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*Green screen/chroma keying
*camera tracking
*Fluid simulation
*3D modelling and rendering

All this can be done in Blender

Its called Blender, though it's "Python" and not "BASH." Matter of fact, a most of Linux programs have a headless mode. https://docs.blender.org/manua....

No problem at all, hope it works out for you. The wacom driver itself should just work out of the box, plug in and it'll get detected. If you need configuration, the major desktop environments, like GNOME and KDE, should also have some GUI configuration options somewhere in their control panel-esque equivalents, though they're usually optional components, so you may have to choose to install from the package manager for them to show up. If the basic options they give you aren't enough, there's also the command-line xsetwacom tool, which gives you everything, and as a bonus can be called from scripts for even more advanced behaviour, like bulk-reassigning the tablet buttons for different applications.

Like I said, though, the weak part of using Linux for tablets is lack of the big-name applications unless you can get them working in wine. It's not as dire as it used to be, though, back when the only option was gimp. Gimp's still around, and still works for photo editing, but I think the stand-out now is Krita, which is a truly excellent piece of art software even stacked against non-free products. If you need vector, I think inkscape's still the best option, and for animation there's Synfig Studio, Krita has some support for it, and possibly other options. Plus, while not specifically made for it, Blender can be used for non-3d video and animation editing in addition to 3d rendering and animation. (Speaking of Blender, there's a UI mod called Sensei Format that I've heard is supposed to make Blender more approachable.)

There's also a fair bit of proprietary software that does support Linux, but it seems to be largely in 3d, animation, and CAD with less of a presence for illustration and photo editing. (Off the top of my head, I know Maya, Houdini, and Lightworks maintain Linux versions.)

And, finally, a random note about desktop environments: most distributions ship with GNOME, but you should consider giving KDE a try if you don't find a bunch of configuration knobs daunting. You have a lot more control over KDE's appearance and behaviour, so you may be able to make it act more like you want instead of the GNOME-like way of having to change your workflow to match what GNOME devs want.

Anyway, good luck with it. Wacom's hardware lasts forever and I agree it's a shame to have to stop using it because of the software.

I have a 55" at the end of my bed. I do not notice any difference between 720p and 1080p. when I run them next to each other. I do see some difference when I run 480p, but not all that much.
I have a 4K 28" monitor and I do not see any difference in running 4K and 1080p and even 720 is not really noticable, unless I run it at the same time.
The reason I have the 55" 1080p is because it was cheap when I bought it. 500EUR including all taxes. The 4K screens I bought because I needed to replace my 2 1920x1200 VGA screens and buying 1920x1200 again would be about the same price.

There is a difference between computer usage and e.g. movies. For a computer I really like the minor difference in sharpness. With a movie I do not care that much as it all moves all the time anyway.

A great way to compare resolutions is Tears of Steal where you can download several versions. Bonus point if you make a script that plays things at random AND you are looking if the quality bothers you or not, not if you are looking if you know the quality.

...the vast majority of over-the-air "HD" broadcasts top out at 1080i so well you know.

I cut the cable many years before HD even existed, so no, I don't know. My only experience with HD is Blu-rays and downloaded videos like Big Buck Bunny.

Whether progressive or interlaced, "HD" is generally regarded as 1080 vertical lines of resolution. Calling something "HD" and then yanking the carpet out with a lowly 720/768/800 line display is needlessly cruel. The HD/FHD labels are a distinction dreamed up by marketing dirtbags.

"You want 1080? Oh, then you don't just want HD, you want full HD."
Fork you, scumball. If I wanted 720, I'd have gone looking for half-HD.

I always thought Gyms were 3D in nature. Newtonian mechanics requires this. Maybe Elon can use something like Blender3D as a Gym?

Which feature films are non-DRM?

Maybe we could have lists of non-DRM movies (probably just Creative-Commons right now)

The Creative Commons movies I can think of are Blender tech demos such as "Big Buck Bunny" and "Sintel". These are shorts, not feature-length.

Even if we establish a DRM-free area in just one genre (e.g. sci-fi), that would still be worthwhile.

I was trying to allude to FSF's guide to DRM-free video, which links to GOG.com's movie section. And last time I checked, GOG.com's movie section was full of video game documentaries and little else.

This is prosumerism, if we cannot buy them, we can make them.

I have a couple questions that would need to be answered before that can become practical: Who pays for their production? And who would pay the damages if, say, it turns out that costume design or music created for the film is an accidental infringement on someone else's work?

