blenderblog

Blender gets a good mention as one of the 3 apps that combine to make The Poor Person’s Production Suite, along with CinePaint and Jahshaka.

The best kept secret in the world of 3D Animation is Blender. Blender, while primarily a 3D modeling and rendering program may also be used to perform video compositing in 3D space. Much like what you will be able to do in Apple’s upcoming release of Shake 4 or Autodesk’s Combustion 4.

Blender is experiencing a faster development cycle than those of most commercial applications. It’s feature rich, having functionality found in software applications like Maya and 3DS Max.

The most recent release of Blender is version 2.37a introduces new transformation modeling tools and "Soft Body" effects. Once applied, the soft body system allows vertices to move based on the laws of physics that govern soft materials--like jello or cloth.

Additionally, Blender features a rich in-program game engine that allows for the development of 3D games. Blender is undoubtedly the "HOTTEST" computer application on the planet at the moment.

Have to agree with them on that note. Nice one.

Sometimes I post content here that has no direct relation to Blender, but rather is related more to 3D in general. Here's an example of one of those posts. The reason for this one is pure inspiration. There's an interview with Dan Maas over at Imagiverse. Dan Maas is responsible for some of the amazing 3D animations release by NASA about it's recent space programs. In particular the Mars rovers and Deep Impact.

What's really inspiring about Dan is that, at present, his company Maas Digital is a one man company. Of course, this will change in the near future, but so far all the animations released by Maas Digital have been a solo effort.

If a story like this doesn't get us Blender folk off our arses and into some serious production, I don't know what will. This is proof that you can do some wonderful animation all by yourself, and make a living out of it. I count myself as one of the more lazy Blenderers out there, not so much because of lack of enthusiasm, but more because I have to work to live and at the moment Blendering for me doesn't pay the bills.

But it doesn't have to be like that, Blender is good enough to produce quality work [the examples are everywhere in Blender galleries and on Blender-related sites]. Also, I know there are many users out there using Blender in a professional manner and earning money with it, and to me, these people are equally inspirational and important to the growth of Blender.

Let's get more productive [maybe a message more to myself than to you, dear readers].

I've mentioned a few of the reviews Blender has been getting from net-publications, and now it's good to see it getting some space in the blogsphere. The Unofficial Apple Weblog, which is part of the every growing WebLogs Inc company, has posted about Blender.

This can only help expose Blender to a wider range of Apple users, and maybe some of these people who are interested in 3D will give it a try. It's another step in forward in any case.

A bugfix upgrade has been released - 2.37a can be downloaded here.

The critical fixes are;

• Appending from files now does not set the string for "last loaded file". That could give an accidentally save over of used library files.

• International Font support was broken for non-Latin fonts.

Plus a host of other fixes and updates can be see in the 2.37a release notes.

Lately I received some great feedback about BlenderBlog, both via comments and email. It goes without saying that positive feedback from readers really puts a smile on my face and helps with motivating me to keep at it. So I'd like to thank those people who have taken the time out to send me a message. It means a lot. Cheers. You're a great example of the friendly individuals that make up the Blender community.

Also, I thought it might be a good idea if readers sent in any information related to Blender that might benefit others. So if you have any ideas, tips, thoughts, links to Blender related material, or anything you think might be of value to your fellow Blenderers [from newbies to pros], feel free to send it in and I'll post it on this site. My email address is pablo[AT]blenderblog[DOT]com, with the obvious spam-prevention modifications =)

Again, thanks for the support, and keep on Blendering.

For me it's Fedora Core 3, but apparently it happens in other distros of Linux and previous versions of Fedora. I recently reinstalled FC3, but after installing the latest Blender release, I discovered that when I animate a window [ALT+A] Blender just closes - I think in this case it can also be called a crash, as any work between the last time you saved and the ALT+A is lost.

Strange thing is that this happened to me with the last install of FC3 and prevous version of Blender, but somehow I fixed it. I'm having trouble remembering exactly how, but I think it had something to do with making sure OpenAL, or the correct verion of SDL was installed.

Whatever I tried this time didn't work, but Google and the Blender Foundattion came to the rescue. I read these bug track reports [1, 2] and found out that the issue is an environment variable that Blender relies that does not exist on my system. To solve the problem the environment variable just has to be create/set.

To fix this issue, open a terminal session and type:

export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=dma

then run Blender from the same terminal.

/path/to/blender/directory/blender -w

The -w option opens Blender in windows mode, which is a personal pet preference of mine. Note that you have to replace /path/to/blender/directory/ with the actual path to the Blender directory on your system.

Rather than having to do this everytime you want to run Blender, you can either set the enviroment varible in one of you profile file [eg: .bashrc, .bash_profile] or, what I've done, is create a simple shell script and made it the link from my Blender menu item. Here's my shell script:

#!/bin/bash
export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=dma
/path/to/blender/directory/blender -w


Hey...I said it was simple didn't I. Again, you have to replace /path/to/blender/directory/ with the actual path to the Blender directory on your system.

Thanks to the developers for that fix.

With the release of 2.37 the numerical input of value has been improved.

As part of the rewrite, numerical input (typing values instead of using mouse input) was greatly improved in a lot of small yet useful ways:

- Works with all the transformations
- Better integration with constraints
- Cleaner and clearer output to the screen
- Input is much less error prone

This results in making numerical input more useful than it was before.

To be quite honest I never really knew about this feature, assuming that transformations were done either directly with the mouse after selecting a transform action, or editing the value in the Transform Properties Dialog Box (N Key, when any object is selected).

Now it's been pointed out in the release notes and I've had a play around with it, I think it's a great improvement. For instances, wanting to rotate an object by 45 degrees is as simple as selecting the object, then pressing R, then 45, then Enter.

It's also good for tweaking values. Say you not sure exactly how much you need to move an object. You start by moving it 10 units - G, then 10. At the this stage the object has moved, but because you haven't pressed Enter, the movement hasn't been committed yet. So you can keep repeating this process until you've moved it to the desired position.

eg:
G, then 10 [no, that's not quite far enough]
G, then 15 [just a little too far]
G, then 13 [just right]
Enter

You can also define which plane the tranformation is to take place on. And the values can also be negitive values.

G, then X, then 10 [moves the object 10 units down the X axis]

G, then X, then -10 [moves the object 10 units down the X axis in the negative direction]

Knock yourselves out fellow Blenderers, 2.37 has been released. It's a big update with lots of additions and fixes. Check out the release notes for more information.

2.37 Downloads page.