In this Blender 2.5 video tutorial we go through the entire process of creating a bright, colorful bunch of balloons.
The tutorials covers the modeling, materials, lighting, rendering, and compositing.
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Discussion
332 Responses to “Creating a Bunch of Balloons”Leave a Comment
Wonderful tutorial, one thing… what’s your wallpaper name? I love it!
Hi, Jonathan. Thank you very much for this tutorial (and the others). I learnt a lot thanks to you.
One question I have on this one (it’s not really crucial but I could not find the answer anywhere yet) is : when you model the balloon knot as though it was laterally pushed by the string, you deselect part of the vertices of a B-select by another Box select. How do you do this “vertex selection substraction”? What is the shortkey sequence?
Thanks a lot in advance.
JPN
Hi there,
You can deselect with the Box Select by dragging with your Middle Mouse Button rather than the left mouse button.
I’m glad you like the tutorial
-Jonathan
Thanks!
Will try it out.
hi ive just joined today and ive been using blender 3 for 4 days and every time i hit p to reder all the balloons group together and they become one big ball? plz help i dont know if ive adjust a setting in there by accident or what p.s. great video by the way
i figured it out know i was clicking p instead of f12 lol noob mistake
Very nice tutorial – thanks – but instead of wrapping the string around the balloon tie why don’t you just add a mesh torus to wrap around the knot and have the string attached to the torus? I did that and it worked out better than wrapping the string, but i’m new to Blender and so perhaps there is a reason?
Is the string a small 3D rectangle or is it just a 2D ‘ribbon’?
F**king bad tutorial i couldnt f**king find out how to make the f**king knot so bloddy hell what the f**k did you do to make the knot i got stuck on that f**kingstep.. and sorry this is a reply i did not f**king know how to leave a f**king comment
I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure you’ll never get a response when you phrase your questions like this. You might want to try some common decency in the future.
I got stuck too, you hold down shift to select multiple vertices and then hit E. right click to send it back to where it was.
Wonderful tutorial, one thing… what’s your wallpaper name? I love it!
I made the wallpaper from this: http://graphicriver.net/item/metal-dotz/36063
I set it up as a repeating Array in Blender with a single, large lamp. The logo was then added in Pixelmator. I’m glad you like it
-Jonathan
Can you post it on imageshack or sth like that ?
Thanks in advance
Hello, when i get up to the part where u say ok now lets render it and see how it looks then you say, Well, it looks pretty crap since we haven’t added the light when i render only the Strings show please help!
Hi, Jonathan. I just started trying to use blender just yesterday, but I’m having a really hard time with it. Can you please help me out with it. Thanks in advance.
Hey Brandon,
What can I help you with? Blender can be a bit of a challenge to get started with but once you get a basic grasp it’s hard to let go
-Jonathan
can you help me with the video between 2:58-3:35
Can u upload your wallpaper to imageshack?
great tutorial!! just a tip- “fresnel” has a silent S
I’m new to this, I spent several days just figuring out a few of the defualt commands. much of it is hard for me to understand. I wanted to create a copy of the ballon in the image:) but much of this is beyond me to say the east. for example what dose “control shift in ” mean? I have one file I managed to create but REALLY could use some help. I wanted to get into this as I’m a star trek fan and the cost of creating the fictional ships is far to high. any help would be wonderful.
Hmmm… this render layer business is just not working! Whenever I select what I want to be moved over to a different layer with M, it just moves me over to the layer I wanted to move the object to and excludes the object I wanted! Frustrating!
Hi Max, can you walk me through the steps you’re taking to move the object to a new layer? Perhaps then I can point you in the right direction.
Great tutorial, Jonathan! Thanks for the introduction to “the hook”. What a great idea and very nice outcome
Great tutorial, Jonathan! Thanks for the introduction to “the hook”. What a great idea and very nice outcome
Wow this was worth it just for the “shift + Ctrl + left click” for attaching the selected render node to the Viewer. I thought this had existed in previous versions but couldn’t figure it out again.
Awesome tip! and great result.
thanks Jonathan!
That feature was compliments to the Durian team! I never knew about it until they used it at the Blender Conference. I was very eager to share it
-Jonathan
Cool VT! But where are the follow-ups on the container VT and the M4 VT? Just curious
Thanks again for all your time and affords.
They are coming soon
And no, I’m not in Amsterdam anymore. I am back in Finland for two weeks before heading back to the States.
-Jonathan
I was going to ask if you feel like coming to Utrecht (a very nice town 40KM from Amsterdam) It’s full of history and has a laid back atmosphere. Ah well there is always next year
I’ll be coming to the Blender conference for the first time. So I’ll probably see you there! You can take me up on my offer. I’ll give you a grand tour of Utrecht and we’ll grab a good locally produced beer. I promise you that you won’t be disappointed =)
Ah that would have been fun! Count on next year then, I’ll be there!
-Jonathan
Hello, this is Shayla Herd. I recently got married and have enjoyed 3D animation all my life. I have taken some class of the Adobe programs in high school, and I now have the Blender program at home to use and create my dreams with. I have been following you on creating “A Bunch of Balloons” and I have only got to the part where you are starting to make the knot. And the reason why I haven’t been able to go any farther is because you have the older version of Blender and I have the newer version. So I’m getting lost on following you how to make them. I was wondering if you have the newer version now and can show me how to use Blender. If you don’t have the newer version then can you tell me how to use my version as we talk to each other on this website? I would really appreciate it. And I’ve noticed on the first couple of minutes of how to create a bunch of balloons, that it sounded like you are a teacher. Are you a teacher of Blender? And if you are, were is your school? I would really love to get a career with this sort of stuff. Well Thank You for listening to me and I hope you can help me on my Questions. Sincerely, Shayla Herd
Hi Jonathan
I just have a question about how you got the image into the UV Image window to get the Sky texture in place.
Every time I try to load the image, it never shows up.
Hi there,
To assign the image to the UVs you must be in Edit Mode on your dome, with all vertices selected. With the mesh selected the UVs should show up. If you then select all the UVs and load in the image it should assign the image to those UVs.
Hopefully that helps!
-Jonathan
Sorry for another post (no edit option available in the messages here), but are you still in Amsterdam Jonathan?
great tut jonathan
just noticed something…behind the right hand blue balloon there seems to be a white one, as you didnt create a white balloon is this one that you missed.
I think that one is yellow, it’s just the reflection making it seem white I think, look at the area between the red and blue ones!
Thanks Jonathan, it was a great tut! Though I’m not sure I like the math node effect for this scene; but I’m sure the knowledge will come in handy some time
Perfect use of nodes… Thank you!
Jan
Gotem
Mr. Frederickson would be proud of you Jonathan
Super Tutorial and cool Idea.
Only I think the reflection is too strong. But Maybe i could be wrong.
Great tutorial as always Jonathan! =D I’d also like to ask you a question: I was thinking about starting a Blender Scripting tutorial series and this scene would lend itself very nicely for my first/ second lesson (assigning a random material from your library to every selected object). Would you mind if I used this scene if I gave you and the site proper credit? (Also, I don’t suppose you’d be looking for a scripting instructor on here? =P)
Great tutorial
more tutorials for nodes
Thanks
Hi Jonathan,
It’s a really great tutorial! Thanks!
Actually, I have searched the shortcut of switching pivot point in between 3D cursor, bounding box centre, etc. while scaling, rotating, ….. but there’s nothing about it. Would u tell me about it? I tried Alt . is work, but only switch to “Active element” and can’t switch to others.
Finally, I am using blender on mac with apple wireless keyboard.
Thank you so much!
Joe
Hey Joe, I only know of ‘.’ and ‘,’ to switch between center and 3D cursor pivoting. Hope that helps a bit. =)
It’s really helpful! Thanks!
Hi Johnathan,
I really appreciate the videos here on BlenderCookie as I’m a noob learning quickly. I’m only 3 minutes into this video so far and am enjoying it but I’m stuck. At about the 3:00 minute mark you say “press E to extrude…” and then go on to shape the balloon nozzle. I’ve replayed this 30 second segment dozens of times but can not repro what you are doing: either I’m not getting something, a setting is different in my environment or you forgot to mention keystrokes. Specifically, I don’t see how you stretch down the bottom (proportionally) while in extrude mode.
Frustrating, because I cruised through the first 3 minutes really quickly! Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Tom
I haven’t seen the tutorial yet but I guess you must be saying that he scaled after extruding. If that’s the case, first press E to extrude and while still in extrude mode, tap S to scale and use either of the axis keys (XYZ) tp scale in that direction.
For proportional editing, press O. Use the mousewheel to adjust the falloff.
