The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated

Boy, life sure got in the way of any creativity this year so far. But let´s just pretend it didn´t happen and get on with it, shall we? This blog is a good resource, and I plan to make it better. Since I´m no longer very envolved in the 3D-community, that part of this blog will be cut down. I have bought a tablet for drawing, so expect my doodles to infest a post or two every now and then. I have some ideas for what I want to do, and I will be more transparent in my process. I want this blog to be for people who are just startin out, by someone who´s just starting out. A joint journey, if you will. I want to share my successes, and failures both. I think that is the way that works best for me. As a starter, here´s my first doodle (don´t say I didn´t warn ya!;)

The Aspiring Adventure Game Developers Toolkit

It dawned on me, that while it´s fairly easy to download all the stuff I link to on this blog, some of you might appreciate having everything available in a collected format. I´m going to look into uploading everything on a torrent tracker, and then just update every other month or so. What do you think?

New Release: Blender 2.5 Alpha 0

After a long time in development, the Blender Foundation have deemed Blender 2.5 ready for serious testing. It is, however an alpha, unstable and incomplete. The finished result is slated for late summer next year, but there is already a lot of kewl stuff to play with=)

What´s done so far:

UI makeover - If you´ve come directly from earlier versions of Blender, you might feel a little lost. However it´s all for good, even if it will take some time to get used to. The UI has seen some love to make it more logical, alot of reorganization has been done and a new toolbar (envoked by the key ´T´ in the 3d view), will make sure you have all tools settings close at hand. The basic Blender identity, I´m happy to say, is still preserved, though. Another interesting direction is that the UI is programmable through Python, which opens up alot of possibilities for designing your own UI. Examples of programming your own context-sensitive popups, ala the spacebar-popup in 2.4x has been shown already. It´s far from finished though, and a lot is bound to change. Looking good so far, though.



Customizable keymaps - No more complaints about migrating from Max, Maya etc. No you can make Blender behave pretty much in the same way. Right now, there´s pretty basic support, and changing all the keys you want is a chore (I would like something like what Wings 3d has), but improvements are expected as this is very early work.

Also in this release is a new animations system with the goal to make everything animatable, spline-ik, volume rendering, smoke simulation, particle enhancements, raytrace optimizations and better normalmapping.

For all the changes, and of course a download, go here.

Johnny Blender - extensive Blender character animation tutorial

David Allen War has graciously dedicated a huge amount of time on making this awesome tutorial series for the creation, animation and rendering of a character - Johnny Blender - which touches on several parts of Blenders capabilities. Prepare to spend a lot of time in front of the screen before you finish these:



The rest of the tutorials can be found here.

3D modeling in Wings video tutorials

Keeping on the subject of introductory tutorials for my tools of choice, I found these very basic video tutorials by Adam Eisfeld on the use of Wings 3D. There are only 3 but it´s a good start if you want to get accustomed to Wings UI and workflow and have an otherwise good understanding of working in 3D. As usual, the first part is showcased below. The rest can be found here.



If you want to download these for offline viewing, and are using Firefox, I highly recommend the DownloadHelper plugin for that.

Blender basics video tutorials

Ok, so on to the next set of tutorials. These are brought to you from BlenderUnderground.com and cover the most basic aspects of Blender that you need to know to get going. Apollos takes us through the UI, basic modeling and materials. It's an excellent starting point for learning blender, and the first part can be viewed here:

All tutorials can be viewed, and downloaded for offline viewing from here.

After viewing those you might be confident enough to try a tutorial I made many years ago, when I was learning Blender myself. It´s on the modeling of a human head and can be found here. Don´t ask for the other parts - there aren´t any;-)

How to use AGS video tutorials

While waiting for new major releases, I´m going to lead you to some great sites and tutorials, that will help you, and hopefully me, in mastering game creation.

First out is a series of videotutorials on the use of AGS, created by Densming, and published on Youtube.com to the delight of budding game developers. There are 41 parts, consisting of literally hours of learning material. They start very basic and progress slowly to more advanced topics. If you´re like me and reading a manual makes you fall a sleep, this is a very fun way of learning. The first part is here:

and the rest can be found here!