In case you missed the news, Blender recently underwent a “merge hurricane”. Meaning that a bunch of new features that were in alpha development phase, have now been merged into the trunk version Blender.

These features are massive and are going to change the way we use Blender in the future.

Here’s a brief explanation of each feature and how to start using them:

1. Cycles

In a nutshell: New improved rendering engine, more realistic renders

Arguably the biggest thing to happen to blender in the last few years is the Cycles rendering engine. Cycles is a completely new way of rendering in Blender that produces far superior results to the outdated internal renderer. Bounce lighting, caustics and glass are now available as standard without any messing around.

Cycles will eventually replace the internal rendering engine, becoming the standard that every Blender user will soon use. The sooner you can jump aboard, the better.

To get started, check my Introduction to Cycles tutorial.

2. Camera Tracking

In a nutshell: Allows you to add 3d elements to moving video footage.

Anyone who’s tried adding 3d elements to video footage knows that if the camera is moving, you need to use a camera tracker to match the motion to your 3d scene. However dedicated camera trackers aren’t cheap, some costing cost upwards of $3,000. But thanks to Sergey Sharybin, we now have this feature in blender.

You can now track camera motion, add 3d elements, composite it, render it and edit the video, all without leaving Blender. Expect lots of budding film makers to suddenly show an interest in Blender as this is developed further.

To get started, check out this early Camera Tracking Tutorial by Sebastian Koenig.

3. Dynamic Paint

In a nutshell: Makes the environment react to interaction

When a character walks through snow, or a car skids it’s tires, it helps to have the environment react accordingly. Previously this wasn’t possible without doing some fiddly workaround, but thanks to Dynamic Paint it’s a piece of a cake.

The way it works is by baking animated textures onto the objects surface. These textures can these be used for reflections, displacements or anything else you wish.

To get started, check out this Dynamic Paint Guide by the developer Miika Hämäläinen.

4. Ocean Simulator

In a nutshell: Allows you to simulate a realistic ocean.

A much desired feature for the nature buffs out there is the ability to create realistic oceans. Whilst this may seem like a rather specialized feature, oceans are an incredibly necessary part of 3d work as they make up 2/3 of the earth, and without a dedicated feature they are almost impossible to create realistically.

To get started, check out the Ocean Wiki or wait for The Nature Academy to reopen.

How to Get These Features

The features are now included in the official blender version!

Just download the newest release here. Anything from v2.61 will have it.

A massive thank you to Brecht Van Lommel, Sergey Sharybin, Miika Hämäläinen and Matt Ebb for developing these four incredible features!

Which feature are you most excited about? Leave your comment below.

Blender Guru has looked the same for over 2 years now. And whilst it’s functional, I think it could be a lot better.

So I’ve decided that I’m going to redesign the website from the ground up with a fresh new look, new features and new segments.

But I need your help.

Redesigns can be good or bad. If I rush into this without first asking you what you want, I could potentially create a website that’s worse than what it currently is

So I’ve created this survey for you to tell me what you want the new Blender Guru to look like:

>>Take the 3 minute Survey<<

The answers you give will directly effect the outcome of the website. So don’t pass it up!

And if you’re passionate about web design and want to send through any mockups or design ideas, you’re welcome to! I’m all ears

Instead of another tutorial I’m dedicating this week’s post to improving skills as an artist. Quite often we get caught up in the technicalities of 3d that we forget what creating art is all about.

I often think back to when I first started Blender and how differently I would approach it now.

Here are some tips to fast track your success as an artist:

1. Produce one finished render each week

If I could jump back in time machine to my skinny-framed 14-year old self, I would give him this one tip: create one finished render each week.

Why? Because when you come at blender with the flipent approach of ‘There’s no rush, I can stop whenever I like’, you are shooting yourself in the foot. Think about it: If your school teacher told you that you could hand in your assignment “whenever”, do you honestly think you ever would? Chances are you just wouldn’t get around to it. Why would you go through the pain of completing that boring assignment when Call of Duty provides instant gratification? When you have no deadline you become lazy.

Deadlines are what drives society to finish projects.

Did you know that when tradesmen are hired to construct a building they have strict deadlines for which the project needs to be finished by? I once heard of an insulation company having to pay fines of $80,000 per day until they could finish the skyscaper they were working on. They overshot their deadline and had to pay the (very hefty) price.

I know that you’re probably just using Blender as late night hobby, but it’s worth at least entertaining the idea of setting yourself a goal. My recommendation would be to set yourself the goal of creating one finished render in 7 days. This imaginary deadline ensures that you stay on track and don’t get distracted by Facebook or other time wasters. The rule is that on day 7 you must stop working on it, regardless of how bad it is and upload it to a forum and start another project. Repeat this process every week and you’ll be amazed at how quickly you grow as an artist.

Funnily enough, I recently discovered that director Sam Raimi has the exact same advice to aspiring film makers.

2. Recreate photographs

Photo I found on Flickr.com

My recreation of that photo - Used in the tutorial 'Introduction to Texture Nodes'

One of the biggest questions a lot of 3d artists have is, “Why does my scene look so fake?” Well if you create a scene based entirely off a photograph then you won’t have this problem, as you can compare your scene with the reference photograph.

When you set out to replicate a photograph you start to notice new details in the photo that you had never seen before. The bounce lighting, the glare, the depth of field, the subtle reflections, all of these things are essential to making the scene believable, but you wouldn’t have noticed them without carefully studying the photo.

Now I know what you’re thinking: “Replicating photos are boring! I’m an artist, I have a right to be creative!” Well that’s true, and I’m not suggesting that you recreate photos forever, but if you’re just starting out it’s essential to understand the fundamentals before moving onto more complicated things. Trust me, you’ll have plenty of time to create wacky sci-fi scenes in the future, but for now it’s more important to understand the fundamentals of how to create a real world scene.

