Blender 360

I managed to import 3D scenes into Blender 2.82a, and add one of my animated drawings.  They were exported as 360° animations, which can be viewed in YouTube, accessed by the links below.  Move your mouse over the video in YouTube (while left clicking) to experience the scenes in 360°.

PANORAMIC VIEW

Loch Ness Monster

walking around in the parking lot?

(Panarama view)

The background from the video above, is this scene below.  The original panoramic image was 13312 x 6656 pixels, and taken from Google Maps, following this tutorial.

Reduced 3D cityscape scene,

1920 x 960 pixels,

used for the animation above

I used these softwares below to make the panoramic animation above:

• iStreet View
• Street View Download 360
• PhotoAnim
• Mixamo
• Blender 2.82a
• Kapwing -- Repeat Video
• Spatial Media Metadata Injector

I roughly followed -- this tutorial to get the 360° image; this tutorial and this tutorial to import the 360° image into Blender; and this tutorial to export the animation from Blender (tutorial playlist).

This blog post explains how I turned my drawing into a 3D OBJ file with PhotoAnim. After that it was easy to import the OBJ file into Mixamo, and export an animated FBX file.  One can import an FBX file into Blender 2.82a.

3D CITYSCAPE

Godzilla-sized creature

walking in the parking lot

(3D animated scene from above,

panoramic view)

The 360° animations can be viewed with your smart phone using Google Cardboard and the YouTube VR app.  This YouTube video shows you on to view in VR (virtual reality).

Screen shot of  the

YouTube VR view on an Android phone

with Google Cardboard viewer

and the YouTube VR app

I used these softwares below to make the animated 360° cityscape YouTube video above:

• RenderDoc
• Maps Models Importer
• PhotoAnim
• Mixamo
• Blender 2.8a
• Kapwing -- Repeat Video
• Spatial Media Metadata Injector

I followed this tutorial to retrieve the 3D cityscape from Google Maps.

This blog post explains how I turned my drawing into a 3D OBJ file with PhotoAnim. After that it was easy to import the OBJ file into Mixamo, and export an animated FBX file.  One can import an FBX file into Blender 2.82a.

MEXICO CITY

I added my dancing figure drawing to a spot in downtown Mexico City, after erasing most of the texture map on my model (referencing this tutorial and discovering the erase function).

Dancing in Mexico City in 360°

Here is a YouTube link of a walking tour of the Zocalo, just two blocks away.

GALLERIES

360 animation of the 

"Prints by Southwest" exhibition of 2017

at the South Broadway Cultural Center 

I took 360° pictures of the "Prints by Southwest" exhibition I put on at the South Broadway Cultural Center in Albuquerque in 2017.

360° pictures of our print exhibiton in 2917

at the South Broadway Cultural Center in Albuquerque

Three views in 360° --

the view changes every 30 seconds

My drawing standing up in the gallery

(Not 360°)

In 2018 we posted 360° videos of our Desert Triangle Print Carpeta exhibition in Riverside, California.  "Mint n Chip" 3D filmed and uploaded the videos.

Desert Triangle print exhibition in 360°,

front half

Desert Triangle print exhibition in 360°,

back half

YOUTUBE TUTORIALS

• Add YOUR 360 degree image into Blender
• Render Output Settings - Blender 2.80 Fundamentals
• How to Render a Background Image in Blender 2.8 Using a Camera Background Image
• Tutorial:  How to Make a 360 video in Blender (In under 5 minutes)
• How to make Vitrual reality VR 360 video using Blender 2.8
• 360° Render Settings (For Images and Video) - Blender Tutorial

• How to import a google map 360 image into Blender

• Importing Actual 3D Models From Google Maps
• Twinmotion | How to import 3d models from google maps
• Blender GIS

• Blender 2.8 Beginner Tutorial - Part 7: Texture Painting
• Eraser tool for texture painting

OTHER BLENDER LINKS

• Tutorials: Blender 2.8 for Complete Beginners
• Blender Compilation
• Top Blender artists of 2019
• 27 Inspiring Blender Animations That Will Make Your Jaw Drop (2011)
• Free Blender scene models

THOUGHTS

• 3D Rendering is Slow!

The 360° animation videos had to be rendered in "Cycles," the most powerful rendering engine in Blender 2.82a.  However, "Cycles" requires a lot of computing power, and heats up my laptop for long periods of time.  That is the reason why my videos are so short, at the beginning of this blog posting.

"Cycles" rendering engine

in Blender 2.8a

However, one can render the animations remotely.  They would just set up the scenario on their laptop, and send the Blender file to Blendergrid, Amazon remote servers, or even Crowdrender, and download the result.  Isn't the 21st century fascinating?

Apparently one can buy a $50 a month (one month is possible) unlimited render service from Render Street, via Amazon.  Also there a second Amazon option as this video  describes, on how to use the Amazon computing (with a free option for the first year).

• Blender Tutorial: Fast & Easy Rendering on Amazon EC2 with Blender & Linux

At one point D-Wave Leap was offering a free minute of quanatum computer time (which I linked to in my "Computer Assisted Drawing" post).

• Karl Sims

At the dawn of the computer age, Karl Sims, my tocayo, posted engaging simple locomotion animations online -- Evolved Virtual Creatures -- before there was YouTube.

1994 computer animation by Karl Sims

More recently I made an animated a blocky voxel figure (in Voxel Canvas) that were reminescent of Karl Sims' animations. The free online software now allows anyone to make similar feeling animations.  We have come a long ways in 20 years.

Of course Karl Sims' animated creatures are also intelligent, and remind me of those by Rodney Brooks in the movie "Fast Cheap and Out of Control" (whom I referred to at the end of this blog post).  Both Karl Sims and Rodney Brooks are from MIT.

From his website, I discovered a new interesting computer animation by Karl Sims.

• Soda Constructor

I also admired Soda Constructor and Crayon Physics in the early days of the Internet.  Maciej Matyka reconstructed the online game, originally created by Ed Burton.

Soda Constructor (Revisited)

• Back and Forth animation with a mouse

I like scrubing my mouse back and forth on the screen, to go backwards or forwards in the animation --like in this old Paleomap project by Christopher R Scotese.  The Java applet is no longer supported in new browsers, so I added the CheerpJ Applet Runner extension to Chrome to see it.  The animation comes out small, not as large as I remember it ten years ago.

You can't do this in YouTube, but you used to be able to do it in Quicktime.

Webrotate will set up a 360 spin image rotation for a fee, like other commerical services. I believe you can do this with Scroll Magic.

There is also a parallax scrolling approach for websites (do you have to use custom CSS?).

• AI

Can AI (artificial intelligence) be used with Blender.  Andrew Price said so in his TED Talk.  It's discussed in this PDF.  Midge Sinnaeve is making Generative Art in Blender.

PLAYLIST

View a YouTube playlist

of the progress 

of animating my drawings in 3D