Nosy Node Thing

The compositing node-tree from Blender on the right resulted in the movie above. Unfortunately Blender does not read Maya IFF image files. Nothing except Maya and it's image viewer Fcheck does. There are plugins for Photoshop though I have not found one that worked properly yet. Figure out which image format to use to render from Maya to get the Z-depth channel to read in Blender I must!

Oh, and the file renaming / renumbering tool I use is called Seq911 (CreativeCrash does require you to log in to get to free downloads - rather silly but creating an account is trivial on that site)

UPDATE: I posted the .blend file on the instruction site.

Blender, what is it good for?

Absolutely everything! (sorry it hit so I had to type it :P)

so as most of you know I do my modeling and UVing in a program called Blender.

Blender is an opensource animation package, that has some of the most powerful tools for the money. From fluid and cloth simulation to complex rigging solutions to even a full video compositor (something maya JUST put into its pakage and even so its no where near blender's), blender can do pretty much anything. It also includes a node based material system as well as a completely openGL interface (meaning you can customize it in anyway you wish).

I'm a very big supporter of blender as well as opensource software. I don't believe price should be the limitation that artists face.

Blender being completely free is just an all around great program to have on your computer, and being extremely small you can load it onto your thumbdrive and take it with you when you go :)

www.blender.org is their site and explains everything in fine detail.

some videos showing what blender can do:









as well as a slew of other vids on the main page.

OH and big buck bunny and elephants dream? they're both open source movies and have the all the files used to make them (Sound textures models scene files etc) available for download and use in your own project :)