Doing some test renders to check overall lighting and verify lights are on the right layers is taking a lot of time… even with anti-aliasing turned off. Only on a dual core AMD processor right now. Running Vista Ultimate 64bit. Think i’m gonna start looking at some cheap quad core systems with more ram and possibly Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit.

So… I took some time this weekend to start getting reacquainted with my animated short project, FWD-REV. I’ve got a lot of work to do, but I did start fixing some texturing issues on the main characters. Hopefully in a day or two I can clear most of them up and move on to building more of the environment. Got lots to do.. but I’ve finally got some motivation to get back to it.

The Blender foundation has reached yet another milestone. Their second open movie project has just been released and can be downloaded and viewed as well as purchased online. Watch the movie below or go to the project web site for more. (http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/)

Well.. with all the updates to Blender (http://www.blender.org/) in the last couple years its about time I start to get back to my animation, FWD-REV. Here is the teaser video we produced a while back. So much more is possible these days it will be almost like starting over again. Hopefully I’ll make a lot more progress this year than in the past couple.

A lot of development has taken place over the past 6 month or more with Blender.  They’ve updated their web site with a small roadmap and an amazingly large list of new great features that will be released in version 2.46.  Version 2.46 will be the Peach open movie release and will be included on the Peach open movie DVDs.

Mainly a bug fix release, the new version of Blender 2.45 is now available!!  And the open movie project, Peach, is about to get underway as well!  Go get your DVD copy reserved and get your name in the credits!!  It also looks like there will be a lot of work happening soon with Blenders physics code as well.  Lots of cool Blender related stuff happening!

For those fans of the open source 3D modeling and animation package, Blender, a new test version is ready for download!  Definitely worth giving a run through to help developers squash any remaining bugs!  And a good step towards getting us to version 2.50!!  Can’t wait!

Check out the new functionality that will be added to Papervision3D!  Very cool!  Interactive movie clips as textures.  Usable interfaces as textures on objects.  This will open a whole world of possibilities!

I loved every minute of Siggraph 2007! It was a lot of fun to meet all the Blenderheads that attended. Some old friends and some new! I’ve uploaded the photos I took over the past week. It was a fun time. Tim Formica got interviews and more from Ton and others at Siggraph. Check out Tim’s first quick follow up of this years Siggraph.

I leave for Siggraph 2007 tomorrow!  I can’t wait.  It’s going to be a fun trip for sure.  So much to see and do!  I know the Blender community will have quite a few members out there as well and I’m looking forward to meeting more of them!  Check out Blender nation in my links to find out more.  I can’t wait!!!