Blender 3D and Google Summer of Code - 2019 Projects.

The Blender Development team start this issue with 8 projects by students and mentors:

The projects have been announced and we are now in the Community Bonding Period. For a month, students learn about the Blender project, the communication channels and development environment. 
This is also the time to make sure that the proposal is clear and has the support of the community. 
Coding starts on 27 May.

You can find all info at Google Summer of Code - 2019 Projects
More about the projects area and teams can be seen at devtalk blender development.

Unreal Engine and HoloLens and Apollo 11.

The Unreal Engine 4 native support for HoloLens 2.
With the new 50th anniversary this year, we can see the interactive visualization of the Apollo 11 lunar landing.
Take a look and use the Unreal Engine game engine.

Now the latest build from NeoAxis Group.

A month ago, on March 28, 2019, NeoAxis Group released the latest NeoAxis Engine 2019.1.
Now the latest Build 2019.1.6 is released today.
This news can be read here.
Let's see some features:

• Free platform, partially open source;
• Modern architecture;
• Complete set of tools;
• Modern look editor;
• C# scripting, visual scripting. .NET API;
• Built-in C# scripting;
• Visual workflow scripting;
• Advanced object types creation capabilities;
• .NET API;
• Classic C# programming;
• Visual Studio 2017, 2019 support;
• Complete set of tools for 3D game development;
• 64-bit floating precision by default;
• Well-thought object serialization;
• Scene rendering is performed via high-level rendering pipeline;
• Good multi-thread rendering performance provided by Bgfx;
• Filament PBR shaders are used for realistic materials rendering;
• Powerful Bullet physics library in 64-bit precision mode.

New set of free files from pixelsquid.com .

You can find a new set of free objects at pixelsquid.com.
These files are free PNG and PSD images format file.

The webtoons webpage for your comics art.

You can share and publish your comics art using this website.
Just draw your work using your drawing software and upload it.
You can have multiple files with these specifications:
Recommended image size: 436x436;
The picture must be less than 500kb (JPG only);
The file name can only be in English letters and numbers.
I recorded one short video with this website like a short intro.
Happy drawing comics!

GrafX2 is a bitmap paint program

GrafX2 is a bitmap paint program inspired by the Amiga programs ​Deluxe Paint and Brilliance. Specialized in 256-color drawing, it includes a very large number of tools and effects that make it particularly suitable for pixel art, game graphics, and generally any detailed graphics painted with a mouse. The program is mostly developed on Haiku, Linux and Windows, but is also portable on many other platforms.
Main supported platforms are:

• Windows: 2.6 Installer / 2.6 Portable / Nightly build (latest changes, may be unstable) 
• Haiku: pkgman install grafx2 
• Mac OS: 2.6 for amd64 or PowerPC 
• Linux: Nightly builds

You can download it from the official website.
One good tutorial about how to create Blending and Transparency with this tool can be found here:
If you want to use for your game development then this is a good video tutorial about Tile Editing
issue:

The 3D photo creator online tool.

This tool named OmniVirt 3D Photo Creator is FREE to use and lets you create 3D photos.
This photos can be used on Facebook 360 or can be shared on the web:
STEP 1: upload the image;
Recommendation of this tool for the image file:
Recommended resolution: 3024 x 4032 px (or 4032 x 3024 px).
For maximum quality: 4032 x 4032 px.
STEP 2: upload or generate the depth map;
STEP 3: generate the 3D photo;
Read more at the official webpage.

The new Unity 3D version 2019.1 .

The new Unity version comes with many features, see the official website.
System Requirements for Unity version Unity 2019.1 are:
Released: 16 April 2019 
OS: Windows 7 SP1+, 8, 10, 64-bit versions only; macOS 10.12+ 
GPU: Graphics card with DX10 (shader model 4.0) capabilities. 
The official blog can be found here.

Browser extension to download videos from the Web.

This extension to download videos from the Web can be used with Firefox and Chrome.
The main goal of this tool: downloads the video files from the webpage.
I was able to download files from web pages with the TS format file.
As you know, these files with the ts extension can be related to M3U8 files.
An M3U8 file is a playlist file used by various audio and video playback programs.
One short video tutorial can be found at the official youtube channel:

The RenderDoc tool graphics debugger.

RenderDoc is a free MIT licensed stand-alone graphics debugger that allows quick and easy single-frame capture and detailed introspection of any application using Vulkan, D3D11, OpenGL & OpenGL ES or D3D12 across Windows 7 - 10, Linux, Android, Stadia, or Nintendo Switch™. RenderDoc can be used as an image viewer.
If you drag in or use file to open then you can open images in a variety of formats like: .dds, .hdr, .exr, .bmp, .jpg, .png, .tga, .gif, .psd.
The tool come with python A.P.I. for testing.
The full features can be found here.
You can see the geometry data visualized in 3D and with each component separated out and formatted.
This tool can be found at the official webpage.

Medical demo created with Qt Design Studio.

Roger Mazzella from The Qt Company shows off our latest infusion pump demo. It was created with Qt Design Studio, Qt Safe Renderer and is running on INTEGRITY RTOS.
You can read more about Qt Safe Renderer at official webpage.

News: $40 million Fortnite World Cup

Play in 10 weekly online tournaments for a chance to win cash prizes and qualify for the Fortnite World Cup Finals.
APRIL 13 - JUNE 16 with $1 MILLION PRIZE POOL EACH WEEK!
Read more about this on the official website.

Lumina by goodboydigital.

Today I come with a web page with great graphics and a design to measure.
The web page is interactive and urges you to drive a firefly through the forest to collect light.
See the full project on the webpage.

