Blender lead developer Ton Roosendaal turns 50 today! Even so, he’s one of the freshest and most inspiring minds that I know, and his passion for Blender, art and everything ‘Open’ never ceases to amaze me. He just has a little less hair.

As a birthday gift, I’d like you to consider making a donation to the Blender Foundation. Let’s make his mailbox explode with gifts today!

To donate, use the PayPal button below (donations go straight to the BF), or use the button on the Blender Foundation page. I’m convinced the money will be well spent.

Thanks!

The Durian team have provided another peek at their work: Render gallery update. Verrry nice indeed!

Continue Reading 'Indirect Lighting Tests from Durian!' »

My apologies for the mediocre sound quality (I goofed up the sound settings). I hope you’ll enjoy it anyway!

Big news: Character animator Beorn Leonard has joined the Durian team!

Via the Durian blog.

The Durian modeling sprint is going on NOW is over. To help the team by modeling required props, check out their instructions. You can also just watch Colin live in the studio. We just witnessed him eating fallafel – who knows what else he’ll do today? ;-)

Update: The live stream is down now – at times, more than 300 people were watching it and the IRC chat was scrolling so fast it was hard to follow. Good times – I can only hope we’ll see more of this!
Continue Reading 'Durian Sprint' »

Big news: Two of The Netherland’s best and most renowned actors have accepted to be voicing Sintel and “the Shaman” :Halina Reijn and Thom Hoffman! The recording will take place next Monday. More info on the Durian website.

Details can be found on the Durian blog.

“It’s been an experience trying to get things together as quickly as possible. How I would ideally like to do it is treat each character completely individually, have fun with the topology, all the unwraps and textures, spend a lot more time dirtying all the clothing and so on. Basically get really involved on every level and push and tweak things around because I find all that quite enjoyable.”

Continue Reading 'Sintel -Guardian Progress' »