Nystic 1.5

Nothing special, but the first release candidate for Blender 2.47 has been released. The release is supposed to be a bug fix version because of the multitude of new things added in Blender 2.46 also known as the “Bunny release.” (If you are simply looking for the download link it is the the bottom of the page). To quote from the official blender site:

The work of the past half year - also thanks to the open movie project “Big Buck Bunny” - has resulted in a greatly improved feature set, now released as Blender 2.46, the “Bunny release”!

The Blender 2.47 is a bugfix release to stabilize the “Bunny release”, serious effort has been put in tracking bugs and fixing them, but also a couple of goddies:

- Better snapping tools
- Better Game Engine Logic

Along with this, the Blender 2.47 include bugfix in the following areas:

- Python Scripts
- Animation System
- Particle System
- Sequence Editor
- Fluid System

As you can see the new features are better snapping tools and better game engine logic. Here is a screenshot of the interface changes:

This is only a prelude to Blender 2.50 which by my estimations will be released late 2009 or early 2010. According to the same page the Blender 2.50 release will feature complete refresh of the UI, user interface. This will include the buttons panel(what I call the toolbar in my tutorials), icons, and the file browser. They also plan to add “Customizable key maps, Macros, Construction history, (Custom) Toolbars, Pie menus, Better python UI integration, and custom editors.”

Many thanks again to the Blender development team working hard on this!

Download Link for Blender 2.47 RC1: Download Here

This batch of tutorial is a whole bunch of goodies. These tutorials are all about Blender 2.46’s new features such as the explode modifier, hair with the rewritten particle section, and nodes. I also have included fixes from old tutorials such the UV Mapping tutorial and Particle Grass tutorial. Please let me know if and of my other tutorials become outdated and need to be addressed in the next released tutorial. Enjoy the videos below:

If you liked this post don’t forget to subscribe via rss or email by registering

Each new blender release comes with tons of new features and fixes. This process keeps Blender up to date with other 3D modeling software like 3DS Max and Maya. New features are usually pushed by large blender projects like Big Buck Bunny or the Yo Frankie/Apricot open game project. Today I would just like to suggest a feature that would be like to see in future blender releases. If you have a feature you would like to add don’t forget to leave it in a comment.

Auto Generation of Meshes/Models by Images - Though it would be hard to implement, the ability to import a simple picture into blender and change it into a mesh with the push of a button would be invaluable. This would greatly improve the efficiency of a project in blender as the time to create a finished model for your project would be exponentially reduced because you could simply generate it from your reference image. This feature could mature through several development steps:

Step 1 - Simple mesh recognition of blue print like images.

Step 2 - Mesh recognition of actual photos.

Step 3 - Each photo is tagged with the angle it was taken at, and a full model is created from the images.

Step 4 - 3D mesh recognition from a single photo as demonstrated by this youtube video.

As Blender progresses there will be tons of new features added. I hope this will be one of them. Maybe when my schedule starts to clear up I can help bring this feature to blender.

If you liked this post don’t forget to subscribe via rss or email by registering.

Well today I got the privilege of playing with a Kindle. Kindle is an digital book reader made by Amazon.com. It is a really lightweight and portable electronic reading device, weighing only 10.3 ounces. If you where to pick up a comic book in one hand and the kindle in the other they would be about the same weight. The weight is not the only thing that makes the kindle.

The screen is a 6″ diagonal E-Ink® electronic paper display, 600 x 800 pixel resolution at 167 ppi, 4-level gray scale according to the the official kindle site. Breaking down the tech words it basically means that the screen is a paper back sized electronic paper screen. This electronic paper, also known as epaper, is nice and easy on the eyes and only draws power when the display needs changing. This means that the kindle has a long battery life, about a day of non-stop use(lets see your phone try to do that). It also means that you could have absolutely no battery left, and still be able to look at a small study sheet or set of notes.

Before I continue complementing the kindle I do have to say the keyboard on the device sucks. It can be compared to the talk about how iPhones on screen keyboard is hard to use. Since the keys are rotated at a slight diffrent angle it is harder to type. I could only see someone getting a few words a minute on that keyboard, but maybe it is something that you will get better at as you use the kindle over time.

You get books, magazines, or blogs instantly via the kindle’s wireless connection. This is provided by Sprint, and Amazon pays all of the wireless fees which is pretty cool. That probably leads to the high price of $359.00 too. You get ebooks, electronic books, and other electronic mediums relatively fast off the amazon kindle page. It took about 20 seconds for the samples I downloaded, so I would imagine only a few minutes for a whole book. An ebook varies in price, but the average price was about $9.99, and many of the ebooks where a good deal cheaper than their physical list price counterparts. I saw sometimes about a 50% decrease in price, but you are getting a electronic copy not a tangible book. Blogs cost about $1.99 per subscription which I thought was pretty lame. You can just get on a computer and look at them for free. If anything it should be about $.99, just enough to cover wireless costs and give a tiny bit of money to the blog itself. I think this wireless reading approach really sets it above other ebook readers on the market though.

