I don't know about the rest of you but one of the things I enjoy the most about Blender is material editing. Even before nodes it was fun to layer textures and procedurals together, adding and mixing…ahhh material bliss. Recently an interesting tutorial on texture stencils has come to my attention and its well worth the look for those new and I think even experienced Blenderheads may learn a few things.

Continue Reading 'Tutorial: Texture Stencils' »

Groo just published the November update of the Blender.org gallery. Again, there's lots of cool artwork and I noticed that more Indigo renders are starting to appear.

Blenderart Magazine is preparing for their 8th issue and they are looking for content. Sandra Gilbert sent in the following call for content:

It's time again to start thinking about articles, tutorials and images for Issue # 8 of Blenderart Magazine.

In this issue we are focusing on ‘Cars’.

Continue Reading 'Blenderart Magazine #8 Call for Content' »

At least the technology preview. In development for awhile and something many have patiently waited with anticipation. Well you can download it now!

Continue Reading 'Terragen 2 is Now Available!' »

I don't know about you, but using the stride bone can a burdensome process for most. Luckily, the upcoming version of Blender (likely to be released in late December or early January) has a new solution that is far easier to set up and may be your new favorite animation tool.

Continue Reading 'CVS: Walk Cycle Modifiers' »

Who doesn't like a good cartoon? - especially the classics by Chuck Jones. Well, Virgilio Carlo de Menezes (aka VirgilioVasconcelos) has made the great classic, "One Froggy Evening", the focus of his graduation project. That's right, "One Froggy Evening" in Blender 3D!

Continue Reading '"One Froggy Evening" Animation' »

Lucky141, a Blender Community member, has recently published a tutorial set concerning the ever popular, and often misunderstood spin modeling method. This tutorial is actually a 2in1 tutorial since it gives two methods of creating the same thing!

Continue Reading 'Spin Tutorial' »

Jeffrey McGrew has written a nice short tutorial on using the sculpt mode that is in Blender CVS.

This is what five minutes of playing around with the Blender Monkey resulted in. I thought I'd take a moment and write up a quick tutorial to how to get the new Sculpt mode to work so y'all can play with too (it's a lot of fun!).

This month's edition of the British Linux User & Developer Magazine features a six-page interview with Ton Roosendaal.

Continue Reading 'Interview with Ton in Linux User & Developer Magazine' »

Trevor has won the first prize ($750!) in the OpenOffice.org 'Clipart and Draw' contest with a clipart library of over 130 images, all made in Blender.

Continue Reading 'Blender entry wins first prize in OpenOffice.org clipart contest' »

After yesterday's post about Piovra, several great comments were posted discussing other alternatives to distributed rendering.  There are of course other options, probably more than enough to make an educated decision on what's best for you or your company.  So let’s take a look five others submitted by BN readers that might peak your interest!

Continue Reading 'More Distributed Rendering Options' »

Ibkanat sent us link of an incredible demonstration of Blender fluids. It reminded me of the Psuedopod from Director James Cameron's move and special effects by ILM "The Abyss"

Continue Reading 'Magic Fluid Control' »

Blender is no stranger to the world of distributive rendering.  There are several simple python scripts as well as Dr. Queue that can do the job for Blender (here's the Windows user manual for Dr. Queue by the Rovorm team).  But one has been silent for the past 2 years… until now.

Continue Reading 'Piovra Renderfarm Project Updated' »

There's a new video site on the block and it's called ShowMeDo. It's not another Youtube or Google video; instead they focus on videos that teach the viewer. At this moment they have seven categories, Blender being one of them. Currently, they host an exceptional series of video tutorials by Glen Moyes, who made these for his Blender workshop.

Continue Reading 'Six Video Tutorials: an Introduction to Blender' »

The challenge of organic modeling is not for the faint of heart. Terms like edge loop, quads, stars, n-gons, topology, etc. are used casually and many new modelers may not understand the terms or the workflow concepts necessary to produce a clean and/or animateable model.

Continue Reading 'Organic Modeling Techniques.' »

Philippe Roubal has been experimenting with ways to animate footprints in the sand. He published the results of his work in a new tutorial.

Continue Reading 'Tutorial: Footprints in the Sand' »

Article submitted by Allan Liddle: Blender was used to compete in the VUKA! awards in South Africa - a national television Public Service Announcement (PSA) competition, where it had to compete against video and film, as well as commercial 3D animation software - and it made the top 10 finals! What makes this more unique was that it was the only submission done completely in open source and was the first-ever animation project by a guy who had just resigned as an engineer to fulfil his passion: 3D open source animation.

Continue Reading 'Blender in top 10 of television PSA competition' »