Epic Games supports Blender with $1.2 million

Epic Games, as part of the company’s $100 million Epic MegaGrants program, is awarding the Blender Foundation $1.2 million in cash to further the success of Blender, the free and open source 3D creation suite that supports the full range of tools empowering artists to create 3D graphics, animation, special effects or games.

The Epic MegaGrants initiative is designed to assist game developers, enterprise professionals, media and entertainment creators, students, educators, and tool developers doing outstanding work with Unreal Engine or enhancing open-source capabilities for the 3D graphics community.

The Epic MegaGrant will be delivered incrementally over the next three years and will contribute to Blender’s Professionalizing Blender Development Initiative.

“Having Epic Games on board is a major milestone for Blender,” said Blender Foundation founder and chairman Ton Roosendaal. “Thanks to the grant we will make a significant investment in our project organization to improve on-boarding, coordination and best practices for code quality. As a result, we expect more contributors from the industry to join our projects.”

“Open tools, libraries and platforms are critical to the future of the digital content ecosystem,” said Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games. “Blender is an enduring resource within the artistic community, and we aim to ensure its advancement to the benefit of all creators.”

For more information about Epic MegaGrants, visit unrealengine.com/en-US/megagrants.

About Blender Foundation
The Blender Foundation (2002) is an independent nonprofit public benefit corporation with the purpose to provide individual artists and small teams with a complete, free and open source 3D creation pipeline, managed by public projects on blender.org. Its spin-off Blender Institute hosts the foundation’s offices and currently employs 15 people who work on the Blender software and creative projects to validate and stress Blender in production environments.
For more information, visit blender.org/foundation.

About Unreal Engine
Epic Games’ Unreal Engine technology brings high-quality games to PC, console, mobile, AR and VR platforms. Creators also use Unreal for photorealistic visualization, interactive product design, film, virtual production, mixed reality TV broadcast and animated entertainment. Follow @UnrealEngine and download Unreal for free at unrealengine.com.

About Epic Games
Founded in 1991, Epic Games is the creator of Fortnite, Unreal, Gears of War, Shadow Complex, and the Infinity Blade series of games. Epic’s Unreal Engine technology, which brings high-fidelity, interactive experiences to PC, console, mobile, AR, VR and the Web, is freely available at unrealengine.com. The Epic Games store offers a handpicked library of games, available at epicgames.com. Follow @EpicGames for updates.

Inkscape (vector illustrations)

Inkscape is a free and open-source vector graphics editor. This software can be used to create or edit vector graphics such as illustrations, diagrams, line arts, charts, logos and complex paintings. Inkscape’s primary vector graphics format is Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG); however, many other formats can be imported and exported.

Inkscape can render primitive vector shapes (e.g. rectangles, ellipses, polygons, arcs, spirals, stars and 3D boxes) and text. These objects may be filled with solid colors, patterns, radial or linear color gradients and their borders may be stroked, both with adjustable transparency. Embedding and optional tracing of raster graphics is also supported, enabling the editor to create vector graphics from photos and other raster sources. Created shapes can be further manipulated with transformations, such as moving, rotating, scaling and skewing.

Inkscape is professional quality vector graphics software which runs on Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux. It is used by design professionals and hobbyists worldwide, for creating a wide variety of graphics such as illustrations, icons, logos, diagrams, maps and web graphics. Inkscape uses the W3C open standard SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) as its native format, and is free and open-source software.

Inkscape has sophisticated drawing tools with capabilities comparable to Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW and Xara Xtreme. It can import and export various file formats, including SVG, AI, EPS, PDF, PS and PNG. It has a comprehensive feature set, a simple interface, multi-lingual support and is designed to be extensible; users can customize Inkscape’s functionality with add-ons.

The Inkscape project has a growing international user community, and many learning materials exist to help get you started with your creations. Help and support is provided by the community, and there are lots of ways for you to get involved if you want to help improve the Inkscape project.

