Hello. So I'm going
to be putting up
some tutorials about
the basics of using Blender.
But first I wanted to make
this video talking about
what Blender can
actually do and what
it can do for
paleontologists.
That's because Blender is
this incredibly powerful
open-source software
for 3D modeling
and animation.
And what that
basically means
if you're not familiar,
is that you can
make a Pixar-like
3D animated movie from
start to finish using this.
So that means there's
lots of different tools in
here and it can be
really overwhelming
to start.
If you just look
at the layout
I have pulled up right now,
you can kind of
get an idea of how
overwhelming this could
be as a beginner.
So first, let's
take a look at
two papers that have
used either Blender
or the paid
industry equivalent
Maya to do paleontology.
So this first example
I'm showing is from
a paper that was actually
developed as a
Blender tutorial.
And basically what
they did was they had
a CT scan of this
really nice,
early chelicerate fossil
and they wanted to
reconstruct it in Blender.
So the fossil itself
was kind of squished.
So they ended
up remodelling
all of the
elements to create
a more lifelike model
in Blender to test out
different walking gaits.
So for instance,
here you can see
they started off
with the primitive,
just a cylinder,
and then they
add more and
more complexity.
And then on the
right you can see
this put together model.
I think this is really
great paper for
introducing you
to what blender
can do if you're
interested.
However, because
it's from 2014 and
Blender has been updated
so much since then,
I wouldn't recommend using
it specifically
as a tutorial.
So the next paper
I wanted to talk
about is from 2019.
And it used Maya,
which is industry
equivalent
software, rather
than Blender.
But they can do basically
the same thing.
So in this paper,
they were basically trying
to reconstruct the gait
of this stem amniote
Orobates,
and so here they have
their mesh of the
Orobates
skeleton in Maya.
And what they've
done is rigged it,
which allows them to assign
bones and joints to
different parts
of the skeleton.
And each of
these joints can
have specified
ranges of movement.
So you can imagine
reconstructing
a walk cycle,
this is a really
useful tool.
And one final
thing that I found
Blender really useful for
is creating renderings,
either videos or
even just images
for papers and
presentations.
This will just let you
make really nice figures
and show your fossils
from any angle.
So here I've just stuck
a bone color onto my
fossil beaver skull,
added some fancy
blue lighting
and off it goes.
