8 ms·

New Blender 3D with Motion Tracking, new rendering engine, dynamic paint

191 points by steren 15y ago

thetrendycyborg 15y ago
I love using Blender. I wish I had enough time to use it.
- drivingmenuts 15y ago
  I wish I had enough time to learn it. It's not exactly a noob-friendly interface.
  - steren 15y ago
    I was sure we would be mentioning Blender UI :) Well indeed, not very noob-friendly and not very respectful of UI conventions. However, it is reckoned that once you get use to it, it is very efficient : No modal screen. The screen is divided. You can adjust your workspace depending on your current task. Tweaking parameters is very easy thanks to well designed widgets. If you try, remember that you should leave your left hand on the keyboard (like a fps) and use the keyboards shortcuts.
    - thetrendycyborg 15y ago
      I used to be pretty good at it. It is a style meant for using the application and nothing else. It is extraordinarily efficient.
    - barrkel 15y ago
      I've had problems in the past with applications like that - they often don't take dvorak layout into account.
  - tikhonj 15y ago
    I don't know. A while back I learned the basics of Blender as well as 3DS Max; I personally found the former easier to pick up. Of course, I didn't do much beyond basics--I got distracted away from 3D graphics in general and never got back to it :)
  - vq 15y ago
    I can recommend checking out Blender Cookie, it has a small series of "Get Started With Blender" video tutorials and a lot of in depth tutorials (of which a surprising amount are free to watch). http://blendercookie.com/ http://blendercookie.com/
  - exDM69 15y ago
    3d modelling is not exactly noob-friendly, not in any software. Google's SketchUp may be a slight exception, it's pretty easy to draw buildings in it but once you start to do more complicated things, it too gets really hard, really fast. Blender's new (introduced in 2.5) UI is pretty cool. They try to have all operations available through a widget in the UI (with a tooltip), a shortcut key, a quick launch menu and through a Python scripting interface. My favorite feature is the quick launch menu. Hit spacebar and a menu pops up, type in what you want and and it searches for operations using a fuzzy text search. It's also nice to see that you can adjust parameters to your operation and see your results live. Previously you had to enter all parameters beforehand and couldn't see the results, now you can e.g. draw a sphere and adjust the number of vertices in it, when you see the sphere. Blender's UI has gone through a vast improvement and it's great that the UI devs have done their job well despite all the bashing they've had - I'm sure they would have done a lot more if they would have gotten more positive feedback. Back when I started using Blender, when it was still a proprietary shareware software, most operations were only available through keyboard shortcuts that were mostly not documented. That was not a barrier for me, I quickly fell in love with the software. Now let's hope that someone has the time to translate (more of) the manual to the new UI.
    - stan_rogers 15y ago
      You must have missed Caligari TrueSpace in your travels. I would dearly love to see basic modeling (including kinetics) made as simple and intuitive as it was in TS 3-6 in another package. (For that matter, I wish it had stayed that easy in the last version of TS.) The only real fly in the ointment was rendering, and the proprietary models didn't export well for texturing and rendering elsewhere. That said, I did a lot of technical illustrations in that package just about as fast as I could think them, and if you didn't need complex reflections with ray tracing (or luminosity rendering), the results were certainly good enough.
daenz 15y ago
The realtime GPU raytracing is pretty incredible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KgrBjt4e9k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KgrBjt4e9k
- regularfry 15y ago
  Hm. Reminds me a lot of FPrime.
pavelkaroukin 15y ago
For me all these features says nothing (probably like "clojure" word for CGer). But to just get a glimpse of what these people do - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QbzE8jOO7_0&hd=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Q... - It is just incredible!
sc00ter 15y ago
This camera tracking test looks very promising: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjeFaexzOu8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjeFaexzOu8
- steren 15y ago
  and it's not only background tracking, it's also objects tracking : http://youtu.be/2AvQiOf2IGA http://youtu.be/2AvQiOf2IGA
feralchimp 15y ago
This is actually the first time I've heard of Blender, and...wow. Every once in a while the free software scene totally blows my mind, and these folks really seem to have the big-name tools in their sights. It's been a long, long time since I understood 10% of what a production-class modeling and animation tool can do, but maybe someone here knows: How does Blender compare to Maya, for example? What would this project need to achieve before folks would start switching?
- steren 15y ago