I’m stuck on the same bit, the whole bottom of the balloon extrudes down.
He seems to be reselecting a smaller area…????
what happens for me is when i finish the shape of the balloon and go and press smooth to smooth the shape the bottom of the balloon looks really wierd… i must be doing something with the extruding part too…
hej there, i’m a noobie too tryin to figure out on blender. i think i maybe encountered the same problem at around 3 minutes. i then figured that in the tutorial the “proportional” mode is put off just seconds before (guess by hitting “o”-key). hope that helps moving on in this great tutorial.
thanks a lot for all the effort.
Great tutorial! I followed and finished this graphic.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42452973@N05/5156245873/
I learned a ton – first time in node world, among other things…
I added a dark green ground plane to give a horizon for the balloons to reflect…
That is awesome – thanks for sharing it out.
create animation balloons
You could render the image out at twice the resolution and scale it down for more sharpness. I dunno why this works but it does seem to (although you likely already know about this). Awesome tutorial!
Hello!
I don’t know why, but I can’t display sky on the sphere. I’ve tried to do it about five times, but without any success. Then I tried to create simple box with uv mapping, but instead of displaying texture it was simply white. Any ideas?
Is it possible that this is due to computer’s performance?
Hi Nikita,
I just replied to your support ticket with some suggestions. Good luck!
-Jonathan
One thing I would have done is used a solidify modifier on the balloons, because if you used them in an animation they’d look like solid glass spheres.
hello Jonathan a good tutorial which reviews the blender 2.5 and is good for beginners, here are my balls http://twitpic.com/3694cy/full
Hi!
Really useful tutorial, but one question… when I try to link materials, nothing happens… do you know why?
If your objects have multiple materials assigned it may be assigning the wrong one to the meshes. In which case you can just select one of the balloons and look at the materials to see if there are multiple slots active, if so just delete all but the balloon color.
-Jonathan
Another great tutorial,lots of handy tips.Heres my own take on it http://i971.photobucket.com/albums/ae197/jkon00/Blender/LegoBalloons.jpg
Ah very nice use of the tutorial!
-Jonathan
Thanks Jonathan and a big thanks for all your tutorials.Just on a side note,the lego man in that scene might make for a good tutorial.While it seems like an easy thing to model,i ran into a few problems that i think many new modelers probably run into with blender.If it appeals to you,let me know and I’d be glad to explain in more detail.
Hey, Jonathan! I love the tutorial, but I have a prolbem with the layers. I’ve created the layers “balloons” and “sky”, ok. The “sky” is only on layer 2, but if I move the sky sphere to layer 2 (making it disappear from layer one, which I guess is good), and then try to render the layer two, which I named sky, there’s… nothing. And if I set the sphere to layers 1 AND 2, then I have it rendered in layer 2, but I can’t render the balloons only, without the sky in the background. Let’s say, removing the sky from layer 2 makes it disappear completely. Am I doing something wrong? Please help me, it’s my first time using Blender and I’m a little confused
Umm… I’m sorry about replying to my own post, but I meant “Let’s say, removing the sky sphere from layer ONE makes it disappear completely”. I’m also sorry about my english, which is far, far away from perfect… Greetings – Chris
Hi!
I’m learning to use blender and I was wondering about the part where you create the nod (min 3) I can’t understand which short cuts are you using =/
thanks in advance.
Hi Alejandro,
The shortcuts I am using for that section are:
E = extrude, G = grab, S = scale, R = rotate. You can also constrain any one of those actions to an individual axis by pressing X,Y or Z after starting the initial transform.
-Jonathan
I have hope that it’ll get better, but this is the first tutorial of yours I’m watching and just 3 minutes into it your narrative confuses what you’re doing. You don’t say that you’re pressing Enter after you “hit E to extrude,” and then soon after you say “extrude down” when you’re actually G-Zing after you’ve E-Entered. I understand that you probably needed to assume that audience members for this tutorial have at least several hours of experience with the interface, but at such critical points it would be an improvement in quality to narrate both precisely like for the first instance and accurately like for the second instance. It took quite a few extra minutes to infer how you were doing what you were doing.
Hi Nate,
My apologies for missing some of the hotkeys in my narrative, I try to make it a habit to always say what I’m doing. I can assure you that most of my tutorials do narrate nearly everything I do. If you are just getting started in Blender I would recommend you also check out my getting started series: http://www.blendercookie.com/getting-started-with-blender/
Cheers and best of luck!
-Jonathan
P.S. thanks for the construction criticism, it’s always valuable.
Thanks, Nate.
The sequence is:
e
enter
s
move mouse to scale down
left-click
g
z
move mouse to pull down
left-click
That part really had me confused.
Thanks.
Thanks so much for this, I was so lost at this part.
First off great tutorial.
So when i get into editor mode and try to select individual vertexes i cant. or it will just select another random one. I cant seem to figure out whats wrong.
a bit confusing everytime you set-up an effect and then just totally delete it…it would be good if the steps are more certain so that it will not be confusing..but i like the clarity of your voice and accent..;-)
I like how he call’s the yellow balloon setting the “yelloow” balloon! lol
Hey your tutorial is great and you are great pro but i have problems. Can you halp me? If you want I can send you screenshots with these problems.
I’d be happy to help. The easiest way would be for you to submit a support ticket from the “Support” tab on the right side of this page.
-Jonathan
I cannot seem to manages to do the first instruction: creating the sphere. I’ve tried Shift+8, but it doesn’t do anything. Shift+F8 doesn’t do it either. Is there a way I could make it so that Shift+8 is the correct shortcut, or just use a menu to do the same thing?
Hi Cousjava,
The short cut you are trying to do is actually SHIFT + A to add new objects. You can also add objects from the “Add” menu at the top of the viewport.
-Jonathan
finished
http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=7298
My try on it
http://dysonshell.deviantart.com/#/d347u0k
how do you rotate around the 3D cursor!?
please answer
Just press the “.” key
-Jonathan
Hi !
I’m using a Mac Book Pro to follow this tutorial and I’m stuck at the point where you create the loop.
I can’t seem to have my extrude follow a rotation along z no matter how much I punch ‘.’ :/
– Fabien
After looking at this tutorial, I did notice something with your transparency, in relation to balloons. In my result it seemed to work better when I added just slight Z transparency, and a slight reflection, to me, that result seemed more real, and was my preference. Of course this is just preference, but Im just throwing it out there.
Hadn’t made it very far into the tutorial when I noticed the left side bars you have going on. I recognize the top one as the tool bar, but the bottom one is unfamiliar to me. Plus it changes as you click things, first says “operator”, then as soon as you added the sphere said “Add UV sphere”. Mine says “Translate” and I can’t figure out what you’ve done.
Also, I used 3D max in high school and have gotten used to the quad-view of the 3d screens. However, I like the concept of having the tools accessible on the left. Is there a way to have them stretch the length of the screen on the left without creating another 3d view and covering it up? Wasn’t sure. Look forward to completing this tutorial. I love balloons!
I belive he uses Blender 2.56 Alpha or Beta? Not sure. I had the same problem until I went back and looked at the basic tuts they did to get some better barings on what I was doing.
http://www.blendercookie.com/intro-to-blender-downloading-and-installing/
I never noticed that anything else was available. It’s an amazing difference and flows better. At least for me.
Hey Jon, have a few questions for you. I hadn’t made it very far in the tutorial when I noticed the left side bar you had going on. I recognize the top one as the tool bar, but can’t figure out what configuration you have with the bottom half of it. I have one there called “translate” but I noticed on the video yours says “operator” then when you add the sphere says “add UV sphere”. How did you get that?
Also, I used 3D max in high school and have gotten used to the quad-view. However, I would also like to have the tools on the left side. Is there a way to have them there without creating a new 3D window and covering it up with the tools? Thanks for your help, look forward to completing the tutorial. I love balloons!
My balloons in animation (I used this tutorial for creating intro)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_Xx0MyXeE8
Took me 2 days to complete it (this was my FIRST real project, and I just started using Blender 2 days ago so ya), but here’s my take on it!
http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/4023/1280×10240.png
By the way. I’m new, so I have 2 questions (you can see how mine turned out). It’s slightly too reflective, what’re some ways to turn that down? And also, in the reflection, I you can see it reflecting an open hole (it looks like). I think it’s reflecting an open hole on the top, how would I fix that (generally)? Thanks for the really good tutorial. This is my first complete project (I modeled a cup before this, but it was reeealllyy basic, anyone could do it). How good do you think I did?
