Planet Blender

2.5 render times: sometimes faster, sometimes slower (+tips)
Oenvoyage's Blender Blog - 2009-12-11 23:21:42

Recently i have been testing the renderings between both 2.5 and 2.49 and i have to say my feelings were mixed at the beginning. I have been opening some recent or older project files/images and just comparing the render times. Some of the scenes rendered faster in 2.5 (in fact most of them), but at [...]

No Christmas without Christ
ArtofInterpretation.com: Recent Images RSS Feed - 2009-12-11 23:00:00

A meditation on Who Christmas is really about. Technical note: Pure Blender internal render.

[dot]Blend Magz 02
BlenderNation - 2009-12-11 21:55:29

Blender Indonesia has just released the second issue of their e-magazine, .Blend Magz! Complete with community news, artwork, tutorials, and interviews (including an interview with yours truly,) this magazine shows an impressive arsenal of work. Congratulations, Blender Indonesia Army! Check it out now! On a personal note, I wish to give a big thanks to Hiza [...]

graphicall: Sculpt Branch has been merged to trunk! Thanks Brecht and Nicholas! [25318] http://tinyurl.com/ydv8oot
Twitter / graphicall - 2009-12-11 21:18:37

graphicall: Sculpt Branch has been merged to trunk! Thanks Brecht and Nicholas! [25318] http://tinyurl.com/ydv8oot

Java City Generator
Arkavision - 2009-12-11 20:29:42

For my final project in the Object Oriented Programming class, I chose to create a basic city generator.  For 3d model input and output, I used the VRML format.  VRML stands for Virtual Reality Modeling Language, it was used a lot years ago for displaying 3D on the internet, though lately it has taken a back seat to more capable formats.  I chose it because it is very easy to understand and manipulate.

My program works by opening a VRML file containing several unique building models.  It seperates the models and inserts their VRML code individualy into an arraylist per building.  Those lists are saved by a class (“Entity”) that creates objects that contain the lists.  The objects themselves are then added to an ArrayList of type Entity for storage.  Think of this a scene manager that lists all your objects and lets you select an individual object for manipulation.

These objects are then reapplied to a new list, randomly, in a grid of a specified size.  Below are screen-shots of the program operation in order, from a model within Blender, to export, to program usage, to the end- back inside Blender.

While the program is functional, it needs polishing before I can release it.  The program will be used in a few scenes of my short film project.

antes de que sea demasiado tarde…
pablo lizardo - digital artist - 2009-12-11 20:07:30

Uf!, ya no sirven las excusas! en estos tiempos ya deben saber que soy un colgado!
Bueno, tenia ganas de publicar al menos qué me mantuvo ocupado durante este tiempo, que producciones estuve realizando.

Blenderart Magazine Issue #17 Now Available In French
BlenderArt Magazine - 2009-12-11 19:53:40

The French translation team has released another issue of Blenderart Magazine in French. Issue #17 ‘Lights, Camera, Action!’ or as they say in French ‘Lumières, Caméra, Action!’ is now available for download on the issues page. Blenderart Magazine would like to thank the French translation team for all their hard work and for being so dedicated to providing a French translation for the French community. This month we’ve seen the speedy work of the French translation team as it has been only several days ago since we last posted issue 16! We have no doubt that issue 18 is close at hand.

The Hatch Dragon Illustration, Saved for Web thanks to the GIMP Plugin Registry
Starbright Illustrations (blog) - 2009-12-11 19:48:42

 

This week we internet artists are being challenged with the word “hatch”. Now of course this is going to produce one or two images of dragons hatching from eggs, produced by the more fantasy, science fiction and role-playing game minded – like me – but it could also be associated with a hatch in the hull of a spaceship. Decisions, decisions… hey wait a minute, how about a dragon coming out of a hatch in a spaceship, now that would be really cool.

I reached for my usual swift internet illustration tools, GIMP and a graphics tablet, and started sketching in the main shapes.

I reached this stage quite quickly and, because the image was already beginning to look interesting, I started to miss the old days when I was using Photoshop and I could hit a button called “save for web and devices” at any time to create a snapshot of my progress at various stages during the creation of an image. I wondered if such a feature existed for GIMP.

Well apparently it does, Save for Web | GIMP Plugin Registry.

So the next question was, how do I add a plugin? Luckily the plugin comes with a readme file that gives simple instructions on how to do this. It’s a simple matter of unpacking the exe file and copying it to the correct directory.

I tried it out, and it worked first time, allowing me to get right back to working on my image. Next I hatched in some of the areas of the dragon with an approximate idea of the colours it might have in the finished image.

Then I added layer after layer, adding detail to each with my stylus, and quite a small brush selected.

With each layer I alternated between adding dark colours, shadows and black on one layer and light colours, highlights and tiny dabs of white on the next. With each layer the borders between light and dark become sharper and the illustration becomes more detailed and defined. I have recently been experimenting with the different pressure and angle settings of the graphics tablet, and how GIMP interprets them, but in this image I have turned all these effects off. I’m beginning to think my style is raw and energetic enough without adding these artificial sources of jitter and irregularity to my illustrations.

Demoreel: Fernando Carvalho
BlenderNation - 2009-12-11 16:00:57

Fernando is a Brazilian freelancer who works with Blender.

Bedre sent en aldri.
Blender3d.no - 2009-12-11 15:36:19

Skriver dette for å opplyse at det har kommet en ny versjon av Blender. Nemlig Blender 2.5. Riktignok er det en alfa build men dette er noe som er i rask utvikling. Hvis du har lyst til å prøve den nye versjonen er det bare å gå til og se om du finner den siste utgaven av blender der.

Det har også vert over 25000 oppdateringer av koden til blender siden den ble åpen kildekode for 7 år siden. Her kan du lese mer mo dette og se grafer over alle oppdateringene.

En annen ting er Durian som har fått støtte fra det Nederlandske film instittutet, noe som kan forlenge deres prosjekt med 3 mnd og få en ekstra person med på laget. Personlig så har jeg veldig store forhåpninger til dette prosjektet med alt det nye som følger med av nye funksjoner for Blender.

News from “Eleven O’Clock”
Trickle Project - 2009-12-11 13:51:03

Hi everybody! The short we are working on is almost finished. We have to complete some animations, and refine lighting in few shots. In these days, we will start rendering. I (Gherardo) am actually working on an original music for ending titles and I’m also collecting audio files for the sound design. I hope we [...]

[dot]BlendMagz 02 PUBLISH
Hello! - 2009-12-11 13:26:40

Terimakasih untuk para Army yang sudah dengan sabar menunggu rilisnya Magz edisi 02. Silakan download 138 Halaman full color dan menikmati karya-karya terbaik blender amry Indonesia. Publikasikan ke semua orang sebagai hadiah . Kami harapkan review dari army juga kritik dan saran tercerdas. Tanpa banyak kata, berikut link dari Magz.

File terdiri dari dua macam format, PDF dan EXE (flip magz for windows). Silakan download juga file sourcenya untuk latihan. Jangan lupa komentar ya GBU

DOWNLOAD PDF

http://www.mediafire.com/?1chntznzngz

DOWNLOAD EXE

http://magmaker.spotbit.com/main/magazine_project.php?proj=25791

SOURCE

http://blenderindonesia.org/download/magz/source/source.zip

Online Version:

http://issuu.com/dotblendermagz/docs/dot_blendmagz02/3

SeaBUG report, next meeting announced
BlenderNation - 2009-12-11 12:00:01

A quick report from the Seattle Blender User Group meeting last Saturday. Oscar writes: On December 5th, Prophetic Sky Inc. and The Art Institute of Seattle hosted the second SeaBUG. Blender users from throughout the Pacific Northwest once again packed the classroom to the gills and shared a number of tutorials, project presentations and general good spirits [...]

