Hey Foxy,
Great work on the hairy golf ball!  I haven't spent a lot of time playing with the particle system on Blender, but it's amazing.
Also the weight painting is a great idea for the particles.  Great tutorial! 

As for rigging the caterpillar, the tutorial that I listed above does a great job explaining how to do it, and it used weight painting too.  The reason my caterpillar looks like it's dancing and having a seizure is because I kind of twisted him up when I was adding/editing the bones. 

I'm glad that you guys are playing with Blender too, It's getting me excited about checking out new things.

As for the particle collision, I'll  check into it after I get some work finished for a class I'm teaching this summer.   

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Starfox... Great job with cloth test.  Did you use a tutorial for that one?

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My response to Blender so far has been, to quote, "Gaaaayyyaaa..." I first tried it a week or so ago to try the particle system to see if it was any better than Carrara's and found it doesn't import many file types. Secondly, my laser printer is bust and I can't print out the quick start:( However these, I'm certain are solvable. My main gripe with Blender is the annoying fact it won't load up a model I created in Carrara, despite saving it in DXF. It's about 10MB, so it's far from huge. Anyone have any ideas?

Just downloaded Blenderundergrounds videos to my ipod, going to keep watching them until it sticks in me head!

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Gix, yeah, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tErlMFSyPTI makes it so easy. I've left a few comments here and there on some of these guys videos, and they've been quite helpful at coming back with the odd tip or too.

Tangster, I don't know Carrera at all, but have you tried exporting your model with other file types. I have been working on a model in Cinema4D which I'm going to try and play around with in Blender. I exported it from C4D as a Wavefront file (.obj) and it imported into Blender fine, see below. (Had a few minor issues with inverted normals on faces, but that's just to do with my messy modelling than anything) Stick with us here, and we might be able to teach each other some stuff.

Ed, thats great, I have a video ipod too, and have been looking for video podcasts for Blender, gonna go check those ones out now.

 

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I was going to suggest .obj too. 
Blender's free, and I'm broke, so price recommends it. E-mail one of us the file and we can see if we can get it in there too.
Don't worry, I won't steal your work or idea.

 

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Itunes crashed on me while I was syncing photos to my ipod now when I restart Itunes the sync starts and freezes Itunes and I have to start task manager to close itunes. I want to get this sorted so I can copy a few more Blender tutorial to my pod aggghhh HELP!!!

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You may have to reset the entire thing... I don't know a lot about Apple Products, I've heard that Ipods are a bit temperamental.

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edart:

Itunes crashed on me while I was syncing photos to my ipod now when I restart Itunes the sync starts and freezes Itunes and I have to start task manager to close itunes. I want to get this sorted so I can copy a few more Blender tutorial to my pod aggghhh HELP!!!

Hmm, not sure what the craic is too well with an Ipod on windows, if thats what you're on. You could try reinstalling ITunes, but that'll probably mean importing all your stuff again, if possible it might be worth backing it up first. Then do a factory reset once you get ITunes going again. Or an alternative is if you can get your hands on another PC with ITunes, you could try doing a factory reset on it then plugging it in. Does ITunes freeze when you DON'T have the iPod plugged in to the computer? 

BTW, I'm working on modelling a basic plasticine model man in Blender at the minute, and I've been using ISHOWU to do a movie of it. Bit messy at the mo, but I'll get it posted when I get a bit further with it. Is there a duration limit on the videos that you can upload to Youtube? 

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Fox, did you make that dog looking robot above?  Did you use Blender?  It rocks.

 

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GixGidea:

Fox, did you make that dog looking robot above?  Did you use Blender?  It rocks.

 

Gix, no I built it in Cinema4D, been working on it on and off for a couple of years, every now and then when I get a chance in work. I had planned to do a short animation with it, I even have a script which my mate had written for it. I had gotten too busy in work to do anything,  but I recently went back to it to try and at least get the model finished, which I think it is now (except for his tail lol) Thought I would import it into Blender to see if I can get it any further, rig it up and see where it'll go. This is how he looks textured and rendered in C4D so far:

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That looks really cool.. I'm looking fwd to seeing what you get it to do.

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Ipod problem solved though I had to delete my library and reinstall Itunes then restart my PC.

 Was going to watch a Blender tutorial on the bus but realised when I tried that the vids were not on my Ipod because of the above problem

 

Great dog-bot! I can see he should be relatively easy to animate as he has perfect looking joints to do so!

 

 

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Here's a project for the Brain Challenge... I'm going to use the hair tutorial that Fox told us about and then try and rig him up.

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I haven't figured out how to get him fuzzy yet, but I do have him rigged up.

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