Planet Blender

Over 50 Youtube Tutorials from cganim8or
BlenderNation - 2009-11-03 16:53:48

Derrick Sesson (cganim8or) has spent a lot of time making a bunch of 50+ tutorials on youtube lately. Derrick writes: I've been spending the last few months making blender tutorials of all topics and putting them on youtube.  I've made over 50 tutorials from modeling to using the node editor. I'm very open to suggestions, so if [...]

Inside Vector Blur Node: action point!
Trickle Project - 2009-11-03 16:05:39

In order to improve the compo node “Vector Blur”, Petru had to understand what is inside it and how it works.
These two awesome files realized by him, show the structure of Vector Blur node and the variables inside it.

- Vector Blur node
- Data Type

We hope these files can be useful for whom that want to start understanding how a compositing node works in Blender 2.5 (at least the Vector Blur one)

Have you been impressed by the chart?
Are you still interested in reading more?
Our developing crew (Olaf and Petru) wrote the document that describes the direction we choose!

- Spark Motion Integrator

It’s still too early to publish the code but the document is an interesting reading!

Hope you like it!

Facial Shapes Test
Sintel, the Durian Open Movie Project - 2009-11-03 15:36:48

My presentation at Blender Conference included facial topology for animation use, as well as demonstrating a series of facial shapes on our test model.

A bit about my work flow: I start by creating the full symmetrical shape, ensuring natural progression from default shape (0) to full key shape (1). The next step is ensuring proper mixing of shapes. Much tweaking is spent on the more subtle details. Once the shape is completed, I weight paint to break up left/right side to allow asymmetrical expressions.

In his recent post, “Development Update #2″ , Brecht describes some of the development work that has gone into improving work flow efficiency.

Here’s the .blend

Enjoy!

Angela

Blender modeling Time lapse Alarm Clock
Vimeo / Blender3D [Time lapse] - 2009-11-03 15:29:45

Este es mi primer Time lapse, es para un torneo de modelado en un foro, al ser mi primer time lapse no es muy bueno pero espero conseguir algun otro soft gratuito que me permita tomar snapshots cada menos tiempo y poder mostrar mas detalle del proceso.

Cast: Belich

Timelapse: modeling a sword in Blender
Vimeo / Blender3D [Time lapse] - 2009-11-03 15:28:03

This is my first video timelapse, hope you like!

Music: AC/DC – If You Want Blood (You've Got It)

Cast: Lucas Falcao

A Conversation with Matt Forcum 11-09
processdiary.com - 2009-11-03 14:00:00




Matt Forcum is a professional Motion Graphics artist. He currently works at the Iona Group, and lectures in 3D character animation at Bradley University, Illinois. In his spare time, he works on a web comic series called Robot Beach, all about a Robot who dreams of surfing, and his adventures with his friends, a crab and a seagull. We speak about the strip, his short film project, Anabelle's Bistro, and many more topics of common interest.


Matt's personal blog can be found at www.houseofmove.com


The Robot Beach strip can be found at www.robotbeach.com



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Creating a Jack-O-Lantern
Vimeo / Blender3D [Tutorial] - 2009-11-03 12:32:02

In this spooky-themed tutorial we will look at some of the techniques needed to create a jack-o-lantern from a pumpkin. Some of the techniques include using retopo, extrude and some manual modeling. The tutorial also provides a series of tips for easily managing your camera angle and spot lights.

This tutorial uses the pumpkin from the modeling and texturing tutorials here:
blendercookie.com/2009/10/14/creating-a-pumpkin-day-1/
blendercookie.com/2009/10/16/creating-a-pumpkin-day-2/

Cast: Wes Burke, Jonathan Williamson

Creating a Pup Tent - part 1
Vimeo / Blender3D [Tutorial] - 2009-11-03 12:31:40

In this tutorial, we'll take a look at the complete workflow for modeling a pup tent in a style that was popular during the 1800s, in North America. This is a two-part tutorial, and in this part we'll be using the Cloth simulator for the tarp of the tent, and also how to create the framing, stakes, knots, and ropes.

Cast: Wes Burke

Art of the Title - Romance and Cigarettes
Vimeo / Blender3D [Animation/Videos] - 2009-11-03 12:30:24

'Art of the Title' is the name of a school project I just finished. I used a dialogue between James Gandolfini and Susan Sarandon in the brilliant movie Romance and Cigarettes. I hope you'll enjoy!

Made with Blender, Final Cut and Photoshop.

The name of the project comes from the website artofthetitle.com which display lots of movie title sequences. Some make use of a technique called kinetic typography; animated words and letters. Check out that website, it contains some brilliant title sequences!

