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If they could move it to Krita for texturing their game 'Super City'.. you can also do it! :)

Blender's provider is currently under DDOS attack: http://www.blendernation.com/2011/04/15/blender-org-down-dos-attack/

If you don't want to wait until situation resolves, add following lines to hosts.txt:
82.94.213.220 www.blender.org
82.94.213.221 download.blender.org

Blender doesn't require installation. Just download the standalone tarball (or more likely a ZIP archive) and unpack it somewhere.

That's a response to the fuckup with the Windows installer. Blender.org used to recommend the Windows installer. Now, they write "ANOTHER NOTE: The preferred way for installing Blender is the .zip. When installing as administrator still creates problems for non-administrator users." (That last sentence isn't even a sentence.) Downloading the .zip file and unpacking it does provide a single-user install, after which the start menu icon and file association have to be set manually. It's the sort of thing the command-line crowd thinks is good enough.

On the Linux side, there's the message "NOTE: 64bit build for Linux currently broken. Will be re-uploaded when fixed."

The last Blender developers meeting reports that there are "too many 'Blender doesn't start' bugs.". Er, yes.

Aha, I found the link to the BlenderNation newspost with the winners. http://www.blendernation.com/rube-goldberg-device-contest-winners-announced/

First, engineering software is a very specialized beast in exactly the wrong way to exist as a FOSS project. For FOSS projects to exist you first need someone who is capable of doing the programing. Then they have to have a need that they want to fulfill. And they can't need it urgently enough that simply going out any buying a working package makes sense. None of this describes the type of people who are trying to design next-generation parts of anything.

That describes some, but not all FOSS tools. In CAD and FEA tools there are government and research facility sponsored tools.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_finite_element_software_packages

It comes down to this: if you have the funding to actually make anything that you plan on designing you have the funding that paying for a high quality industry standard package is peanuts. And if you don't have the funding then it doesn't matter, does it?

The exact same thing was said for feature film animation. The first feature film done almost entirely with Blender premieres in a month http://www.blendernation.com/plumiferos-to-premiere-on-februari-18th/

It isn't to the same quality as Avatar or a typical Pixar film, however Blender was to a productive quality and production speed to get the job done.

It's the same reason that film and television production has always been happy to pick up FOSS solutions that already work but have never particularly cared about developing them. If you are operating at the professional level where you need these tools the cost of them is almost meaningless. It something that always confuses GIMP and Blender supporters who view it as personal software. For them shelling out $5000 a pop for software is such a big deal and they can never understand how the pros don't seem to care.

Actually the reason is more due to a established pipeline, the majority of the available workforce is already trained in the existing tools, and until recently the productivity of the tools was not competitive, among other issues. You should see a dramitic shift to Blender usage over the next 10 years, since it is becoming in widespread usage in universities.

[quote]However, beyond the FOSS issue what you are trying to do will not work. Period. These types of software packages are very specialized for specific types of work and beyond a basic level are no good beyond that. 3D modeling software such as Blender or AoI (or Maya or Lightwave or 3DS Max...) are not CAD software. They are not even remotely CAD software. Yes, they appear superficially similar but they are NOT. 3D modeling software is intended to fake the appearance of large numbers of real objects. CAD software is intended to do what is basically visual math. 3D modeling packages have margins of error built in. Many of them will auto-round any equations or numbers entered. As such they are not suitable for real-world design of any complexity.[/quote]

Precision is definitely an issue when comparing a 3D Animation package to CAD. That said, precision is actually a fairly solvable problem. And as long as the work is not done in drastically different scales in the same file adequate accuracy can be maintained.

That said it is far from clear from his description what they are trying to do. Ie I'd assume that they are not going to be outputting this to a 3D printer etc.

The types of data that CAD and modeling software generate are also not particularly similar. If you try and just toss engineering blueprints into animation software your artists will not thank you are the end result will look like ass. CAD tends to have too much and the wrong type of detail where animation software is looking for simplification and tends to simplify areas that need detail to look proper

I was planning on switching to a MacBook because the video card in the old one wouldn't work properly with Blender (Apple's OpenGL problems, as the same card works with Win/Linux and Blender) ... but the lack of a FW400 port means I can't hook in my DV camera, and using iMovie/iDVD was one of the reasons to want to switch to a Mac to begin with.

See this page for details on how to solve the Blender/MacBook problem (the solution is to disable double buffering or to download a build of blender which is configured to work properly)

http://www.blendernation.com/2008/02/22/blender-problems-on-leopard-solved/

and Blender's interface is one of the worst I've ever seen

You for sure missed this :)

... cue in 3d version of EMACS vs. vi discussion.

CC.

Here's an article that has a few examples. http://www.blendernation.com/2006/08/18/elephants-dream-remixes/

The only other thing I can recall people using the source files for is re-rendering it for technology tests, like an 8 megapixel display.

Now, if the Blender team could ever pull theierr head out of their ass and bring in a UI developer and stay out of the way... they might have something. But it's been ears coming and I doubt we'll ever see Blender become usable.

I've actually seen an interview with a Blender developer (a Linux magazine I flipped through, I can't remember which one) from when Elephant's Dream came out that discussed why they made the interface the way they did. Being the in-house application of NeoGeo, it was geared towards how they worked, and the developers gave the animators what they wanted - maximum productivity after learning the application when used the way that particular group of people liked to use it. The developers came to them and offered them an easier to learn interface - they were told "No, you idiot. We're going out of business and have to try to finish our last few projects. We're not going to hire anyone new. Now add this highly unintuitive key sequence to shortcut this arcane task that no novice has ever heard of." After it was released for widespread consumption, ease of learning became a common request, but there were still people learning the interface it had and wanting to be able to use it the way they had learned to. After almost ten years since its shareware release, and five since its release under GPL, this hypothetical easy-to-use, powerful, intuitive 3d modeling software that someone must have their head up their ass not to have delivered on a silver platter by now would probably have to take the form of a completely separate front-end, a fork, or a complete rewrite with some of the nuts and bolts used over.