These last few hours shaved years of my life… I cannot Alt + Right click and select the lower loop (at 2:20ish of the video) nor can i find it anywhere in the menu’s to find Loop Select as it shows on your panel. I cannot figure out how to do this. And also for when i can finally get to the next 10 seconds of the tutorial, when you say to select the lower vertices’s. do i hold down shift for that?
Thank you,
Mike
Hi Mike, are you able to select loops at all or just unable to select the correct loops? Also, for selecting; if you are selecting with the RMB then you always hold SHIFT if you want to add to the selection. If you are using box select, paint select, or lasso select then you do not need to hold shift.
Does that help?
-Jonathan
Well i just realized i can lasso select, however i cannot just click the loop to select it all. I am unable to select any loops. I looked all through the menu’s to see if i could manually find the Loop panel… unsuccessfully.
Hard to do it on Laptop theres no object tools, and if I click F6 nothing happens.
This seems like such a simple tutorial but for the life of me I could not get through it. I think too many details were glossed over quickly plus the newest 2.5 beta did not match the version used in the tutorial.
Hi Richard, can you tell me where you had problems? I’d be happy to try and help you out.
-Jonathan
Thanks Jonathan for your offer to help. I’ve spent several days trying to work through this tutorial to the point that I’m just too burned out with it to continue. I’ve used Blender for years but not often enough to become completely proficient. The interface has always been a moving target with each version and it’s very frustrating trying to keep up with someone’s better idea. I really think the 2.5 interface is a step in the right direction but again from version to version there are enough changes to keep me on the wrong foot.
Perhaps another day.
Hi, thank you for this great tutorial ! I’m really new to blender and I think this is a good first project.
I’m having a problem when I try to render the view, I just can’t see the strings of the balloons..
Also when I select one of the strings and switch to edit mode, the shape of the mesh changes back to its initial shape, like it’s not hooked.
I can’t figure why and if it’s part of the problem.
Thibaud
Hi Thibaud,
The edit mode behavior with the hook is correct, it should revert back to the original shape. That’s one of the advantages to hooks. As for the strings, I assume your material isn’t transparent?
-Jonathan
Great tutorial so far! However, I am having troubles getting the balloons to render properly.
If I set the “shado” button in the Render tab to ON, my balloons have black and white patches all over and they are grainy. If I turn the “shado” button OFF, they look better but still nothing close to the way yours did. They don’t look rubbery, they just have a spot of light and then the rest looks gray and there are no stark shadows.
Any suggestions?
Hi there, I am not sure what your problem is as it could be any number of things. Could you send me a copy of your .blend to take a look at?
-Jonathan
Well I fixed my main problem (all of my vertices were doubled somehow) which got rid of the choppy/patchy black and white. However, my balloons still look more gray than yours do. I can still send the blend file if you want but this was my major issue. How would I get the file to you?
Thanks for the tutorial, this was the first time I used blender, and though I skipped the step of wrapping the string around the knot (cause I had no idea what was happening) this was my result after I put it in The Gimp:
http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z137/rythem588/balloonsgimp.png
Also to PungoloFiero, I got that problem too, and I think we got the double vertices when we shift+d’d the balloons around duplicated twice before dragging.
This is a great introduction to playing around in Blender but you do skip alot of steps in the video assuming everyone knows all the hotkeys etc…You lose me when creating and attaching the strings. It shows you stretching the “string” shape but you don’t say how and I can’t figure out how to do it. And wrapping it around, you skip a whole bunch of how to steps on how to achieve the wrapping. Thanks!
I agree. You start with a cube, but then at the knot it starts to be ‘flat’. How did you do that?
hi. this is my first time useing blender and i’m stuck at the render layer part, My skydome wont render. it just keeps on showing a black box. can you plz help?
A really great tutorial by a very skilled artist!! I found it exceptionally informative with some quite challenging aspects to it (for a complete beginner that is).
Just a couple of things you may want to be aware of, the first of which could be something I’m doing or a bug in the version of Blender I’m using (2.5 beta, 2.56.0 r34076), and the second may just confuse people trying to follow what’s happening in the tutorial:
- The unwrap of the dome to cylinder would not give me a clean rectangular mesh in UV Editor like the one in the tutorial no matter what I tried. On the plus side, that feature now includes auto scaling options to fit the mesh to your image.
- The second issue can be verified from the tutorial video and even by looking again at the banner on this page (this one managed to evade you as you concentrated on the presentation but). It involves the “sun” lamp when used inside a dome (or enclosure of any kind I assume). You already know what the problem is now I bet, but for the benefit of noobs like me: the “sun” is not modelled as if it was at the lamp position but at an infinite (or possibly actual) distance from the subject, in order to project parallel rays rather than diverging. This puts it outside the dome and therefore it does not contribute to the lighting in this scene at all. You can see this starting at about 26:20 in the tute where you change it from an area lamp to “sun” and you lose all of your specular reflections and darken the scene somewhat. You then make some changes and rerender but it has no effect (first render at 26:52 and second at 27:08). I also believe that none of the environment or sky effects take effect either because I’m pretty sure the before and after renders show no change there either.
I’m not sure what the solution is: cutting away more of the dome will obviously let the sun shine in over the scene but it risks losing sky reflections in the scene, or; making the dome semi transparent (alpha?) and increasing the suns power to compensate also comes to mind. Both seem to work but neither seem ideal.
Now I’m off to start the nodes section of the tutorial. It took me a whole day to get this far.
Sorry to follow up immediately (my noobness is showing). The environment effects that I mentioned do show up of course (and looks great on the balloons in the video) because it’s not part of the lamp attributes unlike the sky attributes.
Back again with a solution I think.
As I was working through the nodes section of the tute it occurred to me that layers may solve this “sun” in a box problem, so I tried it and it works but I had to create an extra (third) layer.
Googling around I see that others have had to devise their own tricks to solve the problem suggesting that there is no “correct” way to do it. Some of the workarounds were: turning “traceable” off on the dome material, or; create an artificial “sun” out of an area lamp, or; the obvious one of cutting a hole in the dome. None of those solutions were ideal for this scene. The first workaround loses any sky/cloud reflections while the second loses the sky and atmosphere modelling of the “sun” lamp. The third introduces a hole in the sky that could be seen in reflections.
Here is another workaround, this time using layers (and it all assumes that there are elements in the scene that would reflect the sky, like shinny balloons etc.):
As in the tute, move the sky dome into scene layer 2 and leave the subject (balloons) plus any lamps including the “sun” lamp in scene layer 1.
Create a “Sky” render layer and include only scene layer 2 in the render.
Create two render layers for the balloons that will later be merged using the AlphaOver node during compositing. The first balloon layer we’ll call “With Specular Reflections” and the second we’ll call “With Sky Reflections”.
Render the first balloon layer called “With Specular Refecltions” and include all scene layers (1 and 2). This will effectively kill the “sun” lamp and any of it’s sky and atmosphere effects but will include any sky/cloud reflections in reflective scene elements. As in the tute, set this render layer up to include the alpha channel and pre-multiply.
Render the second balloon layer called “With Specular Reflections” leaving out scene layer 2 (the sky dome layer), otherwise set it up identically to the first balloon render layer.
You now have three render layers: sky and two balloon layers.
In the Node Editor, combine the two balloon layers using the AlphaOver Node set to 0.5 for each of “Premul” and “Fac”. With the output connected to a viewer you should see your balloons with both sky reflections and “sun” specular reflections.
That’s it. Apart from this extra set of nodes (two), the composite is as it is in the tutorial.
Again, thanks so much for the tute. Everything is so clearly explained and insightful. There’s no way I would have learnt or discovered as much as quickly without it.
Brilliant!
How do you “extrude” Jonathan Williamson? I do not understand that part because with my Blender, I pressed “E” but i couldn’t do what you did? Could you please help me? Thanks, and by the way I am a beginner so I do not quite understand completely how Blender works. I am also using Blender as a art application for 3DVIA STUDIO. Thanks a lot.
-Prad
thanks again. are you in college, lol, you sound like it
When I render my bunch, the whole thing looks dull. As the black slowly peels away, the image under it is very nice and bright, but when it’s finished, it all just looks dull, not cheery. What’s going on?
I am using blender 2.56, I’m kinda new at using it. At 18:35 in the video, I did the same thing but my image wouldn’t show up. Please help.
I think you have to switch into Object Mode.
I had the same problem in Edit Mode and in Object Mode everything was ok.
Greetings from Germany
Hello rich,
I think you have to switch into Object Mode.
I’m using Blender 2.56 and had the same problem.
The image will disappear if you switch back to Edit Mode again but it
doesn’t matter.You will be able to do everything what follows.
