Your 3D plants with ngPlant

ngPlant is a Free Software project and you can download it from here.
The ngPlant modeling tool and ngpshot utility are distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
The great part of this softwarecome for developers.
They can use 3D API-independent library to use generated plant models in their 3D applications, or to create plant modeling plugins for different 3D modeling tools.
Also the software libraries (libngpcore, libngput and pywrapper) which may be used in another projects are distributed under the terms of the BSD License.

News: 60% off for games from bigfishgames.

Is 7 day and 1 hour until  Christmas day.
If you don't try ever a game from bigfishgames then you lost something.
Now you have 60% off for games.
More detailed infos is on the official website.
For example:
I saw one game to be good for children and parents on Christmas day.

Cool and simple online game - sharkz.

This web site come with a simple and great online game for all ages.
Enter your name or nick name then you have to use the mouse to survive in water full of fish and sharks.
What is attractive is that you can meet and chat in this aquatic environment.

News: NVIDIA GPU Educators Program Overview.

The good news come from NVIDIA Developer about the new GPU Educators Program.
NVIDIA’s GPU Educators Program seeks to advance STEM education with accelerated computing by providing high-quality teaching materials and resources to educators, to help prepare today’s students for tomorrow’s computing challenges.
The goal come from official webpage.
NVIDIA’s Academic Programs Team is dedicated to empowering and collaborating with professors and researchers at universities worldwide. We aim to inspire cutting-edge technological innovation and to find new ways of enhancing faculty research as well as the teaching and learning experience. We achieve this through a variety of initiatives and programs.

Websites with comics and database - part 001.

Most comics can be found into shop or online but is hard to make a good choice.
Today I will show you a good website with a great artists database and also have a webshop.
This come with over 13,000 comic artists from around the world.
Shipping your order into Europe will give you a low cost. This website can be found here.

Your city to 3D with Esri software.

Your city can be put into 3D environment using Esri City Engine.
This software come for Windows , Linux and MacOS X and come from ArcGIS Software
I tested the free trial demo with Windows SO.
This free trial is just for 30 days andafter that you will need to contact your local Esri office.
When you download the trial one webpage come with one authorization number.
This is provided to you to deal with installation proces.
The idea is great because can help many people.
I deal with street features and come sized functions.
You can use also textures, and generate tools, objects to edit and many format maps files.
If you want to build your city from simple gamer, business, virtual maps and enviroment then is a good choice.
You can take a look to see how is working.

3D scientific website with good content.

Today I will told you about one great website with 3D content.
This website will have many 3D scientific objects.
You can see old building, old bones, old houses.
One good point to start also is the 3D view of Apollo 11 moon-landing mission command module. About this website the team tells us:

Smithsonian X 3D launches a set of use cases which apply various 3D capture methods to iconic collection objects, as well as scientific missions. These projects indicate that this new technology has the potential not only to support the Smithsonian mission, but to transform museum core functions. Researchers working in the field may not come back with specimens, but with 3D data documenting a site or a find. Curators and educators can use 3D data as the scaffolding to tell stories or send students on a quest of discovery.

The website can be found it here.

Unity 5.5 beta - news.

If you like the Unity game engine and game programming then the Unity blog come with news.
The new the list of features and improvements are huge but the most great part for me s the particle and effects. You can see the demo from the new Unity.

Google Earth VR - virtual reality free.

Google Earth VR lets you explore the world from totally new perspectives in virtual reality. Stroll the streets of Tokyo, soar over the Grand Canyon, or walk around the Eiffel Tower

This is a free virtual reality application. The goal is the 3D space of most known places from world. The application can be found here.

System Requirements - minimum:

• OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1 or later, Windows 10
• Processor: Intel i5-6400 equivalent or better
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 970, AMD Radeon R9 Fury equivalent or better
• Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Storage: 4 GB available space

 

September event artwork - 256 byte, 64K and 4K graphics.

If you missed the event during September 9 - September 11 where they presented the artwork of 256 Byte, 64k and 4k, then you have the opportunity to see this user's channel.
See all 256 Byte  graphics:

This application deal with images into 3D.

