Ton has posted some comments on the progress of the Orange movie project on the Orange blog. So far, things are going well and he has secured one month of extra funding. It looks like the premiere will be on March 16th or 23rd.
Sunflow is an Open Source Global Illumination rendering system written in Java. A new version was released today and it works with Blender thanks to a Python export script that has been made available.
This has nothing to do with yesterday’s article about the new fluid system in Blender. Instead it explains how to create realistically animated water surfaces using (animated) texturemaps.
As of version 2.40, Blender has an integrated Fluid simulator. It is the result of one of the Google Summer of Code projects. It allows you to define fluid bodies, obstacles and in- and outflow of fluids. The results are amazing but you should be prepared for some long and memory-hungry calculations, especially when you’re using high-resolution meshes.
I don’t know where he gets both the energy and the inspiration, but after working on the Orange movie during the week @ndy is also working on his own projects during the weekends. He posted another amazing image.
Here’s what he writes about it:
pardon the ‘roughness’ of this image, but i could only work on it this weekend… otherwise these crazy orange guys would’ve chopped my head off.
this is a bit more gimp than blender, but… oh well…
i just rendered out some little thingies and then stuck them together in gimp.
the idea for this image is a bit older and so is the little dino character.
You can find the full-size version on Elysiun. You can post your praise there too.
If you’re working with the game engine or you have another reason to use low polygon modeling, then this tutorial by NeOmega might be interesting to you.
The Orange site features an article on their recent media coverage. Considering the fact that they haven’t started a full-blown media campaign (yet?) they’re doing pretty well.
Blenderart Magazine #2 is out and once again it is packed with Blender goodness. It features 60 pages of tutorials, articles, Q&A’s and Blender Art and it’s available for free.
If you would like to work on your lighting and texturing skills then check out the CGTalk Lighting Challenge; download the model of a fruitbowl and post the result of your work to compare it with other artists.
The Docboard team have published a very useful ‘Blender Quickstart Guide’: everything you need to get started on one page.
