blenderblog

Like last two years, the Blender Conference 2004 programme will include an 'Art Festival' to show the artistic accomplishments of the Blender community. Our goal is to collect enough work to fill a two-hour show.

We are looking for any still images or videos that have been made entirely with Blender or with a Blender-Yafray combination and that would be of interest to a larger audience because of its artistic or technical quality. In other words: we are looking for cool stuff that is worth watching ;-)

Not being skilled enough yet, I think I'll give it a miss this year, but I'll be keep to see what the people who enter come up with.

If you're interested, check out this page which has all the details for submitting work.

The Really Big List Of Blender Tutorials is maintained by IamInnocent who posts updates to this elYsiun forum. Damn glad he does it too. With 1500+ links it must be a hell of a job. Well done IamInnocent...it's much appreciated.

The list is a downloadable bookmark file. You'll have to use a translator for some of the tutorials. Lots of French & English, a bit of German & Italian, etc. Looks like there's at least a few years worth of tutorials in there.

There's an interesting rant over at /. called SIGGraph and Open Source posted by Sean Cier. Sean makes the arguement that seeing as all the top 3D [Hollywood] animation studios develop a staggering amount of in-house 3D software [applications, plug-ins, add-ons, etc], and a lot of this development is similar in function [Fluid dynamics, Hair, Subsurface scattering, Muscle-and-skin systems, Crowd control, etc.], that it would be beneficial to both the sutdios and the 3D community at large to release this software under an open source licence.

So, what if they all worked on Open Source stuff instead? ... No drawbacks, all upside: no lock-in, you can fix stuff, you can add stuff, you don't have to wait on anybody else, and plus, you can do all this while also using what others have written.

The knee-jerk reaction that may be some executives' first objection: our code is a strategic advantage, giving it away would be throwing away money. If we can do hair and our competitors can't, we'll make better films then they can (and, if it's a visual effects studio, we'll win contracts based on that unique ability).

Bull honkus. If your competitors need hair, they'll write hair software, no problem. Another quote from the Pixar RenderMan user's group, this one by a RenderMan developer (paraphrased): "this is based on the subsurface scattering papers from a couple years ago. Everybody does this, based on those papers." Nope, I don't see strategic advantage there: I see waste.

It is, as they say, a win-win scenario; the studios contribute their code to Open Source projects, and everybody helps make that code better. ILM started it in a small way, with OpenEXR, and it worked: OpenEXR is *the* format for high-dynamic-range images, no questions asked. Did it benefit ILM? You betcha: major packages everywhere (Photoshop, RenderMan, etc) either import/export OpenEXR now, or will soon. Pixar even contributed new compression code.

So, a great scenario, and proof that it works. Why hasn't it happened in a bigger way yet? Fear of the unknown. But listen close, and you'll hear a flood coming that could change the landscape -- and it's hard to divert a flood.

In the article he mentiones Blender...

Blender's great for what it does, but medium-to-large studios aren't its intended audience; it's not going to displace Maya any time soon, because it doesn't offer anything that Maya lacks as far as the studios are concerned

Which is true to some extent, but there's a comment that counters his statement quite well...

Studios are not going to just open source and give out all their code. Even if they did, they'd be huge and confusing to the open source world and nobody would know how to use it. We'd have another Netscape/Gecko/Mozilla thing.

If you want to have open source 3d tools (which there are already), you've got to work from the other end. Creating your own. Taking on the studios at their own game. Growing up between their toes.

If you're a graphics nerd, don't sit around pining like this, start using/hacking on blender [blender.org] and yafray [yafray.org]. They are already seriously good and getting better by the day. If they don't meet your requirements yet, start using them and they soon will with all the extra attention. Besides, half the "really cool" stuff done/needed by 'professional' 3d artists are implemented in custom scripted things. Blender's fully python scriptable. Has been for a long time.

At present, Blender is still the most complete open source 3D solution out there, and with a community that is egar to move forward and supportive.

Not specifically Blender-related, but close enough. POVCOMP is a PovRay rendering competition.

The aim of POVCOMP 2004 is to show the full potential of POV-Ray. All artists are invited to participate and create groundbreaking images with POV-Ray to win one of 25 neat prizes from our sponsors (total retail value in excess of $14,000).

The Hall Of Fame page has some seriously well rendered [and modeled] images.

That's not a bad deal. Ask for a new administrator and get not only a new admin, but new owners as well.

"Michael Davidson is the new Blenderman Administrator. In past weeks Michael has already acted as the Model Administrator, and his new work as the Site Administrator will bring many positive changes to Blenderman and the provided services. Thanks Michael!" - Andrew Kator

The new admin has a name, but who are the new owners?

