Posted on 05. Oct, 2010 by Andrew Price in Articles, Interviews
Let me start by saying, what an amazing week for Blender this has been!
It’s barely been 5 days since the release of Sintel and it’s already been viewed over 1 million times on YouTube, heavily discussed on CGSociety, hit the front page of 3d world and is still being tweeted every few minutes (even by celebrities!)
So I think I speak for everyone when I say, “Well done Durian team!” You guys sure know how to get the attention of the public ;)
Last week we interviewed Ton Roosendaal, and this week I’m excited to speak with the director of Sintel, Colin Levy!
In this 57 minute audio interview Colin explains:
Why he was choosen as the directorThe biggest challenges that the team facedWhat he would do differently if given the opportunityHow he deals with criticismHis future plans and aspirations
*WARNING: This interview discusses scenes from the film! If you haven’t yet seen Sintel, watch it now.*
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Click Play to stream the audio or download the MP3 file here.
If you liked this interview you may also like the interview with Ton Roosendaal.
That concludes this week’s post! Join me next week for an indepth discussion with Campbell Barton on developing Blender and the upcoming stable release :)
Posted on 24. Oct, 2010 by Andrew Price in Focused Critique
Focused Critique is the segment in which I select artworks that readers have sent to me, and critique them. This segment doesn’t poke fun at artwork, but instead aims to help the artist see areas that could be improved.
To submit your own artwork, go here.
This episode features 9 artworks that were sent to me in the last 2 weeks. Watch the video below.
Posted on 14. Oct, 2010 by Andrew Price in Compositing, Lighting, Materials, Tutorials
When I posted the interview with Colin last week, many of you kindly informed me that it had been a while since my last tutorial. And you were right! At least 3 weeks to be exact. So rather than post another interview I’ve decided to revert back to some good ‘ol fashioned tutorial fun. Enjoy! :)
If there’s one thing hollywood loves, it’s muzzle flashes. It lets the viewer know that has gun has been fired and hell is indeed breaking loose.
In fact if you had took a shot everytime you saw one in the Matrix you’d be on the floor before the halfway mark.
One, two, three, floor
The military use flash suppressors to help the soldier remain hidden in night time situations. But where’s the fun in that?
Use volumetrics to create a realistic fire materialUse displacements to quickly deform a meshRandomize animation using the noise modifierCreate glow and glare effects using the compositor
Posted on 21. Sep, 2010 by Andrew Price in Articles
Ever since I started Blender Guru I’ve had countless emails from people asking me for advice on what PC they should buy. We’ve all bought PC lemons in the past, so I can see why this would be a common question.
Now before we move on, let me start by saying that your PC is only as good as your skill. If you suck at Blender and buy $4000 computer, you will still suck. The only way to improve your work is through practice, practice and oh yeah, practice.
But now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about getting one a PC specifically built for Blender…
[Click here to read this post in Persian]
Photo by fosk
Everyone has their own preferences in terms of usablity and stability, but for me the winner is Linux. In the past I’ve used blender on both Windows and Linux, and I found that Linux crashes less, handles memory better and generally runs more smoothly than a windows operating system.
However… what most people won’t tell you is that Ubuntu can be an absolute pain in the ass to set up.
If you come from a windows background (like me) then expect to be punching holes in the wall when you find out that you need to type complex commands in the terminal just to connect to a wired LAN. It really is like entering another world. Everything is done differently and tasks that would usually take 2 seconds in Windows to setup could take hours in Linux, if you don’t know what you are doing (like me). A technical savvy person may say that Linux is a piece of cake, but to me it was an absolute nightmare. Go figure.
So for that reason I actually recommend Windows 7. It’s fast, easy to use and comes with 99% less headaches than Linux.
Photo by Friedemann Wulff-Woesten
The faster your CPU, the faster your render times. This is the meat and bones of your PC and will play the greatest influence on how quickly your render will finish.
I recommend choosing a CPU with multiple cores, as this will allow blender to render more tiles simultaniously. My current CPU has 4 cores, which means blender will render 4 tiles simultaneously. This really pays off in render times.
Cores = Like having multiple CPUs and only paying for one.
Other than that there’s really no secret to choosing a CPU. Buy the fastest one that you can afford!
Photo by Heather Greene
Second on my priority list is RAM. Whilst it won’t effect your render times, RAM will set the limit on how “epic” your scene can be. Now I say the word “epic” loosely here, but really I’m talking about memory usage limits. Everytime you use a large image texture or bake a high resolution simulation you use up more RAM. When you run out or RAM, blender crashes.
Thanks for reminding me to purchase more RAM!
