Pablo (venomgfx) has made an interesting 10 minute video demonstrating a few different ways of using nodes and some GLSL features for real time game effects.

Continue Reading 'Apricot GLSL Shading Node Demonstration' »

Would you like to learn how to export your scenes to the MAP file format? This is a format supported by some Id software's games like Quake. If you want to create scenarios for these games with Blender, a very interesting tutorial shows how to export and setup models to this file format.

Continue Reading 'Using the MAP Exporter' »

Do you remember Project London? The independent feature film, which uses Blender for 3d animation and some effects, has a great clip with a sample animation. And again, the clip has some impressive animations!

Continue Reading 'Project London Clip: Benny's Fuel and Repair' »

Since Blender 2.46 has been released, ResPower has now added support for it.

If you are looking to speed up your rendering time or in a crunch to complete a project, check out ResPower. They offer a very reasonable Blender rate schedule,  good for 30 days.

Brandon Phoenix - aka Dim on Blenderartists.org has completed a huge document detailing the many aspects of Video Games. The document is a great reference and learning tool for anyone interested in the field of game development, no matter what level of experience.

Continue Reading 'Demystifying the Art of Video Games' »

Battelle game engine is an open source project made on Blender 2.45 by Guillaume Coeur and Bertrand Lapraz in order to complete their bachelor degrees at the University of Geneva (CH). This project is supervized by Laurent Moccozet, teacher and researcher at the University. It uses "Bullet" physic engine (which is the blender game engine) for direct rendering.

Continue Reading 'Battelle Game Engine' »

The Seventh Blender Conference will be again in Amsterdam, and we most likely will return to the original venue "De Waag"!

Dates: fri-sat-sun, 24-25-26 October, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Continue Reading 'Blender Conference 2008, Call for Papers and Participation' »

Petri Rantanen aka Falgor of Finland,  a freelance animation artist, made  three commercials , one for TV and the internet, and the other for showing in clubs. They where made with Blender and rendered in Yafray. No other software was used for the animation and rendering (I did use Renoise for sound editing).

Continue Reading 'Commercials by Petri Rantanen' »

I just received an acceptance as a media representative for BlenderNation from SIGGRAPH to cover this years event. Like last year, I'll cover all of the Blender conferences and interview your favorite Blenderheads. I'm also working to secure interviews with  top name industry people as well.

Note: If you are attending this years conference and can help me out with audio audio / visual recording and equipment, please email me using the "Submit News" button.

Rocketman has been working lately on an impressive online comic using Blender and several other open source programs. The comics follow a small group of robots, throughout several humorously entertaining sketches.

Continue Reading 'Webcomic - Us the Robots' »

A new version of LuxRender, the unbiased open source render engine was released a few days ago. And this release presents a lot of new features.

Continue Reading 'LuxRender 0.5 released' »

Well if you've been around Blender for a long time, you may recall "The Official Blender 2.0 book put together by Ton and Carsten Wartmann several years back. I know that I wore out that book, and I still have it. Now Carsten has announced that the first copy of his new Blender DVD Tutorial has arrived. Hopefully there will be an English version in the future.

Continue Reading 'Blender DVD Seminar by Carsten Wartmann' »

SIGGRAPH 2008

Wednesday, 13 August, 8:30 - 10:15 am
Petree Hall C

In May 2008, the Blender Foundation released their second open-movie project: "Big Buck Bunny," a funny and furry 3D short about a giant rabbit who gets even with bullying rodents. This session brings together the key people who created the movie and presents all the aspects of an open-source and open-content-based animation studio, and how this affects the creative process.

Continue Reading 'SIGGRAPH 2008 The Making of "Big Buck Bunny": An Open-Source Evolution' »

The artist's showcase is always a great way to see what other people are doing with Blender. If you like to show work during the Monday afternoon of the Blender Birds of Feather, contact Ton Roosendaal! (ton at blender org).

Note: Blender BoFs are free to attend, also without Siggraph ticket

I was intrigued about this animation by David Liger, it's his first animation and I enjoyed the use of the cartoon edges. An avid Blender user, he created this piece in celebration of the birth of his son, Arsène.

Continue Reading 'Le Petit Papillon / The Little Butterfly' »

Here is a fantastic work from Promotion Studios. Great job guys!

James Neale (producer), Stefan Wernik (animation director), Matt Ebb (lighting/shading/td), Tristan Lock (lead modeller), Jeremy Davidson (lead animator), Kim Neale (matte painting), with Lee Salvemini (animator), Hamed Zaghaghi (ocean sim development), Enrico Valenza (assistant texture artist)

Continue Reading 'Lighthouse by Promotion Studios and Exopolis' »

There is a interesting article on 'Big Buck Bunny' from the render hardware perspective on a news letter regarding grid computing:

"Network.com provided the more than 50,000 CPU-hours of compute time needed to speed up the movie rendering process, sparing the project the need for its own computer infrastructure."

"Even though the Blender team did not have the support of a big studio, they succeeded with the community support, an open source rendering software and an on-demand computing platform," stated David Folk, group manager of Network.com marketing."

Tomas Clergiot of France created two TV commercials. He used blender for the Healts Vision Santé commercial, using Blender to model and map the bottles and kitchen. For the Miss Hawaiian Tropic 2007 (Guy's you're gonna love this one!) he modeled the girl for the opening and the environment. After effects was used for the colors and floor mapping.