The next major release of Microsoft's OS, Vista, will embed a new UI subsystem called Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), part of the managed WinFX framework; WPF will introduce XAML, an XML based descriptive language which enables developers to manipulate the object model to do such things as display a 3D object in a window with a few lines of code.

Continue Reading 'Blender XAML exporter for Vista's Windows Presentation Foundation framework' »

Trying to make Blender run smoothly on ATI graphics equipped machines is like trying to win a dragster racing challenge riding a bike: you're gonna loose for sure.

Well, at least any attempt was going to be a failure until a brave-hearted BlenderHead (a very crazy one, believe me) fell accidentally upon the solution.

Continue Reading 'ATI graphics cards + Blender: it works thanks to NVidia!' »

Time has come for taking a look at the CVS repository again; so many changes were committed since our last overview that here at BlenderNation we were thinking of turning this into a fixed appointment (i.e. 2 times a month) with more detailed information so that anyone can be aware of where Blender is being pushed by the devs and take on a fully functional testing build without having to dig into the developers' forum or battle against gcc complaints. Now sit back and relax, its a long way down, but its worth it, believe me.

Continue Reading 'CVS: what's going on – Chapter II' »

All those nice little (and sometimes unfinished) games made with Blender's game engine that can easily be found here and there in the community's forums are really a good way to start learning and to show off what Blender is capable of in the game-design panorama, but what about a real game, with professional looking graphics and a gameplay longer than 2/3 minutes?

Continue Reading 'Radiance: Blender FPS goes Pro' »

Well, let's face the truth, Blender's layer feature isn't what makes us choose it for our projects ;-)

Almost Maya, the less architect-friendly 3d package, managed to have a nice layer manager in its last versions.

Finally this is going to change thanks to another Python script project: Layer Manager by FourMadMen.

Continue Reading 'Improved layer management' »

by Federico "Lox" Lucignano

Are you a fan of POV-Ray & co. ? Are you bored by the thousands of settings available in the POVAnim script?

Then you'll be interested in taking a look at Blend2POV for sure.

Continue Reading 'One way ticket from Blender to POV-Ray (through Yafray)' »

Directly from SharpConstruct website:

"SharpConstruct is a 3D modeling program designed to paint depth on to polygon models in real-time. Unlike traditional modeling programs, SharpConstruct makes it easy to model organic shapes.

Continue Reading '(Not so) New modeling Tool' »

by Federico "Lox" Lucignano

I know what You're thinking, I'm anything but illiterate ;-)

While surfing the web trying to waste my precious spare time (it's an hobby of mine) I fell on something funny: the "BlenderHeads Around the Globe" Frappr online service!

Are you tired of feeling like the only Blender User in your town/city/country/continent/planet (sorry actually no space positioning system available, complain about it at Nasa.com :-P)? Well go and search for another BlenderHead near you.

Continue Reading 'Welcm t Frappr' »

Blender is having a great time during this period, Project Orange is boosting development and some mid-high level artists are getting interested in using this amazing piece of software; so it seems that after years Blender is getting the right amount of popularity/visibility it'll need to make a big step towards the professional audience.

Continue Reading 'Blender on Architectural Record' »

Recently three different patches made their public debut in the last testing builds posted on blender.org's forum, the features introduced by those contributions are worth writing a small overview, so here we are.

Continue Reading 'Patch time' »

Anyone of us BlenderHeads know that in the last days CVS repository's code is being updated every 40-50 minutes, but only the brave hearted who tried to make a development build know what's going on in detail apart from Ton's rederer rewrite and noodles (the new node system for material definition and compositing).

Continue Reading 'CVS: what's going on' »