  I think Blender really is different from other graphics free-software: - It is baked by a very strong foundation. - It is used by real studios all over the world (and more and more used) - It is used by the scientific world a lot. - The new release cycle is around 10 weeks. And every release ships with awesome features. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Process/Release_Cycle http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Process/Release_Cy... - the community is strong, big and active. - it supports a lot of OS, and the experience is great in all of them. - The foundation is very user focused : * they create "open movies" to identify the needs and the weakness of the use of Blender is pro environement. You don't know about Big Buck Bunny (http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/ http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/) or Sintel (http://www.sintel.org/ http://www.sintel.org/) ? * they try to focus on real problems, not on eye-candy or extra-features that would impress but not be useful once.
- spiralganglion 15y ago
  Blender has been around for decades, and enjoyed a fair bit of popularity in the 90s when it was a great point-of-entry for budding 3D artists. Since then, it's fluctuated in its rate of evolution relative to the industry standard. It always had cutting edge features, but they were trapped behind a troublesome UI, while the big competitors made their tools ever easier to use. In recent years, the gap has been drastically closed due to a ground-up rewrite, completely new approach to the UI, and a tremendous effort to modernize. Unfortunately, Blender still has a bad reputation, a legacy from the previous design. What's more, many studios and schools have firmly entrenched workflows, or depend on custom extensions written for a specific tool. On the other hand, Blender seems to be enjoying popularity in the booming indie games community, where it integrates well with other free tools like Unity 3D. With the new design, I wouldn't be surprised if Blender's best and most-popular days were ahead of it. I see share growth coming from individuals looking to make great graphics on a shoestring budget, as opposed to big studios or schools adopting it instead of Maya or Max. I would argue that it is now roughly equivalent to those other tools in terms of features and usability. So, no real reason to switch (which requires expensive adjustments to existing workflows), but great incentive to adopt it in the first place (because it's free).
terhechte 15y ago
I've worked with blender since 2001 (version 1.9.x, when it was still shareware), and its growth over the past ten years has been outstanding. I'm not a 3d professional but, instead, use it for all kinds of things: Demo and Mock animations / movies, creating icons for apps (almost all my apps' icons were created in Blender), cutting videos (iMovie is a great app, but for quick and short movie edits, the one in Blender is actually superior). It even has a built-in game engine and can be connected to various open source 3d engines. Blender is really powerful. Blender is, in a way, similar to VIM or Emacs, in that the user interface is highly optimized for keyboard navigation. A lot of things can be done with the mouse and the keyboard without ever having to move through long and convoluted menus or hierachies. It's also scriptable in Python. It's one of the first apps I install on my machines. Edit: Typo
templaedhel 15y ago
Before I got into web development I was involved in several open source blender projects, usually as a modeler (someone who creates the 3d objects, then passes them on to people who color animate and process them). I have used both maya3d (the oracle of the 3d modeling, powerful, industry grade software with a cost prohibiting casual experimentation) and blender, in addition to several other programs in limited amount. Blender is everything that is right about the open source community. The feature list is very comparable to commercial applications (which usually run > $500) http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/features/ http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/features/ The community(s) are great, super helpful, nice, and diverse. http://www.blender.org/community/user-community/ http://www.blender.org/community/user-community/ http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/ http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/ http://www.blendernation.com/ http://www.blendernation.com/ (and many more, in other languages) But one of the most important, and as far as I know, unique things about blender and the community are the open movie projects. The Blender Foundation establishes clear and detailed roadmaps for features (something many open source projects struggle for). Then they take a small group of some of the best artists and programmers from the community, and pay them to create a open source project using the current goals in the roadmap. The most recent was Project Durian, which created the short CG film "Sintel" with a focus on developing blenders renderer to do high res (4k) renders, and the animation system to allow for crowds and complex animations. They also developed some sfx like fire and explosions. At the end, not only was the film released as creative commons, but all the files from the film were too, so the community could benefit. Where did the money come from? Presales of the DVD, which contained all the special features and files, and was released before the movie was posted to youtube, giving a "sneak preview". One project serving as fundraising, community support, community outreach, tutorial/teaching, feature development, focus grouping, beta testing/dogfooding, and publicity. Success. Here are links to some of the other blender open projects. - http://www.sintel.org/ http://www.sintel.org/ - Project Durian - Sintel, focus on special effects, high res cinimatic rendering, and animation improvements. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsGyueVLvQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsGyueVLvQ - http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/index.php/about/index.php http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/index.php/about/index.php - Project Mango - Big Buck Bunny - focus on hair/fiber, work with outdoor/large scenes, improve animation system for cartoony deformation styled animations. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSGBVzeBUbk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSGBVzeBUbk) (Note: Chances are you've seen this somewhere, because of the CC licence, stores and online video hosts love to use it for a placeholder) - http://orange.blender.org/ http://orange.blender.org/ - Project Orange - Elephants Dream - This is the project which developed blender into a program that had all the features to compete with the big boys, added the node compositing and spleen animation controls, plus lots more. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFtg0WBD5Hc&feature=fvst http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFtg0WBD5Hc&feature=fvst) I would advise watching all of those, besides being great artistically, the stories are actually pretty good.
mark_l_watson 15y ago
Great project. My granddaughter and I are learning to use it together. She knows that I worked in the entertainment industry for 2 years and when we were driving home from seeing "Puss and Boots" she wanted to know how to do 3d graphics (she is good with Scratch - a good start). One tip: don't try to use it on a Mac without a 3 button mouse.
- randomdata 15y ago
  Regarding your tip: For anyone using a Magic Mouse, MagicPrefs (http://magicprefs.com/ http://magicprefs.com/) can enable a third button area. Works great with Blender.
  - steren 15y ago
    In the user preferences, blender has an option to emulate a third button. Yes, Blender is that awesome.
- sc00ter 15y ago
  If effort/outcome ratio for blender is on the steep side for your granddaughter, have a look at Muvizu http://muvizu.com/ http://muvizu.com/, it's no blender for sure, but it makes getting started with timeline based 3D animation a breeze (pre-designed scenes, ready to go character animation, special effects, lighting, multiple cameras...), and it's free.
  - mark_l_watson 15y ago
    Thanks, that looks interesting. However, she uses a Mac and that is a Windows only program.
mierle 15y ago
Hi guys, I'm the primary developer of libmv (http://libmv.googlecode.com http://libmv.googlecode.com) which is used for the motion tracking component in Blender. I also wrote some of the Blender-specific motion tracking code. What's in this release is not the final word; there's some exciting improvements in the pipeline. Let me know if you have any questions.
- steren 15y ago
  Keir, I've been following the progress of libmv for a at least 3 years now. Seeing it inside Blender today is a real achievement. Congratulations and thanks for your efforts. This summer, I used the "tomato branch" (Blender branch where motion tracking was developed) to track points in a landscape for a small project. It worked well but at the time the workflow to transfer 2D movement to objects in the scene was not obvious. Thanks again.
  - mierle 15y ago
    It feels great to finally get this shipped, so thanks! There's no question that the workflow inside Blender is not optimal. Fixing this is planned for the 2.62 release. If you have specific suggestions on what you were expecting vs what was actually necessary, filing a report on the Blender bug tracker is a great way to get it addressed.
- TechNewb 15y ago
  Wanted to type out "Thank you!" Really excited to use this feature! I would be interested to read a blog post from you on general insight on the technology, and maybe any general guidance.
  - mierle 15y ago
    I'd love to make a blog post but doubt I will have time. I tend to prioritize coding over writing, even though that is not always the best choice.
    - 15y ago
ryanwaggoner 15y ago
Is there anything like blender for video editing? What about motion graphics?
- Joeboy 15y ago
  I'm led to believe Blender has impressive video editing capabilities, although I couldn't tell you anything about them.
commieneko 15y ago
I just started messing with Blender a few days ago. It looks like they've cleaned up the UI a bit since the last time I looked at Blender. Here's a very nice set of getting started tutorials on Youtube. Very simple and straightforward. http://www.youtube.com/user/cgboorman http://www.youtube.com/user/cgboorman
teilo 15y ago
blender.org appears to be down at present. Here's a working mirror of the latest: http://mirror.cs.umn.edu/blender.org/release/Blender2.61/ http://mirror.cs.umn.edu/blender.org/release/Blender2.61/
desaiguddu 15y ago
Blender server down :(
sirwanqutbi 15y ago
First time I've ever seen Blender's website go down.
mgschwan 15y ago
Blender Server is back. download.blender.org did not go down, so everyone interested in downloading even if the server goes down again the newest release can be downloaded from http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.61/ http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.61/ michael
mgh2 15y ago
How is it compared to software for industrial design, like Solidworks?