"I am no longer able to continue supporting or administrating Blenderman, and by the end of August the project is being transferred to new owners. They will keep Blenderman alive, and do far more with the community than I could possibly imagine!" - Andrew Kator

Let's hope they continue to make Blenderman a great resource [and I hope they keep doing the magazine].

Ton has posted some details about how SIGGRAPH turned out for the Blender people. Seems like the SIGGRAPH organizers are finally starting to take notice of Blender.

The fact we applied for three BOF sessions (birds of a feather) attracted two members of the siggraph committee to visit the first BOF and make a statement about plans to include open source and Blender in the official program of next year; especially for courses and the educators program.

And Blender performed well in the The One Million Vertex Challenge.

Having access on Siggraph to fast machines and the latest tools, we did a quick test how the "professional" tools behave on larger datasets. It was also asked to be demonstrated on the booths, but we took time to verify it ourselves too.

The challenge we did is simple; add a cube mesh, and subdivide it in single steps until it reaches 1 million vertices. Then save the file and load it back.
Here's the results on XEON 3.4 GHz with 2 GB mem:

Lightwave:
Doing the subidivides became too slow at 100k vertices, but duplicating the mesh then still worked OK.
Save the file took 4 seconds, loading it back 20 seconds.
Softimage:
Doing the subdivides went reasonable OK, but the last step to make more than 1 Million vertices always crashed.
Saving a file with 500k vertices went reasonable fast, about 1 second, reading it back was 10 seconds
Maya:
Asking it on the booth itself crashed Maya. When trying ourselves we didn't manage to create a huge mesh (it uses modifier stacks or subsurf instead), but a file of 900k we managed to create already was quite slow to read back.
Blender:
Subdividing the last steps took some time, but not slower than the others. Save file was 0.5 seconds, loading it back was instanteously. :)

Nice one! Good to see Blender prove itself and gain a little respect against the commercial products.

Some people in Australia have organised a Blender conference. Details can be found via this Foundation post. I'm going to be visiting Sydney [my home town] during September/October, but unfortunately I've planned to leave before this conference kicks off [October 23rd]. Bummer! I'll have to see how my work commitments pan out and see if I can extend the trip an extra week or two, 'cause I really like to go.

Although SIGGRAPH 2004 is almost over, if you're interested in the event, it might be worth checking out the Siggraph Blog and the Siggraph Wiki. I'm yet to find any mention of Blender on either the blog or the wiki, but I guess that's to be expected. Although one of the entries on the blog reminded me of Andre & Wally B., a classic in 3D animation from Pixar.

When checking Blenderman this morning I saw this...

I am personally very pleased to have created this website and the associated resources, but I am not able to continue the work. There have been many excellent people I have met throughout the world with Blenderman, and I give them all my thanks.

I am no longer able to continue supporting or administrating Blenderman, and by the end of August the project is being transferred to new owners. They will keep Blenderman alive, and do far more with the community than I could possibly imagine!

A new administrator is needed to keep Blenderman running. This person should be willing to spend a minimum of 80 hours each month to keep Blenderman running. Background should include a working knowledge of HTML, CSS, and PHP. If you are interested, please contact webmaster@blenderman.org.

To the Blender Community,

– Andrew Kator, Blender-freak-at-large

I'm sure he'll find someone soon.

Of slightly more interest though...The Blenderman Model Archive is now online. They seem to have implemented it using the PBS CMS, which, while it makes sense [that's what the Blenderman site uses], lacks some important functionality for archive app. For instance, there doesn't seem to be anyway to search the archive, and there's no root to the archive either...you just access the categories from the Blenderman home page. Also, there's no count of how many models are in the archive, or in each category. I suppose they have their reasons...and it has just opened. And it is appreciated. Check it out [right-hand menu pane =)].

As promised in this Development Digest, Blender 2.34 has been released.

After a 2.5 month development period there's a new installment in the 2.3x series. Particles are now more versatile, and a LSCM unwrap implementation will help tremendously with UV-mapping. YafRay is now accessible as a plugin, providing interactive updates of the render in the render window.

For more information, check out the release notes and the bundled scripts, then download it.

One of the projects associated with Blender is Verse.

Verse is a network protocol that lets multiple applications act together as one large application by sharing data over a network. If one application makes a change to shared data, the change is distributed instantly to all the other interested clients.

This simple network protocol allows anyone to write components and applications that are compatible. The protocol is built to be point-to-point, but is usually configured in a client/server solution where the server acts as a hub to allow several clients to share the same data. In this case the hub also stores a master copy of the data to allow the users to subscribe to data-changes and to keep the data persistent. Clients no longer need to access data through import/export features since all communication is done instantly using the protocol...

Sounds interesting eh? You can download specifications, source code, tutorials and more. There's also a Verse Server available. The FAQ is worth checking out and the lead developer - Eskil Steenberg - reads like a nice guy [which is inline with the general attitude of the Blender community].