3. Ask for honest critiques

Photo by Kim Bentley

Lately I have noticed a disturbing trend in the online art community: users are no longer looking for critiques, they are looking for compliments.

I know why this is happening but it doesn’t make it any less stupid. People that do this are putting their fragile emotions before your long term success.

Be a man. Post your artwork with the phrase, “I want to improve my skills as an artist so please give your honest feedback! Don’t worry about hurting my feelings ”

This encourages people to open up and tell you what they really think. Which is a good thing. Instead of the same old “Well done, looks great” response you’ll get real feedback on how you can improve for next time. This is invaluable if you want to improve as an artist.

4. Surround yourself with better artists

'Forest Refuge' by Alex Roman

There’s an old saying, “If you want to soar like an eagle, don’t run with the turkeys.”

It’s almost scary how much of an effect our peers have on our life. Studies have shown that if you take the income of your five best friends, average it out, it will be the same or close to yours. The same goes for your weight, spending habits and oh yeah, artist talent.

Now I’m not just talking about the friends you hang out with on the weekend. I’m talking about the online art communities you associate yourself with.

For example, if you post your artwork on BlenderArtist.org you will get a lot more positive comments than if you posted it on CGSociety.org. Why? Because CGSociety is a community of industry professionals that has a lot higher standards than say, BlenderArtists which is a community of mostly inexperienced or new artists (you know it’s true).

Now I’m not here to bag on BlenderArtists.org, as they provide an invaluable service to the community. But I do want to highlight the importance of surrounding yourself with artists who are more talented then you are. If you constantly surround yourself with mediocre art then you’ll feel accomplished and more likely to slack off. However if you surround yourself with awesome art, then you you’ll realize how lacking you are.

Personally I make it a habit to watch The Third and The Seventh on a regular basis. It reminds me how much further I have to go

5. Actually ‘do’ tutorials, don’t just watch

Photo by John Norton

If you only watch a tutorial, you may remember about half of it by the time it’s finished, but it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll have forgetten most of it by the end of the next day. However if you actually do the tutorial, you will not only retain the information longer but you will also discover new tips and realize that somethings don’t pan out as you thought they would in your head.

Don’t get into the habit of thinking that by simply watching tutorials you are improving your artistic talent. It’s only by doing it that you actually start learning.

6. Decorate your workspace

A 'cubicle' at Pixar Studios

One thing that Pixar, Google and Facebook share in common is that they all give free reign to their employees to decorate their workplace as much as they want. Why? It’s simple: Studies have shown that decorated workspaces increase creativity and encourage out-of-the-box thinking.

It makes sense really. If you put one person in an empty white room and another person in a colorful decorated room, chances are the second person will think of more creative ideas.

Printouts, magazine clippings, posters, anything! Provided it’s inspirational to you, go ahead and stick it to your wall. The next time you’re struggling to think of an idea, your wall will no longer be blank

7. Become an information junkie

Photo by Ruth Ellison

I once heard a speaker say that if you can read three books on one topic then you will become an expert of that field. Why? Because nobody else can be bothered doing this.

There is a plethora of information regarding art, and most of it is free. You just need to tap into it and start absorbing it.

There’s magazines, interviews, DVD commentary, tutorials, making-ofs, breakdowns and more.

Sure you may read some stuff that you already know, but I can guarantee that there will be at least one nugget of invaluable information you can learn from every book or interview out there. Motivational speaker Tony Robbins got to where he is today by attending hundreds of seminars as a kid. He came at it with the approach of ‘If I learn just one tip from this seminar then it has been worth my while’. He became a sponge for new information and as a result is one of the highest paid public speakers today.

What simple, practical tips can you offer new artists? Post your comment below.

It’s inspiration time! If you follow my Facebook page then you’ll know that I like to post little snippets of inspiration that I find on the net. But it’s not always created by Blender users.

“Do you know any good animations created with Blender?”

It’s a question that I get asked a lot, because let’s face it: we all want to know if Blender has what it takes to compete with the big boys.

Well, I’ve been hanging out in the Blender community for the last 8 years and so I’ve encountered quite a lot of blender animatons. You’d be surprised at the quality of blender animations out there.

So in lieu of a tutorial this week, I’ve put together the ultimate blender inspiration post: A list of the most inspiring Blender Animations. Some of these you may have seen, some you haven’t, but I hope that it can inspire you to get out there and create your own animation with Blender.

In no particular order, let’s begin with…

1. Memory

Director Junichi Yamamoto won Best Short Film at the 2009 Suzanne Awards for this attention grabbing short film about a robot in a post apocolyptic world.

2. BMW 3 Promo

Mike Pan modelled, lit and rendered a BMW for this conceptial advertisement using Blender 2.5.

3. Transformation

Andre B used Blender and AutoCAD to demonstrate the beauty of mechanical transformation in this beautiful short film.

4. Mindfields

When Andy Goralczyk created this short film way back in 2003 it became a milestone achievement for Blender. Up until then animations produced with Blender were rather basic, but in just 5 minutes Andy demonstrated grass rendering, deserts, character animation and meteor explosions. Way to break the mold Andy!

5. Kajimba

Red Cartel (formerly known as Promotion Studios) created this animated film project aimed at the Adult comedy market. It gained lots of attention for the Sydney based studio, who then went on to create TV adverts for Bridgestone Tires.

6. Evolution

Alex Glawion won Best Design at the 2009 Suzanne Awards for this moving short film about evolution.

