I have returned from Summer Camp and I am back.  I know I haven't been posting pictures lately, but soon I'll be ready.  The hardest part about mixing the audio and the video of my movie is that I "borrowed" the sound effects from Bejeweled 2, and that those sound files, .OGGs, weren't meant to operate on anything except the game [2018 update: whoops; turns out .OGG is a more common audio format than I'd thought, so I must have run into a separate issue, or else it was just too obscure for Blender's notice at the time].  However, I recently figured out that I may have been doing it right some of the time.  You see, when I made a video with only audio/only visual, I think I created both at the same time--two files, the sound and the sight.  I think I'll be able to mix those together without much problem at all. By the way, another Non Sequiter ... Ι γαν σπελλ Βλενδερ ανδ Σγυλπτρισ ιν Ενηλισθ γθαραγτερσ! Blender and Sculptris in English...

After taking quite a long time studying my book, digressing on world domination schemes and trying more combinations of codecs, I finally got my answer on a forum I'd posted my question on.  The answer was that I could just insert the sounds after I finish rendering.  He also said that the error message means that I've chosen "bad parameters." I have no idea what he means, although I may have a small idea on how to fix it... but then again, I'll probably end up going with his suggestion: put in sound later (I've finished the animation).  There may be yet another long pause since I'm leaving for summer camp soon--a non-computer activity. However, now that I've mostly solved the problem (thanks "Stiv"!), I'll try to post more frequently. On another note, I got a Bamboo pen & pad for my birthday which (when I figure out how it's used) can dramatically improve using Sculptris, and may help with Blender too!

Very busy Summer.  Friday's storm went up, my computer had no electricity, I'm still working on turning our lightning rod into a power supply, and I've still not found out the correct codecs (forms of encryption) for my animation.  However, I have an advantage now: I have the Blender for Dummies book (which I've looked to several times in a row now--don't tell anyone) and I should have a bit less trouble here.  Any other Blender users can also comment all they want so I can read them and then delete them before anyone notices .  Hope to fix it soon!

I can spell Blender and Sculptris in Greek characters! Βλενδερ ανδ Σγυλπτρισ ιν Ηρεεκ γθαραγτερσ!

I noticed I haven't been blogging lately.  For Summer, it's been a busy time!  Keeping the blog up-to-date, I said earlier that I was working on an animation more serious than the others.  The primary difference here is that this movie will include sound , which was not in any of my previous ones.  This is harder than I thought, mostly because: a) only certain output settings show the "Encoding" section that handles sound, b) a lot of the encoding options say when you try to render, "Error initializing video stream" and then there's c) when the right combination is finally reached, there's either no audio or no visual.  Either way, then despite its also being 4 seconds long, I think once the problem's solved it'll be worth the (reeeeally long) wait. On another note, I've started helping to teach some of my family members about Sculptris!  Soon now,  I'll be able to show off show you their stuff as well as my own! On yet...

I’ve shown what Sculptris can do, but I haven’t really said how it does it.  Well, first of all:  Sculptris isn’t a computer animation program.  Really.  It’s an advanced computer modeling program, but at least as of my current knowledge it doesn’t make the objects you create move .  Nor, I believe, can you even save them as JPEGs (universal picture files, for those of you who don’t do technical computer stuff).  However, you can export the files as OBJs (universally compatible 3-D files) and import them to another program, say Blender, and save some files as JPEGs from there.  And you can modify your objects there, too. When you start Sculptris, you start out with a gray sphere made up of triangles.  With this preset you are given nine basic controls.  I will try to explain those which are not self-explanatory:  Crease, Rotate, Scale (which scales up or down anything within your circular selector), Draw (opposite of cr...

Sorry for the slow blogging! I noticed that I said earlier, "I use Blender and Sculptris for my animations".  I have done tons of posts on the former, though hardly one on the latter.  This is mostly because I use Blender far more often and hardly use Sculptris at all, though it most certainly needs at least one post to itself. First of all, Sculptris has a different interface than Blender and Maya and all that, so to speak.  It views itself as "clay" that you can sculpt to your leisure.  You can do a lot of cool stuff with it, but, being an amateur, I did this simple model first: Well, it's about as easy as modeling goes, but as least it's something.  After that, I decided to do Blinky and the gang! I did the background in Blender, but Pac-man and the ghosts are from Sculptris. http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/ , another animation program, is the link of the post.  I don't actually think there's anything else to say here.  However,...