Planet Blender

Cycles Render Passes
DingTo - 2012-01-28 13:11:55

Hey everyone,
Brecht was very busy the last few weeks and he added a lot of great improvements.
Recently he added Render Passes, which can be used for all kind of compositing effects.

See the commit log for details: SVN 43693
Documentation: Wiki docs

They are working on CPU and nvidia GPUs with Computing Capability 2.0 or above (Fermi cards). It will work for OpenCL too, but OpenCL itself has still some issues on AMD cards.

Apart from the obvious passes, like Z-depth or Normal there are the so called Lighting Passes, which are quite interesting.
As you can see in the Documentation (link above), you can use the different ones to get the combined result.

I took my Monkey Test scene (.blend file) and it is interesting to see those separated passes for direct/indirect influence, colour and environment light.

Timelapse: Modeling a Human Head in Blender with BMesh
BlenderNation - 2012-01-28 12:46:58

Working also with NURBS and T-Splines concepts such as N-Gons is very familiar to me when it comes to locally subdivide the mes for detailing. Blendercookie made this timelapsed movie demonstrating the workflow BMesh will bring to you, which eliminates many old school mesh … Continue reading →

Blender Beginner Tips 1 – Cursor and Origin
Blender Journey - 2012-01-28 12:31:59

Blender Beginner Tips 1 – Cursor and Origin from david on Vimeo.   Just posted a new tutorial on the 3d cursor and origin.  Hopefully it will help people that are confused about how these work and how they impact their modeling.  This will be the first in a series of beginner tips.  Stay tuned [...]

Timelock !
Blender Minutes - 2012-01-28 11:21:04

Finally the long awaited major milestone is here ! All major visual development is done and I have edited the movie to a final cut. This is not yet a picture lock, but what I call a timelock. Now the … Continue reading →

Big Buck Bunny loves Creative Commons
BlenderNation - 2012-01-28 06:00:44

“This video was created in order to promote the use of Creative Commons on the volunteer computing based rendering service Renderfarm.fi (http://www.renderfarm.fi) and in any other relevant context” Julius Tuomisto writes: Renderfarm.fi and Studio Lumikuu are extremely happy to announce … Continue reading →

Character Modeling: Creating a Cartoon-Style Groundhog – Part 03
Blender Cookie - 2012-01-27 19:04:37

Hello and welcome to part 3 of the this character modeling tutorial series for Blender 2.6!

This character modeling tutorial series is on modeling a cartoon, ground hog character in Blender 2.6. In this tutorial David Ward takes you through the complete process of creating a cartoon character model, including all the steps, hotkeys, tools and more. A few topics and tools covered include: box modeling, mesh editing, proportional editing tool, mirror modifier, extrude, particle fur, and much more.

What is covered

In part 03 of this character modeling tutorial for Blender 2.61, tweak a few parts of the model and then procede to UV unwrap our character, create a particle system for the fur, comb the particles for the style we want, and then set up the lighting and rendering in order to render the particles nicely as fur.

Here is a preview of the final result from this section of our cartoon, groundhog character modeling tutorial series:

Up Next

The fourth part of this character modeling tutorial series will cover setting up a animation rig for the ground hog by using the Rigify add-on

CT Data Visualized in Blender
BlenderDiplom - Blender Tutorials and Training - 2012-01-27 18:12:48

Blender used to make cover art for Nature Chemistry
BlenderNation - 2012-01-27 17:00:44

Christopher Wilmer has created this image for the cover of Nature Chemistry, a leading scientific journal. Christopher Wilmer writes: Hello everybody, I am Ph.D. student in chemical engineering at Northwestern University in Illinois, Evanston. I’m very happy to report that … Continue reading →

Stop ACTA!
BlenderNation - 2012-01-27 13:00:43

After the US, European websites and citizens are now also in danger being limited in their freedom on the internet. From Avaaz.org: ACTA – a global treaty – could allow corporations to censor the Internet. Negotiated in secret by a … Continue reading →

Open Dental CAD
BlenderNation - 2012-01-27 09:11:32

Blender is more and more becoming a platform for 3rd party applications. Take a look for example at ‘Open Dental CAD’ – a tool for crown and onlay design. Open Dental CAD writes: The Dental Design Tools Add-On is a … Continue reading →