feeblemind has a good list of Python scripting tutorials for Blender. Unfortunately at the moment they are only in French, but they're looking for someone to translate them. Worth having a look at if you're interested in Python scripting for Blender.
Make sure you check out the gallery at feeblemind - great stuff.
For a bit of inspiration, head over and have a looksee at Ron Fedkiw's site at Stanford University. Apart from being a super-brain in the area of level set methods and dynamic implicit surfaces, Ron also has a long list of awards/scholarships and consults at Industrial Light and Magic, with credits on Terminator 3 and Star Wars III.
My research is focused on the design of new computational algorithms for a variety of applications including computational fluid dynamics and solid mechanics, computer graphics, computer vision and computational biomechanics.
Check out the sample video clips of things like;
The list goes on. It's a gold mine of visual stimulation. And near the end of the page is a very interesting project called Mantasuit.
The goal is to design an underwater diving suit that provides a diver with an exoskeleton for enhanced locomotion, as well as augmented reality enhancements for underwater vision and directional sound detection.
Wow!
B@rt's blender blog has become so popular that he's decided to change the name to BlenderNation.
I have thought long about a good name and I settled on this one because it expresses the values of the Blender community that are important to me: we’re one large group with one common interest. As in any nation there are all kinds of people here and while most of the time we get along fine, sometimes we don’t. The important thing though is that we know where to find each other and that we know what’s going on in the group.
This is a good move and I'm sure the site will be a success. I'm also glad there's going to be a blog dedicated to providing fresh Blender news. When I first started blenderblog back in July 2004, I wanted the site to be more of a reference and learning tool for myself and anyone else interested. Lately I've found myself posting more and more news items and to be honest I'd prefer to read that sort of stuff somewhere else.
I'm really glad B@rt has taken up this kind of role for the community because he has a long history associated with Blender which kind of makes him the perfect candidate for that sort of thing.
Now I can just stick to posting new stuff I learn about Blender and point to BlenderNation everytime there's an interesting news post.
Congrats B@rt and keep up the great work.
Matt from Project Orange is asking for users to help them out with textures.
Well, the translators have had their turn (and there will be more news on that later), but we’d also like to give the opportunity for more people to contribute. Part of us are now within the final materials/textures/rendering phase and are working on textures now ourselves. We had a nasty and unfortunate theft in the studio last week, and three of our cameras were stolen, so especially now, we could use some help with textures from outsiders - from gathering source material to final, lighting-corrected, tileable textures.
Read the full post because there are copyright issues that need to be met. Basically you have to license any textures you give them as a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5, which in effect means anyone can use the textures for any reason so long as they give the original author credit for the textures.
That's not a bad deal if you have some nice textures lying around waiting to be used, or if you want some exposure for the hard hours you've put into your textures [remember, Project Orange is going to been seen by a lot of people].
However, if you are currently making money from making textures, giving them away for free may not be to your liking, or you may already be bound by some alternative license.
In either case it's great to see this kind of collaboration happening.
B@rt points to BlenderCE, a project to revive the PocketPC version of Blender.
Blender is a fantastic open source package providing almost everything you could need in Computer Graphics. It was already ported for old IPAQ but the project was not open source.
The aim of this Blog is to provide all information about the advancement of BlenderCE, a project to make Blender run again on all modern PocketPC. Don’t hesitate to comment any article or make suggestions. And if you want to join me in this adventure, you are welcomed.
Hopefully this will lead to versions of Blender that run on other PDA platforms.
Matt from the Orange Project has posted a great description on how they organise their Blender files in a team-based scenario.
Blender offers a pretty wide range of options for managing assets with its library linking system, and we’re using it a lot. As well as appending things straight into a local file, you can link any blender datablocks like objects, object data, actions, or entire sets from an external library .blend file. Blender also allows multiple Scenes in each file, which can be completely independent, or have various datablocks linked between them. The trick for us was in deciding what features would suit us best (and what should be coded :)
It's a great read. Managing files may not be a high priority for users that work solo, but it's still important to know. Even if you are working by yourself, a simple backup and revision/versioning system is a good place to start. I use Subversion at my day job [software developer] but also use it for my own Blender projects, and important GIMP/Photoshop files. In theory you can use subversion to backup/version anything.
Wow...that was quick.
With less than one month of development time, this has been a short and sweet release cycle. The focus of this release is the Game Engine which has added a number of nice new features such as GLSL shaders, the capability of using multiple materials and uv maps; multiple viewports; as well as a number of important fixes such as the return of the armature system. Of course Blender's core tools also have been improved, with subsurf aware UV mapping; the addition of a live sculpting tool; set chaining; a number of python script additions and improvements; and the addition of the python Pose module along with other python improvements and fixes.
If you can, use BitTorrent to download Blender - less load on the Blender Foundation servers and their friendly mirror sites.
B@rt has posted links to some great tutorials on Fluid Simulation using the integrated Fluid simulator in Blender 2.40.
Check the beginners and imtermediate tutorials, or check out the full documentation on the fluid simulator.
On a side note, I'm really enjoying using the Blender documentation online since it was moved into mediawiki.
The Project Orange blog has been around since June 2005 and is the best way to keep up with information on the project. It's also a great learning aid for starting your own small production project.
If you're not using an aggregator to keep up with you Internet news, you should [there's many reasons why, but you discover them yourself].
The Project Orange Blog isn't advertising their rss feed on the blog anywhere, but because they're using WordPress 1.5.2, you can access the RSS feed from the blog via this URL.
Issue #2 of BlenderArt has been released. As with the first issue it's packed full of helpful and interesting information, including a inside look at the Orange Team and enough tutorials to help all us novices turn into pros.
You can grab a copy from this newstand. Congrats to the BlenderArt team.