JiriH has created this nice squash and stretch ball rig to give beginners an introduction to rig animation. However, note that the rig only works for Blender 2.46 RC and hopefully the final 2.46 release as well.
Squash&Stretch Ball Rig
14
Author Archives: MathiasPedersen
Inkscape 0.46 released
Version 0.46 of the open-source vector application has been released, and it has a pretty strong set of new features. I’ve used this program a fair deal myself, and I have to say that this update (or application in general) is a must-have. Do take your time to download and experience inkscape for the first time if you haven’t used it before, or enjoy the new features if you’re a more experienced user.
Tutorial: Animating a Nuclear Explosion
Fabien Weibel has made this great and detailed tutorial of how to make an atomic bomb (or any other massive) explosion. The result looks really good so don’t miss this intermediate/advanced level tutorial!
Automatically generated camera shaking
Yoyofargo has posted this gem of a tutorial on Blender Artists Forums. It describes a very original way of generating automatic camera shake to camera movements using softbody. I haven’t seen anything like this method before, and it works beautifully!
New Displacement Map Baking Development
Interesting new displacement map/baking features are under development. Seamlessly baking normals from a high-resolution object onto a low poly version of the same object is one of the highlights along with being able to bake in camera, world, object or tangent space.
Custom objects in Blender with Python
If you want to expand Blenders Add-menu with your own custom objects, this tutorial teaches you how to use simple Python scripting to do just that. The tutorial goes through the process of adding a custom plane to the Add=>Mesh-menu.
Update on Ohloh metrics for Blender
You all may remember the message about Ohloh beta from back in October 2006. Well, the people at Ohloh have worked hard to improve their site, and many new cool features have been implemented that makes it very nice to compare open source projects to each other. And the Ohloh metrics for Blender show steady growth and no signs of slowing down!
Glossy Reflections/Refractions
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.
Softbody Clothes That Work
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)”
“Spot the Fake Smile” Quiz
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.
