Opening Multiple Copies of Blender on Mac OSX

Up until recently, I thought that there was no way to have several windows (or copies) of Blender open at the same time on Mac OSX. Actually, this rumor has been spread around both in the Blender forums and in the real world, to the point one would even doubt the validity of using Blender on a Mac—some people in the Win-Blender community can be so snide against the Mac sometimes... :D Not fair.

Anyway, I just discovered a very easy way to get around this apparent limitation. My solution does not involve having several copies of Blender, but rather using the Terminal to open multiple copies of the same Blender application. Yes, the Terminal, that little known utility that scares most Mac users out of their wits, or at least it used to have such an effect on me.

There are two things you need to know about the Terminal. First, you can navigate to any folder in your Mac from within a Terminal window. To do so, you open a new Terminal window, type cd (which stands for change directory,) and enter the name of the folder or file you want to have accessible. After that, just press Enter. The Terminal allows to autocomplete file and folder names by pressing Tab. To make sure you are where you're supposed to be, type ls (for list) and press Enter. That shows you the files in the folder you are viewing. You can type an entire path to a specific folder or file by separating the folder inside folders with a /. To backtrack, type cd .. (that's two dots) and press Enter. To go to the root user folder, type cd ~. These basic commands will allow you to start navigating your Mac from the Terminal.

The second things is that you can perform commands from the Terminal. You can open programs and files, edit them, save the changes. Actually, it can do this and more, but at least it is important to realize that you can open a program from the Terminal. In order to work on a file, you need to navigate to the folder where that file is contained—in the same way that, in order to open a file, you need to go to the folder and double-click on its icon.

Once you can do that, go ahead and start a new Terminal window. Navigate to your Blender application folder. Yes, what we see on the Finder as Blender is not a program, but a package: a special Mac folder that contains the program itself and other files used by the program, like the icons, scripts, and default file. Anyway, navigate inside your Blender package, all the way to the folder where the actual program resides. If you have Blender in the main Applications folder in your Mac, the path to it would be (assuming you start from your user folder):

cd ../../Applications/blender/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/

Then, once you're there, open Blender by typing

./blender

The terminal spews out a couple of unintelligible lines, which I choose to ignore:


ndof: 3Dx driver not found
found bundled python: /Applications/blender/blender.app/Contents/MacOS/2.60/python
[Lux 2011-Dec-11 13:37:01] Using pylux version 0.9 (dev)

In any case, the end result is that you get a new Blender window open, independent of the other(s), and it allows you to work with two files at the same time! Cool stuff. I would suggest saving this text somewhere, either as text or as a script, so that you don't have to enter it manually every time. If I work out a Python script for this, I'll make sure to share it.

Enjoy!

Subway Scene 7 - in Cycles

I decided to try and finish Subway Scene. I still don't know exactly what it'll turn into, but I decided to begin texturing it. I also did a few noisy renders with Cycles, just to test things out. More to come.

Notice the amount of noise. 400 samples wasn't enough to begin getting rid of it.

Never Say Final - Coke and Cookies

On my last post, I used a forbidden word in production circles: final. Over the years, I've learned to avoid using it. It's meaningless. Nothing is final—except death, that is. I used it again, and again it exacted its revenge on me. It was supposed to be the final render—really-really final, or double-final, or final-final, or final-2. I've used them all over the years :)

After I had posted that render, the next morning I woke up and I noticed an incredible spike on this blog visitors' count. On a good day, I get somewhere between 50 and 150 visitors. At 8AM yesterday it was at 400 already. I checked the source of the traffic, and I discovered it was coming from BlenderNation, a Blender News web site. Apparently, this BlenderNation admin, Bart, liked my Coke and Cookies render, and put it up on their site. On top of that, blender.org, who usually mirror BlenderNation's news and posts, linked to that post as well. This incredible, two-pronged combination did the trick, I ended the day hitting the 2500 mark. I'm not complaining, I love the attention, and I like talking to people about Blender and Cycles and anything else 3D. Everything 3D.

Another interesting thing about what happened with my being featured in another site is that, all of a sudden, my artwork had become. It got away from me, and it started having an independent life all of its own. It got out into the world, and that was that. It's a funny feeling, but also a good feeling, and a wake-up call concerning the obsessive pursue of perfection. You want your work to be perfect, but in order to achieve it, you keep tweaking and futzing and fidgeting with things, but it does not necessarily get any better. It's just that you get all caught up in the creative process. Or maybe you're just an addict :) Sometimes it is better to leave the freshness of the first impulse as is and not worry about the imperfections. Some examples related to this idea come to mind: the Aeneid is not a finished poem, someone refused to burn it as Virgil demanded on his deathbed. One more: Paul Valéry's Le cimitière marin was published before he could 'finish it.' His over-eager publisher friend took it away from him and decided it was good enough. The hutzpah!

Anyway, for all these reasons, I wanna send a big thanks to BlenderNation, blender.org, and all the visitors to my blog. THANKS!

Oh, and here is the really-final render! I could not resist changing a few things around ;) If you liked the former version better, you know where to go :) Just click on final.

Also, I've decided to release the coke model as open-source file. It seems like there are many others trying to create soda bottles, so perhaps it can be helpful. Send me an email and I'll send you the file, minus the textures.

Render at about 3000 samples, with some
post-processing work done in Photoshop.

Coke and Cookies - Final Render

Here's the final render of my Coke and Cookies scene. I'm going to leave it like it is now. I added some water on the table and a washcloth. Cycles finally decided to stop crashing, and I was able to do a proper render this time. Three hours for 1500 samples. I sharpened it a bit in Photoshop—I don't quite like Blender's Sharpen filter.

Background image used under Creative Commons license
from http://www.smartibl.com/sibl/archive.html

PS: I woke up this morning, and I noticed an unusually high level of traffic on my blog. Then, I slowly realized that both Blender Nation and blender.org are mentioning my work on their sites today! Thank you guys! It doesn't happen every day... LOL

Coke and Cookies - 2

Here is an update of the Coke and Cookies scene I've been working on. I think it's pretty much done now. Creating all the materials and setting up the scene has given me a greater understanding of how Cycles works. There's nothing like getting your hands dirty to learn something new!

Goodbye MacBook

Today, while trying to render the final Dartboard scene using Blender's new render engine Cycles, my old computer died. Apparently, the logic board got too hot. I took it to the Apple store near me and they confirmed that the logic board was fried. I was lucky to have a recent backup, but even so, it's a bit of an annoyance. So, now I'm shopping for a new Mac. I've been really thinking that I'll get a Mac Mini. Why on earth did Apple call it Mac Mini? What a horrible name. Anything would have been better than Mac Mini—how about Mac Pancake? Anyway, I'll try to forget the male-challenging name and buy one. I can definitely not afford or justify a Mac Pro, which is what I really would like to have. On the other hand, I've been toying with the idea of building my own PC, but the idea of not using a Mac anymore is not a pleasant one. I'll keep everyone posted.