Greetings from Germany
PS. Sorry for bad english
Thanks a lot,\nIt helped me out also\nCheers
dude please explain better… you said E to extrude then how did you scale that part??????????????
I had the same problem. You have to turn off proportional editing by pressing O
First off I am new, and I find your tutorials extremely helpful, however like I said I am new and maybe I just missed something but at 6:42 you are extruding then changing the angle of the extrude to wrap the string around the knot. How did you do this I can find no shortcut key to angle it, and the lack 2.5 documentation is really starting to frustrate me.
Thanks in advance and keep up the great work.
I’m pretty new to blender, but I was doing okay until it came to the tie. I am using blender 2.49. When you go to make the tie, and bring down shape, mine doesn’t look right. When you make the tie, are you only pulling down the bottom vertex? Or the ring of vertices above it? I can’t see it very well so I am a little confused. Help me please:)
Hi Rachel,
The tie is made by extruding down the bottom circle several times. If you extrude it four times, then just scale the two middle loops out to form the tie and scale the last loop in and move it up to create the indent. You can then add more loops with CTRL + R if needed and move them closer or further from adjacent loops depending on how tight you want it.
Does that help?
-Jonathan
hello i tried the balloons but when i tried to make the tie, i have a little problem…when i press ctrl-R there happens nothing, i don’t know how to solve it but it gives me a few problems…please help me
Hi Lucas, after pressing CTRL + R be sure that you then hover your mouse over an edge in order to display the purple cut line.
-Jonathan
when extruding the balloon to make the loops you somehow change the bottom vortex into a ring to then be extruded, i can’t meke this happen no matter how much I scale, proportional editing mode is off aswell, any help is appreciated, thanks
don’t worry i found the answer, when you do the scaling on the extrude, hit z so that you only scale in the z axis and you can in effect create a new ring to work with
At 15:55 you do a test render but when i do the test render the only thing that shows up are the strings. I have no idea where i went wrong cause i followed the video step for step.
I had a similiar problem than Tony: when I try to render, all the balloons return overlapped to the same position and rotation of the first one I had duplicated, and it looks like I have only one balloon – any idea why?
Hi there,
Is it possible you animated the position of the balloons such that frame one shows them overlaying each other? If not you can toss the .blend over to me by emailing it to support@cgcookie.zendesk.com and I’ll take a look at it.
-Jonathan
At the bit were you select the vertices right at the start, how was it that you selected the bottomone?
when I try it eithe replaces the selection, or selets the wromg thing.
(sorry if I took so long to answer)
Yes, it is possible. Every time I touch the animation panel the balloons return overlapped; if I try to return to the previous frame, they remain overlapped. I tried reducing the sequence to one single frame, or leaving automatic keyframe insertion, or anything…. I know very little about the animation functioning in this program; how can I solve this (e.g. disabling animation?)
Hi there,
Could you perhaps submit a support ticket by emailing the .blend to support@cgcookie.zendesk.com ? Then I can take a look at it and see what’s up.
i’m finding these tutorials to be very difficult. they keep missing important points and they’re moving too fast. i’ve downloaded both the first blender and the blender 2.55 for almost a year if not for a year now, in hope to know how to use both of them, but until this day i still don’t know how to make a gingerbread man. it’s better to have a person show you how to do it than have tutorials teach you because they seem to keep on forgetting that we newcomers aren’t used to it like they are. if only i could get someone to go through it with me but that’s the problem. you can’t find many of those people around.
I agree… also in this tutorial. Is he working on a mac or PC? I don’t even know how I can turn the thing, which mouse button to click, right or left, or even the wheel? He talks very fast if he explains a short-cut. Shift-what?! Rewind. Shift-what?!
Hi, I’m having a weird problem with the rendering. When the render finishes, the colors dull out, but when it is rendering, they are nice and bright. I can’t figure out what is going wrong…
Fixed the look with the node editor, but it still bothers me that it was doing it… Great tutorial, by the way.
Great Tut. Learned alot.
First: great tutorial, really helpful!
But have one problem with the dome.I am not able to flip the texture on the inside, I hit ctrl-shift-n but nothing happened.
I am using blender 2.56.
Sorry for my bad english.
I hope you had fun in amsterdam!!!
Is this tutorial meant for beginners or advanced Blender’s, because although English is my native tongue, I found it impossible to follow this video as the instructions are rattled off at such a speed as to be unintelligible. Whilst it is kind of you to do the tutorial, you must understand that the nature of a tutorial is to allow those that are learning to follow the actions in the video. The presenter is blabbing so quickly that I found myself having to pause the video every 10 seconds or so.
Sorry, but methinks you should reduce the coffee intake.
Hi Mack,
This video is much more an intermediate tutorial. I will work to remove it from the Getting Started page on blender.org to avoid further confusion. If you are looking for some beginner tutorials check out all of our beginner tutorials here: http://www.blendercookie.com/tag/beginner/
You can also find our Getting Started series that is geared towards absolute beginners here: http://www.blendercookie.com/getting-started-with-blender/
-Jonathan
Thanks
I am new to blender and 3d animation at all for that matter. However I was going through this tutorial and was doing pretty good until I got to the creating a dome background. I am unable to import an image into the UV image editor. Have any suggestions?
Corn
The problem is, that the entire layout (GUI) of the program is way different to the version I just installed. I find it impossible to repeat the steps as I simply can’t find the buttons they use in this tutorial. I am an absolute beginner with Blender. Hard, hard, hard…
Hi Sven,
The interface differences are because you are likely still using Blender 2.49. Our tutorials are all done using the latest 2.56 beta so as to stay current with Blender’s development. You can download the latest version here: http://www.blender.org/download/get-256-beta/
-Jonathan
Hello
I’ve been following your tutorial with only minimal difficulties, but have just now stumbled on an issue that’s consumed far more of my time than I’d like.
At around seven minutes when you are rotating the knot and using proportional editing, I’ve found it to be -impossible- to adjust the radius of the falloff, so it always rotates the entire structure. I searched the internet and found people saying that sometimes the radius might be so huge, you just can’t see it, so I found the proportional radius in the inferface under the translate tool, and still found it impossible to edit, no matter what I set the size to.
The mouse wheel won’t do it, and the manual changing of the radius won’t work, and restarting the program doesn’t help! What do I do?
Hi Derek,
Is the problem that you cannot change the size of the radius or that the size of the radius does not change it’s effect range?
-Jonatan
Thanks for the help, Jon
http://i.imgur.com/4RsZ1.jpg
I did have some problems, like reflections showing up on the other side of the balloons, the weird looking strings, or rotating the balloons incorrectly such that the connection between the string and the balloon looked unnatural (outside balloons should have strings oriented inward, not outward as in my pic). I guess that’s for another day.
when you say you need to ‘flip the normals around’, and you say press ctrl+shift+’in’ how do you do that because I’ve tried Ctrl+shift+insert but it doesn’t work
please help
lol? I didn’t watch the video and I haven’t tried any of it in blender yet but i’m assuming when somebody says something that sounds like “ctrl + shift + in” they don’t mean insert, they mean “ctrl + shift + N” that might work. But you’ve got to be a troll right? People know their alphabet way before they know the insert key.
Hey,
great tut, thx. I’m still in the middle of it, but I noticed something in all of the submitted pictures: You totally see the border of the skydome through the ballons, due to their transparency-distortion. Of course one could solve this by creating some kind of ground, but for this “easy” scene adding a textured, non-flat ground seems to be too much.
Is there an easier way? For example you could lower the transparency to a point that the visible gray-area isn’t clearly visible (as an unrealistic, gray area) any more.
Sorry for my english (didn’t write in english for a long time) and also sorry for not completely checking the comments whether this question has already been posted (there were just too many).
Thanks for your time,
Woodsen
Hi guys! It’s great tut but I have one problem with it.
When I selecting mine UV Sphere (this one with sky texture) and clicking M, it’s moving to another scene not to another layer. I don’t know what i’m doing wrong, i watched this part of tut many times. Here’s a pic what exactly i have problem with:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/69/beztytu2u.png/
If someone can help me i’d be thankful.
When I try to do the dome step, it’s all wacked out. First when I try to bring up the picture it just shows a gray box and then when I do cylinder projection it makes that gate looking thing but at the top it’s not pointed – it’s caved in and it shows the sky picture below it. What’s going on? ):
When i try to insert a uv unwrap image of the sky nothing will appear. I have done everything correctly up to this point. Any suggestions?
Never mind! Thankfully I was able to detect why the image being opened wasnt displayed. I guess the uv sphere i had opened was either unselected or uncreated at the point i tried to unwrap leading to my problem. I was able to continue from where i left off!
thnx man !!!! u solved my problem !!!
