as Creative Commons 3 Attribution

By Purchasing this DVD you support the Blender Foundation projects.

The Blender Open Movie Workshop DVD series is a Blender Institute product, targeted at spreading the knowledge of previous participants in Open Projects. The videos and all files on the DVD are freely licenced as Creative Commons. DVD revenues are used to support current and future Open Blender projects.

Menu preview :

Official support page :

Erratum

Note: first batch of DVDs show short (8.3) names in Windows, Mac and Linux work fine. In Windows, the DVD is browsable and usable via Explorer fine. The HTML fix is available here for download now. On any request to the shop, the Blender e-shop will send you a reprint for free, just reply on the payment confirmed email or with order number. Sorry for the inconvenience! please read this blog post for more information on this issue

1) Install codes typos for terminal, in documentation :

In the 'resources' documentation, 2 typos in the code to install all softwares were found ... too late. Sorry about this :

You can find the correct and updated version here : http://www.davidrevoy.com/index.php?article69/installation-of-2d-tools-i-use-on-linux

2) I forgot to share the python plugin for Gimp 2.6 to save and open Mypaint *.ora layered files :

You can download the script here file-ora.py , and place it in your .gimp-2.6/plugin preference folder. (require Python on windows , and permissions on Linux )

For linux users , a quick "all in one" terminal install :

wget http://www.davidrevoy.com/data/documents/file-ora.py
mv file-ora.py ~/.gimp-2.6/plug-ins/file-ora.py
chmod 777 ~/.gimp-2.6/plug-ins/file-ora.py

3) Video recording bugs :

More thread about :

june, 2011 , Update for windows user : A method exist now to install all the best 2D open-sources drawing tools in windows 7 ( including Gimp-painter and Mypaint ) : The Open Drawing Package.

On this blog, about the making of :

About the keyboard display on screen 'Keymon' :
- http://www.davidrevoy.com/index.php?article68/keymon-custom-theme

About the script I used for the final video compression :
- http://www.davidrevoy.com/index.php?article66/blendpaint-dvd-finished

A *.py script by Nathan Vegdahl to do video-recording :
- http://www.davidrevoy.com/index.php?article65/recordscreen-py-video-and-audio-capture-for-linux-with-ffmpeg

The script I used and setting for video recording :
- http://www.davidrevoy.com/index.php?article62/videocapture-settings-for-the-blendpaint-dvd

FAQ

This question were found on the youtube video comments posted above. Feel free to ask more in the comment part bellow this post.

What kind of program is used to create the "subtitles"? I use Kdenlive (http://www.kdenlive.org/) and the template titles engine (http://www.kdenlive.org/discover/0.7.5#template ).

i really want this..but i don't have a dvd player.. The DVD is a DVD-Rom , to read on a PC with VLC ; so you don't need a TV home dvd player. If your computer don't have a DVD player, feel free to download it ( a torrent will be surely available by the community soon after release) don't forget to support the Blender foundation with a Paypal donation (http://www.blender.org/blenderorg/blender-foundation/donation-payment/ ) if you think it worth it.

Doesn't anyone feel a certain element, or even a large chunk of the magic involved in creating , admiring and displaying, has been removed from the whole essence behind illustration ? No, this is just less pains for illustrator. Difficulties and technical skill are just frontier for artist to express their essence. All possibilities and way are good if the final result express something interresting : a feeling, an idea. Don't mix the Art ( the idea, the result ) and the Handicraft ( the technics, the road to get it ) . Art history with Marcel Duchamp and Readymades already crossed ( almost one hundred years ago, 1917 ) this reflexion with a lot more of provocation than my 3D paint-over technic , really cool ! ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readymades_of_Marcel_Duchamp

I would also like to know is there is a suitable BOOK, normal paper, that will teach me about thing s using the new blender interface 2.5? Yes, I advice this one : http://www.blendernation.com/2011/04/18/book-introducing-character-animation-with-blender-updated-for-2-5/

The future Blender Movie Project???! :P It would be so cool if the next project will be a "science-fiction" story^^ ;) :- ) 'Mango' (codename) will be about sci-fi ; and I really plan to be around to help with concept-art if the future team want it ;)

I am a new beginner on blender and 3D world, and from the moment I realized that blender is a wonderful tool for my future work, I am interested to buy your video DVD blender and Paint. But, this is the question: I do not use MyPaint. I have another colouring software that I bought, and I was wondering if I still can follow your DVD instructions using my software. As a beginner, it will be a bit harder to follow it with OpenCanvas or Photoshop or Corel Painter. But the DVD present a workflow more than a real 'press this button' tutorial . So I think you can benefit from it.

Cool, I wonder how easy this would be to translate into doing 2D animation... the way traditional animation is done with painted backdrops and simply shaded cartoon "layers" has always left me unsatisfied somehow, if this technique used more 3d rendering and less direct hand work would create some beautiful animation For creating 'frame' this techniques would still be to slow in my opinion ( for a traditionnal 2D anim ) , but for painted background, it's ideal. I learned most of it while doing the backgrounds for the video games Troll de Troy ( watch many screenshots here : http://www.jeuxvideopc.com/screenshots/32972-trolls-de-troy-la-cite-de-la-mort-rose/ )

just wondering how much the 3d art is used in the end product. is it mostly for reference, or is it almost 100% traced? I would say the right proportion is around 30% of 3D, and 70% of paint-over