I don't post about Blender artwork often, but every now and then I see an image on the forums that I just keep coming back to.

Continue Reading 'The Chair' »

The Elephants Dream DVDs will hopefully be shipped during the next few weeks, and the excitement in the Blender community about this event is mounting. This leads to interesting new activities: I received an email from Paul Venezio who is planning to rent a small theatre to show the movie and have a Blender usermeeting.

Continue Reading 'Elephants Dream Showing in Phoenix, Arizona' »

Endre Barath (Endi), has created a website dedicated to an amazing kaleidoscope modeling technique which is not only easy but quick. And by quick, I mean getting results in seconds.

Continue Reading 'Kaleidoscope Modeling Technique' »

Blender comes bundled with a collection of useful Python scripts such as import and export scripts and object modifiers. If you have created a script that you would like to see included in the main Blender distribution, then read on.

Continue Reading 'Python Script Submissions for 2.42 Release' »

Recently, there have been some interesting posts on Elysiun that deal with people moving from Blender to other 3D programs. Disturbing as I was reading about this, I went looking for companies that use Blender on a professional level to show that Blender can do a professional grade job.

Continue Reading 'EDM Studio - Professionals Using Blender' »

If you want to learn how to model a car from reference pictures, then check out this tutorial by Gaurav Nawani.

Continue Reading 'Tutorial: Modeling a Toyota Celica' »

We posted about Nicholas Chapman's Indigo (a free unbiased raytracer) here on BlenderNation back when it was just a newborn version 0.3. They grow up so fast! The latest version 0.4 was released on April 9th and is for Windows only (whose processor must support SSE). There is a Blender export script available for Indigo 0.4 thanks to Nick Chapman and Ewout Fernhout.

Continue Reading 'Indigo Version 0.4' »

Hand Turkey Studios, an animation studio from Richmond, Virginia, have prepared the tag-on of their Firefox Flicks entry in Blender. The result is a professional animation that could reach a huge audience.

Continue Reading 'Firefox Flicks Entry Tag-on Produced in Blender' »

Johan Burell (Burre), one of the founders and lead programmer for the development team at Pixelknights announced on Elysiun that their game Origo: Prologue had the units and buildings (and some of the trailer) created entirely in Blender. Origo: Prologue is a realtime strategy game for the Zodiac PDA. I recently spoke with Burre about the game and how Blender was involved.

Continue Reading 'Origo: Prologue' »

A mockup of the Elephants Dream DVD is presented on the Orange Blog. Like the movie, the DVD has a dark and slightly creepy design and it looks magnificent.

Driven shape keys and control set-ups are well known in animation and a vital tool for any animator dealing with something as simple as eye movements to more complex facial expressions. This type of system has been available in Blender for a while and has been used to great effect by advanced users of Blender (see the Ludwig rig).

Continue Reading 'Driven Shape Keys In Blender' »

Those of us who spend most of their community life wondering on Elysiun's forums in search of the latest news/infos/projects/tutorials have aknowledged for sure the change, now if you try to reach www.elysiun.com you'll be instantaneously redirected to the brand new Blenderartist.org forums; but don't worry, all the preciuos old contents will still be there for the joy of the nostalgic ones and the future generations of BlenderHeads.

Continue Reading 'Elysiun changes' »

James Chronister (author of Blender Basics) and his colleague Jason Hancock held a presentation titled '3D Design and Animation in the Classroom Using “FREE” Software' at the International Technology Education Association Conference in Baltimore in March.

Continue Reading 'Blender at International Technology Education Assoc. Conference (ITEA)' »

In my mind there is a grand trinity of powerful 3D functions that all 3D programs should possess: Hair, Fluids, and Cloth. In Blender, cloth simulation was possible only through either animated displacement maps or softbodies, until now.

Continue Reading 'Cloth!' »

The POV-Ray site has recently updated their news site with a range of nice bits of information as well as distributed rendering solutions. One that certainly should draw the Blender community's eyes is a newly updated tool from Theo Gottwald.

Continue Reading 'Distributed Rendering With POV-Ray' »

It has been a while since their last post, but Matt has posted an interesting update report on the Orange blog.

Continue Reading 'Orange Progress Report' »

Ludwig is a fully rigged and animation ready character for Blender. His features include IK/FK arms, stretch and squash head and spine, and a lip sync ready face controlled by a custom UI. Ludwig was created to provide the Blender community with a high-quality humanoid rig and to promote Blender as a character animation tool.

Continue Reading 'Free Rigged Model: Ludwig' »

Rumours are that Blender 2.42 will be released in May and like with the previous versions, a splash screen contest has started on Elysiun. If you want to burn your work into the minds on thousands of Blender users, then this is your chance!

Continue Reading 'Splash screen contest for version 2.42' »