Articles 13
Untitled Document
January 9, 2019 12:00 AM
by Editor in Chief
What was the biggest Blender news in 2019--especially for professional users of Blender? Here are some of the top 10 Blender news from 2019. Please remember hobbyist-grade news or well-known facts--such as the use of Blender in product and arch viz--may have been omitted.
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10. New trend: ‘Tutotainment’
Ton Roosendale, the President of Blender Foundation calls it "Tutotainment," which is a tutorial that is both entertaining and effective. Started by Ian Huber with his one minute "Lazy Tutorials" series it has set a new standard for Blender tutorial. Another that fits the description is those by Jorge Gutierrez. Interesting thing about Ian and Jorge is that they both are directors, having released film of their own. No wonder their work stand apart from so many others.
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9. External Tools Come to Blender
Popular tools that were available for other propriety software are coming to Blender. Among them are TextTools, KeenTools Facebuilder and Atoms Crowd.
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8. Feature films and Shorts and Commercials This year also saw many projects realized with Blender. Some of them to note are:
Skywatch PETA commercial made fully in Blender
VFX--VFX Reel by POSTKINO FX on Tobol
The Super Stretchy Sticky Lizard | MyRodeReel2019
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7. Spring (Blender Open Movie) Released The long-awaited Blender Open Movie "Spring" was released.
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6. Ubisoft and Other Studios Move to Use Blender
Ubisoft has announced that the Paris animation studio would be moving to Blender for series production. And Japanese anime studio Khara also made to to use Blender. And others are also using Blender.
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5. Industry's Recognition for 'Next Gen' Won 2 Kidscreen Awards (the Best Animation and Best Design) in the Creative Talent category of
the 10th Kidscreen Awards.
"I Lost My body"--another feature film created using Blender--has won the Critics Award in Cannes, and the two main
prizes in Annecy. Regarding the film Ton Roosendale the President of the Blender Foundation noted: "For a lot of film makers I lost my body will be a game changer – if anyone had a doubt, animation is definitely “just like film” now. And not only for Hollywood blockbusters, especially for indie teams on lower budgets. We’re proud that Blender plays a role in this movement." Related link:
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4. Powerful Blender-specific External Addons More have been added and continuing to be added the lists of powerful Blender-specific external addons that would help to set Blender apart from its competitors. Some of them even costs as high as $549.00 US dollars. Check out some of them at the following links.
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5. https://www.blendernation.com/2019/11/17/weavr-procedural-textile-shader-for-blender-free-download/
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3. Blender Development Fund Joined by Major Players First the Epic Games, then Nvidia, AMD, Embark Studios and others--even Adidas--have joined the Blender Development Fund. Ton Roosendale, the President of Blender Foundation notes: "If there’s one thing that defined 2019 for Blender it was the massive support for Blender via our Development Fund membership program. It more than quadrupled in a year. Blender now has a much larger team of people working on core development; but not only that, the team is so large that other roles such as managers, writers and devops engineers needed to be filled in."
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2. Ub Iwerks Annie Award for Technical Achievement "ASIFA-Hollywood is one of the premiere organizations in the world promoting the art and industry of animation. Their annual Annie Award ceremony is the ‘Oscars of animation’, with the top of producers and directors of the animation world attending. Each year the Annie Awards jury rewards a technical achievement that made a significant impact on the art or industry of animation. In February 2019 that prize went to Blender."
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1. Blender 2.80~81a Released Blender 2.80 and subsequently Blender 81a have been released, living up to hypes created by Blender 2.80 Eevee demos released in 2018. With left click select as the new default, the interface has been redesigned, attracting professional new users.
Armed with top-notch render engines Cycles and Evee and powerful AI denoiser, new and improved features include: Performance Optimizations, GPU+CPU Rendering, Vector Displacement, Multi-object Editing, View Layers and Collections, Pixar's OpenSubdiv, Custom Font Text Strip, Text Improvements, Alembic, WebM Support, Angular Bending on Cloth, Audaspace Upgrade, Topology Rake, Popover UI Widget, Bone Selection Sets, Film-like Curve Mapping, Object Scatter, New Tablet Preferences, with improved Sculpt tools featured in 2.81 update--and more promising features are yet to come.
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