Guest of September 2000 : Samo Korosec by the Linuxgraphic.org team
I n t e r v i e w

Linuxgraphic.org:
Hi Samo, first of all, thank you for having accepted to be the first honour guest of Blender-Cafe. We only know a little about you, and it seems that you are never far behind NaN. For example, you made the design of their tutorial books, you are deeply involved in the Discussion forums and you also wrote the official UV-texturing tutorial.

Samo Korosec :
Hi Olivier, it's a pleasure to be interviewed.

First of all, I am 20 years old and of Slovenian origin, though I now live and study in Austria. I am mainly working in the graphics design area, where I made my first steps about 3 years ago when I stumbled across a few Photoshop tutorials and tought "Hey, that might be something for me!" - the same happened with Blender some one year and a half ago. I was just impressed by the screenshot I found on NaN's website.

Later I dropped by at the Blender IRC channel, where I met a lot of people involved with Blender. Some of the key guys saw my attepts in Blender and liked it enough to offer me to work on the first tutorial guide. That's how a good relationship was created and I was later invited to the GameBlender User Conference.

Otherwise, I just like to help out new users and I am always happy to answer e-mails. :o)

Linuxgraphic.org:
So let's start. Lots of people tend to be very chaotic in the way they work with Blender. Could you tell us how you work ?

Samo Korosec :
With me it depends - I often work a chaotic way too, although there is a certain routine to it. For example, the only thing I changed in my user settings for Blender was to enable "Auto Temp Save" and set the "Versions" variable to 5. The main 3DWindow is set as big as possible - I can always rotate it anyway and the bigger is the better! It allows me to change details without moving around the 3D space much. I also start with my main model, finish it and then start building the scene around it. with my main object still present, it allows me to balance the scene more and make it "fit" better. I often try to get some inspiration before starting with work, so you could often find me browsing sites of other artists who I respect.

Linuxgraphic.org:
Interesting ! Which are your preferred artists ? Have you any links to share with us ?

Samo Korosec :
I just browse across the high-end 3D galleries out there, I like the work of Igor Posavec a lot though. The next thing is Kaliber 10000, a site for graphics designers. There's a lot of 3D, photography and even motion-picture work involved with modern graphic design - which is basically a combination of the above. I think that the more my inspiration actually varies in it's content, the better it is.

http://www.3d-io.com/ - Igor Posavec's site
http://www.k10k.net/ - designer's website
http://www.futurefarmers.com/ - Amy is good!
http://www.industries.de/ - so is Marc!
http://www.onyro.com/ - looks plain nice

Samo Korosec :
I always start my modelling with a plane! Seriously, I find it a bit funny, but now that you made me think of it - I do use the plane as my "starting" mesh most often. Next comes modelling with spheres. I also made duplicates of objects I am working on and move them to another, invisible, layer. My way of haveing "undo" objects in Blender.

Linuxgraphic.org:
Very clever. Any hints for newbies to start with Blender ? And what about some tips for experienced blenderers also ?

Samo Korosec :
For both groups: read tutorials!

In my opinion the best way to start with Blender is to start with smaller projects - that way, one won't be disapointed too fast. It is important to go through many tutorials and read a lot. Even if you don't understand all terms or technics, you will do, later on, and this will allow you to learn faster and faster.

The "oldies" on the other side shouldn't stay comfotable with what they know ; find an artist who is a lot better than yourself (you have some good links for this, above !) and use him as a measure of your own performance. When you reach the same level, find another artist who is better and so on. It's a great motivation (at least for me).

Linuxgraphic.org:
Do you think that Blender 2.0, with its rather clear game making orientation, has really brought Blender to a higher level, or do you think it's quite a different software that has born ?

Samo Korosec :
I think that 2.0 brought Blender to a much higher level. It's very unique among 3D animation suits, but a lot of people only see the game creation that was forced on a lot, recently. It should be noted, however, that the NaN crew is working on quite a few new features for the animation/rendering deparment only - it's just that those features need longer to be implemented.

Just to make an example - there is a new rendering pipeline in 2.0 as you might know. This will offer a lot more rendering techniques than before and sooner or later Blender will have all the neat stuff you see in Maya's or Lightwave's pluging.

So, as far as I know, the game creation part of it looks like it's being forced on a lot, but it's just normal for NaN to force on the new "features" a bit. But every good game needs a good intro, so to say.

Linuxgraphic.org:
Do you work with basic references (pictures, photographies, sketches of your own...) or do you model your scenes only according to your feeling ?

Samo Korosec :
It often starts by modelling after my feeling, but if I really want to finish my work, I mostly take it back to zero, make sketches and start it over working with the sketches. I was just recently working on a model for xype.com (like I do when I am bored, but I never finish them, though!) and I made a really nice cartoonish body with the subdivision plug-in. And then I started with the head but I made almost ten versions of it before giving up. It just didn't fit! I have made a sketch now, and I hope I'll finish it at last!

Linuxgraphic.org:
What would you like to offer to Blender-Cafe readers and why is it so special for you ?

Samo Korosec :
Link to Samo's gift
You need Blender 2.x for this one, since I used the "Pack Data" feature to include all the textures into the .blend file.

This is basically the first project in Blender that I ever finished. It is also the first project which I've presented the final results to others as my Blender work, and which also made me starting to like Blender.
The car started as a simple surface plane, where I decided to play around with Blender nurbs a bit. At one point it really looked like the front-tyre part of a car (but, maybe I only have a car fixation, though). I said to myself "Ok, let's see how far I can go with it". When I finished with it, I noticed that Blender's nurbs where very primitive - it was long before s-meshes, or Daniel's subdivision surface plug-in. But I somehow managed to finish it.

It's not high quality, it doesn't have much details, but I guess one can still play around with it a bit. I did a lot of other Blender work, but this one is the piece I am emotionally attached to most. Treat it with care...

Linuxgraphic.org:
We will surely do. Thank you for all, Samo !