f r e e f a c

I’ve been editing/annotating some of the screencasts for the FAQ with Blender (Yes, I do use it for everything). When I need an annotation, I render the frame, switch scenes, model the annotation on top of the rendered background image, render from an ortho camera, go back to the sequence, and add it as an image strip. I had a good laugh when I accidentally turned on all layers in that annotation scene and had a surprise but cool looking result- all the annotations for an edit. For completeness, here’s another screenie showing the edit in progress.

blender.org just put up the Mancandy FAQ DVD for presale (actual shipping is towards the end of December) in the eshop . Sorry about the relatively late ship date, it’s mostly my fault- I’ve had all the tutorials recorded and ready for a while, it’s just the matter of putting everything together in a palatable package, and tweaking a few visual details. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that the preview picture here is slightly different from the the one on blender.org. Both are blender rendered mockups, that should be pretty close to the final artwork. The nice hexagon patterened template on the side should be consistent for all future Blender Open Movie Workshop DVDs (phew!) and is nicely designed by Andy, who is working on editing the second DVD in the series, titled “Creature Factory”. As you’d expect from the Blender Institute, the content will be CC licensed.