
New Blender 3D with Motion Tracking, new rendering engine, dynamic paint - steren
http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-261/
======
mierle
Hi guys, I'm the primary developer of libmv (<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
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
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.

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terhechte
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

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feralchimp
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?

~~~
spiralganglion
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).

~~~
trop
The scriptability of Blender has been a big draw for me. It's pretty deeply
integrated with Python. One can even use it as an interactive 3D front-end for
a substantial Python script. That is, let the script create and manipulate the
objects, and just use Blender to view what is happening. In Blender 2.4 it was
possible to keep a script continuously animating the scene, something I found
tough to make happen after the 2.5 overhaul.

Blender 2.4 also let scripts create UI components, such as entire control
panels to influence the running script. The last time I checked in 2.5, this
was either not possible or not well documented. But I'm not up to date on
this.

I'm also not familiar for comparison with the scriptability of Maya or other
tools.

~~~
Silhouette
Maya has multiple scripting facilities. It has its native language, MEL, but
for a long time it has also supported Python scripts, more recently with a new
API. In fact, much of its GUI is built using scripts that come with it.

There is some lack of consistency between the different approaches, not just
in the languages but in the presentation of the underlying data model, which
isn't always helpful. Still, as a guy with a programming background, I
actually found it easier to figure out how Maya works by playing with scripts
and the underlying object model than by experimenting with the user interface.
:-)

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daenz
The realtime GPU raytracing is pretty incredible:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KgrBjt4e9k>

~~~
regularfry
Hm. Reminds me a lot of FPrime.

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pavelkaroukin
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=Q...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QbzE8jOO7_0&hd=1)
\- It is just incredible!

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templaedhel
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/>

The community(s) are great, super helpful, nice, and diverse.

<http://www.blender.org/community/user-community/>
<http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/> <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/> \- Project Durian - Sintel, focus on special
effects, high res cinimatic rendering, and animation improvements. -
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsGyueVLvQ>

\- <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>)

(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/> \- 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.

~~~
ajtaylor
I'm watching Sintel now at 1080p. The quality is something I'd expect to see
in a movie theater! Previously I've seen Big Buck Bunny, which my daughter
loves. :) But Sintel blows it away.

~~~
templaedhel
That was the main focus of Sintel. There was a lot of focus on getting the
renderer able to realistically handle 4k, which is a resolution standard
(stands for 4k horizontal resolution). From wikipedia

 _As of 2009, the most common acquisition medium for digitally projected
features is 35 mm film scanned and processed at 2K (2048×1556) or 4K
(4096×2160) resolution via digital intermediate. Most digital features to date
have been shot at 1920×1080 HD resolution using cameras such as the Sony
CineAlta, Panavision Genesis or Thomson Viper. New cameras such as the Arri
Alexa can capture 2K resolution images, the Red Digital Cinema Camera
Company's Red One can record 4K, and Sony's F65 CineAlta camera can capture 4K
and beyond to 8K 8768 x 2324._

So it is actually twice the resolution you would expect to see in theaters.

P.S. Don't show your daughter Sintel until you've watched it, it's actually
fairly sad.

~~~
ajtaylor
Yes, I know what you mean now!

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mark_l_watson
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
Regarding your tip: For anyone using a Magic Mouse, MagicPrefs
(<http://magicprefs.com/>) can enable a third button area. Works great with
Blender.

~~~
steren
In the user preferences, blender has an option to emulate a third button.

Yes, Blender is that awesome.

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commieneko
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>

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

~~~
drivingmenuts
I wish I had enough time to _learn_ it. It's not exactly a noob-friendly
interface.

~~~
steren
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
I used to be pretty good at it. It is a style meant for using the application
and nothing else. It is extraordinarily efficient.

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sc00ter
This camera tracking test looks very promising:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjeFaexzOu8>

~~~
steren
and it's not only background tracking, it's also objects tracking :
<http://youtu.be/2AvQiOf2IGA>

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mgschwan
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/>

michael

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

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

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

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teilo
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/>

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mgh2
How is it compared to software for industrial design, like Solidworks?

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desaiguddu
Blender server down :(

