Weekly – March 30
Tears of Steel - 2012-04-01 12:56:54

After three weeks we already have a first version of animatic! Things went fast the first 3 weeks, with 5 weeks of time left still to tweak & refine (before filming starts). We also had the first designs in for the costumes! Casting info is still unknown, have to hunt the Casting Agent this monday. As weekly visitor we had composer Joram Letwory.

Behind the Scenes
Blender Minutes - 2012-04-01 09:25:00

This is one of the rare shots from our shooting during production

The render machine is running and purring and I already have 80% of the movie in 1080p rendered out. As of this writing the remaining render time will be ~48hrs.

During the course of this final rendering, all sorts of little nasty and quite unexpected problems surfaced, which forced me to tweak and investigate to force the render to be what I wanted it to be.

It seems that running with everything fully turned on, you start to experience all the bugs which you wont get in a decent and small production. One especially mysterious problem was e.g., that exactly one frame out of 250 came out totally black out of compositing. All the frames before and after where perfectly fine, just this single one had some special ‘features’. Tracking down the problem revealed at first, that a blur node with fast gaussian produced a black image. Even switching to Gaussian or Flat produced black blocky artefacts in the result.

In the end I found the problem to be one layer fed into a Hue/Saturation/Value node to cause this whole problem. When exchanging this node with an RGB node everything worked fine again.

My thought was that once the rendering was done I have a final movie in terms of visual appearance as the colour correction was already done in compositing. I did quite some reading and testing in the past couple of weeks and am now convinced, that a final colour correction pass is in order.

Initially I wanted to do this with blender, but at it stands now, only primary color correction is possible in an easy way. Any secondary colour correction needs a huge amount of tricking and fiddling around, and I quite frankly do not have the patience to do this at this stage. I want the job to be done.

I looked for alternatives and unfortunately Lightworks is not yet available for Linux. This will be a piece of software I will really like to try out.

I found no other real solutions in the Linux world. But there is a free ( but not open source) alternative for the Windows platform: DaVinci Resolve. The free version lets you do everything the full blown version does but is restricted to 1080p maximum Resolution, not a real problem for me here

I already played around and tested various aspects on actual footage from Ara’s Tale and must say that this is a joy to work with and it gives me yet another tool to enhance the visual storytelling.

My workflow now is to render out the movie to DPX image sequences and feed those into the DaVinci software. The output will be DPX again and those will be the final picture locked frames. From there I will use ffmpeg to encode to the various formats I have in mind for distribution.

The music and sound work is also going quite smoothly. Mikkel has started to deliver the first sounds and FX and the first integration tests are sounding really phenomenal! There is still a lot of work ahead, but it’s quite clear the the end result will be absolutely beautiful.

And as a last note, I plan to do more regular mini updates through my google+ account. For those who want to follow there here is my link.

Martin Lubich at google+

Renderfarm.fi goes Amiga!
Renderfarm.fi - 2012-04-01 08:15:16

 

Add-on: Render Music
BlenderNation - 2012-04-01 06:00:07

Liven up the wait during rendering with this add-on by Jason van Gumster! Jason van Gumster writes: While rendering, “elevator” music automatically plays. When the render job is complete, a bell rings. You can optionally enable and disable the music and … Continue reading →

Learning Mesh Topology Collection
Blender Cookie - 2012-03-31 23:55:11

Hello and welcome to this collection of topology videos on understanding mesh topology for modeling!

Mesh topology is arguably the single most important aspect to a high-quality model in many different areas. No matter whether you’re preparing a model for animation, modeling clean hard surfaces, making an organic model with smooth curves, or simply modeling something that is easy for other artists to work with, topology is key to each of these.

What is topology?

Topology refers to the structure of your mesh and the way the mesh flows around the surface and details of your model. Due to the complex nature of topology, truly understanding it and grasping how to create clean, effective topology for your models, of all subjects, can not only be daunting but also very challenging. Historically there have been only a few tutorials scattered across the web that really delve into understanding topology. We wish to change that.

Starting a while ago, Jonathan Williamson began producing Topology Overview videos here on Blender Cookie that attempted to demystify topology for everyone. Each of the videos have been very well received and so we have gathered each of those videos, along with our other various topology videos here on a single page; giving you a one-stop place to learn topology.

Jonathan is a self-professed topology snob and has made topology a strong focus for everything he does. He has given many lectures on topology and constantly works to help make topology easier to understand and learn.

Additional Reading

For further topology resources be sure to check out the Polycount Wiki: http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryTopology

A Tale of Teslas
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-31 17:36:47

Yesterday the courier arrived and we received the two – sponsored by Nvidia – Tesla computing units we’ve been waiting for days! It’s been a nice afternoon at the institute, with Sergey configuring the correct drivers in order to unleash the power of two cards and Ian making fruit smoothies to relieve the tension. More interesting information comes after the documentary “A Tale of Teslas”.

If you skipped the video, here the render time for the BMW benchmark file:

• 1 Tesla: 1 min 4 secs
• 2 Tesla: 34 secs

Although this result is not really comparable to the one obtainable with a GTX 580 (23 secs),  there is a main difference: Tesla cards have 6GB of memory, each. This means that in the dual configuration we could render a test scene (the bridge scene) with several GB worth of textures and data (otherwise impossible on a GTX).
The time for rendering such scene was:

• Dual Tesla config: 5 mins
• Dual Xeon rendernode: 15 mins

We are going to get Brecht over here very soon to see if he can improve the performances of Cycles on this cards. Will we eventually be able to replace the whole renderfarm with a GPU-based solution? We don’t know yet!

Currently we’ve put the cards next to more humble GTX 260′s in two workstations, this will help designing a lot. Special thanks to Nvidia for giving us these cards to test!

Astra Itinera
Nyquist Art + Logic - 2012-03-31 13:22:00

My first iPad game, Astra Itinera, is now available on iTunes! Astra Itinera is a turn-based strategy game. Check out the Facebook page.

Shoulder poses
Makehuman - 2012-03-31 10:43:47

Demo Reel: Liersch Architects
BlenderNation - 2012-03-31 06:00:12

By Architekturbüro Liersch Architekt Recklinghausen. All rendering in Cycles and Octane.

what I’ve been doing
Pablo Lizardo - Blender freelance - 2012-03-31 05:24:54

First post in years , i want to share a few images of what I have been doing this months at Encuadre, Prodarte and Soki Studio.

Starliner Spaceship
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2012-03-30 23:22:51

I was looking through my hard disc for inspiration and came across an image I created a long time ago. It’s a scan of a sketch that I coloured after scanning.

One of the things I like about this illustration is the giant transparent bubbles on its flanks. Some parkland can be seen below the protection of the nearest bubble and even the suggestion of a swimming pool.

I’ll have to come up with the statistics so that it can be used in Extreme Future – the sci-fi role-playing game as soon as possible.

I’ll probably scale it up in GIMP and work into the illustration a little to make it look like the other spaceship illustrations used in the game. At the moment it has more of the style of the sort of spaceship you might see in a Japanese animation. That’s no bad thing of course, but it’s not the look I want for the Extreme Future role-playing game.

Car paint shader with flakes for Cycles
BlenderNation - 2012-03-30 14:00:27

Monsterdog at Blenderartists.org came up with some good ideas about how to start a good car paint shaders with built-in metallic flakes. You can follow the discussion about this material in the...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Open Street Maps import
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-30 12:47:53

Campbell Barton ported the OpenStreetMap import script to 2.6 for us !

And it’s now in trunk.

The script loads XML files saved from the OpenStreetMap website (http://www.openstreetmap.org) into Blender (as edges).

This was quite helpful in blocking out the Oude Kerk area for mango (to correctly place the church and the buildings around)

Now, we’re integrating these maps with more detailed infos (necessary for the final models but also for animatic / previz purpose)

The the finer measurements will come from survey or more accurate plans  : city planning maps can be very useful in these situations (especially roads height measures)

We haven’t got those yet but we might be able to get all needed data from tracking (Sebastian is testing that on the ground surfaces  just now)

A User Meeting Near You, Revisited
BlenderNation - 2012-03-30 12:00:10

Last november I asked if you would like to meet other Blender users in your area. The number of replies was amazing – MANY people wanted to connect locally with other Blenderheads. Now it’s time to actually do something about … Continue reading →

The Pet Dragon Fantasy Novel Arrives on Amazon
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2012-03-30 11:02:06

The Pet Dragon, the fantasy novel I’ve just written, has turned up on Amazon, and looks nice there on the old familiar Amazon product page. I’m very happy with the green cover, which gives a good feeling of the elves and forests of the novel’s setting.

It’s great to see it there and after exploring a little further, I found there’s a way to enable the ‘look inside’ feature. I simply fill in a few details and send a request email, and, according to the information on the Amazon site, the feature will soon be enabled. I’m a big fan of the ‘look inside’ feature and I’ve already sent the email, and of course I already have a PDF I can upload, so the feature should be available for The Pet Dragon very soon.

The book is an old-school fantasy novel containing the first installment of the story of a young elven maiden who goes from obscurity in the forest to playing a huge role in the destiny of the fantasy world in which she lives. The first stage of her story is her meeting with a freshly hatched dragon, and the friendship they form that will go on to have such a huge influence on the direction of her life, and the lives of those around her.

SketchFab
BlenderNation - 2012-03-30 10:00:17

SketchFab is a new online 3D showcase service, that allows you to embed 3D models on your webpage using WebGL. They allow direct upload of Blender files. SketchFab writes: SketchFab is a free service offering a simple way to upload … Continue reading →

Model: Low Poly Health Crate
BlenderNation - 2012-03-30 06:00:24

By Metalix. Metalix writes: I decided to release this little goody. For one of our school projects at natcoll we were asked to build a game crate. So I came up with this. It was actually so vivid in my … Continue reading →

Huniad Castle Maquette
BlenderNation - 2012-03-29 22:00:14

Romanian artist Imre Horvath created this paper Maquette based on a 3D design in Blender. Imre writes: I made this maquette of the Huniad Castle (Hunedoara, Romania) to order. First I created the 3D design in Blender, based on photos and … Continue reading →

Posting a few test videos
Reign of Fury - Blender Short Film Production Blog - 2012-03-29 20:28:10

I decided to post a few production tests to the blog just for fun. Here is an animated version of a first idea for the title treatment. It originally had flames behind the logo at the end, but it was too much, so here’s the version without the fire at the end. (Watch in HD if you can!)

I’ve also been working on a workflow for animating a ship on the ocean mesh. Here’s one of those tests.

I’ve also been testing out using the new Dynamic Paint tool as an animated mask for revealing something written with pen and ink. It’s not perfect but it’s not bad. The resolution of the mask is not high enough so the edges are a little rough. Good proof of concept though!

Blender SVN Development Updates
BlenderNation - 2012-03-29 18:00:48

Terry Wallwork likes to keep a close eye on the changes in Blender code by reading the SVN commits (see his Google+ page). Because of their sheer volume and often cryptical descriptions, it’s difficult for most of us to make … Continue reading →

Tracking de Oude Kerk
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-29 17:11:32

After finishing the Track, Match, Blend DVD this week I could finally start doing something more useful for the production.

In order to help with the reconstruction of the set at the Oude Kerk I have started tracking various shots that I took there, getting a more or less good geometry reconsctruction out of that. But there is always a slight error margin in these tracks, so the resulting geometry is never 100% perfect. Still, it is very useful to get a sense of scale and proportion with some actual footage. The nice thing about Blender’s tracking system is the flexibility to link in several shots at once and align the cameras manually, to get multiple views aligned, and thereby getting a pretty big point-cloud reconstruction of the scene.

This point cloud can then be used to create simple geometry from it that can then be used for scene reconstruction etc.

The next development target is a more advanced way of aligning several shots to eachother as well as to some already existing geometry. First this will not influence the actual solution, but once we get Keir’s new solver it will probably even be possible to set some known constraints to help the solver. But being able to constrain the camera orientation to certain points will be the first step into that direction.
Sergey is already on it! And knowing Sergey, it can’t be long until this becomes possible. :)

Engagement Ring
BlenderNation - 2012-03-29 16:00:50

By Thio. Thio writes: Hi, this is One of my favorite pieces that I made is simple but I work on it for 12 hours I model it and shade it, complete it in blender it has around 256 passes … Continue reading →

Production update: Composer Joram Letwory
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-29 15:31:35

March is nearly over, the filming dates (around May 10) are getting closer every day! So much todo :)

Here’s some news tidbits from the production department:

• Composer & sound designer: Joram Letwory
  I’m already following Joram’s work a couple of years – yes he’s the brother of Blender developer Nathan “Jesterking” Letwory – and I’ve always been impressed with this work. More over, he’s not only a great composer and sound designer but even doing film and hiphop & dance clips! I’m very happy he accepted to help us with music and sound! It’ll be a tough job to work in the shadow of the great Jan Morgenstern, but it’s time to give a new talent a chance to get a public portfolio with a film soundtrack!
• Ian and me had a meeting with production designer Romke Faber to go over a lot of practical filming details. He already did film design for several blockbusters here in the Netherlands. Needless to say – good quality films have production designers involved from the very beginning! For Mango, we have a lot of great artists on board already though, under Ian Hubert’s creative direction. For the filming itself however we can really use Romke’s help here. We’ll only have a week to film and we better make our sets & props work out perfect!
• Rob Tuytel arranged us a surprise visitor next week: monday the famous director Dick Maas will be coming over for a studio visit! Dick is the renowned (and and first!) action & horror director we have in the Netherlands. His films usually give a nice level of controversy – with as many haters as lovers. His somewhat cheesy Dutch style is definitely well aligned with Ian’s American cheddar approach! It’ll be a fun visit ;)
• Joris Kerbosch (DP) has already found us his crucial buddies for on the set; a Key Grip, a Focus Puller and a Gaffer! I need to settle deals with them first, then we’ll talk more about it.
• Sebastian – finally done with dvd duties – now is refining our breakdown spreadsheet into fine detail for sets, props, etc. He’ll be doing preparations & tests for us as some kinda mix of assistant director & production designer. That’s what vfx supervisors do!

(Image: Joram)

-Ton-

Blender Workshop at FMX, Stuttgart, May 10
BlenderNation - 2012-03-29 14:00:11

Thomas Dinges and Andy Goralczyk are hosting a Blender workshop at the German FMX conference on May 10th. Thomas writes: It’s FMX time again! Andy Goralczyk and myself will present Blender at FMX...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Model: Seats
BlenderNation - 2012-03-29 10:00:35

By Zero4mike. Zero4mike writes: Seat! Simply a collection of seats that I made from my abandoned short-film project, Seat!. Not long ago I decided to dust-off my models and share them with the...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Call for review: Blender Demoloop
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-29 09:55:59

Hi everyone!

Although this is not strictly Mango-related news, I would like to share it with as many blender users as possible. A few days ago Ton asked me to collect some nice blendfiles to use as Blender feature showcase for one of our sponsors: HP computers. This is called the Blender Demoloop and will be displayed on booths,  computers in stores, and so on. It will eventually fit on a USB stick as a portable demo. It will also be available for download under CC-BY license. I’m asking for support to the community for two reasons:

• testing the demoloop and providing feedback
• provide more/better contents for it

How to test the loop

You can download this archive (~300MB) and try opening either _start_demo_CPU.blend (cycles render will be done with CPU) or _start_demo_GPU.blend (cycles will use GPU). WARNING: you need a very recent (trunk) version of blender, which you can download here. Please be patient for a few seconds after you open the file, since the loop could take some time to start. If you encounter any issues please make sure to mention your blender build, OS and basic hardware config (RAM, GPU, ecc).

How to provide contents

Just leave comment here with a link to the content you would like to point out. We can accept only CC-BY, CC-0 contents. Your work will be properly credited of course.

Please help spread this message so that we can create an awesome showcase and prove Blender’s industry-level capabilities.

Hades Turntable
BlenderNation - 2012-03-29 07:42:23

By Jeepster3D. Jeepster3D writes: Modeled, sculpted, textured, and rendered in blender 2.62 with Cycles. It ended up being 2.4 million polys.

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Blender Documenter Meeting
BlenderNation - 2012-03-29 06:00:53

Join the Blender Wiki Documenter Meeting next Sunday! Ivan Paulos Tomé writes: In the next Sunday, at 9:00 (- 3 GMT, Brasilia) , we will be doing a Documenter Meeting for Blender Wiki. By consequence, we will have the first … Continue reading →

Introduction to Shape Keys in Blender 2.6
Blender Cookie - 2012-03-29 03:48:55

Hello and welcome to this quick video tutorial tip for using shape keys in Blender 2.6!

Through this video Jonathan Williamson will give you a quick introduction to shape keys in Blender 2.6 and how to use them.

Shape keys are also known as morph targets and can be used for anything from mesh animation to facial expressions to fixing bad deformations from rigs.

Jungle Space Pirate
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2012-03-29 00:36:54

I’m working on Illustrations for a new supplement for the Extreme Future sci-fi role-playing game, which I’m thinking of calling Deep Space Encounters. The picture is a space pirate in a jungle on some lonely alien planet in the outer reaches of the galaxy.

I’m thinking that there’s no reason pirates shouldn’t bury their treasure in the extreme future, just as they did in the past. I’m writing that up as an encounter for the game as we speak. Perhaps the players will find a pirate spaceship orbiting an out of the way planet, with the spaceship strangely deserted. The encounter would then revolve around the pirates on the surface of the planet fighting it out over treasure buried in a terrible alien swamp.

The illustration will go with encounter description. The pirate in the illustration might even be the leader of the band of interstellar cutthroats.

The whole book will basically be a bunch of wandering monster tables, but for deep space and with fleshed-out encounters rather than just a bunch of monsters for the players to deal with. Putting the book together is proving a lot of fun and, with a bit of luck, it’ll be finished soon. I’ll upload it to the RPG Drivethru site as soon as it’s ready, so it can be downloaded straight away., along with all the other Extreme Future stuff.

Windows nightly build - again
Makehuman - 2012-03-28 21:37:12

Predator Test
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-03-28 19:52:16

VFX shot for a short. Made with Blender (cycles and blender internal), compositing and color correction in After Effects.

Cast: Matthew Francis Pye

Tags: Blender, cycles, predator, uav and after effects

Blender Demolition
BlenderNation - 2012-03-28 14:00:39

By KaiKostack (see also his other videos on his YouTube Channel).

Got bones?
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-28 13:40:09

So the rigging of the Robot is going well.

595 bones and counting! Any bets on how many it’ll have by the end of it all?

——-

edit 7pm same day: now at 637

A Hedgehog...
Aligorith's Lair - 2012-03-28 13:11:00

At this time of the year, the hedgehogs usually migrate through our property, moving between some unknown overwintering destination and (presumably) Deans Bush. Tonight, I managed to catch one of 'em in action.


Read more »

Developer Meeting Notes, March 25, 2012
BlenderNation - 2012-03-28 10:00:49

The Google Summer of Code is ready for applications! Ton Roosendaal writes: Here’s the notes from today’s meeting. 1) Blender 2.63 progress Reminder: release schedule & targets. Campbell reports on BMesh. Better Python docs. Added documentation on updating Python scripts to … Continue reading →

Model: Supermarket
BlenderNation - 2012-03-28 08:52:14

By Reaper798. Reaper798 writes: A simple super market, mostly using arrays. No materials except for the lights and such. Link Supermarket (Blend Swap)

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

BGE Candy Branch: realtime SSS and area lights
BlenderNation - 2012-03-28 07:49:01

The Blender Candy branch includes few new very interesting features for the BGE such as realtime SSS and Area lights which can be previewed in textured mode right inside Blender through using the logit brick light highlighting tool. Planned and … Continue reading →

Blender Cycles – Rebirth of a 7 years old computer
Oenvoyage's Blender Blog - 2012-03-27 22:11:49

Another great thing with cycles is that you can make a good render machine out of an old computer: just buy a new graphic card ! No need to upgrade CPU, motherboard, or even RAM, just plug a recent graphic card and voilà. A long time ago (2005) I bought a Dell PC for rendering, [...]

Blender at FMX 2012
Thomas Dinges - 2012-03-27 17:28:39

It’s FMX time again!

Andy Goralczyk and myself will present Blender at FMX 2012, the “17th Conference on Animation, Effects, Games and Transmedia” in May this year in Stuttgart (Germany).

Check out the Blender Workshop on Thursday, 10th May: Blender Inside Out

I feel very honoured for having the chance to be there again, it’s a great place and many extraordinary people from the cg/film industry are there!

Get your FMX ticket now, and see you in may!

Thomas

Bullet Integration - Small Goodies + Fixes
Aligorith's Lair - 2012-03-27 15:05:00

Just a quick update on this. As I finally managed to have some spare time today, I spent some time doing some "fun" hacking for a change (from writing reports and reading papers)...

Auto-Mass - Select a material preset to calculate mass

I've just pushed two changes to the Git branch:
1) An "auto-mass" feature, which calculates the mass of objects based on their volume sizes (mesh-objects just use the bounding box for now, which may overestimate in cases) and a "material" preset (which provides density information about the type of material that your rigidbodies are made from). Activate this tool from the "Change Mass..." tool in the toolbar, from the RigidBody panel. No more guessing mass values for hundreds of fragments by hand anymore!

2) An experimental patch from Sergej Reich which makes the collisions work properly out of the box (i.e. fixing the various problems with mesh-mesh collisions many were having).

Read more »

Creating a Point-and-Click Adventure with Blender and Unity
BlenderNation - 2012-03-27 14:00:34

Follow the development of this Blender/Unity powered adventure game. Manuel writes: We are “Serious Monk”, an independant game-studio working on our first Prototype, a Point-and-Click Adventure called ‘No Place For Traitors’. We use Blender as the 3D software for modelling … Continue reading →

Asta-La-Vista FeLaaSs
BlenderNation - 2012-03-27 10:00:27

By Draguu. draguu writes: Here is my art for blenderguru’s saying goodbye competition, hope you like it Here is the highres image.

Hall and Staircase Scene Lighting and Compositing Tutorial (French)
BlenderNation - 2012-03-27 06:00:24

A French 40 minute tutorial on lighting and compositing this scene. Benjamin Vurlod writes: This Tutorial will show you the process of Lighting and Compositing a Hall and Staircase Interior Scene in Blender. Topics covered in the Tutorial include: Set … Continue reading →

arcs
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-03-27 04:20:45

This is another cycles tests I made

local-guru.net/blog/2012/3/27/shiny-arcs

Cast: Nikolaus Gradwohl

Tags: blender, cycles and 3d

Spiralling Cat Illustration in blue
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2012-03-26 22:29:52

This blue cat is a nice looking image and I’ve uploaded it – as I have a load of other stuff – to Society6, for sale.

The blue cat in this illustration is intended to look complex and sophisticated, and although it is speaking in the image, the only words that are coming are spirals.

The cat is a relaxed and urbane creature that obviously lives in the city, and a cosmopolitan city at that.

It even looks a little mysterious and evil. I designed it together with my girlfriend.

Model: Staurotypus Salvini
BlenderNation - 2012-03-26 22:00:35

An animated low-poly turtle model by GenX. GenX writes: Turtle: Staurotypus salvini Model: low poly Rig: simple, IK Material: UV, Procedural Animation: walk, swim Link Staurotypus salvini (Blend Swap)

Google Summer of Code 2012
Blender3d.org: Latest News - 2012-03-26 18:41:00

Students can again apply for a summer coding job on Blender! Ever wanted to work in CG, animation,...

Wireless game control using iPad
BlenderNation - 2012-03-26 18:00:42

Luca Bonavita writes: Some time ago we’ve been asked to build a system to let people in a trade fair to interact with the 3D model (displayed on a screen) of a product with more than 700 possible configurations, using … Continue reading →

Blender internal fake AO
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-03-26 16:30:39

Test of fake AO and handheld camera effect

Cast: Ireneusz Balazy

Tags: Fake AO, hand camera and blender AO

Really Far Behind the Scenes
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-26 14:35:59

Can I in good conscience suggest you watch this video? No. And yet- it is here.

13 minutes of almost completely unedited Mango action; mostly filmed during times that have almost nothing to do with mango, and featuring an absurdly disproportionate amount of Ian’s face.

May I present:

Really Far Behind the Scenes

Jonathan Williamson’s – Architectural Visualization In Blender 2.6
BlenderNation - 2012-03-26 14:00:22

Terry Wallwork reviews Jonathan Williamson’s latest training video. Terry Wallwork writes: Jonathan Williamson – Architectural Visualization In Blender 2.6 – Training Video Recently...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Robot update
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-26 11:33:27

Here’s a update on the robot for your viewing pleasure. It’s starting to take shape.

Google Summer of Code 2012 -- Projects Wishlist
Aligorith's Lair - 2012-03-26 10:06:00

Over the past few weeks there has been quite a lot of discussion about projects which would be cool to have for this year's Google Summer of Code. With applications opening again this week, I'll take some time to quickly go over a few of the project ideas that have been coming up.

Read more »

Sonic
BlenderNation - 2012-03-26 10:00:57

By Julio Cezar Pires. Julio writes (translated by Google): It is an honor to model a character I loved so much in the infancy until today it amazes me why they had no better choice to model the Sonic, I … Continue reading →

Autumn Harvest
Aligorith's Lair - 2012-03-26 06:06:00

With winter slowly creeping upon us (the last few nights have been starting to drop down to single figures, and next weekend daylight saving ends), it was time to finally harvest all the fruit and veges that had been growing around the house over summer.


Read more »

Breakfast Hall tutorials
BlenderNation - 2012-03-26 06:02:00

Greg Zaal describes the creation of this image in a six-part videotutorial. Greg Zaal writes: 274 days later and this series is finally done. The tutorial is split up into six parts: In part one we model the basics of … Continue reading →

blender particle experiments - letters
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-03-26 04:45:16

for this part of my blender particle experiments I use a particle group containing the letters from A to Z

local-guru.net/blog/2012/3/26/blender-particle-experiments---letters

Cast: Nikolaus Gradwohl

Tags: blender, particles and 3d

Update libraries script
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-25 18:11:23

Hey there!

Just wanted to share one script which might be useful for almost everyone (and after some further improvements for everyone :)

This script checks which files in svn repository were moved/renamed using `svn mv` command and updates paths used by data blocks in all blend files from this repository preventing “dead links” and manual work to repair all this stuff.

How to use it: simply rename/move needed files using `svn mv` command and before commit run the script.

Notes:

• Script was written to work with out directory structure (basically it assumes svn checkout is done to /mango folder), so before running it you’ll need to make some tweaks to paths.
• Script is working directly with .blend files and in theory it might corrupt something. So do not use it on uncommited to the svn files.
• Currently script changes paths only critical for us at this moment, probably some extra paths should also be fixed (like paths to external multires data, text data blocks and so on). Easy to add but i’m a bit too lazy for this :)

This script is using small python library which read/writes .blend files which was written by Jeroen Bakker for blender aid project.