In my opinion Firefox OS is the only thing that stands between us and the enternal rule of giant Megacorps in the mobile space. It get's way to little attention and not enough support. Jolla is struggling to survive and last their OS wasn't fully FOSS and the Ubuntu Phones are not approachable as a plattform. A FOSS web-centric mobile OS is a truely feasible thing. If I had the time and resources, I'd build a kickstarter prototype for a high-end Firefox OS phone.

systemd get's the credit for raising hell amoung the FOSS crowd. Couldn't say I particulalry like or hate it, but the attention it has gotten definitely make it the most talked about project.

Blender gets far to little credit.

Atom and Electron are both neat too. ... Love that video-ad for Atom. :-) ... I like Atom for the hippster vibe it brings to FOSS with UIs and usability that don't look or feel dated. ... It does still have some issues though. :-) And, btw., unlike .Net Atom did start off as a true FOSS project done by GitHub. These folks put their money where their mouth is - unlike some other folks in the industry.

Compare it with Blender, with a healthy and energetic user and developer base, a continuous flow of real and useful new features, and a rapidly growing and actively using user base.

Feel free to correct me, but GIMP doesn't have the kind of sponsors that Blender has. But the help you get in the forums involves a lot of "works for me" defensiveness and that drives users away.

The day GIMP started trying to force people to save in its own proprietary format (to the great unhappiness of a large portion of its user base) rather than the format the file was OPENED in pretty much marks its death.

Native, not proprietary (the spec is out there and you're free to write readers/writers for it). Do you know of any other open format that preserves the structure of a GIMP doc?

As for writing back to the original format, I just opened a random PNG to double-check. Sure enough, under the File menu, Save (Control-S) and Save As... are for saving to XCF (so you don't lose any GIMP features you've built on top of it). Then you have Overwrite foo.png which does exactly what you want and Export As... which lets you pick a new name. Just remember that, just like with Libre|OpenOffice, opening another format is actually an import operation.

That's not where my gripes lie. For example, using the Text tool is akin to waltzing on a messy car repair shop and the font picker is an unhelpful eyesore. Installing plugins is anything but foolproof. My memory fails me right now but I'm sure you guys can pick up from here.

The important question is - how does it perform for the Cycles (Blenders render engine) benchmarks :)

http://blenderartists.org/foru...

https://www.blender.org/downlo...

Blender: http://www.blender.org/manual/

The worst are pretty much anything requiring me to type "man" in a terminal.

I see a lot of whining, but I think this is great. For a GUI, use the free edition of Maya. I'm sure there will be a way to get scenes out of Blender. For the hobbyist or student, this is the best news out of Pixar since Typestry. Thanks, Pixar!

Sweet! Happy for you and that's great information. By the way, do you use Blender http://blender.org/ (Free and Open Source 3D and Video editing) too? Here is a sweet tutorial on how to generate 2D artwork (SVG's) from 3D models. http://goinkscape.com/use-blen... if you ever need it. That's the great thing about Blender and Inkscape, there are so many free and great tutorials on the Internet as well as a wonderful community of users you can most likely get an answer from when you get stuck. Something I really want to learn myself is how to run a CNC milling machine (or Plasma cutters) as well as how to 3D print. I mean if you learn Blender, GIMP, Inkscape and Inkcut one can be very versatile and valuable to a lot of companies in a lot of situations. Or like yourself, run your own business.

Hide nothing from him for game development.
He can't have total focus on any particular aspect and be able to ship anything.
Buy this kid a new gaming-class computer every 2 years.
This investment could save you $100,000 in college tuition fees.

This may be advanced, but worth a shot: Game Theory

As far as gameplay goes, follow the mantra of Dwarf Fortress and FTL, "Losing is Fun!".
Occasionally place players in impossible situations so they can experience failure while trying their best.
A game that's too easy or too linear gets dropped quickly.

Maybe he'll pick up the art side as well and make a game before he's out of high school.
8 years is long enough for a really good game, even designed/developed solo - Uplink had 3 devs, Banished is a 1-man shop.
I started programming at age 15 - within a year of getting my 1st computer.
I could have done it earlier, but didn't have the $2000+ required in those days.

More resources
Unity 3d
Playmaker - an AI design tool using zero code.
Blender
Blender Guru
character rigging

Quick assets (some free):
CG Textures
Open Game Art
Turbo Squid

Easy scenery:
Terrain - Terragen
Plants - Speedtree

Not many people know that Blender has a Video Editor. Its not the most intuitive, but once you get used to it you find that it is very stable just the the rest of Blender.