AwesomeBump is a free and open source program designed to generate normal, height, specular or ambient occlusion, metallic, roughness textures from a single image.
The AwesomeBump software is totaly written in Qt cross-platform application framework.
This application come with some features like:

• convert from normal map to height map,
• convert from height map (bump map) to normal map,
• extract the bump from the arbitrary image,
• calculate ambient occlusion and specularity of image.
• perspective tranformation of the image,
• creating seamless texture (simple linear filter, random mode, or mirror filter),
• generate roughness and metallic textures (different types of surface analysis are available),
• real time tessellation is available,
• saving images to following formats: PNG, JPG,BMP,TGA
• edit one texture which contains different materials
• add some grunge to your map with grunge texture.
• mix two bumpmaps togheter with normal map mixer.
• and many others, see our videos on YouTube

The official page can be found here.
You can see video tutorials about this application: here.

Beloola - 3D world.

Beloola is the web-based social network constructed as an immersive 3D world. It resembles Linden Lab’s Second Life, but doesn’t require any special software except for the browser. This allows passionate people to meet up in the same place anytime they want. With free content you can set your avatar boy or girl and explore the word of this Web VR platform.

Krita 3.1 beta available.

The Krita 3.1 beta come with a full features and fixes.
The most useful features can you be found into this 2D software for drawing:

• ffmpeg-based export to animated gif and video formats;
• the OpenGL canvas is fixed;
• will officially support OSX
• fixing bugs on Windows and Linux
• the beta still contains the colorize mask/lazy brush plugin
• expecting to experimenting with new algorithms, but with the next release 
• same splash screen like old version

You can read more abiut this here. 
Krita come with this free copyright for Krita

Krita is free software under the GNU Public License, Version 2 or any later version at your option. This means you can get the source code for Krita from . The license only applies to the Krita source code, not to your work! You can use Krita to create artworks for commerical purposes without any limitation.

Krita Shell Extension come with MIT copyright. Krita Shell Extension
The MIT License
Copyright (c) 2016 Alvin Wong
 

OpenVR for VR hardware under linux, windows and osx.

Is working with windows 64/32, linux 64 and osx 32. The github tells us about this development:

OpenVR is an API and runtime that allows access to VR hardware from 
multiple vendors without requiring that applications have specific 
knowledge of the hardware they are targeting. This repository is an SDK 
that contains the API and samples. The runtime is under SteamVR in Tools 
on Steam.
Documentation for the API is available in the wiki: 
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/openvr/wiki/API-Documentation
More information on OpenVR and SteamVR can be found on  

http://steamvr.com

Defold Engine with editor and lua scripting.

The new game engine come from Defold Engine and was released 31. May 2016.

The Defold is a cross platform 2D focused Lua powered game engine created by King and available for free. If you want to learn Lua programming language or you know this programming language, then is great.
About Lua:  is a powerful, efficient, lightweight, embeddable scripting language. It supports procedural programming, object-oriented programming, functional programming, data-driven programming, and data description.
This game engine brings improved editor performance on OSX, Windows, Linux 32 and 64 with  GUI layer counts. It's working with your google account.
You can also have online tutorials.
This improved account management options, including the ability to delete your account if required. You can see the official playlist with some video tutorials:

Blender 3D - addon Screencast Keys tested.

Today I tested the Screencast Keys with the last version of Blender 3D - version 2.78.
One great addon can be used to share your work over 3D Blender community.
This addon will show the keys and mouse actions into Blender 3D.
The Blender 3D addon can be downloaded from here and then just put into your Blender 3D path: blender-2.78-rc2-windows64\2.78\scripts\addons.
Now next step is to enable it from: User Preferences > Add-Ons > 3D View.
Restart your Blender 3D software to make setting.
The setting can be allow with start under right panel by using key N and will find the Screencast Keys area.
You can also just start working by press the keys: Shift+Alt+C.
The addon is very useful for most blender users.

Dynamic Draw - vector graphics editor.