One of the features that the kindle offered in the amazon store was the samples. Basically it gives you something around the first 20 pages of the book to read. Although this approach would work well for a regular novel or book it was not adjusted for other types of books like programming books, which I would be using the kindle to read. In the programming books you would only get the introduction and terms in the first 20 pages, and a kindle sample was not enough to convince me if the book was good or not. I think that is something the amazon should change about the kindle.

There where also experimental features including a web browser. It was mostly a text only browser, but there where some images that where processed. I think it was very cool to use and you could theoretically update your blog or twitter from kindle’s free wireless access. I found no trouble browsing this blog at all.

In all the Amazon kindle is a great e-reader, compared to the others on the market. The kindle is portable, lightweight, and wireless. Like I said before the price of $359.00 is way too steep, but if you a very avid book reader that may spend a few hundred on books in the next two years then the kindle is a no brainer. The kindle also doubles as a music player which makes it much cheaper than an Ipod. You also get free internet on it( I do wish someone would hack the thing so it could be used as a free wireless modem). I think to price is a really deciding factor in getting a kindle. Is the internet, cheaper books, and music player worth $360? I think if there where more experimental apps launched for the kindle, or amazon opened it to 3rd party apps it sure would. With a new epaper factory being built maybe Amazon could pass the epaper screen savings on to the consumer to bring down the price. I can’t wait to see if they have kindle 2.0!

More Resources:  Official Kindle Site

If you liked this post don’t forget to subscribe via rss or email by registering.

As most of you are aware Viacom sued YouTube’s parent company, Google, for one billion dollars. This lawsuit has been going on since 2007, and Viacom recently requested the youtube logs of all videos watched. This request, a massive 12 Terabyes of log data, was granted by the judge. If this lawsuit is won by Viacom it could change the internet completely.

The massive amount of money that Google would have to pay, and other subsequent lawsuits by other media companies could lead to the death of youtube. Though other sites may spring up to replace it there will be a considerable content gap as hundreds of millions of videos that have been embed in websites would simply cease to work.

Here is a Question For You: Think how you would be affected if you where not able to watch youtube videos? Personally it would be a major inconvenience for the blender tutorials that I post on youtube. Without that popular medium I would have to resort to some other video sharing site, and start a new site fan base.

This seems similar to Napster and the music industry. In the end the orginal Napster did close, but the music industry had to change the way that they distributed their product. Seems similar to what is happening now. Some networks like FOX and NBC have already responded to the change with Hulu.com, which consists of ad supported videos of their programs. Viacom needs to change, not the users.

Viacom’s acquisition of the records also raises a privacy question. Could Viacom come after the individual users who viewed their copyrighted videos, the video publishers, or both? Would you really want someone to see a list of all the videos you have watched? Viacom could also use this data for targeted advertising.

One of the most interesting parts about this pertains to the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert shows. Both freely distribute portions of their programs on youtube, but now the Viacom(who owns both shows) want them to pull their content from youtube. This is despite the fact that youtube plays some part in the show and promoting it. The best example of this would be Colbert’s green screen challenge.

I urge you all to sign the petition and boycott Viacom’s brands and networks. Below is a list of companies provided on the Viacom website:

BET NETWORKS: BET, BET J
MTV NETWORKS: ATOMFILMS, ADDICTINGGAMES, CMT, COMEDY CENTRAL,
GAMETRAILERS, HARMONIX, LOGO, MTV, MTV2, MTVN INTERNATIONAL, MTVU, MTV TR3S, NEOPETS, NICKELODEON, NICK JR, NICK AT NITE, NOGGIN,
PARENTSCONNECT, QUIZILLA, RHAPSODY, SHOCKWAVE, SPIKE TV, THE N
TV LAND, VH1, VH1 CLASSIC, VH1 SOUL, VIRTUAL WORLDS, XFIRE,
FILMED ENTERTAINMENT: PARAMOUNT PICTURES CORP, PARAMOUNT PICTURES, DREAMWORKS STUDIOS, PARAMOUNT VANTAGE, MTV FILMS, NICKELODEON MOVIES, HOME ENTERTAINMENT, GLOBAL REACH

This is such a major piece of the entertainment market that I admit it will be hard to boycott all of these, but I encourage you to at least boycott their networks as much as you can. I also encourage investors and advertisers to cease to do business with this company.

To keep up to date on this issue you can subscribe via rss or email by registering.

Over the years the Blender Foundation has released two open source movies that both have shown the amazing capability of Blender. These projects have also brought about many changes to Blender’s source code that have benefited those who use blender. For example, the newest open source movie contributions included a new fur and hair tool, improved character rigging, and faster ambient occlusion. For those of you not familiar with the recent blender open source movies:

Elephant’s Dream from Blender Foundation.