7. Old Key

A personal favourite of mine that showcases particles, fluid simulation and very realistic rendering. The music alone is enough make me hit replay

8. Bounce to space

Pablo Vazquez somehow managed to give a bouncy ball personality in this humourous short film. He received a nomination for Best Character animation at the 2009 Suzanne Awards and later went on to work on Sintel.

9. Omega – Teaser Trailer

Andy Goralczyk used a unique combination of stop motion and CG, to pull us into this post apocolyptic world of robots and trash formations. Omega is still a work in progress, but you can follow the progress on his blog here.

10. Esign

[iframe: src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/b717oeNkHXY?rel=0&showinfo=0" frameborder="0" width="540" height="333" scrolling="no"]

Chris Larkee created this abstract animation way back in 2005, winning Best Design at the Suzanne Awards.

11. Overheated

David Ward created this hilarious spoof of Pixar’s Cars about a grumpy car stuck in the sun.

12. The Cup

The students at Pepe-Shcool-Land created this hilarious short film in just three months using Blender. They received a well earned nomination for Best Short film at the recent 2010 Suzanne Awards.

13. Dikta – Goodbye

Miðstræti studio was contacted by the Icelandish band Dikta to create a music video for their popular song. The band gave complete artist license to the studio who pulled through to create a unique styled animation about a world made of paper.

14. Stop

Eoin Duffy won Best Design at the 2007 Suzanne Awards for this attention grabbing music video. It’s a perfect example of why visuals aren’t everything when it comes to creating a powerful video.

15. Chicken Chair

Bassam Kurdali created this iconic short film way back in 2003, and has stood the test of time with it’s brilliant character animation.

16. Lighthouse

Red Cartel created this short film for American insurance firm Liberty Mutual as a series of online short film around the theme ‘responsibility’. It is regarded by many as one of the finest Blender’s animations to date.

17. Project London: Benny’s Fuel and Repair

Project London is an independant, feature length, live action movie that uses blender for all it’s VFX work. It’s still a work in progress but you can follow their progress here.

18. Lista

Pawel Lyczkowski created this unique stop motion styled animation and won Best Short Film at the recent 2010 Suzanne Awards. Well deserved!

19. Suite Noire

Matray created this high impact opening for a TV show. Apparently the client deemed the intro “inappropriate” and it was never aired. I have no idea what the show was about but if I saw this intro I’d be hooked!

20. A Glimpse of Light

Alex Glawion created this super slick animation and received a nomination for Best Design at the 2009 Suzanne Awards. As with most of Alex’s work, the music and visuals go hand in hand to create a beautiful work of art.

21. Tape-à-l’oeil

Jason-Sean Guillemette created this artist short film about the topic ‘Cinema & Me’. The lighting, compositing and rendering are all top notch.

22. John el esquizofrénico Music Video

MoxStudios put an incredible amount of work into this catchy music video. It won Best Design at the 2010 Suzanne Awards.

23. Babioles Trailer

Matray composited this cute CG characted onto live backplates for the TV show pilot, Babioles.

24. Taste Lab

Chris Burton created this humourous short film about two rival professors in a race to create the ultimate drink. For his hard work, Chris received a nomination for Best Short film at the 2010 Suzanne Awards.

25. Klaas Vaak (TV intro)

Red Cartel created another amazing piece of work for the opening of the dutch TV show called Klaas Vaak (if you’re easily scared don’t watch past :32).

26. HapiLoli

Japanese artist Tomo, proves that anime styled animation is 100% possible using blender in this cute animation of a girl dancing. Be sure to check out his followup video: ルイズ／恋愛サーキュレーション

27. Death Grind

Endre Barath created this thought provoking short about the effect that television has on our minds. He received a nomination for Best Short Film at the 2009 Suzanne Awards.

Honourable Mentions

Some of these videos are more ‘tests’ than animations, but they are still powerful enough to deserve a mention.

• Japanese Camera Mapping by JuL J
• Blender car game test by Mike Pan
• Dynamic Paint + Indirect Lighting = Awesomeness by miikah
• Massive Blender fluid simulation by Mike Pan

That concludes this list of inspiring Blender animations! I deliberately left out Sintel, Big Buck Bunny and Elephants Dream as I wanted to focus on the lesser known independantly produced animations

Which animation was your favourite? Did I miss an animation? Write your comment below!

Flying to the Blender conference is expensive! Flights, accomodation, entry fee. Gah! Not everyone who wanted to attend, could. The event organizers set up live broadcasting of the presentations, but unfortunately there weren’t any cameras in the smaller room… except mine

I made an effort to record as much of the workshop presentations as possible. Enjoy 9 exclusive videos below!

1. Ton Roosendaal – Keynote Presentation

2. Andy Goralczyk – Speed Modelling

3. Jonathan Williamson – Topology

4. Pablo Vazquez – Compositing in Sintel

5. Soenke Maeter – Lighting and Compositing in Sintel

6. Beorn Leonard, Lee Salvemini and Jeremy Davidson – Bringing Sintel to Life

7. Andy Goralczyk & David Revoy – Art Collaboration

8. Andrew Price – The Big Issues

9. Andrew Price – How to Raise Your Profile as an Artist

PLUS! See photos from the event:

What was your favourite part of the Blender conference? Will you be attending next year? Drop a comment below!

With the upcoming release of Blender 2.5, the industry is now watching our every move. But how are we portraying ourselves to the outside world? In this presentation, I highlight some of the problems that are holding us back, and possible solutions on how to fix them.

In this presentation you will discover:

• The results from ‘The Great Blender Survey’
• The #1 frustration with blender as voted by the community
• The average age of the blender community
• Why Blender.org is unappealing to new visitors
• Why new users are unable to learn blender
• How we can make donating more “fun”

Video Recording

Recorded live at the 2010 Blender Conference in Amsterdam.