So, here’s the script: updateLibraries

Have a nice day!

-sergey-

Weekly report
Morevna Project - 2012-03-25 17:23:40

Here’s one more week passed by. For some reasons this was a kind of hard week.

From one side the non-stop-drawing mode starting to tell – as result of psychological exhausting the process turns into routine and drawings get looking dull and unfacy loosing their creative tune. At the beginning of passed week we have spend a lot of efforts to overcome this aspect, to “refresh” our vision and our minds. Much help in that we got from watching the Gainax artbooks, especially the “Groundworks of Evangelion” – which is like our “Bible”. Watching those works we always get a high impact to recreate our inspiration and get drawings done with a “right” feeling.

On the other side, the time limits don’t allows us spend too much time on “refreshing” and polishing each drawing. Of course there’s always a chance to extend the deadline and put more efforts into drawing, polishing… But there is a danger that during the longer period of drawing artist will grow his skills to the level when his “last” drawings will significantly surpass his”first” drawings. And in this case he will need to get back to his “first” drawing and do rework again and the process end up in nowhere. That’s why I don’t want to dedicate more than 2 months for keyframes drawing. There’s also another reason – we need to learn to draw fast. From my experience the amount of time spent on picture and the quality of picture isn’t strongly correlated. The mos exciting images come out quick like a sparkles, but sometimes we can spend many hours on an image and get an awful result. So if we want to survive we need to draw fast and working on our current deadlines is an only way to learn that.

As I’ve said this was a hard week. We’ve hit some action scenes which are consumed much of our efforts and we often leave unsatisfied with the result we got. But I know that we just need go through and overcome this period, I know that will lead us to the next level, to the second breath. Maybe it’s just around the corner. Just keep working hard. So, enough of rants, back to work!

P.S. Don’t forget to watch the latest drawings page. ^__^

Studio Hardware
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-25 13:02:00

Hello everyone,

Apparently you can’t do a computer graphics without using computers. But which exactly computers and how much of them we’re using?

Couple of different hardware configurations are used in the studio by artists and by renderfarm and this short post is devoted to describe which exactly hardware configurations we’re using for Mango project. As an addition there’re benchmark result of CPU and GPU rendering on that systems provided at the end of this post.

Studio Server

Studio server is a fancy dual-Xeon system with 12 Gb of RAM. Both processors are quad-core with hyper-threading support running on 2.27Ghz. Own hard disk space is only 146Gb SCSI disk (which means it’s superfast), but there’s external hardware disk array attached to this server. In fact, there’re are two raid arrays there: one of them is only 1Tb which is used for day-to-day shared folder and production svn, and another one is 5Tb array used for rendered data. I’m not sure about raid levels used, but think it’s raid-1 (mirror) used to smaller array and raid-5 used for bigger array.

It’s a headless server so there’s no fancy video card in this computer.

Render Nodes

Currently we don’t have justacluster running (probably it’ll be configured this week), so there’s only 4 Dell nodes which are used by render farm. Each Dell node is a dual-Xeon station and it’s also quad-core processors with hyper-threading support and they’re also running on 2.27Ghz. They’ve got 24Gb of RAM and 160Gb space on a SCSI disk.

This is also headless systems.

 Systems used by artists

• Kjartan is using new system delivered to us from HP which is a single-Xeon station, quad-core without hyper-threading running on 3.5Ghz. It’ve got 8Gb RAM and 1Tb haddrive space. This machine has got Quadro 2000 video card.
• Francesco is also using HP station with the same processor, memory and hard drive, but video card was replaced with 8800 GTS.
• Nicolo is using station based on Core i7 920 processor which is quad core with hyper-threading support running on 2.67Ghz. This computer has got 12Gb RAM and 500Gb hard drive. This computer has got two videocards one of them is 8400GS and another oen is Quadro 2000 taken from Francesco’s computer.
• Ian and Sebastian are using identical systems with dual-Xeon configuration. This processors are quad-core with hyper-threading support and they’re running at 2.66Ghz. There’s 24Gb of RAM and approximately 380Gb hard drive. Video card is GTX260.
• Jeremy is using quite the same computer as Nicolo with core i7 processor but here there’s another video card installed — it is GT220.

Network

We’ve got two separated networks here. One of them is used by computers in the studio and another one is used by render farm. In both cases it is gigabit network and separation is needed to reduce network latency caused by network activity of render farm and artists. To be more fancy studio computers are attached to gigabit switch which is connected to server with 10GBit connection.

Benchmarks

Benchmark was done using BMW model from Mike Pan which you can find in this blenderartist thread. There were 4 setups: FullHD (1920×1080), HalfHD (960×540) with CPU and GPU rendering. There’s a time taken for rendering by different systems (time in brackets is time of HalfHD rendering).

• Dell nodes: 13:54.73 (3:36.34)
• Server: 12:16.38 (3:08.18)
• Single Xeon stations used by Kjartan and Francesco: 15:19.74 (3:49.34)
• Core i7 stattions: 18:12.02 (4:51.83)
• Dual Xeon stattions used by Sebastian and Ian: 10:30.83 (2:47.79)
• GT220: 20:52.60 (5:39.25)
• GTX260: 9:53.98 (2.43.56)
• Quadro 2000: 11:10.93 (2:55.09)

-sergey-

Model: Gauge Maker
BlenderNation - 2012-03-25 06:00:55

By Kunho362. Kuhmo362 writes: A collection of several modeled cockpit gauges. I made these for my Viper MK II project (also on Blend Swap), but I thought this file might be useful to someone. There are ten gauges already built, … Continue reading →

Moon Bug lost in the swamp
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2012-03-24 22:31:25

Caz, the queen of the moon bugs, has gotten lost and ended up in a swamp. You might be asking yourself why Caz got lost. It’s because of Illustration Friday. This week’s word on Illustration Friday is swamp – and so I did a quick illustration with a swamp in it.

The Moon Bugs have a much more light hearted look than the usual gritty sci-fi art I do for my role-playing games, and the illustrations can be done a lot quicker, which is exactly what you need when you are creating an illustration for Illustration Friday with only a few hours to put something together.

I did start doing a painting with gimp too, showing a space pirate lost in a swamp on a far off planet, but I soon realized that would take a lot longer than the time available to complete. The space pirate illustration will no doubt make an appearance in a supplement for extreme future, the sci-fi role-playing game.

The Moon Bugs were initially done as characters for a comic strip, but I’m thinking of working on them a bit more to turn them into a children’s book.

Twitter: 2012-03-25
Matt Ebb - 2012-03-24 16:31:00

• Now for a few weeks of time off… #
• Sadly, my last day working on Prometheus at Fuel VFX. What I've seen so far has been amazing, really looking forward to the finished film. #
• Mesmerising video from the space shuttle solid rocket booster: http://t.co/PX5DYvEV #

Creating An Animated Fish Swarm Using Particles
BlenderNation - 2012-03-24 12:32:33

In this 43 minute long tutorial Frederik Steinmetz teaches you how to create a fish swarm animation using the particle system and the force modifiers in Blender. Modeling, texturing, rigging and animation is also covered. In the upcoming part two Frederik … Continue reading →

Blender turntable sculpt Wolverine WIP - 2nd update
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-03-24 12:02:10

Sculpture 3D entièrement faites avec Blender 2.61, travail en cours...
Réalisé pour mettre en évidence les prochaines corrections....
mise à jour 2...

3D sculpt entirely made with Blender 2.61, work in progress...
Done to highlight the next corrections….
Update 2...

Cast: Fabien APFFEL

Tags: 3d, wip, sculpt, blender, turntable, wolverine and cycles

Weekly – March 23
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-24 11:50:33

This is only the 2nd weekly presentation of the team, and we’re already getting glimpses of how the film will look like! Ian and Jeremy have been doing crazy stuff on animatics already! The whole team’s been working great last week; concepts, training dvd work, animation tests, modeling, and even work on an auto-run Blender demoloop for HP (Francesco will post this soon).

As usual I’ll just grab from the weekly presentation folder. The artists themselves will update with more elabortated posts here.

blender particle experiments - 1000000 cubes
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-03-24 07:55:58

for this blender particle experiment I made a particle system containing 1000000 cubes

local-guru.net/blog/2012/3/24/blender-particle-experiments---1.000.000-cubes

Cast: Nikolaus Gradwohl

Tags: blender and particles

Caldera in Festivals
Tube - Epic Production Notes - 2012-03-24 03:02:56

We are thrilled to report that our podmates Evan Viera and Chris Bishop have premiered their new short, Caldera at SXSW. Chris Bishop is of course also wielding his supreme anim supervisory-fu on Tube. Congratulations to the whole Caldera team, and the excellent Bit Films mentoring and independent production program at Hampshire College that helped the movie happen. Look for it at festivals and thereafter in full release on the web!

comments fixed!
Tube - Epic Production Notes - 2012-03-24 02:52:02

Turns out commenting has been broken for quite a while, with mainly only spammers being able to post
I’ve ‘fixed’ this with a really, really ugly hack, but at least you should be able to comment now. Phew!

EDIT: It appears they are not fully working, only for logged in users, we’ll investigate.

EDIT EDIT: Really, truly, comments should be running fine now. But please let us know if you experience problems.

Friday Hangout: What’s Your Favorite Part of Blender?
BlenderNation - 2012-03-23 20:24:34

So, which part of Blender do you spend most of your time in, and why? Do you love modeling or lighting, does your job require you to rig characters, or are you trying to build skills in realistic rendering or … Continue reading →

Planet Express Ship (WIP)
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-03-23 17:04:50

A little fanboy doodling to pass my Spring Break with... Of course, FUTURAMA is property of Fox and no copyright infringement should be inferred.

[Rendered & edited in Blender 2.49b; titles produced in Gimp 2.6.11; sound engineered in Audacity 1.2.5]

Cast: dark foundation

Tags: blender, futurama and planet express

Fund Raising and Roadmap of Image Layers for Blender
BlenderNation - 2012-03-23 14:00:24

Fabio Russo is raising funds for the development of the Blender Image Layers. Fabio Russo (ruesp83) writes: Regarding my last work on the layer manager, I have drawn up a roadmap and started raising funds for the development of the Image … Continue reading →

19 Billion Triangles Render
BlenderNation - 2012-03-23 12:47:43

Using instancing, Agus3D created this image containing 19 billion (19 000 000 000) triangles. The kicker? The scene used only 200MB of memory and required 40 minutes to render in Cycles. The .blend...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Interview: Brecht van Lommel on Cycles development
BlenderNation - 2012-03-23 10:00:04

BlenderDiplom interviews Brecht van Lommel, the lead-developer of Cycles, on his decision to develop Cycles, the future of development and various design decisions. Gottfried Hofmann writes: BD: You’re Brecht Van Lommel, the main coder of Cycles, the new Render Engine … Continue reading →

Here in the hole
BlenderNation - 2012-03-23 08:19:17

By Basse. Basse writes: for a longtime now.. i’ve been using blender just for workstuff, nothing really exciting.. banners and logos and such.. so it’s time to catch up with blender.. and try to learn the new things. here’s something. … Continue reading →

The HammerHead ESP-244
BlenderNation - 2012-03-23 06:00:37

By Sam Speed. Sam writes: The HammerHead ESP-244 is a cyberpunk style electric sports car modelled and animated in Blender and rendered with Octane Render. It exists in a time in the near future when we’ve completely depleted all of … Continue reading →

Fixed my floor
ThruDreamsgate's Blog - 2012-03-23 05:29:38

Okay, yesterday I managed to totally mess up the floor in the loft. It had disappeared, okay most likely I deleted it and didn’t notice. When I went to refill it, I managed to cover up the stair well . The fix, all said and done was way too easy. I deleted the floor (this [...]

Process to Go: Pandeia – Episode 03
processdiary.com - 2012-03-23 00:16:42

Apologies for the lateness of this episode. Work has come back, and it was a good job too. Definitely showreel material.

In this episode, I talk a bit about the process wrapping up on issue two, some thoughts about market, social media and audiences, and some chat about the up-coming Supanova expo.

I also touch a bit on a requested topic: how I script. Well, the answer is: my process is messy. Here’s a quick picture to show you just how messy.

all comments welcome! Am keen to hear your thoughts.

Download audio file (TPD_P2G_PanE03.mp3)

MinnBUG Meetup, Minnesota, April 1st
BlenderNation - 2012-03-22 22:00:27

Minnesota Blenderheads are meeting up on April 1st. John Fino writes: The next monthly MinnBUG meeting is scheduled for April 1st, 1-4pm in Keller Hall, at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota. We’re going to start out discussing animation and … Continue reading →

Jonathan Williamson's - Architectural Visualization In Blender 2.6 - Training Video
Adventures In Blender Diary Entries - 2012-03-22 20:02:00

Review of Jonathan Williamson's - Architectural Visualization In Blender 2.6 - Training Video

Results from the “Saying Goodbye” Blender Competition
BlenderNation - 2012-03-22 19:00:58

Blender Guru shares the results, the runners up and the winner of the “Saying Goodbye” competition. Andrew Price writes: 6 weeks ago I announced the new Blender competition: “Saying Goodbye”. Artists were given complete creative control to create whatever work … Continue reading →

Production update & HP sponsor!
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-22 18:29:02

Everyone’s busy, no blog posts is always good news (unfortunately for you guys out there!). The team spirit is awesome amazing, very inspiring, it tops any project before! It’s probably a bit thanks to the kick-off workshop, but also because we have an amazing talented and well fitting team together.

Here’s production updates from my side:

• Two new workstations in!
  Hewlett-Packard kindly provided two HP Z210 Workstations and two 24-inch Performance Displays. These powerful systems (xeon processors) are perfect for content development!
• Casting agent: Kemna Casting.
  I’ve already had a couple of phone meetings with them, they’re going to help us with finding the right person for the roles. Good actors are crucial… they can make an audience absorb with a single eyebrow move…
• Tomorrow Ian works 2 hours with Joris on DoP stuff
• Next week we meet with www.overexposure.nl about getting their helicam (!) for filming the Oude Kerk and canal+bridge.
• Next week we also meet with a production designer to check on cooperation or an advisory role.
• City of Amsterdam should tell us now any day if we get permit for filming there!
• Filming is most likely now: May 7-8-9 in studio, May 10-11 on location. We might need some hands, extras, or just people to make sandwiches! Mark it in the agenda :) A call for help will be posted later.
• Breakdown of film: we have four main sets, with about 40 scenes, 120 shots. Expected length is 6 minutes. Probably will become 7 or so ;)

Image in this post: stolen from the render farm. Ian is doing already crazy cool animatics! Will get posted here later, promised :)

Non-Blender: Unnamed Soundsculpture
BlenderNation - 2012-03-22 14:00:01

By Daniel Franke & Cedric Kiefer. See the making of below. Daniel and Cedric write: The basic idea of the project is built upon the consideration of creating a moving sculpture from the recorded...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Learning Texturing – Finishing
Fax on Blender - 2012-03-22 13:08:05

Heh, I was going to say that this post could be a let-down after what I wrote about the importance of finishing, and then I picked that title. Well here’s what: I’m no longer going to follow along with the book step by step to texture the buggy character. I am going to finish the [...]

Bullet Integration Updates - 23 Mar
Aligorith's Lair - 2012-03-22 12:50:00

It's been a while since there have been any updates about the Bullet Rigidbody project here. Over the past month, I've been practically swamped with deadlines and uni work, hence the lack of updates or Blender development activity recently.

Having said that, tonight I've managed to squeeze out a little chunk of time to field support questions/requests from the Mango crew, in particular with regards to Bullet integration. 

Read more »

Demo Reel: Alex Glawion
BlenderNation - 2012-03-22 10:00:50

Alex writes: I have done an overhaul of my Reel and thought I’d share. It contains some cinematographic studies, as well as lots of shots from my Short Films “the Risk not Taken”,...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Quick Architecture Tip: Cut the Walls with the Roof
BlenderNation - 2012-03-22 09:30:12

By Matthieu Dupont de Dinechin aka viralata. He offers more tips like this one on his website.

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Updated documentation
Makehuman - 2012-03-22 07:42:44

I modeled a box!
ThruDreamsgate's Blog - 2012-03-22 06:53:21

Um kind of, well not really, but yeah I kind of did. I started the Blender Cookie’s Training Course: Interior 3D Architectural Visualization in Blender 2.6. And while it is not an actual box per se, rooms are rather box-like. So yes I modeled a very fancy box with windows and a stairwell. I’m not [...]

Products
Blender Guru - 2012-03-22 06:21:59

Models: Sci Fi Vehicle Collection
BlenderNation - 2012-03-22 06:00:34

An assortment of different sci-fi vehicles, mostly low-poly, by Kunho362.

Process to Go: Pandeia – Episode 03
processdiary.com - 2012-03-22 03:11:10

Apologies for the lateness of this podcast. Work has come up – really great stuff for NickJr, and I’m doing it from home.

In this episode, i talk about the updating process, my writing/creative process, and have a bit of a rant about social media. I’d love to hear your thoughts about how you use social media: do you follow corporations? How about artists who are selling you something? Do you follow anyone/anything for the purposes of seeing what is out there for sale? Hit me up on the comments below.

I’m candid about some numbers:

And I discuss my thoughts on how I should react to these.

And here is a shot about my writing process (yes, it’s messy!):

I’m finishing up a short stint for NickJr (which is going on the next showreel). Hopefully by next week, I’ll get another huge burst of pages coming out.

Download audio file (TPD_P2G_PanE03.mp3)

Rendering Realistic Headphones in Blender Cycles
Blender Cookie - 2012-03-22 00:41:21

Hello and welcome to this video tutorial on rendering realistic, stylish headphones in Blender Cycles!

In this tutorial you will be shown how to take a plain, grey model and turn it into a complete, stylish and realistic render using Blender 2.6 and the Cycles render engine.

What you’ll learn:

Jonathan Williamson will take your through the lighting, rendering and compositing for the final result, including: how to set up all of the material shaders for metal, plastic, rubber and the soft ear cushions, how to use node groups to make easily re-usable shaders, and how to use several different lights to get excellent illumination and tone in your image. Also, you will learn how to separate the objects into two different render layers for extra control and then combine them back together in the node Compositor; while making some color adjustments as well.

Blender 2.6 Essentials Training Review
BlenderNation - 2012-03-21 20:04:24

Terry Wallwork reviews Lynda.com’s ‘Blender 2.6 Essential Training’ by George Maestri. Terry Wallwork writes: George Maestri – Blender 2.6 Essential Training – Training...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Working with very large files in Photoshop
My World of VFX - 2012-03-21 19:58:44

Sometimes I’m in a situation where I need to handle very high resolution layers in Photoshop and would love to work with smaller resolution proxies instead and only later have the high detail image for the corresponding layers. But, I’ve never figured out the way to replace the contents of the Smart Objects (proxies) without the layer dimensions exploding on the main composition after the file inside the Smart Object has been resized. Well, now I finally found a way and I’m so happy about it that I need to tell the world! (I really couldn’t find anything from the web.. maybe it is too simple and obvious task? )

This is really simple. When inside the Smart Object layer file, do not change the pixel size straight from the pixel values, change the resolution value instead!! The important part here is the Document Size values must not change. Then just bring the high resolution version on top of the image (flattening might be a good idea too) and save. When you go back to the main composition, the dimensions of the layer are exactly the same than before but the low res layer is now high res. And of course, if you made any duplicate layers of the Smart Object they are updated too.

I can’t believe I didn’t find this out sooner!

Update on my journey
Blender Journey - 2012-03-21 18:14:05

Ok, so I haven’t written in a while. It’s because I’ve felt stuck and have been trying to sort out a few things. I’m working on my first completely original, complex model. It’s of a spider and I’ll post a screenshot later. The problem I’m running into is getting the detail I want and texturing [...]

Mixamo Space Battle Character Contest
BlenderNation - 2012-03-21 15:00:10

Motion capture data supplier Mixamo is hosting a contest with some nice prizes. Design a space battle character (vanguard or pirate, your choice) and win cash, a Unity 3D pro license, and more. Submission deadline is April 27th. Check out … Continue reading →

Interview: Brecht van Lommel on Cycles
BlenderDiplom - Blender Tutorials and Training - 2012-03-21 14:52:55

Amsterdam photo refs
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-21 14:46:42

Here’s a small selection of the thousands reference photos shot during the last weekends.

Boats, bridges, canals and the Oude Kerk, of course. but also many refs from the architecture and design of the Amsterdamse School (1910-1930~)

Especially interesting are the street furniture pieces (like the electrics box and the street-lamp in these pictures ) partly used directly as typical dutch environment props , but also as a base to build sci-fi and tech pieces (some of those shapes and geometries seems made just for that !)

Sample Chapter from “Track Match Blend”!
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-21 11:56:34

For all of you who are already waiting for  too long for the Track Match Blend DVD here is a little preview chapter about using manual undistortion for a better camera solution and using reference images from Google Maps to check if the solution makes sense.
I am working hard to finish the DVD within the next days! Sorry for the delay!
:)

Here’s the link to footage and blendfile:
download.blender.org/ftp/incoming/libmv/sebastian/using_reference_material.zip

Python Scripting for the Game Engine
BlenderNation - 2012-03-21 11:00:33

In this tutorial aimed at beginning Python programmers/Blender users, CG Masters dive into Python and show you how to control a game character. CGMasters write: In this beginner’s Python tutorial you’ll learn how to use Python scripting to make a … Continue reading →

“Saying Goodbye” – Competition Results
Blender Guru - 2012-03-21 09:52:48

6 weeks ago I announced the “Saying Goodbye” competition. I didn’t offer any clues or inspiration as to what the theme meant, participants had complete creative control.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a massive 183 entries!

 All Entries

All entries were judged on the following criteria:

• Aesthetics
• Story telling
• Impact

The Finalists

These are the entries that although didn’t win, look great and deserve a mention:

Another great entry by Pratik Solanki. The composition and fun atmosphere make this one stand out. The color scheme could be better, but it’s still great, keep it up!

An entry by Blender Nerd‘s Greg Zaal! As I wrote on twitter: “well done mate! Looks dope. Captured the atmosphere nicely.” The ocean and jetty in particular are great Some brighter lighting on the character would improve the focus, but it’s still a solid image. Well done

A simple yet effective concept. The footprints on the window were a nice touch. Great job carita87!

This perfectly captures the mood of saying goodbye to a loved one. Well done Josh! The style could be more decided (as some parts seem cartoonish and others realistic), but it’s a solid effort nonetheless. Keep it up!

A great tribute to forgotten childhoods. Nice job mcdavid! Better lighting would definitely improve the image, but it’s still excellent.

Other honorable mentions are:

• PansWorld
• Pedro A (NSFW violence)
• JohnMervin
• Jonathan L

Runners Up

These Runners Up will both receive any item they choose from the Blender Store:

I like the less serious approach and the cartoony style. The characters look fun and the lighting is simple. A clearer story would improve it (as currently it’s unclear if the focus is the children or the grandma), but it’s still an excellent image and one deserving of the runners up prize

Beautiful! This one wins points for harmony. Everything just seems to fit together nicely. From the soft lighting to the desaturated color scheme. I’m still not sure who is leaving or staying, but it’s a nice piece of work nonetheless. Great job Ex-Nihilo!

Winner

We have a winner!! Definitely an unorthodox approach to the theme but it’s one that I love. It’s light hearted and fun. The lighting and colors are the hardest things to do well and you nailed it. The frothy part of the wave is the only weak point, but the rest makes up for it. Beaches are notoriously difficult to create (speaking from a first hand experience), so the fact that you managed to create believable sand AND waves in the same picture is nothing short of amazing.

So Congratulations Simon! You’ve won:

• $200 Cash
• Expose 9 (Hard Cover)
• $300 for any Charity of your choice
• A permanent spot in the Winner’s Hall of Fame

Thank you to everyone who entered this competition! I’m constantly surprised to see what the Blender community is capable of. Time and time again I’m wowed by the entries that are sent in. It truly is a blessing to have such an eager and ambitious audience.

Unfortunately I don’t have enough time to explain why each image didn’t win, but if you list your name in the comments I’m sure the community would be more than happy to offer you some constructive critiques.

The next competition will be announced in 2 weeks. Stay tuned

Model: Ilyushin IL14p aircraft
BlenderNation - 2012-03-21 09:43:44

By Felis. Felis writes: Hi. Here is a model, that i used to create an add-on for X-Plane9 flight simulator. It used to be payware at first, but then i decided to make it free as a promotional. This model … Continue reading →

Blockheads.blend
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-20 17:54:04

Due to popular demand, and us being the sharing type, here is the blockheads file for your amusement!

BlockHeads_Release.blend

There is a readme text inside the file that explains the particulars of them all.

Now go out and make us some funny blockheads skits!!!

—————

Edit: People were having crashes with the file, possibly due to different versions of blender. This file *should* be ok!

BlockHeads_Release2.blend

080
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-03-20 17:20:50

I am doing a one-creative-thing-a-day project for each of the 366 days of 2012, sharing my entries over on Google+. Most days they are just photos, but today I decided to do something a bit more challenging. A while ago I saw a tutorial on 3D Animation plus for a cute little effect using particle systems in Blender and wanted to try it out. This is the result.
Today, 20 March, is the 80th day of the project - 080, a super-bubblicious-looking number. What better day to make an animation of all these bubbles? :-)

Tutorial:
3danimationplus.com/tutorials-2/fresh-particle-effect

The #creative366project on Google+:
plus.google.com/u/0/116621242048023202918/about

My #creative366project album:
plus.google.com/u/0/photos/115244822505211094728/albums/5693778270843755297

Cast: Jonas Neergaard-Nielsen

Tags: Blender, animation, bubbles and 366 project

Course in Graphic Design and Advertising with Blender
BlenderNation - 2012-03-20 16:00:50

A new on-line Spanish Blender course. IHMAN writes: IHMAN – Escuela Online is a school dedicated to teach and divulge Blender. Our aim is help the Hispanic Blender Community with tutorials and courses in spanish. The course lasts for 13 … Continue reading →

BlockHeads
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-20 14:13:33

We’re starting to gear up for the animatic. With Ian getting the timing together with a storyboard edit, I’ve been rigigng up some low-poly, least-distracting, fast, quick and easy to use proxy characters I’ve affectionately named BlockHeads.

The idea is to use these with low res environments to really plan out how each scene and shot will be done. Obviously we’ll probably tweak it all alot once we start the actual filming. But for now this will give us a really solid idea on how each shot should be planned, how when and where we need to add detail and also what the film itself is going to be like.