191 points by steren 15y ago

thetrendycyborg 15y ago

I love using Blender. I wish I had enough time to use it.

drivingmenuts 15y ago
I wish I had enough time to learn it. It's not exactly a noob-friendly interface.
- steren 15y ago
  I was sure we would be mentioning Blender UI :) Well indeed, not very noob-friendly and not very respectful of UI conventions. However, it is reckoned that once you get use to it, it is very efficient : No modal screen. The screen is divided. You can adjust your workspace depending on your current task. Tweaking parameters is very easy thanks to well designed widgets. If you try, remember that you should leave your left hand on the keyboard (like a fps) and use the keyboards shortcuts.
  - thetrendycyborg 15y ago
    I used to be pretty good at it. It is a style meant for using the application and nothing else. It is extraordinarily efficient.
  - barrkel 15y ago
    I've had problems in the past with applications like that - they often don't take dvorak layout into account.
- tikhonj 15y ago
  I don't know. A while back I learned the basics of Blender as well as 3DS Max; I personally found the former easier to pick up. Of course, I didn't do much beyond basics--I got distracted away from 3D graphics in general and never got back to it :)
- vq 15y ago
  I can recommend checking out Blender Cookie, it has a small series of "Get Started With Blender" video tutorials and a lot of in depth tutorials (of which a surprising amount are free to watch). http://blendercookie.com/ http://blendercookie.com/
- exDM69 15y ago
  3d modelling is not exactly noob-friendly, not in any software. Google's SketchUp may be a slight exception, it's pretty easy to draw buildings in it but once you start to do more complicated things, it too gets really hard, really fast. Blender's new (introduced in 2.5) UI is pretty cool. They try to have all operations available through a widget in the UI (with a tooltip), a shortcut key, a quick launch menu and through a Python scripting interface. My favorite feature is the quick launch menu. Hit spacebar and a menu pops up, type in what you want and and it searches for operations using a fuzzy text search. It's also nice to see that you can adjust parameters to your operation and see your results live. Previously you had to enter all parameters beforehand and couldn't see the results, now you can e.g. draw a sphere and adjust the number of vertices in it, when you see the sphere. Blender's UI has gone through a vast improvement and it's great that the UI devs have done their job well despite all the bashing they've had - I'm sure they would have done a lot more if they would have gotten more positive feedback. Back when I started using Blender, when it was still a proprietary shareware software, most operations were only available through keyboard shortcuts that were mostly not documented. That was not a barrier for me, I quickly fell in love with the software. Now let's hope that someone has the time to translate (more of) the manual to the new UI.
  - stan_rogers 15y ago
    You must have missed Caligari TrueSpace in your travels. I would dearly love to see basic modeling (including kinetics) made as simple and intuitive as it was in TS 3-6 in another package. (For that matter, I wish it had stayed that easy in the last version of TS.) The only real fly in the ointment was rendering, and the proprietary models didn't export well for texturing and rendering elsewhere. That said, I did a lot of technical illustrations in that package just about as fast as I could think them, and if you didn't need complex reflections with ray tracing (or luminosity rendering), the results were certainly good enough.

daenz 15y ago

The realtime GPU raytracing is pretty incredible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KgrBjt4e9k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KgrBjt4e9k

regularfry 15y ago
Hm. Reminds me a lot of FPrime.

pavelkaroukin 15y ago

For me all these features says nothing (probably like "clojure" word for CGer). But to just get a glimpse of what these people do - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QbzE8jOO7_0&hd=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Q... - It is just incredible!

sc00ter 15y ago

This camera tracking test looks very promising: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjeFaexzOu8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjeFaexzOu8

steren 15y ago
and it's not only background tracking, it's also objects tracking : http://youtu.be/2AvQiOf2IGA http://youtu.be/2AvQiOf2IGA

feralchimp 15y ago

This is actually the first time I've heard of Blender, and...wow. Every once in a while the free software scene totally blows my mind, and these folks really seem to have the big-name tools in their sights. It's been a long, long time since I understood 10% of what a production-class modeling and animation tool can do, but maybe someone here knows: How does Blender compare to Maya, for example? What would this project need to achieve before folks would start switching?

