Everyone knows endi– he's one of those guys who can't seem to touch the computer without making something fabulous.  So when endi decided to try out the Blender Game Engine,  it was inevitable that something amazing would result.

Continue Reading 'Boom - endi's BGE Masterpiece' »

From joe's Secret Lab comes this interesting tutorial on how to create models in Blender using a "digital clay" method. Those of you interested in alternative methods of modeling will certainly not want to miss this!

Continue Reading 'Metaballs as Digital Clay' »

The pantograph was a special tool invented in the 1600's to copy diagrams. Today, with the advent of tools such as CAD, computer-based tools have become the norm for designing and drafting. But where does Blender fit into this? Simple. Blender user rocketship has created a new plugin renderer called PantoGraph which can render your models not to a typical image file, but as Scalable Vector Graphics.

Continue Reading 'PantoGraph: The Vector Renderer' »

Anyone who works with Flash should find this interesting. Blender user Dennis Ippel has created a script which can convert Blender objects in Flash ActionScript 3.0 objects. This allows the creation of realtime-3D rendering within Flash (which is more typically used to render two-dimensional vector imagery). For more information, visit the exporter's official page, or its wiki entry.

Continue Reading 'Blender > ActionScript Exporter' »

In the art world, composition is one of the most important elements of an artwork. However, many Blender artists lack formal artistic training, and may not be familiar with either the concept or application of this important aspect of visual imagery. That's where this handy "tutorial" comes in.

Continue Reading 'Learn Composition from Blue Sky' »

Neal Hirsig, a professor at the prestigious Tufts University, has created an online course to teach students to use Blender. The course is available to all for free on Hirsig's website.

Continue Reading 'Tufts University Online Blender Course' »

After years in development, The GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) v. 2.4 is now available for download for your favorite OS, be it Windows, Linux or Mac OS. The popular open source image editing tool has been redesigned with new features and a new look, and it's ready to take on all your texturing and image post-processing needs. Oh, and you can edit photos too! Don't miss out, check out GIMP 2.4 today!

Continue Reading 'Gimp 2.4 Released' »

Exciting news! Sun Microsystems has agreed to donate processing power to render the Blender Foundation's new open-movie venture, Peach! The corporation has granted the project free hours of computing time on their supercomputing network network.com. This will enable far faster rendering and allow the team to build more-complex scenes than they might have otherwise! See more on the official Peach blog.

Continue Reading 'Sun to render Peach!' »

Astute users of Microsoft 32-bit Windows may have noticed that Blender is never allowed to use more than 1.5 GB of memory. As Blender can often consume a lot of memory, this can be a severe limitation at times. In this short tutorial, user mpan3 explains what causes the issue, and how to correct it.

Continue Reading 'Blender's 1.5 GB RAM Limitation' »

A skybox is one of the most typical ways to create a sky for a game. A sky texture is mapped onto a large sphere or box, which then surrounds the game environment to provide the illusion of a sky and distant background. Skyboxes can, however, be a pain to make, requiring a lot of touchy manipulation and set up. With this tutorial, you'll learn how to use Blender to make fairly realistic skyboxes quickly and easily.

Continue Reading 'Making a Skybox with Blender' »

Here's a resource you may know about already, but still definitely worth a mention! The Blender Open Material Repository is a site with over 200 native Blender materials available for download. Subjects range from typical (Car Paint) to the downright bizarre (Brains).

Continue Reading 'Blender Open Material Repository' »

Anyone who's programmed in Python will tell you that it's often easy to write a script, but it's always hard to write an efficient script. This resource from the main Python wiki will teach you how to program for speed and performance.

Continue Reading 'Python performance tips' »

NASA has started an intriguing contest which should be of interest to some of you. The contest encourages art & design students to work with engineering students to depict a scene of "life and work on the Moon." Most of you have wide-ranging interests of course, so chances are that a few of you are well-qualified to try this out.

Continue Reading 'NASA Art Contest' »

Whether you make games, play games, or even if you don't like games, you should find this article useful. Eric Gooch, a game lighting artist working for Insomniac Games, has put together this interesting article about how he lit the recent game Resistance: Fall of Man. You'll learn about the difference lighting makes both in realism and in mood, and a bit about the artist's workflow.

Continue Reading 'Lighting "Resistance: Fall of Man"' »

If you enjoyed Roland "Harkyman" Hess' video interview, don't miss this write-up about SIGGRAPH that comes straight from the man himself! Harkyman talks about the city of San Diego, experiences from the Expo floor, and even more.

Continue Reading 'Roland Hess Talks SIGGRAPH' »

Motion capture is a special animation technique that allows human actors to define the movements of an animated character. Special cameras track the actor's movements and can then transfer them onto a CG character. The result is a simple yet realistic method of animating. Unfortunately, however, motion capture systems are very expensive, far too expensive for the hobbyist. That's where this great resource comes in!

Continue Reading 'Blender-Compatible Motion Capture Library' »