The more RAM you have, the more you can push your scene to it’s extremes. If you had only 2GB of RAM and created a fluid simulation, you may only be able to use a domain resolution level of 100 before blender crashed. But if you upgraded to 16GB you may be able to reach 800.
And who knows, in the future you may even reach over 9000!
If you’re a simulation junkie then I recommend splashing out and buying lots of RAM.
Photo by Fred.org
A common misconception by beginners is that you need a super duper awesome graphics card to use blender. This is false.
A good graphics card will only help you when you are navigating around the 3d viewport. It will not effect your render times! For the past 7 years I’ve used a graphics card that was at least a year older than the current leading card (I’m cheap), and my work has never suffered from it.
Unless you plan to do lots of high poly sculpting in the future, then an expensive graphics card is a waste of money.
At least as far as Blender is concerned. Crysis however...
Now when it comes to choosing a GFX card, I always recommend Nvidia. In the past many blender users (including me) have had issues with ATI cards, wherein the menu flickers or some other glitch makes itself known. So for that reason I always recommend other blender users purchase Nvidia.
But! Having said that my last laptop had an ATI card and had no issues whatsoever, so maybe those glitchy days are over? Nope! According to the comments below, the ATI issues are still very much alive. Stick with Nvidia people! :P
Side note: If you follow 3d news, you may have heard about a new, faster method for rendering that uses your GPU instead of the CPU. Unfortunately, this technology is not yet available for Blender, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s developed soon. In the meantime use an external renderer like SmallLuxGPU or Octane if you would like to take advantage of GPU rendering.
Photo by Adamcha
If you’re going to be doing lots of rendering on your PC then I’d recommend finding a PC with adaquet cooling.
My last PC suffered permanent internal damage when rendering my New York Earthquake animation, because I only used a standard PC case. As a result, it overheated and now refuses to turn on.
But hey, at least it didn't catch fire.
Standard cases are suited more for air conditioned office environments, not prolonged rendering sessions in your stuffy bedroom. Take note :)
I’d recommend choosing a gaming case as these generally have better cooling than standard cases.
Photo by Stuart Bryant
In terms of speed within blender, you aren’t going to see any noticeable difference by purchasing a faster hard drive. So let’s focus on stability instead…
The last thing you want is for your hard drive to fail, right? Well unfortunately hard drive failure is a sad fact of life so the best thing you can do is be prepared and create a backup.
And what’s the easiest way to do that you ask? Set up a RAID array.
A RAID array. It’s a system configuration that uses two physical hard drives to mirror each other, so that if one fails you always have a backup. All you need to do is purchase two identical hard drives and set it up in the BIOS settings. I highly recommend that you do this before the inevitable happens! ;)
Since so many people have asked what my specific PC specs are, I’ve created this short video revealing exactly what hardware I use. Check it!
My specs are:
OS: Windows 7 64 BitCPU: Intel i7 950 3.06GhzRAM: 12GB Kingston 2000Mhz DDR3GFX Card: Gigabyte Nvidia GTX 470 1280MBHDD: 2 x 1TB Western Digital Sata 3 (RAID 1 array)Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X58ACase: Antec ‘Nine Hundred’ 750WMonitor: 21? Benq WidescreenKeyboard: Logitech G15Mouse: Microsoft basic optical mouse
If you’re still unsure PC components to purchase, then check out the Blender Render Benchmark. This is a website dedicated to benchmarking PCs with Blender, showing you exactly what rigs give the fastest render times. In fact, I probably could have just started the post with this website and saved myself the trouble of writing it. Oh well :P
Here’s the site again: Blender Render Benchmark – Bookmark it.
Thanks for reading! :) If you enjoyed this post you might also enjoy 5 Worthwhile Purchases for 3d Artists.
Posted on 20. Oct, 2010 by Andrew Price in Articles, Interviews
This week I thought it would be interesting to hear from one of the quiet achievers of the community: Campbell Barton.
Campbell is a fulltime Blender developer who is working hard to make Blender more stable and easier to use. Most recently he worked on Sintel as the Technical Director, fixing bugs and adding features that the team needed.
He currently lives in Victoria, Australia, working 9-5 to meet the demands of this very demanding community!
In this interview I ask him some of the big questions that the community has been echoing of late. Such as:
When will the final stable version of 2.5 be released?Is BMesh still being developed?How long will you be sticking with Blender?What was the hardest part about working on Sintel?How was the Sintel renderfarm created?How did you first learn Python?Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Click Play to stream the audio or download the MP3 file here.
