Our animation tool just grew a “make hi-res picture” option. Click this option to get a crisp, high-resolution version of your current frame. Here’s an example of the quality (reduced for this blog from 800×600 pixels to 400×300 pixels):

Have fun!

We’ve had a tool for some time now for making movies with your own images and text.  Many of you have made good use of it, but noted the following drawbacks:

• It is quite slow.
• The artwork is very basic.

We are now experimenting with a simpler tool for making animations from your images.  It deals with the first problem, since it is much much faster (I don’t quite understand why, ask our Bozo).  The speed will also let us use fancier artwork (though we haven’t got that in place yet) without the website grinding to a halt.

Watch this space!

Brownie and Bozo have posted a new set of scene examples for the movie mixer. I think they are slowly getting better at using blender, but they’ve still a long way to go. Still, it is a fun journey to watch.

In other news, I’m happy to welcome Plonkr both to our planet and to our little MakeSweet family! I’m sure there will be an initial period of adjustment to our non-homicidal ways, but over time you’ll wonder what you ever saw in acts of unprecedented depravity!

Bozo and Brownie have developed a new template for the MakeSweet Blender. Here’s the example they showed me:

The template gives you control of the appearance of the surface of a planet, and constructs a “mountain range” from words of your choosing. Nifty!

Via BlenderNation, a script for exporting blender 3d models to javascript. This reminds me of Samuel Johnson’s quip: “Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.” The conversion is approximate and the animation slow for non-trivial models, but it is impressive to see plain javascript doing this. Kudos to useless pickles for the core triangle-drawing trickery.