Non-Blender: Transformers VFX Breakdown
BlenderNation - 2012-03-20 14:00:03

A nice breakdown of some of the VFX in Transformers: Dark of the Moon for your inspiration (via Andy).

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Ocean + Dynamic Paint + Particles = ?
BlenderNation - 2012-03-20 10:00:02

By FelipeDR. FelipeDR writes: I created this video, for testing that Blender could do with your Ocean modifier, Dynamic Paint and particles. It’s a fake Realflow. Links BlenderArtists Thread Blend file (Blend Swap)  

George Maestri - Blender 2.6 Essential Training - Training Video Review
Adventures In Blender Diary Entries - 2012-03-20 10:00:00

Review of George Maestri - Blender 2.6 Essential Training - Training Video

Attitude
Reyn's Blog - 2012-03-20 09:27:00

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree." -Martin Luther Made with: Blender 2.62 (click image to enlarge) Camera-animated version:

Happy Birthday, Ton!
BlenderNation - 2012-03-20 09:22:30

Reached 52nd anniversary today. Still not too late to grow up! One day! :) — Ton Roosendaal (@tonroosendaal) March 20, 2012

Attitude
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-03-20 08:35:40

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree." -Martin Luther

Made with: Blender 2.62

Cast: Reynante Martinez

Tags: attitude, optimism, joy, happiness, blender, 2.62, 3d, cg and animation

Melbourne Blender Society: two upcoming meetings
BlenderNation - 2012-03-20 03:00:56

Two Blender meetings are coming up in Melbourne A casual dinner on the 29th of March A more formal meeting at the end of April. See the MBS blog for details. (Via Alex)

Discovering Custom Hotkeys
3rD Movement - 2012-03-20 02:53:00

Well there are a few things even an experienced blender user may have not run across before... one such thing is: adding hotkeys manually. You know, you can right click on operations in menus to add or change hotkeys, but what about those times when you want to add a hotkey, but your can't add it with the right click menu.

For this example I will use one of my favorite useful add-on: Chromoly's Vertex Slide. It doesn't come with a hotkey assigned. You can find more information about this specific add-on if you wish in this thread.
The first step is to use the spacebar search, a menu or  a button to locate and activate the operation you are adding the hotkey for. When you use the operation and confirm the action. It will print out the operations you just completed. To be able to see the printed operator command you need to drag the top bar down. 

Note: There are a few other ways to view operator commands such as hovering over buttons and menu items long enough will give you a popup that shows you the python command.

Next go to your preferences with Ctrl-Alt-U, go to the
Input tab and go to the
3D View>Mesh key map, scroll down to the bottom of the mesh key maps to where you see the "Add New" button and press it. Then expand the new key map with the little triangle.

For this example the "mesh.vertex_slide" is the part that is important, the operation is doesn't need the bpy.ops. or the information in the brackets to work, so when you enter the operation into the blank text box it will recognize the operator and give you the options for the operation inside key map.

Note: Make sure the hotkey you intend to use is not being used or you may run into issues with crashing or hotkeys not working. In edit mode Alt-V is a free hotkey.

Now that you have a working hotkey, don't forget to drag the top window back up and save your default scene.

Keep Dreaming, Buddy!
3rD Movement - 2012-03-20 00:53:00

So I decided to pick up an old project that I started for a BWC (Blender World Cup) competition, I was not able to enter it due to some technical issues at render-time, But here is the finished image.



I called it "Dreamer" attempting to imply something about the image, but yeah... the rest is up to the viewer to interpret.

Just knock on the comments if you would like to grab a wallpaper version of the image :)

Great day to be a Citizen
ThruDreamsgate's Blog - 2012-03-19 20:09:06

A Blender Cookie Citizen that is. Jonathan Williamson has just finished up an epic video recording session, resulting in over 5 hours of modeling awesomeness for Blender Cookie’s Citizen Training Series, Training Course: Interior 3D Architectural Visualization in Blender 2.6. This course is a complete run-through on how to create an interior architectural visualization completely [...]

Editing the Storyboard
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-19 18:56:47

The video has nothing to do with the rest of this post :P. I was sketching “defensive tombstones”, and Sebastian walked by and said, “I have the perfect shot tracked for that!” so I threw some in! I’ll wait to develop them until we know if we have a specific place for them, though.

It’s also the first video on our new Mango-Specific YouTube channel. There are some videos we want to post, but aren’t really deserving of the massive traffic the BlenderFoundation channel gets, so it’s more for scraps and the like. If that’s your thing, though, feel free to subscribe-or-whatever.

Anyway! Anyways? Anywaying?

We’re going to be using most of the models-in-progress ‘as is’ in order to start the animatic, but before we do that, I’m editing down the storyboards into a loosely timed deal to try and give us an idea of timing. This means that by the end of the day, we’re going to have a film. Not a finished film- but all the shots will be in there. Then we get to spend the rest of the project making them look great! It’ll be interesting to see how the initial timing estimates compare to the final; I suspect I’m cutting a lot of shots a bit short. Seeing it as a sequence of shots like this, it’s more like a comic book than a film, so a ‘see-one-image-move-onto-the-next’ pacing inherently feels more natural than one that actually gives actors enough time to complete all their actions.

There are definite pros and cons to having the film this well locked down so early. For sure, especially after we get the whole animatic done, we’re going to know exactly what we need to move forward, and will be able to block out scheduling for every single aspect of production/post. For example, we’ll know exactly what parts of the church we need to measure, to avoid wasting anyone’s time.

It can also make things tricky, though. In a way, we had a lot of shot selections locked after just a few days of madcap work, meaning we’re working an awful lot on CG models/environments and the like, and surprisingly little on actually designing the flow of the film. We’re still going to be able to treat it as an evolutionary process though, and as long as each iteration is improving upon the previous, we’re on the right track! After seeing all of these assets come together, this is going to be an absolutely killer animatic :D

Blender Sourcerers Competition
BlenderNation - 2012-03-19 17:00:15

The Blender Sourcerers Competition is an AWESOME community intiative, aimed at creating videos that’ll help starting Blender developers. Crumpet writes: Compete with your skills by making a...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Meet you at LGM!
Morevna Project - 2012-03-19 15:42:04

Today I’ve got the confirmation that my talk for Libre Graphics Meeting was accepted! That means you have a real chances to meet me among the other visitors of this awesome event during 2-5 May in Vienna. My talk will be about Remake – our build system for animation projects. I’m going to give some explanations about its principles, future and show some live examples. Although it’s about Remake, I won’t refuse any related questions about Morevna Project and Synfig. ^__^ See ya on the meeting!

blender particle experiments - dancing little stars
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-03-19 15:29:10

for this part of my blender particle experiments I made some little stars dance using a boid particle system

local-guru.net/blog/2012/3/4/blender-particle-experiments---dancing-little-stars

Cast: Nikolaus Gradwohl

Tags: blender and particles

blender particle experiments - text
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-03-19 15:17:22

for this blender particle experiment I pixelized a text string using a remesh modifier and transfered It using a curve-guide force field.

local-guru.net/blog/2012/3/19/blender-particle-experiments---text

Cast: Nikolaus Gradwohl

Tags: blender, particles, forcefield and modifier

blender particle experiments - particle tree
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-03-19 15:16:29

This is a tree made from cubes and spheres

local-guru.net/blog/2012/3/15/blender-particle-experiments---particle-tree

Cast: Nikolaus Gradwohl

Tags: blender and particles

Factory Lot
Fax on Blender - 2012-03-19 13:31:42

Here’s the first render (lets call the other one render number zero): What do you think? I put some thought into it which resulted in a few creative decisions but I’d love to hear your thoughts. All comments and criticism are very much appreciated :) This was rendered with Luxrender as well. Absolutely great piece of software. [...]

Training Course: Interior 3D Architectural Visualization in Blender 2.6
BlenderNation - 2012-03-19 13:02:27

CG Cookie has just announced their latest training course on interior visualization. Jonathan Williamson writes: In the duration of this course you will be taken through many aspects of the modeling...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Monday morning kick-off
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-19 10:44:36

Every end of friday 18h we do weeklies – artists/devs show their work. These weeklies we try to be constructive and cheerfully positive. That way everyone can enjoy a friday drinks/dinner together and weekend without too much stress as well. Every monday at 10h we do the kick-off meeting. Then the new targets for the week are being discussed, and some asses get kicked – when needed. For Durian this practice did quite well, so I’m testing it with the team here if it works :)

Notes from today’s kick-0ff:

• Ian will work on moving storyboard edit
• Everyone continues design work (robots, dome, props)
• Target: friday basic models – also character stand-ins – ready for 3d animatic work next week
• Ton/Rob and Ian will finish breakdown work (all scenes and shots numbered and quantified)
• Sebastian finishes the tracking training dvd this week, Francesco assists on dvd design and html work.
• Everyone does a blog post, of course!

Image: a tree across the institute already has leaves. It’s spring soon!!!

Public Enemies
BlenderNation - 2012-03-19 10:00:29

By DeargRuadher DeargRuadher writes: Here it is – a final version! Not perfect, but I’m gonna leave it as it is, for now. Made in Blender 2.6-Cycles (300x) + Picasa 3 (minor post-pro) So,...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Training Course: Interior 3D Architectural Visualization in Blender 2.6
Blender Cookie - 2012-03-19 09:40:41

Hello and welcome to this Online Training Course for Interior 3D Architectural Visualization in Blender

Interior architectural visualization is an ideal use of 3D rendering; it can help portray exactly what an interior could look like after being built without ever setting foot in the space or picking up a tool. Through this course, Jonathan Williamson will give you a complete run-through on how to create an interior architectural visualization completely within Blender 2.6.

This course makes use of the Cycles render engine to achieve an excellent sense of realism and mood. To gain access to this course you can signup as a Citizen member of the CG Cookie network for just $10 USD per month. This is an incredible deal, the course contains just over five hours of training; covering modeling, shading, lighting, rendering, compositing, and post processing. Normally a course like this would go for no less than $45 USD. You can sign up for a Citizen account from our membership page HERE.

Kaleng cycles
inblender.blogspot.com - 2012-03-19 08:26:00


Share model: Kaleng cycles
app  : blender 2.62
download blender model : kalengcycles.blend

Developer Meeting Notes, March 18, 2012
BlenderNation - 2012-03-19 06:37:09

Blender 2.63 development is in BCon3 now and we’ve been accepted by the Google Summer of Code. Ton Roosendaal writes: Here’s the notes from today’s developer meeting in irc.freenode.net #blendercoders. 1) Blender 2.63 Campbell worked on BMesh last week. Weekly … Continue reading →

graphicall: Uploaders can now enjoy real time progress bar thanks to Miika Hämäläinen from http://t.co/fE4kZZXr go update your builds and see!
Twitter / graphicall - 2012-03-18 20:47:18

graphicall: Uploaders can now enjoy real time progress bar thanks to Miika Hämäläinen from http://t.co/fE4kZZXr go update your builds and see!

monster illustration for sci-fi role-playing game extreme future
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2012-03-18 18:15:17

I’ve been working on the art for Extreme Future and its supplements. I was looking through the sketches I have on my hard disk, and I found a nice sketch of a sci-fi monster walking down a spaceship corridor. It’s in the tradition of Alien, and those sort of biological construct kind of monster aliens, but this alien – I call it the ‘Scorpiant’ – has cybernetics too.

The idea is that the creature can secrete metal as it grows, and so has a metal skeleton, metal claws, and a metal syringe sticking out the end of its tail that it can use to sting player characters – and NPCs too pf course – rather like a scorpion.

When there are a group of them , they organise themselves like an ant hill, with warriors, a queen, drones etc. But mostly warriors, this being an action and adventure game set in deep space.

I’m writing a new supplement for Extreme Future, which will include table to be rolled on when characters are traveling through deep space. They will be sort of like the wandering monster tables from old D&D, but there will be loads of encounters based around monsters, wrecked spaceships, distress calls coming from strange planets, space pirates and the like.

I think this illustration will make a fine cover, with a bit more work, but it is definitely heading in the right direction. It just needs to be perhaps a bit darker, with even more shadows in the spaceship corridor.

Drawing, drawing, drawing…
Morevna Project - 2012-03-18 17:53:10

One image instead of thousand words.

And everyone knows that I love posting “work-in-progress” drafts. ^__^

For finished keyframes please see watch the recent images page at our wiki. Cheers!

Weekly – March 16
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-18 14:07:38

Every friday at 18h we’ll drop our work and gather together to do a short presentation of work. We always have a couple of guests then as well. This friday we had Tony Mullen here, the girlfriends of Sebastian and Jeremy, and Filmmore VFX supervisor Willem Zwarthoed. Willem worked for me 11 years ago (with Bart!) on the website and for Blender support. Since his film academy graduation he works for Filmmore, mostly using Maya and Nuke. Willem shows us some cool Amsterdam vfx work he did for “Sint”. Check the docu here.

Every artist then showed his work and progress of last week; which is mostly doing tests and designs – also to get ready for animatic work. I’ve copied a random selection of graphics just for your fun. Most of this had been discussed here already, or will be next week!

(If you like to attend a weekly, just mail me to make an appointment. We prefer to limit to a just few guests each time, we cannot handle masses here! ton at blender.org)

Image: IEo
BlenderNation - 2012-03-18 14:00:29

By Spailler. Spailler writes: Here is my last character design for another personal project i’m working on. His name is Leo. I used cycles for the render except for the hair rendered in BI. Hope you like it (him). Link … Continue reading →

Blender Wiki: Call for Help
BlenderNation - 2012-03-18 08:13:29

The Blender documentation team is looking help! If you’d like to spend some time writing or reviewing Blender documentation, read on. mindrones writes: We have just done a call for wiki writers, to see if we can build a team … Continue reading →

GOF Design Patterns Reference Card
Aligorith's Lair - 2012-03-18 05:36:00

For the software engineers out there, this is quite a handy little graphical reference for the GOF Design Patterns:

Training Course: Interior 3D Architectural Visualization in Blender 2.6
Blender Cookie - 2012-03-18 00:48:56

Hello and welcome to this Online Training Course for Interior 3D Architectural Visualization in Blender

Interior architectural visualization is an ideal use of 3D rendering; it can help portray exactly what an interior could look like after being built without ever setting foot in the space or picking up a tool. Through this course, Jonathan Williamson will give you a complete run-through on how to create an interior architectural visualization completely within Blender 2.6. This course makes use of the Cycles render engine to achieve an excellent sense of realism and mood. To gain access to this course you can signup as a Citizen member of the CG Cookie network for just $10 USD per month. This is an incredible deal, the course contains just over five hours of training; covering modeling, shading, lighting, rendering, compositing, and post processing. Normally a course like this would go for no less than $45 USD. You can sign up for a Citizen account from our membership page HERE.

As a Citizen member you get access to the complete streaming course, including all project files and the ability to download each individual video.

To make this series more accessible you now choose to either stream or download any of the videos. To stream the videos, simply click on the thumbnail for that portion and it will automatically load at the top of the page.

What you’ll learn in this Course

In the duration of this course you will be taken through many aspects of the modeling process, including an introduction to BMesh, how to model things to real-world scale and how to make easy use of a model repository to populate your scene. You will learn how to quickly UV unwrap models for texturing, how to setup a material library of Cycles shaders and you will learn how to make complex shader node networks for realistic materials. Beyond that, you will also learn how to create good environment lighting to achieve a realistic sense of interior light, how to optimize your scene for faster rendering, how to make use of multiple scenes and render layers and composite them together, and you you will be taught how to perform advanced color adjustments and other post processing techniques on your image to produce a stunning final render.

Do be aware, this training course makes use the Blender 2.63 beta in order to use BMesh and other features that are currently in development. Very, very few things are subject to change in this series, but for a couple videos you will need the latest development version if you wish to follow along exactly. You can download daily, official builds from HERE.

Note: the first two videos, and the introduction and freely available for anyone to view to help give you a better preview of the course Enjoy!

Twitter: 2012-03-18
Matt Ebb - 2012-03-17 16:31:00

• golden horn, istanbul http://t.co/47yztrjI #
• WIP thread of said short here: http://t.co/QT5CkX1k #
• Not a huge fan of the story and music, but the environment work and lighting in this cg short is spectacular https://t.co/L0eq8m5f #
• cihangir, istanbul http://t.co/8eF71uZk #
• cihangir, istanbul http://t.co/zkYdDswH #

Blender turntable sculpt Wolverine WIP - first update
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-03-17 15:38:15

Sculpture 3D entièrement faites avec Blender 2.61, travail en cours...
Réalisé pour mettre en évidence les prochaines corrections....
mise à jour...

3D sculpt entirely made with Blender 2.61, work in progress...
Done to highlight the next corrections….
Update...

Cast: Fabien APFFEL

Tags: 3D, wip, sculpt, Blender, turntable and cycles

Response to the "Action Fake User" issue
Aligorith's Lair - 2012-03-17 10:44:00

or Answer to "Where did my Actions go 2.62?" ...

Wow. I've just gotten back to checking various things afterseveral busy days of being swamped with work and deadlines, and it appears that a massive firestorm has been erupting in multiple places over the past few days. So I'll try to take some time to respond and hopefully "diffuse" the situation a bit without inciting vitriol (fingers crossed).

Read more »

graphicall: Blender Developer wannabe? Check this awesome video by Campbell Barton "Learn to navigate Source & Simple Fix" http://t.co/5TNN9rRR #b3d
Twitter / graphicall - 2012-03-17 08:13:11

graphicall: Blender Developer wannabe? Check this awesome video by Campbell Barton "Learn to navigate Source & Simple Fix" http://t.co/5TNN9rRR #b3d

Model: Hugo
BlenderNation - 2012-03-16 15:26:34

By Wirlow. Wirlow writes: Hello, I present to you Hugo. It’s a single turtle designed by me. Materials, lighting and composition is a mixture between my character PiOpioOo and the character Zanno...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

misc. environment tests
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-16 14:49:38

The actual work on Mango production started this week, so everyone started various parallel tests, experiments and actual assets for the movie, here are a few:

Quick test for the dome structure :

A technical test for a material in cycles that receives shadows and AO but doesn’t cast (for compositing)

Robot (from ‘Quit Blender’) test in cycles , trying to define the ideal node setup for those dirtmap-and-tileables shaders i’ve posted previously.

Some early planning for the animatic (map from openstreetmaps data) : we have a very ‘real’ and precise set , so a model of it could be very useful for planning  -if we get the data easily and without doing crazy surveys ourselves, of course..

Robo and Brain
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-16 13:10:44

Quick post. Here’s a preliminary block out model of robot. And for some reason someone wanted me to make a brain.. ?

Italian Television: Opener LA7
BlenderNation - 2012-03-16 12:00:35

fpaglia80 writes: This is an opener for the Italian Broadcaster LA7 that we recently completed. It sugest “the following movie is for an adult audience only”. Art Director: Gaetano Leonardi Production supervisor: Francesco Paglia 3D supervisor and animator: Daniele Casoria … Continue reading →

A Good Place
BlenderNation - 2012-03-16 10:00:28

By Julio Cezar Pires. Julio writes: inspired by the work of Bertrand Benoit BLENDER 2.62 RENDER V-ray Link inspirado na obra de Bertrand Benoit-inspired by the work of Bertrand Benoit

Eh, what?
BlenderNation - 2012-03-16 08:57:35

These Mango guys are having way too much fun.

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

3D Easter Camp, Kimberley, South Africa
BlenderNation - 2012-03-16 08:42:00

The 3D Animation Network will host a 3D Animation Easter Camp this March / April school holiday in Kimberley south Africa. From the 3D Animation Network website: We will do an introduction to 3D Animation using Blender 3D at the … Continue reading →

Creating a Rocket with a Smoke Trail in Blender
Blender Cookie - 2012-03-16 05:01:47

Hello and welcome to this Blender smoke simulation tutorial on creating a smoke trailing rocket!

In this tutorial, David Ward will show you how to model a small rocket and then animate the rocket complete with a trailing smoke system.

What you will learn:

During this tutorial, David goes over creating a model of a rocket, complete with texture painting/mapping, then goes on to set up the smoke trail. David will show you how to use large domains for the smoke simulation, adding particle systems to control the smoke flow and also how to set up the volumetric materials for rendering the smoke.

Final Effect:

MYCAP Studio 2012 - 3D Motion Capture Demo 2
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-03-15 23:53:18

Finger motion capture demo using MYCAP Studio 2012 and two Logitech Pro 9000 webcams.

About MYCAP Studio 2012:

MYCAP Studio 2012 is a powerful motion capture solution being developed by Reban Robotics in the Netherlands and will be available sometime in April 2012.

Unique features:

-Fast camera calibration
-True 3D capture using two cameras (webcam/DV)
-Automatic marker identification and stereo matching
-Kalman filtering for clean, professional quality data
-Global motion stabilization
-BVH, FBX, ASC and CSV support out of the box
-Compatible with 3ds Max, Blender, Maya and Lightwave

Limitless applications:

-Digital puppetry/animation
-Human and animal gait analysis
-Kinematic modeling
-Robotics
-Structural analysis
-Multiple 3D point tracking
-3D scene reconstruction

Price: 99 Euros (excludes cameras)

For more information contact info@rebanrobotics.com

Cast: Reban Robotics

Tags: blender, 3ds max, animation, vfx, mocap, motion, capture, stereo, 3d, tracking and robot

MYCAP Studio 2012 - 3D Motion Capture Demo 1
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-03-15 23:31:21

Facial motion capture demo using MYCAP Studio 2012 and two Logitech Pro 9000 webcams.

About MYCAP Studio 2012:

MYCAP Studio 2012 is a powerful motion capture solution being developed by Reban Robotics in the Netherlands and will be available sometime in April 2012.

Unique features:

-Fast camera calibration
-True 3D capture using two cameras (webcam/DV)
-Automatic marker identification and stereo matching
-Kalman filtering for clean, professional quality data
-Global motion stabilization
-BVH, FBX, ASC and CSV support out of the box
-Compatible with 3ds Max, Blender, Maya and Lightwave

Limitless applications:

-Digital puppetry/animation
-Human and animal gait analysis
-Kinematic modeling
-Robotics
-Structural analysis
-Multiple 3D point tracking
-3D scene reconstruction

Price: 99 Euros (excludes cameras)

For more information contact info@rebanrobotics.com

Cast: Reban Robotics

Tags: blender, 3dsmax, animation, vfx, mocap, motion, capture, stereo, 3d, tracking and robot

Character Animation Fundamentals V1 – Training Series
Blender Cookie - 2012-03-15 20:26:10

Character Animation Fundamentals in Blender By Beorn Leonard

This training series covers all the fundamentals of Character Animation in Blender. During this series, you will learn many of the fundamental skills that are essential for all character animators. This series makes use of both simple ball rigs and a complete character to allow you to really focus on what really matters, the animation. Some highlights of this series include fundamental exercises, timing and spacing, working with overlapping motion, animating walk and run cycles for film or games, understanding IK and FK, using the Grease Pencil for animation sketches, and much, much more! You can view the complete chapter breakdown HERE

This series makes use of a pre-built character named Clive, modeled by Jonathan Williamson and rigged by Beorn Leonard. Clive works as a great introductory character that lets you focus on the movement during animation, rather than a bunch of accessories and other items that would only distract away from the task at hand.

What you’ll learn

This training series takes you through many of the essential skills every character animation artist should know by heart. You will learn about timing and spacing, overlapping motion, squash and stretch for cartoon character animation. You will also learn how to animate walk and run cycles for film or games, be given an understanding of IK and FK constraints, including when and how to use them. Not only that, but you will also learn how to use the grease pencil for sketching out animation sequences and much more.

To see much of this in action, check out the video below by Beorn for a look at what he covers throughout the serie. It’s full of awesome! You can find complete details on what is covered, and view some sample training and animations from the series by visiting the full training page HERE

Who is Beorn?

Beorn is a very proficient Blender user best known for his work on Sintel, on which he did a large amount of character and creature animation. He also just recently finished working as part of the animation team on Happy Feet 2

Order Now on DVD or as a Digital Download

The series is available for order from our shop! You can order now by clicking the button below.

Robo-Rigging
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-15 16:01:18

I’m baaaaaack! Arriving a little later than everyone else but now the team is complete!

Making up for missing out on the “Quit Blender” fun, i’ve been spending my first few days playing around with some of the half finished models that have been laying around. This robotic arm (modeled by Kjartan from David’s awesome concept with little tweaks by me) is the first to be rigged up as a test.

In this we’ve got three main fingers each rotating it’s segments with a different style.

• The little finger as just a basic 2 bone/1 axis pivot.
• The big finger with a median plate between them and pistons coming of each side.
• And the Thumb with a 2 arm/1 piston type do-hicky…

With each of the fingers on its own rotating segment of the hand, as well as influencing “protector plates” on top of the hand and extra cogs in the forearm and wrist.

For the wrist itself I separated each of its rotational axis to 3 different positions, with the Z-axis split again between another 2 points, all controlled by the 1 bone!

Its still a bit buggy at the extreme angles and there are still a few holes with joins and pivots and stuff to fill up. But for the most part its 99% working!

Now to add the mini chainsaw and other hidden blades of death!!!

Workshop in Barcelona
BlenderNation - 2012-03-15 14:00:35

The Fine Arts faculty of the Universitat de Barcelona hosts a Blender training on March 19, 20, 21, 22 and 27. Raimon Guarro i Nogués writes: Next week Labmedia at the Fine Arts faculty of the Universitat de Barcelona will … Continue reading →

Development update: Cycles & S-curves!
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-15 13:32:23

We didn’t forget what Mango is really about; which is of course to help improving Blender!

Last Monday we had two meetings with the devs & artists, on cycles and general issues. Yesterday we discussed pipeline designs. This morning we worked out a design idea for curve editing for masks. Time for an update :)

Cycles topics

• Number one missing feature: Motion blur! It will (can) be added in three ways: 1) Camera motion blur (almost free) 2) Object motion blur (an extra matrix per ray) 3) Deformation motion blur (requires pre-proces as current vector blur in Blender.
• Cycles will then also deliver vector pass in render-layers, for vector blur node.
• For rendered masks, cycles should support Index passes (Object, Material index numbers). Also the old Z-mask option should be brought back, but hopefully can be combined with better visualization (in 3d window)
• Shadow passes! This took a while to get pinned down precisely, mostly because from Cycles point of view the idea of “shadow” doesn’t really exist. It’s light bouncing around :). A good definition we found is to add two Shadow pass types. 1) Direct shadow (shadow caused directly by area or point/spot/sun lights) and 2) Indirect shadow (shadow which includes bounced light, GI, contributions from environment.
• Anti-aliasing: Brecht will investigate to implement FSA for cycles. That method (1 full composite per sample, then merge samples) is still the way to deliver optimal quality AA. Alternative ways could just be to internally render things bigger, composite once, and merge down. Under investigation.
• Mixing render engines in 1 scene: Since the ‘render database’ of Blender Internal and Cycles is not shared, individual render-layers of a Scene can also not use different render engines. For this it’s adviced to set up multiple scenes to render (which can be used in 1 composite anyway).
• Volumetric render: will be possible in Cycles eventually, but we can fall back on Internal if needed.
• Ramp shaders & Curve nodes: being worked on.
• Biggest challenge for Cycles the next months is render speed. It’s still on the slow side for production scenes. Some shaders (caustics) can be avoided, other slow shaders (soft glossy) not so easily.
• Sergey will research the topic “methods to attract lighting circumstances from footage, using 3d reconstruction”.

Other Blender topics, lessons from past week

•  Blender’s library system is far too static with paths (relative, non relative, moving stuff). Needs a good tool & UI to manage.
• Asset pre-viewing and browsing (in other files too) would be cool
• Compositor is too slow! We need Jeroen Bakker’s new OpenCL compo!
• Check on Alembic style baking for for animation playback.
• Smoke sim should really allow objects to animate and interact with the smoke.
• Bullet physics/fracture goes via game engine, can this be unified now? How is Joshua Leung’s Bullet branch going?
• We need efficient ways to share animation data (like control 1 modifier property curve on 50+ objects).
• Mesh modeling: bevel needs fix, “Inset” tool would be great. And are we getting realtime AO or Cavety shader for modeler now?

Pipeline meeting

Sebastian presented a cool diagram showing the data and workflow. Jeremy explained the data structure has we used in past (for sintel). Agreed is that Sebastian will become our “pipeline manager” and report and design issues further, he will pick this up next week when his tracking dvd training is done.

Mask curve editing: S-curves!

This morning we had a fun session together (Sergey, Sebastian, Francesco, Ton) on efficient ways to draw and edit masks, with efficient but advanced control over local feathering. This lead to a design proposal I nicked S-curve (Sharybin curve :)

• Curve shape and curvature gets edited using 1 perpendicular handle (like X-splines).
• Curve feather shape can be controlled using additional points (as many you like on a curve), which will have a user-defined distance from the original curve shape – but always remain perpendicular.
• That means that feather–points can be dragged out of curve to define a soft area, but also can get ‘slided’ over the curve shape to position it.
• Technically: the feather point is based on the U coordinate on curve, plus a Dist (or weight factor) to define distance.
• Bonus: non-closed curves will always draw as a two-sided feathered string.

If this S-curve idea works will be figured out later, but the theory & design is promising. Back to coding! :)

Reel: Sixthlaw 3D Visualisation
BlenderNation - 2012-03-15 12:43:15

By Sixthlaw. Sixthlaw writes: So I have finished the promotional video for my business Sixthlaw 3D Visualisation All modelling was done in blender, rendering in octane, and some final post-pro in...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Modelling Teeth Timelapse
BlenderNation - 2012-03-15 06:44:23

By Alfondo Annarumma writes.

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Jason Van Gumster on The Process Diary
BlenderNation - 2012-03-14 22:00:34

Paul Caggegi interviews Jason van Gumster. Paul writes: Jason Van Gumster has built a successful studio on the backbone of Free and Open-Source Software. He has written “Blender for Dummies” and co-written “The GIMP Bible“, and is active in the … Continue reading →

Mango: Source files & Storyboards!
BlenderNation - 2012-03-14 17:27:24

The Mango team has released the source files for their training short ‘QUIT BLENDER!‘, and all the storyboards for the movie (except for the last minute). The storyboards are amazing – the team has their work cut out for them! … Continue reading →

Aqsis 1.8 released
Blender to RenderMan - 2012-03-14 15:08:00

Aqsis 1.8 has been released as of Feb 29, 2012, a long awaited release build which brings some of the most exciting new features in this renderer in some time. Of these new features, the Point Based Global Illumination functions are the most obvious and anticipated. This release was not without it's problems however as the Windows and MacOS binaries were broken due to the move from FLTK to QT4, work is underway to fix this so expect a 1.8.1 patch release soon. The QT4 switch changed the GUI appearance only slightly, though in some tests Piqsl seems to respond much slower than it's FLTK predecessor, however the point cloud viewer program makes up for that. The PartIO library is a great addition as well, which will allow particle data to be used from various software such as Maya and Houdini. Despite the binary problems, this is one of the most exciting releases from the Aqsis team in years.




LONDON, UK - February 29, 2012 - Aqsis Team, the developers of professional open source rendering software, announced today the immediate release of Aqsis Renderer 1.8.0; its leading cross-platform 3D rendering solution adhering to the RenderMan standard.
This is the accumulative effort of many developers and community members around the world, resulting in an even more competitive solution.

Global illumination and software integration have been the primary focus for this release, with improvements including:

• Point-based global illumination, providing bake3d(), indirectdiffuse(), occlusion() and texture3d() shadeop support.
• Partio library integration, providing Houdini, Maya and PRMan compatible pointcloud support.
• New pointcloud viewer application (ptview).
• Qt library integration, providing native 64-bit support on all recommended platforms.
• BSD licensing for all new code.

In addition, key feature enhancements have been made with improvements including:

• Memory optimisations.
• PNG read/write support.
• Updated SLO interface, matching other renderer APIs.
• Improved RIB parser, including precise syntax error reporting.
• Reinstate command line support for frame selection using -frames and -framelist.
• MinGW support.

Further information regarding the changes in this release can be found within the release notes distributed with the software.
Aqsis Renderer 1.8.0 is freely available to download from the Aqsis website, with installers for Windows, Linux and OS X:
www.aqsis.org

Storyboards
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-14 14:41:01

As part of our new even-opener initiative, we’re releasing everything but the last minute (and the script)- that means we’re releasing a ton of storyboards!

Feel free to swing over and take a look here at the gallery. Or download the pdf with high resolution images (20 MB).

Reel: Ray Mairlot
BlenderNation - 2012-03-14 13:57:51

By Ray Mailot. Ray writes: This is my modelling specific demo reel, I don’t yet have a general demo reel done. Only the first project [the futuristic car - ed] in the demo reel isn’t done using Blender as it … Continue reading →

The Structure of Blender
Blender Total - 2012-03-14 13:52:41

Riven Phoenix nos apresenta uma incrível material, em uma sequência de vídeo aulas totalmente gratuitas mostrando desde a criação de um personagem até a produção da animação no mesmo, totalizando um conteúdo de quase 9 horas de duração! Veja os tópicos abordados: Criando o Personagem; Modelando as Roupas; Mapeamento de Texturas, Vertex Painting e Texture Painting; UV [...]

Team complete!
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-14 12:50:21

And, here’s the Mango Open Movie team in two versions, all of them still looking like fresh young happy people! From left to right: Nicolo, Ian, Sergey, Kjartan, Jeremy, Francesco, Sebastian. (Brecht is working from home still this month).

Blender Conference(s) Doodles Book
BlenderNation - 2012-03-14 10:30:46

Blenderheads around the world have doodled in Pablo’s Book. Pablo Vazquez writes: So! Were you in any of the last bcon’s around? Such as Blender Conference Amsterdam, Blendiberia in Spain, or BlenderPRO in Brasil? Well, then maybe your drawing is … Continue reading →

Snap tool during transform
inblender.blogspot.com - 2012-03-14 09:51:00


 demo menggunakan Snap tool/ Snap during transform blender 2.62

Sintel on a Linux-powered Video Wall
BlenderNation - 2012-03-14 09:46:35

Gotta get me one of those to play the 4K version of Sintel!

graphicall: @Mohammed_A_A here some info http://t.co/CrN1Ct6R
Twitter / graphicall - 2012-03-14 08:45:48

graphicall: @Mohammed_A_A here some info http://t.co/CrN1Ct6R

Female Body Character Modeling Series – Part 11 – Arms and Legs
Blender Cookie - 2012-03-14 02:34:21

Hello and welcome to this character modeling tutorial on creating the female body in Blender!

This character modeling tutorial series for Blender 2.6, Jonathan Williamson takes you through the entire process of modeling a detailed, female body with clean topology that will deform and animate well. This tutorial puts a strong emphasis on topology and anatomy, making use of photo references from 3d.sk

What you’ll learn

Throughout this tutorial series Jonathan will walk you through all the steps necessary to construct the entire model, piece by piece with clean topology using the Edge by Edge modeling method. This method gives you very good control over your topology by laying down the topology first and then filling in the surfaces.

Part 11 of this character modeling series takes you through modeling the arms and legs with a very simple extrusion technique, then followed by adding edgeloops and tweaking the shapes.

Up next

Once the modeling is complete in this series we will move onto texturing the final model.

Reference Images were purchased and licensed from 3D.sk. To learn more about 3D.Sk please visit them today.

Massive Desktop with Multiple Projectors
Dalai Felinto - 2012-03-14 01:52:17

What do you do when you have 2 idle projectors by your computer? The answer is obviously a high definition projection area to be filled with lo.v.e. (lots of valuable experiments).

Two short throw projectors in one seamless desktop

I’ve been following the work of the Vision3D since 2009. This lab in Montreal is specialized in computer vision (recherche fondamentale et appliquée sur les aspects tridimensionnels de la vision par ordinateur). Lead by Sébastien Roy they have been producing (and sharing!) on calibration of projection surface (e.g. domes \o/), multiple projector systems, and content toolsets.

lt-align manual calibration process

The Vision3D lab main tool in that area is Light Twist. This tool was presented in the LGM2009 with a live showcase of the system in a cylinder. In the last week I tried to have light twist going with a multi projector system (aiming to use this for a dome later on) but so far I’m stuck in the playback of content (and I suspect the calibration stage is wrong). Anyways, light twist will be a topic of another post, once I get it up and running.

Plugin enabled – video in the middle of the screens, desktop working normally

Since 2009 the light twist project shifted its focus from labs to end users. In 2011 they finally presented a new project called lt-align and lt-compiz-plugin. The lt-align is a software to quickly calibrate the screens alignment, very easy to use.

The Compiz plugin requires some fooling around with ubuntu settings, but once things are in place it works like a charm. I’m yet to make it work with Unity, so I can have real fullscreen across the desktops.

Recording of the alignment process and video playback

Elephants Dream – Stitched Edition

Note: there is an extra package you need to compile the lt-compiz-plugin:`sudo apt-get install compiz-plugins-main-dev. And I didn’t have to restart compiz with ccp to make it work. Also I changed the shortcuts to start the plugin because Alt+F* were taken by other OS commands.

Time to make it real and project in a large wall

In this picture you can see Djalma Lucio, sys admin that oversees all the computer installations at Visgraf on IMPA. A great professional and a very funny guy to work with. Think about someone that actually enjoys opening a xorg.conf file. And you can also see in the right Aldo Zang. Check it out his ARLuxRender project – a plugin system for LuxRender “which allows to render scenes with mixtures of real and virtual objects directly, without post-processing”.

I hope to post more in the coming months in domes, projections, a special video project … I went on a 3-month leave of my work at UBC to join the research lab at Visgraf/IMPA, under the coordination of prof. Luiz Velho. This is the second week only, but it’s been already a great experience. And above all, it’s nice to be back home (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil).

Happy Twisting,
Dalai

graphicall: To clarifying, we're moving the *domain* out, host has always been separate. Cheers for all the advise anyway
Twitter / graphicall - 2012-03-13 19:19:18

graphicall: To clarifying, we're moving the *domain* out, host has always been separate. Cheers for all the advise anyway

Blender Theme: Energy
BlenderNation - 2012-03-13 18:00:28

Studio LLB shares a dark Blender theme.

Quit Blender! Source files and HD version
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-13 16:09:09

As promised we release a final version of the kickoff workshop short film in full HD for your delight, containing a few fixes and tweaks. We are also releasing the main production folder under CC-BY license for you to explore and improve.

• Quit Blender production files (~173MB)
• Quit Blender footage folder (~589MB)

Here we have an outline of the quit_blender_files folder:

• chars – the library files for the tentacle robot and the dones
• footage – a readme.txt file, which will invite you to copy in there the content of the quit_blender_footage folder
• scenes – all the VFX shots in the short film, shot_XX_compositing usually is the final version of the file, linking in all the libraries and effects
• sets – basics sets used for tracking support, masking and compositing

Since a lot of renaming and refactoring has been done, it is possible that some paths might still be broken. Make sure you are using a recent (trunk or 2.62 should also work) release version of Blender.

Last but not least enjoy the full HD version of “Quit Blender”!

Something Sweet to Eat
BlenderNation - 2012-03-13 14:00:45

By James Campbell. James writes: This is an animated short I created in only six days animated and rendered using Blender. Depth of field was also done in blender. The ability to transfer camera data from Blender to After Effects … Continue reading →

Lock Camera to View
inblender.blogspot.com - 2012-03-13 10:48:00

untuk menempatkan posisi pandangan kamera pada objek dengan interaktif dan mudah, blender menyediakan fasilitas lock camera to view, yaitu dimana kita bisa menggeser maupun memutar posisi pandangan kamera kita terhadap objek seperti yang biasa kita melakukanya pada pandangan viewport 3d.

untuk menggunakanya tampilkan properti panel(shortcut: n) untuk mengaktifkan pilihan lock camera to view,

Introduction to Blender at Chemnitz Linux Days 2012, Germany
BlenderNation - 2012-03-13 10:00:41

 Visit the Linux Days in Chemnitz, Germany this weekend and enjoy a Blender lecture and/or workshop. Erik Schufmann writes: There will be a lecture and a workshop about Blender at the Chemnitz Linux Days 2012 at the University of Technology … Continue reading →

Such is Life-Anim
Reyn's Blog - 2012-03-13 09:55:00

This is a camera-animated version of my work titled 'Such is Life' (http://reynantem.blogspot.com/2012/02/such-is-life.html). Made with: Blender 2.62 Rendered with: Cycles Music: Melancholic Interpretation in G# by Connum, courtesy of http://www.freesound.org

Such is Life
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-03-13 08:50:29

This is a camera-animated version of my work titled 'Such is Life' (reynantem.blogspot.com/2012/02/such-is-life.html).

Made with: Blender 2.62
Rendered with: Cycles
Music: Melancholic Interpretation in G# by Connum, courtesy of freesound.org

Cast: Reynante Martinez

Tags: such, life, floren, blender, cycles and happiness

The Structure of Blender
BlenderNation - 2012-03-13 08:17:40

Riven Phoenix presents a free Blender videotraining of almost 9 hours long! Riven Phoenix writes: The Structure of Blender 3D Modeling and Animation has been released spanning 8 hours and 45 mins. This course is FREE just like blender. Enjoy! … Continue reading →

graphicall: We're moving out of @GoDaddy expect some downtime folks! #freeweb
Twitter / graphicall - 2012-03-13 00:56:39

graphicall: We're moving out of @GoDaddy expect some downtime folks! #freeweb

The Corolla is Finished(-ish)
Fax on Blender - 2012-03-12 20:01:52

Finishing stuff is very important. If you keep having new ideas and starting too much and finishing too little, it can all add up and you can start doubting your own power of execution, even if you're fully capable to do what you were doing. So I picked up the Toyota project again a couple of weeks ago and promised myself I wouldn't start any other personal project before I finished this one. Here is the preliminary result, and some lessons learned.

Open or closed: we’re open! :)
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-12 18:11:47

This morning’s kick-off meeting we agreed on following the OPEN strategy:

- We’ll open everything, except for the last minute.
- But we do not publish the script at all.

This is easier than trying to check each time if we spoil secrets… or being forced to categorize posts. This strategy allows us to discuss a lot of issues openly for our followers, but still keep the ending hidden – AND let everyone guess the story :)

-Ton-

Meeting with the costume designer
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-12 17:09:16

Ian spent today a couple of hours with Pablo Londono Serria. His ideas and designs for clothing are awesome – we really like the proposals and direction it will take. Pablo admitted he had two big desires in his life; getting his own fashion brand, and do a post-apocalyptic film once. :)

Pablo will show first clothes Wednesday already!

Blender Conference(s) Doodles Book!
Blog - PabloVazquez.org - 2012-03-12 15:58:12

So! Were you in any of the last bcon’s around? Such as Blender Conference Amsterdam, Blendiberia in Spain, or BlenderPRO in Brasil? Well, then maybe your drawing is on this book, if not, lets wait for the next bcon!

http://pablovazquez.org/bcon/

Short story is:
The awesome Martín Eschoyez makes this drawing books (a ‘Cartapacio’) by himself, in 2011 he was awesome enough to organize CheBlender (Argentinean bcon) and invite me over, he ended up paying my flight ticket (not cheap at all, even though I was in Argentina as well, I’m from the penguins land!), food and so on out of his pocket, pure Blenderhead awesomeness. So I wanted to give him a present.

I took a copy of this special Blender cartapacio he made, to a few Blender conferences, and asked people around to draw something on it, here is the result.

Idea: I’m thinking in doing the same this year, but to leave this book on the Blender Institute as a souvenir for all the awesome blenderheads that every year meet at bcon’s and do some tourism on the BI, I already asked Martín and he is willing to make a special Blender Conference(s) 2012 book

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Note: Everyone I asked for, agreed on having this book published online, some even added their URL/Email, but if for some reason you don’t want your drawing online, just ask! and I’ll remove it right away with a smile.

Hope you all like it!

Movie Poster
Blender Minutes - 2012-03-12 15:50:34

Now that my render machine is spitting out frame by frame, I had some time to work on the movie poster for Ara’s Tale.

Enjoy and spread it !

UPDATE (15.3.2012): I have now added a link to the high res version of the poster.

Movie Poster high resolution

Windows nightly build
Makehuman - 2012-03-12 14:48:39

Nintendo NES Timelapse
BlenderNation - 2012-03-12 13:12:10

Jimmy Widlund continues his timelapse series with a Nintendo NES. Jimmy writes: This timelapse was created for the blender people. Again i want to show the people how i made this NES right here cause people have been asking me … Continue reading →

Morevna Banners
Morevna Project - 2012-03-12 12:02:12

I would like to thank everyone who donating to our keyframes drawing campaign – thank you for believing in us!

We are encourage everyone to share information about the donation campaign we running and for that purpose we have prepared a few banners (below). If you have a website suitable to place any of them – please help us to promote Morevna Project! Thank you!

Gone fishin'
Aligorith's Lair - 2012-03-12 11:53:00

Just a little fun the other day...

Linux Tab-Completion: .inputrc Hacks
Aligorith's Lair - 2012-03-12 11:51:00

As a followup to my post the other day (re case sensitivity), I've ended up applying a few hacks to my Linux environments to get things working nicer when dealing with the command-line. So, my ".inputrc" in my Home Directory (i.e. the config file for the shell) now looks something like:

set completion-ignore-case on
"C-i": menu-complete

So far this seems to be working quite well, and removes two of the annoyances, making the Linux command-line behave in some ways more similar to the Windows one for increased productivity.

Wraith Invasion
BlenderNation - 2012-03-12 10:00:46

By Tamás Török. Tamás writes: Hi! I made a Wraith Hive ship model (from Stargate Atlantis) a few years ago but I couldn’t made any usable render. I went back to my hive ship and also create a...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Developer Meeting Notes, March 11, 2012
BlenderNation - 2012-03-12 06:50:47

An impressive list of activities, including a LOT of work on BMesh. Ton Roosendaal writes: Hi all, Here’s the summary of today’s meeting. 1) Blender 2.63 progress Full report of...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

The Pet Dragon Fantasy Ebook now available on Drivethrufiction
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2012-03-12 02:20:21

Drivethrufiction describe themselves as an outlet for genre books, which means it’s chock full of fantasy, superheores, sci-fi, and other nerdy stuff.

I’ll let the blurb I wrote for the book speak for itself about what this fantasy novel has within to delight, but also frighten, the reader.

The troglodytes below the peaceful kingdoms of the known world are stirring again, hungry to rekindle ancient enmity between human, elf, dwarf, and halfling. If their machinations succeed and war returns, the ancient troglodyte king will be able once more to return to the surface, and start a war of conquest that will change everything. His plans are finally underway, after centuries of preparation, and a chain of events has been set in motion that will unleash a storm of bloodshed across the dwarven mountains, elven forests, human cities, and even the farms of the halflings.

Completely unaware of the terrible plans that are reaching fruition, Willowtide is a young elven girl living in a peaceful elven city among the trees. One day she sees a dark shape in the sky, and driven either by impulse or destiny, she embarks on a journey to save and befriend a dragon, a journey that has huge and unforeseen consequences for her, her friends, and the troglodyte king’s plans for the entire known world.

As you can read it’s a rollicking fantasy yarn. Have fun :-)

Rendering a Drink Can in Blender with Cycles – Exclusive
Blender Cookie - 2012-03-11 22:58:12

Hello and welcome to this Citizen exclusive tutorial on rendering a drink can in Blender with Cycles!

In this video tutorial for Blender 2.6, Jonathan Williamson will take you through the steps needed to render a very cool product advertising shot of the fictional CG Cookie Essence drink can in Blender with Cycles.

What you’ll learn:

Through this tutorial you will learn how to use mesh light in Cycles to illuminate your scene; including fill lights, key lights, rim lights, and more. You will be shown how to set up better metal shaders with the node system and how to add bump maps to your shaders. You will also learn how to separate parts of your scene out to different render layers for complete control of the lighting and composition of your scene. Finally, you will also learn how to use the different render layers to composite the different parts back together, make color adjustments, add filters, and fine tune your final image through the node compositing system.

Scars by Phantom
My World of VFX - 2012-03-11 22:46:48

Got a quick assignment to edit & decorate some wonderful Delicode Visualizer Kinect material, which was recorded and created by Julius Tuomisto (Coordinator/Director) & Janne Karhu (Visualizer Programming) for music video “Scars” by Phantom. I think I’ve never had so many (14) simultaneous tracks in any of my edits before and it was quite a struggle at times to decide which was the best material for the cut.

Anyway, it still was fun to edit and even more fun to decorate it in After Effects with Red Giant’s Magic Bullet Suite. Also, some Trapcode Particular was used. Check out the video below, the track “Scars” by Phantom is really great!

Lazy sunday in Amsterdam (and some research)
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-11 16:18:17

Today we did a little tour to the Oude Kerk here in Amsterdam and enjoyed the first sun of spring. Blogging in the sun while hanging around in the beanbag in the Blender Institute is also quite pleasant, I can tell you!

Anyway, the light in the church is beautiful! We have to find a way to put this in the movie while at the same time have it destroyed by robots. Also the trees and bicycles in front of the church and around the redlight district might become a masking nightmare too. Or we just cover them with futuristic tech-stuff. But let’s see what happens.

I couldn’t help but film and track something in the church. But I have other things to do than putting something in it, so if you guys are interested in some compositing fun, here’s the track and footage. Do something cool and link here! :)

http://download.blender.org/ftp/incoming/libmv/sebastian/kerktrack.zip

Soldier Model
Morevna Project - 2012-03-11 15:39:42

Meanwhile Nikolay struggle with keyframes, Erik Castillo has finished the promised 3D model of soldier. I was a little worried about the lack of such model, because we need it in shot 35 for keyframes drawing (this is a very complex shot where the soldiers are thrown into the air). Luckily Erik did best to cover us here. Now I can proceed to playing with shot 35.

Also we will need soldier models in shot 07 – it is where camera does a long turn around Ivan and Morevna and soldiers getting up from the ground and surrounding them. For this we will need 5-6 variations of this basic soldier to use all them in shot 07. It will be the next step. Stay tuned!

Promo Video: Global Entrepreneurship Week Venezuela 2011
BlenderNation - 2012-03-11 10:40:14

By Luis Robles. Luis writes: Good day, fellow Blender users! I’m really happy to show you my recently completed video, comissioned by a local client hosting a global event. It was completely animated in Blender, with a few textures created … Continue reading →

graphicall: YafaRay invasion on GraphicAll! http://t.co/L5oGPLCH Every platform is covered thanks to megasoft78, have fun! #b3d #yafaray #rendering
Twitter / graphicall - 2012-03-11 07:35:04

graphicall: YafaRay invasion on GraphicAll! http://t.co/L5oGPLCH Every platform is covered thanks to megasoft78, have fun! #b3d #yafaray #rendering

Keyframes drawing workflow
Morevna Project - 2012-03-11 06:11:52

Today I want to write a little about our keyframes drawing workflow.  The described workflow is not something that we come up at once, but this is something that formed up spontaneously during the last week.

Nikolay uses MyPaint to draw the keyframes and some edits are done in GIMP or Krita. Thanks to the GIMP’s ora plugin and native support for ora files in Krita we can seamlessly edit MyPaint files everywhere. Well, in fact Krita’s ora support isn’t that perfect (2.3.3 here), but we can live with that.

So, our basic working format is OpenRaster (ora). My task is to prepare all animatic images – compose them together with all reference data into ora files, so Nikolay can proceed directly to the drawing. We have a special production sheet to identify pending, prepared and finished keyframes. I also mark keyframes which are considered relatively “easy”.

Nikolay looks at this sheet when he needs to choose next keyframe to draw. After the keyframe is drawn he sends me ora file for review. My job is to look for style consistency and general quality issues. If the keyframe is accepted then Nikolay moves to next one in the list. If there is a issues then I put my notes onto separate layers together with some explanation sketches, send the file back and process repeats. On the images below you can see how it’s usually looks like.

Having a production sheet allows Nikolay to proceed with other keyframe while I’m doing review, so the work keeps to be intensive.

Also we can’t go without phone conversations – although Nikolay is quite familiar with the matter it takes from 10 to 30 minutes for discussions on each keyframe. Discussion can take place at any moment, so the mobile phone is an only option for that.  Although Nikolay lives in other town, we are lucky to reside in the same region – that allows us to have all talks at the flat rate.

Needless to say that we have certain conventions about file naming which allows us to keep all data in the order. I will not cover them here as it may sound boring and there is a high probability that those conventions will change with a time.

That’s all my notes about the current workflow. If you would like to see the finished keyframes please watch the recent images page at our wiki. Cheers!

Workshop @ Cancún, México
Blog - PabloVazquez.org - 2012-03-11 05:55:16

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Yep! Time for more workshops, this time in Cancún, México! Like I did back in 2010 right after Sintel.
I’ve been also giving talks and workshops here in Pachuca, also México.