Campbell has opened my eyes to a lot of issues that I didn’t know about and I hope it had the same effect on you. Join me in thanking Campbell for his hard work! :)
In other news, on Tuesday next week I will be flying to Amsterdam where I will be attending the Blender conference and updating Blender Guru with up to date happenings and hopefully recording a few presentations. Stay tuned ;)
Posted on 09. Nov, 2010 by Andrew Price in Articles
With the upcoming release of Blender 2.5, the industry is now watching our every move. But how are we portraying ourselves to the outside world? In this presentation, I highlight some of the problems that are holding us back, and possible solutions on how to fix them.
In this presentation you will discover:
The results from ‘The Great Blender Survey’The #1 frustration with blender as voted by the communityThe average age of the blender communityWhy Blender.org is unappealing to new visitorsWhy new users are unable to learn blenderHow we can make donating more “fun”
Recorded live at the 2010 Blender Conference in Amsterdam.
Not a fan of long videos? No problem! I’ve summarized the main points from the presentation and listed them below. All slides appear exactly as they are in the real presentation.
In this presentation I will be discussing the Big Issues – What we are doing wrong. The point of this talk is to raise some issues that we as a community are doing poorly and to provide possible solutions. The point is talk is not to simply point out flaws, but to bring them to the attention of the community so that we can act on them.
There are four main issues that I will discuss in this presentation.
If you’ve ever been to the Blender forums before you will probably recognize this situation: Lots of people with lots of opinions.
Everyone seems to have the answer for what needs improving and not surprisingly we never seem to get anywhere. The reason for this is that there is no central voice or opinion poll to determine what the most important task is.
Businesses usually track this sort of data by distributing an opinion poll. However, for Blender this had never been done before. So in August 2010, I created “The Great Blender Survey”.
Here’s a screenshot of the online survey:
The survey had one goal: To find out who is using Blender and why.
I think that if you can answer this question, then everything else will fall into place. You can determine what people are doing with blender and then develop the software to their needs.
I wanted this survey to be as accurate as possible so I exposed it to multiple parts of the community, including Blender Guru, Email subscribers, facebook, twitter and BlenderArtists.org.
I won’t claim that the survey is 100% accurate because it’s not, but it’s the closest I could do using the resources and connections I had available.
Over the course of 3 months I received 3,434 submissions.
Thank you to everyone who participated!
I have never released these results to anyone… until now. Ready to finally see them? :D
As you can see, it’s pretty close. Guys, if you’re using blender to find a girlfriend… it’s an uphill battle ;)
This important question tells us what age most people in the community are, and finally speaks on the “maturity” issue.
As you can see, the largest age demographic for blender users are 18-24 year olds. These are the people that have just finished school and are in college or a job.
This question not only tells us which year attracted the most blender users, but also how experienced we are at using the software.
From this graph you can clearly see a surge in new users over the past 12 months. This is a startling statistic as most of Blender’s news, tutorials and training products are geared for experienced users.
This question is aimed at identifying what level of skill users are at in order to cater training and tutorials to their needs.
If I could only ask one question in the survey it would be this. This question will tell us exactly why people are using blender and greatly assists us in developing the software for their needs.
The biggest demographic are clearly hobbyists, but it’s comforting to see that a good 47% of us are using Blender for commercial reasons. And I for one never expected to see so many game artists!
This is a two part question. The first is to find out how many people are outsourcing the render process to other programs.
34% of the blender community have never used an external render engine!
This question helps identify which external renderers people are using, so that we can create intergrated exporters that meet the demands of the community.
Yafaray and LuxRenderer are the two most used render engines are amongst the blender community.
Blender users love comparing blender to commercial alternatives, but how many have actually used commercial alternatives?
Surprisingly a good 74% of the community have! This is good news because it means they decided to stick with Blender anyway. We must be doing something right :)
Finding out which applications people have switched from helps us understand which UI layouts and keyboard shortcuts they are used to.
As you can see, 3ds Max is by far the most familiar app with Blender users.
This question will tell us exactly what advertising methods are working the best.
Not surprisingly the biggest reason most of us tried Blender is because it’s free. What shocked me though was finding that 23% of us were more impressed by seeing what Blender is capable of. This is another reason why artists should post their work on public 3d forums like CGSociety.org instead of just blender specific forums.
With the ongoing development of 2.5, many users have voiced their frustration over the stability of Blender. How likely are we to jump ship to another piece of software?
The good news is that almost ¾ of the community is here to stay! Only 1% are dedicated to switching. >>Bonus! Find out why are they are quitting<<
This all important question will tell us exactly what feature of blender needs the most attention.
As you can see, the internal render engine is heads and shoulders above everything else. This stresses just how important it is to keep the render engine competitive to the industry.
Focusing on the bigger picture, I asked people to decide on the single biggest problem with blender as a whole.
