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!

Continue Reading 'Looking back on 2006' »

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**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.

Continue Reading 'Erroneous: Blender Model Repository Moves' »

A very interesting texture generator written in Java. The program has an brush/bristle creation tool that makes complex pattern creation easy.

Continue Reading 'Semicuro pattern/texture generator' »

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.

Continue Reading 'Call for 2.43 Release Notes Samples' »

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.

Continue Reading 'Blender for Architecture.' »

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.

Continue Reading 'Tutorial: Ice 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.

Continue Reading 'Lighting Tutorials' »

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.

Continue Reading 'Elephants Dream in CGSociety's CG Retrospective 2006' »

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.

Continue Reading 'Videotutorial: A Christmas Tree' »

You might recall the one small step for Blender which was the incorporation of MentalRay support in a build by RCRuiz. Well now comes the giant leap of Blender2MentalRay 0.0.3.

Continue Reading 'Blender2Mentalray v 0.0.3' »

If you're new to Blender and you would like a kickstart introduction to modeling, check out this tutorial by Gaurav Nawani.

Continue Reading 'Tutorial: Creating a vase in Blender' »

About ten days ago (on December 12th) Microsoft released it's Microsoft Robotics Studio (which is free for non-commercial use and $400 USD for commercial). What's really neat is that there is an add-on with Blender support.

Continue Reading 'Use Blender With Microsoft Robotics Studio' »

Hand Turkey Studios (the company of Jason 'Groo' van Gumster, the blender.org gallery maintainer and Blender fluid wizard) is offering a Blender Training Workshop in Richmond, VA on the 12th of January.

Continue Reading 'Blender Training Workshop: Richmond, VA, USA' »

The Blender 2.43 release is getting closer everyday, and even with the clock counting down to release, huge advancements are being made to the Blender code. This time, Ton has done an image refactor (committed to the CVS Dec. 20th) and Brecht has given us the much asked for Multiple UVs and vertex colors (committed to the CVS Dec. 21st)!

Continue Reading 'CVS: Image Refactor + Multiple UV/Vertex Colors' »

TDT3D.com, 'the European CG Network' is hosting a realtime 3D contest with a rather impressive bunch of prizes. Most of the names on the prize list don't mean a thing to me (I'd be happy with the 3DWorld subscription ;-), but it might be interesting for aspiring game developers in the Blender community.

Continue Reading 'Realtime 3D Contest: €25,000 in prizes' »

In November we wrote about Blender3DTutorials.com, a Google powered search engine by Jason Schluter for Blender tutorials. Jason has now decided to stimulate the creation of new tutorials by offering $30 for the best new Character Animation tutorial.

Continue Reading 'Write a Tutorial, Earn ' »

Here’s another handful of items about recent appearance of Blender in the international media: a Blender article in Playboy magazine, a famous Blender user on Digg.com, some videoblogging and the appearance of a short bit of Blender on American national television.

Continue Reading 'Quicklinks - Blender in the Media' »