The third issue of Blenderart Magazine is now available for download. Once again it is filled with top-notch articles and art; I am deeply impressed by this initiative. Kudos to everyone involved!

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Illusoft has released their Collada 1.4 import/export script version 0.1 (released March 19th, 2006) for Blender. The the site also has a forum and bugtracker for users to post questions and report issues.

Illusoft, a games, software and design company, has recently put up a new website dedicated to their new Blender plugin.

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Last day, almost didn't make it today, just fall asleep in the morning, luckily my aunt woke me up just in time. It was actually pretty good today because the train only left at 7:55 AM and arrived at the station at 9:23, the bad thing was that I had the first modeling workshop starting at 9:00AM.

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GarageGames, producers of the Torque Engine, opened recently a project page on projects.blender.org for the Python exporter targeting their product.

For those of you that don't know it the Torque Engine is what was used to build such great commercial games as Dungeon Siege I, Dungeon Siege II, Tribes II, Auto Assault, Starsiege and many many more for both PC and Xbox.

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Rui is reporting in from his second day at the Libre Graphics Meeting in Lyon, France.

Today was a pretty intense day. I was really tired from yesterday and I had a hard time keeping myself awake during the whole day. This is the side effect of having to wake up at 5AM and go to sleep at 11PM for two days.

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samtheeagle has followed up his export script with a script to import Orbiter mesh files (.msh) into Blender.

samtheeagle has released a new version of the Blender to Orbiter export script.

There are loads of changes from 0.3, with significant code re-working and feature additions. Top amonst the new features are the GUI, mesh smoothing support and the automatic creation of DDS textures from the texture maps defined in the Blender model!

The sixth edition of the Blender F1 Challenge has begun! CurtisS is once again hosting his yearly fast-futuristic-car modeling contest.

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RCRuiz's Blend2Pov (version 0.0.5D) makes use of YafRay's XML file format to render to POV-Ray. Currently available for Windows and Linux.

The MakeHuman Project Team has released a new version of MakeHuman (v. 0.8a beta) which features a fully working obj exporter. Also, a new version of the Blender script MakeTarget (v. 1.1) is released which creates morphing targets for MakeHuman and fixes various bugs. Among the new features are 3D diagrams of deformations and the possibility to load body settings with custom values.

Besides me having to wake up at 5AM to get at LGM at about 9AM, everything is going nicely.I'm staying with some family in Lons le Saulnier, although it is near Lyon it is still almost 2 hours away by train.

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XfrogPlants 2.0 released March 15, 2006. Sample file available in every format at the bottom of the page. From the site: "XfrogPlants are 16 Libraries, each containing 60 models. These Libraries are modeled by botanical experts, and real samples of each species of plant in each library are obtained for textures - tree leaves are scanned, flower petals are scanned, and bark is photographed."

SketchUp has been purchased by Google. This news is being reported at several sites, but what does it mean for Blender users (if it means anything at all)?

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With 64-bit applications taking the 3D world by storm, Blender is no exception. Adkiller, who brought us the first x64 Windows build of Blender 2.41, has posted his latest Blender 2.41 and YafRay 0.0.8 x64 builds which fixes some Blender 32-bit compatibility issues.

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As many of you may be aware, there will be a three day event in Lyon France called Libre Graphics Meeting, it will be a three day conference around Open Source graphics, and Blender as an Open Source graphics related tool will be there.

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Ask anybody who knows Blender well which school they were taught it at, and their reply will most likely be “I wish.” Learning Blender has long been the major sticking point of this great 3D app; the price is very attractive to amateurs, but the interface, unfortunately, is not well suited to those that are not familiar with 3D applications and 3D computer graphics terminology. Further compounding the problem is the lack of professional Blender training available in most parts of the world, even in areas where 3D Studio Max, Maya, and similar training is readily available. Enter Rui Campos, a Java developer from Portugal. You may already know Campos as the head of the Blender Foundation Education Board (BF-Education), and recently I got together with Rui to discuss the initiatives that he and the board are taking to improve the situation of Blender education.

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Trillian is hosting a contest on Elysiun: creating the most realistic Blender explosion.

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