Blender 2.5 will render up to two times faster then 2.49. This render optimizations is done by Jaguarandi and his Google summer of code 2009 project. Thanks! Take a look at this video:
The Blender Foundation have received sponsorship and will hire Matt Ebb as a full-time Blender developer for 9 months and may longer to work on Blender 2.5. The sponsor is unknown.
I do not know why but offen i read that video editing on Linux is an adventure. From my point of view that is nonsense and here are the proofs why video editing on Linux is easy:
Blender Yes, Blender has a superb video editor that works without 3D rendering
Just a month after the first Blender 2.49 update a secound update is available. Blender 2.49b brings quite a lot of fixes to the open source 3d suite. All improvements listed at the release log page. Deb packages for Ubuntu are available at GetDeb.net.
Bugfixes: - Brackets in normalIndex VRML output - NormalIndex values in VRML output - Particles type in X3D - DEF/USE for Particles - SpecularColor calculation - Minor fixes - Error handling if no full Python installation is found - automated version handling in output modules
Enhanced support for Particles including: - fadeAlpha and fadeColor (used from particle mesh in Blender) - gravity and emitVelocity (using AccX, AccY and AccZ properties of Blender's particle engine) - random size of particles
BTW: At the Siggraph 2009, the world biggest event about 3D, a Blender 2.5 preview was presented by the Blender Foundation. A preview of Blender 2.5 is available online too.
A first demo reel of Ben Dansie's applictaion for the open source Blender movie project Durian is available. It looks quite amazing and we all can hope getting much more of this stuff:
the 22nd issue of the Blender Art Magazine is available. Again filled up with a lot of interesting things incl. new features of Blender 2.49: * Articles/Tutorials on Tracks Creator * Fun with Texture Nodes * Water Tank * KnowHow: Great Educational Resource * Reviews: Creature Factory * Making of: - Arkor - Cute Clown - Cave Troll
A new issue of the Blender Art Magazine is available. This time it includes a lot of "Making of": * Using Blender to Animate Your Family Photos * Editing a Music Video in Blender * Product Visualization * Mystery of The BLEND * Making of: - Game Art for Project Aftershock - Cricket and Friends See a Comet! - Modeling and Rigging a Mechanical Model - Making of the Sun - Building Online Generators with Blender
A new fantastic release of the 3D suite Blender hit the streets. Again filled up with tons of lovely new features. This time a lot is focused on the Blender Game Engine (BGE): * Texture Nodes * Projection Painting * Etch-a-ton armature * Boolean Improvements * JPEG2000 Support * Video Texture in BGE * Real-time Dome rendering in BGE * BGE speedup * Bullet Physics upgrade * Game Engine Modifier support * Improved Game Logic and Python API * New Python scripts and a lot of bug fixes All new features in detail and download available at the Blender website.
After Elephants Dream and Big Buck Bunny - Durian is the third Blender movie project. The movie will based on a script of Martin Lodewijk, a comic author from the Netherlands. Colin Levy from the USA will be the director and David Revoy from France will create the concept art. Ton Roosendaal will be again the producer and Brecht van Rommel will be again one of the developers. Check out the team page for more details. If you are a Blender pro and artist or a developer then polish your portfolio and submit your profile up to the 10th of June 2009.
The first release candidate of Blender 2.49 is available for download. Blender 2.49 brings you: * Video Textures in Game Engine * Logic API cleanup for Game Engine * Texture node editing * Etch-a-ton, armature sketching preview * Dome rendering for Game Engine * Projection texture painting * Jpeg2000 support in sequencer * New GE actuators
A new issue of the BlenderArt Magazine is available: * Articles/Tutorials on Baking normal maps from a high poly model * Big Bobby Car (Organic Surface Modeling) * Normal Mapping in Blender * Lighting and Film Making Tricks: Conveying * MAKING OF: 'A Cassette Tape' * MAKING OF: 'Dusting Off A Surprise' * Bookreview - INTERVIEW: David Hickson - Blenducation This time the website of the BlenderArt Magazine has a brand new look too!
I'm a little bit late with it: InnerWorld, a landscape generator running inside the 3d suite Blender and uses internal noise functions and external height fields, is now available as alpha 0.0.6: * Procedural object placement. * User defined objects can be duplicated to populate the generated mesh. * For calculating locations different strategies can be selected. Supported are grids, Poisson disk sampling and spirals. * Random generators can add variations in size, locations and rotation of duplicated objects.
A new issue of the Blender Art Mag is available now. Issue #19 is about "Features Articles/Tutorials on Rig a Boat’s Rigging, Perpetual Motion Machine Rigging, Caterpillar Soft Track, Animation Temporal Verification, KnowHow - Armatures aren’t just for Characters, KnowHow - Meshdeform Modifier & more…": * Tutorial - To Rig a Boat’s Rigging * Tutorial - Perpetual Motion Machine Rigging * Tutorial - Caterpillar Soft Track * Tutorial - Animation Temporal Verification * KnowHow - Armatures aren’t just for Characters * KnowHow - Meshdeform Modifier and much more
I updated the version 1.20 of the VRML/ X3D exporter "BS Exporter for Blender" for Bitmanagement to get it work with Blender 2.48+. The "BS Exporter for Blender" was an amazing release: * Speed improvement, up to 40 times faster on export * Advanced texturing and shader support * Export of FlashMovieTexture and ProcedualTexture nodes * Support for Sound and mesh animations too * Tested on Ubuntu Linux 8.04 and Windows XP (should run on Mac too) * New exporter dialogue with advanced options * Bugfixes and improvements The only problem was that an API change of Blender didn't allow to run it on Blender 2.48+. That has now been fixed
Blender 2.5 will render up to two times faster then 2.49. This render optimizations is done by Jaguarandi and his Google summer of code 2009 project. Thanks! Take a look at this video:
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