This software is a vector graphics editor and can be found it here.
Working with instalation and portable version under Windows OS.
It is an object-oriented drawing and design program and is for making flowcharts, line drawings, org charts, buttons, etc.

It has intelligent linking system by using the keys T and V ( or will select your arrow line with another key from tool menu).
It can export the graphics image as SVG, JPG, TIFF, PNG, EMF, WMF, PSD, BMP.

It supports OLE and that help you to copy objects and paste on other applications as OLE.The official website come with just one prepared a demonstration movie (see here).

Mandelbrot with three.js .

The Mandelbrot set is the set of complex numbers c for which the function f c ( z ) = z 2 + c . - wikipedia.org

You need to download the three.js - java script from threejs webpage.
The source code is simple. Come with default HTML5 page and javascripts.
One part of this will make vertex-shader and fragment shader, both is 2D shader type.
You need the canvas tag with id="canv".
The last part of source code is make to put all into one image processing by shaders.
You can read this tutorial here.

 <!DOCTYPE html>  
 <html>  
 <head>  
 <meta charset="UTF-8">  
 <title>Title of the document</title>  
 <script src="three.js"></script>  
 </head>  
 <body>  
   
 <canvas id="canv" width="640" height="480"></canvas>  
   
 <script id="2d-vertex-shader" type="x-shader/x-vertex">  
 attribute vec2 a_position;  
  void main() {  
   gl_Position = vec4(a_position, 0, 1);  
  }  
 </script>  
   
 <script id="2d-fragment-shader" type="x-shader/x-fragment">  
  #ifdef GL_FRAGMENT_PRECISION_HIGH  
   precision highp float;  
  #else  
   precision mediump float;  
  #endif  
  #define PI 3.14159  
   
 float hash( float n ) { return fract(sin(n)*753.5453123); }  
   
 #define NUM_STEPS  50  
  #define ZOOM_FACTOR 2.0  
  #define X_OFFSET  0.5  
   
  #ifdef GL_FRAGMENT_PRECISION_HIGH  
   precision highp float;  
  #else  
   precision mediump float;  
  #endif  
  precision mediump int;  
   
  void main() {  
   vec2 z;  
   float x,y;  
   int steps;  
   float normalizedX = (gl_FragCoord.x - 320.0) / 640.0 * ZOOM_FACTOR *  
             (640.0 / 480.0) - X_OFFSET;  
   float normalizedY = (gl_FragCoord.y - 240.0) / 480.0 * ZOOM_FACTOR;  
   
   z.x = normalizedX;  
   z.y = normalizedY;  
   
   for (int i=0;i<NUM_STEPS;i++) {  
   
   steps = i;  
   
     x = (z.x * z.x - z.y * z.y) + normalizedX;  
     y = (z.y * z.x + z.x * z.y) + normalizedY;  
   
     if((x * x + y * y) > 4.0) {  
      break;  
     }  
   
     z.x = x;  
     z.y = y;  
   
   }  
   
   if (steps == NUM_STEPS-1) {  
    gl_FragColor = vec4(1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0);  
   } else {  
    gl_FragColor = vec4(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0);  
   }  
  }  
 </script>  
 <script type="text/javascript">  
 var gl;  
 var canvas;  
 var buffer;  
  window.onload = init;  
    
  function init() {  
    
   
   canvas    = document.getElementById('canv');  
   gl      = canvas.getContext('experimental-webgl');  
   canvas.width = 640;  
   canvas.height = 480;  
    
   gl.viewport(0, 0, gl.drawingBufferWidth, gl.drawingBufferHeight);  
   
 var shaderScript;  
 var shaderSource;  
 var vertexShader;  
 var fragmentShader;  
   
  buffer = gl.createBuffer();  
  gl.bindBuffer(gl.ARRAY_BUFFER, buffer);  
  gl.bufferData(  
   gl.ARRAY_BUFFER,   
   new Float32Array([  
    -1.0, -1.0,   
     1.0, -1.0,   
    -1.0, 1.0,   
    -1.0, 1.0,   
     1.0, -1.0,   
     1.0, 1.0]),   
   gl.STATIC_DRAW  
  );  
   
   render();  
    