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Places involved:

A female jedi knight
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2012-03-11 05:51:21

I’ve been working with my graphics tablet and GIMP for the last couple of hours, just so I would have something to post for Illustration Friday. Well that’s not quite true, I’m killing two birds, as it were, because if the illustration is good enough, it will end up being the cover for a role-playing game called Heroes in Time.

The female warrior, seen in the painting with her back to the fire on the bridge of a doomed spaceship, is actually just a detail of the finished painting. The picture will also have a barbarian in a cave, representing the other end of time.

In the game, the player characters can choose to play as different types of adventurer from the very beginnings of time, to the very end. So they can be a robot, a magic user, an investigator from modern times, or the most primal of cave people.

It was when I was cropping out a nice thumb to paste on Illustration Friday that I noticed that the female jedi could easily be the subject of her own painting.

I like the urgent and energetic the image has right now, but I’m aware it will need some smoothing out, some detail, and a few more hours of attention before it really reaches a place where it could be called a finished piece of digital painting.

I keep coming back to this image though – attracted by the juxtaposition between brutal cave thug and sophisticate spacewoman – so undoubtedly it will eventually get to that coveted polished state of a completed painting.

The barbarian standing beside our woman from the future looks a bit naked I just noticed. I think the next stage will be to paint him in some clothes :-).

cihangir
Matt Ebb - 2012-03-11 03:33:30

istanbul

New Fantasy eBook hits the virtual shelving
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2012-03-10 22:20:09

My fantasy novel is finally finished, and has hit the shelves. Well the virtual shelves at the likes of Smashwords, anyway.

The main character in the book is called Willowtide. As the blurb I wrote for the website tells, she is a young elven girl living in a fantasy world where dragons fly the skies and danger stalks the land. Either impulse or destiny sends her on a journey to save and befriend a dragon, a journey that has huge and unforeseen consequences for her, her friends, and the entire known world.
She is banished from the elven forest, attacked by monsters, befriended by the great and the good, and has to tap her latent magic powers just to survive.

Smashwords do the eBook version of books exclusively, and so the formatting is a little different. The book has to be turned into something a little like a big long river of text, with no page n umbers as different devices people use to view the book will cram a different number of words onto the page.

Getting all the little details right, such as fonts, formats and formatting has taken pretty much my whole day, but it’s worth it to see my work out there.

Next I’ll probably be turning to science fiction, and some nice space opera with spaceships, robots and monsters, unless of course ‘The Pet Dragon’ sells well, and then it’ll be back to the magical worlds of fantasy for more stories of elves, dragons, and even a few humans too.

Twitter: 2012-03-11
Matt Ebb - 2012-03-10 16:31:00

• cihangir, istanbul http://t.co/JQH08SVF #
• spray http://t.co/wVpnNpz1 #
• 500px looks like a nice site but what on earth is with the stretching and re-cropping of their users' photos on the front page? @500px #

Process to Go: Pandeia – Episode 02
processdiary.com - 2012-03-10 16:00:16

Episode 2 is here, and it looks like this might be a short run! Why? because I am pumping out the pages like never before! Three pages got done last week. While I may not be able to match that next week, I’m going to give it the old college try. Just five pages until the end of the issue, then it’s cover design and off the Ka-Blam for printing. It looks like I’ll have two issues to table this year.

So here are a few draft pics from the previous pages:

Recroom in Sketchbook pro. I would have used Blender for this, but I wanted to get better at using the protractor and ruler tools in SBP. I think the results were well worth it.

Here are the cleaned up inks:

This image was the “ride off into the sunset” shot. The inks really worked well.

But it wasn’t until I toyed around with the colors that I found some “happy accident” results which made it pop:

Stay tuned again next week for more process to go!

Download audio file (TPD_P2G_PanE02.mp3)

First week kick-off, behind the scenes
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-10 14:08:47

Tony Mullen wrote:

It’s my last week at the Blender Institute before returning to Tokyo. It also happens to be the start of production on the Blender Institute’s Mango Open Movie project. For the past week, the team has been working on a 5-day project to get their feet wet with working together and with what will become the Mango production pipeline. I’ve basically been keeping out of the way, observing, and taking a little bit of behind-the-scenes video:

For a brand new team doing five days of work it’s very impressive. Add to this the fact that the main Mango project has already been completely storyboarded (in stunning detail) by David Revoy, and I think that Mango is off to an incredibly auspicious start.

(Thanks Tony! Was great having you around here, and see your own short film evolve: http://electrictownmovie.wordpress.com/ That one is going to be awesome too! :)

Japan - One Year On
Aligorith's Lair - 2012-03-10 13:19:00

So it's been a year since the devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami, which unleashed a nuclear emergency and barrage of death and destruction in its wake.

How time flies...

Case Sensitivity and Issues of Usability
Aligorith's Lair - 2012-03-10 11:03:00

Once upon a time, when I had up until then only ever worked with Windows based computers, I discovered the world of Linux/Unix through Cygwin (as a result of needing or rather wanting to run GNU LilyPond, a story in itself). At this point in time, I also discovered the issue of case sensitivity, or rather the lack of it in Windows (but its presence in Linux).

I can't remember the exact reason(s), but at the time, I found this really cool, and wondered why this wasn't the case on ALL systems.

Read more »

cihangir
Matt Ebb - 2012-03-10 07:06:21

istanbul

Making Shadeless Materials for Cycles in Blender
Blender Cookie - 2012-03-09 23:37:57

Hello and welcome to this quick tip on making shadeless materials for Cycles in Blender!

In this quick tip by Jonathan Williamson we show you how to create materials for Cycles in Blender that are completely shadeless; e.g. they do not receive shadowing or highlights. Shadeless materials are very useful for rendering a scene with a background image or any other numerous uses.

What you’ll learn:

Through this short video tutorial you will learn how to setup shadeless materials in Cycles by using an emit shader and light paths. You will see a quick demonstration of what light paths do and even get a small tease of what our Eat Sheep project looks like at the time of this recording!

QUIT BLENDER (or die!)
BlenderNation - 2012-03-09 20:31:42

The Mango team has completed their first milestone: a five-day workshop in which they created a short film based on a script by Ton. Ian writes: BAM! Here we are, the finished kickoff film, only 5 days after starting. Is … Continue reading →

Kickoff Workshop: Day 5
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-09 19:10:16

BAM! Here we are, the finished kickoff film, only 5 days after starting.

Is it perfect? Nooooooo- we’d tweak this thing forever if we could- but we finished all the big stuff, and made a short film!

Today was a day of last minute tweaks and battling the render farm. At one point we had every computer in the place up and running rendering shots, along with the render farm. I suspect we would have been rendering on folk’s cellphones if we could.

Francesco is going to be cleaning up the SVN database this weekend, and we’ll be putting that all up for all of you to browse! The models and everything we made will be going up then as well.

We’re also going to be rendering a full HD version of this thing over the weekend. We ran into deadlines (as can happen! When render farms! Are! On fire!)- so some of this stuff is only 50% full res (nothing you’d miss on YouTube, probably :P). But yeah, the “Official Artist’s Version” is coming early next week.

And with that- it is time for dinner! And Mango proper! Because, just again, this isn’t Mango! It’s a short kickoff project to test the pipeline and get to know each other and figure out what needs to be worked on! And pester Sergey with requests! 

Friday Hangout: Demoreel Friday!
BlenderNation - 2012-03-09 18:00:40

Demoreel galore! Post a link to your reel today! (it seems that YouTube links will be embedded automatically).

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Linux nightlies back up
Makehuman - 2012-03-09 15:58:20

Videotutorial: Folding a Plane in 3D
BlenderNation - 2012-03-09 12:01:40

Learn how to set up armatures to simulate paper folding in this videotutorial by A1Sirius. Part 1 Part 2

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

spray
Matt Ebb - 2012-03-09 11:54:30

YafaRay Code Sprint 2012
BlenderNation - 2012-03-09 10:25:30

Yafaray is planning a code sprint in the second half of 2012. Right now, they’re looking for a location to house the team and for donations. From the Yarafay website: This year we are going to...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Fake Sinkhole created with Blender
BlenderNation - 2012-03-09 06:40:59

  Andrew Price writes: In a little prank to the blender community, I posted this video without revealing it was made with Blender. Most blender users were smart enough to call fake, but a couple were fooled. What I didn’t … Continue reading →

Kickoff Workshop: Day 4
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-08 21:53:42

We’re releasing today’s video amidst quiet protests from the team. Once you get this close to done, it’s hard to release it before it’s all polished and perfect (and understandably so! The closer we get to the end, the harder it is for the community to know what’s done or not). But! We’re uploading the video every day, and here’s where we’re at! As usual, lots of shots are actually further along than they appear; most all the destruction simulation and shards are completed- they just aren’t rendering at the moment.

A lot of work left for Friday, but definitely manageable! We’re making sure everything necessary is being sent to the render farm tonight, so we can lay in the image sequences tomorrow! We still have one shot left that really needs a bit of work, but with everyone working together tomorrow morning, it should totally come together.

Stay tuned for the final!

Sandra Gilbert talks Blenderart Magazine | processdiary.com
ThruDreamsgate's Blog - 2012-03-08 19:58:44

Sandra Gilbert talks Blenderart Magazine | processdiary.com. Last night I had the pleasure of being invited to sit and discuss Blenderart Magazine and various blender related topics with Paul Caggegi from Process Diary. It was a heck of a lot of fun with lots of laughter.

graphicall: Brand new MyPaint build for #Linux, check the coolness! http://t.co/ETNR7wOp Great dev speed, way to go #MyPaint ! #b3d #painting
Twitter / graphicall - 2012-03-08 19:33:18

graphicall: Brand new MyPaint build for #Linux, check the coolness! http://t.co/ETNR7wOp Great dev speed, way to go #MyPaint ! #b3d #painting

graphicall: RT @chokeamancer: thank you @graphicall for the experimental #blender #cycles build that works with my gts250. how sweet (and fast) it a ...
Twitter / graphicall - 2012-03-08 19:30:34

graphicall: RT @chokeamancer: thank you @graphicall for the experimental #blender #cycles build that works with my gts250. how sweet (and fast) it a ...

graphicall: RT @moth3r: My favorite @graphicall #b3d build, every morning on my front door! http://t.co/Aas96oxo
Twitter / graphicall - 2012-03-08 19:30:16

graphicall: RT @moth3r: My favorite @graphicall #b3d build, every morning on my front door! http://t.co/Aas96oxo

For all those confused:
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-08 12:38:23

The movie we are currently making isn’t Mango! Mango is going to take us more than a few days!

We’re currently doing a 5 day kickoff film to work through the entire pipeline- the end goal hopefully being that all those mistakes and lessons we’d have learned from Mango, we’re making and learning now. It’s also cool from a momentum aspect (us artists would spend the first 5 days just calibrating our monitors, if we got the chance)- and gives us a much better sense of perspective in terms of time estimation. We’re learning first hand how long certain tasks take.  Just a sec- lunchtime.

Back! To see the original script and Ton’s initial announcement, check here!

So yes, full fledged Mango pre-production continues next week! If you check back later today, you’ll see some cool robot-y updates.

Visualize Photography Lighting Setups in Blender
BlenderNation - 2012-03-08 12:00:04

Patrick David uses a Blender setup to simulate the effect of lighting setups. The .blend file is provided. Patrick writes: [...]Having a reference for how the contribution of different types of light will affect the final outcome is very handy … Continue reading →

March 20: Introduction in Destruction, Izegem, Belgium
BlenderNation - 2012-03-08 10:00:29

Baptiste Ghesquiere will host a free workshop in Belgium on March 20. Baptiste writes: Hello Blenderusers, Recently I’ve given a little workshop on Blender in Izegem, Belgium during the Linuxbabbel. March 20, once again I will give a workshop in … Continue reading →

Squandered Relentlessness
Reyn's Blog - 2012-03-08 09:53:00

An essay by Rommel M. Martinez (2012-03-07) Original Link http://rmm.meta.ph/essays/squandered.html There is a disturbing, and eerie sensation that I feel whenever the damping realization that I am no longer a young child, is observed in my consciousness. The uneasy struggle between learning to let go of my portentous past and my capricious future, grips me, with heavy clench. It is not about

Improv club advertisement
BlenderNation - 2012-03-08 06:00:51

By Olli Äkräs. Olli writes: This is an animated advertisement for an improv theatre club of our group. I did the rendering in Cycles, added vector motion blur in BI to some parts, removed some noise with After Effects, cut … Continue reading →

Slumber Node Composite Setup
Reyn's Blog - 2012-03-08 04:59:00

I have recently received an email from Marco Iñiguez regarding Slumber (link) and thought it might be best to share my node setup with those of you who are interested as well. Here it is (.blend file and preview): http://www.pasteall.org/blend/12338 (click to enlarge) Thanks so much! :) -Reyn

Sandra Gilbert talks Blenderart Magazine
processdiary.com - 2012-03-08 03:50:14

About seven years ago, there was rumor of a magazine about to be released which would be targeted to the fast-growing Blender community. After wishing and waiting, Sandra Gilbert and Gaurav Nawani said “you know what? Let’s make our own” and thus, BlenderArt Magazine was willed into existence.

Blender Art Magazine is a terrific and free resource available to anyone who likes written tutorials, and who likes to keep up to date on what’s going on in the blender community. It is available to read online, or downloadable as a pdf – who knew seven years ago that this would be PERFECT for the iPad? (It’s where I store my issues!) As a bonus, you can also download many of the source .blend files contributed along with the tutorials in a handy companion zip file from the website.

Sandra isn’t as findable on the interwebz as most people, but not for lack of being reclusive. You can get in touch with her via the blender art website, twitter: @etagsmaerd and even like them on facebook

Blenderart Mag is always on the lookout for contributions. Each issue is themed, and you can get the details straight from their website on what the next theme is. The cut off date for  Issue #37 is April 5th 2012 and the theme is “cool tools”.

Sandra explains in the podcast what the best formats for submission are (.doc, .odt, text, acompanying pictures clearly labelled in jpg or png) and how she’ll do her very best to make it all look extremely professional and readable.

In the spirit of the community which it services, please consider also sending along your .blend file for the readers so they can follow along and learn from it.

Download audio file (Sandra_Gilbert.mp3)

Argh! Damned Fraudsters!
Aligorith's Lair - 2012-03-08 01:44:00

Aaarrrrgggggh!!!!!

It appears that a certain damned fraudster, or group of fraudsters, have spent the past weeks using some of the money left on one of my Google Summer of Code cards. Some $70 USD has been illegally spent over the course of the past week or two (as recent as yesterday, and as early as Feb 23rd - the day I fell ill) on the Apple iTunes Store (raking up $45 in one particularly rich feast - apparently through/from a Luxembourg address/account), Paypal, and some bogus skincare crap.

To add insult to injury, Citibank's phone systems have been impossible to navigate; dozens and dozens of different numbers, but none of which I can get through on.

Anyhow, damned be the "Luxembourg Fraudster or Fraudsters". I hope they face an unpleasant end to their days, but not before facing the full force of the law.

Render !
Blender Minutes - 2012-03-07 20:23:02

Finally I have (virtually) pressed the big RENDER button on my render machine and with this I have started the last part of the visual voyage for Ara’s Tale.

Since my last post I have worked through all the remaining todo’s and checked each shot file for problems and consistency. Where I knew of better solutions to problems, I applied those to older shot files. I also consolidated all the naming conventions, which greatly eases the creation of various helper scripts for the final rendering.

It was a very interesting experience to go through all the files again and ensure that all my standards are adhered by each shot. This is where a real checklist comes in very handy.

While going through each shot, I did test renders and compositing for 1 or two frames and with this I kept track of the total estimate in rendertime and more importantly the final size of the renderpass files.

Now I know the exact numbers:

total rendertime : 350 hrs ( on my render machine)
total filesize : 2,4 TB

With this knowledge I have created scripts which will allow me to automate the render process almost to 100%. There is yet one problem to solve: I am short of ~250  GB of harddisk space, so I will have to get some more space. ( Unfortunately the harddisk prices have risen considerably since the disastrous thailand floods some months ago).

The Music for Ara’s Tale is right on track too. Phil managed to create the first 250 seconds of the score and I can tell you: its everything I have dreamed of and then even more.

Now lets hope my render machine is up to the task and I have a 1080p picture locked footage in 14 days from today.

Stay tuned …

ps: and this post’s title image was my first go with the cycles render engine …

Kickoff Workshop: Day 3
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-07 19:01:27

Day 3!

The hump! Everything’s coming together, but we’re at the dangerous point where we go, “Psh! Filmed and edited in 2 days! We have nothing but time!” I suspect we’re going to wake up tomorrow, look at everything that’s left, and start sprinting.

Totally amazed by everyone’s skills today. Destruction and dust simulations, tons of motion tracking, even more bug fixes, insane compositing- it’s wild. And I’m not just saying that in the polite, “Go team! Everyone’s great!” way- no. My day was a daze of revelations and discovery!

And the Video Sequence Editor is surprisingly awesome!

Huge CG jump coming tomorrow!

Below is my current wallpaper.

Naruto Live Action Chapter One
BlenderNation - 2012-03-07 18:00:30

By stridermax. stridermax writes: So this is a live action I did where the main baddie is a puppet. If you know a lot about naruto it will make 100% sense but if not its still ok. So the puppet … Continue reading →

Use the Double Edge Node to Stylize your Rendering
BlenderDiplom - Blender Tutorials and Training - 2012-03-07 13:47:15

Extraction
BlenderNation - 2012-03-07 12:36:40

By ! FaB ! ! FaB ! writes: Hey! Here is my latest work made with our favorite 3d software! 90% Blender and 10% photoshop I hope you like it ! Link BlenderArtists Thread

5 Passos para um Projeto com bom fluxo
Blender Total - 2012-03-07 12:28:15

Foi postado um excelente artigo no BlenderCookie, que nos dando cinco ótimas dicas para termos um bom fluxo de trabalho ao realizarmos ou participarmos de algum projeto. Como você já deve saber o assunto ‘projeto’ é sempre intrigante no meio da comunidade Blender pelo fato de que uma grande parcela de projetos iniciados jamais são [...]

Mango Fun: Videos!
BlenderNation - 2012-03-07 08:25:48

The Mango team is updating their blog almost daily – too much for me to keep up and turn BlenderNation into MangoNation. Instead, I’ll do periodic updates on the project. Here are some...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Non-Blender: Get Free Unity Licenses for iOS and Android
BlenderNation - 2012-03-07 07:59:50

Unity is a free (as in beer, not open source) game design and deployment platform. Until April 8th, you can also get a free license to export your games to iOS or Android. Enjoy!

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Five Keys to a Happy Project Workflow
Blender Cookie - 2012-03-07 07:19:50

Hello and welcome to this project workflow tutorial! 

Unless you are an artist or team member that is actively involved in a studio production environment, chances are you find the requirements and good practices for a project workflow to be a complete mystery. It is not uncommon to see new, or even intermediate Blender users with little, to no idea how to efficiently structure a project. This can cause unnecessary delays and challenges during production.

Before getting down to it, I would also like to take a moment to give a small pitch for our Citizen Membership. If you like this guide and want to take it with you for easy reading or reference then sign-up for a Citizen account and download the print-ready PDF to take with you on your iPad, Kindle or phone! Citizen also gives you access to download the source files for all our tutorials and it includes exclusive tutorials you can only view with a Citizen pass.

This tutorial, or editorial of sorts, is meant to try and shed some light on a few things you can do to help make your production more successful; regardless of your project is or who is involved.

Efficiently structuring a production, and the project workflow is absolutely key to succeeding with larger projects. If your project is not a solo project, and instead you’re working with a team then this is even more crucial!

An effective project workflow, or production workflow, not only helps you get the job done faster but it helps you produce better work. You will enjoy the process more and it leaves you with a project that is easier to navigate several years down the road; even if the person looking at the project was not on the original team.

Every project is different and the workflow must be adapted to fit that particular project as best as can be. However, there are a few things that are universal to all projects. In the below text you will find a few of my thoughts on these things, along with some of the techniques I have found to make a successful project workflow during our productions here at the CG Cookie Studio.

I have attempted to break the key parts of a production or project workflow into five components. These are Project Roles, Team Communication, File Structure and Naming Conventions, Asset Management, and Finishing the Project! Let’s take a look at each one of these in turn.

#1 – Project Roles

Being part of the Blender Community, I believe many of us have this idealized picture of a large group of people all coming together and communally working to produce something awesome without a centralized direction or project lead. This is a great mental image but in reality, particularly when it comes to your beloved project that has been stewing in your mind for years it just doesn’t work.

One of the first things you should do before you produce a single project asset is define team member roles. Determine who is doing what, which roles need to be filled and figure out how you can best make use of the skills your team brings to the table.

Below are some example roles which you should be looking to fill. Granted, depending on the size or type of project you may also include User Interface Designers, Concept Artists, Marketing, and others. The exact roles for your team may vary, the important thing is that you define them.

Example Primary Roles:

1. Project Lead - the person responsible for making project-wide choices and keeping the team on task and motivated.
2. Art Director – the person that takes charge of the look and feel of the project. On smaller teams this person may also help direct marketing.
3. Production Artist(s) and respective Leads - these people are charged to ensure all project assets are completed to spec. Depending on the spec of your project, this may be broken into several areas such as: Character Artist Lead and Environment Artist Lead. 
1. Environment Artist: Responsible for all hard surface modeling and environment layout. This includes object modeling and lighting in most cases.
2. Character Artist: As you can imagine all things characters. Clothing, accessories and textures.
4. Animation Lead – the person that keep tabs on all animation to ensure quality and consistency
5. Tech artists / Engineers - these people are responsible for making sure everything actually works. This can boil down to shader development, optimization, custom tool creation and staring at lines and lines of codes for months on end.

When you have these roles defined, stick to them! Within the production environment, it is crucial each member fills their role to the best of their ability; this includes everything from the producer keeping the project going to the asset artists pumping out quality work. Doing this helps everyone stay on track and keep moving towards project completion.

Aside from making the best use of available skills, this also helps to avoid work overlap and too much head-butting. It is very common for new directors/producers to try and always be nice and let everyone do what they want, but this nearly always results in one things: you getting walked all over and the team getting nothing done. Let’s face it, this is your project and it should be done the way you want it to be.

#2 – Team Communication

I cannot stress just how important team communication is…personally I believe it is more important than your entire team, hardware, location, and everything else combined. The only reason this isn’t the #1 key is because the roles can determine aspects of the communication. Without good team communication your project will start to fall apart even before you begin. Good team communication should be a lot like your neighbors annoying, clanging, noisy machine that is always spouting steam! It’s always there, constantly makes a racket and refuses to be turned off.

The first step to good team communication is to put together a group of people that actually like to communicate. If each member of your team is off gallivanting with no regard for the rest of the group your project is doomed to fail. Every person on the team should actively contribute to team discussions and updates while also following the project lead. It is their job to help guide the project through completion and it is everyone else’s job to fulfill their role.

There are many different ways teams choose to communicate, if you’re looking for some new options then here’s a brief list to ease the process:

1. Skype - this works great for active discussions, particularly if the group chats are used to keep all members up to date
2. Wunderkit - the newest member of the 6WunderKinder family, this software is a great team to-do list and management application
3. BaseCamp - this tool is renowned for great team management while offering a wealth of tools
4. email - while boring, email is tried and true but it takes a very good team to not lose track of messages and to make sure everyone is on the email list. Use mailing lists to help solve this problem.

In the end, the most important thing is to simply keep the communication going!

#3 – File Structure and Naming Convention

If there’s a single thing I would consider a pet peeve of mine in the production process, it is bad or inconsistent file structures and naming conventions. When I’m knee-deep in a project, the last thing I want to do is spend hours searching for the files Sneaky Tom sent me because I don’t know what they’re called or where they’re at. Hours may be an exaggeration, okay fine it’s a huge exaggeration, but you get the point. If each team member follows a consistent naming convention and file structure it will be much easier for each member to pick up where others left off or make use of files from other people on the team.

You can use most any structure and naming convention as you like, just so long as it’s consistent and everyone sticks to it!

An example project directory structure:

• Project Root
• assets
• models
• textures
• output
• final_renders
• sequence
• sequence_comp
• scenes
• 01
• 02

This is merely an example and could be broken down further for specific projects. For example, you might further separate assets into characters and environments.

#4 – Asset Management

Right up there in importance with file structure and naming convention, is asset management. While working in a team environment it is crucial that every member know exactly where each and every file exists that is pertinent to them.

There are many different ways you can manage your assets, but I highly recommend using something like Dropbox with shared folders to keep everyone in sync and on the same page. The requirements of your project may bring to light other challenges for asset management, but Dropbox or some of the other software is a good place to start.

1. Dropbox -  an automatic file syncing tool that allows for shared folders between team members; also includes file change history in case of emergencies.
2. SugarSync – another automatic file syncing utility with much the same feature set as Dropbox but with wider range of customizations.
3. SVN – a version control utility that lets team members check in and out from a central source. It is great for coding projects but not so good for animation projects due to file sizes.

#5 – Finish the Project

This sounds like a silly thing to bring up in a workflow guide, but this is probably one of the hardest things to do. We’ve all seen and been around the start-up projects where everyone is excited, anxious and pumped to get started. Only to find out months and sometimes just weeks later that the project is on hold… Somebody is upset at somebody else, this other person won’t answer e-mails, and the motivation to work on this awesome project instead of going streaking on Saturday night isn’t winning.

If you follow the above project guidelines you will be making the first steps towards a successful project. By making communication a priority, defining team roles and managing your assets well you can not only give the project a successful start but be well on your way to finishing the project and going on vacation!

All vector artwork done by the excellent Yuanden

Space Weasle
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2012-03-07 00:37:43

And, I’ve just uploaded another phone skin to society6. I had an image I doodled of a space weasel, which I had originally created very, very small indeed. I made it a few years ago in Photoshop, and there was just no way of improving the quality.

So I imported it into Inkscape, and copied the shapes as vectors. I probably wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t wanted to upload it to the art site for possible sale. After creating it as an .svg file in Inkscape I can now resize the file to any size I want.

It’s perhaps a little bare with a white background, so I might add some detail to the image behind the subject. Perhaps a spaceship bridge, or the surface of a strange alien planet.

The planet might benefit from having dinosaurs of course, because there really isn’t any image that wouldn’t benefit from a few dinosaurs in the background, or perhaps this illustration will just languish on my hard drive, like so many others. I’m feeling guilty about not working on my novel after all, and it might be time to try and finally get it finished.

Or I might let it stay just the way it is, an illustration of a cute character, against a simple white background. I’m thinking it might look really nice on a phone skin.

The vector art process is a very useful addition, even to an artist like me who thinks of himself as a painter rather than a graphic designer. It unifies and simplifies an image, and gives it really nice clean look. And with Inkscape, there is much less chance of nasty ol’ pixelation.

