Man, seems like I haven’t updated this for a long time… but, that doens’t mean we haven’t been busy!

In brief, Jean-Sebastian is still marathoning his way through school. Ben is working away at his studio job and preparing to start on Project Durian. And I have been busy with more than I know what to do with! Rather than spread all of this out over a couple weeks, I am just going to do it one big blog post.

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Over the last year or so, I have had the honor of working quite closely with Wes Burke from CG Cookie on providing a Blender video tutorials. It has been a wonderful experience and we have had a lot of fun doing it. With the upcoming release of Blender 2.5 we are taking on our biggest project yet! I give you:

Introduction to Blender 2.5 Training Series

This is a very exciting time to be involved with Blender and we have taken it upon ourselves to be one of the first to show you how to make full use of the new Blender 2.5. I won’t go into too many details here, check the site for that, but I can tell you that it’s going to be good!

Some of the topics you can expect to see:

• Modeling a full character, complete with accessories
• Modeling a scene, strewn with objects
• Adding materials and textures to a vast array of objects
• Animating walk and run cycles
• Creating smoke simulations
• Lighting day and night scenes
• Post-processing with the node editor
• Using the video sequencer as a video editor

And these are just some of the topics. The training is intended to take you through the entire workflow of creating a character and scene; everything from modeling to texturing, animating to rendering. This series is huge! If this blurb has piqued your interest (or if you’re thoroughly bored by it) head on over to the dedicated site here for more info and to preorder!

We hope to release the first part of the series by mid, late October. It all depends on the development of Blender 2.5.

P.S. if you’re one of the first 20 to preorder it you get one of the first-ever CG Cookie T-shirts!

http://blender.cgcookie.com

New Blender Tutorials

These are a bit old now, but I have had two more video tutorials published at CG Cookie, one video tutorial at CG Tuts and a written tutorial at Packt Publishing.

Creating a Praying Mantis in Blender

In this video tutorial we will look at modeling a cartoon style praying mantis in Blender. This tutorial covers the entire modeling process, starting from a sketch, and then goes to look at some basic materials and rendering. Some of the topics covered include: modifiers, edgeloops, box modeling, poly-by-poly modeling, materials, and more.

Watch video!

Creating a Light Bulb in Blender – part 2

In this follow-up video tutorial to the Lightbulb Modeling tutorial, we look at how to take our model and a basic scene and apply various materials in order to get a semi-realistic effect. This tutorial covers the creation of materials for plastic, glass, metal, and a lit-up bulb!

Watch video!

Modeling a lowpoly Alien head with Retopo in Blender

This video tutorial for Blender demonstrates how to use the retopology (retopo) tools in Blender to create a lowpoly model from a highpoly original. This is particularly useful for creating normal maps of high-res, sculpted models.

Watch video!

Modeling a Character head in Blender

In this written tutorial we go through the complete process of modeling a character heading from a concept sketch. The tutorial covers everything from setting up your background image, adding a mirror modifier, laying out the edgeloops, adding details, refining the mesh, and more.

Read it!

Book Deal

There is not a lot I can say on this just yet, but I have just signed a contract with a publisher to write a book on Blender 2.5. The tentative topic revolves around character development and workflow. The aim is to publish 2nd quarter of 2010, right around the time of Durian’s completion and the full, production ready version of Blender 2.5.

More news on this as I have it.

That is all for now… whew! Enjoy and expect more news soon as it comes!

Thanks again to everyone for all of the support!

-Jonathan

I just sat down and recorded a brief overview video of some of the changes and additions to Blender 2.5. Keep in mind, 2.5 is still under heavy development and many things will be added/changed. That being said, what has been done so far is incredible!

Enjoy!

-Jonathan