Big Buck Bunny from Blender Foundation.

These sort films are about 10 minutes each. Although they look very great you can see there is a major improvement between Elephant’s Dream and Big Buck Bunny. The voice acting on Elephant’s Dream was a little shaky, and the plot was a little more abstract, at least to me. Big Buck Bunny lacked dialog, but was very comical and the plot was very clear.

The finance part of these open source movies also surprised me. Despite the movie being released for free in high quality, there where literally hundreds, as shown by the ending credits, that bought the €34.00 DVD which is ~$53.35 USD. This goes to show the huge support of the blender community for these open source movie projects.

I would love to see more and more of these open source movies. I thank the Blender Foundation and the people that made these movies possible.

Extra Resources: Big Buck Bunny Scenes and Characters .Blend Files, Elephant’s Dream Production Files 1, Elephant’s Dream Production Files2, Offical Big Buck Bunny Site, Offical Elephant’s Dream Site

If you liked this post don’t forget to subscribe via rss or by registering.

I have been using the phpBB board system for over 4 years and I really love it. With phpBB3 released not long ago I though of some things that I would like to see in phpbb4, which is a long way away. Some of the things I would like to see in the next major release would be use of Ajax to make things move smoothly, a handy offline mode with Google Gears or Firefox3’s new offline framework, and/or a plugin system for modifications.

A plugin system for phpbb4 would be very nice because it you could quickly add extra functionality to phpbb. Some would argue that phpbb already offers the ability to add modifications, but these modifications take a bit of work to a ton of work depending on the mod. A plugin system would make things much easier for the forum administrators, and make forum modification easier and quicker to deploy. Making a plugin system for phpbb would be no easy task for the programmers most involved in coding it. It would probably require a partial rewrite of the template engine, but in my opinion it would be well worth it in the long run.

An online mode would also be nice. Firefox 3 now offers support for offline applications which could be used to make phpbb function while you are offline. Google Gears could also be used to develop an offline phpbb3. Although this would not a main function of phpbb, it would be helpful in the form of convince. Because large forums have so many posts, the amount of posts stored could be limited to new posts and saved posts. After a user comes back online his responses could be added to the forum. In making this feature developers would have to take measures to stop spam bots from using this feature to their advantage. I do have to say that the phpbb team has done a good job of keeping out the spam bots that where so rampant in phpbb2.

Last but not least the use of Ajax would be nice. This would make phpbb more into a web 2.0 application. Although this would be the hardest to implement, it would be one of the coolest new features. For a phpbb junkie like me, navigating and posting faster would make things more efficient. I could make many more posts in less time. Transition created in ajax would also make phpbb look much cooler.

I admit these could be a little much, but if they where implemented they would be awesome new features. If you liked this post don’t forget to subscribe!

Firefox 3 is finally out. There are many cool features to play with, and with over 15,000 changes Firefox 3 runs faster and better than before. Firefox 3 also set the world record for downloads in 24 hours with over 8 million downloads. According to Mozilla, Firefox’s market share jumped 300% on Download Day alone. In celebration of the Firefox 3 release I would like to share 3 great Firefox extensions that I have recently downloaded for Firefox and I urge you to check them out.

1) Speed Dial (Download) - This extension allows you to access your favorite sites in a click. It looks cool, and is quicker to use than bookmarks. The add-on allows you to put 9 of your favorite sites on a page that can be shown on the homepage, new window, or new tab page as demonstrated below:

2) Fox Marks (Download) - I have over 1000 bookmarks between my active computers with about 300-500 per computer. This list is constantly growing, and I need something that will allow me to let me view the bookmarks on other computers. Fox Marks does just that. It syncs your bookmarks between computers, and allows you to view your saved bookmarks from any computer on their website. It is great for backing up your bookmarks, because no one is happy when they loose all their bookmarks.

3) Fire Bug (Download) - A powerful tool for web designers. This add-on allows you to edit, debug, and monitor your web pages easily from the browser.

I hope you will take some time to try out these cool add-ons. If you liked this post don’t forget to subscribe!

I have seen several robot band videos, but this one has to take the cake. It almost looks like a real version of AniMusic. I really loved the song that they played, and hope to see more from this robot band. Take a look at the YouTube Video:

If you like this post don’t forget to subscribe!

The idea came to me two days ago, and I thought I would share it with everyone. I found some software in conjunction with site that does live web streaming. This would allow me to show what I am doing in real time on blender. With this I could do tutorials live or play a pre-made tutorials, then take questions on a predetermined chat room. I could then show solutions to the question live for everyone to see step by step. I could also have 1 on 1 sessions with people, which would you would have to pay for because of the apparent demand.

Now this is not something that will be happening anytime soon, but it is something to think about. I still have many websites and the DVD to finish, but this could be something that comes after that.

Give me your thoughts on the subject.