Browse your Blender files with the Explorer with this auto-preview generator plugin.

Continue Reading 'BlenderExtender: .blend Preview Plugin for Windows Explorer' »

Like Indigo Renderer, Kerkythea is working on a commercial product. Unlike Indigo a free version will stil be available, although it will not be as actively developed anymore.

Continue Reading 'Kerkythea Renderer going commercial' »

"LuxRender is an open-source, free software rendering system for physically correct, unbiased image synthesis. Rendering with LuxRender means simulating the flow of light according to physical equations. This produces realistic, photographic-quality images."

After the announcement that the Indigo renderer is planning to go commercial, LuxRender got a lot of attention. A new version has just been released.

Continue Reading 'Luxrender 0.6 RC3 released' »

Continue Reading 'Pyppet – real-time character control with sound and gamepads' »

Here's what looks to be a very complete set of tools for rendering with Aqsis and Pixie, two open source Renderman-compliant renderers.

Continue Reading 'Blender to Renderman Artist Tools released' »

We just received word that the Indigo renderer will no longer be free (there'll still be a trial version with a small-sized render and a watermark). For now, the news has only been announced to their beta users, but a full announcement should appear shortly. The best of luck to you guys!

Continue Reading 'Indigo renderer is going commercial' »

Loki Render is a cross-platform job queue manager for rendering 3D frames. Commonly called a "render farm" or "distributed network rendering", it serves Blender render jobs to a group of computers. Rendering 3D frames is CPU intensive and can take a long time, so having several computers work together can greatly decrease the total time needed. The more computers you have, the faster you can crank out those frames.

Continue Reading 'Loki Render – create your own render farm' »

You can help the MakeHuman team by creating model morph targers with their new script, makeTarget.

Continue Reading 'Help MakeHuman' »

[Multiblend] connects to multiple computers on your network, and lets Blender render in parallel on each. This will drastically improve your rendering speeds!

Multiblend is a standalone Python script that runs from outside Blender. This means you can even use it on machines that don't have powerful graphics cards, like older computers or servers.

Continue Reading 'Multiblend Parallel Rendering' »

The planetarium of the Weber State University uses Blender to create content for their full-dome digital projector. Rendering for this screen requires a Fisheye camera, for which they have created and released a camera rig.

Continue Reading 'Ott Planetarium Releases New Fisheye Camera Rig' »

The BS Exporter for Blender transforms Blender into a complete authoring application for quality Web3D content using the extensions of BS Contact VRML/X3D. It exports to both the XML and VRML Classic encodings of the X3D Standard. Version 1.2.1 was recently released.

Continue Reading 'BS Exporter for Blender 1.2.1' »

The Centre for Parallel Computing (CPC) at the University of Westminster, London are test-driving their 250-CPU Grid. It's built around Blender and they're inviting YOU to render your work there.

Continue Reading 'Free rendering on 250-CPU Grid' »

ResourceSpace is a web-based, open source digital asset management system, with a twist: it will dynamically render previews of Blender files, making it a great solution for Blender Asset Management. It's based on PHP/MySQL so you'll need to have access to a webserver if you want to use it.

Continue Reading 'ResourceSpace: Open Source Asset Management for Blender' »

Here's something we don't *nearly* write enough about on BlenderNation: the Aqsis RenderMan compliant renderer, and the MOSAIC plugin that allows Blender and Aqsis to work together. Eric Back has just published a very cool sample of what kind of quality you can achieve with these systems – check it out.

Oh! And these guys are aiming at rendering a small part of Big Buck Bunny as well, "the perfect project to really push MOSAIC's integration with Blender and its ability to efficiently export a large animation.". Awesome.

Continue Reading 'Blender to RenderMan: Aqsis/Air Depth-Mapped Occlusion using multiple light rigs' »

The Layer Manager Script by FourMadMan makes Blender's own layer management bite dust. It offers features like layer naming, locking and selection of objects by their type.

Continue Reading 'Layer Manager Script' »

VisionBin is a free online service to publish and share your work, created by Dion Moult of the 'Official' Blender Model Repository. A nice tool by a Blender user for other Blender users.

Enjoy, and have a nice weekend!

Continue Reading 'VisionBin – Share your (Blender) art online' »

We received multiple emails about the new version of the Gimp, an indispensable part of any Blender artist.

Continue Reading 'Gimp 2.6 released' »

Exporting rigged and animated models from Blender to Papervision3D is now possible thanks to an update of Cast3D, a 3D animation framework library for Adobe Flash in ActionScript3. (Check out this example).

Continue Reading 'Animated Blender Models in Papervision3D' »