Blender
I’m still a beginner using Blender. But it is a very impressive software. It has been very fascinating getting to know Blender since it’s purpose and philosophy is very different from Alias.
In short, Alias is intended for nurbs surfacing… that’s it. But, in my opinion, it will do that one thing better than almost any other software. It’s like a surgeons scalpel. But for that precision and specialization you will have to pay an exorbitant amount of money for it, of cause as a subscription.
If Alias is a scalpel, Blender is a multitool with a built in chainsaw. Blender is a sub-d and mesh software and as far as I know, it doesn’t have one specific use case. It’s used for modeling, rendering, vfx, composition, game design, simulation, animation, even video editing. It’s also open source and freeware.
I have been having more fun than I care to admit exploring this software. Especially the rendering and shader capabilities that Alias is sorely lacking.
My first solo project. I had recently played a game called "the Stanley parable". In the game, little statuettes like these, resembling the player character "Stanley" were hidden hard to reach places. I liked the game a lot and decided the cartoon looking character would be a good solo challenge. I had a lot of fun with this one. Especially with the shading, like using geometry nodes to generate something that resembled text on the papers. As well as doing my best to make a grubby dull office carpet.
The obligatory donut. Everyone's first project.
Freehand playing around with shaders to see what I could make them do. I must admit I'm pleased with this result.
As an "elder millennial" I grew up with the early computer games. I was 9 years old when PlayStation released the PS1. I would be lying if I said that is wasn't a huge influence on my life. Having said that I got to thinking what PS1 style graphics with realistic lighting would look like. Again I had a lot of fun with shaders for this one. Some geometry nodes to pixelate and posterize the shading.
I found a high resolution elevation map of the moon on nasas homepage. I just knew I had to try it. I made it into a displacement map, wrapped it around a sphere and added a linear light source. Spinning it around the results blew my mind. This is not a photo of the moon, the shadows are part of the render.
A close up of the moon displacement shader. So cool.