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From the Blog

Jan
07
Posted by BrianH at 1:50 am

Happy New Years, everyone!  It’s 2010!  A new decade is upon us and technology is continuing to blossom as rapid as it always has.  Especially in the world of open-source.  Blender 2.5 is pushing closer towards Release Candidate 1, with all its juicy new features and eye-candy user interface.  The Durian project is looking more awesome by the minute.  Montage Studio is pouring into the Durian development team, and producing awesome work with CG Cookie.  And Hynds|Studio is, well … not doing a whole lot of anything.  A lot of my projects at the moment are mix and match, between my part-time job and side work.  I’ve been working on getting my Blender Networking eBook finished and ready to launch.  Writing an entire book is not an easy task by any means.  I also have some other projects I’d like to get done, including a rewrite of the old Fur Library for 2.5.  I really just need to take a step back and focus on getting one thing done at a time.

So, let’s start with my New Year’s Resolution.  Here we go … I, do solemnly swear, by the witness of the new decade 2010, will post blog posts on a regular basis.  Yes, you heard it correct and can hold me to it!  I pay for the blog so I might as well use it, right?  I will also post a lot more goodies for you to enjoy as well.

Speaking of goodies, you’re probably wondering what happened to my video podcast series.  Well, one thing I’ve learned is that things never go as planned.  During the creation of the first podcast, my svn checkout quit compiling properly.  Largely due to the fact that there was a lot of new code commits to the svn that wouldn’t let me compile on Mac OS X.  So, I jumped on IRC and started talking about it in the #blendercoders channel about my compile problems, which itself stemmed interest in another problem with compiling on Mac OS X.  The user-def.mk system for overriding the settings was, and actually always has been, somewhat of an issue.  The current method was to copy the entire user-def.mk file from the config presets, and paste it into the blender root directory to be edited.  To be honest, I’m not a coder, or at least not a well experienced one.  So, I have no clue why this was a problem.  It’s always been routine for me when compiling Blender to do this.  Well, since then, it’s changed again.  To make a long story short, I’ll need to do some more research on how it’s setup now before I can continue with the compiling series.  There are some dependency issues that need resolved too.  The video podcasts are planned to get back into development, but starting into something else other then compiling Blender.  Feel free to post suggestions in the comments, because I’m always interested in my reader’s feedback.

Another goody to expect from this year is a rewrite of the old Fur Library for the 2.5 update.  There’s some really awesome stuff I’d like to take advantage of, and I think it would really benefit those who actually used the old library.  I’m researching the in-app tutorial stuff in 2.5, so I hope I’m able to make something useful this time around.

Again, I’d like to wish you all a Happy New Year, and I look forward to keeping in touch more often.

Oct
21
Posted by BrianH at 9:37 pm

Just thought I would drop you an update on the Blender Game Networking book.  I am still working on it.  It almost veered into the endless pit of no return, but I am finding a lot more time to getting back to writing again.  Let’s hope for the best.  Here’s a teaser screenshot of some context (Note: not necessarily the final draft) :

Chapter 2 beginning context for the upcoming Blender Game Networking book.

Oct
20
Posted by BrianH at 7:57 pm

Yes, it’s official. And it’s released! Episode One of the Hynds|Studio Video Podcast is here, and gives you a quick introduction to the Compiling Blender 2.5 series. So without further ado …

the Hynds|Studio Video Podcast

Episode 1
Compiling Blender 2.5 – Introduction

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