Wings 3d – A superb Opensource 3d Modeller

Wings 3d has come a long way from when it first took up the Nendo / Mirai baton. Nendo used to be a really sweet 3d modelling program and was especially fantastic for organic polygonal modelling back when software like 3dsmax and lighwave were clunky sledgehammers. Perhaps a stand alone modeller was ahead of it’s time and eventually Mirai and Nendo seems to have died out. Somewhere in between Wings 3d surfaced. Inspired by the nendo system of a minimal U.I, wings is a great tool for beginners. (Not as easy as Gsculpt, but still damn good!)

Wings took it’s own sweet time to hit release 1.0 and now it’s here.  Wings has just released Ver 1.2 RC2 and it looks really good. Download here…

Here are some Wings tutorials to get you started…
http://www.brilliant-creations.com/ghoulconstruct.htm: Model a Ghoul
http://medlem.spray.se/nuvilljaghahemsida/twodescphotos5.html: Model an Eye
http://www21.brinkster.com/jrcsurvey/tutorials/alana/Index.html: High Heeled ladies Shoe

Blender scores the most

CG Genie recently conducted a survey of the World’s best 3d software based on a series of criteria. Blender consistently performs on par and sometimes even better than it’s high-end commercial counterparts. It also scored the highest when it comes to user satisfaction with software upgrades. As a follow up CG Genie conducted an interview with Ton Roosendaal, the chairman of the Blender Foundation. Here are his views on the results, on Blender and on the future of open source in 3d graphical computing.

And if you’re wondering what all the hullabaloo about the upcoming ver 2.5 is then go see it here.

Distriblend – Blender renderfarm management

“Distriblend is a Java application designed to set up and manage a renderfarm
for Blender. It is written in Java and as such the Java Runtime Environment is required.
Other than having Blender installed, this is the only requirement for creating a
renderfarm with Distriblend.

The system works on a variety of platforms – wherever Java may be installed.
It has been mainly tested on Windows but has been used by many on Linux and
other platforms.”

From Distriblend

Over a thousand GIMP brushes

Over a thousand high quality GIMP brushes…

From Mike belanger’s Bookmarks.

GIMP is a FOSS. The open source alternative to industry standard image manipulation software like Corel’s Photo paint or Adobe’s Photoshop. GIMP is free and is a great replacement for commercial software. GIMP is available for a wide range of operating systems and it’s feature set is top notch. Here’s an indicative list copied from the GIMP website…

Art of Illusion 2.7 now available

AOI has released version 2.7 of it’s beautiful little 3d app. Some of the images that you see on the sidebar to the right have been created in AOI. Download and try it now.

Inkscape 0.46 is here

The amazing Inkscape is ready with yet another update. The latest in the series has some jaw dropping new features:

• Paintbucket tool

• Tweak tool

• 3D Box tool

• Live path effects

• Color management

• New SVG filters and UI

• Native PDF and AI import

• XAML import/export

• Open Clip Art Library integration (import/export)

• Stock patterns

• Bitmap editing extension effects

• Full on-canvas gradient editing

• Engraver’s Toolbox in the Calligraphic tool

• Touch selection

• Dockable dialogs

• Command-line access to verbs

• Snapping made usable

• “3D” / axonometric grid

• Angled guidelines

• Conversion of objects to guidelines

• Significant speed and interactivity improvements

• Hundreds of smaller features and bugfixes

 Go download and make some neat art.

Timelapse Head

Wow. Check this time lapse Head modeling video out by Jonathan Williamson. Modeling done in Blender.