Winter holidays are fast approaching, making this the perfect time for BAM to take a short vacation. We will return with the new year fully recharged and ready for more blender fun.

We will post a brand new call for content the first week of January and get the blender ball rolling once more.

Have a great holiday season!

I invite all of you to post your results to our facebook page. David and all of us here at Blenderart are waiting to see what you come up with.

And before I forget once again, here is the licensing info for Little Bot Bunny. David has given Little Bot Bunny to us with a very permissive CC-By license. So enjoy and don’t forget to post your results.

from David Revoy:

I offer it to the Blender community and for internet in the very permissive CC-By licence. I really hope it will help book writers or maker of video tutorial to work on a fancy character. Also, if many blenderheads can try their modeling skill on it, I would be happy My wish for this character ; have the honnor to see it animated one day doing crasy stuff with the carrot light saber. I hope it will inspirate some 3D artist.

So , 2 versions ; black&white for 3D viewport friendly , and a colorfull one for indication about my idea on shaders and material.
Of course, as long it’s CC-By , user can do what they want as long as they keep attributing me the model-sheet and the character design.
( ex; change the color for a black one as well as the design a bit , to do a fighting )

If you have not yet downloaded your copy of Little Bot Bunny, he can be found in the blend file zip for issue #35.

written by Lance Flavell

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (December 30, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430231262
• ISBN-13: 978-1430231264

Blender is a very powerful program, filled with buttons, options and tools that often seem to change willy nilly depending on what you are doing. There is SO much to cover when writing a book about Blender. What do you focus on? How in depth do you go? And ultimately, how big would you like the end result to be.

So what can you expect to learn from this book?

Right in the introduction, Lance sums it up best.

… a guide to explain just the few important options needed to get me started.

“This book does not aim to be exhaustive and yet it is not written to an overly simplified manner so as to insult your intelligence. 3D animation by its very nature is not simple. What you have with Beginning Blender is a book that covers a good range of the many different areas of Blender, with practical examples to get you fast-tracked into using those areas.”

Each chapter focuses on a different area of Blender and guides you to the most important tools and options. There are tables, diagrams and call out areas showing key information that can be quickly referenced. The examples are easy to follow and show how easy it is to accomplish a variety of common and a few not so common tasks in blender.

This is a great resource for beginners to Blender as well as experienced 3d artists who are changing over to Blender as it gives you a “leg up” on getting going with Blender. For experienced Blender users, Beginning Blender is a great reference to keep on your desk. Especially during those all night blending sessions when your brain goes blank and just needs a little refresher on how to do something.

Because Beginning Blender is not meant to be an exhaustive one stop reference guide, Lance encourages testing and experimenting with options and points out areas that should be studied further.

Technical:

• Well formatted.
• Can be read straight through or pick a chapter as needed.
• Nice color screen shots.
• Easy to understand explanations and examples
• Lots of tables and diagrams for quick reference
• Written for 2.5 series
• Helpful to reference where options and tools have been moved or changed for the 2.5 rewrite.

Table of Contents

• History and Installation
• The Interface
• Modeling
• Lighting and Procedural Textures
• UV Mapping
• Curves and NURBS
• Basic Rigging and Animation
• Advanced Rigging
• Making Movies
• Particles and Physics
• The Game Engine
• Going Further
• Companies That Use Blender
• Blender and GPL Terms of Use
• GNU Public License
• OpenContent License

Okay I didn’t put it in because I totally forgot to grab it from Claas.   I was obviously having a senior moment.

But I now have the file and nam has ever so nicely tucked it into the blend download zip file and you can download it at your convenience.

from Andrew:

I am currently heading up a multi-aspect project, working on bringing back a classic game, “The Journeyman Project” by Presto Studios.  The project is currently split into three efforts:

1.  A prequel novel
2.  A port to Windows of “Pegasus Prime”, a remake of Journeyman by the original studio.
3.  A retelling of Journeyman using Blender to model and render the video footage, “Journeyman HD” if you will

I have been keeping a blog of the modelling work I’ve done on the project so far, which can be found at http://andyjourneyman.blogspot.com/.

Currently there are several members on the novel and port teams, but the modelling HD version is only done by myself at present.