Lack of documentation has been voiced countless times in the past but only now is it glaringly obvious.
This tells us exactly how many people have successfully used Blender for a professional service.
As you can see, only 23% of us have ever succeeded making money with Blender.
From these results we are able to work who exactly is the “typical blender user”.
Identifying who our users are and what they want is the first step in improving Blender. Hopefully this survey will help developers, studios, trainers and other professionals cater their services to the needs of the blender community.
>>Download the survey results as a PDF and Excel file<<
Marketing is all about how we portray ourselves to the outside world and get new users on board. For Blender the first impression that most people have is from visiting Blender.org. What the visitor sees when they arrive on this site, greatly effects whether or not they download the software.
According to the book ‘Don’t make me think’, all visitors are at a website because they have a question and they want it answered.
In the case of new software, it’s three questions:
If you can answer these three questions on the homepage then the website is successful at giving the visitors what they came for.
Before we discuss blender though, let’s first take a look at our competitor’s websites.
An image slideshow at the top proudly shows what 3ds max can do. Underneath that is a brief description telling exactly what 3ds Max is. On the right is a Buy it now button that shows the visitor the next logical step if they like what they see. All three questions can be answered just by glancing at the homepage. Therefore, 3ds Max passes the web design test.
A similar layout: Gallery Slideshow at the top, short description underneath and a buy it now button on the side. Octane Renderer also passes the web design test.
Gallery at the top, description underneath and buy button underneath. Are you noticing a trend? Lightwave passes the test.
Gallery slideshow at the top, description underneatch, buy it now button on the side. Maya also passes the test.
What’s wrong with this picture?
The biggest glaring problem is that the entire middle section is completely irrelevant to new users.
In fact there really isn’t anything on the blender homepage that is relevant to new users.
Blender.org reads more like a hangout spot for experienced users then a doorway for new users. Which is a shame because the whole purpose of a software homepage is to convert a curious visitors into a user. Currently we are failing that.
I’m not a web designer, but I’ve attempted my own mockup redesign of the site, using artwork from the current blender.org galley:
Artwork by Mathias Pedersen, Clement Granjon, Filip Sadlon and Radiance
The whole purpose of this design to answer the three important questions that new visitors have:
The most crucial element of this design is the large image gallery at the top. Users don’t want to be told why a software is a good, they want to be shown. Currently the community is posting amazing pieces of artwork on BlenderArtist.org. But unfortunately, once they slide off the frontpage they disappear forever. What a waste! Why not showcase this art directly on the homepage for the world to see?
Also featured in this site redesign are a short description, two easily identifiable download buttons and links to the gallery and demo reel. All these elements are appealing to new visitors.
In the last 12 months we have seen two new websites emerge that are dedicated to delivering ongoing tutorials: Blender Cookie and Blender Guru.
So you may be wondering… what’s the issue? Surely we have this training thing covered, right?Wrong!
There are two problems. The first one being that training is incredibly hard to find. Experienced users know about Blender Cookie and Blender Guru, but new users don’t.
An obvious solution would be to update the Blender.org tutorial page with new tutorials, but unfortunately I already did that and it hasn’t solved the problem.
Why? Because the tutorial page is almost impossible to find! A new user does not know to click ‘Education & Help’ and then read a long block to text to find the link for ‘Tutorials’.
Without easily accessible training new users will get frustrated with Blender and quit. We need to reference the tutorial page in as many places as possible so that new users can locate it with ease.
One place to start would be the Blender splash screen. This is the first thing new users see when opening Blender and it’s the first place they get stuck. By having a clear link right on the splash that says ‘Tutorials’ they will know exactly where to go.
The second obvious place would be to link to the tutorial page directly on blender.org.
Believe it or not but this also persuades new users to download the software. Why? Countless marketing research has proven that if you can provide free training to a customer they are more likely to buy the product. This is one of the reasons that Adobe products ship with a training disc :)
The second problem is that we have forgotten about new users!
Blender Guru makes advanced tutorials and Blender Cookie teaches techniques and tutorials at a beginner level. But there no tutorials for complete beginners. How is a new user supposed to wrap their head around the concept of 3d without a proper walkthrough?
I’ve decided to volunteer to solve this one. Next year I will be creating a completely free beginner training series, very similar to Video Copilot’s beginner series. Stay tuned!
Receiving donations is crucial to the success of Blender. The more money the foundation has, the more fulltime developers Ton can hire. Unfortunately, the donation system is very lackluster:
“Well it looks like a pretty standard donation page to me. What’s the problem?”
Good question. Whilst donating is fairly simple concept, there are many things that we can do improve the experience and make it more attractive to masses:
In detail:
Only accepts one off payments – This is like shooting yourself in the foot. Dedicated blender users have asked for a way to donate on a regular basis, but currently there is no option to do this.No Recognition – Obviously when people donate money they are doing out of the goodness of their heart and aren’t expecting anything in return. But human beings are still human beings and we crave a pat on the back. If we know that nobody will say “Thank you” for the effort, then we aren’t likely to follow through with the donation.No clue as to where the money goes – If you donated $100 today, where would the money go? A new feature development? Bug fixes? Pay the rent on the blender institute building? If the donator does not have a 100% clear understanding of where their money is going, they won’t donate. It’s as simple as that.
For examples of how to do donations the right way, you need to look no further than World Vision:
Now obviously Blender is not a charity but we are still asking for donations so we should not stray to far from the pros.
World Vision donations are accepted on a monthly basis so as to ensure that the support contines all throughout the year.Novelty plaques are given to the donator so they can “show off” their donation to friends, family and whoever visits their house.Detailed descriptions show exactly how each dollar of your money is spent.
I’ve put together a redesign of the donation system based off these ideas:
In this redesign, people wanting to donate are given three simple monthly donation plans: Bronze, Silver or Gold (an option to donate as a once off is still available)
Detailed descriptions show exactly where each dollar is spent.
The donation plans are visualized as a trophy to make it feel like you are purchasing a product as opposed to throwing money in the air. For recognition this could be intergrated into the blenderartists.org forums:
A small trophy icon is all it takes to thank the donator for their contribution. Everytime the user makes a post, they can feel good knowing that other users are now recognizing their contribution. This small gesture will also entice other users to contribute because when they click the icon it can route them to the donations page.
You may be wondering, “Yeah but how many people would actually want to donate on a monthly basis?”. Well for that you need to look no further than Farsthary’s blog. He asked his readers “How much would you donate monthly to support the Blender Foundation?”
And believe it not, but 40% said they would happily donate $10 or more on a monthly basis. Now obviously that’s just a poll and not everyone who voted will actually follow through with it, but it shows that the blender community is at least supportive of the idea.
So that concludes my presentation! Thank you for reading :)
What did you think of these proposed ideas? Do you think they would help improve the progress of Blender? I am very interested in hearing your feedback. Please write a comment below!
If you like this presentation you may also like my other live presentation, “How to Raise your Profile as an Artist”
Posted on 05. Oct, 2010 by Andrew Price in Articles, Interviews
Posted on 16. Oct, 2010 by Andrew Price in Focused Critique
Posted on 24. Oct, 2010 by Andrew Price in Focused Critique
Posted on 14. Oct, 2010 by Andrew Price in Compositing, Lighting, Materials, 
One, two, three, floor
Posted on 21. Sep, 2010 by Andrew Price in Articles
Photo by fosk
Photo by Friedemann Wulff-Woesten
Cores = Like having multiple CPUs and only paying for one.
Photo by Heather Greene
Thanks for reminding me to purchase more RAM!
And who knows, in the future you may even reach over 9000!
Photo by Fred.org
At least as far as Blender is concerned. Crysis however...
Photo by Adamcha
But hey, at least it didn't catch fire.
Photo by Stuart Bryant
Posted on 20. Oct, 2010 by Andrew Price in Articles, Interviews
Posted on 09. Nov, 2010 by Andrew Price in Articles
There are four main issues that I will discuss in this presentation.
Everyone seems to have the answer for what needs improving and not surprisingly we never seem to get anywhere. The reason for this is that there is no central voice or opinion poll to determine what the most important task is.
Here’s a screenshot of the online survey:
Let’s begin…
From this graph you can clearly see a surge in new users over the past 12 months. This is a startling statistic as most of Blender’s news, 
Yafaray and LuxRenderer are the two most used render engines are amongst the blender community.
As you can see, the internal render engine is heads and shoulders above everything else. This stresses just how important it is to keep the render engine competitive to the industry.
Lack of documentation has been voiced countless times in the past but only now is it glaringly obvious.
In the case of new software, it’s three questions:
Gallery at the top, description underneath and buy button underneath. Are you noticing a trend? Lightwave passes the test.
What’s wrong with this picture?
In fact there really isn’t anything on the blender homepage that is relevant to new users.
Artwork by Mathias Pedersen, Clement Granjon, Filip Sadlon and Radiance
So you may be wondering… what’s the issue? Surely we have this training thing covered, right?Wrong!
The second obvious place would be to link to the 
In detail:
Now obviously Blender is not a charity but we are still asking for donations so we should not stray to far from the pros.
