Anfeo  shows us how he sculpts the likeness of a character from the ABC TV's show Lost, Benjamin Linus.  This is a two hour sculpting video broken down into a four part series.

Continue Reading 'Sculpting in Blender' »

We just finished the migration to our new webserver and we're stil testing the waters. Please report any funky website behaviour here.

Our second attempt! We'll be moving BlenderNation to a more delicious server tonight. The plan is to bring the site down at 20:30 GMT+2 (Amsterdam time) and to spend about one hour to migrate and test everything. We're stepping away from the potato-powered server, that didn't work so well for us. We're open for suggestions for alternatives! (Post your pics in the comments and I'll pick one to use during our downtime).

Bummer - we didn't bring enough potatoes. We'll keep you informed of our new plans.

We'll be moving BlenderNation to a more delicious server tonight. The plan is to bring the site down at 20:30 GMT+2 (Amsterdam time) and to spend about one hour to migrate and test everything.

Update: the timezone had me confused :)

It is with great pride (and just a tiny bit of fear) that I announce BlenderNation Links! I'm hoping that it will solve the biggest challenge for Blender users: finding quality and up to date tutorials, downloadable models, textures, books.. BN Links is a community-driven website where authors can leave their links and tag them. Our link browser allows you to drill down to exactly the kind of content that you're looking for.

Continue Reading 'Welcome to BlenderNation Links!' »

Testing of the BlenderNation Links system is going well and we'll be ready to go live in just a few more days. If you want YOUR tutorials/models/materials/… to be there when we launch, send a message to inbox(at)blendernation.com and include your BlenderNation login name (BN Links is a 'self-service' system so you'll have to take care of adding your own links). Thanks!

In the basement of the BlenderNation research labs, I've been working on a new part of the website: BlenderNation Links. BN Links will be a large database containing Blender tutorials, models, materials, textures, scripts… you name it! Everything neatly tagged and powered by an easy to use but powerful search system.

Continue Reading 'Looking for Blender Resource Publishers' »

Due to the insistent nagging of a certain unnamed individual (other than that this guy managed to blow four of his websites out of the water - without backups! Can you imagine THAT!? <evil grin>), you can now log in on BlenderNation using an OpenID account.

Update: no, we don't. I've disabled OpenID for now because it was giving too many problems, and the webserver turned out to be barfing out error messages like you wouldn't believe :-(

Social Networking or Notworking? No idea, let's find out! We're on Twitter now.

We pulled this article. People were worried about the impact it might have on the company and that's certainly not our intention. April Fools joke gone bad  - sorry guys!

After three months of negotiations, I'm proud to announce that I've sold BlenderNation to the influential Windows Test & Fun Magazine. WTF, with a staff of 25 full-time editors are planning to put their full weight behind the biggest Blender news site. Read on for more details.

Continue Reading 'BlenderNation sold to Windows Test & Fun Magazine' »

Woah! Three years have already passed since I began a small experiment in blogging :). Time for a birthday present!

Maybe you remember our previous fundraiser where we donated 1 classroom, 4000 hot meals, 2 goats, 1 alpaca and 3 animal care kits to a Third World country? That was great, but when tax time came it became hell for me because I had to sort out all the donations with my bookkeeper ;-)

Still, I want to do something similar again - use the size and enthusiasm of this community to do good for others. Just with less tax headache.

Continue Reading 'BlenderNation now three years old! Help us make a difference' »

From the entire team: the best wishes for 2009! What are your hopes for Blender this year?

Leonarda Sala (see also his 'Mikrobitus') sent in a nice New Years e-card. Enjoy!

Continue Reading 'Happy 2009!!' »

Christmas Eve is about to begin here, so let's dress up BlenderNation with some great Holiday Seasons headers! I picked 27 designs from this weeks contest and put them on the site - almost everyone's a winner this time! A new one will be shown each hour, so keep reloading to see if you're in it ;-)

Merry Christmas!

We're getting ready for Christmas and New Year here at BlenderNation and of course, we'll need an appropriate header graphic during that time. Would you like to see your work here for a week? The deadline for submission is Wednesday, december 24th, 6pm (GMT+1). Good luck!

Continue Reading 'Design our holiday season header!' »

Both Blender and the Blender community have been advancing at an incredible pace over the last two years - there is more and more activity and the users are rapidly becoming more professional. Being editors of BlenderNation we're in front-row seat watching an amazing journey!

As a result, more commercial products and services are appearing. In a article which I wrote over 2,5 years ago I was already putting forward my belief that these commercial endeavors are a GOOD thing for Blender (and for Open Source in general) - they give more credibility to the project by providing much-needed documentation, training, support, access to developers and artists.

Still, how do you sell your product or service to a community? So far, getting a post on BlenderNation was the best thing you could hope for - most people will sell really well for a few days but then the effect falls off and you're back in the dark. There had to be a better way.

Continue Reading 'Introducing the BlenderNation Community Store' »

We upgraded our WordPress installation earlier this weekend and I've received some reports of login problems. To fix these, first log out using this link and then log in again.