You can get all this info from the Foundation site's post, but I duplicated it here for my own personal reference. I'd really like to get to a Siggraph one day.

Blender.org Community Meeting
Sunday, 8 August, 4 - 6 pm, Room 505

- Ton Roosendaal: overview of last year, future plans
- Eskil Steenberg: Verse development
- Tim Courtney: LDRAW community
Blender Course: Seeing is Believing!
Monday, 9 August, 10 am - 12:30 pm, Room 505

- Ton Roosendaal: General introduction
- Bassam Kurdali: Character animation
- Stephen Swaney: Python scripting
- Wybren van Keulen: using YafRay engine
Blender Artist Showcase
Monday, 9 August, 4 - 6 pm, Room 506

- Siggraph showreel
- Highlights Suzanne Awards 2003
- Gordon Fisher: character rigging
- Tatsuya Nakamura: using game engine and python for pre-viz
- Bassam Kurdali: artwork
- Groo: artwork
- Wybren van Keulen: Yafray artwork
- Randall Rickert: animation for TV show "Modern Marvels"
Blender Hangout HQ
Poolbar of the Figueroa Hotel, just across the convention center (still to be confirmed!).

And I'd really like to get to some of these talks. And I'd REALLY like to see the talk by Tatsuya Nakamura about using Blender's game engine and python as a pre-viz tool.

Mark Shuttleworth, who created Thawte, sold it to Verisign, became a multi-millionaire, then became the First African In Space, is now funding development of several software projects [ex: SchoolTool - an open source school administration system developed in Python]. He also offers bounties which include finding bugs in Mozilla products. More interestingly though, he's willing to fund development in Python [his language of choice] for the following applications - OpenOffice, Blender, AbiWord, Gnumeric, The GIMP.

Good to see Blender included there. I've already come across a few scripts that would probably deserve a couple of bucks. For example, the guys involved with the make human script.

One small issue I've always had with Blender was it's color scheme. 90% of it is fine, but there are a few elements that slowly give me a headache the more I look at them. The vertices colors - that mixture of pink and yellow - there's just something wrong with it, especially after a few hours in front of the 'puter building a model. And the default color for selected objects in object mode is similar.

It was only a few months ago [when I started getting serious about learning Blender] that I discovered the hidden user defaults [aka. application preferences] which live above the main menu. Yep...that's right - above. The main menu is a window which can be dragged down to reveal a whole new world of options. And one of the options available is Themes.

There are only two themes available after you install Blender, but in the great tradition of making 3D application UIs as flexible as possible, Blender hasn't let us down. You can create your own themes and modify the colors of almost everything you see. And then by pressing CTRL + U, save the them as defaults.

Apart from the themes, there are a lot of options to be found in the 'hidden' user preferences. View Controls [Grid Snapping, Menu Auto Open, View Rotation, etc], Edit Methods [Mesh Undo Level, Auto Keyframe On, Duplicate with Object], Language & Font, Auto-Save, System & OpenGL settings, and Default File Paths. After making changes, you need to press CTRL + U to save the changes. Doing this creates a file called .B.blend in your home directory, allowing you to upgrade without loosing your defaults.

Like I said, I found the user preferences menu a while ago, but the CRTL + U part is vital, otherwise you're changes get lost when you close the app. This I only discovered today when I was fooling around with the Themes. Now I have a Blender with the colors I want. When I open Blender, I get the 4 3D views I like to use. I can finally start organising my supporting files [scripts, textures, sounds] and rendering locations. I'm having one of those Blender moments when you realise just how lucky we are to have such a powerful and professional application available to us. Of all the great 'large-scale' open source projects [eg. Linux, Apache, MySQL, to name a few of the many], Blender has to be up there with the best of them. I'm stoked.

Over at the Blender Foundation, they've release a demo reel that will be shown as Siggraph 2004. There's a 40MB DivX AVI version, and a DVD ISO image downloadable via BitTorrent which is 415MB.

I watched the 40MB version and am way impressed. You may have seen some of the stills in galleries already, but it's great to see them in a well produced reel. All of the work is really good. Very inspiring, I suggest you check it out.

The Disk Storage Formula tutorial by Dan Sawyer over at BlenderWars explains how much disk space you're going to need to produce a feature length film, short film, music video, etc. And also provides some valuable advice for the type of disk media you should use.

When you do a film, you want a high-speed ATA or SCSI drive, or (at bare minimum) an external firewire (but not USB) drive. For example, a Jazz drive is fine to use as a scratch disk, for storing and writing back to, but it's useless as a capture disk - far too slow. Almost all Magneto-Opticals are.

Looks like you head towards something like 280GB plus. Although as the IT industry loves to say, disk space is cheap.