Text Version

Not a fan of long videos? No problem! I’ve summarized the main points from the presentation and listed them below. All slides appear exactly as they are in the real presentation.

Intro

In this presentation I will be discussing the Big Issues – What we are doing wrong. The point of this talk is to raise some issues that we as a community are doing poorly and to provide possible solutions. The point is talk is not to simply point out flaws, but to bring them to the attention of the community so that we can act on them.

There are four main issues that I will discuss in this presentation.

Issue #1: Unclear Goals

If you’ve ever been to the Blender forums before you will probably recognize this situation: Lots of people with lots of opinions.

Everyone seems to have the answer for what needs improving and not surprisingly we never seem to get anywhere. The reason for this is that there is no central voice or opinion poll to determine what the most important task is.

Businesses usually track this sort of data by distributing an opinion poll. However, for Blender this had never been done before. So in August 2010, I created “The Great Blender Survey”.

Here’s a screenshot of the online survey:

The survey had one goal: To find out who is using Blender and why.

I think that if you can answer this question, then everything else will fall into place. You can determine what people are doing with blender and then develop the software to their needs.

I wanted this survey to be as accurate as possible so I exposed it to multiple parts of the community, including Blender Guru, Email subscribers, facebook, twitter and BlenderArtists.org.

I won’t claim that the survey is 100% accurate because it’s not, but it’s the closest I could do using the resources and connections I had available.

Over the course of 3 months I received 3,434 submissions.

Thank you to everyone who participated!

I have never released these results to anyone… until now. Ready to finally see them?

Let’s begin…

Q1: Are you male or female?

This question was to find out if the cliché that “all 3d artists are male” was true or not.

As you can see, it’s pretty close. Guys, if you’re using blender to find a girlfriend… it’s an uphill battle

Q2: What’s your age?

This important question tells us what age most people in the community are, and finally speaks on the “maturity” issue.

As you can see, the largest age demographic for blender users are 18-24 year olds. These are the people that have just finished school and are in college or a job.

Q3: How long have you been using Blender?

This question not only tells us which year attracted the most blender users, but also how experienced we are at using the software.

From this graph you can clearly see a surge in new users over the past 12 months. This is a startling statistic as most of Blender’s news, tutorials and training products are geared for experienced users.

Q4: If you had to describe yourself, what level of skill would you say you are?

This question is aimed at identifying what level of skill users are at in order to cater training and tutorials to their needs.

Q5: What is your primary use of Blender?

If I could only ask one question in the survey it would be this. This question will tell us exactly why people are using blender and greatly assists us in developing the software for their needs.

The biggest demographic are clearly hobbyists, but it’s comforting to see that a good 47% of us are using Blender for commercial reasons. And I for one never expected to see so many game artists!

Q6: Have you ever used an external renderer?

This is a two part question. The first is to find out how many people are outsourcing the render process to other programs.

34% of the blender community have never used an external render engine!

Q6b: If yes, which external renderers?

This question helps identify which external renderers people are using, so that we can create intergrated exporters that meet the demands of the community.

Yafaray and LuxRenderer are the two most used render engines are amongst the blender community.

Q7: Have you ever used commercial 3d software?

Blender users love comparing blender to commercial alternatives, but how many have actually used commercial alternatives?

Surprisingly a good 74% of the community have! This is good news because it means they decided to stick with Blender anyway. We must be doing something right

Q7b: If yes, which applications?

Finding out which applications people have switched from helps us understand which UI layouts and keyboard shortcuts they are used to.

As you can see, 3ds Max is by far the most familiar app with Blender users.

Q8: Why did you originally start using Blender?

This question will tell us exactly what advertising methods are working the best.

Not surprisingly the biggest reason most of us tried Blender is because it’s free. What shocked me though was finding that 23% of us were more impressed by seeing what Blender is capable of. This is another reason why artists should post their work on public 3d forums like CGSociety.org instead of just blender specific forums.

Q9: Can you see yourself switching to another 3d application in the next 5 years?

With the ongoing development of 2.5, many users have voiced their frustration over the stability of Blender. How likely are we to jump ship to another piece of software?

The good news is that almost ¾ of the community is here to stay! Only 1% are dedicated to switching. >>Bonus! Find out why are they are quitting<<

Q10: What aspect of Blender needs the most improvement?

This all important question will tell us exactly what feature of blender needs the most attention.

As you can see, the internal render engine is heads and shoulders above everything else. This stresses just how important it is to keep the render engine competitive to the industry.

Q11: In your opinion what is the biggest problem with Blender?

Focusing on the bigger picture, I asked people to decide on the single biggest problem with blender as a whole.

Lack of documentation has been voiced countless times in the past but only now is it glaringly obvious.

Q12: Have you ever made money using Blender?

This tells us exactly how many people have successfully used Blender for a professional service.

As you can see, only 23% of us have ever succeeded making money with Blender.

Results

From these results we are able to work who exactly is the “typical blender user”.

Identifying who our users are and what they want is the first step in improving Blender. Hopefully this survey will help developers, studios, trainers and other professionals cater their services to the needs of the blender community.

>>Download the survey results as a PDF and Excel file<<

Issues #2: Marketing

Marketing is all about how we portray ourselves to the outside world and get new users on board. For Blender the first impression that most people have is from visiting Blender.org. What the visitor sees when they arrive on this site, greatly effects whether or not they download the software.

According to the book ‘Don’t make me think’, all visitors are at a website because they have a question and they want it answered.

In the case of new software, it’s three questions:

If you can answer these three questions on the homepage then the website is successful at giving the visitors what they came for.

