# Father Christmas in the Nude



## InsanityStrickenWriter (Dec 17, 2011)

Well, the title says it all. The thing of children's nightmares. You may not want to let this shady character give any sort of presents in future.





















This one is a print screen of wireframe mode. He was made in Blender, and I might make use of him in a Unity christmas game, (depends if I can get one done by Christmas, only about a week so I'm cutting it a bit short  ).


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## vangoghsear (Dec 17, 2011)

Nice work with the modeling.  I'd like to see it again finished.


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## bazz cargo (Dec 18, 2011)

You gotta get a life.


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## InsanityStrickenWriter (Dec 19, 2011)

bazz cargo said:


> You gotta get a life.


Not during Christmas holidays I don't 



vangoghsear said:


> Nice work with the modeling. I'd like to see it again finished.


Thanks. There's still a few imperfections about, but he probably won't be seen up close particularly often and I'm running short on time, so without further ado here is the complete and clothed Father Christmas/Santa Claus:


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## vangoghsear (Dec 20, 2011)

Cool.


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## ScientistAsHero (Dec 20, 2011)

Insanity, good job on Santa. I'm currently playing with Blender 2.6 a bit and I must say the interface is WAY better than the 2.4 version and previous. I've got some experience in Cinema 4d and 3d Studio, but always wanted to learn Blender. I'm always amazed at that program... it has comparable functionality to the commercial 3d apps but it doesn't cost a cent. Sintel was amazing. (Elephant's Dream and Big Buck Bunny were pretty good too but Sintel took it to a whole 'nother level, to quote Eugene Struthers from MADTv.)


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## InsanityStrickenWriter (Dec 21, 2011)

VanishingSpy said:


> Insanity, good job on Santa. I'm currently playing with Blender 2.6 a bit and I must say the interface is WAY better than the 2.4 version and previous. I've got some experience in Cinema 4d and 3d Studio, but always wanted to learn Blender. I'm always amazed at that program... it has comparable functionality to the commercial 3d apps but it doesn't cost a cent. Sintel was amazing. (Elephant's Dream and Big Buck Bunny were pretty good too but Sintel took it to a whole 'nother level, to quote Eugene Struthers from MADTv.)



Thanks. 2.6 is definately a lot better  2.4's interface was incredibly out-dated. The new one is much easier to find everything with, is more slick, etc. Plus, I don't think they had quad view on 2.4. There's also a couple useful new (or at least, I didn't notice them before) features that I find myself using a lot: applying modifiers to the editing cage and being able to turn on and off selection vertices that aren't visible, (without going into wireframe mode). ...And that might've just gone completely over your head depending on how far along you are with learning blender. 

I've never actually tried the _professional _modelling software, but from what I've read from people who have, blender tends to be superior. I'm certainly happy with it. And the blender short films are great, I always end up feeling a mix of envy and inspiration. Always have great storylines with them too, rather than just showing off their 3D brilliance.

So, what brings you to 3D modelling software anyway? Hobby?


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## ScientistAsHero (Dec 21, 2011)

I got into 3d back in about '03 or '04... on a whim I took an animation class. I guess I didn't read the course description very well, because I actually thought I was going to be learning how to make 2d cartoons, so you can imagine my surprise when I got there and we start learning about NURBS and splines and modifiers and such. We were using Cinema 4d. But once I got over my initial shock I found I really enjoyed it. This was about the time that Finding Nemo had come out, and I remember one class period we sat and watched it and our teacher would discuss the technical details of the modeling and animation. It was a fun class. I kind of regret not getting into it as a career, actually. I remember one time sitting in the computer lab at school working on a model of a head... it was spring and the door was open and it was evening outside and I had music on, and I was just sitting there moving vertices around modeling this person's face, and I thought, "man, this is nice. I could do this as a job."

I have done it on and off over the years since then. I've known about Blender for some time, but have never really gotten too far into learning it because I had gotten so used to 3d Studio. I don't know if Blender is _superior_ or not to commercial apps like Maya and 3d Studio. But it definitely gives them a run for their money. (I have heard people say that once you learn the interface it is easier and faster to work in Blender, though.)

Ton Rosendaal and the guys that make those short movies in Blender are amazing. I have seen videos of them at work and it looks like they are so passionate about what they're doing.


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## InsanityStrickenWriter (Dec 22, 2011)

Yeah, the 'superior' thing was just me being a blender fanboy for a moment. I actually had rewrote that sentence a few times before posting my reply, thinking there was something wrong with how I typed it. I think the real issue I was seeing was the fanboyness of it. Though I think you may be right about blender being faster once you're up to speed with it. I had a sort of click moment a while back, let go of absolute perfection and grid fascism, and now I can get a fairly quality model out within an hour. Since posting Santa I've made his elves, a ticket warden, a train driver, a steam train, and a work-table. A while back, I remember agonising for a week just to model one sword. And then I found that I'd been looking at it in front view the entire time and that from the side... well, it wasn't a blade in the slightest. It would have had better use as a club. Took another couple days to fix that. Good times.

And the animation class sounds brilliant. I'm self-taught personally, youtube videos in large part. You're a lot more experienced that I am, I've only been modelling for about 2-4 years I think, and always only for short phases. I could definately see myself doing this for a living too, but from what I've read, the pay isn't particularly brilliant for animators. But then, I read the same about programmars, only to see a job the other week paying pretty highly for a C-Sharp coder for Unity games. Which I can do! It was pretty much the perfect job, but, well, I'm still in education and had to let it go.


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## ScientistAsHero (Dec 22, 2011)

Yeah, most of the jobs I see advertised for experienced web developers and programmers seem to pay pretty well. I am currently trying to teach myself how to do some "backend" web stuff -- Javascript, Python, PHP -- in an attempt to increase my job marketability. The unfortunate thing is that I'm already pretty entrenched in graphic design and I'm 32, so I feel way behind in the game. But I enjoy doing it, so I'll probably stick with it even if it never amounts to anything other than a hobby. And I could always try to freelance graphic design/web design/web development if I wanted to.

You know C#? That's pretty cool. I've looked at C++ before but mainly just kind of poked around at some books, never really tried to learn it seriously. I used to do a lot of stuff with Linux and kind of got into the technical side of things from that. From what I hear Linux is a good OS for software developers and programmers.

I've got way too many hobbies.


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