How do I learn Blender? Check out Blender Cookie

Now that Blender 2.57 has been released -- a stable/production-worthy version completely re-written from the ground up -- more people are considering it for their projects.

I have been tinkering with it for years, and am now using it for Crawler,  so I had planned to write an article about how I learned this amazing (and free) piece of software, but it looks like Blender Cookie beat me to it. They just posted the Blender Community Starters Guide, a comprehensive guide to the who, what, where, when, and why of learning Blender. Of course I recommend Blender Cookie itself as a good starting place for training. They have free streaming video tutorials covering most topics you need to get started, and plenty more for advanced users. They also have exclusive content for a modest fee. If after visiting their site, as well as the others on the list, you still don't know what Blender's all about, maybe you should consider another line of work (or hobby).  ;)

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Blender 2.57 Released

The Blender Foundation just released the first stable release in about 2 years. 2.57 is a complete re-design from the ground up, and addresses many of the issues that have kept mainstream CG artists away. There's a whole new interface (the largest complaint in the past was how confusing and non-friendly the interface was), and nearly every feature has been greatly improved. There's also additional features like volumetric rendering, approximate indirect lighting, and many others. There are still a few things missing from this version (like BMesh), but Ton Roosendaal stated that they're going to try to release new versions every couple of months for the rest of the year. Good times!

The link to the latest version is here.

Related articles

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• Sintel, 4k edition (and why it's useful) (creativecommons.org)


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• Blender 3D: Noob to Pro, free ebook (en.wikibooks.org)

Rebranding Blender

Word is spreading throughout the Blender community of a few companies (3DMagix, 3DMagixPro, IllusionMage) who are rebranding Blender and using copy-written material to sell "their" product.

Ton Roosendaal explains:

With the success of blender.org projects, and publishing all the exciting Blender releases, we're now being challenged by third parties who like to ride the waves and do business with Blender.

There's nothing wrong with that. In its very nature, GNU GPL is about freedom, the freedom not only to use and modify the sources, but also to distribute and resell our releases under another brand name.

Recently we received several concerned emails and forum postings from people who were worried about Blender resellers using especially Ebay to sell Blender.

...

On their web pages they intentionally hide that the products are distributions of GNU GPL licensed software, and that the software is freely downloadable as well. More-over, even after contacting them several times, they don't remove copyrighted content from their websites.

Here's a link to the full article on the Blender Foundation's  site: 3DMagix and IllusionMage, scam or open source leeches?

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New Creative Cow Forum for Blender 3D

Image via Wikipedia

I'd say this is a huge step forward for Blender 3D. Creative Cow forums are for production-worthy tools. This truly signifies Blender has opened some eyes in "the industry".

Here's the link: Blender - NEW ! Forum.

Import Blender Fluid Simulation into Lightwave

The latest Lightwave newsletter mentions a plugin that allows the import of Blender fluids. Blender's simulator is very cool, and Blender is completely free, of course. Once in Lightwave, you can texture using Lightwave's awesome surfacing system and render engine. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks great.

You can find the plugin and tutorial here.