One of my goals is that the footage be done completely within Blender.  No external renderers/video packages can be used to manipulate the video.  As well as Blender, I am using VirtualDub to edit the footage together, keeping the project open source at the moment.

What has been needed in the Blender community for some time is exactly what Colin Litster has delivered in Blender 2.5 Materials and Textures Cookbook. He has written a comprehenisve book that explains the ins and outs of using Blender’s material and texture options to create a wide array of materials and effects.

There are nine chapters, with each covering a different material category in a easy to understand and well thought out format. Each chapter starts out with a short introduction that discusses the material type being covered. It is followed by a series of clear “recipes” that show you exactly what settings are needed to create the material being discussed. After the “recipe”, Colin then explains what each part of the “recipe” did to help make a convincing material and how it all works together. Not only does this format make it easy to understand how the material was created, it makes it even easier to quickly flip through at a later date to find just the settings needed for whatever material you needed with out having wade through the explanation part.

You can check out the materials and techniques that Colin covers in the Table of Contents listed at Packt Publishing as well as download a sample chapter:

Preface
Chapter 1: Creating Natural Materials in Blender
Chapter 2: Creating Man-made Materials
Chapter 3: Creating Animated Materials
Chapter 4: Managing Blender Materials
Chapter 5: Creating More Difficult Man-made Materials
Chapter 6: Creating More Difficult Natural Materials
Chapter 7: UV Mapping and Sub Surface Scattering
Chapter 8: Painting and Modifying Image Textures in Blender
Chapter 9: Special Effects Materials
Index

Now granted, not every material/texture imaginable has been covered in this book, but the techniques taught and clearly explained will give you the knowledge to create those materials for yourself.

Pros:

• Clean layout
• Screenshots are clear
• Recipes are easy to find and follow.
• Explanations of the recipe follows the recipe, making it much easier to go back and just find the recipe
• Book can be read cover to cover or just jump to needed recipe
• Colins shows how to build a basic material then shows you how to build on it to produce variations

Cons:

The only downside to this book is that it is printed in black and white. A book that teaches materials would have benfited from being offered in color or at least having a small gallery of color images to view.

Packt Publishing has offset this drawback by supplying the files Colin used to create the materials in a downloadable package of blend and texture files. The link to which can be found in the front of the book.

Conclusion:

Colin has produced an excellent guide to Blender materials. It is clear enough for a beginner to understand and covers more than enough to be of use to experienced users. In my opinion this book will prove to be invaluable guide to Blender’s material and texture options for quite some time.

Blender 2.5 Materials and Textures Cookbook
by: Colin Litster
312 pages
Publisher: Packt Publishing

From the Packt Publishing Website about Blender 2.5 Materials and Textures Cookbook

You will learn how to emulate the reflective properties of natural materials and how to simulate materials such as rusted iron, which is difficult to make believable. Transparency and reflection are both tricky natural surface properties to simulate but these recipes will make it easy. Explore ways to speed up animations by using special painting techniques to significantly lower render times. By the end of the book, you will be able to simulate some of the most difficult effects to recreate in any 3D suite, such as smoke, fire, and explosions.

What you will learn from this book :

• Understand the new Blender 2.5 user interface that simplifies creation of materials and textures
• Explore the complex task of UV mapping of a human face
• Use the Sub Surface Scattering commands in Blender to create objects the way you want
• Confidently simulate materials such as smoke, flames, and explosions using the Blender 2.5 Smoke Physics module
• Create an entire ocean that animates and reacts with objects in the water by using the new Blender 2.5 features
• Employ simple repeating textures that can be applied with infinite variety without appearing to repeat
• Synthesize complex materials without complex mesh objects by using alpha transparency
• Create incredible moving textures and materials by using Blender 2.5 animation curves
• Create flexible materials that can curve around corners or apply themselves to complex winding meshes without unwanted texture distortion
• Manage Blender 2.5 materials and textures and effectively apply them to your Blender projects

They are also calling for high quality images to be shown in their gallery, that they would like to print in a 30×40 format. You can contact the organizers at blendercat@festimatge.org for further information.

The winner in the Function Category is the Zoybar TOR by Bård S D.