Cast: Sander Wit

Animated cracks in Blender
Vimeo / Blender3D [Tutorial] - 2009-11-03 12:27:54

Tutorial for animating a crack on a plane. This is a simplified example of the technique I used to make the cracks in my 'Barrel' animation.

Cast: phlopper

What to name things? [ blender rant ]
digital janitor - 2009-11-03 10:33:00

I've been following a discussion on the blender developer mailinglist. And one thing that I don't understand is why developers in general have a problem of implementing naming conventions that are
accepted by the general population. Right now they are talking about shape keys, which in my world (and I would think 90% of the 3d artist world) is "shapes that has keys."

Even though I am at heart a "Softimage 3D Artist" I refer to shapes as "blendshapes", as it's a common concept in the industry. In blender they are called RVK's (?).

Anyhow, the interesting about this conversation is that no one seems to just accept what everyone is calling it. And in the open-source world it's even worse as it feels like they don't want to "do as the commercial applications" do. It's just a name... and I would think that if the blender community would like to have some more users from the commercial domain of users, they need to step down from their high horses of OpenSource pride, and just DO IT!
It's nothing wrong to call it what the general population is calling it. If you take a peek in
ANY magazine about vfx, it's generally called 'blendshapes' regardless of which software that is being used.

As much as I love how blender is being developed (and I bow my head to all the people who are doing this for free... it's just awesome!) I don't like the attitude of how it's looked upon other softwares or workflows.

I started a discussion there once which was based on that blender should have Application Environment Variables (and it's user preferences). This would make blender easier to fit into a existing pipeline. And this is how Softimage, Maya and Houdini has it. But this discussion led nowhere and ended up in "how the unix standard is".
And if they want to compare Blender with xmms or OpenOffice, fine, but it's NOT!

I wish though that I had the money to pay for a developer to code for Blender full time, but I don't have that. So until then I can only try and pitch in and rant about things :)

My list of a few common names to their functions

blendshapes = shapes for ex. a face
renderpasses = Beauty, Occlusion, ID, motion vector
renderbuffers = outputs that are made from 1 render, buffers that the
render engine spits out.
layer = visibility
partition = objects that belongs to a partition should be rendererd
(or not, depending on what the status of the partition is)
FCurve = FunctionCurve aka Animation Curve

etc.

That was a long rant... damn.... :)
blender developer mailinglist --->
http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/

graphicall: Sculpting is now multithreaded!! since r24257 in the sculpt25 branch, AWESOME, thanks Brecht!
Twitter / graphicall - 2009-11-03 08:34:39

graphicall: Sculpting is now multithreaded!! since r24257 in the sculpt25 branch, AWESOME, thanks Brecht!

How to train your dragon
Virgilio Vasconcelos - Animation - 2009-11-03 08:18:43

I must say I wasn't very excited about How To Train Your Dragon, by DreamWorks. Even though it is directed by the great Chris Sanders, I still shiver when I remember the absolutely terrible Monsters vs Aliens, the last movie from that studio. Fortunately this trailer shows that this upcoming movie is closer to Kung Fu Panda in terms of quality than to bombs like MvA and Shark Tale:

[read the full article]

Bearubs Video
BlenderNation - 2009-11-03 05:00:40

Created by David Lindsley "Christmas is Coming"  is in the style of those 60's stop-animation classics Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman. The song was written by David with help on the arrangement from his neighbor and neighborhood kids on the vocals. David is also looking for some help to create a longer [...]

Zaar Update 3
Arkavision - 2009-11-03 04:03:16

I wasn’t totally satisfied with the eyes, so I made the eyes larger and rebuild the face around them.  I did some other things to the face to improve it, and made small adjustments to the chest and front torso area.

Quick guide to model walls in Blender 3d for architectural visualization
Blender 3D Architect - 2009-11-03 00:26:28

I often get e-mails and questions from architects and students interested on migrating their visualization workflow to Blender 3D, and start to produce 3d models for architecture. They get interested on Blender based on artwork seen on the internet and the great renderers produced in LuxRender, YafaRay and Indigo with Blender 3d used as the [...] Related posts:

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COLLADA merged with trunk, Blender 2.5 – 64-bit!
Letwory Interactive - 2009-11-03 00:07:51

As I wrote in my previous message, I’ve been working on getting OpenCOLLADA libs built for Blender 2.5. Yesterday I managed to get the problems solved for getting good builds on win32.

Today, I managed to create working 64-bit builds of OpenCOLLADA. The libraries I have committed to our repository, along with the necessary changes in trunk source to get proper win64 builds done with Blender.

I have uploaded the build based on r24264 to Graphicall.org: my 64-bit build for Windows.

If people want to know how to create 64-bit builds for Windows, please leave a comment. If there’s enough interest, I’ll write up an article explaining my development and build environment, and how I create my builds (and official releases).