Ollie Johnston died of natural causes on Monday April 14, 2008 in Sequim, Washington.

"Ollie was part of an amazing generation of artists, one of the real pioneers of our art, one of the major participants in the blossoming of animation into the art form we know today," said Roy E. Disney.

Continue Reading 'Ollie Johnston, last of the Disney "Nine Old Men" died at age 95' »

The May edition of 3D World magazine contains two four-page Blender related articles.

Continue Reading 'Big Buck Bunny, Explosion Tutorial in 3D World Magazine' »

And not a moment too soon, either. Let me celebrate by posting a bunch of crazy/great/interesting animations I found on YouTube.

Continue Reading 'The Weekend is Here!' »

Yeah, not many people can say that ;-) Congratulations to the entire team for keeping this website running for almost two and a half years already!

On a side-note, last month we *almost* broke the 1,000,000 pageviews barrier for the first time, and I just noticed we broke the 4,500 RSS subscribers barrier today. We're doing great!

Having said that, the amount of Blender news just keeps increasing and posting only two articles a day just isn't enough to keep up anymore. We need help!

Continue Reading '1,500th Post!' »

LGM 2008 will be held from May 8-11th in Poland. This year, the Blender Institute will support Campbell Barton and Dariusz Dawidowsky to join the LGM and do a presentation there about Peach and Apricot. Schedule to be announced.

Continue Reading 'Libre Graphics Meeting 2008' »

Blenderart Magazine is preparing for their 16th 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 # 16 of Blenderart Magazine. In this issue we are focusing on the ‘WOW! factor’.

Continue Reading 'Call for Content Blenderart #16' »

If you're learning how to rig a character, take a look at OSCAR. For the faint of heart: OSCAR leaves no doubt he's a male character ;-)

Continue Reading 'OSCAR: Free Rigged Character' »

Quick3D is a Java applet for displaying interactive 3D objects on a webpage. It reads 3DS objects which can be easily exported from Blender. Who's going to create the coolest example with this applet?

Continue Reading 'Quick3D - Free Embedded 3D player' »

Every now and then we happen to see Blender being used in an innovative way, from Desktop Publishing to (it seems) whatever you can think of.

The artist Bert Simons, for example, uses Blender in the process of making very cool papercrafts.

After some thinking, he decided to go a step further:

Continue Reading 'Cloning yourself with Blender' »

Blender user Felix is a PhD student in physics at Hamburg University, Germany. Not only did Science accept his paper (and his team's, I presume), but they also picked their illustration to feature on the cover. I don't have to tell you which software he used to create the image, do I? ;-). Having your work featured in Science is no small feat, so congratulations everyone!

Continue Reading 'Blender Image on the Cover of Science Magazine' »

The first stable release of Indigo Renderer, since it reached 1.0 is available to download. Actually, this stable release is version 1.0.9.

Continue Reading 'Indigo Renderer v1.0 Released' »

Here's one we haven't seen before: Brandon Marvenko uses Blender's game engine as a development environment for artificial neural networks.

Continue Reading 'A Neural Network Using the Game Engine' »

Here's a crazy animation by Antonio Ruiz Mateos and Jonatan García Bellés that has made me chuckle all day.

Continue Reading 'Las Letricas / The little Letters' »

Blender artist Pablo Vazques [VenomGFX] is giving some insight in the production process of one of his great works, 'Swim Merlin Swim!'

Continue Reading 'The Making of 'Swim Merlin Swim'!' »

Blender Artist Colin Levy participates in the PSAId contest with an short video. He has also published a video explaining how he made it - focusing on the camera mapping.

Continue Reading '"In Dire Need" - Camera Mapping Breakdown' »

Here are two scripts that will add a nice enhancement to your workflow and your ability to graphically document the progress of your projects.

Continue Reading 'Two Easy Ways to Maintain a History of Your Project Renders' »

Martin Pyka was at the Big Buck Bunny Premiere this week and he made a great video report in which he gives a good impression of the event and interviews Nathan, William, Nathan and Ton. . You'll also find some photo's on his site.

Continue Reading 'Big Buck Bunny Premiere - Video #2' »

Last night I went to the premiere of Big Buck Bunny in Amsterdam and it was a blast! The movie was amazing, the audience loved it (they even laughed - imagine THAT! ;-), the Peach team looked extremely happy and the party was great. I decided to have fun and talk to everyone instead of doing interviews etc, so all I can offer is an impression of the evening. Oh, and I didn't tape the movie - you'll have to wait just a little longer for that!

Continue Reading 'Big Buck Bunny Premiere' »