Microsoft's Open Source support has recently contacted the Blender developers regarding their file format support. Groklaw picked it up and wrote an interesting piece on it.

Here's a short tutorial that'll explain how to create some rather realistic twirling smoke.

Continue Reading 'Creating Twirling Smoke' »

Ton just posted the following dates on the Peach blog:

• May 17 or 18: Release of Blender 2.46
• May 20th: DVD Arrival, shipping
• May 30 or 31: Internet release of Big Buck Bunny

Sterling Roth [mexicoxican] started a challenge over at Blender Artists: what can you make with just 10 cuboid shapes? This very limiting rule is opening up a *lot* of creativity.

Continue Reading 'Weekend Fun: Cube Modeling Challenge' »

My previous Giant Spider post turned out not to be done in Blender after all, so I set out to find one that was. I found a videotutorial by 15 year old Daniel Reynolds, who explains how to align a spider animation with live action footage and then uses After Effects to composite it.

Continue Reading 'Giant Spider Compositing with After Effects' »

Russian Animator Shiva3D posted this awesome animation. This is the kind of stuff that I imagine the Blender Institute's next project will have: SciFi, Robots, explosions, smoke, pointless impressive stuff. Love it.

Update: I thought this was made in Blender, but that was not the case. Bummer. Anyway, we can do better than that, right? ;-)

Continue Reading 'Itsy Bitsy Spider?' »

As you may know, nothing escapes our attention (you there! stop picking your nose, it's disgusting!), and here's my latest catch: over the last few weeks I've been tracking a Korean site which diligently translates all our articles.

So, here you go: suddenly YOU're on BlenderNation, too! You're doing a great job - thanks. It would be great if you could introduce yourself in a comment below.

Like many other apps, Blender does not work well with Arabic or other right-to-left written languages. ArabBlend writer Islam Abofarha explains how to work around this.

Continue Reading 'Using Arabic Scripts With Blender' »

"Two treasure-hunting teens sneak into an abandoned military base looking for a rumored gold cache. Once inside, they accidentally activate a top secret relic of the Cold War - a huge mobile weapons system bent on protecting the base from all intruders. Cut off from every exit, the pair must fight to survive."

Hangar No. 5 is an action-packed short film featuring Talan Torriero from Laguna Beach and Charity Shea from The Best Years. Produced by Northwestern University undergraduate students, Hangar No. 5 was shot during October 2007 around the Chicagoland area. The film will premier in June 2008.

Continue Reading 'New Hangar No. 5 Trailer' »

Satoshi Yamasaki (yamyam) is the operator of the Japanese blender.jp community site. His Blender book for beginners was published last month.

Continue Reading 'New Japanese Blender Book: 'Hajimete no Blender'' »

Martin White, whom we know from the animation 'The Goat, The Boy and The Sun', submitted an entry to the aniboom.com Radiohead contest.

Continue Reading 'Blender Entry in Radiohead Video Contest' »

So it's time for another weekly video roundup. Sit back and enjoy!

Continue Reading 'The Weekend is Here!' »

The second edition of the German Blender magazine 'Blenderzin' has been published.

Continue Reading 'Blenderzin #2' »

Last night's interview in the Dutch TV show 'De Wereld Draait Doort' with Ton and Sacha is now online!

Update: Dutch transcript is ready. If you want, you can log in and help to translate now. Thanks!!
Update 2: English translation is ready. Thanks for all the help!

Continue Reading 'TV Interview with Ton, Sacha Now Online' »

Tonight at 7:30pm on NL3, Ton and Sacha will be interviewed in the popular Dutch TV program 'De wereld draait door'. I'll upload the interview to dotSUB tomorrow so we can have it properly subtitled for all non-Dutch speakers.

Oh, and I see that 'The Big Lebowski' will be on at 8.30pm - it's gonna be a great TV night :)

Het Parool, one of the larger Dutch newspapers wrote last Saturday: "Big Buck shakes up the movie world". The full article (2 pages!) is available online (scan on the Peach site, or Parool website).

Update: translated version, thanks to kimme and rpgsimmaster

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!' »