Its the middle of the year again, which means the Blender World Cup is being polished, and the competition is about to heat up. This years prize pool is pretty good, so if you are interested we'd love to see there.

Continue Reading 'Blender World Cup #4 - Kicks off on the First of July' »

Glossy reflections and refractions in the internal renderer has been wanted by lots of users for a long time. Now development of a new patch doing this is shaping up. Matt Ebb (broken) is developing this patch with the assistance of Brecht, the developer of the Sub Surface Scattering in Blender 2.44. The results so far are very interesting.

Continue Reading 'Glossy Reflections/Refractions' »

There's a new "one stop shop for UK Blender Users"!

Continue Reading 'New Forum for UK Blender Users' »

Here's a very cool and playable game project being developed by "martinsh".

Continue Reading 'Monster Truck sidescroller game in Blender' »

If you're a Blender artist and you would like to spend 3-6 months in Amsterdam, the Netherlands to work on the next Blender Open Movie or Open Game project, then this is your chance!

Continue Reading 'Recruiting for the Blender Institute has Begun' »

A new and exciting type of texture is being developed for Blender! And yes, builds are available so you can check it out…

Continue Reading 'New Procedural Tiles Texture in Blender' »

Here are some more interesting facial expression reference sites.

This site is is 2D which I think makes it easier to see the facial movements. You can also select combinations such as the eyes up or down or the mouth - smile, sneer etc. You'll need Java to run this one.

This game allows a player to experiment with the different effects of moving separate facial parts. In teaching someone how a face conveys emotion, you may choose to isolate one part, such as turning brows down to indicate disapproval, or up for surprise.

Continue Reading 'More Facial expression reference sites' »

Some of you may remember Ekakiya from our previous article about his technique for illustration style rendering. Now he has come up with another excellent compositing technique for toon-style motion blur. And an example file has even been provided!

Continue Reading 'Toon Style Motion Blur Technique' »

The Brazilian Blender book “Blender 3D – Guia do Usuário”, it gains one second edition in less than eleven months! With the first edition sold out in April, I have been updating the book content for the latest Blender release. Last week, the publisher (Novatec) just release the second edition.
Continue Reading 'Second Edition of the Brazilian Blender Book' »

We received word from Ton that Essential Blender is as good as ready to be shipped. Ton writes:

Right now the CD's are being inserted, and books get packed. Next week people can expect the books getting in the mailbox!

[insert obligatory remark to support the Blender Foundation by ordering this book ;-)]

A few weeks ago a very nice article called, “Freelancer`s Manifesto – A Collection of Advices” was published on cgarena, by an artist called Anselm V. Seherr, or 3Delicious. The article gives some tips and advices, for artists that work as a freelancer. Like how to deal with projects and get organized. And the author mentions Blender in the article!

Continue Reading 'Freelancer`s Manifesto - A Collection of Advices' »

This July will be the 5th Anniversary of YafRay and they want you to make a commemorative render for this anniversary.

Continue Reading 'YafRay Fifth Anniversary Contest' »

ARTNATOMY / ARTNATOMIA is an excellent facial movement reference site, complete with muscles and skeleton. You can select various muscles to see how they lay out on the face and you can also choose various expressions. Use level II where you can click on different areas of the face to see the underlying muscles. To the far right of the face, is a list of facial expressions that you can also select to see what muscle are used. It is free to use online or you can also purchase the software.

A little while ago, I received a copy of Mobile 3D Graphics: Learning 3D Graphics with the Java™ Micro Edition from Thomson Course Technology, a publisher of a variety of technology and graphics-related books. Being eager to delve into the subject myself and knowing that there two chapters of the book devoted to the use of Blender for mobile 3D applications, I was very interested in seeing what the author, Claus Höfele, had to offer on the subject. As it turns out, the answer is "quite a bit."

Continue Reading 'Book Review: Mobile 3D Graphics by Claus Höfele' »

!!!EXCITING NEWS!!!

Ton Roosendaal has announced a follow up to the Orange project and more!

The Peach Open Movie

"As a follow-up to the successful project Orange's "Elephants Dream", the Blender Foundation will initiate another open movie project. Again a couple of the best 3D artists and developers in the Blender community will be invited to come together to work in Amsterdam on completing a short 3D animation movie."

Three well known Blender artists / animators: " Sacha "Sago" Goedegebure (Netherlands) and Lyubomir Kovachev (Bulgaria) have been approached. They will work with producer Ton Roosendaal to pick the other team members, define the concept and get a great script to work with. Andy Goralczyk, art director of the former Orange team, has accepted to join the team to migrate his experience especially."

If you want to be part of the process, see the details on the Blender announcement site.

DIGG IT

Continue Reading 'It's HERE!!! Blender Peach Open Movie - The Blender Institute and … The Apricot Open Game!' »

The Sixth Blender Conference will be held in the new Amsterdam venue De Zwijger, which will offer us more space and very cool facilities, including a large theater. During the dinner and party of Saturday we will also celebrate that exactly 5 years ago Blender became Open Source. Dates: fri-sat-sun, 12-14 October.
Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Click here to check for updates.

Igor Križanovskij has kept personal notes on his experiences with Blender and made them available in a wikibook format. In it, you'll find answers to beginner FAQs, a material Refraction Values Table, reference links, tips, rigs, .blend files and more.

Continue Reading 'BlenderWiki's MemoBook and ActionBook' »

Tolobán (Jorge Rocha) has recently posted a thread in the tutorial section of the Blender Artists Forums. He describes how to properly model basic clothing and how to do Softbody simulation with it. The advanced level tutorial is divided into parts (posts) and is still a work in progress, but what has already been posted is very educational!

Go to "Softbody clothes that work (warning, lots of images)"