steren 15y ago
I think Blender really is different from other graphics free-software: - It is baked by a very strong foundation. - It is used by real studios all over the world (and more and more used) - It is used by the scientific world a lot. - The new release cycle is around 10 weeks. And every release ships with awesome features. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Process/Release_Cycle http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Process/Release_Cy... - the community is strong, big and active. - it supports a lot of OS, and the experience is great in all of them. - The foundation is very user focused : * they create "open movies" to identify the needs and the weakness of the use of Blender is pro environement. You don't know about Big Buck Bunny (http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/ http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/) or Sintel (http://www.sintel.org/ http://www.sintel.org/) ? * they try to focus on real problems, not on eye-candy or extra-features that would impress but not be useful once.
spiralganglion 15y ago
Blender has been around for decades, and enjoyed a fair bit of popularity in the 90s when it was a great point-of-entry for budding 3D artists. Since then, it's fluctuated in its rate of evolution relative to the industry standard. It always had cutting edge features, but they were trapped behind a troublesome UI, while the big competitors made their tools ever easier to use. In recent years, the gap has been drastically closed due to a ground-up rewrite, completely new approach to the UI, and a tremendous effort to modernize. Unfortunately, Blender still has a bad reputation, a legacy from the previous design. What's more, many studios and schools have firmly entrenched workflows, or depend on custom extensions written for a specific tool. On the other hand, Blender seems to be enjoying popularity in the booming indie games community, where it integrates well with other free tools like Unity 3D. With the new design, I wouldn't be surprised if Blender's best and most-popular days were ahead of it. I see share growth coming from individuals looking to make great graphics on a shoestring budget, as opposed to big studios or schools adopting it instead of Maya or Max. I would argue that it is now roughly equivalent to those other tools in terms of features and usability. So, no real reason to switch (which requires expensive adjustments to existing workflows), but great incentive to adopt it in the first place (because it's free).

terhechte 15y ago

I've worked with blender since 2001 (version 1.9.x, when it was still shareware), and its growth over the past ten years has been outstanding. I'm not a 3d professional but, instead, use it for all kinds of things: Demo and Mock animations / movies, creating icons for apps (almost all my apps' icons were created in Blender), cutting videos (iMovie is a great app, but for quick and short movie edits, the one in Blender is actually superior). It even has a built-in game engine and can be connected to various open source 3d engines. Blender is really powerful. Blender is, in a way, similar to VIM or Emacs, in that the user interface is highly optimized for keyboard navigation. A lot of things can be done with the mouse and the keyboard without ever having to move through long and convoluted menus or hierachies. It's also scriptable in Python. It's one of the first apps I install on my machines. Edit: Typo

templaedhel 15y ago

Before I got into web development I was involved in several open source blender projects, usually as a modeler (someone who creates the 3d objects, then passes them on to people who color animate and process them). I have used both maya3d (the oracle of the 3d modeling, powerful, industry grade software with a cost prohibiting casual experimentation) and blender, in addition to several other programs in limited amount. Blender is everything that is right about the open source community. The feature list is very comparable to commercial applications (which usually run > $500) http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/features/ http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/features/ The community(s) are great, super helpful, nice, and diverse. http://www.blender.org/community/user-community/ http://www.blender.org/community/user-community/ http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/ http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/ http://www.blendernation.com/ http://www.blendernation.com/ (and many more, in other languages) But one of the most important, and as far as I know, unique things about blender and the community are the open movie projects. The Blender Foundation establishes clear and detailed roadmaps for features (something many open source projects struggle for). Then they take a small group of some of the best artists and programmers from the community, and pay them to create a open source project using the current goals in the roadmap. The most recent was Project Durian, which created the short CG film "Sintel" with a focus on developing blenders renderer to do high res (4k) renders, and the animation system to allow for crowds and complex animations. They also developed some sfx like fire and explosions. At the end, not only was the film released as creative commons, but all the files from the film were too, so the community could benefit. Where did the money come from? Presales of the DVD, which contained all the special features and files, and was released before the movie was posted to youtube, giving a "sneak preview". One project serving as fundraising, community support, community outreach, tutorial/teaching, feature development, focus grouping, beta testing/dogfooding, and publicity. Success. Here are links to some of the other blender open projects. - http://www.sintel.org/ http://www.sintel.org/ - Project Durian - Sintel, focus on special effects, high res cinimatic rendering, and animation improvements. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsGyueVLvQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsGyueVLvQ - http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/index.php/about/index.php http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/index.php/about/index.php - Project Mango - Big Buck Bunny - focus on hair/fiber, work with outdoor/large scenes, improve animation system for cartoony deformation styled animations. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSGBVzeBUbk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSGBVzeBUbk) (Note: Chances are you've seen this somewhere, because of the CC licence, stores and online video hosts love to use it for a placeholder) - http://orange.blender.org/ http://orange.blender.org/ - Project Orange - Elephants Dream - This is the project which developed blender into a program that had all the features to compete with the big boys, added the node compositing and spleen animation controls, plus lots more. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFtg0WBD5Hc&feature=fvst http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFtg0WBD5Hc&feature=fvst) I would advise watching all of those, besides being great artistically, the stories are actually pretty good.