Before we discuss blender though, let’s first take a look at our competitor’s websites.

3ds Max

An image slideshow at the top proudly shows what 3ds max can do. Underneath that is a brief description telling exactly what 3ds Max is. On the right is a Buy it now button that shows the visitor the next logical step if they like what they see. All three questions can be answered just by glancing at the homepage. Therefore, 3ds Max passes the web design test.

Octane Renderer

A similar layout: Gallery Slideshow at the top, short description underneath and a buy it now button on the side. Octane Renderer also passes the web design test.

Lightwave

Gallery at the top, description underneath and buy button underneath. Are you noticing a trend? Lightwave passes the test.

Maya

Gallery slideshow at the top, description underneatch, buy it now button on the side. Maya also passes the test.

Blender…

What’s wrong with this picture?

The biggest glaring problem is that the entire middle section is completely irrelevant to new users.

In fact there really isn’t anything on the blender homepage that is relevant to new users.

Blender.org reads more like a hangout spot for experienced users then a doorway for new users. Which is a shame because the whole purpose of a software homepage is to convert a curious visitors into a user. Currently we are failing that.

Redesign Mockup

I’m not a web designer, but I’ve attempted my own mockup redesign of the site, using artwork from the current blender.org galley:

Artwork by Mathias Pedersen, Clement Granjon, Filip Sadlon and Radiance

The whole purpose of this design to answer the three important questions that new visitors have:

The most crucial element of this design is the large image gallery at the top. Users don’t want to be told why a software is a good, they want to be shown. Currently the community is posting amazing pieces of artwork on BlenderArtist.org. But unfortunately, once they slide off the frontpage they disappear forever. What a waste! Why not showcase this art directly on the homepage for the world to see?

Also featured in this site redesign are a short description, two easily identifiable download buttons and links to the gallery and demo reel. All these elements are appealing to new visitors.

Issue #3: Training

In the last 12 months we have seen two new websites emerge that are dedicated to delivering ongoing tutorials: Blender Cookie and Blender Guru.

So you may be wondering… what’s the issue? Surely we have this training thing covered, right?Wrong!

There are two problems. The first one being that training is incredibly hard to find. Experienced users know about Blender Cookie and Blender Guru, but new users don’t.

An obvious solution would be to update the Blender.org tutorial page with new tutorials, but unfortunately I already did that and it hasn’t solved the problem.

Why? Because the tutorial page is almost impossible to find! A new user does not know to click ‘Education & Help’ and then read a long block to text to find the link for ‘Tutorials’.

Without easily accessible training new users will get frustrated with Blender and quit. We need to reference the tutorial page in as many places as possible so that new users can locate it with ease.

One place to start would be the Blender splash screen. This is the first thing new users see when opening Blender and it’s the first place they get stuck. By having a clear link right on the splash that says ‘Tutorials’ they will know exactly where to go.

The second obvious place would be to link to the tutorial page directly on blender.org.

Believe it or not but this also persuades new users to download the software. Why? Countless marketing research has proven that if you can provide free training to a customer they are more likely to buy the product. This is one of the reasons that Adobe products ship with a training disc

The second problem is that we have forgotten about new users!

Blender Guru makes advanced tutorials and Blender Cookie teaches techniques and tutorials at a beginner level. But there no tutorials for complete beginners. How is a new user supposed to wrap their head around the concept of 3d without a proper walkthrough?

I’ve decided to volunteer to solve this one. Next year I will be creating a completely free beginner training series, very similar to Video Copilot’s beginner series. Stay tuned!

Issue #4: Donations

Receiving donations is crucial to the success of Blender. The more money the foundation has, the more fulltime developers Ton can hire. Unfortunately, the donation system is very lackluster:

“Well it looks like a pretty standard donation page to me. What’s the problem?”

Good question. Whilst donating is fairly simple concept, there are many things that we can do improve the experience and make it more attractive to masses:

In detail:

• Only accepts one off payments – This is like shooting yourself in the foot. Dedicated blender users have asked for a way to donate on a regular basis, but currently there is no option to do this.
• No Recognition – Obviously when people donate money they are doing out of the goodness of their heart and aren’t expecting anything in return. But human beings are still human beings and we crave a pat on the back. If we know that nobody will say “Thank you” for the effort, then we aren’t likely to follow through with the donation.
• No clue as to where the money goes – If you donated $100 today, where would the money go? A new feature development? Bug fixes? Pay the rent on the blender institute building? If the donator does not have a 100% clear understanding of where their money is going, they won’t donate. It’s as simple as that.

For examples of how to do donations the right way, you need to look no further than World Vision:

Now obviously Blender is not a charity but we are still asking for donations so we should not stray to far from the pros.

• World Vision donations are accepted on a monthly basis so as to ensure that the support contines all throughout the year.
• Novelty plaques are given to the donator so they can “show off” their donation to friends, family and whoever visits their house.
• Detailed descriptions show exactly how each dollar of your money is spent.

Donation Redesign

I’ve put together a redesign of the donation system based off these ideas:

In this redesign, people wanting to donate are given three simple monthly donation plans: Bronze, Silver or Gold (an option to donate as a once off is still available)

Detailed descriptions show exactly where each dollar is spent.

The donation plans are visualized as a trophy to make it feel like you are purchasing a product as opposed to throwing money in the air.
For recognition this could be intergrated into the blenderartists.org forums:

A small trophy icon is all it takes to thank the donator for their contribution. Everytime the user makes a post, they can feel good  knowing that other users are now recognizing their contribution. This small gesture will also entice other users to contribute because when they click the icon it can route them to the donations page.

