I'm currently re-learning Blender. @darkwolf is keeping me company and learning it as well. We're both at the stage where we can do some hard-surface modelling, set up some lights and a camera, and animate bits and pieces in the scene.

There's a lot more to learn, so we're doing a little challenge.

We've both been selectors for @brothersoul's Pick 'n Mix show on LABR, so this idea to do a handful of one-minute looping blender videos for their livestream would be a good way to help a brother out, as well as test and expand our Blender skills.

It's set up like the famous challenges by pwnisher on YouTube. We have a basic template and we imagine different scenes using those shapes to inspire and build upon. It's been really fun, and is giving us an opportunity to try out different skills and disciplines on a bite-sized project.

If you follow #LABR you may have already seen a couple of them.

It's an interesting choice, tying the frame rate to sixteenth notes. It makes the video really jerky and jarring, but gives it a sense that everything is marching to the beat of the song. I'd make her movements have a higher rate, just to contrast the jerky movements of the technology and environment, but I don't know how hard tweening would be.

I tried to use Blender to model a house once. Couldn't get the stairs to snap, kind of had to give up. It doesn't do well with things with holes in them. Tried to use it to make an animation once but uh... the physics simulation is a bit disconnected from much of the stuff in the program. Like where you want to just give her hand a slight vertical impulse to the beat, and instead you have to calculate the position of her hand at each moment yourself.

@dgar

Good God, man, that must have taken forever to do. It's really well cut to the music too. Do you edit in Blender or use other software for that? Your points about pulling from all those disciplines are on point, in my experience as an architect, 3d modeler, and filmmaker. I've worked in formz, 3d studio max, Maya, Rhino, SolidWorks... But I never picked up the ball and ran with animation like this. I couldn't focus on it, trying to pull from all those disciplines can spread me pretty thin. Ultimately, I only learned those things as necessary evils to become a designer, never truly loved the tools in my toolbox, after coming from furniture making. This piece you've made though is epic and filled with worlds inside and still clicks in with the music just so. It's light and really fun. Now I want to learn blender. I've been meaning to take another stab at grasshopper for rhino in terms of the particles, etc. you described. I should edit my thoughts too but I've learned to let myself not give AF anymore. I'm an old now. Life is too short. Just be generative. Always.

@dgar Before my disability became more pronounced, I was a big work-with-my-hands person. I worked in factories and restaurant kitchens. I built shelves and tables, I gardened, knitted, wove and tatted. I drew and painted and wrote everything by hand. Now most of that is gone, and what is left is sporadic at best. Blender has opened the creative world back up to me in a way that no 2d art software ever did. I can conceptualize and then build furniture, structures, trees, objects... It's magic.

@dgar Blender is one thing I want to learn about.

That video will always be my favourite one.

@dgar There's something about this video that really reminds me of the video for I Am Chemistry by Yeasayer, but without the body horror and nihilism. Which... sounds insane I guess, to subtract those things from a video that centers them so hard. But you see what I mean, right?

@dgar Agree 1000%
Blender is so many wonderful things rolled into one package. It can be overwhelming, so just pick a piece that interests you and start there.

@dgar oh, no, nope, i'd not have written it that way!