Planet Blender

Overview of Blender 2.62 – New Features Tour
Blender Cookie - 2012-02-20 22:49:35

Hello and welcome to the overview of Blender 2.62

This video tour showcases many of the new features included with Blender 2.62 to help get you up to speed with the new version as quickly as possible. Several of the most notable features include additions to Cycles, Motion Tracking and UV Unwrapping! You can see details on each of these below (and in the above video). Along with these features there were also over 200 bug fixes and numerous smaller features throughout.

Cycles

The Cycles render engine has a few major additions including render layers, render passes, multi-GPU rendering, better environment sampling, border rendering and more.

Motion Tracking

Following up with Camera Tracking in Blender 2.61, 2.62 adds the ability to track motion in a video file and apply that motion to an object. This makes is a breeze to do anything from digital makeup to cowboys with plasma cannons on their arms!

UV Unwrapping

Blender’s UV Unwrapping tools have always been pretty good but now they’re even better! Several new tools have been integrated that were developed during the 2011 Google Summer of Code. This includes a full automatic stitching tool, UV sculpting, auto-seam generation by UV islands and more.

Complete Feature List

Fore a complete list of new features and bug fixes be sure to check out the Release Notes

Stay up to date by subscribing to the Blender Cookie Newsletter

Call for Content Blenderart Magazine #37
ThruDreamsgate's Blog - 2012-02-20 20:33:43

It’s time again to start thinking about articles, tutorials and images for Issue # 37 of Blenderart Magazine. The theme for this issue is “Cool Tools” The last several releases of Blender have seen a drool worthy number of new tools and features. So this issue we are going to take a look at some [...]

Call for Content Blenderart Magazine #37
BlenderArt Magazine - 2012-02-20 20:29:30

It’s time again to start thinking about articles, tutorials and images for Issue # 37 of Blenderart Magazine.

The theme for this issue is “Cool Tools”

The last several releases of Blender have seen a drool worthy number of new tools and features. So this issue we are going to take a look at some of these fun new features. In addition, as a fun play on words, we are also accepting projects that focus on real world tools, which can include everything from the common hammer to specialty tools or new concepts for tools.

Looking for tutorials or “making of” articles on:

• Use of any feature or tool in blender (stable or test builds)
• Useful Add-ons
• Modeling or animation of Real world tools

*warning: lack of submissions could result in an entire issue of fuzzy bunnies, puffy hearts and a galley filled with images of hammers…. …… goes off to google reference images of hammers …. just in case.

Articles

Send in your articles to sandra
Subject: “Article submission Issue # 37 [your article name]“

Gallery Images

As usual you can also submit your best renders based on the theme of the issue. The theme of this issue is “Cool Tools”. Please note if the entry does not match with the theme it will not be published.

Send in your entries for gallery to gaurav
Subject: “Gallery submission Issue # 37″

Note: Image size should be of 1024x (width) at max.

Last date of submissions April 5, 2012.

Good luck!
Blenderart Team

Rigging training DVD from Nathan Vegdahl
BlenderNation - 2012-02-20 19:34:38

Pre-sale of Nathan Vegdahl’s new rigging training DVD has started. Nathan writes: I’ve been working really hard over the last few months to put together a training DVD for rigging in Blender. It’s part of the Blender Open Movie Workshop … Continue reading →

First Day in the Institute: Script Updated!
Tears of Steel - 2012-02-20 18:40:44

My first day working in the institute is finished! This morning I finished polishing up the next draft of the script. I’d been chewing on the first version for a while, and realized it suffered from being spread a bit too thin, and dramatically detached (non of the stakes directly affected the main characters). It seems like the best changes are always obvious in retrospect (‘does the protagonist have a ‘motivation’?') I consolidated the scenes to take place in only two locations, and brought the antagonist into the same scene as the protagonists, and the story is now a lot stronger!

That said, while the variety of visuals in the film have been pared down a bit, the improved quality/impact of the ones remaining should make up for it. Barring an awesome modelling sprint, our real superpower is development/quality- not modelling on a massive scale. I think it will demonstrate Blender’s abilities a lot better if we have a few great showcase locations, as opposed to trying to model everything under the sun. I can say now, we’ll definitely be doing a lot of digital set extensions and augmentation, requiring lots of motion tracking, keying, rotoing, and destruction simulation!

What’s exciting to me is that we’re not just going to be putting cool CG augmentations into Amsterdam, but that we’re going to be putting them into the coolest parts of Amsterdam. We’ve been scouting old churches and other places filled floor to ceiling with great textures and lighting, so that when we add in our details on top of it, every frame will be rich. When you’re shooting as high res as we’re going to be, you don’t want to spend a few million pixels of screen real estate on a bland T-shirt!

I just wrapped up a meeting with Ton, where we went in depth through the entire script, and I’m also getting some very good comments from the team, so with any luck we’ll have a locked script in a day or two!

Until then, here’s a cool frame from the storyboard David drew, showing an early concept for one of the opening shots. Working with David has been amazing. His hands have to work so fast to keep up with his imagination! He didn’t sleep at all last night because he was busy drawing 26 amazing panels like the one you see below- then he spent all day doing more concept art! He’s finally sleeping.  It’s so incredible to be able to work with such a talented artist.

Talk to you soon!

Ian

Mango: Storyboarding has Started!
BlenderNation - 2012-02-20 13:30:10

The first two members of the Mango team (Ian and David) have arrived in Amsterdam, and immediately started on the movie’s storyboard. Ton Roosendaal writes: David (arrived saturday!) surprised us this morning with a complete storyboard of the first three … Continue reading →

Storyboarding!
Tears of Steel - 2012-02-20 12:53:13

David (arrived saturday!) surprised us this morning with a complete storyboard of the first three scenes. It’s A_M_A_Z_I_N_G! Here you see Ian and David going over the shots. It’s so much fun :)

The script in its core (premise) is still the same, but it has been condensed to be more centered on events in future Amsterdam; removing the scene in space with a battle fleet. More you won’t hear from me now :) This week David and Ian get full freedom – just make it awesome! Next week we’ll get real and will start planning.

-Ton-

Free Rig: GRRRRR
BlenderNation - 2012-02-20 12:27:48

An awesome free rig by Draguu! Draguu writes: Hello guys, here is my 2nd free rig “grrrr” and few tests… hope you like it … you can grab it from here. Videos

Lego Minifigs
Aligorith's Lair - 2012-02-20 11:16:00

Recently I had a pair of Lego Minifigures loaned to me. Naturally, this was a perfect excuse to play with my camera (though it'd have been better if I'd gotten around to doing this earlier, instead of just before returning them) ;)



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Breakdowns for Assembly: Life in Macrospace
BenSimonds.com - 2012-02-20 11:04:55

My friend and partner in crime at Gecko Animation, Jonathan Lax, recently put together some breakdowns of the shots we did for our short film Assembly: Life in Macrospace, which won Best Designed short film at the suzanne awards last year. Have a watch if you’re interested in how it was made. All of the [...]

Captain LeChuck
BlenderNation - 2012-02-20 10:00:13

Is Monkey Island becoming a recurring theme in the Blender community? Only two weeks ago we posted a picture of a Guybrush model. Now it’s time for his archenemy, the undead captain LeChuck. MESCH973 doesn’t offer too much comment about this … Continue reading →

Dragón
BlenderNation - 2012-02-20 06:00:53

A very nice camera tracking sample by by ChincheArt.