Open Shading Language for Blender on BlenderMarket

The last couple of weeks I have been working to create a distribution channel for my Blender related e-books that is better suited to the intended audience. And what better distribution channel than BlenderMarket! With special thanks to Jonathan and Matthew I am happy to announce the first result is there:
Open Shading Language for Blender is now also available on BlenderMarket:

(click on the image to go to the shop where you can read the description and download a sample chapter)

A Bugatti T59 modeled in Blender

I normally focus my Blender activities on writing add-ons but I am pretty pleased with this small project:

New Book: Creating add-ons for Blender

Yeah, it's there! I am happy to announce my new, short-and-sweet, information packed book on creating add-ons for Blender.

It might be small, but it is beautifully formed :-) You might want to sample it (or buy of course) from the location below:

A sample of the book is also available as pdf

Small fix to basket arch add-on

Something in the 2.77 Blender API of object_utils.py was changed and broke the basket arch add-on. I fixed it and a new version is available on GitHub.

troubles, troubles, troubles ...

I forgot to renew the lease on the swineworld.org domain with NetworkSolutions. This sucks big time because I cannot remember/ find my login credentials and apparently I never updated my primary email address :-( Asking a question requires that you login and the telephone number listed for international users connects but is not answered!

Well too bad. The old blenderthings.blogspot.com keeps on working but unfortunately all links pointing to www.swineworld.org are now broken, even the ones inside articles that link to other articles on the same blog. I'll try and fiz that as much as I can but I am certainly not renewing this domain with Network Solutions because the first thing they did is auctioning it of for a ridiculous price.

Floor boards add-on: random thickness

Acting on a question from Ákos I added a random thickness option to the add-on.

The new version is of course available on GitHub. (this is a single python file: select File->Save As... from your browser and save it somewhere as planks.py. Then in Blender, select File->User preferences->Add-ons->install from file... (don't forget to remove an earlier version if you have one).

If you select a non-zero thinkness each plank gets a random extra thickness up to the chosen maximum.

The option is located together with the other randomization options (which can be applied in parallel.)

Weightlifter Watershed Demo

I just uploaded a new version of my WeightLifter add-on to BlenderMarket.

The video gives a short impression of the new watershed mode. You could use this watershed mode for example to calculate a realistic distribution of vegetation in large scale landscapes.