mark_l_watson 15y ago

Great project. My granddaughter and I are learning to use it together. She knows that I worked in the entertainment industry for 2 years and when we were driving home from seeing "Puss and Boots" she wanted to know how to do 3d graphics (she is good with Scratch - a good start). One tip: don't try to use it on a Mac without a 3 button mouse.

randomdata 15y ago
Regarding your tip: For anyone using a Magic Mouse, MagicPrefs (http://magicprefs.com/ http://magicprefs.com/) can enable a third button area. Works great with Blender.
- steren 15y ago
  In the user preferences, blender has an option to emulate a third button. Yes, Blender is that awesome.
sc00ter 15y ago
If effort/outcome ratio for blender is on the steep side for your granddaughter, have a look at Muvizu http://muvizu.com/ http://muvizu.com/, it's no blender for sure, but it makes getting started with timeline based 3D animation a breeze (pre-designed scenes, ready to go character animation, special effects, lighting, multiple cameras...), and it's free.
- mark_l_watson 15y ago
  Thanks, that looks interesting. However, she uses a Mac and that is a Windows only program.

mierle 15y ago

Hi guys, I'm the primary developer of libmv (http://libmv.googlecode.com http://libmv.googlecode.com) which is used for the motion tracking component in Blender. I also wrote some of the Blender-specific motion tracking code. What's in this release is not the final word; there's some exciting improvements in the pipeline. Let me know if you have any questions.

steren 15y ago
Keir, I've been following the progress of libmv for a at least 3 years now. Seeing it inside Blender today is a real achievement. Congratulations and thanks for your efforts. This summer, I used the "tomato branch" (Blender branch where motion tracking was developed) to track points in a landscape for a small project. It worked well but at the time the workflow to transfer 2D movement to objects in the scene was not obvious. Thanks again.
- mierle 15y ago
  It feels great to finally get this shipped, so thanks! There's no question that the workflow inside Blender is not optimal. Fixing this is planned for the 2.62 release. If you have specific suggestions on what you were expecting vs what was actually necessary, filing a report on the Blender bug tracker is a great way to get it addressed.
TechNewb 15y ago
Wanted to type out "Thank you!" Really excited to use this feature! I would be interested to read a blog post from you on general insight on the technology, and maybe any general guidance.
- mierle 15y ago
  I'd love to make a blog post but doubt I will have time. I tend to prioritize coding over writing, even though that is not always the best choice.
  - 15y ago

ryanwaggoner 15y ago

Is there anything like blender for video editing? What about motion graphics?

Joeboy 15y ago
I'm led to believe Blender has impressive video editing capabilities, although I couldn't tell you anything about them.

commieneko 15y ago

I just started messing with Blender a few days ago. It looks like they've cleaned up the UI a bit since the last time I looked at Blender. Here's a very nice set of getting started tutorials on Youtube. Very simple and straightforward. http://www.youtube.com/user/cgboorman http://www.youtube.com/user/cgboorman

teilo 15y ago

blender.org appears to be down at present. Here's a working mirror of the latest: http://mirror.cs.umn.edu/blender.org/release/Blender2.61/ http://mirror.cs.umn.edu/blender.org/release/Blender2.61/

desaiguddu 15y ago

Blender server down :(

sirwanqutbi 15y ago

First time I've ever seen Blender's website go down.

mgschwan 15y ago

Blender Server is back. download.blender.org did not go down, so everyone interested in downloading even if the server goes down again the newest release can be downloaded from http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.61/ http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.61/ michael

mgh2 15y ago

How is it compared to software for industrial design, like Solidworks?