Kung Fu Bunny
Virgilio Vasconcelos - Animation - 2009-12-11 10:34:31

Nope. That's not a Kung Fu Panda and Big Buck Bunny mashup.

[read the full article]

Nicer graves with Blender and 3DNP
BlenderNation - 2009-12-11 10:00:50

Carsten Wartmann used Blender for an interactive display of gravestones. There’s a first time for everything :) Carsten wrote: I was just successful to sell some (slightly interactive) 3D content for the Web. Of course done with Blender, rendered with the internal renderer. Presented on the web with the great tool 3DNP (http://www.thoro.de/page/3dnp-introduction-en). The three first gravestones there [...]

Film credit for DVD sponsors
Sintel, the Durian Open Movie Project - 2009-12-11 09:27:09

As you remember, everyone who has purchased and paid the DVD set before september 15th will  get a film credit. People who purchase the DVD later, but before the film is finished, will get a credit on a special DVD section.

To avoid we miss names we already collected the full film credit list for the DVD sponsors (not gold sponsors, etc). You can review it here:

http://durian.blender.org/wp-content/content/filmcredits-dvd-durian.html

If you miss your name, or want a change, send a mail to Anja from our e-shop about this: shop at blender org. Also refer to your order number then! We will only use real names of individuals, no company names, no urls, and no nick names. If you want to be credited as company become gold sponsor, see our sponsor page.

A month before we go to premiere, we’ll also email everyone a reminder. But email addresses can expire, or get caught in spam filters.

-Ton-

Textures: Tile-able Wrapping Paper
BlenderNation - 2009-12-11 07:41:56

BlenderCookie is giving away five nice tile-able wrapping paper textures for your holiday season 3D projects under a CC license. Wes Burke writes: Everyone likes free stuff, but as artists free stuff can be a real life saver. With this round of free stuff, we are including 5 wrapping paper textures. These textures are 102400×1024 and are [...]

Textures: Tile-able Wrapping Paper
Blender Cookie - 2009-12-11 05:09:41

Everyone likes free stuff, but as artists free stuff can be a real life saver. With this round of free stuff, we are including 5 wrapping paper textures. These textures are 1024×1024 and are licensed as CC Attribution 3.0. You are free to use them for just about any use. In commercial work and personal, [...]

http://blendercookie.com

The Ian Report #476 - Depth and Displacement
Ian Hubert's Posts - Project London - 2009-12-11 04:29:51

This week is... exactly like all the weeks of the last few months! Still animating the final battle, and things are looking great! I'm currently compositing a shot from Nate Taylor, involving giant beasts and big missiles.

I had to create a higher-res version of Subject C's head for an extreme close up, which I was able to do by rendering out a still and a depth map, adding all the textures to the still, then using the depth map as a displacement map, which allows me to simulate head rotation (you had to be there). I'm pretty darn pumped by how well it turned out; it's one of the shots I've been curious about since we shot it ('just how is this going to work?')

I'm pretty darn pumped for the Half Acre Day show tomorrow night (info here); those guys are awesome!

Until next week...

Peace!
Ian Hubert

Writer Director

Comparison between YafaRay, LuxRender, Indigo Renderer and Maxwell Render for architecture
Blender 3D Architect - 2009-12-11 02:50:34

The number of external renders engines compatible with Blender 3D is growing fast, and today we have several options to render projects using advanced global illumination algorithms and methods. A few months ago we only had mostly YafRay and PovRay to create our projects. I know there was other like Sunflow and Kerkythea, but [...] Related posts:

1. Indigo Renderer will no longer be a Freeware In Blender 3d we have several external renderers to choose...
2. How to setup a render farm in Blender 3D and Indigo Renderer The look and feel of an image is very important...
3. Indigo Renderer 2.2 for architectural rendering in Blender 3D It`s been almost a week so far that I`m using...