And there are people out there who think that Blender "has something" just like it is. If a hobbyist or student wants gratis open-source 3d modeling with an easy to use interface, they should try Art of Illusion. It's nowhere near as powerful, but it's easy and intuitive enough for someone to learn on, and it can export into formats used by the big boys. According to TFA, Blender has the same "Learning path to be productive" as the others, even with the less familiar and intuitive interface. If someone is "getting serious", there isn't really a way around having to invest the time to learn something. And of six packages the article reviewed, only one could be learned in the single month they give you to try modo, and I'm sure those figures are for people who aren't squeezing it in on a part-time basis.

Oh, and there's a few gotchas with modo. They support both platforms - Mac and Windows! Should I download the trial and see if I can get it to work under Wine? Let me click on the "Try Modo" link - "Interested in trying modo? As a result of modo 301 now being available, all of our website bandwidth is being focused on supporting our registered modo customers. Sign up to create an account and you will be informed just as soon as the new evaluation version of modo 301 is available. If you already have an account you're already on the list to be notified." What? If I have an account, I'm on a list to be notified that there's a trial version available? Oh, they want $400 for an upgrade (which they're ready to sell you sight-unseen right now). Okay, let me see if I can figure out if I can use modo to turn blueprints into 3d models the way they do here. Hmm... not too big on the import/export capabilities are they? Looking over the so-called tech specs (looks like they hired some marketing people and got out of the way) I can only find "modo is able to harvest animation data from other 3D applications in order to render it. modo reads .MDD files for this purpose." Maybe it

• Parametric Blender 1
• Parametric Blender 2

• Parametric Blender 1
• Parametric Blender 2

Speaking as a former professional game developer, and as an active participant in open source 3D engine efforts, I want to point out that powerful 3D game development kits can be downloaded for free, and you can make games with easy scripting languages like Python. Maybe something like Blender or Panda 3D would be good for your case, both of which can be programmed with Python.

Then, if your son wants to make GTA3, make a simple level file with some buildings and a car model, then tell your son "OK, now make the car move in circles".

Probably your son wants to see cool graphics first. You can download free high-quality models and textures if you search. For instance, you can get a free car model from http://www.blendernation.com/2006/12/03/using-blen ders-game-engine-for-more-than-just-games/ , and see http://lowpolycoop.com/ for some other high-quality models.

Show your son the graphics, then show him that HE can control the graphics by programming the scripting language.

The bar has been raised since we were kids (when we were excited just to control pixels on the screen), but there _are_ tools available that allow fancy graphics to be controlled with simple programs.

Best of luck.

Here's some more information about the background of this project:

http://www.blendernation.com/2006/05/18/the-worlds -first-open-movie-released/

Cheers,

Bart

If you're interested in some more resources for Blender (or info on the movie), try checking these places out:

Blendernation

Blendernation article about Elephants Dream

Blender Artists Forums

Collection of WikiBooks

Elephants Dream on Wikipedia (in case you don't know anything about it, considering the main website is down and the original poster didn't say much of anything about the short itself)

Blender on Wikipedia

Seriously, though, considering how much has been happening with this project, and what a significant milestone it is for those who use OSS and/or CC, I find it almost sad that this is the first story on Slashdot in almost exactly a year. And that it took Slashdot editors well over a day since the first story submissions (some with links directly to the torrents to avoid killing the Elephants Dream homepage immediately) to get this up. Maybe I'm biased (I pre-ordered the DVD 9 months ago), but I just think that stories about people doing amazing things within and beyond the community deserves precedence over the latest reports about what the PS3 might cost. Not to anger anyone, just to toss that up for discussion.

If you're interested in some more resources for Blender (or info on the movie), try checking these places out:

Blendernation

Blendernation article about Elephants Dream

Blender Artists Forums

Collection of WikiBooks

Elephants Dream on Wikipedia (in case you don't know anything about it, considering the main website is down and the original poster didn't say much of anything about the short itself)

Blender on Wikipedia

Seriously, though, considering how much has been happening with this project, and what a significant milestone it is for those who use OSS and/or CC, I find it almost sad that this is the first story on Slashdot in almost exactly a year. And that it took Slashdot editors well over a day since the first story submissions (some with links directly to the torrents to avoid killing the Elephants Dream homepage immediately) to get this up. Maybe I'm biased (I pre-ordered the DVD 9 months ago), but I just think that stories about people doing amazing things within and beyond the community deserves precedence over the latest reports about what the PS3 might cost. Not to anger anyone, just to toss that up for discussion.

Here's a nice write-up written by somebody very much in cahoots with the Orange team and the heads of the Blender project:

http://www.blendernation.com/2006/05/18/the-worlds -first-open-movie-released/

You can get Blender here:

http://blender.org/cms/Blender.31.0.html

and learn how to use it here:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_P ro

and get community help here:

http://blenderartists.org/forum/
IRC: irc.freenode.net/ #blender #blenderchat #blenderqa

spiderworm

I've posted an article on the background of this project: http://www.blendernation.com/2006/05/18/the-worlds -first-open-movie-released/ Enjoy!