  }  
    
 function render() {  
    
   window.requestAnimationFrame(render, canvas);  
    
   gl.clearColor(1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0);  
   gl.clear(gl.COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);  
   
  shaderScript = document.getElementById("2d-vertex-shader");  
  shaderSource = shaderScript.text;  
  vertexShader = gl.createShader(gl.VERTEX_SHADER);  
  gl.shaderSource(vertexShader, shaderSource);  
  gl.compileShader(vertexShader);  
   
  shaderScript  = document.getElementById("2d-fragment-shader");  
  shaderSource  = shaderScript.text;  
  fragmentShader = gl.createShader(gl.FRAGMENT_SHADER);  
  gl.shaderSource(fragmentShader, shaderSource);  
  gl.compileShader(fragmentShader);  
   
  program = gl.createProgram();  
  gl.attachShader(program, vertexShader);  
  gl.attachShader(program, fragmentShader);  
  gl.linkProgram(program);   
  gl.useProgram(program);  
  positionLocation = gl.getAttribLocation(program, "a_position");  
  gl.enableVertexAttribArray(positionLocation);  
  gl.vertexAttribPointer(positionLocation, 2, gl.FLOAT, false, 0, 0);  
   
  gl.drawArrays(gl.TRIANGLES, 0, 6);  
  }  
 </script>  
 </body>  
 </html>   

News about Blender second release candidate and other projects.

The Chairman Blender Foundation and producer Blender Institute, Mr. Ton Roosendaal comw with this news about second release candidate and other projects:

Hi everyone,

Here are notes from today's 14 UTC meeting in irc.freenode.net 

#blendercoders.

1) Blender 2.78 RC2

- Second release candidate is out! 
http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.78/

- Release logs are also taking shape:
https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.78
https://www.blender.org/features/2-78/

Based on tracker reporting and further testing we either do a RC3 or 

the actual release this week. Sergey Sharybin and Bastien Montagne are

 monitoring it closely.

2) Other projects and 2.8

- Currently Blender for OSX links to an Apple system library for 

quicktime (qtkit).
This has been deprecated for long, and will be removed from 

XCode 10.12.
We have to decide if we want to drop this, and make Blender for 

OS X use ffmpg for 
all codecs.

- Julian Eisel uploaded custom manipulators patch for review 
https://developer.blender.org/D2232
Code docs

https://wiki.blender.org/index.php?title=User:Julianeisel/Custom_Manipulators

- Mike Erwin is in Amsterdam, with Dalai Felinto and others 

he will do design sessions
on the 2.8 viewport. Expect interesting logs and docs!

Thanks,

-Ton-

The 8 bits game and development.

Today I will tell you about the old and new 8 bits game and development.
Even now some people want to recreation of the 1980s personal compute bluetooth - zx spectrum
Most users who use a computer remember the old 8-bit computers or were linked to them.
I will start to present to you some of the most important web pages useful this topic:
ZX_Spectrum - wikipedia
ZX Basic stable version
Speccy - emulator multiplatform Z80 cross-assembler
TommyGun IDE and lots of utilities
TommyGun - source code
TommyGun - wikipedia
Guide to inline assembly using Boriel’s ZX compiler to create zx spectrum code.
I install ZX_Spectrum into my project path C:\Proiecte\8bits\ZX-Basic\.

I create one folder named SpeccyEmulator and I unzip the emulator Speccy.
The TommyGun IDE install C:\Proiecte\8bits\TommyGun.AGD from here.
I start the IDE with a new project.
The old TommyGun come with some errors when to try to reopen project and with more projects.
This is not bad, just you need to start it for each project and make settings each time.
The  TommyGu.AGD is more good but I don't make all the tests. This has just one project AgdGAmeEngine.asm with agd files.
The next step is tab Code - Build Settings - Compilation - I used pasmo.exe .

Under Code - Build Settings - Emulation I set the path to emulator: C:\Proiecte\8bits\SpeccyEmulator\Speccy.exe .