You may be wondering, “Yeah but how many people would actually want to donate on a monthly basis?”. Well for that you need to look no further than Farsthary’s blog. He asked his readers “How much would you donate monthly to support the Blender Foundation?”

And believe it not, but 40% said they would happily donate $10 or more on a monthly basis. Now obviously that’s just a poll and not everyone who voted will actually follow through with it, but it shows that the blender community is at least supportive of the idea.

So that concludes my presentation! Thank you for reading

What did you think of these proposed ideas? Do you think they would help improve the progress of Blender? I am very interested in hearing your feedback. Please write a comment below!

If you like this presentation you may also like my other live presentation, “How to Raise your Profile as an Artist”

This week I thought it would be interesting to hear from one of the quiet achievers of the community: Campbell Barton.

Campbell is a fulltime Blender developer who is working hard to make Blender more stable and easier to use. Most recently he worked on Sintel as the Technical Director, fixing bugs and adding features that the team needed.

He currently lives in Victoria, Australia, working 9-5 to meet the demands of this very demanding community!

In this interview I ask him some of the big questions that the community has been echoing of late. Such as:

• When will the final stable version of 2.5 be released?
• Is BMesh still being developed?
• How long will you be sticking with Blender?
• What was the hardest part about working on Sintel?
• How was the Sintel renderfarm created?
• How did you first learn Python?

Click Play to stream the audio or download the MP3 file here.

Campbell has opened my eyes to a lot of issues that I didn’t know about and I hope it had the same effect on you. Join me in thanking Campbell for his hard work!

In other news, on Tuesday next week I will be flying to Amsterdam where I will be attending the Blender conference and updating Blender Guru with up to date happenings and hopefully recording a few presentations. Stay tuned

Let me start by saying, what an amazing week for Blender this has been!

It’s barely been 5 days since the release of Sintel and it’s already been viewed over 1 million times on YouTube, heavily discussed on CGSociety, hit the front page of 3d world and is still being tweeted every few minutes (even by celebrities!)

So I think I speak for everyone when I say, “Well done Durian team!” You guys sure know how to get the attention of the public

Last week we interviewed Ton Roosendaal, and this week I’m excited to speak with the director of Sintel, Colin Levy!

Listen to the Interview

In this 57 minute audio interview Colin explains:

• Why he was choosen as the director
• The biggest challenges that the team faced
• What he would do differently if given the opportunity
• How he deals with criticism
• His future plans and aspirations

*WARNING: This interview discusses scenes from the film! If you haven’t yet seen Sintel, watch it now.*

Click Play to stream the audio or download the MP3 file here.

If you liked this interview you may also like the interview with Ton Roosendaal.

That concludes this week’s post! Join me next week for an indepth discussion with Campbell Barton on developing Blender and the upcoming stable release

With the official release of Sintel just days away, I decided to approach Ton Roosendaal for his thoughts on how the production went.

If you don’t already know, Ton Roosendaal is the head of the Blender foundation and producer of Sintel. When he’s not organizing blender updates, handling media enquiries or answering emails he’s working on open movies. He’s one of the few people that has worked on every open movie to date.

I had the pleasure of meeting him at last year’s blender conference and I can attest to the fact that he’s an awesome down to earth bloke. Taking time out of his busy day to even talk to losers like me

When Ton agreed to the interview I asked my followers on Twitter and Facebook what questions they wanted me to ask Ton, and I got a bazillion responses! Well since I know that Ton is a busy man, I narrowed it down to the top 7 most asked questions. Here they are…

Interview

Q: As the producer of Sintel, what were your duties?

My main goal was just to bring it all together, to facilitate everyone, to have people well aligned, get a productive and inspired team, and ensure everything moves on as smooth as possible, with the highest quality possible as well. Certainly a complex job, also because I was bringing in experience and ideas from previous projects, which made it very hard to not sit on the seats of the director or art team!

I’ve been in the studio with everyone from the very first day until now, and being part of – and pushing! – a team that manages to get over initial struggles and limitations, learn great new things, and produce in the end this film is a deeply satisfying experience. I’m proud of this team, and everyone is for sure!

Q. Where did the original idea for Sintel come from?

Initially I approached Dutch fantasy comic legend Martin Lodewijk for the script. He provided a story around a Cinderella theme. His first treatment was really hilarious, about a Amazon (warrior) female-only village with an evil stepmom, her stupid daughters and our hero orphan girl. The girl had a little dragon-like sidekick. Unfortunately the story was far too big and complex for a short film, but in the next versions he kept her, now more as a lone gypsy traveler hunting for dragons. Martin named the girl Sintel, which is Dutch for “Cinder”.

With Martin having too little time, and no real experience with script structures, I approached Esther Wouda as a script doctor to consult us. The match with her and Colin was great, so soon I decided to let her write the whole script, based on substantial input from Colin, and inspired by concept art by David Revoy.

Concept art by David Revoy

Q. What major issues did the team encounter during the production?

‘Ambitions versus competences’ is always the biggest hurdle. You want people to feel confident we can survive it, but also sharp and eager to go for a great new challenge. Having again a nearly complete new team together, of mostly inexperienced artists, made it very hard to cope with everyone’s expectations to deliver something much better than the previous two open films. We were very lucky to get good support in DVD pre-sales, subsidies and sponsoring, which allowed us to hire experienced artists to help finishing it during the 2nd half of the project.

Obviously, having this new incomplete piece of Blender 2.5 software was also not very helpful here…

Director, Colin Levy

Q. If you had to do Sintel all over again, what would you do differently?

I don’t know really… for projects like this you fully depend on the people you can get, and I’m still convinced we made the best choice back then.
Ideally, it would have helped in the beginning to get more experienced designers in, especially trained in art. On the other hand, the way we managed to survive it is also beautiful. It’s a great gift if people can look back on a year where they’ve learned so much.

