Dr. Nexil

"Steadfast" Hello! This is going to be a bit of a lengthy post, so strap in. My name is Dr. Nexil, some of you may recall seeing me around on these forums (mostly in this subforum) but so many of the people I used to know on this site have moved on to other platforms, programs, or even dropped Mine-imator completely. It's been pretty strange! While MI 2.0 was in pre-release development I wanted to try and improve and invigorate myself in the program again after several years where I frequently used the software but rarely made anything I felt like posting. Wow, how far MI has come from when I began using it 9 years ago! Back in 2018 I started making more renders/wallpapers than animations as Mine-imator became more of a hobby instead of what I spent all my free time on. Like many other users, I grew up. The amount of stuff I created slowly waned until around late 2020 when I basically stopped posting. Then, MI 2.0 was announced and I decided it was time for me to really dig in again and see what I could make with more powerful tools and an older mindset. There's one animation of mine that I want to remake, and I figured the perfect way to begin honing my skills was to restart where I left off: Wallpapers. I knew I wouldn't get far if I didn't set a goal, so after a successful creation last December I made it my goal in 2023 to make one wallpaper a month for one year. That brings us to today, December of 2023 and 12 (technically 13) wallpapers later. I'd like to delve into each one briefly and share some notes and behind the scenes about them now that time has passed. I'll also give a little rating mostly for myself based on how I feel about them in retrospect. On with the show: Final thoughts: Overall, 2023 was a success in my book since I was able to produce a new wallpaper consistently even if the quality wasn't consistent. What I've learned after looking through all these is that I need to work on my lighting and visual storytelling more. The future: I'll be slowly chipping away at that previously mentioned animation, but this is the end of my "frequent" posts. I've become so much more busy that I realized I would when I was a kid just starting out making simple, cringy Minecraft animations after school. I'll still stop in but probably much less than I used to. "Steadfast" is what I named this month's wallpaper, and it's the feeling I have looking forward. The unbridled enthusiasm from years ago has gone, but left behind is the steady passion for this blocky medium. I'd like to give a warm thank you to everyone on these forums. From the old members who made my childhood, to the new members who upvote or comment on my posts, thank you. Happy New Year!

Here's an old tip (but still a useful tip) for fixing those shadows: Put all of your scene/objects in a folder and scale the folder by 5. This makes the lights smoother by giving them more area to cover. Mine-imator's shadow rendering isn't very accurate, especially at the edges of objects, so scaling them makes that edge relatively small compared to the object. You'll probably need to adjust your lights again after scaling, but the result is usually worth it to me. I love the render by the way! - Dr. Nexil

This month's render is using some characters that I made 3 years ago and decided needed an update. Say hello to Melon "Melony" Vine and Harvest "Harvey" Patch! And if you're curious to see the original (terrible) designs: Anyway, Happy Halloween!

Ten years ago today I bought a little sandbox game. I was 11 years old and had never really played video games but as a kid who was really into Lego this one spoke to me. I never realized how much of an impact this game would have one me. After all this time, I'm lucky to still have my very first world. What you see in this picture is my first house. After digging deep through my old laptop I even found my first skin. I've made some great friends through this game and subsequently through Mine-imator. Thanks for the memories everyone. - Dr. Nexil

Haha, loved it! Always a treat to find myself as a cameo. Nice animation, looking good!

Glad to see the shadow get recognition, I tried very hard to make sure it made the final cut. Thanks!

Things were renamed and reorganized in 2.0. For pre-4 it's still called "Blade angle". Anamorphic ratio works the same. If you aren't seeing changes with it then you don't have the DOF blur high enough.

Hilarious!! I loved it!

This is achievable with the Depth of Field (DOF) blur. Change the anamorphic ratio setting under DOF in your camera. You can change the angle of the blurred lines in the camera's aperture settings. Here's an example I made real quick:

Thank you! I'm going to say she's listening to Chirp (my favorite track) even though it doesn't sync perfectly.

Bonus looping animation (gif):

Happy Holidays!

Top right of the viewport. I find it much handier to have these here as I don't have to select what I want to move to activate snapping. In fact, it's got a keyboard shortcut (F) so I don't even need to click anywhere. Big improvement if you ask me.

The best part is that I can tell it's Hammond and Clarkson. Great video!

My little contribution for #DearNimi. I've been using MI for 6 and a half years now, unfortunately less often now than the first few years, but it's safe to say that my life would be pretty different without it. Thank you Nimi for all you've done with Mine-imator, and making this beloved software better and better every year. Also thank you for ModelBench, which made the model shown below possible!

Hey, this is pretty good man! The only tip I've got for you right now is that you can embed your picture by including the .png or .jpg at the end of your link, so instead of "https://imgur.com/hPaazaJ" it will be "https://i.imgur.com/hPaazaJ.png" and it should automatically embed to look like this: When you post your images to imgur, you can right click on them and select "Copy image address" and then paste that into your post. I look forward to seeing more of your creations. Good luck!