Bard has won a full Zoybar Hardware kit + the fabrication of his design by Shapeways. Total Value: $870 (USD). We are looking forward to see and hear you play on the mighty Zoybar TOR! The winner in the Fantasy Category is the Zoybaroque by Marc Leboeuf from Montreal. According to Marc: “ a design to bring the futuristic Zoybar design back to the 17th century! It gives warmth and soul to the instrument.” Well, you made it work!  Marc has won a full Zoybar Hardware kit. Congratulations to both of our winners!

All of these designs among many other more are available to download from our project gallery and can also be produced by Shapeways.com, look for them tagged with the word ‘Zoybar’.

Thanks again to everyone that were involved!

Zoybaroque by Marc Leboeuf

Have you ever wanted to custom design your own electric guitar? Well here is your chance. Design and model your very own custom parts to attach to a Zoybar electric guitar hardware kit.

Official Press release

We are very excited to launch a new collaborative contest with Zoybar and Shapeways. This contest represents the first hardware integration between a mass production product and mass customization of user made applications. Within ten working days you can hold your own custom guitar and hardware features that were originally designed from your home computer!

In order to promote Open Hardware/Software we have initiated a contest with the prize of two electric Zoybar guitars along with the fabrication of the winning hardware design by Shapeways. Musicians, designers, animators – professionals and amateurs, are all invited to design original hardware features that can be incorporated with the Zoybar instruments and enter a contest to win their creation.

Who, What, Where & How

Zoybar is an open R&D Lab for academic, hobbyist, and commercial developers to easily create music instruments and applications. Zoybar also provides fully produced hardware kits for those who are more interested in experimenting with these new instruments physicality. For this challenge however you don’t need to buy anything! Zoybar`s unique open R&D model provides access to both hardware and production files for further customizations and development by the end users themselves. Zoybar`s 3D CAD production files are available to download for non commercial use and can be used to design new hardware features on many 3D modeling softwares, including Blender.

Shapeways is an online manufacturing platform for physical objects. Designers upload their design files to the Shapeways website, they print it and ship it to any destination you choose. Shapeways is using a technique called ’3D Printing’ which has proven itself as a high-quality production technique, but up to now has always been very expensive.

Blenderart Magazine was started for the Blender community to provide quality learning content from the efforts of the community itself. In addition to providing community contributed educational content, Blenderart Magazine promotes and encourages the use of Blender software in innovative and creative endeavors.

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

For more information about this contest visit: http://www.zoybar.net/The%20Zoybar-Blender-Shapeways-Challenge.html

General Overview:

The Challenge:

Design original hardware features that can be incorporated with the Zoybar instruments and enter a contest to win your creation.

Timeline:

The competition will start on August 05, however submissions will not be revealed before August 22 and will continue until September 20, 2010.

The competition will end on October 05, 2010

The prizes:

Function category prize (Open to all): A Full Zoybar Guitar or Bass Hardware kit provided by Zoybar, plus 3D print of the winning design entry in the amount of $200 (USD) provided by Shapeways. Total Value: $870 (USD)

Fantasy category prize: (Exclusive for Blender users only) A Full Zoybar Guitar or Bass Hardware kit. Valued: $670 (USD) provided by Zoybar.

The winners will be announced in Blenderart Magazine’s 30^th issue.

We have had a few complaints about messed up formatting in Issue #25. So I had Gaurav generate a new pdf for that issue as well. It has now been corrected and uploaded to our site. Like Issue #28, the mirrors should be updated within a few days as well.

And now for an explanation of our recent website problems. During the release of the last two issues of Blenderart Magazine, we have experienced rather annoying site outages. Something that had not plagued us up to this point.

Oddly enough, after investigation by Nam, this is not a bandwidth problem. But a problem with the number of site hits at once. Apparently our ISP is under the mistaken impression that we are being attacked and shuts down our site. And the number that trips it is not even that outrageous. We are talking about 65 “hits” at once. Seems like a pretty small attack to me.

We thought we had it fixed after the first time it happened, the second time wasn’t as bad as the first. But it still happened. So Nam and I have been discussing ways to lessen the chances of it happening again. When issue #29 releases, we will just have to see how it goes.

I guess this is the price of being popular.