If you can still purchase issue #91 in your local bookstore jump on it. In this issue there is a tutorial by Bassam Kurdali on rigging a fully posable worm character in Blender.

Continue Reading 'Rigging Tutorial in 3D World Issue #91' »

Katorlegaz.com, the good folks who hosted the original Blender Model Repository, has released all of the 3D models on their website under a Creative Commons license. From the site:

All of our 3D models are now Creative Commons, and related web pages have been updated to reflect the new licensing. Special thanks to all who donated to cover legal expenses from when we hosted the BMR.

There are a large variety of models under a number of different categories. Who knows? You might just find a model that you need for one of your projects there. It's great to see that despite the legal headaches that they've had to go through, Andrew and Jennifer are still willing to contribute to the community. Big thanks to them!

Can you see the difference between a fake and a genuine smile? This small test on the BBC Science and Nature website lets you test yourself with 20 different persons smiling. This is not just a fun psychology test - for an animator it's a little gem of reference material.

Continue Reading '"Spot the Fake Smile" Quiz' »

Roughly 6 months from their first workshop offering, Hand Turkey Studios will be holding two Blender training workshops this month on consecutive weekends. Both classes are considered 'Basics' level classes, though they do build upon each other and even offer a few tricks that more experienced users would find helpful. Continue Reading '2 Blender Workshops in Richmond, Virginia' »

Martin White the nominee of the 2005 Suzanne Award for the Best Animation Artwork has completed his 20min film entitled: The Goat, The Boy And The Sun.

Martin has been inspired to make 3d animated films since seeing the animated film Tron as very small child. Today with tools available pretty cheap for the masses, Mr. White finally had the chance to make something out of his life.

Continue Reading '"The Goat, The Boy and The Sun" by Martin White' »

Bob Holcomb is holding another compositing contest on blenderartists.org called "WHAT WAS THAT!?!?!" Prizes for this challenge include Ron Brinkman's The Art and Science of Digital Composition for first place and the Blender Fluids Training DVD from CmiVFX for second place. This challenge involves using supplied video footage, so be sure to check out the discussion thread on blenderartists.org for complete rules and how to get the video file.

The contest deadline is 1 August 2007. Good luck everyone!

Congratulations to the winner of the 2007 Blender F1 Challenge! Out of no less than 55 contestants, the voters have voted Joel Hewitt the winner of this year's F1 Challenge.

Continue Reading 'Blender F1 Challenge Winner Announced!' »

I was going through some links that I haven't gone to in a while when I came to this one from SIGGRAPH. I thought it was worth reviewing. Good animation fundamentals.

Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation by George Maestri, "Digital Character Animation", New Riders Press, 1996.

Also this one at CG Society by Tito A. Belgrave. Applying the 12 principles to 3D Animation

The new 3D World magazine came out last week (issue #92) and there is a great article on the popularity of computer animation software based on "copies installed".

Continue Reading 'Blender No.1 animation packaged based on number of installed copies' »

Konrad Haenel contacted us about a beautiful promotional animation he helped produce alongside Felix Böhm for IconParc GmbH. The video was produced to show off at trade fairs and on the IconParc GmbH website. The animation is entirely produced in Blender!

Continue Reading 'IconParc promo animation' »

Pencil recreates the traditional style of animating on your computer. And it does so in the grand open source way!

Continue Reading 'Pencil 2D animation software' »

You may remember Oto the cleaner from a previous article. We'd like to draw attention to another of his tutorials, an excellent beginner's look at rigging, setting up constraints, weighting and animating a female figure.
Continue Reading 'Make a character dance.' »

Robert Burke has created a modeling tutorial with a focus on precision modeling. It is an excellent and very detailed tutorial. Some great techniques and clear detailed instructions.

Continue Reading 'Precision modeling a 608 Bearing.' »

According to Blender.org printing of the new Blender manual has begun.

Continue Reading 'New Blender manual "the Essential Blender" goes to print!' »

From Sandra Gilbert:

Welcome to Issue #10, “Organics”

(A little bit late, but better than never :P )

We have 63 pages full of Organic Modeling goodness for you check out and enjoy. With several tutorials as well as “Making Of' articles and a look at the exciting project “Extinction Level Event”.

Continue Reading 'BlenderArt Magazine Issue #10 Released' »

When I first learn 3D animation via Blender there where many new concepts for me to try and understand. One of which was, how do you define the location of a 3D object in relationship to it's world, the 2D computer screen. The answer is something that you learn in 7th grade Algebra, the X, Y & Z coordinate.

Continue Reading 'Splinophilia By Victor Navone (IPO Curves)' »