http://mrbichel.com

This week i recieved my preordered copy of Big Buck Bunny. A video production by the Peach open movie project. The movie tells the story of a giant hearthful rabbit taking revenge against three rodents who harass him. The storyline is alright, and the general quality is stunning. However the aspiring aspect of the project is the philosophy behind.

The two open movie projects, Orange and Peach respectively have pionered the world of open movie production. The Orange movie project released Elephants Dream as the worlds first open movie and the same team supported by the Blender foundation now gave us Big Buck Bunny. Both projects are made entirely with open source graphics software such as Blender, and with all production files freely available to use however you please, under a Creative Commons license.

Traditionally you need to watch the mandatory disclaimers and copyright notices before the action starts. That is; if you are lucky enough that the region code of the dvd matches that of your drive. In short the paranoid industry spends enormous amounts of resources on lawyers and copy protection. Protectiong themselves from who? One might be right to ask.

The open movie projects are a breath of life to the industry and a prove of concept that professional movie production and animation can be accomplished with an open phillosophy utilizing only open source software.

I recently purchased Space Navigator from 3D Connexion. The product arrived in a little heavy package, and the product within seemed to be of genuine quality. I ignored the bundled software and installed the most recent driver from 3Dconnexion.com.

I fired up Google Earth and got the tool working smoothly and quickly learned to navigate with it. Later i tried in in Google sketch up where it seems to be less intuitive to use. But I’m confident i will learn it eventually.

What i was more interested in was to get the tool running in Blender and Second Life. Second Life is not supported by the tool but it seems to be possible through using Space Navigator with a joystick driver – i wonder if i can use it for a flight simulator.

Driver for Space Navigator Space Navigator with SL – SL wiki

So it seems from these resources that the recipe for getting Second Life, windows and space navigator working together will work with Tenebrous settings for the RBC9 driver. I have yet to try that on my PC. But what I’m more interested in is to get it working on my Macbook Pro.

There seems to be a similar solution to the one on windows with the software Controller Mate. I have yet to try that as well but before i will try to find a free driver available for mac. Especially since i expect 3D Connexion to do something about their Second Life support eventually.

Meanwhile i discovered that a beta plugin for blender was released yesterday so I’m downloading that now.

I will keep you updated on my results later.

Recently i downloaded the open source 3d content creation suite Blender learning the interface and then i made my first project. I took Accident Desig. I spend a dayns logo and added a 3rd dimension.

I really enjoy working in Blender the interface is elegant and intuitive. The possibilities are endless. And then theres is easy access to tons of helpful tutorials and other resources.

I am quite sure i am going to do a lot more work in blender in the future, especially as the current primitive system of Second Life develops. Soon i expect to be able to export images for sculpted prims to the main grid. I also downloaded a plug in for Blender enabling me to work with the current primitive system of Second Life externally in Blender an afterwards making it possible to upload the creations through some lsl scripts and a notecard containing the primitive parameters. Seems brilliant however so far it have done nothing but crashing blender. I will look into it again and see if i can find a solution and get it working.

I have yet to try and make my logo in to a sculptie. Stay tuned for my results:D

Guide to sculpties in Blender
Second Life wiki about sculpties
prim.blender – external Second Life modelling and importer