Posts Tagged ‘blender’

Balancing the Costs and Benefits of Commercial and Open Source Software

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

I recently ran across this 3D artist’s perceptions about moving from commercial to free, open source software.  I appreciated what I believe to be an objective analysis of the costs and benefits of commercial and open source software.  Sure, the commercial software has some nice features that you’ll have to live without…but do those really affect your artistic expression?  Probably not.  How much do you gain by moving to free, open source alternatives like the time you gain for artistic work when you don’t have to analyze the financial costs of upgrades, plugins and other up-sells that keep subtracting from your personal or professional budget?  I’m guessing most non-profits and churches identify closely with the author’s tension caused by  “[wishing] to conduct business in a legal, sustainable fashion amidst a struggling economy”.

There are many very full-featured free, open source alternatives to all of the mainstream art and production software.  Give them a try…you just might find that free is freeing in more ways than just in your pocketbook…

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Posted in Culture and Community, Philosophy, Ethics and Theology | 1 Comment »

Use Blender To Add Effects To Your Videos

Wednesday, January 12th, 2011

Just saw this pointer to a couple video compilations showing some of what is possible these days with Blender 2.55, the open source animation, compositing, and many-other-things-multimedia software.  If you’ve been wanting to do some more advanced stuff, but can’t take the financial hit of After Effects or Cinema 4D (or anything else really) it would be worth it to try out the latest Blender.  It’s not for the faint of heart though, it’s a serious program with serious power.  Take a look!

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Posted in Reviews | No Comments »

Blender Foundation’s Sintel released online today

Thursday, September 30th, 2010

I’m hoping to do a more in depth review soon, but I couldn’t wait to post that the Blender Foundation’s third open movie project Sintel has been released online.  It is just a testament to what is possible with free and open source software.   It’s a huge accomplishment for the Blender Foundation and a huge inspiration to me personally to keep learning and expanding my toolset.

The movie is also a way cool business model based on making everything available for sharing, education and remixing via Creative Commons license.  Share it with your organization, your friends, your followers.  Copy it, download it, use it as your church service countdown video this week, do what you want with it just as long as you attribute it.

Congratulations for a job well done.  I am in awe!  I look forward to seeing more faith-based organizations taking advantage of the amazing free and open source multimedia tools that are available like Blender, Gimp, Inkscape, MyPaint, Alchemy and others.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsGyueVLvQ

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Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

New Christian TV Series Made With Open Source Software

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

Just saw this come through the Blender channels, looks like a new Korean production house, Dave Interactive, is developing a new TV series with Blender, my favorite 3D-animation-video-editing-special-effects-and-just-about-anything-multimedia-software.  The visuals and animation look great on the preview.  I look forward to hopefully being able to see the final product.

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Posted in Culture and Community | No Comments »

May the FOSS be with you…new open source multimedia studio in Brazil

Wednesday, September 15th, 2010

Just a quick post to show off a new professional studio in Brazil that’s making a TV series in all open source multimedia software!  Awesome!

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Posted in Culture and Community | No Comments »

RealWorks Walkthrough – Professional Media With Open Source

Monday, June 7th, 2010

If you don’t think that open source can put out professional video and animated media, you should check out this virtual design tour done for RealWorks.  Everything was done in Blender except for some texturing in Gimp.   If you don’t know, Blender is a really great multimedia software package that does animation, but so much more.  It includes a lot of the functionality you’d find in After Effects, Maya, ZBrush, Premiere, Cinema 4D, etc.

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Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment »

Installing Gimp Paint Studio on Windows

Saturday, April 24th, 2010

So, it’s been a very busy week.  I haven’t had the time I want to start working on several tutorials that are on my list.  I did run across this tutorial from David Revoy though.

David is the concept artist for this year’s Blender Open Movie, Sintel.  If you have a creative community at your church and they haven’t checked out Blender or Gimp, they should.  Both are highly capable media and graphics packages with a huge feature set.  Both also have the main complaint being that the user interface is hard to use.  Both are doing huge user interface redesigns this year to help remedy that.

Gimp Paint Studio is really just a add-on set of tools for Gimp to help make it more like Corel Painter.  David does some amazing work with Gimp and Alchemy.  He also used to be a Photoshop user which is proof that you can make the switch!  He also created the content for a Blender training DVD that shows you the professional workflow he used to create his art with all open source software.  You can support the Blender Foundation by purchasing it, but like all Blender Foundation training DVDs it is released under a Creative Commons licensing so downloading a copy is completely legal.  You don’t have an excuse not to check it out.

Anyway, if you are a creative type and are tired of paying through the nose for your software, I can tell you there is a ton of professional level open source software and Gimp Paint Studio is one of them.  Hope the tutorial is helpful.

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Posted in Tutorials | No Comments »