Inkscape is a member of the Software Freedom Conservancy, a US 501(c) non-profit organization. Contributions to Inkscape are tax deductible in the United States.

Who makes Inkscape?

Inkscape has many authors, every author retains their own copyright and authors are likewise involved in setting Inkscape’s technical and project goals. There are also many other non-coding contributors who are considered important parts of the Inkscape project.

If you wish to refer to Inkscape’s creators or organisation you can use the terms “Inkscape’s Contributors” and “The Inkscape Project” respectively to differentiate from Inkscape the software package.

Inkscape – official website

Pencil 2D (animation)

An easy, intuitive tool to make 2D hand-drawn animations.

• Minimal Design: Lightweight and easy to use so you can focus on animating and not what button to hit next.
• Raster & Vector: Seamlessly switch between raster and vector workflows, allowing you to sketch, ink & paint on the go.
• Cross-Platform: Pencil2D is cross-platform and runs on Windows, macOS, Linux & FreeBSD.
• Open Source & Free: Pencil2D is completely open source and free to use, even commercially!

Pencil2D is a free and open-source 2D animation software available for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. It is a fork of ‘Pencil’. The application uses a bitmap/vector drawing interface to produce simple 2D graphics and drawings as well as animation. Pencil is written in C++ and is Qt-based. The application license is GNU General Public License.

It started as a simple “pencil test” program by Patrick Corrieri, extended to the current Pencil application mainly by Pascal Naidon. It was forked as Pencil2D by Matt Chang and is being developed.

History

Pencil was originally an application created by Patrick Corrieri by the end of 2005 under the name “Pencil Planner”. It was a simple yet effective pencil test (a.k.a. line test) programme. It included a drawing area, a single-track timeline where Keyframes could be added, previous and next onion skins. The drawing tools were a pencil and an eraser, along with a colour chooser. The animation could be played at a specified frame rate, and in addition it was possible to add a background image and a background sound. It was developed under Qt 3 and made available on Macintosh and then Windows platforms under GPL license. The Mac version could output QuickTime files.

When developer Paul became aware of this programme,He realised that it could be evolved into an application for making traditional animations rather than just pencil tests. Obviously what was needed was more drawing tools to fill shapes with colours,and some selection tools to move things around.

He got in touch with Patrick, and started implementing those functions, along with cleaning the original code. In this way the “Pencil planner” started to get to software “Pencil 2d”.

Pencil 2D – official website

FreeCAD

FreeCAD is an open-source parametric 3D modeler made primarily to design real-life objects of any size. Parametric modeling allows you to easily modify your design by going back into your model history and changing its parameters.

FreeCAD allows you to sketch geometry constrained 2D shapes and use them as a base to build other objects. It contains many components to adjust dimensions or extract design details from 3D models to create high quality production ready drawings.

FreeCAD is a multiplatfom (Windows, Mac and Linux), highly customizable and extensible software. It reads and writes to many open file formats such as STEP, IGES, STL, SVG, DXF, OBJ, IFC, DAE and many others, making it possible to seamlessly integrate it into your workflow.

FreeCAD is designed to fit a wide range of uses including product design, mechanical engineering and architecture. Whether you are a hobbyist, a programmer, an experienced CAD user, a student or a teacher, you will feel right at home with FreeCAD.

FreeCAD equips you with all the right tools for your needs. You get modern Finite Element Analysis (FEA) tools, experimental CFD, BIM, Geodata workbenches, Path workbench, a robot simulation module that allows you to study robot movements and many more features. FreeCAD really is a Swiss Army knife of general-purpose engineering toolkits.

FreeCAD is a truly open source project and if you would like to help fix bugs, implement new cool features or work on the documentation, we invite you to join us and create a software that benefits the whole community.

FreeCAD – official website

KRITA – Paint

Krita is a FREE and open source painting tool designed for concept artists, illustrators, matte and texture artists, and the VFX industry. Krita has been in development for over 10 years and has had an explosion in growth recently. It offers many common and innovative features to help the amateur and professional alike. See below for some of the highlighted features.

