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!

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.

Brownie and Bozo came up with a new animation for the MakeSweet Blender, featuring a table falling from space with a cake on it. Now that I write that down, it seems a little … odd. I’m not sure if this was the one missing piece that the world was lacking in order to achieve a completely harmonious whole. You can control the image on the cake, and some words that sort of hover nearby it, so I suppose if you made some breathtaking choice of image and words, you might achieve … something. “This is not a pipe“, perhaps? They’ve used it in the past as an elaborate birthday card, apparently.

The movie generation procedure has been improved a bit; you can finally request email notifications (which is important, given that movies can take hours to produce), and it is a bit more obvious how to actually download the result (as opposed to viewing it online).

Enjoy!

The MakeSweet Blender, a tool for making customized 3D movies online, just got a whole lot better. We’re trying to do our bit to bring the possibilities of blender (an open source 3D design and animation program) to the masses. We now have the beginnings of a web interface for customizing designs. Now we just need to recruit some artists to come up with some cool movies. Our in-house talent on this isn’t up to much unfortunately (no offense, Brownie and Bozo). Watch this space, it is going to be fun!

For those not familar with blender, you should check it out. The learning curve is steep, but with just a little patience you can learn to make crazy animations of exploding business models and impress all the other CEOs (or whoever you hang out with).