A quick search finds this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te9HFQVaSUE

I found that Blender has a surprisingly intuitive Video Sequence Editor. It might be worth looking into.

This is a measure of Blender's success as FOSS. I hadn't expected this kind of reaction for a couple more years, but Blender has been developing a lot faster than I had thought it would.

What constitutes indie is one questions (and AAA is even harder to come to a consensus, even among my work peers) but that said...

As a child of the 80's, who adamantly played video games (e.g., Apple ][, arcade, 2600, NES, etc...) and got into professional game development over 10 years ago (I work for a AAA studio and my have my own gig for nights/weekends) I'd agree with those who say now, 2014, is the best time for indie game development.

Powerful engines and Middleware tools are accessible with licenses that fit indie budgets (e.g., Unity3d, Unreal4, etc...) as well as a swatch of free software for development. (e.g. Phaser: http://phaser.io/ Blender http://www.blender.org/ Love https://love2d.org/ Flixel http://flixel.org/ Haxe http://haxe.org/ )

The internet, as-is, provides indies with a way for
- distance-collaboration (Skype, E-mail, Groups, etc...)
- community building (Twitter, CMSs, Facebook, etc...)
- fundraising (IndieGogo, Kickstarter, HumbleBundle, Paypal, custom web-based donation system, etc...)
- advertising (game communities, news outlets, etc...)

Organizations, such as the International Game Developer's Association (IGDA, http://igda.org/ ) and events like the Global Game Jam, PAX (IndieMegabooth), and MAGFest also contribute to the community of indie game developers.

It is a great time to be an indie game developer in terms of accessibility and ability to achieve a sustainable income.

Mega-Block is a parallel to Minecraft. The size of the blocks irritates me. I've seen some more recent games in development that allow multiple sizes of blocks. Those will be the better system. Minecraft is "fine," but the ball has been dropped and is being picked up slowly by other indie developers.

Being one of those "indie developers," I feel the need to spam about my own effort at smaller blocks, Multiplayer Map Editor. Just prepare yourself to be unimpressed. The game has existed for years yet basically has only one active player. ...and to be honest, I have no idea how he keeps himself amused. I feel like I'm punishing myself every time I start it up just to see if anything is happening.

...but, it does work in Linux. I think that counts for something around here, although that something may be immediately wiped away by its closed-source nature.

More to the point of the discussion, those smaller blocks aren't all you'd imagine they are. In my experience with this game, if I were to make suggestions to someone thinking of writing a similar game, I'd suggest they stick with the standard size, or at most cut it in half. I'm not sure I'd do the same if I were to start over with the game, but I'd definitely have to consider taking my own advice on the issue as it would be kind of silly to ignore what I learned the first time.

First of all, essentially no one actually wants smaller blocks. Even those who think they want smaller blocks don't want smaller blocks. If you actually want the ability to add more detail, what you're really looking for is something like Blender which, despite the steep learning curve, is perfectly usable if you're willing to spend a few weeks watching these tutorial videos. My nephew used to play my game, and liked it since it was detailed enough that he could build complex objects like tanks, and he'd actually look up measurements on the internet to make them as realistic as he could. Then I taught him how to use Blender. Building with blocks just isn't good enough for him anymore. I don't blame him since I also never built anything in my game after I learned to use Blender. Using blender is simply more rewarding when you look at what you get vs. the time you put into it.

So your players consist entirely of people who don't want to learn Blender. ...but that isn't all that they don't want to do. They're also not fond of measuring anything. So their ceiling heights are entirely random because you can't just eye-ball 24 blocks, you have to use the measuring info box that the cuboid tool provides, but first you have to know that ceilings should be 24 blocks tall. So how do you know that? Well, I provided a tiny example house, with proper measurements for ceiling height, door height, door width, chair height, etc., but no one takes the hints. They just build whatever they want. Then it looks awful and they lose interest and they go back to playing Minecraft. ...but again, I can't blame them. I use the measuring tools and what I build looks awful too. I tried building a full-size house and only got half way through before deciding I really didn't give a shit.

The only time I really built anything that looked interesting was early in the game's development when I needed a properly-sized house to verify that everything was sane (you can't really judge your speed or height above ground when you're looking at a flat surface and nothing else) and so I found blueprints for a house on the internet and drew a grid over them at the scale of the blocks in the game. That turned out nice and was rather impressive. It's been all downhill since then, particularly because I've never since found a freely available blueprint for a house on the internet.