Kickoff Workshop: Day 2
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-06 18:02:17

BAM!

So we filmed the script this morning. The current edit is looking pretty darn similar to the animatic from yesterday (with a few minor exceptions). Everybody was awesome! This is a pretty incredible team.

Destruction simulations, amazing robot texturing, 3d motion tracking, editing, great animation, and insane bug fixing abound! The film has really taken shape- but tomorrow the CG shots should really start looking closer to finalized! Also! Getting audio locked down!

If this is where we’re at by the end of the 2nd day, with any luck we’re going to be able to do all the polishing we need!

Developer meeting
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-06 17:32:55

Yesterday I sat down with Brecht and Sergey to go over the main development topics, checking if we’re still on track and still have the big picture in mind. Because of the current workshop week we didn’t go over issues extensively with the artists, for that we’ll have plenty of time later. Here’s a short summary of what we discussed.

• Motion tracker: is in good shape already, a new solver is underway to test. No bottlenecks.
• Cycles render: will be seriously used. Brech is unsure how fast it’ll be in our production setup. We will do GPU and CPU (farm) comparision tests. Missing features are known topics (like shadow & id passes). He’ll also check volume render. Antialiasing and sampling (FSA) is an issue. A more detailed Cycles review we’ll do in 1-2 weeks here with the team.
• We will need light probes or environment mapping (and stitching). Worth to investigate is efficient methods to extract light conditions from footage. Sergey loves to dive into this.
• 3D viewport: Brecht will check on overlay methods to enhance selection/active info, especially in rendered display.
• Compositor project: some nodes – required by tracking – will need porting to opencl still. Might become a bottleneck.
• Green Screen Keying: we will investigate best practices and state-of-the-art articles on this. My suggestion is to connect keying (mask extraction) to the clip-editor, using markers and tracking info and temporal filter options etc. Jeroen Bakker and Pete Larabell  are interested to help too.
• Depsgraph: we’ll try to focus on solving the crucial failures. Like the ‘dependency cycle conflict’ for piston cases and essential driver updates. As a bonus – when there’s time – we can try multi-threaded anim updating. The “proxy armature” also will have to get attention.
• Getting Alembic to work would rock too… it would allow to combine a lot of real-time characters in a shot for animators and shade/lighters.
• Color pipeline: the confused code for alpha and color spaces will have to become stable and useful (also on UI side, to clearly communicate things). OpenColorIO needs to be investigated still by the team.
• Asset managing: continue work with Andrea Weikert on it (or gsoc student?) or help out ourselves.

We’ll keep you posted, next week we can do an artists’ version of the above :)

Model Download: Chair
BlenderNation - 2012-03-06 17:30:58

By Julio Pires.

Quick update
Tinker Code - 2012-03-06 17:14:11

Hi all!!!! This is a very short and quick update! I’m currently on Cuba, without any kind of connectivity , but I keep working offline and making progress, taking advantage of the concentration that provides the isolation, and also some deserved relaxation with my family. With God’s help and friend’s help I hope soon been [...]

Phil Willis talk animation & Happy Feet 2
processdiary.com - 2012-03-06 16:00:54

Phil Willis is a Sydney-based animator. I met Phil a few years back at drinks for local industry folks. At the time, I was trying to get into freelancing, and Phil was trying to escape his IT job. Several years on, and things have changed for the better. I still can’t believe people pay me to do motion graphics, and Phil finished 18 months of Animation Mentor, and recently worked on Happy Feet 2.

He writes for www.Ozanimate.com, which features Australian animators and has his own blog at www.AnimationIdeas.com

Phil is currently juggling being a new dad with a number of personal creative projects.  To learn more about Phil and his work, you can visit his website: www.PhilWillis.com.au

Download audio file (Phil_Willis.mp3)

Having fun during the kickoff workshop
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-06 14:56:15

The Kickoff Workshop is a lot of fun!

We did the filming today, and it turns out the team is made out of awesome actors!

Little tour through the institute:
Team is working, Sergey is fixing bugs.

2D in Blender 2.6 – Tutorial (Part 2)
BlenderNation - 2012-03-06 14:22:30

Ian Ball goes on to explain his 2D animation technique, and shows how to create animations like the one above. This time: bending! Ian writes: Ok, so now we’ve got some images on planes we want to animate them. We … Continue reading →

Livro: The Complete Guide to Blender Graphics
Blender Total - 2012-03-06 12:37:09

Foi lançado recentemente mais um guia para quem quer iniciar no nosso querido software, escrito por John M Blain, o livro vem com a intenção de simplificar o aprendizado do mundo gráfico e fornecer instruções aprofundadas sobre os fundamentos e ferramentas do Blender, incluindo animação. O autor inicia com uma explicação detalhada a respeito da interface [...]

Meet your Oracle – Scientific Visualization
BlenderNation - 2012-03-06 12:00:20

A Blender Game engine project by Dalai Felinto. Dalai Felinto writes: The AAAS is an international scientific conference, that concentrates scientists from all over the world. Blender clearly...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Blender Institute Filmstudio
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-06 11:12:22

Bought this morning 4×500 watts halogens, and borrowed a huge theater light from the neighbours. Right now I hear screams coming from the studio, probably they’re filming ;)

Image Layers in Blender
BlenderNation - 2012-03-06 10:00:06

Fabio Russo is working on an image layers feature. Fabio writes: I started to develop features for images to create layers in Blender, as in PS and Gimp!!A first implementation was done by KWK (Konrad Kleine)  for Gsoc2010. Link Image … Continue reading →

Thanks, GMA News!
Reyn's Blog - 2012-03-06 07:03:00

Thank you so much to GMA News via Rose-an Jessica Dioquino for the news article and feature. http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/249598/pinoyabroad/self-taught-graphic-artist-in-la-union-wins-intl-award I'm very very honored and humbled. -Reyn

DVI Cable
BlenderNation - 2012-03-06 06:00:28

By LeoMiyashita. LeoMiyashita writes: This is my first post. DVI Cable Rendered by Cycles Link DVI Cable (BlenderArtists)

Sick Little Bunny phone skin design
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2012-03-06 01:57:55

I’ve been adding a few images to the society6 art site over the past few days. I found a few nice images I did a while ago, on an external hard drive I’ve been using for backups. This bunny phone skin design for example is a couple of years old, though I only completed it last year.

One of the fun parts of the whole process – apart from the idea that somebody may one day actually buy an image – is seeing my art on a phone skin or laptop case. It makes it look kind of like it has already been used in making the product, even though of course I’m aware the merchandise is only produced on demand.

I particularly like ‘Sick Little Bunny’ because, despite his messed up teeth, his bilious colour, his big fat belly, and his squint, he’s still kind of cute. I have quite a large selection of these creatures and characters I’ve designed over the years, including space weasels, elephants, robots and aliens, and I’ll probably take a little time each night to upload one or two to society6, and get a kick out of seeing them on a mobile phone skin.

This isn’t detracting from my novel too much either. I managed to write 2,500 words tonight, though the writing kept me up later into the night than I probably intended. I’m getting quite excited about the book, as it gets closer and closer to being completed. I’ll have to think seriously about getting the cover illustration finished, because I’m hoping I may well need it soon.

Book: A Complete Guide to Blender Graphics
BlenderNation - 2012-03-05 22:00:33

“While Blender is a wonderful free and open source program for computer modeling and animation, there has been a lack of unified, up-to-date documentation for beginners. Removing the...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Kickoff workshop: Day 1
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-05 19:13:27

We started with a briefing at 10 AM and around 8 PM the mango team finished the animatic. Here are some photos and a short video. Tomorrow we will do the filming, so stay tuned!

Adam Baum – The Chase
BlenderNation - 2012-03-05 18:00:51

By David Lindsley. David writes: After I did the face capture and hand capture tests in Blender a couple of months ago – I decided to put together a quick little story – which turned into...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Hot Dog
BlenderNation - 2012-03-05 14:00:37

  By JoOngle. JoOngle writes: I had some client that needed a 360 degree photo of a yummy hot-dog, the people that visited our ad-bureau, could not tell the difference, of course – you...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Mango Kick-Off
BlenderNation - 2012-03-05 11:24:47

All Mango members have now arrived in Amsterdam! They’ll be spending this week on a ‘kick-off’, where’ll they have to turn a short script (written by Ton) into an actual movie in only 5 days! Sounds like fun :) Note: this … Continue reading →

Kick-off week
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-05 10:13:48

Monday morning, 10.00h. I delivered a script to the team, which they’ll have to turn into a short film within 5 days. Premiere will be here at 18.00h friday, on youtube an hour later! The process of making it will be shared as open as possible. So: here’s the script already linked to the right. Written by yours truly, playing here in the Blender Institute! By the end of the day it should become a full storyboard and shot breakdown.

Tony Mullen will be here filming to deliver a documentary making-of!

Developer Meeting Notes, March 4, 2012
BlenderNation - 2012-03-05 10:00:45

Developers are finishing up the release targets for 2.63. Also, Google Summer of Code is coming up, and preparations are in full swing. Ton Roosendaal writes: Hi all, Here’s the notes from today’s meeting: 1) current projects Today BCon2 starts, … Continue reading →

Disbalanced
BlenderNation - 2012-03-05 06:00:00

Warning: extreme/pointless violence! By José Luccas Rosa de Oliveira. José writes: The first time i earned some money with blender is in a animation competition I made this animation, won the first place, and $200 =) I’m participating in another … Continue reading →

3D cat created with Blender as t-shirt and hoody design
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2012-03-05 03:12:09

I had this mesh I did of a blue cat hanging around on my hard drive, and I thought it would be the easiest thing in the world to render off an image to use as a t-shirt design, but there was a problem. It had been so long since I worked on the 3D model, that I had forgotten all the settings I had used in the blend file. It kept rendering wrong whatever I did, but it turned out to be fixed just be deselecting the ‘fields’ button. I have no idea what the fields button is for, or why I was using it last time I worked on this model, but everything worked fine once it was unchecked.

I was doing the render for my society6 store, where I’m adding all my art, or at least the stuff I originally created at large enough resolutions, which rules out some of the old images I did on my old clunky computer. It would slow to a crawl working on any image bigger than 500px to a side. A t-shirt image for society6 needs to be ten times that size.

I’m making progress with my fantasy novel, I’m at 6 and a half thousand words, and I’m slowly redesigning the site to better showcase all the role-playing game stuff I’ve been doing. So it’s been busy, and I still have to watch an episode of ‘The Good Wife’ and then drag myself out of bed to go to work in the morning, sheesh.

But it’s a lot of fun doing this creative stuff.

Deadstar I
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-03-04 23:21:27

Anime style short film about man who must choose between saving his close friend and the world.

Cast: Brandon Wright

Tags: anime, blender, short, film, space, animation, animated, 3d, experimental, avant-garde, sci fi, sci-fi, science and fiction

Blender Rockz
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-03-04 21:44:39

Doodled around with Blender 2.62 this Sunday.

Some shapeshifting controled rocks (Very easy to art-direct) and Cycles rendermagic (30s rendertime/frame using 100 samples). Finaly I edited some sound using Blender video editor :) Blender sure rockz!

Cast: Daniel Bachmann

Tags: Blender, 2.62, Animation, Rocks, Sound, 3D, VFX and Effect

Thanks Microsoft for saving the day
Dalai Felinto - 2012-03-04 17:07:55

What happens when an image fails to load in your system? It goes without saying that we need to find a non-intrusive way to analyze it.

It happened to me today. An image downloaded from the internet was failing to load in my project (a virtual art gallery for domes, more on that once it’s out). The internal framework involves to copy the image to the project folder and open it with Video Texture. For those unfamiliar with the Blender Game Engine, this is a python module to dynamically load and swap in-game textures.

In my tests all the images I tried were working. No exception. But of course it takes only a test-run with the client to get a crash One single image was enough to make me pull my hair.

Our beloved open image editor GIMP opens the image with no problems. In fact if I open it and save it I can open it in my project with no problems. So what’s wrong? Why can’t GIMP warn me about this problematic file?

Looking for ‘file inspectors’ I ran into this Binary File Inspector from Microsoft. It didn’t take more than a glance to spot the problem:

CMYK … Bingo! Opening the image in a station with Photoshop proved this was the issue.

For the adventure seekers out there, remember: open source tools are great. Yet you should be not afraid of getting out of your comfort zone once in a while.

Who could guess that Microsoft would be the cavalry to make it up for the lack of CMYK (and feedback) support on GIMP (or the lack of CMYK support in Video Texture, or me being short in tools for image forensics, …).

Have a great day,
Dalai

Blender Sequencer scripts you can’t live without!
BlenderNation - 2012-03-04 16:50:01

The ‘Blender’s VSE’ Blog has compiled a collection of awesome Sequencer Python scripts. Blender’s VSE writes: The Blender VSE or Sequencer is a very capable video editor. But it lacks some key features of other NLEs (Non Linear Editors). Fortunately … Continue reading →

Citizen Exclusive: Modeling a Car series – part 07
Blender Cookie - 2012-03-04 16:38:55

Welcome to another Citizen Exclusive! Each week we are working to produce Citizen content. If you’re not a Citizen, no worries and no need to start a website about sheep taking over the world and having to release monsters to eat them.  This isn’t affecting the amount of free tutorials/content to hit the site on a weekly basis. Basically we are just working harder. Of course you are welcome to sign-up today to get access to this exclusive and many more.

---

Modeling a Car series

Hello and welcome to this Citizen Exclusive series on modeling a car! This series will be covering the entire process of modeling a very detailed, high-poly car in Blender 2.6x. Throughout this series you’ll learn everything you need to know about modeling cars with an edge-by-edge method that focus very heavily on creating clean topology that not only results in a good mesh, it also results in a car model that renders far more realistically.

In Part 07:

The seventh part moves the focus to the wheels to model most of the wheel rim while focusing on clean topology and techniques for planning out the model so as to avoid potential problems.

Car Blueprints:

You can find the blueprints used in this tutorial here: Here you are! http://www.the-blueprints.com/vectordrawings/show/3257/mini_coupe_concept

Weekly news
Morevna Project - 2012-03-04 13:17:08

OK, the main event of this week is the official launch of donations campaign. It took much of my time to prepare it, but I think it worth the efforts.

With that event the project enters new phase – keyframes drawing – and since the 1st of March Nikolay is working on them. And here’s some results.

Also, to celebrate the beginning of the new phase of the project we decided to update our website theme with the new banner to better fit with current status of the project. Nikolay quickly made some cool artwork and now you can see the result (you may need to clear your browser cache to see the changes). Goodbye, old theme!

We was so excited with new artwork so after playing with new banner we accidentally got a new wallpaper done.

That’s all stuff for today. Stay tuned – the next week is going to be hot!

Nicolo, Kjartan, Francesco arrived. First day together!
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-04 12:10:15

No blog updates? Unfortunately that means we have loads of fun together! It’s now sunday afternoon and it’s the first time in 2 days I can sit down a while and check the web and email and this blog! Here’s quick bullet point updates:

• Everyone’s installed in a room in a cool appartment. Especially the one in the canal area (at Keizersgracht, awesome views) will make your Dutch friends green with envy!
• Yesterday Ian and David presented their mindblowing storyboards and script. For the team it was the first time they saw the entire story worked out visually and in detail. Lots of questions, many open (design) issues to tackle, definitely a lot fun ahead! There’s shots in this film that’ll become epic & iconic :)
• We then went for the ritual after-weeky ‘beer at the windmill’ and ‘dinner in thai’ evening. Many more to come!

Right now:

• Sergey is doing is Russian citizenship duties! He’s now on a train to The Hague in Amsterdam to vote.
• Sebastian is doing recordings for the Track Match Blend DVD here.
• Francesco is finishing his Animation Mentor homewerk.
• David Revoy is at Schiphol airport waiting for this flight back to Toulouse.
• Kjartan and Ian are on a bicycle trying to find the bridge over ‘t IJ to the northern part of Amsterdam, enjoying some nature.
• Tonight Rob will bring the *horrible cheesy funny* Amsterdamned movie, to have a film evening with the guys.
• I’m going to write a funny silly short script to present tomorrow morning to the team; they’ll have to execute & finalize it in 5 days as getting-started workshop!

(BTW: it seems nobody is smiling at the pictures, but that’s a coincidence :) I’ve just done quick snapshots yesterday, didn’t want to miss a second).

-Ton-

Adventure
BlenderNation - 2012-03-04 08:17:21

By Zordan. Zordan writes: It’s done and I’m actually happy with it The sphere in the foreground is rendered with cycles and the background with BI. Turned out to work better than I expected. Software used: Blender, Gimp Link Adventure … Continue reading →

Process to Go: Pandeia – Episode 01
processdiary.com - 2012-03-03 19:28:26

So with three short comics under my belt (Have you picked up your eBook copies from the Process Diary eStore?), and one anthology about to be published under my guidance (ok, not entirely mine, Derrick Utz went above and beyond with extra art, design, layouts, etc) I think it’s high time I began churning out pages for Pandeia again. And not at the old clopping pace of once a week, either. I’ve got a deadline on issue 2 if I want it on my table for Supanova 2012, so I am thinking way further ahead on page layouts than previously. Now if I can get the pace up, and really make a go at refining my workflow, this would bode well for future issues. I do not want to be writing this web comic in my 40s… and they are not that far away.

Thanks to listeners/commenters and all-round enthusiastic emailers like Mikhail P. Schalk, I took the hint and decided to do a “process to go” style series all about finishing this issue. If all goes well, I’ll do a short series for each future issue. I think I’ve gotten into the hang of getting work done while managing all sorts of craziness in day-to-day life, and if I concentrate on this title for a while, I reckon I can make it my main focus again.

I hope you enjoy this first episode of this P2G Redux. Some great suggestions rolled in via twitter: Pandeia On The Run, Pandeia 2Go, Pandeia Rides Shotgun, Buckle up, Minauld, Pandeia On Board, My Copilot is Shooter – all awesome (thanks Jose!). Still happy to hear suggestions!

Download audio file (TPD_P2G_PanE01.mp3)

Interview: Hjalti Hjalmarsson
BlenderNation - 2012-03-03 18:00:20

Paul Caggegi interviews animator Hjalti Hjalmarsson (see his animations American Style and Dikta). Paul Caggegi writes: Hjalti Hjalmarsson joins Paul Caggegi on The Process Diary to talk all things animation, working on commercial projects with Blender, and his experiences with … Continue reading →

More SVN Log Updates
MiikaHweb blog feed - 2012-03-03 17:19:43

I have added even more features to my Blender SVN pages.

Commit messages now display the authors full name instead of cryptic username, revisions in commit messages are now shown as links and there is a "changed paths" list on each revision page. Additionally some Statistics pages now have new file related charts. E.g. developer pages show most edited files and number of added, deleted and modified files.

Commit Logs are also available as RSS feeds in case you want to follow Blender commits more closely. You can subscribe All Commits, Trunk Commits or commits from a specific branch from any branches' statistics page.


Update: You can also use RSS feeds with "short-title" option (All Commits, Trunk Commits), this way revision title is printed as "r12345:" instead of "Revision 12345 (trunk/blender):". This can be useful if your reader has only limited screen space.

Twitter: 2012-03-04
Matt Ebb - 2012-03-03 16:31:00

• Only gets a small mention ( http://t.co/U07JtXcB ) but #houdini 12's new Solver SOP is going to make a lot of things much easier! #
• Congrats @sidefx on h12! Played with the beta already and it's in a different class to any other 3d app. Downloading apprentice HD now :) #
• Iridescent clouds over Newtown, Sydney @CloudAppSoc http://t.co/rHncgqwB #
• iske, ekat http://t.co/cT2o8DFD #
• carriageworks http://t.co/EmifmnXp #

A Cute Alien in a Crater Illustration
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2012-03-03 16:27:12

I just did a quick digital painting using GIMP and Inkscape of a cute alien poking its head out of a crater. I’ve painted it in a format that I can sell as a mobile phone cover – although everyone in the world seems to have a smartphone and cover already. I used Inkscape to make the basic shapes with clean lines. Then I exported it to GIMP and added a few nice shadows and other touches to make it more 3D and alive.

It’s nice to be doing an illustration just for the sake of it again, after doing a lot of illustration specially for the Extreme Future sci-fi role-playing game. It’s still a sci-fi illustration of course, as everything science fiction is still my first love, but it has a touch of cute about it that most of my sci-fi illustration doesn’t. My illustration, especuially for the sci-fi role-playing games, tends to be a lot more gritty and ‘realistc’ – if it’s possible to use that term about faster than light travel in the extreme future.

I have a bunch more of these cute alien designs that I have created over the years and I’m planning to do a few more paintings like this one in sizes that can be used for cool things like mobile phone covers and laptop covers, but the main reason for doing them is that they are just a lot of fun.

I’ve also found a site that I can sell the image through, and who will deliver the iphone case with my illustration.

7H30 and frame 200
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-03 15:49:07

Found on my desk this morning…

Renderfarm.fi at GDC and SXSW, Blender meeting!
Renderfarm.fi - 2012-03-03 13:57:33

I'm happy to say that this year I'll be representing Renderfarm.fi at both the Game Developers Conference (San Francisco, California) and South by Southwest (Austin, Texas). In case you're heading to either of these two great venues, please do seek me out! At GDC you can find me best at the Finnish section of the Nordic Pavilion (North Hall, booth 1824), while at SXSW you can find me best from the stand of the Finnish Mobile Association (stands 1123, 1125). In case you do get to either venue you can pick up your copy of the free and now classic Renderfarm.fi poster "Join the Blender Army", proven to also be hanging on the walls of great studios like the Blender Institute and Energia:

We'll be having a get together for Blender users at the Game Developers Conference on Thursday the 8th of March. Let's meet up at around 2PM at the Nordic Pavilion (North Hall, booth 1824) and move on from there if necessary. Similar meet up could be held at SXSW if enough Blenderheads show an interest. I know of at least two IRC #blender regulars who will be attending GDC with me, so the meeting's going to happen in any case. If you're there or even if you aren't but know of some Blenderhead who will - let them know!

Ott Planetarium Announces Blender Workshops for 2012
BlenderNation - 2012-03-03 07:25:36

The Ott Planetarium announces two new workshops, one of which is online. Ron Proctor writes: The Ott Planetarium at Weber State University has provided Blender-based production workshops every year...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Updated Front Page with Second Edition of the SciFi RPG
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2012-03-03 00:57:53

Extreme Future, the sci-fi role-playing game, has been in its second edition for quite some time now, a few weeks at least, and I’ve finally gotten round to updating the front page of the sci-fi and fantasy publishing and illustration website to reflect that. I’m very proud of the new edition, and on top of a vastly expanded background galaxy – yes an entire galaxy – to adventure in, the game system is also now entirely designed in house.

Designing a dedicated game system, rather than using an off the peg system like FUDGE, was the only way to get the control I required. I wanted to make a game that was light on the bookkeeping, but heavy on cool detail and stats for all the sci-fi hardware of the setting, including robots, spaceships, weapons and monsters – oops, I mean belligerent aliens.

I quite like the cover as well, it sums up the busy environment of the game, with lots of action both in space and on planetary surfaces. It also emphasises the space opera aspect of the games, where some attempt has been made to keep things corresponding to real science concepts, but never at the expense of making things cool. Faster than light travel and communication are commonplace in the background to this role-playing game and psionics are also far from uncommon. One of the weapons available is even an approximation of the good old force sword famous from a certain blockbuster sci-fi movie that shall remain nameless.

And on top of all this there are also extensive rules for including mechs within the gaming experience. They fit into a space opera setting surprisingly seamlessly.  RPG Drivethru has a few pages of the game that can be flicked through, and of course this sci-fi role-playing game is available for sale there too, take a look.

Starting up: Sebastian and Sergey arrived
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-02 17:51:31

Two team members arrived safely today. The studio is looking like it’s being used again, so cool :)

Friday Hangout: Do you make money with Blender?
BlenderNation - 2012-03-02 17:03:15

Howdy! Today I was wondering how many people out there are actually making some money with Blender. Is Blender part of your job, do you do freelance work or even run a business? Is Blender a small...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Mango: Open or Closed?
BlenderNation - 2012-03-02 15:52:19

Ton Roosendaal wonders just how much the Mango crew should share in their (almost daily!) blog updates. Do you want to be fully aware of what’s going on, or would you rather be surprised? Ton writes: In a previous post … Continue reading →

Half Life 2 Gravity Gun
BlenderNation - 2012-03-02 14:00:36

By Lino Thomas. Lino writes: I played a lot Half Life 2 the last weeks, so i decided to recreate the lovely physics gun i frequently used in this game. Because of the lack of detail in the lowpoly version … Continue reading →

Raspberry Pi
BlenderNation - 2012-03-02 11:30:40

The Raspberry Pi is a credit card sized computer that runs Linux and sells for only $35. After its announcement yesterday, 10,000 of them were sold in only a couple of hours. Here are two interesting stories involving the Raspberry … Continue reading →

Open or closed?
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-02 10:17:01

In a previous post people mentioned they’d hate it if we would give too much away here. I realize there’s a certain level of fun getting a surprise when you watch a film. However, this is also a making-of blog… so how will we balance sharing here? Here’s a couple of suggestions to promote more openess for Mango than previously for Durian/Peach/Orange.

1) Organize external help

If we want help from the outside world again, we should be able to talk about what we’re making, right? For example, we can really use help with props again (real ones and cg ones).We will have complicated vfx challenges to tackle as well – not only in smoke/fire sim and with fracture. Discussions and reviews – what to film in a studio, what to do on a film set in town, and what we’ll rely on to do “in post”- would be great to share here with an audience too.

2) There’s a lot of fun to share

We are going to talk to the costume designer, there’s going to be a casting stage – and we’d like to introduce the characters here – and we’ll do filming on public locations (and will also allow visitors on the set). We will be doing storyboading, animatics, test renders, experiments… if we have to think twice before sharing anything the threshold for posting here will get higher and it’ll result in only very few posts.

3) Low posting threshold = more involvement = less frustrating crits

I think that a higher level of openess here will also work very well for the team. During Sintel, the quite critical blog following we had was often spoiling the fun and interest to post here. We should be able to post unfinished work-in-progress here without immediately getting flooded with (constructive but) negative reactions. I think that can best be tackled by posting much more, allowing followers here to track actual progress and get involved in the process that way.

4) Process of film making is coolest thing ever!

The process of making a film is much (much!) more rewarding than watching it; even when you can only witness it from the outside. Also when you already know everything (like me), it is stil a mystery how the film will actually look or work in 6 months from now. This is a gradual process of small steps during a long period… and actually we only know if it works in front of an audience in a theatre!  Further, even though I’ve seen ED, BBB and Sintel like a 1000 times, I can still enjoy watching it. Having seen it grow and come to existence only makes watching it more interesting. Every time.

Realize that you already knew the story of a lot of movies you’ve enjoyed. Lord of the Rings, Titanic, TinTin, etc. Did it spoil the fun? Wasn’t it much cooler to watch how the filmmakers solved things in the end?

Anyway! Feedback welcome :) The team will be arriving today and tomorrow, and after next week we should together make a good decision on what to keep hidden, and what to share. Personally I think we could share much more than we did for Sintel. Just not the final edit and script itself.

-Ton-

Fantasy Characters Contest – Blend Swap
BlenderNation - 2012-03-02 10:00:27

Blend Swap has just announced a new contest on fantasy character design. Blend Swap writes: Enter our new contest!, Create an awesome, full-featured, ready for production fantasy character and win...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

‘Viaje a la tierra del Quebracho’ Open Animation Movie
BlenderNation - 2012-03-02 06:00:14

The movie was created in MyPaint and composited in Blender. Libre Graphics World writes: Earlier this month TEMBE, a group of argentinian animators, publicly released “Viaje a la tierra del...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Review: Humane Rigging
BlenderNation - 2012-03-02 06:00:03

Fax on Blender did a ‘pre-review’ of Humane Rigging, the upcoming training DVD by the Blender Foundation.   Fax on Blender writes: “So what’s up with a new rigging product by...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Over, Under, and Elsewhere
Reyn's Blog - 2012-03-02 04:34:00

An essay by Rommel Martinez 2012-03-02 Our cunning ability for oversight is deridingly high. Whether it may be solving a problem or just trying to be creative. Our impulse to over-engineer is unusually prevalent if our initial expectations are not met. We drag our consciousness to lengths almost unfathomable because we think that if we pour in a lot of thought, the outcome is

A pretty good app for translating Italian words
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2012-03-02 02:11:30

This is just a little test post to see if the plugin in my blog to crosspost to Facebook is working. But just so that it isn’t too boring, I’ll tell you about my efforts to learn Italian. I’m learning it by reading a comic book, and translating as I go with a dictionary. I thought the best way to have a dicionary with me at all time was to get one as a free app for my iPod, and I was half right.

There was a pretty good app available, but not any of the free ones. None of the free dictionary apps I tried recognised any of the words, but this one at a few dollars recognises most works.

I’m Writing a Fantasy Book for Self Publishing
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2012-03-02 01:30:30

After reading an article in the guardian about a lady who self published a fantasy book to make enough money to buy a ticket to go see the Muppets, I’ve decided to write one too. Since then I’ve read a bunch more encouraging stories, including the top Kindle crime book, being self published. I read another interesting article about an author who raised a million dollars online, but it was on a project funding website, and the author was already well known, but I still somehow find it encouraging.

Of course I’m going to be providing the cover illustration myself, and I’ve been working on the manuscript and the digital painting for the cover at the same time. This has been a nice synergy, because the ideas I have while writing feed into the cover illustration, and at the same time the digital painting for the cover also feeds into what I’m writing.

I haven’t been able to talk about my writing project up to now, because I needed a cover image to go with my blog posts, and it has taken a long time for the cover to start looking anything like I wanted it to. It’s looking pretty good now, but it’s still a long way from completion, with every element – the main character, the dragon, the text, and the background  – needing tweaking at the very least, but I’m no longer so ashamed of it that it must remain hidden on my hard drive. I can set it free to decorate the deluge of posts I plan to unleash about my new self-publish fantasy book project.

All this writing is one of the reasons the blog has been silent for a while, but now, with a cover painting to show off with every post about the novel to be, that’s all over. I plan to write a bunch more posts about this self-publishing project, and its success or failure.

I’ve added  a ‘Flattr this!’ button for anyone with funds in Flattr, so they can encourage me to get from 60,000 words, where I am now, to 100,000 words, the planned length of the novel.

‘Our New World’ Wins Animation/Motion Graphics Award
BlenderNation - 2012-03-01 18:00:35

The Videomakers Festival received over 2000 entries, Niklas Holmberg ‘Our New World‘ won the first prize (€ 1000) in the Animation/Motion Graphics Award. Congratulations!! Niklas writes: Hello people! I submitted a video to Userfarm’s Videomaker festival 2011. I was just … Continue reading →

Concept art: the Oude Kerk dome
Tears of Steel - 2012-03-01 17:52:00

Just outside the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam is a small bridge where the key break-up scene happened in the past. Scientists have been constructing a gigantic dome and a lot of equipment around it to ensure they can reconstruct the past there perfectly… or is it a time machine? Image by David Revoy!

(Concept art is 6 days old, things are evolving into exciting directions, involving robots – for sure! Stay tuned!)

Donation campaign is launched!
Morevna Project - 2012-03-01 17:11:47

OK, today is the 1st of March and that means 2 things: Nikolay proceeds to drawing keyframes and we are officially launching the donation campaign.

Please spread a word and help us to reach the goal!

Read more…

Listen While You Animate
The Blender Show - 2012-03-01 17:03:30

In this audio-only episode, Ian and Wray discuss the various ways they discovered and learned to love Blender, the LEGO paradigm, and the computer viruses that come with cracking other pieces of 3D software. Download .mp3

One of my spaceship illustrations turns up, with a credit
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2012-03-01 14:46:31

Here is a green spaceship I painted, being used on a self-publishing writer’s blog. It’s always great to see my stuff being used out there, of course there are copyright issues, because the image is being used without my consent – but with a link so I think it’s cool. And it made me aware of a fellow creative’s blog, when the image got linked back.

I’m very ambivalent about the whole copyright issue anyway, and I think it has evolved to become a nasty way for big companies and governments to control what we see and when; a bad thing, of course.

There is for example the famous civil rights documentary ‘Eyes on the Prize’ that can’t be shown because nobody can afford to pay the copyright fees for the song ‘Happy Birthday’ that is sung to Martin Luther King by his supporters in one scene.

So I’m very deeply against copyright being used to stifle creative people.

In fact it would be great to live in a world where income was distributed equally to all irrespective of the work they did (so people did useful work that they actually wanted to, and that made them happy – rather than being forced to join the army of people forced to work producing either nothing, or worse helping to destroy the planet we inhabit). I’m a bit of a lefty :-). In such a world, we’d all get paid and we wouldn’t have to spend collective centuries arguing in court over who owns the rights to some slogan or jingle or other so the winner of the case could move into a mansion and the loser went outside to die on the street.

I also hate to see young inexperienced people having what they created being taken away from them by companies, or things like DNA being copyrighted, or Basmati Rice. It’s all nuts, so I have no particular issue with this struggling author using my image, at a resolution too low to be used in print, and with a link back to the source.

That seems to be cool behaviour from someone who respects me as a creative person. Of course (in case this post ever turns up in a court case in the future when I’m a big famous artist/writer/whatever) I do reserve the right to sue anybody that rips off my images, especially if they can afford to pay :-)

MinnBUG Minneapolis, Minnesota – March 4
BlenderNation - 2012-03-01 14:00:14

Blenderheads in Minneapolis, Minnesota are meeting this Sunday. John Fino writes: The second MinnBUG meeting is on for Sunday, March 4st, 1-4pm in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After a great showing for...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

First Cycles render ever on Renderfarm.fi!
Renderfarm.fi - 2012-03-01 12:50:02

We are extremely proud to announce that Renderfarm.fi might well be the first renderfarm on the planet to have successfully implemented distributed rendering for Blender's new awesome render engine Cycles. Although still at a preliminary testing phase, most of the difficult work is now behind us. We've created proof of concept that our method of splitting and computing work in to small sample sets, collecting them and combining them into a high quality and high resolution finish on the server side works. Here's Nathan's test render from yesterday that proves our case, the image on the right is the result of merging 100 21-sample images together, in effect creating a 2100-sample image:

The first session to apply this new technology is now running. As Cycles is in early beta for us, all Cycles sessions will be running on a small subset of computers. If you would like to help us in testing, please get in contact with Gekko on this forum thread. Similarly we would We would also now like to invite artists to send us some us some ultra realistic scenes, computationally intensive that they would like to see rendered as tests on Renderfarm.fi. If you have any, please get in contact on the same forum post or find us on on IRC Freenode #Renderfarm.fi! Three cheers for Blender!

Google Summer of Code Wishlist
BlenderNation - 2012-03-01 12:24:31

Preparations for this year’s Google Summer of Code have begun and the organisation is asking for your input! LetterRip writes: Hi all, I’m working on our GSoC application again this year. Part of that is a wishlist. Would be interested … Continue reading →

Design Classics
BlenderNation - 2012-03-01 10:00:57

By Lars Fischer. Lars writes: Hi. I used Blender 2.62 and Cycles. You see furniture from the Architects and Designers Charles & Ray Eames. More Information on my blog. Lars

Humane Rigging – the new Blender Open Movie Training DVD
Fax on Blender - 2012-03-01 09:41:37

Fax's Shopping Choices are back, this time with a small twist! You probably already know that the Blender Foundation is launching a new training DVD, this time on the subject of rigging. Nathan Vegdahl, of Mammoth Rigging Tutorial fame (and of course Big Buck Bunny and Sintel and Project London fame), is the author and he asked me to write a pre-review of the thing. Click to read it!

Headphones Advert
BlenderNation - 2012-03-01 06:00:30

By Chris Mcfall. Chris writes: An Experimental Advert for Wireless headphones Animated and rendered with “Blender” and “Cycles” “I created this advert for the “Zync” Wireless headphones by Versus. I wrote the Music In Fruity Loops, modelling, simulation and animation … Continue reading →

Introduction to Texturing with Cycles in Blender
Blender Cookie - 2012-03-01 04:48:31

Hello and welcome to this introductory tutorial on texturing with Cycles in Blender!

In this Blender tutorial Jonathan Williamson gives you an introduction on setting up your material shaders with textures for Cycles in Blender.

What you’ll learn:

Through this tutorial you should gain a solid understanding texturing with Cycles in Blender, including how to take existing texture maps (diffuse, spec, bump) and use them in material shaders to create the various surfaces you require for your project. You will learn how to set up the textures through both the Material Properties and the Node Editor while being shown distinct advantages of each method.

Along with texture map setups, you will also learn how to set up and HDRI environment texture for the lighting and how to use node groups for easy reuse of existing node setups.

Ted Talk – Daniel Pauly: The Ocean’s Shifting Baseline
Dalai Felinto - 2012-02-29 19:51:52

credits: Dalai Felinto, Mike Pan (Blender) and Sherman Lai (post processing)

 It’s available on Ted Talk the presentation from Dr. Pauly on the ocean’s shifting baseline. The key idea is that we need to stick to a baseline in order to develop a more reliable feeling on the changes that are happening.

But what happens when we can’t see the baseline? In this case the use of simulations – films and images – can be of great help. In the final slide of his presentation, Dr. Pauly showed an image to suggest a simulated ocean in 2010. You can see this at ~ 8:12.

This is not one my favourite works, but it’s an important one. This image was made based on a still from the first animation made in Blender I worked on, back from early 2009: The Life in The Chesapeake Bay. It’s nice to look back and admire how many chances to improve my work I got.

To work with science communication is a thrill, and to have this work recognized really makes my day. Note that this image is not being used only to illustrate a particular ocean scenario. The image is there to make a point. To reenforce the role of art in the understanding of our lives.

. . .

And yes, it’s always great to spread Blender around the world, even when people are unaware of it (I was going to do a screenshot from the Blender file but I can’t find it – it took TedTalk way too long to make the stream online available

A belated thank you for Villy Christensen, Sherman Lai and Mike Pan for the opportunity of doing the  original project together. And for York University and the unexpected strike in late 2008 God and his crooked lines, go figure.

Model download: Break Time!
BlenderNation - 2012-02-29 18:00:45

By Jay-Artist (Blend Swap) Jay writes: I started this with the intention of just modelling a Mug for a quick bit of fun, but got carried away. I have a dislike for badly modelled pottery, especially where the handles join … Continue reading →

And yet more storyboardin’!
Tears of Steel - 2012-02-29 16:04:42

Only a few days before the rest of the team starts flying in!

Our biggest goal right now; storyboarding EVERYTHING! It’s my first time using a tablet for any sort of extended period of time, and it’s really growing on me. I’d only ever used the 3X4” bamboo deals before, and having a larger pad definitely makes a difference. David Revoy set up his ideal drawing system on my machine, and MyPaint is proving to be a powerful ally. The current storyboard is clocking in at about 175 images so far- though in a lot of cases one shot is represented by several storyboards.

I’m doing the quick-n-dirty storyboards of everything, then David is going over some of the more complex/ambiguous frames and clarifying some of my scribbles.

It’s actually been rawther relaxin’. I’ve been so busy for the past few years that I haven’t really set any time aside to draw at all, and a few solid days of it are waking up some old muscle memory. That said, the hardest part is balancing my desire to make every frame detailed and awesome, and knowing when to move on when it’s good enough.

I started storyboarding a bit out of order, so it’ll be interesting to see how it feels when it’s all assembled. I think we’re in a pretty good place; lots of complex stuff that’ll test our tools, but nothing that seems flat-out impossible (just really darn hard).

But yeah! Nothing new to say that David hasn’t already, except that I think in a few hours we’ll hopefully have this whole deal laid out!

Jason van Gumster Interviewed on The Process Diary
Hand Turkey Studios - 2012-02-29 15:14:12

Recently, Hand Turkey’s Production Monkey, Jason van Gumster sat down (well, virtually) for an interview with Paul Caggegi of The Process Diary to discuss the various facets of running an animation studio with a pipeline built entirely on free and open source software. They discuss Blender, GIMP, MyPaint, Python, and even a little bit of LibreOffice. It’s great geeky fun. Have a listen!

Jason van Gumster talks Hand Turkey Studios

Pixels Clay and Noodles
BlenderNation - 2012-02-29 14:00:04

Here’s a new Blender blog that’s worth keeping an eye on. Manuel Burchi (Manollo) writes: We are four passionate French guys who love sculpting, working together and who especially love Blender. So, Lorembolo, Blackschmoll, Otsoa and mysefl (Manollo) created a … Continue reading →

Blender Production Essentials Webinar Now Online
BlenderNation - 2012-02-29 10:00:22

Last week, 3D Buzz hosted a free webinar as an introduction to their upcoming 6-week Blender training. This webinar is now available for download.   It’s over 150MB to download (and you’ll need to un-RAR it) but that’ll get you an introduction … Continue reading →

Jason Van Gumster talks Hand Turkey Studios
processdiary.com - 2012-02-29 09:34:03

FOSS may still be seen as the domain of the hobbyist with zero budget. But what if I told you that more and more studios are starting to turn to Free and Open-Source Software as the backbone of their operations? From Open-Office (now libre Office) to Blender, MyPaint, and GIMP, studios such as Hand Turkey Studios are successful examples where professional, commercial work is being done, and nary an Adobe nor Microsoft product can be seen. (Oh my!)

I speak with Jason Van Gumster about how he runs his studio, and also about the books he’s written: Blender for Dummies, and the GIMP Bible. We totally geek out, and some of the listening is definitely for the intermediate-to-expert crowds, but if you wanted to know what’s in store for future GIMP releases, and how Jason stays on top of the game, enjoy this very high-tech, geeky interview. You may have to come back and listen to it again once you’ve got some Python under your belt.

(… did that sound a bit wrong to you too?)

Jason can be found all over the inter-netter-webz:

• Jason’s Vimeo Page
• Jason’s Facebook Page
• Jason’s G+ Page
• Jason’s Twitter

Platform:	Windows/MacOs	Linux Ubuntu
Office:	Microsoft Office	LibreOffice
Image creation/manipulation:	PhotoShop	GIMP
Vector Art:	Illustrator	Inkscape
3D Software:	Max/Maya	Blender
Sketch/Paiting:	Sketchbook Pro	MyPaint

It’s by no means a comprehensive list, but it gives you a great start to some viable options that replace popular packages that you commonly see.

Download audio file (Jason_VanGumster.mp3)

Quick Basic Blender Test
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-02-29 08:28:12

Cast: Adrian Baxter

Tags: Blender, 3D and Animation

SUBLIME in all VALENTINE
BlenderNation - 2012-02-29 06:00:20

By Julien Remy. A bit late, but still pretty cool.

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

#3dpreset: Great Blender tips from James Neale
ThruDreamsgate's Blog - 2012-02-29 02:15:29

Today James Neale posted a series of awesome tips on twitter under the hashtag #3dpreset. I thought I would gather them up for those of you that don’t do the whole twitter thing. from James Neale “A creative studio can … Continue reading →

Model Download: CAT – Dozer
BlenderNation - 2012-02-28 22:00:10

By Daniel Kreuter. Daniel writes: This is a blend I made some months ago… but I still think someone could use it. It’s just a model without materials but feel free to apply some. Sorry for the wrong...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Exclusive Resource: Character Modeling Sheets – Krystal
Blender Cookie - 2012-02-28 21:08:18

Hello and Welcome to Citizen Exclusive Resource Pack of Character Modeling Sheets!

In this Citizen Exclusive Resource pack we are bundling up Krystal in two detailed, clean turnaround character modeling sheets done by Tim Von Rueden. The first is a blank canvas leaving her nude, to show her proportions and is ready for use as a reference or as a base for your characters. The second is an example of the bare turnaround sheet with her original outfit on. In the source files are a .PSD and . JPEG of the turnaround modeling sheets. The .PSD versions come in layers and is set at a very high resolution for you to zoom in and check out the details and line work.

Why are turnarounds so important?

In concept art,

Character modeling sheets take out any fancy lighting, poses, angles, and leaves you with just the character and their outfit. This helps push the strength of the designs and overall appeal. You are really able to create a believable, functional wardrobe. Even if the charactert is mythical, it still has to feel like it works together.

For this particular character, she is a runaway in a grand forest type setting. Since she is always on the move I gave her lightweight articles of clothing with a focus on her boots being a central point of detail. A forest’s floor can be unforgiving so some thick, protective boots were needed. Her hair is messy from the constant mix of the wind blowing through it and the sweat that has built up. She also has a few double edged combat knifes so the holsters were placed on her in position for easy access, such as on her hip. The rest are details that were added to give some more interest to the character.

For modeling,

During the modeling process, character turnarounds are nearly unparalleled in their usefulness. Character modeling sheets can drastically speed up the modeling process and give you a higher quality, more accurate model as nearly all of the design decisions have already been made by the concept artist, leaving you to focus exclusively on the modeling.

If you would like to learn how to create modeling sheets on your own…

Below are are two tutorials teaching you how to do so in both the Gimp and Photoshop software,

        Photoshop: Creating a Female Character Turnaround Modeling Sheet

        Gimp: Creating a Male Character Turnaround Modeling Sheet

Thanks for viewing and if you have any questions or suggestions, leave them in the comment section below ↓

Exclusive Resource: Character Modeling Sheets – Krystal
Blender Cookie - 2012-02-28 20:29:22

Hello and Welcome to Citizen Exclusive Resource Pack of Character Modeling Sheets!

In this Exclusive Resource pack we are bundling up Krystal in two detailed, clean turnaround character modeling sheets done by Tim Von Rueden. The first is a blank canvas leaving her nude, to show her proportions and is ready for use as a reference or as a base for your characters. The second is an example of the bare turnaround sheet with her original outfit on. In the source files are a .PSD and . JPEG of the turnaround modeling sheets. The .PSD versions come in layers and is set at a very high resolution for you to zoom in and check out the details and line work.

Why are turnarounds so important?

In concept art,

Character modeling sheets take out any fancy lighting, poses, angles, and leaves you with just the character and their outfit. This helps push the strength of the designs and overall appeal. You are really able to create a believable, functional wardrobe. Even if the charactert is mythical, it still has to feel like it works together.

For this particular character, she is a runaway in a grand forest type setting. Since she is always on the move I gave her lightweight articles of clothing with a focus on her boots being a central point of detail. A forest’s floor can be unforgiving so some thick, protective boots were needed. Her hair is messy from the constant mix of the wind blowing through it and the sweat that has built up. She also has a few double edged combat knifes so the holsters were placed on her in position for easy access, such as on her hip. The rest are details that were added to give some more interest to the character.

For modeling,

During the modeling process, character turnarounds are nearly unparalleled in their usefulness. Character modeling sheets can drastically speed up the modeling process and give you a higher quality, more accurate model as nearly all of the design decisions have already been made by the concept artist, leaving you to focus exclusively on the modeling.

If you would like to learn how to create modeling sheets on your own…

Below are are two tutorials teaching you how to do so in both the Gimp and Photoshop software,

        Photoshop: Creating a Female Character Turnaround Modeling Sheet

        Gimp: Creating a Male Character Turnaround Modeling Sheet

Thanks for viewing and if you have any questions or suggestions, leave them in the comment section below ↓

Exclusive Resource: Character Modeling Sheets – Krystal
Blender Cookie - 2012-02-28 20:29:22

Hello and Welcome to Citizen Exclusive Resource Pack of Character Modeling Sheets!

In this Exclusive Resource pack we are bundling up Krystal in two detailed, clean turnaround character modeling sheets done by Tim Von Rueden. The first is a blank canvas leaving her nude, to show her proportions and is ready for use as a reference or as a base for your characters. The second is an example of the bare turnaround sheet with her original outfit on. In the source files are a .PSD and . JPEG of the turnaround modeling sheets. The .PSD versions come in layers and is set at a very high resolution for you to zoom in and check out the details and line work.

Why are turnarounds so important?

In concept art,

Character modeling sheets take out any fancy lighting, poses, angles, and leaves you with just the character and their outfit. This helps push the strength of the designs and overall appeal. You are really able to create a believable, functional wardrobe. Even if the charactert is mythical, it still has to feel like it works together.

For this particular character, she is a runaway in a grand forest type setting. Since she is always on the move I gave her lightweight articles of clothing with a focus on her boots being a central point of detail. A forest’s floor can be unforgiving so some thick, protective boots were needed. Her hair is messy from the constant mix of the wind blowing through it and the sweat that has built up. She also has a few double edged combat knifes so the holsters were placed on her in position for easy access, such as on her hip. The rest are details that were added to give some more interest to the character.

For modeling,

During the modeling process, character turnarounds are nearly unparalleled in their usefulness. Character modeling sheets can drastically speed up the modeling process and give you a higher quality, more accurate model as nearly all of the design decisions have already been made by the concept artist, leaving you to focus exclusively on the modeling.

If you would like to learn how to create modeling sheets on your own…

Below are are two tutorials teaching you how to do so in both the Gimp and Photoshop software,

        Photoshop: Creating a Female Character Turnaround Modeling Sheet

        Gimp: Creating a Male Character Turnaround Modeling Sheet

Thanks for viewing and if you have any questions or suggestions, leave them in the comment section below ↓

The Violin Timelapse
BlenderNation - 2012-02-28 20:08:05

By Jimmy Widlund. Jimmy writes: This video took alot of time and patience. I started creating it like a week ago but I did many mistakes so i never gave up until i had good topology and i nice looking … Continue reading →

Production update: final script!
Tears of Steel - 2012-02-28 18:27:07

Yesterday Ian signed off the script as final! This means no further changes happen unless he gets the full team (or me at least) to support it.

He’s been rewriting scenes a couple of times, shuffling events around, adding/removing characters and playing with a lot of angles for telling this short story in the best way. I really like it how Ian now focused on filming a relative compact event, with a group of cool characters doing really fun stuff, with a lot of cinematic & design challenges!

But don’t worry, it’s still about a really crazy breakup in Amsterdam, causing the future to go haywire with robots. We’ll update you guys on this here soon as well, but I think it’s fair to first go over it with the team itself.

A final script also means we can start-up the casting process: the current script has 2 young characters (late teens), and five older characters in the future (warriors and scientists) and a bunch of extras. We also will target at getting our locations (around Oude Kerk, Amsterdam) arranged.

This Friday and Saturday the rest of team will arrive: Kjartan, Francesco, Nicolo, Sergey and Sebastian. (Jeremy will arrive March 13). We will do a final presentation of story/artwork/storyboards here Saturday 1700h! Sunday is day off, on Monday we’ll start a 5-day workshop – meant to deliver a short film as proof-of-team-spirit by friday 17h. Stay tuned!

-Ton-

Blender Videos in Mythbusters
BlenderNation - 2012-02-28 18:00:55

Here’s an overview of some Blender work that made it into the popular Mythbusters TV series! Dave Timperley writes: A bit of a Blender spotting. I worked on the Mythbusters TV show for six months and managed to squeeze a … Continue reading →

Planned downtime for nightly builds
Makehuman - 2012-02-28 15:02:51

Necromancer With her Boar
BlenderNation - 2012-02-28 12:00:37

An awesome model, based on a painting by David Revoy. Damien Monteillard writes: My name is Damien Monteillard and I’m French. I have modeled Necromancer with her boar, based on an illustration by David Revoy Modeling/Texturing/Compositing/Rendering : Blender 2.62 Texturing … Continue reading →

Create a Classic Old Letter
BlenderNation - 2012-02-28 10:00:35

Learn how to create a handwritten letter in this 1.5 hour videotutorial by Blender Magician. Blender Magician writes: This is a 2 part tutorial focused on creating what I’ve always wanted to do, and that is create an old handwritten … Continue reading →

Captain Proton On 3D World Magazine
BlenderNation - 2012-02-28 08:16:38

Luis Arizaga’s ‘Captain Proton’ image features prominently on the cover of the latest edition of 3D World Magazine. Congratulations! (See also the full-size image and the...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Such is Life
Reyn's Blog - 2012-02-28 05:58:00

(click to enlarge) “For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson My huge thanks to my friend Floren Bautista for allowing me to make him my model reference. Everything you see here is his existence. Made with: Blender 2.62 Rendered with: Cycles This is my entry to BlenderGuru's "Saying Goodbye"

The Producer's Report #152 | Edit System Crash Part 2
Phil McCoy's Posts - Project London - 2012-02-27 20:24:41

Dang nab it. We were chugging along and then crash. The little battery on the edit system motherboard needed replacing, so I replaced it. But in the process of removing and replacing the Blackmagic card to gain access and replace the little battery, the card was fried. So dang. We have a replacement Blackmagic card on order. It should be here Thursday and I should be able to pickup the HP XW8400 Workstation, the heart of our edit system, from our friends at Media Tools this Friday.

I am so looking forward to seeing Project London with all the music in place! That's what's on deck. And also a chance to evaluate all the dialogue and sound design work done to date.

BTW, this isn't the first time our edit system crashed. Thankfully through all of the crashes, we haven't lost data!

