Planet Blender

10º Encuentro Linux – Valparaíso, Chile
Licuadora Studio - 2009-10-30 20:42:17

The 22nd, 23rd and 24th of October took place the 10th edition of Encuentro Linux, in the city of Valparaíso, Chile, and we were invited to talk about Licuadora Studio and Blender. The main event took place at Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, with a total of 70 speakers from different parts of Latin America, and [...]

GIANT BH2!!
CG系blog - 2009-10-30 19:35:27

TKです。
BLUE HERO2とまではいきませんが、mayaでモデリングしようかと考えています。

相変わらずしょぼいですがこんな感じにします。
シッポは動かすのが面倒なので無くなるかも。
学校の課題も兼ねてモデリングします。

Similar Surface modifier continues
harkyman.com - 2009-10-30 18:56:15

I’ve added a patch to the tracker. It’s the superstructure for a new modifier, in case some kind soul with a bug up their butt for the functionality previously described wants to show up, write only the hardcore code (the bind and deform) and take all the glory. Let me just say that this modifier will be used constantly, by everyone. Maybe even the Pope. So you’ll have that going for you.

But really, who am I kidding? I’m going to end up fighting with this all weekend and into next week when I should be writing my book.

Tracker link: Similar Surface modifier patch

Before the Phoenix Rises, It Must
ArtofInterpretation.com: Recent Images RSS Feed - 2009-10-30 18:30:00

From my "Mythologies" series. Technical note: pure Blender internal render.

News: Monthly Challenges in the BlenderNewbies Forums
Blender Newbies 3D Video Tutorials (Learn to Create 3D Graphics with Blender!) - 2009-10-30 18:08:00

The members of the BlenderNewbies Forums have been conducting several different challenges over the past few months. It's a great way for participants to have creative fun and challenge their current abilities with Blender. The challenges are always friendly because it's not about the competition, it's about participating in a fun way to help strengthen your Blender skills. So, no worries about being "good enough".

I'll be posting news about these challenges in the future, so come on in and have some fun!

The winner of the previous challenge decides what the next challenge will be. The last challenge ended with a tie, so they decided who would come up with the next challenge idea. The current challenge is a Monthly Challenge called "Self-Portraits" :

Challenge Idea:
I thought it'd be interesting to see how each of the members that participate on these challenges look.

It doesnt have to be a photo-realistic and accurate render, it's open to your interpretation.

So you could model yourself as an animal, as a tree, as a jedi, or whatever you think that represents yourself, having, of course, some sort of similarity to your look.

...Good luck and I hope to see a lot of entries!

This challenge is set to end on November 29th. Check it out...

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

Model, UV, and Texture a Complete Manga Character
BlenderNation - 2009-10-30 15:00:38

An *extensive* video tutorial teaching you how to create your own Manga Character. Karan Shah writes: Creating a 3d character that is equipped to be animated is one of the most challenging things you can do in CG, and to make matters worse, it has always been equally challenging to find any comprehensive tutorials on the entire [...]

DVD box with 4 disks
Sintel, the Durian Open Movie Project - 2009-10-30 14:04:03

David made this cool new graphic to promote our dvd presale… so it’s time to tell we plan a to do a Quad box even! It’s just more efficient to have two single layer video dvds (PAL, NTSC) and two dual-layer DVD-ROMs, one with all the  (HD) videos and tutorials, and one with the studio data. (24 GB total).

Still nothing compared to Main sponsors, who will get a TeraByte usb drive with *everything* on it.

-Ton

Easy installation of Yo Frankie! For Ubuntu
BlenderNation - 2009-10-30 13:00:54

It just became a lot easier to play Yo Frankie for Ubuntu Linux users. DramaKing wrote: PlayDeb, a software repository for Linux software, has made YoFrankie available for download from their website. This is a great leap forward because it simplifies the installation of the game for users running Ubuntu 9.10 (soon to be released). Link Yo Frankie! On [...]

Development Update #2
Sintel, the Durian Open Movie Project - 2009-10-30 11:50:34

Bugfixing and bringing back features in 2.5 has been taking up most of our time in the last two weeks. However a number of new features have been added as well, so let’s talk about those a bit.

Campbell and Martin worked on a Gimbal mode for the transform manipulator, which allows you to see exactly where each Euler axis actually is and edit only the single f-curve corresponding to that axis. It also gives you a nice visual indication when you reach Gimbal lock.