Please help. I’m stuck @2:58 – 3:06. I don’t know to scale it down like you did. can you please elaborate the procedure during the said time – which keys you pressed?
Really appreciate your help in advance. Awesome job! Thanks
Hi there,
Starting with the bottom bit selected you first press E to extrude, followed immediately by pressing S to scale. You can then just move your mouse to scale to the desired size. Next you can extrude it again with E, followed by pressing G > Z to activate Grab mode constrained to the Z axis.
I hope that helps!
-Jonathan
i must be missing something, i press E to extrude then S to scale but it just extrudes that bottom section and scales the point, it doesn’t shrink the middle like on the vid creating a 2nd bit to extrude, so stuck!
When I tried to open an image, and link it, it didn’t show an image.
Why?
Op. Never mind, fixed it
Hi Kat,
Where are you trying to link the image to/from?
-Jonathan
Thanks so much for the Tutorial. (and the site) This was my first go around with Blender. Posted the image. Looking forward to seeing what I can learn and come up with.
Cheers.
Hey jon, what city is blendercookie’s office based out of? Or do you all live in different cities and submit work online? Or maybe even all share the same house….that would be weird though so i hope its not the latter.
We are mostly based out of the Chicago suburbs but we have a few people, such as David, Patrick, Porter and Alessandro that submit work online. And nope, we don’t share a house but we do work in the same office
-Jonathan
i was wondering if you could write a step by step tutorial and not a video.maybe have lil pictures to show witch button in blender to use.
i have blender 2.5.. Im asking you because some people don`t want to what 4 hours to watch your video because we don`t have high speed in are area..or if someone can give me a link to a written step by step tutorial.I would be happy if u or someone could help me.thanxs
Hi Brandy,
I am looking to write a few more step-by-step tutorials in the near future so thanks for speaking up!
-Jonathan
how about a written tut of creating a character.that would be great. thanx
When I render my image a have strange blotches showing up all over my image. I was wondering if anyone had ideas to what my problem is, could it be my graphics card?
Thanks, Nolan
Hi Nolan,
Can you attach a screenshot so as to see exactly what is going on?
-Jonathan
Heres the picture http://i1183.photobucket.com/albums/x464/Kawaii_Kappa/Balloons.jpg
it kinda came out fuzzy sorry for the quality.
That happened to me. In my case that was because I had balloons duplicated overlapping one another. When I grabbed them out around it rendered right.
Any chance of getting a print copy of this? I have students that respond better to text.
thank you very much for such amazing tutorial… i tried and i got really nice output… but i still need to learn lots to master…
pity… the skydome won’t work with me. Any help is welcome.
What is not working with the skydome? I’ll be happy to try and help if I can.
-Jonathan
Hey Jon,
thanks for replying.
First of all, also thanks for the tutorial. Up to this point, I’ve learned quite a lot.
Secondly, I use blender on a windows XP system, just in case this might be important.
Since I had some weird problem with downloading the photo you recommended, I’ve chosen another one displaying the alp mountains in a panorama, but I guess that won’t be the point.
Closer description: I created the skydome sphere just according to your description. The projection grid in the UV/Image Editor, however, will appear, but unlike in your vid, it won’t be centered vertically to the image but be mostly above it. You can see it here:
http://www.koerrie.de/Zeug/bs1.jpg
Nevertheless, I continued the work by scaling the grid horizontally and then shifting it into the desired position, as you can see here:
http://www.koerrie.de/Zeug/bs2.jpg
Also, the normals of the dome seem to be flipped already (though I can’t reconsider having done so).
As you can see in the second screen, I’ve turned the dome so that you watch it from slightly below, so you should see anything displayed upon it either on the inner or outer side.
However, whatever I’ve tried, it won’t display anything but bright white, which is very much different to the alp image I tried to display.
Im having a slight issue. When ever something gets sub surfed I cant see the basic model like you can.
Your tutorial is simply the best it makes me interested to go back and learn more about 3D.
Glad to hear it! Thank you
-Jonathan
Nice tut! I can’t seem to scale my balloon’s edgeloops symmetrically though. It keeps scaling relative to one vertex, so I end up with a very funky looking knot. How do I fix that?
Well, I figured out a solution to the scaling problem eventually. For anyone else having the same problem: In edit mode, go to the button that says “Pivot center for rotating/scaling” when you mouse over it (it’s near the bottom left) click it and change the setting to “bounding box center”. Your selections should now scale symmetrically.
Cheers,
Tako
Hi, total noob here.
Nice tutorial, but I’ve followed it up to 16:14 and I’m getting that problem where I press f12 to render and only the strings are there. I checked the balloons and noticed that none of them had materials, so I tried adding them and I’m still not seeing the balloons. What am I doing wrong? I checked and they’re not supposed to be transparent.
Hi there,
It is most likely that the objects that are not showing at Render time have been set to not render. In the Outliner, is the Camera icon on the far right next to each name greyed out? If so, click it and they should then render. You can also select the objects and press CTRL + ALT + H to turn their renderability back on.
-Jonathan
gee.! phew! thanks for that ctrl+alt+h. Had a really tough time figuring what had happened to the string. A great tutorial for getting started. Keep them coming.
I have a problem with the skydome it doesnt work D:
great tutorial, but i have a problem whit the skydome you say then “press alt + z, no wait press in” and i really don’t see an in button on my laptopXD this sounds really stupid but i really dont get it you say it at 20:12
sorry if a made some grammatical mistake, but english is not mine native language:P
already thanks for the effort
UMMMM I DID EVERYTHING UP TO WHAT YOU SAID AND I TRYED TO RENDER IT AND IT DIDN’T SHOW ME THE BALLOONS IN THE RENDER JUST THE SKY OF THE SKYDOME PLEASE HELP!!! (I have Blender 2.6 so i don’t know if this makes a difference or not) please help tho!
Hey nice tutorial. I’m loving it so far.
I’ve got a problem though. I managed to get the sky texture onto my sky dome on the outside. When i press control+shift+n to change the texture to the inside but it does nothing. On the tool bar on the left it says everything it does on yours and the box that says inside is ticked but it doesn’t do anything. If you could help me out that would be great.
Cheers
Your tutorial is very hard and not bery detailed. Please add subtitles and say every key you’re going to press.
From Amy and IT classmates
>:|
You have to do it in edit mode in 3d View
Yeah I did. I’ve spent ages trying to make sure I’m doing everything exactly the same as him but it’s still not working.
do you have it set to textured solid?
None of the alt functions described seem to work for me in ubuntu. Whenever I press alt right click or alt space, all i get is the window asking about maximizing or minimizing
Also, control r doesn’t seem to work either, it just rotates
how did you do the x-ray mode? like you can see inside the model
thanks
Press “Z”
Hey Jonathan, great tutorial so far!
I just wanted to know, when you make the string for the balloon, how do you make the string(thin cube) go around the bottom of the balloon to make the knot? what buttons do I have to press?
-Callum Hodgkinson
I’m stuck at around 2:50-3:10! I can’t understand this “extrude” thing and how the balloon become invisible. Please help!
Hey Jonathan,
When you stick the image to the half circle, i can’t use my mouse in the second window, i can’t grab or anything. what should i do??
SnakeKId
Me again. I’m stuck at 32:06. I’ve separated out the sky from the balloons, only now the sky renders as completely black. I tried putting it back in the first layer but it seems the texture it’s displaying is completely black. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
thanks a lot..i’m a newbie and this will be my first output..
grateful for every details..
Thanks a lot for this tutorial !
I’m a newbie and I don’t understand very much english. Very clearly explained.
I learned a lot with this lesson (not completely understood everything about the nodes interface but it’ll come ^^)
Thanks again
you don’t teach but only talk. Good job bad tutorial.
It’s going to require some practice and repetition of these tutorials on my part but I see the potential of this one enlightening tutorial to create all sorts of floating objects other than balloons. I’ve got to dive into this!
“UP!” animation movie fits this subject very much
http://adisney.go.com/disneyvideos/animatedfilms/up/
I am having a huge problem with the final render. I finished the tutorial and it worked fine. Then, the next time I rendered it the sky comes up as a black box. Occasionally it will black out the balloons entirely, too. I reloaded an old save and it is also having this problem (when before it did not.) I am nearly 100% sure I did nothing in between renders except go get a drink…so I am really confused as to what happened! Nothing I do seems to fix this.
Please help. I am SO frustrated!