Sincerely,

Phil McCoy, Executive Producer
on behalf of Ian Hubert (left), Writer Director, and Nathan McCoy (far right), also Executive Producer and Phil McCoy (middle).

Sign up for email news about the movie premiere.
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Follow Project London on Twitter.

 

Track, Match, Blend!
Tears of Steel - 2012-02-27 19:30:30

Sebastian Koenig – our masterful 3d camera and motion tracker – is currently finishing a new training DVD for the Blender store. It has been written with a general audience in mind – also filmers with no real experience with Blender should be able to learn how to track and match. And blend!

As usual for Blender Open Movie Workshop titles, all the content will be free to share and spread as CC-by, and all revenues will help out realizing Blender Foundation projects. Like this movie :)

Click here to watch the awesome Youtube trailer.

Cycles + Internal Test
Tube - Epic Production Notes - 2012-02-27 19:30:13

 

Made a test from  Bassam’s tutorial on using cycles and internal together. The result is not terrible, but not perfect. Used another model cause cycles crashes during render (too many objects) and doesn’t work with multiple UV layers like internal does.  Cycles is good to use but it has a lot of limits so far.    Not suitable for animation yet – too slow and crashes often.  Maybe for statics and interiors. Difficult to work with lights – it seems only be possible to change intensity. Internal also has problems with SSS : for instance, no shadows in ShadowPass. Anyway we won’t use cycles for characters yet, maybe for environments. Now to make some more tests! I’m looking forward for further developments in cycles.

Note from Bassam: If this is Dimetrii’s ‘not perfect’ result, I think his perfect one would give me a heart attack brilliant as usual.

Training DVD: Track, Match, Blend!
BlenderNation - 2012-02-27 17:30:15

The Blender Foundation have announced a new training DVD on the new camera tracking module by the King of tracking: Sebastian König (pun intended ;-). From the Blender e-shop: This DVD will help you to get started with this powerful … Continue reading →

Another training DVD: Track, Match, Blend!
Blender3d.org: Latest News - 2012-02-27 16:49:00

Blender's camera & motion tracking gets fully explained with a new "open movie workshop" DVD, which...

Ending-dong
BlenderNation - 2012-02-27 15:00:12

By Vanilla Seed. jf sarazin writes: We are happy to share with you our latest very short film,fully done with Blender and Vray. Vanilla Seed is a six years old french Studio. We are using Blender...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

MY SON ON THE MOON :blender tracking test
Vimeo / Blender 3D - 2012-02-27 14:20:33

tracking and environment :Blender 2.62
masking and composite :AfterEffects

Cast: Tumota

Tags: Blender, Aftereffects, 3D animation and camera tracking

Digital open-source storyboard workflow
Tears of Steel - 2012-02-27 13:33:52

Here are the tips and rules I set for my storyboard workflow on the Mango project. For the past project Sintel, I decided to make it on traditionnal ( each frame drawed on paper ), but as the tools get betters 3 years after, I decided to go with digital storyboarding for this new project. I used Krita 2.4  ( last version,  compiled from fresh sources ) as my main tool.  Krita’s features presented here are really recent for some and were done on purpose to boost this workflow. But lets starts for now with the spec I use :

1. Image Resolution, size, format and  compression:

I decided to use this 2432×1024 weird format a bit arbitrary to keep the frame compatible with Mypaint ( who round each picture at saving to 64px , a known bug rooted in Mypaint engine ). Of course this size is a little ‘ off ‘ compare to the 2.39:1 ratio cinema standard, but for a storyboard it’s ok. PNG file format is used for the easy compatibility with other systems ; I want the team to be able to use the frame with any picture viewer and openraster ( *.ora , multilayer opensource file format )  still don’t allow it yet. The choice of having a large size over 2000px was lead to can reuse the brush preset I’ve done ;  mostly are designed to render good strokes on the scaling of a A4 300 ppi (   2480 x 3508 px ) , at around 35% zoom out of the viewport from the real pixel size.

2. Background and style

I start often on a bright grey background ( select the grey tones on a palette, then ‘X’ on keyboard to switcfh the foreground color with background color , then ‘Backspace’ to fill the background with the background color. ).

For the style, I draw greyscale silhouettes; with minimalistic outliner in a first draf step. Silhouettes are great to focus on the composition, and I generaly use the following code : Darker shape are in front of the camera, lighter grey are back. Black and White zone with contrast attract the eyes , I use it to underline the focus point of the picture.

If the shot get validated I can work it a bit more and render some details on the top.  But this step is only usefull when a shot also need to preview concept art in a precise situation of a shot.
This is already on the previsualisation , than really storyboarding. But because it produce nice looking picture and makes the story able to be read as a comics , I like to render my frame like that. I hope I will get time to make the definitive version like this.

3. Krita ‘save incremental’ workflow ( or the magic F2 key )

Krita can work fast on storyboard, if you name your first file with this sort of pattern :
xxxx_001.png
Then you can use ‘backspace’ to erase the whole picture ( I work flat on this little pictures )  , draw another frame , then press ‘F2′ on keyboard  as a shortcut for File > Save incremental version.

Your files will be saved like this :
xxxx_001.png
xxxx_002.png
xxxx_003.png
etc…

So , it’s easy to be fast to draw a scene in a linear way , just frames after frames. If you have a picture viewer open in parallel who read the sequence according to filenaming ( I use Gwenview who does excellent dynamic fading transition between frame on the fly, part of every KDE distributions , here I use Linux Mint KDE 12 ).

4. Inserting new frames before or after

You can take advantage of working with the filenaming as a ‘timeline’ if you want to insert a frame before or after another one.
For exemple , in the list  xxxx_001.png , xxxx_002.png , xxxx_003.png  , it’s easy to add a frame before and after 002 like this :
xxxx_001.png
> xxxx_001b.png
xxxx_002.png 
> xxxx_002b.png
xxxx_003.png

Working with extra letters ( + a~z ) offer 26 more ‘slot’ before and after a frame.

5. Modifying a frame , using an existing frame 

From your file browser ( mine is Dolphin , the file browser in KDE ) you can drag and drop the file over Krita (1) ; a nice menu will appear (2) and propose you to “replace the current document”  ( ideal to re-work a frame without closing Krita ) , or “Insert as layer”  ( this is cool if you want to insert an element from the previous frame , it happens a lot of time ).

6. Cleaning

Of course , a series of filename like 001, 001b, 002, 002b, 002c, 003 … etc… might not be clean for the final file sharing. I use the rename utiliy in the Gthumb picture viewer ( select thumbnails in diapo mode, then hit ‘F2′ ). This renamer dialog  is able to patternize and rename all the files in a cleaner way. So don’t be affraid to work a bit messy ; if your file order by filename is OK , then you can always clean it at the end.  Optionnaly , you can also batch rename in Dolphin ( the default filebrowser of Kde ) directly with F2 or with a right click and ‘rename’ label , the pattern options are mutch more basics, but it does also the job for a simple  batch renaming.

When all the *.png frames are ready  , you can insert them with Libre Office Draw in page and write subtitles or annotations and draw vector arrow above. Libre Office Draw is fine to work in multipage document, then print it or do a Pdf out of it. Ian did it for a dossier last Friday.

For animatic storyboard, Png frames are easy to embed into the time line of a video editor ; Blender VSE or Kdenlive. But we are still not at this step of the process to talk about it more.

Conclusion

Thats all, I hope this informations will help you to improve your “digital storyboard workflow” when you will need it. Now I have to go back and draw more of  concept art.
Today : Robots again !  I will try to answer any comments related to questions about this process.

- Note :  Thanks to the Krita team, and particularly Boudewijn Rempt, Dmitry Kazakov  and Sven Langkamp for the fix, helps and new features for Mango.
- Note 2:  Krita team is looking for coder(s) to fix OpenEXR support in 2.4. It will be a needed tool for Mango artist.

Article license infos  :
CC-By Blender Foundation : www.blender.org :: artwork : David Revoy

Force Fields Introduction
BlenderNation - 2012-02-27 12:17:05

Daniel Kreuter demonstrates the different force field options in Blender’s particle system. Daniel writes: Hey! Sorry for making you wait so long for the next tutorial but it was quiet hard to collect the information about it. So I hope … Continue reading →

Seco & Árido
BlenderNation - 2012-02-27 10:00:59

By Jorge Vega.

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Developer Meeting Notes, February 26, 2012
BlenderNation - 2012-02-27 08:24:49

Bmesh, Bmesh, BMesh. Oh, and some other projects :) Ton Roosendaal writes: Hi all, Here’s a summary of today’s topics: 1) Current projects and next release Bmesh has been migrated! About 75 issues were reported for it last week, 40 … Continue reading →

Exciting
Morevna Project - 2012-02-27 07:55:32

Damn, I just can’t handle myself! I never had such fun collaborating on drawings!

Weekly news
Morevna Project - 2012-02-26 14:17:42

Ok, folks, guess what I have for you? That’s right – the demo snapshot! It’s just few days left before the project will be to be kicked to the new phase, so it’s good time to publish things like that. ^__^

But that’s not all! This week Nikolay finally got his Cintiq tablet arrived and he already did some cool concept drafts. He is absolutely bizarre about contributing new keyframes and I can’t wait to see them!

And that’s not all again. To demonstrate our approach for backgrounds Nikolay made a quick wallpaper with “realistic” version of Morevna. We hope that you’ll like it.

Blender Cycles best hardware ? Using the Benchmark spreadsheet analysis
Oenvoyage's Blender Blog - 2012-02-25 21:07:27

So you are a cycle fan ? You have an old computer and graphic card, and want to upgrade your hardware to something good enough for running the new cycle rendering engine ? Here is an interesting article for you. It all started with a cool model and shared .blend file by Mike Pan. People [...]

Twitter: 2012-02-26
Matt Ebb - 2012-02-25 16:31:00

• looks like i made the right decision to pike early from #tropfest . #
• Silent World by Michael Kenna http://t.co/TPyEvitI #

Steampunk Dome
BlenderNation - 2012-02-25 10:00:13

By c.j_235 and CJ. c.j_235 writes: Hey guys, that is the last render made by my friend CJ. We made a blog with the challenge “Make 130 renders in an year”! Yes, we’ll make that! This render is the second … Continue reading →

Interview: Jonathan Williamson
BlenderNation - 2012-02-25 07:51:32

Paul Caggegi interviews Jonathan Williamson from Blender Cookie. Paul Caggegi writes: Jonathan Williamson joins me for this episode of the Process Diary for an information-packed interview, and...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Ugh... :(
Aligorith's Lair - 2012-02-25 06:34:00

For nearly the first time in 2 years, I've been sick over the past few days with a sore throat, nasty cough, and recently snot-filled nose. Be aware that it'll be a few days at least before I get around to replying to any emails or bug reports, on top of my growing todo list of (small) deadlines in the coming days.


Ugh... I hate getting sick.

Meet your Oracle
Dalai Felinto - 2012-02-24 22:48:24

Welcome, I’m your Oracle. What would you like to know?

Those promising first lines announce what is to come. A virtual avatar who will walk you through a journey of knowledge and discovery.

This was our first take, a prototype if you will, in creating ways to communicate global data on the ocean possible futures and the scientific models underneath the predictions. As part of the NF-UBC Nereus Program.

If you wanna learn more about the science underneath the project, and the whereabouts, go check the official press-release:
http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/2012/01/03/the-oracle-meets-nereus-predicting-the-future-ocean/

What is the Oracle?

“We use a 3D gaming engine as an interface for the scientific models in order to present a science-based view of how the oceans once looked, how they look now, and how they may look in the future depending on our actions.” V. Christensen

This interactive presentation is part of a few years of research and some trial and error on better ways to communicate our science. We realized that a very powerful way of  communicating quantitative differences in scenarios was through a split screen and a continuous camera. The principle is based on having a constant baseline we can compare the simulated future scenario against.

For this installation we have a single yes/no question (“do you want to limit fishing for top predators?”) and thus two possible outcomes. We see this as an open end  framework we can feed with new questions and visualizations according to the topics of the time. At some point we can use the globe to explore the geographic aspects of the issues as well.

Or we may change everything and start from scratch. It’s really hard to tell at this point, but so far the response has been quite positive.
A screen capture of the whole interaction can be seen on youtube:

What is going on under the hood

Blender – an open source 3d tool – was used to produce all the graphic elements of this application. The application is built on top of the Blender Game Engine – a 3d game engine that is part of Blender. All the models and animations were made in Blender and the same goes for the videos.

Animations

Oscar Baechler, an artist from Seattle, joined us for two weeks to work in the oracle. His role was character concept, modelling, texturing, rigging and animation. It was quite a relief to have him on the team while I could focus on the programming, the rest of the artwork, videos …

The animation workflow was built on top of Papagayo. This is a standalone software that helps converting recorded dialogs into animated shapes over time. It works quite well for lip-sync. The original add-on for Blender was designed to control shape keys. This was a bit overkill and doesn’t work in the game engine. Thus for this project I had to change it to apply the transformations straight to hardcoded bone channels. Part of the patch was already committed back to Blender. Soon Oscar and I will create documentation for this workflow and share a sample character ready to use.

For cut scenes in the game engine I controlled the playback of the animations (for the camera and the oracle) through an Action Actuator in the Property Mode. The property used (frame) was updated with the current position of the dialog being played. The audio can be played using the python module audaspace or with a sound actuator. The key here is to use the current time of the audio multiplied by the animation frame rate: object["frame"] = time * 30.0

Look at me

In order to have the oracle looking at the camera, she  has a neck bone, set in a Damped Track. For every animation we set a different influence factor according to how much we want she to look straight to us. This is/was not currently supported in the game engine and the same goes for controlling the influence of the constraint. Despite all the rush we could afford to allocate some time for development. After a few copy and pastes I expanded the Armature Actuator to support Set Influence and the Damped Track. The patch with a test build is waiting for peer review here.

Click on the image to see the complete Logic Brick setup of the oracle.

Videos

The videos have a clever setup. The three scenarios (present/future yes/future no) are in fact one single file. I’m using python to switch the current scenario through a simple button in the interface (we got to love Blender Python capabilities). By doing so, the multiple particle systems (i.e. reef and small fish) have their population changed accordingly to the scientific data feeding the visuals. Also the camera border is set (so we render only what we need) and the colour of the water and other post processing settings (i.e. composite nodes) change as well. For the big fish and the turtle we are simply hiding the ones we don’t need for the current scenario.

This almost works out of the box. We had, however, to patch Blender to force the particle system to render exactly what you see in the screen (usually a small amount of the particles to avoid overloading the graphic card during the pre-render work). We could simply have different particle systems with different population numbers. The problem is that once you change one single particle all the arrange turns out different. So what we needed was simply to hide more or less of one specific arrange of a particle system.

We have been using this patch for quite some time now, but I’m yet to work with Janne Karhu (Blender particle developer) to push this into trunk.

Future Yes: more big fish, less small fish, turbidity 1.0

Future No: less big fish, more small fish, turbidity 0.2

If you want to see the videos individually, please visit:

• NF-UBC Oracle – Future Ocean – Present
• NF-UBC Oracle – Future Ocean – Yes
• NF-UBC Oracle – Future Ocean – No

Blender on the news

I was to post a  video on CBC Canada covering the event and airing a good part of the oracle presentation. However the video is no longer available. I wrote to the news network to see if I can get hold of it to re-share here. In the mean time I gathered some links 

http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/2012/02/18/window-into-worlds-future-oceans-unveiled-by-nf-ubc-nereus-team/

http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/2012/01/03/the-oracle-meets-nereus-predicting-the-future-ocean/

http://planetsave.com/2012/02/18/the-nereus-project-predicting-the-future-of-the-worlds-oceans-video/

Credits:

The Oracle is a NF-UBC Nereus Program product, designed to inform about management topics that are important for the world ocean.

Concept and Direction: Villy Christensen
Production: Jeroen Steenbeek and Dalai Felinto
Sound: Jeroen Steenbeek
Narration: Rhona Govender
Animation: Dalai Felinto and Oscar Baechler

The Nereus – Predicting the Future Ocean program is a scientific cooperation between The Nippon Foundation and The University of British Columbia.

NF-UBC Nereus Program
Director: Villy Christensen
Co-Director: Yoshitaka Ota

We thank the Global Shark Conservation Campaign of The Pew Environment Group for cooperation on production of the animated shark videos.

Scientific Advisor: Villy Christensen
Production: Jeroen Steenbeek
Visualization: Dalai Felinto and Mike Pan

AAAS, February 2012

The destiny of our oceans is in your hands …

Dalai Felinto
NF-UBC Visualization Expert
3D Artist / Software Architect

[if you have any questions or comments, please express yourself]

Friday Hangout: Crowdfunded Projects?
BlenderNation - 2012-02-24 20:21:34

Here’s a question I’ve been wrestling with this week: is the recent surge in crowdfunded projects a good thing for the Blender community or not? I love the concept of crowdfunding, and it works amazingly well for the Blender Institute’s … Continue reading →

Bridges tracking / integration test
Tears of Steel - 2012-02-24 18:11:17

A technical test, using 4k footage from real Amsterdam, tracked, integrated with some cg elements, all rendered in Cycles.

Of course being a test, we focused on some aspects and moved quickly on to others, so the modeling is a real simple kit-bashing, but still, kits are incredibly useful and a lot can be done with a small number of beam/girder/truss modules.

These use materials similar to the greeble objects in an earlier post, but even simpler: no AO bake, just an image with various B/W gradients, then each piece is UV mapped on one of those to set rusty/shiny parts, then tileable textures using a cube map projection.

The matching part (materials and light) is always interesting: ok, it is unforgiving, and spotting differences in extended objects (stone, brick) is very easy, but on the upside the ‘real’ objects in the footage make an amazing reference that really helps to improve the realism. Simply .. you don’t need to think that much or look for references, you pick something that doesn’t match and improve it :)

[[Show as slideshow]]

The shot was tracked and reconstructed by Sebastian, who also set up layers and masks for rendering in BI,  then I did the modelling and to render in Cycles we had to rethink it without masking layers, so we tried a few setups and eventually found a working one with the help of Kjartan.

The main question was managing the reconstructed parts (..the real objects that need to cast and receive shadows and AO from cg objects) the final workflow for the project will be likely very different, but for a start it wasn’t too scary :)

It will be a lot easier to do this kind of compositing when we get shadow and AO-pass, as well as mask-layers.

Once we have managed rendering this, we’ll post the finished tracked sequence. Will be interesting to see how that looks like! Will there be jitter? Will there be sliding? Fireflies?
In a few days we’ll know more!

:)

Baby head
Tears of Steel - 2012-02-24 17:23:05

Another concept idea done yesterday we will probably not use, scripts changes are going better and better.
Thanks for the comments on previous drawings :)

(Krita 2.4 Beta) 

Compositing and Camera Tracking in Blender: Hidden Safe – Part 03
Blender Cookie - 2012-02-24 17:16:17

Hello and welcome to this tutorial series on compositing and camera tracking in Blender 2.6!

In this tutorial on compositing and camera tracking in Blender, Greg Zaal of Blender Nerd will take you through the complete process of placing digital, 3D assets into existing footage. This tutorial series will be making use of Blender’s modeling tools, texturing and rendering in Cycles and even using the new Camera Tracker to match the camera movement for a believable VFX integration.

What you’ll learn

In the final part of this series you will learn how to cover up the markers in the footage that were placed as tracking points so that we could track the footage properly, resulting in a clean 3D composite.

View the final result:

1956 Chevrolet Bel Air Convertible
BlenderNation - 2012-02-24 15:16:20

A highly detailed 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air Convertible movel by kxlexk (Blend Swap).

Non-Blender: ‘Odeur de pain’
BlenderNation - 2012-02-24 11:00:24

Jean-Sebastien Guillemette gives an extensive overview of the creation process of their new commercial ‘Odeur de pain’ (Smell of Bread).

Living Room Scene
BlenderNation - 2012-02-24 10:00:48

By julioras julioras writes: hey guys alright,this is my last project I am very happy with the resul do cycles,I hope you like it too… Blender 2.62+Cycles. I used evironment texture HDRI as lighting,she’s a bit dark because it is … Continue reading →

Comparing OBJ, Collada and Alembic
BlenderNation - 2012-02-24 09:16:40

  Christian Ochsner shares some insight into three file formats: OBJ, Collada and Alembic. Christian writes: I thought it might be helpful to some people to laern something about the new Alembic file-format and how it differs from OBJ and … Continue reading →

UV Offset Modifier
BlenderNation - 2012-02-24 02:00:08

Paweł Kowal has created a patch for a ‘UV Offset Modifier’. He ‘s looking support to get his code into the Blender ‘trunk’ (and has created an absolutely wonderful presentation!). Paweł writes: I’m working on UV Offset modifier for Blender. … Continue reading →

Hjalti Hjalmarsson talks animation
processdiary.com - 2012-02-23 22:51:13

Hjalti Hjalmarsson is an animator working in Iceland. The studio he works for – Midstraeti - adopted Blender as their main 3D tool a few years ago, and never looked back.

We talk extensively about the industry in general, using Blender, reminisce on some ads we worked on together, and chat a bit about his experience with Animation Mentor.

Last year, he was the Winner of 11 second club March which garnered the attention of Animation Mentor. His work has evolved into a highly nuanced style, as seen from his most recent work on his Vimeo Page which I recommend you check out.

You can follow Hjalti on twitter: @hjalti while he works on getting his official website up and running.

Download audio file (Hjalti_Hjalmarsson.mp3)

Colin Levy’s New Logo Animation & Trailer for ‘The Secret Number’
BlenderNation - 2012-02-23 22:00:34

Colin Levy shows a breakdown of his logo animation and shares the trailer of ‘The Secret Number’. Colin writes: Wanted to post a different sort of VFX breakdown which shows a bit more *process*. Over a year ago I spent … Continue reading →

Well I finally went and did it….. I modeled a teapot
ThruDreamsgate's Blog - 2012-02-23 21:47:46

Yes I did, I modeled a teapot. Aren’t you impressed? No? Really, but it’s a teapot! LOL, I know, big deal, would you be impressed if I did it in cycles? Still no, huh, you all are hard to impress. Actually I find it beyond funny. In 11+ years of modeling, I have never once [...]

MiikaHweb Updates
MiikaHweb blog feed - 2012-02-23 20:25:10

I have been updating some parts of MiikaHweb in the past few days.

First of all: after gathering dust for nearly five years, the Mobile section is finally up to date again.

Basically it's a listing of mobile apps I have found useful. New section features all popular mobile platforms: Android, iOS, Symbian and Windows Phone, although Android is the main platform as I'm using it myself.


I also did some small improvements on Blender SVN statistics pages. I suppose most useful tweak are new Blender Tracker links on Commit Log pages. Now you can view the related bug report/patch simply by clicking the hash number on commit message (if any).

MiikaHweb Updates
MiikaHweb blog feed - 2012-02-23 20:23:30

I have been updating some parts of MiikaHweb in the past few days.

First of all: after gathering dust for nearly five years, the Mobile section is finally up to date again.

Basically it's a listing of mobile apps I have found useful. New section features all popular mobile platforms: Android, iOS, Symbian and Windows Phone, although Android is the main platform as I'm using it myself.


I also did some small improvements on Blender SVN statistics pages. I suppose most useful tweak is the new Blender Tracker link system on SVN Log pages. Now you can view the related bug report/patch simply by clicking the hash number on commit message (if any).

Breakdowns for Assembly: Life in Macrospace
BlenderNation - 2012-02-23 18:00:28

Jonathan Lax and Ben Simonds show you the magic behind their short ‘Assembly: Life in Macrospace’. Ben Simonds writes: We recently put together some breakdowns, showing how we did a few...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Timelapse – Lake
BlenderNation - 2012-02-23 14:00:04

See how this image was made. Jonathan Esquivel writes: I made this lake using blender 2.62, about 2 hours finishing it, here’s the timlapse :)

Have no Fear, Fax is Here – Take 2
Fax on Blender - 2012-02-23 11:50:52

So, ahem, six months went by without any updates here at the blog... Sorry about that :) Anyway, there will be new content soon, starting with a new review. Have you seen the new Training DVD the Blender Foundation has put up in pre-sale? ;) Meanwhile, some inspiration: what an AWESOME render over at BlenderArtists.

OSX Tip: Palua
BlenderNation - 2012-02-23 11:30:09

Using Blender on OSX can be awkward as OSX tends to use the function keys for other functions such as screen brightness, exposé and iTunes control. You can change this behavior in the system settings, but going back and forth … Continue reading →

NuremBUG – Friday, 24th Feb, Nuremberg, Germany
BlenderNation - 2012-02-23 10:00:59

Blenderheads in Nuremberg, Germany, are meeting this friday afternoon. Gottfried Hofmann writes: Hello Blender community, the Nuremberg Blender User Group (NuremBUG) is meeting for the 5th time now!...

[read the full article on blendernation.com]

Focused Critique – Episode 13
Blender Guru - 2012-02-23 07:11:42

Focused critique is the segment where I review artworks, and suggest ways they could be improved. It is aimed at helping serious artists who want to improve their skills by discovering the weak points in their artwork.

All the artworks are submitted with consent by the original artist.

Watch the Episode

This will be the last episode of Focus Critique. I’ve decided to put the series to rest as I’ve found the general idea to be overly negative and also fairly repetitive. Much of what I say in each episode was previously stated in the episode before it. So if you want more tips on improving your artwork, there is around 10 hours of episodes that you can still watch

Thank you to everyone that has stuck through the series. I hope it’s been helpful!

From now on, if you want critique on your artwork, please submit it to the BlenderArtist Focused Critique forum.

Featured Artwork in this Episode

I hope you enjoyed the final episode of Focused Critique. Remember to go to the Focused Critique forum for further help.

Blender 1st in Italy’s Tom’s Hardware Review
BlenderNation - 2012-02-23 06:00:41

Influential Tech website Tom’s Hardware votes Blender the most useful free Windows tool (and use a WAY outdated screenshot ;-) Francesco Missarino writes: Italy’s version of Tom’s Hardware website just published a review titled “Fortytwo useful and free Windows applications”. … Continue reading →

Cartoon Character Pack 1
BlenderNation - 2012-02-23 02:00:31

Three great rigs by VMComix (CC Licensed). VMComix writes: Contains 3 characters, including my old Porl character (but refined a tad bit and dressed). If you want to add your own clothing, just delete all the clothing parts, select the … Continue reading →

How to Change Your Blender Theme
BlenderNation - 2012-02-22 22:00:13

This is for new Blender users: did you know you can easily change (and store) the Blender color set? Sazid Al Rashid writes: Hello Blender folks. Today I am going to show you how to change the theme of your … Continue reading →