News: Release Trailer for Godot Engine 3.1

The official youtube channel come with a release trailer for Godot Engine:

Heart shapes with Wolfram MathWorld.

I chose to present this resource today because it is March 8th.
There are a number of mathematical curves that produced heart shapes and you can find many tools on the web.
The author presents himself with a brief introduction:
Eric W. Weisstein began compiling scientific encyclopedias as a high school student nearly twenty years ago. Born in Bloomington, Indiana in 1969, Weisstein studied physics and astronomy at Cornell University and Caltech and received his Ph.D. from Caltech in 1996. In 1995, Weisstein took the vast collection of mathematical facts that he had been accumulating since his teenage years and began to deploy them on the early internet. These pioneering efforts at organizing and presenting online content helped define a paradigm that has subsequently been followed by other large-scale informational projects on the web.
The most important part of this resource is highlighted in a table of contents about mathematical issues:

• Algebra
• Applied Mathematics
• Calculus and Analysis
• Discrete Mathematics
• Foundations of Mathematics
• Geometry
• History and Terminology
• Number Theory
• Probability and Statistics
• Recreational Mathematics
• Topology

The examples and details can be found here.
If you want to use the Wolfram Alpha syntax, there are formulas:

heart curve

Godot : water shader example.

This is an example created by user named Gonkee in this video tutorial.
The result of this shader tutorial I tested is this:

The source code of this shader is this:

shader_type canvas_item;

// Gonkee's water shader for Godot 3 - full tutorial https://youtu.be/uhMAHpV_cDg
// If you use this shader, I would prefer if you gave credit to me and my channel

uniform vec4 blue_tint : hint_color;

uniform vec2 sprite_scale;
uniform float scale_x = 0.67;

float rand(vec2 coord){
 return fract(sin(dot(coord, vec2(12.9898, 78.233)))* 43758.5453123);
}

float noise(vec2 coord){
 vec2 i = floor(coord);
 vec2 f = fract(coord);

 // 4 corners of a rectangle surrounding our point
 float a = rand(i);
 float b = rand(i + vec2(1.0, 0.0));
 float c = rand(i + vec2(0.0, 1.0));
 float d = rand(i + vec2(1.0, 1.0));

 vec2 cubic = f * f * (3.0 - 2.0 * f);

 return mix(a, b, cubic.x) + (c - a) * cubic.y * (1.0 - cubic.x) + (d - b) * cubic.x * cubic.y;
}

void fragment(){
 
 vec2 noisecoord1 = UV * sprite_scale * scale_x;
 vec2 noisecoord2 = UV * sprite_scale * scale_x + 4.0;
 
 vec2 motion1 = vec2(TIME * 0.3, TIME * -0.4);
 vec2 motion2 = vec2(TIME * 0.1, TIME * 0.5);
 
 vec2 distort1 = vec2(noise(noisecoord1 + motion1), noise(noisecoord2 + motion1)) - vec2(0.5);
 vec2 distort2 = vec2(noise(noisecoord1 + motion2), noise(noisecoord2 + motion2)) - vec2(0.5);
 
 vec2 distort_sum = (distort1 + distort2) / 60.0;
 
 vec4 color = textureLod(SCREEN_TEXTURE, SCREEN_UV + distort_sum, 0.0);
 
 color = mix(color, blue_tint, 0.3);
 color.rgb = mix(vec3(0.5), color.rgb, 1.4);
 
 float near_top = (UV.y + distort_sum.y) / (0.2 / sprite_scale.y);
 near_top = clamp(near_top, 0.0, 1.0);
 near_top = 1.0 - near_top;
 
 color = mix(color, vec4(1.0), near_top);
 
 float edge_lower = 0.6;
 float edge_upper = edge_lower + 0.1;
 
 if(near_top > edge_lower){
  color.a = 0.0;
  
  if(near_top < edge_upper){
   color.a = (edge_upper - near_top) / (edge_upper - edge_lower);
  }
 }
 
 COLOR = color;
}

Blender 2.8 and Manuel Bastioni LAB add-on.

The author of this add-on stops development.
The last released works on Blender 3D version 2.8.
The source code and info about this add-on can be found here.
MB-Lab: the free and open source character editor for Blender MB-Lab is an advanced add-on that turns Blender in a powerful laboratory for humanoid characters creation. 100% Open Source and Free. Based off of ManuelBastioniLAB, MB-Lab is a community updated addon for Blender. 
NOW BLENDER 2.80 COMPATIBLE!
Download from GITHUB the zip archive with the add-on.
Use from Edit - Preferences... Add-ons - Install... button to install from the archive file.
The add-on can be used from Layouts, press N key and select the vertical tab named MB-Lab.
You can see how this add-on works on the next screenshot:

About Sans Forgetica and memory.

This font named Sans Forgetica was scientifically designed by academics at RMIT University to help enhance memory retention of digital text.

Verge channel project.

The official YouTube channel of the famous VERGE publisher now comes with a visual project:

Ace Sprite just for $14.99 USD.

Just for $14.99 USD or you can test trial version of this great software for pixel drawing.
The pixel art is a similar in the art area according to wikipedia website:
 Pixel art is a form of digital art, created through the use of software, where images are edited on the pixel level. The aesthetic for this kind of graphics comes from 8-bit and 16-bit computers and video game consoles, in addition to other limited systems such as graphing calculators. Creating or modifying pixel art characters or objects for video games is sometimes called spriting, a term that arose from the hobbyist community.

This software include:
  Aseprite is a pixel art tool with which you can create animated sprites & graphics. Here you can buy Aseprite with updates for the whole v1.x series. It includes Windows portable .zip, Windows installer, Mac OS X app bundle, Ubuntu 14.04 .deb package, and a Steam key.
The youtube official channel show us: