It was a busy year for everyone who is involved with Blender in one way or another. The Blender Foundation been extremely busy with finishing Elephants Dream, organising the Siggraph Open Source Pavilion and the Blender Conference. But that’s not all: the community has also really gained speed this year. More websites, tutorials and books have appeared than ever before.
Let’s look back at some what we think were the major events this year.
Best wishes everyone, and see you next year!
**Looks like we got this one wrong and I personally blew it. It seems that BMR hasn’t moved, but is just off-line temporarily. The site I link to here is a private site NOT BMR. Sorry for the mis-information, we got a bit confused! I sincerely apologize to katorlegaz.com for all the trouble I’ve caused. From Andrew Kator:
While we appreciate the attention to our models from this post, I must point out (as has Bill) that our site is *not* the new BMR. At the top of the models page, above the licensing: “The Blender 3D Model Repository has moved, with a new version of the community archive hosted by new owners. Please change your bookmarks accordingly.” The community archive, meaning an archive of models created by people other than us, has moved. Unfortunately, the “new” BMR was hacked in early December. The last public communication from the new owners was that they would try to have the new BMR back ASAP. From our past experience from hosting the BMR, it is not a simple process to keep hackers and other problems at bay. I am sure that when the new BMR is back online, it will be better capable of handling the communities needs.
A very interesting texture generator written in Java. The program has an brush/bristle creation tool that makes complex pattern creation easy.
Blender developers are currently wrapping up the 2.43 release. Rumours are that a release candidate may appear any day now. In the mean time, the release notes are being prepared and they can use a little help there.
There has been a growing community of individuals and studios using Blender for architectural visualizations and renderings. A website has been started by a French architect to promote using Blender for architecture, and bring together content for Blender.
Let’s face it, a good material can make even a cube look amazing. This tutorial will show you how to make just such a material.
Good lighting can bring your models to life. The right tint of the lighting can transform a scene from somber to angry. We’ve found two excellent tutorials that cover the concepts of lighting.
Here’s a nice Christmas present for y’all: Elephants Dream was included in CGSociety’s CG Retrospective 2006; a public-voted list of the twenty most important developments in CG in 2006! It made sixth place, making it cooler than the PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii, Pixar’s ‘Cars’ and several major commercial packages.
Kernon Dillon is working on a six-part video-tutorial on making your own lighted christmas tree WITH gift boxes!
Updated december 27th: parts 3 and 4 added.
Today is the deadline for submitting the Character Animation tutorials for the $30 prize that is offered by Blender3DTutorials.com,
