The first official release of Blender 2.5 is here! The new generation of 3D modeling is a few clicks away from your fingertips. Keep in mind that this is ALPHA-quality code. For the non-familiar-with-geek-speak, alpha is less stable than BETA. Blender has a great tradition of being very stable and generally higher quality than many commercial products but this is not meant to be used in production. So proceed with caution and run to the Blender Release Log Page and download it!
We have a delay on the start of the class. While it was scheduled to start at the end of this month, I received a request to prepare a video presentation for a worthwhile cause: the Santa Cruz Community Assessment Project (CAP), a program of United Way that has caused a lot of positive changes in our county. The CAP report for this year will be presented on November 23rd and for that occasion the organizers wanted to have a video presentation to celebrate 15 years of this project. The video is a quick sample, 9 minutes, of some of the initiatives in the words of the people who worked on them.
Anyway, I had to shift my schedule a bit in favor of this and I hope I’m not upsetting the plans of the people who are planning to attend the class. I’ll post the new schedule here asap so be sure to check frequently.
I also need to get an idea of how many people are planning to attend. That will help with the selection of the venue and other logistics. If you haven’t signed for the class notification please do it now by clicking here!
Signing in doesn’t commit to the class but it will help me understand the amount of people interested in the class and organize the event better.
John Dickinson at MotionWorks has just posted an article by Dave Simons about the history of After Effects. Funny how things happen. Last March, in 2008, the San Francisco Motion Graphics Group (SFMoGraph) met for the first time. We were lucky and honored to have David Simons and Dan Wilk, two of the original developers of After Effects, as our guests. David and Dan gave us a funny and engaging retrospective about the development of After Effects from the days when the company was called COSA (the Company Of Science and Art) and After Effects had menu-inspired code names like “Lort” and “Egg”. Here are some pictures from the event with precious snapshots of the first version of AE running on Mac OS. Enjoy!
What you’re looking at is the Adobe’s Cafeteria being taken over by the SFMoGraph meeting, last October 22nd. We had an estimated 200+ people, a full night of demos and videos to watch. A very diverse crowd, from students to veterans of the industry. It was my first time addressing this audience and it was great. Thanks to everyone who showed up, asked questions about Blender and After Effects, and contacted me after the show. And thanks to Adobe for once again letting us take over the space. It was great, let’s do it again!