Too confusing, not for beginners, to begin with I can’t see the bottom of the uvsphere when I select the front view so I have to rotate everytime and go back to front view, then the ballon doesn’t have enough vectors to make the tie. I’m so frustrated right now :/
Thanks for suggesting me to press “z”, I did some annotations while I was making the tutorial, I’m still far from finishing it but they may help someone. I’m a complete noob.
Here are the notes:
For the view press 5 on the numpad then go to Front view (you can press numpad 1 instead of “View/Front”).
To pan the view press shift+mmb (that’s middle mouse button), to rotate simply press mmb and drag.
After pressing E for extrude press S to resize.
If when you scale the tie all the ballon also scales press o g c then scale.
To pull down the tie you may need to press o g c (one or two times maybe? or deselect and reselect the vectors).
Jonathan,
I am having the hardest time using CTRL+R. I’m trying to double the lines and have both selected and the same time so I can scale up. How do you split the CRTL+R lines?
Thanks in advance!
Jonathon,
I just noticed when you added the two loop cuts, I saw underneath “operator” the number of loop cuts present, but when I try to add the loop cuts, underneath “Operator” on my blender it shows nothing.
hi, i am not understand on the doing to bottom part, can you provide detail way? it seems a lot of short cut key and is that have sub title to support?
The bottom of the balloon, or the empty where the balloon’s strings come together?
Thanks a lot for the tutorial. Btw if it means something iv found out that under the shadows u can check transparent shadows and i found it really good option. Btw this is my first time ever blender work. Last nodes part was a bit hard but ill practice it later on.
Thanks once again.
Fascinating, once again, the best of the best.
My balloons: http://blenderw.blogspot.com/2011/12/globos-globos-para-todos.html
Hey, I’m stuck in the string part, I can’t get it loop around the balloon, I’m not getting the hand of the rotation, and the tutorial doesn’t explain how to do it
Help?
Hi Sarah,
My apologies for the trouble. Which part of the rotation are you having trouble with? Rotating around the 3D Cursor?
-Jonathan
Hey Johnathan, nope I got that, I just can’t get the string to go around the balloon knot.
Thanks for the tutorial by the way!
In the tutorial I used the 3D Cursor as the pivot point and then rotated the extrusion for the knot 90 degrees from the top view. Then I repeated this several times: E to extrude, R to rotate each time.
You are talking way too fast for me. I gave up, can’t get the bottom of the balloon shaped correctly. I am new to Blender and I would not consider this a beginners vid. You are assuming that the user already knows all the key combos, which I do not. There are also times where you do something, but don’t say what key combo you are using for example when shaping the balloon tie you are moving vertices without stating what key combo you are using. Sorry I am sure this is fine tutorial for some, but I am going to look elsewhere.
Hi Gary,
You are absolutely right, this tutorial is incorrectly labeled a beginners tutorial; it should be intermediate. I hope you’ll give our tutorials another chance, though. I would recommend starting here
http://cgcookie.com/blender/get-started-with-blender/
And then maybe moving on to this tutorial:
http://cgcookie.com/blender/2010/07/14/creating-a-cg-cookie-coffee-cup/
This one may also be good for you: http://cgcookie.com/blender/2010/09/09/series-modeling-a-shipping-container-part-01/
Cheers and best of luck. Please let me know if you have any questions or need any extra help. If you have a question relating to a tutorial you can also always email me via support@cgcookie.com
Enjoy!
-Jonathan
At the 3′rd minute mark when you start scaling the bottom part down, when i press E and S and try to scale i don’t get the same effect you do, is it because I am maybe using a never version or am I doing something wrong ?
Hi, im having an issue following this tutorial. I’m using blender version 2.58 on ubuntu linux, and at the beginning you say press Alt Right click to select the loop.
This doesnt work on my version of blender. Any ideas how i can fix this as the only way i can currently select a loop is to select each vertices’s manually all around the object, which im sure you’re aware is quite time consuming!
Hi David,
When loop selecting you need to click on one of the edges making up the loop, not the vertex.
I hope that helps!
-Jonathan
Sweet tutorial. I just finished and am now enjoying the great desktop background.
Good to hear!
-Jonathan
Hello,
I am far from a N00b at Blender, but after the destruction of my last laptop (Do NOT get Minecraft texture packs, it’ll literally blow up your laptop) I had to purchase a new one and reinstall Blender, but by that time, the new version (6.0) came out. The execution and shortcuts are near identical, but the scale feature…I just can’t figure it out. Help!
Hi Mackie,
What seems to be the problem with the scale tool?
-Jonathan
Thanks Jonathan,
I’ve experimented with it, and it scales, but it doesn’t extrude right for anything.
I’m a complete novice in blender!!!
thanks jonathanwilliamson great tutorial
and I did it
so, i didnt got the control+shift+ in hotkey so i couldnt make the skydome
so i followed other tutorial just to make the skydome
here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWptDU3xG60 (4 we… the novice)
and them you finish it continue with jonathan’s tutorial
I prefer skydome textures (circle sky picture) than sky texture (rectangular picture)
so… i got this results (finished)
http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/s720x720/380381_160954854010927_100002892417217_202336_907334364_n.jpg
(skydome with balloons modeling view) http://a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/391149_160954014011011_100002892417217_202334_1306958905_n.jpg
thanks jonathan to share it with us,now im going to make the orange
Glad you like it!
i dont get the part at 03:04. After you scaled, what did you do?
He pressed “G” to move it and then “Z” to move it along the Z-axis. I’m glad if I helped you.
Hey Jonathan, i have one question.
When I render the final image, there are not all strings and they are at the wrong position.
Image: http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/9994/balloonsl.png
I hope you can help me,
Widgeonnn
PS: Great Tutorial
Hi, everyone! This is a very useful and comprehensive tutorial. Since it was my first time playing around with Blender, I skipped that part about compositing and my balloons ended up just fine. Take a look: https://twitter.com/#!/nandotelles/status/156092059915272192/photo/1/large
Thanks!
Aargh, I’m getting so frustrated! I know this is supposed to be a simple tutorial, but I am having a lot of trouble following.
In creating the knotted part, for example, the narrator says he’s “pulling the edge [of the balloon] down” … then “loop cutting twice”, but I’m not sure how he’s doing it. And I also get completely stuck on the part where he creates the string and somehow deforms, then extrudes it into a knot.
I feel really dumb asking this, but are there instructions for this tutorial that’s a little more step-by-step and detailed? Learning Blender has been a real uphill battle for me.
It’s a great tutorial, but I have not even seen half of it. My problem is that when you first say we render to check it I only get a grey render image. I have lights the camera is active. When I press 0 on the numberpad to view from the camera everything is fine… I’m also rendering the right layer, I don’t know what is wrong =\
Hi Fen, it sounds like your objects are disabled during the Render time. If you look in the outliner the camera should be enabled next to each name. If it is greyed out then it means they are set to not show at render time; meaning you just need to click the camera.
I hope that helps!
-Jonathan
Yes, it did help. Thank you so much, finally I can continue =)
hi love this tutorial.. but im stuck with the first rendering of the baloons. While im rendering i’ve notice that the position of all the baloon came back to its original position it is not the position that I assign after the constrain part. but if i use undo(ctrl+z) the position of the baloon arrange according to what i assign. but if render it again it back to original positon. what do you think the problem sir? tnx in advance..
Hi Zeus,
It sounds like you have added a keyframe for the position of the balloon, such that when you render it’s putting the balloon in the position of that keyframe. If you look at your timeline with the balloon selected, do you have any vertical yellow lines anywhere? The yellow lines represent keyframes for that frame. If you move to that frame in the timeline and press ALT + I with your mouse of the viewport you can remove the keyframe.
I hope that helps!
-Jonathan
how do you make the object so you can see the lines at the other side so dont have to constantly spin round and also would be helpfull to know for when making the knot seen as i cant see inside it
thanks in advance
also im onto the string now and it just keeps messing up how do you rotate it exactly by 90 degrees
Hey Johnathan,
I’m stuck on the ”Bottom Vertex” I have no idea what is it and the hot key for it. It makes sense for me except that bit.
Thanks.
I’m sure the best for you convert vob to flv for more detail convert vob to flv online
Great tutorial. I also added my version of the rendered bunch of balloons -image. This is my first comment on this site. Next thing I’ll do, will be propably be a 3d-logo of my favourite band or something. But I will definitely use these technigues I just learned from this tutorial.
Can somebody please tell me how to get that clear image of the figure and make the knot?
Hey Jonathon. I love your tutorials. Just one question. When I render the sky all I get is a black screen. What am I doing wrong? I know I’ve moved the dome to layer 2 and the renderer is set to layer 2. So what am I doing wrong?