An intuitive user interface that stays out of your way. The dockers and panels can be moved and customized for your specific workflow. Once you have your setup, you can save it as your own workspace. You can also create your own shortcuts for commonly used tools.

Quickly pick your color and brush by right-clicking on the canvas. You can also use Krita’s tagging system to swap out the available brushes that are displayed. The ring outside of the color selector contains the most recently used colors. These settings can be configured through the preferences.

Customize your brushes with over 9 unique brush engines. Each engine has a large amount of settings to customize your brush. Each brush engine is made to satisfy a specific need such as the Color Smudge engine, Shape engine, Particle engine, and even a filter engine. Once you are done creating your brushes, you can save them and organize them with Krita’s unique tagging system.

Open PSD files that even Photoshop cannot open. Load and save to PSD when you need to take your artwork across different programs. Krita takes advantages of OpenGL for some of its operations. With OpenGL enabled, you will see increased canvas rotation and zooming speed. The canvas will also look better when zoomed out. Choose and manage your colors. Mix colors with the Digital Colors Mixer. Select your colors in a compact fashion with the Small Color Selector. Select colors by value with the Specific Color Selector. Have a predefined color palette with the Palette docker.

Krita – official website

GIMP – GNU Image Manipulation Program

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image retouching and editing, free-form drawing, converting between different image formats, and more specialized tasks.

GIMP is released under GPLv3+ licenses and is available for Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows.

Lifewire reviewed GIMP favorably in March 2019, writing that “for those who have never experienced Photoshop, GIMP is simply a very powerful image manipulation program,” and “if you’re willing to invest some time learning it, it can be a very good graphics tool.”

GIMP’s fitness for use in professional environments is regularly reviewed; it is often compared to and suggested as a possible replacement for Adobe Photoshop. GIMP has similar functionality to Photoshop, but has a different user interface.

GIMP 2.6 was used to create nearly all of the art in Lucas the Game, an independent video game by developer Timothy Courtney. Courtney started development of Lucas the Game in early 2014, and the video game was published in July 2015 for PC and Mac. Courtney explains GIMP is a powerful tool, fully capable of large professional projects, such as video games. 

The single-window mode introduced in GIMP 2.8 was reviewed in 2012 by Ryan Paul of Ars Technica, who noted that it made the user experience feel “more streamlined and less cluttered”. Michael Burns, writing for Macworld in 2014, described the single-window interface of GIMP 2.8.10 as a “big improvement”.

In his review of GIMP for ExtremeTech in October 2013, David Cardinal noted that GIMP’s reputation of being hard to use and lacking features has “changed dramatically over the last couple years”, and that it was “no longer a crippled alternative to Photoshop”. He described GIMP’s scripting as one of its strengths, but also remarked that some of Photoshop’s features – such as Text, 3D commands, Adjustment Layers and History – are either less powerful or missing in GIMP. Cardinal favorably described the UFRaw converter for raw images used with GIMP, noting that it still “requires some patience to figure out how to use those more advanced capabilities”. Cardinal stated that GIMP is “easy enough to try” despite not having as well-developed documentation and help system as those for Photoshop, concluding that it “has become a worthy alternative to Photoshop for anyone on a budget who doesn’t need all of Photoshop’s vast feature set”.

GIMP – official website

Spring – Blender Open Movie 2019

lk asdk aslkf aslkj asfdlkja sldfk lak lk asdk aslkf aslkj asfdlkja sldfk laksjdf lk asdk aslkf aslkj asfdlkja sldfk laksjdf lk asdk aslkf aslkj asfdlkja sldfk laksjdf lk asdk aslkf aslkj asfdlkja sldfk laksjdf sjdf

