GuruBlog

A view days ago I found the java.blend library by Holger Machens, a java library that allows reading and creating .blend files from java. This opens a whole new range of possibilities for creating blender animations, importing scripted content or using blender to model stuff for interactive applications, and and and. And whats also really cool in my opinion it allows me to combine two of my favorite tools Blender and Processing.

I have already ported one of the example programs that comes with java.blend to processing and so far the experiments look very promising.

What this example does is creating a new blend file containing a cube and saving it at "/tmp/copybuffer.blend" This file is used as the clipboard in blender. So when this file exists you can insert its content to the current blender scene simply by pasting it.

to run the code open the sketch in Processing 3, download the jar files from java.blend and drag them onto your script window. This creates a "code" folder for your sketch and adds the needed jars to the import path.

when you run the sketch and click on the window you create the copybuffer blend file and can paste it into your blender scene.

Conclusion: A very interesting new tool - I'm pretty sure I will add more experiments integrating Processing and Blender in the near future - so stay tuned :-)

For this experiment I used a texture in blender and mapped it to the density value of a volumentric material

you can download the blend file here

I used the material from my dissolving icosphere animation and applied it to a labyrinth generated using my blender labyrinth addon

you can download the blend file here

I made a video for a song I recorded in november using the technique I showed In my blog post on quaternoid rotations

I experimented with some animated camera quaternoid rotations in blender

you can download the blend file here

I recently watched a tutorial by tutor4u on how to make a dissolving blender material using a noise texture

I recreated the technique dissolving a ico-sphere instead of a suzanne you can download the blend file here

I started experimenting with mirrorball environment maps in cycles. This is the result of experiment no 1

you can download the blend file here

for this animation I used an ocean simulation modifier on a plane and then sliced it up using two boolean modifiers on an array of cubes.

you can download the blend file here

I planned to model and animate a rubics cube for quite some time, but it turned out that animating the rotation is a lot harder than I expected it to be. After some (failed) experiments I found out that the trick is moving all the origins of the cubes to the center and using quaternoid-rotation for the animation.

you can download the blend file here

For this animation I used an "Evaluate Sound"-Node to animate boxes placed on a circle

you can download the blend file here