The magic of how to get a good script is also something I keep trying to improve. We had some bad luck in the beginning causing delays, but after two months we knew quite well what it would be.

For some people having this long period of uncertainty is killing, but it’s also a great asset to be around when the script gets written and tuned. Makes it truly “your film”!

Q. How has Blender improved as a result of the production?

The main achievement is on basic 2.5 usability level. Both Brecht and Campbell worked here nearly full-time supporting the team with their issues. Luckily Brecht could save enough time for a couple of great new additions, such as sculpting improvements, microdetail displacement and global illumination.

Ton and Jan Morgenstern discussing sound

Q. How are open movies financially feasible? What’s in it for the sponsors?

The simple fact that we produce content in an open way, without ugly license restrictions makes it incredibly attractive for many sponsors. They can also ask us to tailor content technically for their needs, like one of the sponsors who will receive a 4k rendered version of the film.

The benefits of jointly financing Open Content slowly begins to stick on with companies… and I hope we can use Sintel’s success to attract more next time.

Further we also have built a positive name to get involved with, having your company credited as sponsor is really good PR!

This month's edition of 3d World, featuring Sintel on the cover

Q: Are there any plans to make a fourth open blender movie?

No plans, only ideas The idea I’m playing with is code named Mango. It will have focus on visual effects for film, having good tracking tools for example, more realistic lighting and shading, and advanced grading tools.

On behalf of the Blender community, thank you for your efforts and taking the time to do this interview!

I think you’ll agree that there are some mighty exciting times ahead for Blender. Remember, the online release for Sintel is scheduled for Thursday September 30th which is just 3 days away! Follow the Durian blog for updates.

Join me next week for a phone interview with Director, Colin Levy

Ever since I started Blender Guru I’ve had countless emails from people asking me for advice on what PC they should buy. We’ve all bought PC lemons in the past, so I can see why this would be a common question.

Now before we move on, let me start by saying that your PC is only as good as your skill. If you suck at Blender and buy $4000 computer, you will still suck. The only way to improve your work is through practice, practice and oh yeah, practice.

But now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about getting one a PC specifically built for Blender…

[Click here to read this post in Persian]

Operating System

Photo by fosk

Everyone has their own preferences in terms of usablity and stability, but for me the winner is Linux. In the past I’ve used blender on both Windows and Linux, and I found that Linux crashes less, handles memory better and generally runs more smoothly than a windows operating system.

However… what most people won’t tell you is that Ubuntu can be an absolute pain in the ass to set up.

If you come from a windows background (like me) then expect to be punching holes in the wall when you find out that you need to type complex commands in the terminal just to connect to a wired LAN. It really is like entering another world. Everything is done differently and tasks that would usually take 2 seconds in Windows to setup could take hours in Linux, if you don’t know what you are doing (like me). A technical savvy person may say that Linux is a piece of cake, but to me it was an absolute nightmare. Go figure.

So for that reason I actually recommend Windows 7. It’s fast, easy to use and comes with 99% less headaches than Linux.

CPU

Photo by Friedemann Wulff-Woesten

The faster your CPU, the faster your render times. This is the meat and bones of your PC and will play the greatest influence on how quickly your render will finish.

I recommend choosing a CPU with multiple cores, as this will allow blender to render more tiles simultaniously. My current CPU has 4 cores, which means blender will render 4 tiles simultaneously. This really pays off in render times.

Cores = Like having multiple CPUs and only paying for one.

Other than that there’s really no secret to choosing a CPU. Buy the fastest one that you can afford!

RAM

Photo by Heather Greene

Second on my priority list is RAM. Whilst it won’t effect your render times, RAM will set the limit on how “epic” your scene can be. Now I say the word “epic” loosely here, but really I’m talking about memory usage limits. Everytime you use a large image texture or bake a high resolution simulation you use up more RAM. When you run out or RAM, blender crashes.

Thanks for reminding me to purchase more RAM!

The more RAM you have, the more you can push your scene to it’s extremes. If you had only 2GB of RAM and created a fluid simulation, you may only be able to use a domain resolution level of 100 before blender crashed. But if you upgraded to 16GB you may be able to reach 800.

And who knows, in the future you may even reach over 9000!

If you’re a simulation junkie then I recommend splashing out and buying lots of RAM.

Graphics Card

Photo by Fred.org

A common misconception by beginners is that you need a super duper awesome graphics card to use blender. This is false.

A good graphics card will only help you when you are navigating around the 3d viewport. It will not effect your render times! For the past 7 years I’ve used a graphics card that was at least a year older than the current leading card (I’m cheap), and my work has never suffered from it.

Unless you plan to do lots of high poly sculpting in the future, then an expensive graphics card is a waste of money.

At least as far as Blender is concerned. Crysis however...

Now when it comes to choosing a GFX card, I always recommend Nvidia. In the past many blender users (including me) have had issues with ATI cards, wherein the menu flickers or some other glitch makes itself known. So for that reason I always recommend other blender users purchase Nvidia.

But! Having said that my last laptop had an ATI card and had no issues whatsoever, so maybe those glitchy days are over? Nope! According to the comments below, the ATI issues are still very much alive. Stick with Nvidia people!

Side note: If you follow 3d news, you may have heard about a new, faster method for rendering that uses your GPU instead of the CPU. Unfortunately, this technology is not yet available for Blender, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s developed soon. In the meantime use an external renderer like SmallLuxGPU or Octane if you would like to take advantage of GPU rendering.

Case

Photo by Adamcha

If you’re going to be doing lots of rendering on your PC then I’d recommend finding a PC with adaquet cooling.

