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!

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If you ever needed a good texture for a scene, you probably know that good texture library is very important for any 3d artist. Even if most professionals recommend not using pre-made textures, we need something to get started. A good place to get started with textures is a website called Texture Archive, which offers a lot of free textures.

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Finding models to use in our scenes created in Blender sometimes may be a bit difficult, since most 3D libraries use the 3ds file format. When we import these models in Blender, in most cases we have to work with triangular faces and some other artifacts. But now there is a very good model library called Scopia`s resources, which is a 3D models library with models available in the ".blend" file format, and with textures!

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A new resource for artists that use Blender to create architectural visualization is available, with downloads of furniture models, tutorials and scripts. All this is provided by a site called LineDstudio.

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Here are some more interesting facial expression reference sites.

This site is is 2D which I think makes it easier to see the facial movements. You can also select combinations such as the eyes up or down or the mouth - smile, sneer etc. You'll need Java to run this one.

This game allows a player to experiment with the different effects of moving separate facial parts. In teaching someone how a face conveys emotion, you may choose to isolate one part, such as turning brows down to indicate disapproval, or up for surprise.

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Can you see the difference between a fake and a genuine smile? This small test on the BBC Science and Nature website lets you test yourself with 20 different persons smiling. This is not just a fun psychology test - for an animator it's a little gem of reference material.

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The Open Material Library is a new Blender material repository and even though it's still in beta (in good web 2.0 fashion), I think we may have a winner here!

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The BlenderGalactica.com team has been working on a new project: BlenderGates. Their aim is to provide freely downloadable Stargate SG-1/Atlantis models for Blender.

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Daniel Martinez Lara seems to be getting quite well into Blender. He has now made this simple but great leg rig. It uses very few handles (only around 2-3) without compromising the functionality even the slightest.

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Treatkor has posted a library of 64 materials on the BlenderArtists.org forums. They're not organized in any way, but you might just find what you need.

Juan Pablo Bouza has published BlenRig, a humanoid rig for Blender 2.43 based on bones deformation. The rig, which uses over 680 bones and includes full facial animation, comes with a whopping 26 page manual.

Continue Reading 'Free Rig: BlenRig the Dwarf' »

No, really this time. Daniel Lara Martinez from Pepeland School has created another Blender resource. And this time its a Blender setup with icons designed to emulate the Max or Maya interface.

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Every once in awhile some impressive things pop up for Blender users to learn from and experiment with. This is one of those things.

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Clean3D has created a fun little rigged character to experiment with.

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Brendon Murphy [Meta-Androcto] has released a 'meta material library' in which he has collected over 480 materials and textures and he's planning for 160 more. It is a monster collection of several material libraries that have been released so far and it's well worth checking out.

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TrueBones.com is offering several sets of reasonably prices motion capture files. One of their sets, CrazyLazyBones, comes with eight freely downloadable files.

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This amazing rig demonstrated by Bassam at the Blender Conference is available for testing. Bassam plans to release a new version of Mancandy with each release of Blender. Thus ensuring that the latest goodies are included in the rig.

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We've posted about texture libraries before, now we have found the king of texture libraries. With over 25 links to other texture libraries, this is the biggest collection we've published so far!

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