Blender VSE Part-3: How To Add Fade In-Out Effect

Part 3 of the Blender Video Sequence Editor (VSE) show how to animate the opacity of the image added in Part-2 to create a Fade In-Out effect.

Hope this helps,

-Steve

LINK: https://youtu.be/69KP-8Ezvao

Bumble Bee

 

This is part of an earlier painting entitled "Black Eye Susans".  I had so much fun creating the bee in flight that I wanted to create a higher resolution painting of the bee.  Here I depict the bee in flight about to land on the flower.

Blender VSE Part-2: How To Overlay Images

This tutorial is Part-2 of the Blender VSE (Video Sequence Editor) series.  This video covers adding or overlaying and image. Overlaying images is useful for adding titles, watermarks or description to your video

Hope this helps,
-Steve

LINK: https://youtu.be/f5uMFrd5El8

Blender VSE Part-1: How To Edit Video

This tutorial is Part-1 of the Blender VSE (Video Sequence Editor) series.  This video covers manually setting up Blender's interface, cutting a video file and rendering out a portion of the source video.

Virtual Dub Mod: Overview

This is a quick overview of Virtual Dub Mod and how I use it. Virtual Dub Mod is free, based on Virtual Dub and has a lot of uses.  With the use of WINE I have been able to use it in Linux.

Video Editing

There are a few video editing tools that I use.  The one I choose is the one that is most suited for the task at hand.  The three main applications are Blender, Virtual Dub Mod, and Authoring Works 4.

Blender Offical Test Builds

Blender Test Builds are now featured on Blender.org and can be downloaded HERE.

GIMP 2.7.4 Wacom Support

GIMP 2.7.4 now has Wacom Support.  I have been working towards replacing Photoshop so I can run Linux full time.  But Photoshop is not easily replaced, but the the newest version of GIMP, which is 2.7.4 is getting better everyday and now the issue with no Wacom or tablet support has been fixed.

Linux Mint-12 Upgrade from Ubuntu

I have been quite happy with Ubuntu up untill 11.10 when they dropped Gnome for Unity leaving us without a choice.  But I tried to get use to it but found it somewhat glitchy.  Then I kept hearing talk about the Mint branch of Linux.

MyPaint 1.0 for Windows and Linux

MyPaint 1.0 is now available for Windows users.  This is still an experimental build but seems to be quite stable.  There have been a lot of changes including dockable menus.  For full features, changes and download go to MyPaint's home page HERE. You can thank tumagonx for the Windows build. For those on Linux that want to try the newest build with the latest features, a PPA as been created. Just copy and paste the commands listed below that were posted by David Revoy:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:achadwick/mypaint-testing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mypaint

I will have a short video on my workflow utilizing GIMP 2.7 and MyPaint 1.0 hopefully before the birth of my son. After that, all bets are off.

Thank you,
-Steve

Tree Study

  

Here are a few drawings of trees I did for fun recently.  They are done with a mix of graphite and charcoal on smooth Bristol paper.

-Steve

Quick Tip: Why Calibrate My Monitor

Calibrating your monitor.  What can I say?  We all try to get away with calibrating our monitor by eye, but that only works for so long and unfortunately our eyes change.  Not just over the years but throughout the day.  We get use to seeing a certain way and we adapt in different lighting situations.  In the end our paintings, photos or what have you suffer.  Our darks are too dark, the colors are to saturated or the hues just don't look right especially when we go to print.  So we are left to buying hardware to calibrate our monitors.

Synfig Studio: 2D Animation Suite

This one is for anyone interested in 2D Animation.  Synfig Studio is a open source, cross-platform animation package.

Quick Tip: Launchy + Dexpot

Just want to introduce some free applications that I was introduced to the other day.  These are great little utilities that can help speed up ones work flow. Launchy is cross-platform while Dexpot is for Windows users who like the virtual desktops that is found in Ubuntu.

COMING SOON! - Blender 2.5 Video Sequence Editor

This is a snapshot of a new tutorial that is on it's way.  In the past few months I have been working on moving from commercial applications to FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software) and Blender has been one I have been working with since 2.48. One feature is Blenders Video Sequence Editor (VSE), which is also refered to as the Sequence Editor.  I have done some extensive testing changing options and working through some issues.  I want to show how to set up Blender's interface, add video files, edited them within Blender, add image overlays for titles, watermarks etc, and how to animate some of the properties.  These tasks maybe broken down into multiple parts so you can pick and choose what you need and to minimize the duration of the tutorial.

I hope to have it out within the next week or so,
- Steve

Quick Tip: MyPaint and GIMP Template

I have been working with GIMP a lot lately and also playing with MyPaint. I have seen some very good paintings done with MyPaint and I love the feel of the brushes. But I have always been able to control my canvas size and resolution. But MyPaint doesn't allow you to set either from scratch. This is one method that gets around those issues.

GIMP: How To Add Themes UPDATED

This is an update to the original tutorial on theme. In this tutorial I show how to download, adjust the themes and install them in either version 2.6.11 or 2.7.3.  In the end I preview the new themes and show how to set it as your default so it loads automatically.   The custom themes can be downloaded from GNOME.

Update: Installing GIMP 2.7.3 in Windows

UPDATE-: I add this update to an earlier post on "How To Install GIMP 2.7.3 in Ubuntu and Windows.
I had issues with saving to the OpenRaster extension (.ora) and had to go back and forth between 2.7.3 and 2.6.11 (stable version).  I went and backed up my .gimp 2.7.3 folder and uninstalled Gimp 2.7.3 with RevoUninstaller.  Then I reinstalled it with the version I downloaded from Gimpusers.com HERE.  I verified that it worked by exporting as an .ora file.  Then I copied my themes and brushes into the new folder.  Not sure what happened, but it is an experimental version.

Hope this helps,

-Steve

How To Sketch: Sketching The 4 Step Method

Overview: 
Sketching is a vital skill that enables one to quickly capture a vision or idea. Sketching is normally the first place that artists start out and is also the basis for most projects. Even movies start out with storyboards that are a sequence of sketches. Most often, but not always very rudimentary ones at best. Sketching is very important for digital artists for that reason. It is utilized in all media. Sketching is art in it's simplest form but can be taken to a very high degree of detail. Their is a difference between sketching and drawing where drawing is more detailed. These terms are quite often used interchangeably.

Running Computers On Generator

Well we are back on commercial power again.  We were able to borrow a generator Thursday night.  One thing I must mention with running electronics on a generator is that you should use one that has an inverter or use a separate one or you may damage your equipment.  An inverter basically works like a filter and cleans up the noise on the electrical signal similar to background noise found on audio signals.  I was lucky that I didn't damage anything (haven't noticed anything yet) but I did have issue with frame rates with video editing.  Normally I run about 130fps with normal encoding tasks, but I had less than 50fps at times.  So even thought I had power, and ran it through an UPS, it still wasn't good power.  Something to keep in mind if you are in the market for a generator.