My last PC suffered permanent internal damage when rendering my New York Earthquake animation, because I only used a standard PC case.  As a result, it overheated and now refuses to turn on.

But hey, at least it didn't catch fire.

Standard cases are suited more for air conditioned office environments, not prolonged rendering sessions in your stuffy bedroom. Take note

I’d recommend choosing a gaming case as these generally have better cooling than standard cases.

Hard Drive

Photo by Stuart Bryant

In terms of speed within blender, you aren’t going to see any noticeable difference by purchasing a faster hard drive. So let’s focus on stability instead…

The last thing you want is for your hard drive to fail, right? Well unfortunately hard drive failure is a sad fact of life so the best thing you can do is be prepared and create a backup.

And what’s the easiest way to do that you ask? Set up a RAID array.

A RAID array. It’s a system configuration that uses two physical hard drives to mirror each other, so that if one fails you always have a backup. All you need to do is purchase two identical hard drives and set it up in the BIOS settings. I highly recommend that you do this before the inevitable happens!

My personal PC

Since so many people have asked what my specific PC specs are, I’ve created this short video revealing exactly what hardware I use. Check it!

My specs are:

• OS: Windows 7 64 Bit
• CPU: Intel i7 950 3.06Ghz
• RAM: 12GB Kingston 2000Mhz DDR3
• GFX Card: Gigabyte Nvidia GTX 470 1280MB
• HDD: 2 x 1TB Western Digital Sata 3 (RAID 1 array)
• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X58A
• Case: Antec ‘Nine Hundred’ 750W
• Monitor: 21″ Benq Widescreen
• Keyboard: Logitech G15
• Mouse: Microsoft basic optical mouse

Still not sure what to buy?

If you’re still unsure PC components to purchase, then check out the Blender Render Benchmark. This is a website dedicated to benchmarking PCs with Blender, showing you exactly what rigs give the fastest render times. In fact, I probably could have just started the post with this website and saved myself the trouble of writing it. Oh well

Here’s the site again: Blender Render Benchmark – Bookmark it.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post you might also enjoy 5 Worthwhile Purchases for 3d Artists.

Nobody likes waiting for hours whilst their render finishes, but most people do.  Little do they know, they can cut these render times in half with a little bit of tweaking.

By default, the big CPU sucking features are turned on default the blender devs want to ensure that you get the best looking renders. However when you are still working on the scene and don’t need to see the final image yet, it makes sense to turn these off.

Here’s a list of 13 ways to speed up your render times:

[Read this post in Farsi]

1. Turn off Ray Tracing

If you didn’t know this already, ray tracing eats CPUs for breakfast. It’s not uncommon for ray tracing to multiply your render times by 10. So if your project doesn’t need reflections, ambient occlusions or ray shadows then turn this CPU sucker off.

2. Lower the SubSurf levels

You might call this common sense, but when you’ve been working on a scene for 5 months it’s easy to forget that you created a car tire at the start with 6 levels of subsurf. Glancing over your scene and checking for any excessive subsurf levels can save you lots of time in the long run.

3. Turn off soft shadows

Sure it’s pretty but is it really necessary? If you don’t want to waste hours rendering, set the Soft size and the Samples for all spot lamps to 1.

4. Turn off Ambient Occlusion

Ambient occlusion is great for adding that extra touch of realism to your scene by faking indirect shadows. However it’s also notorious for stacking on hours to your rendertimes. If it’s not completely necessary, turn it off.

5. Turn on Simplification

One of the little known features in Blender is the Simplify option. This allows you to set global limits on subdivision, shadow samples and AO and SS so that you can quickly create preview renders. Definitely keep this feature close if you need to do a lot of testing and adjusting.

6. Turn off blurry reflections

A fairly recently feature is the ability to create blurry reflections. They certainly look pretty but be prepared to pay for that in rendertimes. By default blurry reflections are already turned off, but if you accidentally change the Gloss amount to anything less than 1 you can suffer the consequences of awful rendertimes.

7. Turn off Subsurface Scattering

If you do a lot of character modelling you probably already know this, but for those that don’t: Subsurface Scattering multiples rendertimes like crazy! Only turn this feature on if you are creating the final render.

A quick test revealed that turning this off could reduce your render times by 6 times!

8. Turn off shadows

If you aren’t rendering the final scene it can help to turn off the shadows whilst you are rendering previews.

9. Turn off Anti Aliasing

Another feature that can add hours to your rendertimes is the anti-aliasing option. Turned on by default, this option ensures that all the edges in your scene are smooth and unjagged. But if you aren’t rendering the final scene yet then turn it off! You’ll shave your render times in half!

10. Increase tiles

‘Tiles’ are the little boxes that you see appear when Blender is rendering the scene. Increasing tiles are recommended when rendering to a large size and need the CPU cores to render smaller segments. This will ensure that all cores work on the render until it’s finished without one core finishing before another.

11. Start Baking!

Everytime you hit render, Blender has to calculate all the shadows, ambient occlusion and lighting in the scene. If you are creating an animation it’s highly recommended that you bake all this data so that Blender only needs to calculate it once. If you don’t know how to do this, check out the wiki entry.

12. Make materials non-traceable

By deselecting Traceable in the materials section, you will make that material discarded from the ray tracing calculation. This has saved me HOURS of rendering time. If you have a complex object that doesn’t need shadows or reflections, then turn this off. You’ll be amazed at how much quicker your scene will render.

13. Reduce the dimensions

An obvious trick, but easy to forget. Setting the resolution percentage to 50% will render the scene 4 times faster!

Pretty simple hey? Hopefully these little tricks will come in handy the next time you need to render a large scene

Do you know any other useful time savers? Share them in the comments below!