Something came up...

Sorry, Byrce, Jacob, and I will not be going to Blender User Group this evening.

The room will still be open to who ever wants to come and do Blender stuff.  There just won't be any instruction.

See you all next time!

Posted a Day Ahead and Texture Baking

Thought I should give everyone a heads up for Blender User Group tomorrow.  We will be going over texture baking in the Blender internal render engine.

(There are zero lights in this render).

This is a awesome tool that can be used to improve render times, and create great textures for video games, among other things.  Here is a link to the wiki  http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Bake   We encourage you to review some of the terms so not everything is unfamiliar to you.

We will be meeting at the same place and time.  Check the meeting schedule page if you don't know when or where.

See you all there!

Time for some Cycles Fun

Good morning everyone.  Hope to see you all at Blender User Group this evening.  Same place and same time.

And a small note on what we will be cover this evening, for instruction.  We will be doing a small introduction to the Blender Cycles render engine.  This engine provides a way to achieve highly realistic lighting effects, in a relatively short period of time.

If you wish to dig into it before user group this evening here are a few links to some great resources

Cycles wiki page
Blender Cookie - Intro Tutorial
Blender Guru - Introduction to Cycles

See you all there!

Gettin Together

User group this evening!  Same place same time.  See you all there!

Modeling!

Just a reminder about our meeting this evening.  We will be going over some modeling tricks that were introduced with Bmesh in the latest version of Blender.

Also, we will be going over the pros and cons of Ngon modeling.  And show some examples of when and where to use them.

Here is a post that briefly goes over some of the new modeling features.

http://gamefromscratch.com/post/2012/04/20/Blender-BMesh-in-action%E2%80%A6-what%E2%80%99s-so-special-about-ngons-anyways.aspx

See you all there.

The Group is Meeting again

Quick reminder to everyone for this evening. We have Blender User Group at the Salt Lake Public Library, in conference room 3, at 7:00PM. Sorry for the late reminder, again. But, a little on what we have planned for this evening. Will Thorup is going to follow up, for just a moment, on UV unwrapping, to see if anyone still has some unanswered question. Then we will spend the rest of the time on modeling. We are going to teach how to setup reference images, and begin modeling from those reference images. Hope to see you all there!

Our Next Meet-Up

I just wanted to remind everyone of our next meetup this coming week on Tuesday.  It is on the 3rd floor in Conference Room 3.  We hope to see you all there.

Also, if you haven't been keeping an eye on Blender.org they just posted about there new way of tracking all the different Blender groups around the world.  Click here to see that post.

I have already started the meetup for Salt Lake City users, here.  And I think it would be awesome if we all could RSVP and show the rest of the world our strong little group we have started in Utah.

There is one downside to the process though.  You need a facebook account, or sign-up for a meetup.com account.  But if that isn't an issue for you, I hope you can find the time to head on over and RSVP.

Thank you!

Request for Content

Hello everyone!

We have a user group coming up this Tuesday.  And we wanted to make a call out to anyone one who would want to show and/or explain some work they are doing in blender.  Something that will fit in 15 to 30 minutes will be good enough.  Go ahead and reply to this post/email, if you are interested, and we will get back to you about it.  And if you can't share this week, there is always plenty of time in the future.  No pressure, but we want to make sure that everyone who attends has the chance to support the group, and advance the use of Blender in Utah,  by sharing what they know.

Plus, who really wants to hear Jacob, Bryce and Will talk all evening?

We Got Them!

Okay.  I messed up with the reservations.  The great people at Salt Lake City Public Library were on the ball, while I wasn't paying attention to the inbox where they were sending the reservations.  So we have missed a few Blender User Groups, but there are still plenty more we can all enjoy. Look at the schedule here .

Our next User Group will be March 6th 7:00 to 8:45 pm at Salt Lake Public Library.  And I think we are planning on making it a show-and-tell session for those who would like to share anything they have worked on over the holidays.  And we will be providing basic training for anyone new to the group.  So bring your friends to blend.

Also, a little reminder.  If you have not signed up in the Google group, to the right, I encourage you to do so.  You will receive instant updates for this blog!

Sorry...

Sorry everyone for the lack of updates.  I emailed the library,  over a week ago, with still no response.  I will call them soon and let you all know the verdict.

Getting ready to make reservations.

I am getting ready to make the reservations for Blender User Group for the next six months.  But, before I do that, I want to get opinions on how often we should do the user group.  Before, we were doing it about every two weeks.  But we can change this to every three weeks, or every month.

Let me know what you think.  Thanks!