Blender News

Hi all, I'm making this a sticky to feature news about Blender that may have not reached BlenderNation or PlanetBlender. I follow Ton and the other developers on Twitter and because I made a commit once to the Wiki I am cc'd on the program and wiki email chains. Therefore, I sometimes get alerted to news that may never hit BlenderNation.

The [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] movie is currently going through a [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] for their next Open Movie (more on that in the next post). However, not everybody is happy about the movie plans, particularly a small handful on BlenderArtists.

While I don't think we should practice Ton worship, I think the good [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] deserves respect with regards to how the Blender Foundation is shaping Blender. A few parallel threads got so heated Ton came out and said:

Ton Roosendaal wrote:Apparently a positive encouraging story gets poisoned within an hour here. Strong communities are resistant to poisonous people, but this is getting to a level I would not tolerate longer. BA is also my place. I'll be in touch with the site moderators about that. For the next weeks you will find me elsewhere though.

Jonathan Williamson, who owns BlenderArtists, started a dialog on Twitter about building a better BA (#betterBA) [meaning a different site]. This led to Jonathan posting this statement:

Jonathan Williamson wrote:BA can be so poisonous to the point that I tend to avoid discussions (and I half own the site!) ... it’s bad enough now that most devs and other key community members won’t go there.

And [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] on BA. Basically it's a "don't bicker with each other" list. It's now spilled over into a new argument about FOSS vs Free Speech.   

My take (am I allowed to add my commentary to the news? MSNBC does, why not BnB?):
I was hoping that BA would implement my idea that I submitted to the conversation:

Bunnie wrote:How about molding BA to be a forum where effective critiques, clean language, and mentorship guidance are encouraged? #saveba #b3d

But any effort toward reeling in the cancerous few will help improve BA. I tried a few times to be a part of BA, but between the elitists and the children (by that I mean attitude, not age), it's hard to continue going back. BlenderNewbies and BlenderUnderground were the only two friendly locations to go. Nystic was very accommodating to young newbies and helped them develop other talents outside of Blender (like scripting). BA has always been, and will always be, a CGTalk wanna be, the same attitude just without any mentorship.

The next open film by the Blender Foundation is going by the project name "[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]".  This film will be feature-length--making it the first open source feature length film in history.  To put that in perspective, Snow White was the first feature-length animated film and Toy Story was the first feature-length CG animated film.

Parts of this project will be made by different studios across the globe.  These studios will each have their own stylistic spin, resulting in a film of many different faces.  You can think of it almost as the Animatrix, but telling a single story rather than several mini-stories.


What's neat about this project is that you'll be able to see the different workflows, methods, and styles of these different studios by exploring the content (meshes, node layouts, editing, etc).

You can buy a three-month access to the Blender Foundation's library for $57.60 and help [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

I won't post each time a new Blender version is out, but let's face it--this is only the third time a release of this type has happened for most of us.  2.5x was the first, then 2.6x, now 2.7x.

2.70 has 560 bug fixes and several new features, including volumetric shading and lighting.  CGCookie has compiled an awesome (and free) 2.70 guide [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].  The videos' audio is left-ear only, which I can't understand why they didn't fix before uploading, but it's useful and free.

Pablo Vasquez has been playing around with changing the UI to be more Windows 8ish (flat rather than beveled/shadowed):
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Mike Pan, the Blender special effects guru from years back has re-emerged with an interesting self-challenge:

Mike Pan wrote:How far one can I push Blender using only a single cube object?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Not Allowed:
- More than 1 cube object
- Any modelling of the cube
- Curves, Surfaces, Metaballs and Texts when used as on-screen geometry

Allowed:
- Any number of Emptys, Lattices, Lights, Cameras, Groups, Modifiers, and Particles.
- Curves and Surfaces when they are not being used directly as visible geometry.
- Weight painting is the exception to the ‘No editing of base mesh’ rule and is allowed.
- Post-processing as long as the modifications do not introduce any significantly new visual element.

See his results [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

Wow!... that's some incredible work! Whoudda thunk?

Long-timers probably already know this, but I thought I'd post here for anybody who doesn't:

The Blender Wiki is available as an off-line PDF for those who don't have reliable or constant internet connections.  This is also heavy reading material if you are riding rail or on a long flight.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

This isn't "breaking news", but it was news to me so I thought I'd share...

Rhythm & Hues' India branch created an animation entirely in Blender.


Rhythm & Hues did Life of Pi.  They won the Oscar for Best Achievement in Visual Effects less than two weeks after declaring bankruptcy.  The person accepting the award tried to call attention to the fact that R&H was having problems because of the late payments by the studio, but he was cut off before he could finish. (Of course he did talk for two minutes before getting to that point. (Never mind that director Ang Lee took much longer and didn't get cut off.)

(start at 2:45)



[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Not Blender, but very relevant:

GIMP's User Experience Chiefs (UX) has quit. If I understand his reasonings correctly, he left because (1) the team was falling apart and (2) the code was just too flawed to work with. You can read his post here: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Blender's documentation project has been struggling to get moving again after its move from the writer-friendly wiki to the developer-friendly Sphinx. Forums are dying, Planet Blender (a BNation-like site) has been inactive for several months, and I get the feeling that things are not going well for the Foundation ("testy" and "us vs them" almost).

My take: Blender might be heading for a fork--just like GIMP faced (GIMPshop, which is now malware-ridden and not recommended by the official GIMP folks for download or use.). GIMP may be ready for a boon in new users if the new UX and UI teams can get the underlying code cleaned up. (And I am not hating on Blender, the software is great, I am just seeing growing project/program management issues that might start to hurt them before long.)

Final note: If you are a GIMP fan, consider supporting them, I have a feeling a $10 donation or a handful of hours of coding support to them is more needed (and appreciated) than the same to the BF.

Final note on the slow decline of Blender:

Google Summer of Code will not have a Blender project for the first time in 10 years.

Read more on BlenderNation: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

(Maybe I have become a Blender(Foundation) detractor and I just haven't realized it. But I use it all the time!  I love what it has become! I don't understand!)

Big news for game developers:

Unreal Engine 4 is free! [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Not to be beaten, Unity 5 is free! [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Check out what has been going on with the Gooseberry project:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Renders look great!