Dome Jam

I'm launching a new collaborative project for Dome Club and invite as many people to get involved as possible!

The project is called Dome Jam. 

The idea is that we have a 'Jam' where we all make something for the dome in Blender and then I shall link it all together into one short film that will be shown dome at Dome Club. (domeclub.co.uk)

I will put the names of all the collaborators up on the dome as well.

So.....

Dome Jam #1

The project for the first Dome Jam is very simple and is one of the first things animators have a go at in 3D software - making a bouncing ball.

Here is a link to the Blender file in Dropbox that I would like you to use. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zly9jnuiy27yyh4/domejam01.blend

The camera in the scene is Ron Proctor's fish-eye camera downloaded from http://blendertarium.ottplanetarium.org

There are two red balls (of the same size) and a circle in the scene. Do a render and see where the balls are positioned on the domemaster, that is the outer edge of the dome. 

Please try to keep the objects bouncing within the circle, they can go as high as you like. 

Now delete the red balls and model whatever you want. Keep it simple! We need to keep the scene sizes small for the jam to work. 

Please do not use any physics or particles as this will make the scene too complicated. Just a key-frame animation that can be looped in the graph editor. 

Here is a tutorial to help you.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwLNMVJEiHE

There are lots of bouncing ball tutorials out there so feel free to watch a few, I think this one is easy to understand though. One thing to note is we are using 30 frames per second so this will effect where you place your key-frames.

Take a look at my first post on this blog for information about downloading and using Blender - Blender is open source and completely free.

Here is a short film I have made for the dome advertising Dome Jam #1 

Once you have finished your bouncing animation send your Blender file, with your name in the file name, to me at coralann.manton@gmail.com or send me your email and I will send you a link for the dropbox and you can add it to the collection.

If you have any questions about Dome Jam or comments feel free to add a comment to the blog or drop me an email.

So good luck everyone and get jamming! 

Here is the video of my first Blender fulldome test so you can imagine what it looked like in the dome. It was screened last Thursday at Dome Club.

It took far longer to render than it did to make since to render for the Dome Club dome is 4000 x 4000. This is an issue I'm currently pondering and need to factor into my work flow.

From first opening Blender to finishing this test took about five hours. To render it out of Blender for the dome it took about a day. It was completely worth the wait, to see it on the dome was magical for me!
I

I am creating my first ever blog to share my adventure into full-dome cinema!

My name is Coral and I am an artist and animator. I have been going to an awesome weekly event, at Think Tank Planetarium in Birmingham, called Dome Club.

Mario Di Maggio, the founder of Dome Club and planetarium manager, asked me if I would make some stuff in Blender for the dome and do some talking at Dome Club about using Blender to make dome films and hopefully encourage some other creative people to get involved. 

I said yes and so began the adventure...



The first thing I needed to do was check out Blender.

Blender is an open source 3D modelling and animation software. It is free to download so take a look and have a play. You can download it from http://www.blender.org/

I had heard of Blender but had no real experience of using it. So I downloaded the software and watched the "getting started" tutorials http://cgcookie.com/blender/get-started-with-blender/

I found these easy to follow and in no time was making my first 3D models in Blender. 

The next task was make something for the dome.


I have found everything I have needed so far on http://blendertarium.ottplanetarium.org in the tools and tutorials link. It is an excellent resource and a place to learn from other dome heads.

Ron Proctor has developed a fish-eye lens camera in Blender that allows you to render dome-masters easily. A dome-master is a circular image that contains the correct distortion for projection onto a dome.

He has created some useful tutorials for how to use the fish-eye camera http://blendertarium.ottplanetarium.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=31


So here are my first dome-masters created in blender

I previewed this test at the last dome club and am happy to say it went down really well. 
I did a brief talk on how I created the test in blender in which I showed the blender file which I used to make it.

I shall be making further test pieces and posting my dome tests, ideas, inspirations and tips on this blog. I'll also be at Dome Club regularly to talk about blender, making dome content and sharing how I am getting on.