Photo retouch using GIMP

This post is under construction…

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur maximus cursus sapien, sit amet imperdiet quam pellentesque sed. Praesent in libero sed tortor molestie dapibus ac sit amet magna. Integer vel est porttitor nibh viverra vestibulum. Etiam et dolor luctus, congue ligula ac, dictum orci. Nullam rhoncus augue luctus arcu porttitor lacinia eu tempor tellus. Etiam sodales nisi ut massa lobortis eleifend. Sed faucibus sodales elit, vitae pellentesque nisi gravida eget. Aenean efficitur lobortis dui, cursus facilisis augue. Sed gravida faucibus viverra. Nam mattis, dolor ac laoreet pharetra, mi purus fringilla ex, eget euismod eros mi et ex. Proin laoreet, ex sit amet accumsan feugiat, lorem mauris interdum metus, eget tincidunt quam quam et dolor. Nam sollicitudin tempus mi vitae malesuada. Vivamus urna orci, volutpat et turpis ut, tincidunt hendrerit risus. Mauris sollicitudin purus at felis interdum rutrum vel sit amet enim.

Duis placerat hendrerit velit vel accumsan. Etiam interdum ipsum vel nulla venenatis vehicula. Etiam vel pharetra purus, at bibendum tortor. Duis nec tortor accumsan, euismod ligula ut, iaculis nisl. Duis vitae nibh ac quam tempus euismod id et turpis. Sed lectus orci, pharetra ut mattis vitae, porttitor et justo. Morbi vitae enim aliquet, auctor libero quis, molestie enim. Nam accumsan elit sapien, a gravida urna varius eget. Suspendisse tempor leo magna. Sed at magna massa. Duis sit amet enim sit amet mi dictum ultricies. Etiam libero risus, semper a aliquet ac, sodales sed tellus. Curabitur eget faucibus diam, non dignissim ex. Quisque fermentum, nibh volutpat tincidunt lacinia, urna odio venenatis turpis, quis scelerisque leo sem sed diam. Suspendisse ac convallis orci. Etiam nunc nisl, facilisis at facilisis vel, dignissim sed ipsum.

Fusce tempor posuere sapien eget viverra. Donec mauris nisi, laoreet non commodo in, congue sed tellus. Vivamus pulvinar posuere luctus. Duis nulla arcu, viverra eu consectetur eget, interdum a augue. Quisque sodales libero suscipit felis euismod, sed ultrices sapien ullamcorper. In congue, turpis non varius porta, ante ante commodo ipsum, id mollis tellus sapien non elit. Fusce venenatis felis ac leo dictum sollicitudin. Sed ut ipsum suscipit, interdum elit sit amet, maximus magna. Integer cursus nisi vel leo sagittis dignissim. Praesent convallis elit et nunc aliquet tincidunt. Morbi nibh augue, condimentum eu ullamcorper eu, tempor ut turpis. Vivamus semper tellus ut lectus pellentesque, eu ornare dui euismod. Mauris ac nibh et tortor fermentum elementum.

Morbi blandit risus vel justo dapibus placerat. Praesent congue aliquet erat, quis porttitor ipsum ullamcorper vel. Integer vestibulum nisl quam. Pellentesque at tortor justo. Curabitur blandit turpis id lacus facilisis tincidunt. Morbi quis placerat orci. Nunc at diam justo. Sed vel volutpat diam, varius ullamcorper ex. Praesent hendrerit, neque et interdum faucibus, lacus nibh suscipit mauris, vitae feugiat neque purus id nunc. Nunc pretium lobortis efficitur.

Etiam ultrices turpis sit amet blandit imperdiet. Suspendisse tincidunt convallis efficitur. Nunc accumsan nisi sed nulla posuere, ac molestie nisl commodo. Cras molestie id leo quis venenatis. Suspendisse potenti. Maecenas finibus, lacus non rhoncus condimentum, metus neque ultricies velit, tempus tincidunt lorem erat vitae ligula. Suspendisse at pharetra lectus, ut scelerisque risus. Integer placerat sodales aliquam. Vivamus metus justo, pellentesque non sagittis sit amet, rhoncus