Yes! Blender 2.46 RC3 is available to download, and it looks like a stable release is very close.

Continue Reading 'Blender 2.46 RC3 available to download' »

Kai Kostack, developer of the awesome Demolition script, is at it again…

Continue Reading 'Adaptive Subdivision Modifier (in development)' »

Kerkythea Echo has been released. If you haven't heard of Kerkythea its a flexible and powerful free rendering engine now capable of ray tracing, Photon Mapping and Metropolis Light Transport.

Continue Reading 'Kerkythea Echo Has Been Released' »

That is right. A developer is working on a muscle simulation system for Blender. Its currently in pre-pre-development. But the developer seems pretty steady at working on it. Continue Reading 'Flex Them Muscles' »

The highly expected Blender 2.46 Release Candidate 1 is available for download!

Continue Reading 'Blender 2.46 RC1 Available' »

Blender user Marcelo de Gomensoro Malheiros have just released the first version of his vector texture plugin: Vectex.

Not sure of what this is good for? Imagine that you have a bitmap logo applied to, say, that cool wine bottle you just finished. But now you had this great idea of making an animation where the camera zooms out from a particular detail of the logo until the whole bottle is framed.

Well… if you haven't made an insanely huge bitmap for the logo, the results on that zooming won't be as good as you though of. This is where this plugin could be very handy.

Continue Reading 'Vectex: SVG Vector Texture Plugin for Blender' »

B-Con3 is here and its time to lend a helping hand. Consider this…

Continue Reading 'Bug Reports' »

Many Blender users are experiencing problems with the interface speed when running Blender on Leopard. These issues seem to be related to an update in the OpenGL graphic system that Apple made in 10.5. After a bit of experimenting, a group of users found a solution.

Continue Reading 'Blender Problems on Leopard - Solved?' »

When I was at the Blender Institute a few weeks ago, we didn't only talk about Peach, Apricot and Durian, but Ton and I also talked about the future of Blender. What are the major changes that are planned for Blender 2.50, and what will happen to Blender in the five years after that?

Continue Reading 'The Future of Blender' »

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.

Continue Reading 'New Displacement Map Baking Development' »

As you may remember, we have talked about the development of a cloth modifier for Blender before (1, 2).

Now we come back with this to let you know about the latest announcement from Daniel Genrich (a.k.a genscher): the code is now in SVN trunk! There are even two more videos showing what you can do with it.

So… what are you waiting for? Just go to GraphicAll.org, download the build and play with it! =)

*In the time of writing this, there was only Windows and Mac OSX builds available, but it's just a matter of time until we have builds for all Operating Systems.

With the new particle system coming out likely in the coming Peach release, we all probably want to learn more about how it works. So I've put together a collection of links to learn the new system. If you come across any resources yourself, let us know and we'll add them to the list.

Continue Reading 'New particle system learning resources' »

In a previous article we spotlighted changes made to diffuse shading. The latest news is that Zmask rendering has been implemented and it now gives us the capability to create some complex composites.

Continue Reading 'Zmask Rendering' »

On the Peach blog, Brecht introduced a new method of Ambient Occlusion called Approximate Ambient Occlusion. At the time of the post it was not available in the SVN, so in turn not available for use by the masses. But that has changed you can now find builds on graphicall.

Continue Reading 'Ambient Occlusion in SVN' »

Hamed Zaghaghi has been developing these features and they're currently being reviewed by Ton. The results look very promising.

Continue Reading 'Sun, Sky/Atmosphere, and Aerial Perspective features in development' »

Development continues full speed ahead on 2.5. Thankfully keeping us informed some developers have been posting youtube videos of new additions/works in progress as they happen. We thank you for this.

*Note: These are early interface development videos. Consider them as such.*

Continue Reading '2.5 Development Demos available on youtube' »

Nathan Letwory is integrating Blender and MySQL, which allows new ways of using Blender such as working with huge scene files or distributed/team work. If you though that is cool, wait for this: he has been invited by MySQL to present this at the MySQL Conference in Santa Clara on April 16! After the conference he'll be showcasing his work and for that he can use your help.

Continue Reading 'DbBlender at MySQL Conference, Santa Clara - Help Needed' »

Boids particle systems can be set to follow basic rules and behaviors, something close to artificial intelligence. They're useful for simulating flocks, swarms, herds and schools of various kind of animals, insects and fishes.

Continue Reading 'Simulating Flocks, Herds, and Swarms using Experimental Boids Particles' »