http://www.blender.org/ - a free (both as in speech and beer, GPLd) and complete interactive 3d suite. Development facilitated by the BlenderFoundation

most recent experiment (July 2009), BlenderOMV - Blender as a world editor to SecondLife / OpenSim / RealXtend? worlds.

here a special interest is in the game engine, and it's use for VJing - that is gathered in LiveBlender

ModellingProgram

besides the real-time engine, have been learning and working with the modelling & animation side - among other things BlenderSVGexport (now import is there too!). for making different kinds of production and processing pipelines, making Blender behave better with regular Python would be good: hence PythonBlender

annoyances that could be fixed (regarding the GameEngine):

• can not set trackTo by id, only name (which is same for all added objects, and can not be changed)
  • fixed! kudos to Kester / alien-xmp! see http://www.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2004-August/007163.html
• setPosition etc. for childs, i.e. parenting in the game engine
  • was discussed in http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=143661#143661

bigger issues:

• switching character meshes
  • GameBlender crashes (at least through BlenderGameLogic?) when switching MesH? of BlenderArmature - may be done by simply having all objects present, but invisible when not shown
• switching textures: not possible?
  • http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3495&highlight=texture says it is, but does that actually work in game engine?
• MultipleMovements? (like in Cal3D)
  • can not mix MultipleIPOs?
    • but has blending (endpoint of a movement becoming the start of next) for ArmaturE?, unfortunately not for IPOs?
  • is implemented now by having the concurrent actions not share bones
    • another way is exporting the Blender animations to e.g. cal3d and run them in some other engine that has that. there are python bindings for cal3d itself (PyCal?3d) that people have used with PyGame/pyopengl, i've tested how SoyA does it and those people wrote the blender export too

useful stuff at Elysiun and elsewhere:

• real time vertext paint
• getOrientation explained
• textbox
• using python in the gameEngine
• creating entire new objects from scratch in realtime (not really possible)
• changing vertex colors in game engine
• AudioInput with Blender
• DemoLoop
• http://blenderman.free.fr/tut/followcam/uk/followcam.htm

beginner tutorials:

• Creating a simple armature in Blender
• making an animation path loop

development stuff:

• PythonBlender drafter here, moved to blender dev. then

  subtopics:

  • Blender25
  • BlenderArmature
    • BlenderCVS
    • BlenderToCal
  • BlenderFoundation
    • InternetAccess
    • OrangeBlender
    • UniVerse
      • VersE
        • PurpleBlender
        • VerseDemo
          • TypeSystem
  • BlenderOMV
  • BlenderSVGexport
  • BlenderSwoosh
  • Cal3D
  • GPLd
  • GameBlender
    • GameEngine
  • KyperWiki
  • LiveBlender
    • LiveBlenderPresentation
      • BlenderVJ
      • GameLogic
      • PixelShox
        • NodeSystem
      • VJing
    • LiveComposition
  • ModellingProgram
    • AutoCad
    ...
    • CarrarA
    • LightWave
    • MayA
    • ProceduralModel
      • FormFollowsComputation
        • anProgramming
    • SketchUp
    • TrueSpace
      • CrazySpace
    • ZBrusH
  • PythonBlender
    • PythonBlenderProposal
  • RenderingDefinition

comments:

as WebService --antont, Thu, 11 Aug 2005 10:49:41 +0300 reply
MonkeyThink? at http://bebop.cns.ualberta.ca/~cwant/monkeythink/

Blender25 --antont, Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:30:53 +0200 reply
with the new RNA data access system and autogenerated UI