The performance implications of smaller blocks also cannot be i

https://cloud.blender.org/goos... For only 224 USD you can be in the movies credits. Others have to work their ass off to get into a movies credits, so if your name is not too offending to anybody this is a done deal ;-) Of course there are also cheaper deals.

What other GPU enabled software runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux?

For starters: Every game that makes use of 3D and is available for the three platforms, scientific software like Paraview, Slicer 3D, 3D rendering software like Blender, the famous video player VLC, ...

You are correct, the Gimp team does not distribute Windows binaries. But (in case you want one) they do have a link on their page to someone who does: http://www.gimp.org/downloads/ Blender does distribute Windows binaries, as zip archives and installer programs: http://www.blender.org/download

Go ahead. Download Tears of Steel. From wherever. You're allowed to - it is licensed under the Creative Commons Attributions 3.0 license, so you're allowed to! Be sure to read the license before re-sharing though - you'll have to give credit where credit is due.

See http://mango.blender.org/sharing/ for details.

Well, as the FOSS community would say: "shut the fuck up and fix the problem yourself".
Here's a link to get you started OGRE. Here's another Blender. And another learncpp.com
When you're done with your masterpiece, feel free to give it away and support it forever.

More importantly, does it run Blender?

Here you go. http://wiki.cgsociety.org/index.php/Comparison_of_3d_tools
Blender compares extremely well with other sweets, especially now with it's new dynamic topology sculpting
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.66/Dynamic_Topology_Sculpting

The UI in Blender today is immeasurably better than the old versions. Just try something pre-2.0 and you'll see how bad it used to be.

How about linking to the changelog instead of directly to the download page? Or even better, both?

It's pretty close to the Blender story - where a closed source but active community decided to open up the source code in order to grow the community. See "3D software Blender's "community buy out" in 2002" - http://www.blender.org/blenderorg/blender-foundation/history/. I was at the launch event, and they faced many of the same code issues that the LiveCode community now face - a large amount of legacy code written in a way which was difficult to open source. Blender is now the preeminent open source software for 3D modelling around the world - and LiveCode has the potential to be much bigger - as it applies to a more general audience of developers interested in desktop, server side, mobile and tablet apps across multiple platforms - in a language which is literally child's play to learn. Anyone interested in getting more people into coding, and therefore getting a wider understanding of some of the most important technologies that are shaping our future - should give the KickStarer a look. This is more than an educational project, it is about democratising programming - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1755283828/open-source-edition-of-livecode

I second Python: just type in the pseudocode you'd write on a piece of paper, and there is a good chance that it will work just like that in Python.

2D gaming using SDL (and OpenGL 3D, but you have to do the hard work yourself): Pygame
3D drawing/animation/gaming: Blender 3D
(I started by gaming, because that's a fun way to learn a language quickly)

Web: Django
Co-routines: Stackless Python
Maths: NumPy and SciPy
Networking: Twisted

That just scratches the outside of it, but have a look at the above to get an idea of the language.

And Python's documentation is quite good: brief, but everything you need is there - you just need less than you would expect at first. Here are some good tutorials:

Official Python Tutorial
Dive into Python
How to think like a computer scientist?

Hmmm, looks like I've turned into a Python fanboi... Be careful if you try Python, you could fall for it.

The wiki is a lot better than it used to be and probably 95% complete, but you're right. There is still a lot of work to be done and far too many blank sections in the documentation.

Having recently banged out a 450-page manuscript w/ text and complex figures/tables, on a 15" laptop w/ professional pre-press software? As a guy who regularly fires up LuxRender and Blender for fun?

I don't even want to know how that would work on a ridiculously underpowered tablet processor with a puny GB or two of active RAM that can barely run itself and a couple of apps on most days...

Never mind: I forget the gadget-geeks mostly consume content, and don't build anything beyond the occasional blog.

If you're trying to figure that out, I must advise against trying to use the Blender.

The current docs are mostly available here. As to your first two questions, they are pretty well covered in the manual. As to the third question, there is really no good way to do it while preserving decent topology and UVs. If you have a messy mesh, you probably want to retopologize it and lay out new UVs. You might want to use 2.4 for this and, when you're done, import it into 2.6. I say this becuase I know the tools in 2.4 are good and haven't yet used the 2.6 tools for this (they went through a massive redesign and the documentation was apparently never written). If you're lucky you can bake/project your old mesh's texture onto the new mesh but i'm not sure if Blender can do that (there are, however, programs that can, although I can't think of any open source at the moment).