Try selecting the Sky and pressing CNTRL + ALT + H to re enable it during rendering
Okay I am having a HUGE problem with making the knot. I can’t seem to do it. Any help? (:
Hi Bryce,
What’s the problem you’re having? I’ll be happy to help but I’ll need a bit more info
-Jonathan
Okay, so I am very new to Blender but I have gotten most of the material down, but I have no idea how you created the knot by extending and getting it to the wire frame. I can extrude the first step just fine right after you make the ballon shape, but after that I can’t seem to get the rest just right at all.
hey Jonathan. great tutorial, I’m new using blender and i find your tutorial really usefull, my question is. can i make the objects (in this case the ballons) to be solid so they can´t join together. for example when you add the other ballons, you have to manually separate them from each other, so they won´t join (the ballon penetrate into the other ballon). is there an option in blender that restric objects so when they touch on the borders blender won´t allow you to keep pushing into, thanks
Unfortunately there’s no real good way to do this without actual physics simulations. You’re best off manually placing them at the moment.
-Hey Jonathan
Love the tutorial! Everything worked perfectly at the end. Rendered it like you said and it looked great! I saved my progress, and quit blender. Came back later and reopened my project, but when I rendered it again all i’m getting is a black screen everytime I do. What advice can you give me to help this problem?
-Justin
Are your objects disabled during Render in the outliner?
No. Both layers are enabled. hmm…
hi jonathan,
thanks a lot for this tutorial, but i have a problem, is that when i render it, the balloons aren’t looking clear pure and fine white color befor the texture and red pure fine color after the texture like yours. instead its looking like grid balloons. can u please help him in this problem?
thanks
Hi Ahmad,
I am guessing you have duplicate vertices that is causing artifacts on the balloons. Try going into Edit Mode, selecting everything and then press W > Remove Doubles.
-Jonathan
hi jonathan,
your solution didn’t work. still when rendering there are square artifacts on the balloons. can you please give me other advice to solve this issue.
thanks.
Can you upload a screenshot of the render result? This will help me troubleshoot it a bit more.
I had this problem and it turned out I had somehow duplicated some balloons without moving the new one away (so there were two in the same place). Try selecting a balloon with the square artefacts and pressing x to delete one of them.
hi jonathan,
i have uploaded a screenshot of my work render result. can you please click on this link to browse the screenshot:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.229819490428057.56050.100002000230128&type=3#!/photo.php?fbid=248000258609980&set=a.229819490428057.56050.100002000230128&type=3&theater
thanks
sorry for the post above, the link isn’t working. i’ve posted it on your wall on facebook. you can open this link:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jonathan-Williamson/117541648325556?sk=wall#!/pages/Jonathan-Williamson/117541648325556
sorry and thanks
Just wanted to say thank you for the tutorials,you go a bit fast but thats what pause and rewind is for :> I just started messing with blender recently,and have found these very helpful.
Hi,
until now I only watched the “getting started” videos and the first video down to them, so I’m really new to blender.
But unfortunately I fail, when I try to model the node of the ballon.
I think I select the right nodes and then I press E to extrude and S to scale. But after pushing the vertices in the direction of the ballon, no new vertices, like in the video appear.
Could it be, that you insert new vertices with Ctrl. + R = loopcut, like a little bit later in the video? I couldn’t imagine another way. I tried this out, but it wasn’t possible to insert a loopcut in the “last section” of the ballon. I call the area between the lowest vertex and the first row of vertices the “last section” of the ballon.
thanks in advance
Hi Tilo,
I am not quite sure what your current problem is. Could you perhaps upload a screenshot with what you’re trying to do and what’s not working?
Thanks!
Hi, thanks for the quick answer. I will try to explain my problem a bit better, in reference to your tutorial video.
In the video, the modeling of the knot of the balloon starts at 03:00 min. You say, that you first hit “E” to extrude and “S” to scale and push the selected vertices “into” (in +z direction) the balloon. This works on my computer, too. (Maybe I have to say, that I use blender 2.61, here could be the problem too, I don’t know)
Then you finish the process, I think with clicking the left mouse botton(?). After you start the process of extruding again, now in -z direction, new vertices appear. It’s around 03:05 min. I don’t know, how these selected vertices could appear. I think these are NOT the vertices you selected at first, when you made the shape of the balloon. But I didn’t notice any other selection. On my machine there aren’t any new vertices.
I hope that you could reconstruct my problem. Thanks for your effort.
Hello P4chw1n
Did you, or anyone else, find a solution to this? I’m experiencing exactly the same problem and it’s driving me nuts! Click on “M” moves the object (in this case the UV Sphere) to a new scene, and not a new layer. It then appears as scene 2 in the scene box (to the left of the layer box).
Any help would be appreciated!
Hi,
I think I nearly get it. Not in the way you did, but now my balloon looks nearly like yours.
Hi! Around the time of 3:23 you brought down the tip of the balloon over the other part and it became somewhat transparent, where you could see through the balloon to the underlying faces, vertices, etc. How did you do that because mine stays solid? Thank you
Hi, you can press the Z key on your keyboard to toggle between transparent and solid.
Hello! I’m having an issue with the camera. When it’s time to render, it doesn’t show the balloons. I have the camera pointed right at them with light and nothing shows up, just gray space. I’ve replaced the camera and still nothing. Any help would be super awesome, thank you!
Hi kourt,
Select the balloons and press CTRL + ALT + H to enable them during render time.
the first time of the video when you extrude and after you scale for the knot, it scale to center of the balloon
This is a very nice tutorial Jonathan. But when you do you the string for the balloon, I don’t understand how you rotate the string 90 degrees and all that. Also, when I click B and drag to select, it only selects what I see infront and not behind.
I can not figure out the knot. I’ve got the first part but as soon as you extrude it the second time I get lost. I’ll try to figure it out on my own, but please help!!!
Hi Jonathan,
In the video tutorials I miss many things while you are doing them very quickly.
Is it possible I can get same as written tutorials?
Thanks
Everything is going well… then when I applied the cloud material to the half dome,,, I was unable to see the texture in my 3D Viewport even after activating texture mode, it just slightly became a darker gray than it was. I thought maybe it was my graphics card.
I then tried rendering it, and everything was still gray. I flipped normals and still gray. I flipped about 10 times to see each way and it never worked.
Any help? I’m using Blender 2.62 64-bit on Win7.
I kind of figured it out. It was because I had chosen Cycles as my render engine. When I chose the Blender Render the image just appeared. The only issue is that it doesn’t render,,,, even though it’s showing up in my 3D Viewport.
Thank you for creating this great tutorial, I have learned a lot from it, even though it took me a while to finish.
I think you missed a small point at 23:35 when you set the IOR for the balloon to 1.591 which is the value for plastic. The balloon is not solid plastic, but mostly helium which has an IOR very close to 1.000. That value results in a transparent balloon that looks more natural to me: http://imgur.com/Trjbo
A minor inconvenience when following the tutorial is in knowing what keys you are pressing, is there a setting in Camtasia that will display keypresses? Or some other software that would?
The replay on Vimeo is not bad except that I have can’t jump ahead, I have to wait for the video file to load into the browser from the start. A little annoying when returning to a tutorial.
Anyway the above are minor issues, your tutorials are fantastic and I’ll continue to follow them. Thanks again!
Hey guys im new to blender (2-3days) and I dont understand how you do the rotate etc. at 7.45 -> 8.20min. I cant rotate it like you, im now 7h in front of my PC and i still dont get it. I checked all other Videos and Google search but nothing. My rotate focus is at the lil orange point but yours at the red/white circle you set up on the one line.
I like your Tutorials Jonathan and im sorry for my bad english i can read and understand english movies but cant write or speak in english >.<
Hi Mikan,
You can set your pivot point for rotation/scaling to the 3D Cursor (red and white thing) by pressing the “.” key. You can change back to default with the “,” key. You can also change these in the bottom of the 3D View.
Cheers and best of luck!
-Jonathan
Yo thx ^.^ im done with my “Bunch of Balloons” now and i rly want to upload it but i dont know how… I never upload something on the i-net.
Do i need a account to upload a pic? if so i will make one, i was planing to creat one anyway.
Hi Mikan,
You will need an account to upload. After that it’s a very simple matter of just going to Gallery > Submit image
yeay my My “Bunch of Balloons” are up now ^.^
thx again for the great tutorial!
this tutorial is no good for someone new to blender, your flying through things without explaining how many of the steps are done or what key presses you are using
Hi Ben,
My apologies for the speed in this tutorial; even though it’s listed on Blender.org as a beginner tutorial it is really much more of a intermediate one. I would recommend you start here first and then come back to this tutorial: http://cgcookie.com/blender/get-started-with-blender/
Cheers and best of luck! Please let me know if there is anything specific I can help with.