Also you can see the Presets can be edit and save it (Pasmo, Speccy).
NOTE: About ZX settings then under Code you need to load the files from ZX-Basic project.
If you want to use the basic language then you need to set this zxb.exe for .bas type file and the content will be the basic language (ex: C:\Proiecte\8bits\ZX-Basic\examples\clock.bas). The name of this file will need to put into Compilation (ex: clock.bas) and Emulation (ex clock.tzx).

The 3D Print - online tool in over 50 materials.

This will help you to have your 3D Print in over 50 materials. 
From plastics to porcelain, silver to sandstone, Shapeways offers a large collection of materials for you to create unique products.
The website tells us about transit Times / Pricing

	Option	Transit Time (business days)	Flat Rate
United States	USPS First-Class	1-3	$4.99
	UPS Ground	3-5	$6.50
	UPS Two Day	2	$9.50
	UPS Next Day	1	$15.50
Canada	USPS First-Class	2-8	$11.50
	UPS Worldwide	1-3	$21.50
Australia, New Zealand	USPS First-Class	5-9	$14.99
	UPS Worldwide	3-8	$25.99
Germany	DHL Europaket	1-2	$6.50
	UPS	2-3	$11.50
Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg	Standard	1-2	$6.50
All other EU countries, Switzerland, Norway, San Marino, Vatican, Andorra, Liechtenstein	Standard	Varies by country	$9.50
All other countries	Standard	Varies by country	$19.99

You can test this online tool here and allow materials here.

Anime Studio is now Moho.

Anime Studio is now Moho.

Moho (Anime Studio) Animation Software – Coming Soon!

Moho™, the complete animation solution for professionals and digital artists, is coming soon. Moho is a new name and new version of Anime Studio. Moho delivers advanced animation tools to speed up your workflow with an intuitive new interface, a visual content library and powerful features such as a bone rigging system, Smart Bones™, frame-by-frame animation, and more exciting new features that will be announced at the product launch.
Get a first look at Moho. Webinar August 12th: What’s New in Moho 12 – Register Now! Go to register link, fill up and follow. You can get more infos from this link.

Tested: Sheep it Render Farm.

Today I used this render farm named: Sheep it Render Farm and they tells us:

What is a render farm?

A render farm is a group of computers connected together to complete a large task. In the case of 3D rendering, most of the time, a render farm will split frames of an animation to multiple computers, so instead of having a single computer who works for 100 days you can have 100 computers who will work for 1 day.

I tested this render solution and result come with free registration, free project adding and free rendering.
First the CPU and GPU from my laptop are supported.
You can selet only the GPU or CPU or both.
You can render project and will have credits and this is very important.
Why? Because you need to wait if you don't have credits - mode details FAQ.
You can take a look at status.
If you take a look at this status and the all result you can see how fast is working: 3316 frames per hour, time to complete render: 6h52m
I tested with one 250 frames with 60 frames/s Blender 3D file.

You can donate with PayPal, Bitcoin and Dogecoin here.

News: NeoAxis 3D Engine 3.5 Released.

The latest version of  NeoAxis Engine 3.5 it was announced today with new features:

• Graphic user interface of the tools has been updated.
• A tool to easily import 3D models from a file has been added.
• Example maps have been updated.
• Freeze Objects Manager has been added. The object is indended to optimize maps with big amount of objects on them. With this object the developer can make some objects on the map freeze to save resources.
• Streaming terrain has been improved. Better management of load/unload mechanism.
• The ability to skip mip maps during loading textures.
• Bug fix: Broken rendering with enabled SoftParticles parameter of the material.
• Bug fix: Broken decals on terrain.
• Bug fix: Broken export of 3D models from Map Editor to DAE.

Read more about this: NeoAxis 3D Engine 3.5 Released 

News: New Unity products and prices.

The development team announced new products that will launch in June.
As we can see with the new products you will benefit from:

• All platforms. No iOS or Android Pro add ons, everything’s now included
• All updates more regularly, with no extra costs 
• New features and tools – from performance reporting to new Analytics realtime and raw data to Asset Store project packs and more 

See more about this news here.