The current docs are mostly available here. As to your first two questions, they are pretty well covered in the manual. As to the third question, there is really no good way to do it while preserving decent topology and UVs. If you have a messy mesh, you probably want to retopologize it and lay out new UVs. You might want to use 2.4 for this and, when you're done, import it into 2.6. I say this becuase I know the tools in 2.4 are good and haven't yet used the 2.6 tools for this (they went through a massive redesign and the documentation was apparently never written). If you're lucky you can bake/project your old mesh's texture onto the new mesh but i'm not sure if Blender can do that (there are, however, programs that can, although I can't think of any open source at the moment).

The current docs are mostly available here. As to your first two questions, they are pretty well covered in the manual. As to the third question, there is really no good way to do it while preserving decent topology and UVs. If you have a messy mesh, you probably want to retopologize it and lay out new UVs. You might want to use 2.4 for this and, when you're done, import it into 2.6. I say this becuase I know the tools in 2.4 are good and haven't yet used the 2.6 tools for this (they went through a massive redesign and the documentation was apparently never written). If you're lucky you can bake/project your old mesh's texture onto the new mesh but i'm not sure if Blender can do that (there are, however, programs that can, although I can't think of any open source at the moment).

"Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License". link

"The film itself -- as well as original footage and all the studio files -- will be released as free and open content; the Creative Commons Attribution license". link

"Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License". link

"The film itself -- as well as original footage and all the studio files -- will be released as free and open content; the Creative Commons Attribution license". link

Supposedly they're working on it. I've had similar issues when trying experiment with OpenCL mode. Sorry to hear you're problems with your 460. I have three and they all work fine. Great for Cycles. You might try Luxrender or smallluxgpu for your GPU (both work well with blender). Have you tried either?

Exactly. I now use an AMD card due to...complications, and I'm "forced"* to wait for them to improve AMD and general OpenCL support. I imagine that'll happen on or well after 2.65, but oh how I can't wait for that.

*I scare-quote "forced", because with 2.63a and the current 2.64 RC2, I can sometimes actually get a few Cycles features to work with OpenCL, if I play around with the feature #defines in [BlenderPath]/2.63/scripts/addons/cycles/kernel/kernel_types.h, if I am willing to wait a whole bunch of minutes to see if the altered kernel code compiles (or watch as the compiler just aimlessly grinds on and on forever), and if it finally loads and doesn't overwhelm and freeze the card (which has happened to me a bunch of times, after I move a bunch of stuff in the modeling viewport while in Rendered mode after I try the other steps); and because I can always just use the (vastly slower) CPU instead anyway, or donate to motivate. :P

Is anything major using Python 3 already?

Guess it depends on your measurement. Blender uses (hosts) Python 3 for scripting.

It's a pretty reasonable open source license, actually.

It may be, but it can't be used by Blender for example because it is based on GPL v2 (like a lot of OSS software)

But the good news is that the project leader of Blender, Ton Roosendael, has met with Pixar director Bill Polson and he promised that they would work out the licensing issues.

Our intent is to encourage high performance accurate subdiv drawing by giving away the "good stuff".

I want to be wrong about this. I really do. But I read this as "our intent is to establish a tie to our proprietary products Renderman and Maya via a license carefully designed by Microsoft to be incompatible with GPL, and thus Blender."

You'll be happy to know then that you're likely at least partially wrong.
First: http://www.blender.org/BL/ -- from this, you may conclude that their intent is to force Blender to activate the Blender License.
Second: Blender is licensed under "GNU General Public License v2 or later" -- and that "or later" bit is key here, as the MS-PL is compatible with GPLv3, just not with GPLv2. The end result of this is that the code is compatible with any GPLv3 code *and* any GPLv2 code with the "or later" clause that is used with Blender libraries and derivatives. It should also be compatible with the LGPL.

I think I'm going to need some tutorials on this application. But is this the one? The Blender3D conquerer?

There is a picture create with Blender that looks quite similar, but with better colors: To the Competition

There is a picture create with Blender that looks quite similar, but with better colors: To the Competition

http://www.blender.org/documentation/blender_python_api_2_57_release/

PDF Version: http://www.blender.org/documentation/blender_python_api_2_57_release/blender_python_reference_2_57_release.pdf

http://www.blender.org/documentation/blender_python_api_2_57_release/

PDF Version: http://www.blender.org/documentation/blender_python_api_2_57_release/blender_python_reference_2_57_release.pdf

You can download it from here unpack the archive and run it - nothing more complicated than that.

Current releases still seem to be accessible from here: http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.57/