Blender 2.8 Overview

The fun is back in 3D, so says the heading on the download page for Blender 2.8. Believe it.

More mind blown Speedflow magic.

Cedric Lepiller keeps adding more awesomeness to his Blender Add-on Speedflow.

 I don't think anything can match this kind of non-destructive workflow that results in perfect quad meshes. I may be wrong on that (don't quote me), in any case, Speedflow is the worth it's tiny price.

Tears of Joy.

Dreams do come true, you like me, you really really like me! I scored a top row mention in the Blenderartists forum, here's a screen grab before it gets cycled off the shelf to make way for all the brilliant work constantly being shuffled through that thing.

That's me top left. What a hoot to come home and see that there. I guess I can die now.

DUIK Bassel, or DUIK 2 released.

The free animation and rigging script DUIK has been updated and is now available. Not only does this super useful script help animators who use After Effects set up IK (inverse kinematic) rigs, it also includes many handy work-flow tools and expressions, for example, being able to select multiple key-frames on different layers, and copy paste them without creating new layers, that is just one tiny thing among others that even non character animators would want.  Sure there are plenty of commercial animation assistant scripts out there, but DUIK is free, widely used and well tested.

LightWave 2018 release for January 1st.

LightWave 2018 has a release date finally. It's basically the version they've revealed in the official blog posts for quite some time now. As I knew for a long time now, this version had been ready for release for ages, the reason why it has been announced now and not before, we'll never know. The man who headed LW's development has stepped down and he's not going to gain by saying why, and in any case it doesn't matter now.

I've largely left LightWave behind, I'll probably download a trial and test it, but I'm not seeing anything in the samples they are showing that really impress me, I have no idea why they never offered me a beta version, I have renders I did with their older versions that look better than the images they are currently showing to promote this version, and I'm not the only one who has done good looking stuff with the old Lightwave. It's ridiculous that Chris Jones never got his hands on a copy of the beta for example.



Anyway it's about to be released, exactly as advertised, it will be a good version, users will enjoy it.

I'll leave you with the only sample image that I consider worthy of putting up to promote the product. This tiger image that's been around for a while now.

HDRI's from HDRI Haven are now all entirely free

Greg Zaal, who runs HDRI Haven from Blender community has gone rogue and decide to release all his HDRI content for free from now on, you might consider supporting him on patreon but it's not required, no sign in or acknowledgments required. They're some of the best quality out there in various resolutions 1k to 16 K unclipped.

I've downloaded everything off his site and put some of them to the test below.

Blender 2.79 New Features.

Check the source video on YouTube for links mentioned in the video.

Blender 2.79 is official.

At last, we have the PBR shader, the denoiser and Filmic Color, among other things in an official "stable" release. Go download it now. This is the last release before 2.8.

Made the Switch to Blender.

I had to re-topologized  a scan of an office chair, something I'd never done, and looked online to find a how to. Blender came up as an option and I went ahead, after a day of doing re-topo in Blender I was starting to appreciate it's modeling tools, then decided to also do a render in Blender using Cycles. Up until then I hadn't really looked into Cycles. The above images were the result of setting up materials and lighting for Cycles. I instantly recognized the quality, the detail and believably of the surfaces wasn't something I was used to seeing without a lot of fiddling about (I use Lightwave normally), yet in Blender I barely did a thing, it felt like cheating.

At that point I made the decision to finish that particular job in Blender and all went well, it didn't take more than a day to get my head around working in the new system and the renders came out way better than I'd anticipated.

I realized that I would probably be using Blender more.

I took a car model I'd made with Lightwave and imported it into Blender to start the process of converting it into a Blender file, going through the different surfaces and very quickly making them Cycles friendly, most using what's called the Principled BSDF shader, an all in one shading node. Here are those render tests.

I just wanted to see how Cycles would render something I was familiar doing in Lightwave. Most of the time my head was shaking in disbelief at how much better everything looked, the clarity and smoothness for instance, plus the speed seemed comparable to what I would expect in Lightwave. I think I'm at a point where I will consider Blender first before automatically going to Lightwave. I await with interest to see the next version of Lightwave, with it's re-built renderer, but for now I will choose Cycles for anything that needs to look real, and learning Blender has made 3D interesting again for me.

Ouroboros 2 is out.

The updated, stripped down and re-written from the ground up version of this wonderful pay what you want script is now available.



From the the same guy who bought you Ray Dynamic Color and Ray Dynamic Texture. Find it here.

Vimeo's new page layout

I very much approve the new vimeo video page layout they just introduced. I've disliked the old page and just wanted to be able to see and find all my videos quick and easy, so now it has been economized and improved, even allowing for some bulk management, like mass delete of selected videos for example. Good one vimeo.

Surface Studio demos MOHO caught on tape.

I just came across this vision of MOHO being utilized on the new Microsoft Surface Studio.

 

Anime Studio is now Moho 12

The animation software that I've been using has been given a face-lift along with a name change, the somewhat misleading and long winded Anime Studio Pro moniker has been reduced to the cuter more cuddly 'Moho'.
This fun name is actually the original name of the software before I'd ever heard of it, so it's sort of coming home event in the history of the program.




I think this update kicks the program out of the hobbyist domain and lands it into the realm of a pro production tool for serious animation.

One of the big step ups they have introduced is proper bezier curve functionality in the vector creation tools, and as much as I like the current way Anime Studio deals with vectors, beziers are just superior.

For more information about Moho visit the site.

The Mill BLACKBIRD

This is a very niche use of technology to combine motion capture, CG texture capture and tracking data together in one piece of kit.

SABER

After the first few minutes using this free Video Copilot plugin you realize it was something you always needed.

BAO Mask 3D Warper - New plugin for After Effects

Create 3D geometry using masks, project textures onto distorted planes, export the geometry to other 3D apps that communicate with After Effects, this is one of those plugins that re-define what's possible inside of After Effects.






Can by purchased over at aescripts.com.

Anime Studio pro 11 at half price.

If you were thinking about buying this software then now would be a good time to act.

ASP is a great solution for a small studio that needs or wants to deliver 2D animation. It is relatively easy to get up to speed with it and start pumping out animation. This is not a paid comment, I just like and use the software and want to see its development continue.

Updated Video Notice

Just a note to say I've updated and replaced the video below two posts down to include the story-boarded shot in the previous post.

Rebelle Digital Watercolor Demo

Rebelle is something I've never used and didn't know about up until now. This video by a user speaks for itself. You can try the online version or download a demo, or purchase a full version which is very reasonably priced.

Anime Studio Pro 11 Frame by Frame explained.

Animation artist Chuck Kenway did this excellent walk-thru of the new Frame by Frame process in Anime Studio Pro 11. This really helps explain how it can be used as part of a complete work-flow in your productions, with all layers (outline, color, shading) being referenced off the first blue pencil layer. Any changes the animator makes to the first layer is passed on up the chain of referenced layers.