Work has gone into the shape key editing user interface, focusing on making the workflow more efficient, so less clicking, mode switching and manual work is needed compared to 2.4x. It’s now possible to create new shape keys by blending existing ones, mirror shape keys, edit shape keys with the blending applied, and to switch between shape keys in edit mode. Further the shape key list now shows editable values for each, and the list can be scrolled through and resized. Shape keys can be reordered and weights can be quickly cleared for experimenting with different shapes.

Autosave is also back now in 2.5, and working correctly now with library linked files, which were problematic in 2.4x. This should help the artists recover their work when Blender crashes.

We now have a basic deep shadow map implementation in SVN, it is not very advanced yet but working stable. This will be mostly important for hair rendering. Right now it supports transparency for shadows using a fixed alpha value per material, and lower memory usage than equivalent multi sample buffer shadows. Here’s an exaggerated example of how alpha allows to let more light pass through.

Further, Nicholas has been doing an excellent job improving the internal sculpt code. It’s now using a BVH for sculpting and redrawing code, so that those no longer needs to go over the whole mesh when drawing a stroke. I’ll start working on sculpting as well soon, mostly focusing on performance and memory usage.

For interested developers, the feature wishlist is being updated all the time, so please check it out. Also, the 2.5 list has many items that developers could pick up. Some features we think are feasible even if you’re not an experienced Blender developer, and that we could use here (see the web page for details):

• Connecting node links more efficiently
• Sequencer strip selection, transform, snapping, .. improvements
• Bring back Ctrl+L, Link Selected
• Proportional editing in object mode

Brecht.

*Update*
Thanks to Martin Poirier for adding object proportional edito mode, Revision 24185

Blender Game Competition 2010
BlenderNation - 2009-10-30 10:00:45

Things are gearing up for the 2010 Blender Game competition. We saw similar contests organized by Erwin in 2006, 2007 and more recently the one organized by malcando earlier in 2009. Similar to the game contest in 2009 there will be 3 main categories: 1) Gameplay/physics 2) Graphics 3) Logic bricks only Check out Erwin's announcement thread here while Mokazon's [...]

Asset management & modeling with proxies & arrays
BlenderNation - 2009-10-30 06:40:10

In his latest video, Paul Caggegi covers a number of tips including camera rigging and asset management. Paul Caggegi wrote: Hi Blender community. I've just completed a new video for the process diary. The subject is varied, but all parts factor in the creation of a set. I show you how to rig a targeted camera; create [...]

The Producer’s Report #91 - Lots of Activity
Phil McCoy's Posts - Project London - 2009-10-30 03:30:00

The Blender Conference finished up last weekend in Amsterdam. Two of Project London's top animators were in attendance; Dolf Veenvliet and Nathan Vegdahl. We contributed a 90 second trailer featuring a new song by Half Acre Day, Multiply, that we hope to include in the movie. Nathan and Dolf both reported that the trailer, which featured a bunch of crazy story elements and some eye-popping CG, was very warmly received. You can see this trailer if you happen to be at the Blender Party on November 7, in Osaka, Japan.

On other fronts, our usual Thursday post-production meetings are now moving to Saturdays from here on out. So look for this post to appear sometime Saturday morning instead of the usual Thursday evening time frame.

Here are the stats.

Status of Visual Effects (VFX) Shots:
Number remaining: 81
Number in progress: 10
Number completed: 537
Percentage remaining: 13.1% (LESS THAN 15%!!)

Doom: "Oh no!" (calculated by Ian)

Projected date for completion of all VFX:
12 January 2010 (based on projected time estimates of all tasks)
11 February 2010 (based on spreadsheet items completed per week)

This week’s recommendations:
Ian: "Wear your seatbelts!"
Jen: "Barry Gregg" because there is no one else I would rather have DP a movie.
Bryce: "Woot.com" because they're amazing. One day. One deal.
Nate: "Spirit of the Radio" by Rush. Yes, I like Rush. "Spirit of the Radio" is classic Rush. Classic nerd rock.
Phil: "Dreamer" by Supertramp. No explanation required.

Cheers,

Phil McCoy, Executive Producer
on behalf of Nathan McCoy (left), Producer and Phil McCoy (right)

Thanks to the BlenderConf
Reyn's Blog - 2009-10-30 00:39:00

Wow! I'm so high right now! I just wanted to thank the Blender Community and the Blender Conference for choosing my animation "Button" as one of the nominations for the Blender Festival, I really really appreciate it.  And in behalf of the whole developers and Ton of course, you have my greatest gratitude.See ya and happy Blendering! ^_^-Reyn