True 3D

Ok, all these 3D pics, are not really. They are just 2D pics. All pictures are 2D effectively, so I guess we can't blame them for not living up to their name. They are called 3D of course because they are designed and generated in 3D, and as you have seen before, you can take two pics (or as many as you want) from different angles. As opposed to being designed in 2D, or drawn, or painted or a 2D canvas.

I decided to jump ahead a bit, and make some actual, real, 3D pics. Since you don't have a 3D computer screen yet, I found another way to show it to you. Maybe. If you can hack your eyeballs a little.

I took the 12 pipey thingy from last time, and took 2 pics of it from very slightly different angles, and put them side by side. The left one is from a spot corresponding to your left eyeball, and the right one your right eyeball. If you look closely you can see the images are just very slightly different.

Now, all you have to do is look at the left image with your left eyeball, and the right one with your right eyeball. What's the matter, you can't do that? Yeah, its not immediately obvious how to, but it can be done. Try the following - if it doesn't work, just pretend you can see it anyway.

Start by making sure no-one is watching you. This is going to look pretty silly. Bring your face right up close to the screen. Put your nose just about touching a spot between the two images. It will be very blurry, since no-one can focus that close, but don't worry. Now, let your eyes relax. Each image is directly in front of each eye. They both will sort of blur together into one image, but nothing you can make out very well. Stare straight ahead, right through the screen to a point several feet behind. Tricky to do with a screen in your face. It is still burry. Just ignore that. Keep your head level.

Now, very slowly, I mean really slowly, move your face backwards. Or the screen forwards, your choice. Keep staring in the distance. If at any point the two images that are blurry in the middle together start to spread apart, stop, and go back a bit again until they remerge. Keep relaxing. Come back out again and repeat until you are about 10 inches away. Relax. The central image will slowly un-blur, and become clear. Suddenly you will see the object in full 3D. And the surprise will make your eyes revert back to focusing on the screen, and you will have to start all over again.

Once you get it it really does look quite cool. And with a bit of practice you will be able to do it more and more easily. I can do it now without even moving my head. Since you liked that pic, I created a second one for you to practice on, based on the first, a sort of clubby thing that you might knock people on the head with who look at you funny. With eyeballs staring right through you.

Pipe Organ

Have you seen those movies where they have an evil overlord villain, who spends much of his time directing his minions from his massive lair in some remote location. For some reason he nearly always seems to have a huge pipe organ, and loves playing scary dramatic music in a theatrical way. I'm not sure where he get minions with pipe organ building skills. Perhaps he outsources it.

Making pipes in Blender, and joining them together, is done simply, once you know how. The yellow one is a simple T-joint, although I haven't yet worked out how to get the edges round. The cyan one I did next, starting with a cube, and extruding in all 6 directions at the same time.The magenta one is the same, but just in 3 directions instead of 6. And the green one is a small tube coming out of a larger tube, nearly twice the diameter, using a totally different technique called retopology.

They looked pretty bland, so I made them all shiny. Who doesn't like shiny? No-one, that's who.

Notice how at the joins, some of them come together very sharply (the yellow one), some very smoothly (the magenta one), and some half way in-between (the cyan one). You can easily control the smoothness of the intersection edges to get the effect you want. Just like the smooth and handsome hero (or beautiful heroine) that always controls the evil villain in the end.