Hi Jonathan,
Just finished up your tutorial and wanted to give you my thanks. I started learning Blender about a week ago and have not done much besides reading through the basics of the program. I used your tutorial as my first outing so to speak. This tutorial was very easy to follow and your pacing and narrative during the video are excellent. There were a few parts where I wasn’t sure which hotkeys you were using or how you achieved a certain effect, but a quick search on Google resolved my issues. I felt like I learned a variety of different techniques just from this one video. So again thank you very much.
I’ve added my final result to the gallery above.
Hi Rossen,
That’s great to hear you found the tutorial helpful! Best of luck with any future tutorials
-Jonathan
WHY is it that this video player won’t ever let you select a position to play from?
I can click wherever and it just starts back at the beginning.
Hi Connors,
Which browser are you using? The player should work perfectly in Chrome and Firefox.
Whenever I try to use keyboard shortcuts, it deletes everything, the cube, camera, and light, leaving only the grid and y-axis. Although, it looks to me as if you are using Mac. I’m using Windows, is that what the problem is?
Yeah, I just realized, feeling incredibly stupid, that the keyboard shortcuts aforementioned are meant for the number pad. Sadly, my laptop has no number pad or NumLock, and the Function key does nothing. Are there any alternate keyboard shortcuts for things such as changing to front and perspective view, in the beginning of the video?
You can get around this by enabling Emulate Numpad in the Input section o the User Preferences
How do you get to your textures folder because i dont have one
What I mean is how do you open your texture folder to get the bluesky
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks for making this tutorial. I am stuck at the part where we extrude the string around the balloon knot. Unfortunately my string seems to be going inside the bottom of the balloon rather than to the side and sometimes when I rotate the rotation is around the cursor at the center axis point rather than the end of the string. I can fix this by moving the cursor to the end of the string but should I have to? Also I’m on a laptop with an emulated number pad so I’m unable to use the period button to rotate 90 degrees that I’m aware of. any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Nathan
I was up to the extrude bit where you said scale down, i hit E. But it didnt come up with a dotted line and two arrows. It came up with just a the axis it goes on and the marked bit extruded and didn’t “scale down” as you said, please help.
good but around 6:20 you forgot you were doing a tutorial for begginers. You didnt say what you were doing and it all got really confusing.
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks for this wonderful tutorial. I just started using Blender and this gave a good insight of the shortcuts and rendering. I had trouble moving the sky dome and baloons to different layers. I selected the sky dome and pressed M and 2 to move it layer 2. But when I tried rendering the sky alone, it either kept showing me a black screen or some times it was both the sky as well as the baloon.
I also see in your tutorial that all the scenes were selected in different layers in the menu on the right. But in my case I see only scene 1 selected. I would really appreciate if you could explain how to render different layers more clearly.
Thanks again for the wonderful tutorial.
Hey Jonothan…I still don’t get the part where you e to extrude then r to rotate, and it automatically rotates 90 degrees.( the string around the balloon) how do you do that?
I think it is thought the period (.) key
Hey Jonathan, thank you so much for putting together this tutorial! Really good stuff, much appreciated!
I haven’t been able to work around a problem with the shadow rendering. Some of the shadows are jagged for some reason. When I change the light type from area to sun or point it works, but I think that is probably not right the way to solve this
! The picture is here: http://www.flickr.com/x/t/0096009/photos/77530836@N05/6960773372/
I’d appreciate your support on that! Let me know if you need the blender file. Cheers!
Alessandro
Hi Alessandro,
Do you by chance have duplicate balloons there? If not, could you send me the .blend file? I’m not quite sure what might be causing that.
Cheers,
Jonathan
Hey Jonathan,
Thanks for the reply! I’ve just checked that – they are all single balloons. But don’t worry, I have changed to sun instead of area and it’s all good
! But I’m happy to send you the blender file – not sure how to send that through the forum though…
Here is the result so far:
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/I_5xredWTwxqhlLpFLAqK-8NbyZh1uXm2iHVXm-v04c?feat=directlink
I still have to go through the compositing part. I also need to fix a few balloon nodes, but I’ll get there hopefully
!
Man, I really appreciate the tutorial and your help! I’m glad we have people like you out there taking the time to share the knowledge! Really appreciated!
Cheers mate, take care
Alessandro
Great tutorial. I got a little hung up on splitting the scene up into rendering layers, it’s kind of unintuitive for a first timer like myself.
I think I’m going to follow the volumetric clouds tutorial next and see if I can’t combine these two tutorials into a cool little scene. I have so many ideas I could do with this, but I’m not good enough yet to actually do them
I loved it, am now making balloons for the fun of it, like using color, and ctrl R, and most importantly, E. I need extrude for a lot of things. i’m currently modeling Bumblebee from Transformers. oh, by the way, couldn’t you animate the balloon a bit to show how its done? for other beginners benefit, because I already know.
Hey, I really enjoy this program and Learning it, but Im having a problem that i cant figure out, Everytime i render the image, the Balloons will go back on their side at the Origin out side the picture, I do not know what is causing it, I had multiple hooks, but got rid of them, and now there is only one, and All of the Balloons are connected to it like they should be, I can place them, but they will not stay once rendered PLEASE HELP!!!
Thank you all.
John “Calvin” Coolidge
I my program is not working like yours how do i get the other shape
download it/
I’ve learned a lot, thank you.
Still I waisted a lot of time finding out how to do things that are not explained thoroughly and had to rewind and replay small portions of the tutorial 100 times, the player could not handle that very well.
For the next time I recommend you to have the tutorial slower, it would save the users much time, though it sounds contradicting
All the best
Í
Hello.
Thank you for tutorial, it’s great.
But very fast explanation for me, as novice. This tutorial is linked on Getting Started on blender.com, but the format of presentation of this not so easy as possible. Something very fast, something is unclear.
But i’m glad, that english is understandable for me, I’m pre-intermediate
im about to give up google sketchup and start learning this blender software. but one thing i wanna ask before downloding, is it possible to transfer of put up my sketchup models into blender? by the way, nice tuts you got there, fast though.. but easy to follow.
It sure is! Depending on your SketchUp version, you should be able to export to either OBJ or DAE (Collada) and import them right into Blender. I actually spent a week training an Architecture firm on doing exactly this, transferring from SketchUp to Blender. Let me know if you find any road blocks along the way, I’ll be happy to help you out.
-Jonathan
haha got it. im actaully creating the “UP” house with balloon attachments. the only problem is the knot modeling like when i press the extrude then scale on the part of after you shaped the balloon, it seems to be not working like what you did and also when im scaling the double loop it doesnt resize the selcted area but the entire balloon.
For scaling the double loop, I’m guessing you still have proportion editing enabled from when we shaped the balloon. If you press “O” to turn it off and then try scaling the loop it should work right.
Hey, I’m having a bit of trouble creating the balloon shape. I don’t know why but it won’t allow me to select both the bottom ring and vertex, only one or the other, and I can’t figure out what to do.
When you select one and then the other, be sure to hold down SHIFT so that it adds to the current selection, rather than replacing it.
-Jonathan
Thanks Jonathan, I have a problem my strings doesn’t appear
Hi Santiago,
Most likely they’ve been disabled at render time. Select the strings and press CTRL + ALT + H to reenable it. You can see this represented by the camera icon in the outliner next to the object name.
Cheers,
Jonathan
appears
thanks, I can see the strings
I cannot add a hook as the string has no vertices. Don’t know how they disappeared. Help required….
If the vertices disappeared you’re likely in Object mode. Select the string and press TAB to go back to Edit Mode.
I am not in the object mode.
by the way, why didn’t you go onto world textures and insert the sky image? maybe people needed to know how to stop shadow receive. I don’t have a sky image, so I made a sky texture by setting world to white, setting world texture to blue, and rendered the scene and saw that the background looked like a sky.
would you have thought of that?
hey jon, i have somerendering issues? i took almost 30 minutes to render this image,and it appears just worst than pixel art i mean the whole image is kinda noisy? my specs are P4, 4 gig ram, 128 vcard, geforce4 mmx. i tried rendering it on indigo” and it took just about 5 mins and i got a very good image.
Hi Jeff,
Is it possible you were simply zoomed in on the image while rendering? When you press render, try pressing Numpad 1 in the render view to make sure the scale is set to the actual size.
wew thanks. it worked.
Whats the key at 20:12 after alt + z, I’m stuck! I think I heard the “In Key” but I don’t have that :/.
Help?
The key you want is the “N” key
-Jonathan