News: This game can help science of dementia.

The first mobile game where anyone can help scientists fight dementia.

 As well as navigating the icy Arctic Rivers and the glorious Golden Shores, you can also navigate your way around here to see how game developers, Glitchers, together with University College London, University of East Anglia and Alzheimer's Research came together to bring Sea Hero Quest to life. The game is made up of three main tasks; navigating mazes, shooting flares to test players’ orientation, and chasing creatures to capture photos of them. From the penguins, to the mammoth hidden in the ice, every element of the game was carefully crafted to be as fun and exciting as it is scientifically valid.

Try it from google play.
Read more about this game here.

Black Desert Online - great game with new classes.

If you like games, news, programming graphic and all you think is graphics then subscribe to my blog.
Black Desert Online is a sandbox-oriented massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Korean video game developer Pearl Abyss. The game has been in development since 2010, and entered closed beta testing in October 2013. Wikipedia
The game come with Daum Cash (DC) is the virtual currency. You can use to make in-game purchases in Black Desert Online and it starts from 10 euro.
We have new anticipated Musa and Maehwa classes.
The Musa is a melee class that relies on high speed and fast reactions like incredible mobility and a specialty for AoE - focused attacks.
The Maehwa is the female counterpart to the Musa class specializes in one-on-one combat with the impressive ability to lock down single targets for an extended amount of time.
You can see into the next video the Maehwa class:

Website 3D - PLAYCANVAS .

Today I will show you one of 3D websites I liked.
The website is PLAYCANVAS and come with many projects over 3D.
PLAYCANVAS was founded in London, UK in 2011 and is the world's first cloud-hosted game development platform. It's a social hub where game developers have a next-generation toolset that focusses on real-time collaboration where users can build, share and play video games.
You can try most of this projects here.

Blender 3D for web.

I don't know if I told about Blender 3D software and web but seem the last demo has great.
So take a look at this website.
All of this demos was make with Blender 3D software.

News: 2016: E-ink Features 54 Inch - Display Solution

News: Netronix the new E-Ink.

Netronix shows 13.3" flexible E Ink digitizer sub-400gr.

News: Blender 3D software the new version 2.77 .

The last version of Blender 3D software can be download it from here.

The Blender Foundation and online developer community are proud to present Blender 2.77, released March 19th, 2016!

• Cycles Rendering has better Subsurface Scattering, GPU support for Smoke/Fire and Point Density, and a few other features and optimizations.
• User Interface has faster OpenGL rendering and better Anti-Aliasing, and other improvements
• Modeling now has an edit-mode boolean tool, better decimate modifier, selection tools
• Sequencer has a Gaussian Blur effect speedup, and other strip and modifier improvements
• Sculpting/Painting has better extruding and weight painting tools
• Animation has a new constraint interpolation method, and improvements in graph editor, dope sheet, armatures and motion paths
• Grease pencil now has stroke sculpting, and several other workflow improvements
• Library handling has been improved to better manage missing and deleted datablocks
• Game Engine has a few new small features
• A new Add-on supports packing .blend files and their dependencies, some other IO Add-on was improved, and Python was upgraded
• OpenVDB caching is now supported for smoke/volumetric simulations, multithreading is now massively supported, and also 2D stabilization node, Image editor, Cubemap and spotlights were improved
• Support for Windows XP was removed, and the SCons build system too.
• And, as usual, a massive bug fixing!

 

News: Telltale Games - Batman.

Telltale Games finally revealed some details about their much anticipated Batman game. You can read more about this game here. The first trailer:

A very beautiful game: Never Alone.

Today I will told about one game named Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna).
User Reviews: Very positive (2616 reviews)
Release date: November 18th. 2014
Today : 2,99€  
This new theme that take my attention come with frozen lands.
Anyway try to see the video.

News: Blender 3D project 2016.

The new year come with news for Blender 3D users.

The Blender 3D team has a new 3D project named:Caminandes 3.

You can see this funny trailer from Blender Foundation on youtube channel.

Also if you see more about Blender team and how to do it, then you can see this old documentary about making of Sintel: