Articles 178
January 1, 2019 9:00 AM
by Editor in Chief
What was the biggest Blender news in 2018--especially for professional users of Blender? Here are some of the top 10 Blender news from 2018. Please remember hobbyist-grade news or well-known facts--such as the use of Blender in product and arch viz--may have been omitted.
 | Goodbye Blender Internal As of April 19, 2018, Blender Internal got officially removed from Blender 2.8. Related link: https://blender.community/c/today/jlcbbc/ | |
 | 9. YouTube Blocked Blender Videos Worldwide During June 2018, The scarist things happened to worldwide Blender users, with Blender Foundation's official channel being blocked for more than three days. While the channel got normalized a few days later, no one seems to have been told why it happened or if it can happen again.. Related link: 1. https://blender.community/c/today/Tqcbbc/ 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6ecEv7lOzg | |
| 8. Blenderartists.org under New Management Blenderartists.org moved to a new site with Bart Veldhuizen in charge. Related link: https://www.blender.org/press/blender-top-15-highlights-of-2018 | |
 | 7. Grease Pencil Perfected as a 2D Animation Tool With--HERO – Blender Grease Pencil Showcase--released, Blender's Grease Pencil has evolved to become a perfect 2D animation tool. Related links: 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKmSdY56VtY&t=23s 2. https://www.blender.org/press/blender-top-15-highlights-of-2018 | |
| 6. Blender's Use Expanded Beyond Animations, Films From creating Drone choreography to fixing multi-million dollar jet fighter, Blender's use has been expanded to various fields. Not to be overlooked is its conventional usage: creating animations and films. Related link: 1. https://www.blendernation.com/2018/12/23/drone-show-choreography-in-blender 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc41jrMpH_o 3. https://hackaday.com/2018/08/23/marines-3d-print-part-to-repair-multi-million-dollar-fighter 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luHmXHEpF7w 5. https://www.soft8soft.com/experience-insight-nasas-new-interactive/ 6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3S8RMXi2A07. 8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ambpl0AGTfI 9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sASB3BE26MQ 10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwLhFoyyvQ0 11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdlGR5JdGPY | |
 | 5. Industry's Recognition for Blender Blender Foundation got accepted as the first open source foundation member of Academy Software Foundation (ASWF) and won several notable awards this year as well Related link: 1. https://www.aswf.io/sony-pictures-entertainment-sony-pictures-imageworks-and-warner-bros-join-academy-software-foundation-at-the-linux-foundation 2. https://www.webbyawards.com/winners/2018/film-video/general/animation/agent-327-operation-barbershop 3. https://www.blendernation.com/2018/12/04/ton-will-receive-prestigious-ub-iwerks-award-for-technical-achievement | |
 | 4. The success of Blender Specific Paid Tutorials Aidy Burrows & Gleb Alexandrov's Hard Surface Modeling in Blender tutorials earned over $28,000.00 US dollars within 20 hours after its initial released in 2018 and still counting. That is a great reason for other talented artists to take Blender more seriously and to market their skills and tools through Blender. And apparently, others have already joined in. Related link: 1. https://blender.community/c/today/zxcbbc/ 2. https://blendermarket.com/products/hard-surface-modeling-in-blender | |
 | 3. Blender-specific Third Party Add-ons As was last year, new and irresistible features are continuing to be added to Blender by means of third-party add-ons. Related link: 1. https://www.kit-ops.com/story 2. https://remingtongraphics.net/tools/d-noise/ 3. https://www.metinseven.nl/blog/an1g/blender-3d-auto-retopology-add-ons 4. https://www.cgchan.com/static/doc/scenecity/1.2/getting_started.html 5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PEsSpz2LZA 6. http://renderhjs.net/textools/blender/ 7. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT6NBLv7w_Q 8. https://blender.community/c/today/T5cbbc/optix-ai-denoiser | |
| 2. Use in Feature Films & VFX NexGEN--a sci-fi feature animation---produced by Tangent Animation has set a milestone for Blender as a feature animation tool. Reportedly, the movie was made almost entirely in Blender and was purchased by Netflix for worldwide distribution. Blender was also known to be used in the production of other feature movies released in 2018 as a part of the pipeline. Related link: 1. https://www.blender.org/press/blender-top-15-highlights-of-2018 2. https://3dcinetv.com/netflix-nextgen-blender-review 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRtzMIxbmcQ 4. https://blenderartists.org/t/spiderman-into-the-spider-verse-concept-art/1138581 5. https://www.blendernation.com/2018/05/22/making-of-kaali-movie-cgi-shots 6. https://blender.community/c/today/kjcbbc/ 7. https://blenderartists.org/t/chevrolet-stock-car-40-years | |
 | 1. Blender 2.8 Evee Demos First introduced in late 2017, Blender Evee--the built-in real-time render engine for Blender 2.8--continued to evolve so as to threaten Unity or the Unreal Engine as a real-time renderer for films and arch-viz. With Evee evolving toward a certain level of perfection, more stunning Evee demos created by talented artists are likely to come in 2019 as well. Related link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hGSDD9-Tkc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij-99hlCcCc https://www.blendernation.com/2018/11/06/free-procedural-cloud-system-for-eevee-real-time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxrwx7nmS5A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ0mPrNdZbA http://www.creativeshrimp.com/30-blender-eevee-demos.html |
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