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Posted almost 15 years ago
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Posted almost 15 years ago
Normally our posts on this blog have to do with the studio or art but today I have some very exciting, personal news! My oldest sister just brought a beautiful little boy into the world in the wee hours of this morning. Weighing in at 8.2 pounds Luca David Flindall is taking a wonderful first [...]
Posted almost 15 years ago
Kai Kostack has recently posted an amazing video tour of the human body using Blender. The simulation is in real time and hasn't been possible until now, thanks to the latest GLSL features and speedups of Blender over the past year.Just a quick warning:Highly sensitive people should be aware that this video shows a cadaver [...]
Posted almost 15 years ago
In a comment on the animatics blog post, I was asked how the camera switcher scripts are supposed to work. I promised a detailed answer, so here?s the skinny:Preperation:Well, first you have to download them, and unpack them from here. You will get ... [More] two python scripts add_shot.py and camswitch.py.To work in the way intended by the scripts, make sure that your layout/screen includes a 3D view to work in, a buttons window, a timeline, and text editor.In the text editor, do ?Text->Open? or on the datablock do ?Open New? and browse first to camswitch.py and open it.Again in the text editor, do ?Text->Open?, and browse to where you extracted add_shot.py and open it.In the Buttons window, switch to ?Script? buttons, make sure ?Enable Script Links? is on, and then press New, select camswitch.py from the list and make it work on ?FrameChanged?.. the panel should looks something like the screenshot here.Now Go back to the text editor where Add_shot.py is , and press alt-P or Text->Run Python Script from the menu. You should get a single text button.Usage:Now you are ready to start really working! Scrub in your timeline to a frame where you want to make cut.In the 3D view, adjust the viewport framing to roughly the right framing for the shot (don?t worry, you can tweak all the cameras later, even animate them if you want).In the text editor (where add_shot is running), type the name or number of your shot in the text button and hit enter. The script will create a camera, with the same name, and a marker with the same name (and the prefix: cam_) As you scrub over this, it will make that camera the active scene camera.Now just keep on adding shots by repeating steps 1 through 3! you will have multiple cameras, and as the frame changes, those cameras will be active, making cuts. This is perfect for a small project, but it is also good for do simple visualization/shot blocking for a bigger project such as this one.Hope that helped! [Less]
Posted almost 15 years ago
What's funny about this whole process is that, for the past 2 years, I've felt like I'm on the edge of a major breakthrough, teetering on the edge of a "major production precipice" and once I reach a certain point everything will just get done- BAM! ... [More] Like, "Once I get this file complete, the dam will burst, and the movie will be done before I believe it."The thing is, I've been absolutely convinced of this for years now. Remember; when we were wrapping the shoot, I was telling folks I'd probably have the visual effects done 3 months later, in time for the new year- and I believed it!Now I look at all we've done (and it's a lot) and am like- wow. Remember, there are almost 400 VFX shots already completed, and the movie is only 100 minutes long, meaning we're averaging about 4 visual effects shot per minute. That's nuts! And it only takes one sub-par VFX shot out of all of those to take you out of the movie- so every shot has to be spot on.I don't even want to think about how long it would take without this awesome team.Nate Taylor's been working on sculpting out the Subject C mesh- it's looking fantastic. We're slowly eliminating all of the shots except for the final scene, so when the time comes we can attack it with a fully-formed vengeance! HUZZAH!Ian HubertWriter, Director28% Pulchritude [Less]
Posted almost 15 years ago
As you might have deduced, this is not a stand alone project but part of a larger research. Two previous projects have also tried to find out how to best introduce usability help into open source projects.The first project was done in 2007. In that ... [More] project a group of students (including me) did some expert evaluations and usability testing on an open source multimedia application. The results were then reported to the developers. Sending the report was the first contact to the OSS project. This tried to resemble the way patches are submitted to OSS projects: the work is what matters and extra chatting might be considered even rude or disturbing.It seems that we got the open source culture completely wrong in that one. The research at that point gave an important result: this was not the good way to improve usability in open source projects. So it was necessary to continue research.Early 2008 UKKOSS 2 project took a different approach. In this project I was the project manager but the rest of the team was different. UKKOSS 2 chose an open source game that had a relatively small group of developers. This time the OSS project was contacted at the very beginning. The usability activities were chosen so that they fitted with what the OSS project wanted and needed. The results were much more encouraging and the OSS project leader even asked if they could collaborate with more student projects like this.Now we have UKKOSS 3 and 4 with, once again, completely new teams. I work in these projects as a link to the previous UKKOSS projects. As UKKOSS 2 was a success, UKKOSS 3 tried the same approach with a larger project. It is already clear that with a large project like Blender the developers are too busy for the kind of close collaboration that UKKOSS 2 had. This blog is one of the ways we use to try to get closer to the Blender community.There's already plans for next UKKOSS projects. Hopefully all these efforts result in better collaboration of coders and usability experts in open source projects.What do you think is the best way to improve usability in OSS? Answer the poll on the front page and comment this post. [Less]
Posted almost 15 years ago
Xard voitti edellisen skaban (ja siitä hänelle onnittelut!) ja fisuk päätti uuden skaba-aiheen. Aiheena on tällä kertaa siis ?Toveruus?.Deadline: Sunnuntai 3.5.2009 klo 2400.Linkki skabathreadiin-Xard won once again (congratulations!) and fisuk ... [More] decided the topic for the next compo, which is ?Comradeship?.Deadline: Sunday 3.5.2009 @ 2400hrs.Link to the compothread [Less]
Posted almost 15 years ago
I've been asked to give a one hour talk about Blender 3D at the new Video Art & Electronic Music event Sideseen in Rotterdam on friday May the 15th. There are also people there form the SAE Institute talking about 3D animation. After the talks ... [More] there are lots of DJ's/VJ's and what looks like heaps of fun. Perhaps even a drink or two. read more... [Less]
Posted almost 15 years ago
It?s hard to believe that already a year has passed since I opened the site on April 25th of 2008. Things have gradually grown, from only a handful of feeds to well over a hundred. During this year almost 7000 blog posts have been aggregated by ... [More] Planet Blender, averaging over 18 posts per day.In order to ensure we keep growing and providing quick community updates, I invite everybody to send in more Blender-related blog feeds, from any language possible. Send them to my mailbox.I hope that the coming year will be as interesting as the previous one, with growth and enough to read for everybody who likes to follow Planet Blender.Cheers,/Nathan [Less]
Posted almost 15 years ago
Here?s some exciting news for you all!Wes Burke has just launched an initial preview of a new site, Mavenseed. The site is dedicated to offering private one-on-one CG tutoring! Myself and a fellow artist named Alessandro have been brought on as the first two instructors to test the waters. I see this as a very [...]