Blender Foundation - Gooseberry Open Movie Project

2014 and 2015 are going to be great years for Blender! Ton Roosendaal shared some plans - Gooseberry Open Movie Project:

• EU funding of €220,000 per year (with luck for two years).
• The launch of Project Gooseberry, the new Blender Institute open movie (a teaser website is now live).
• A list of projects and tools – many in the content/asset management and collaboration area.
• A list of full time and part time employees – the team is growing!

In the past 6 months, I’ve only had time for a handful of tiny commits to the Blender code. As much as I love coding and work on Blender itself, I’m also quite useful for other tasks – especially to help the Blender project to grow, become more professional and to get more developers on board.
Blender has grown as a community and volunteering project very well in the past decade, but the current user demands and our ambitions also require that we need more full-time developers on board. The past Open Movies have helped with that, and last year the Development Fund and gifts from sponsors allowed us to hire more people as well.

Giveaway - Picture Cutout Guide

Picture Cutout Guide separates solid objects from an arbitrary background and transfers them to another photo. The software offers these tools: Wide Edge – allows separation of an object from its background and storage for later making a picture collage, applies background effects; Paste Object – pastes a separated image into another photo, makes a collage of pictures, fulfils export and import of the objects; Smart Patch – replaces one area of the photo with a “patch” from another area of the photo; Text; Resize; Crop; Rotation.

Download link available for today only: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/picture-cutout-guide-3-0-2/

Alternative: Gimp

Giveaway - iSkysoft Video Converter Ultimate

iSkysoft Video Converter Ultimate is a comprehensive video tool that helps you to convert more than 150 video types, including AVI, MP4, WMV and more. It allows you to rip DVDs and convert videos to play anywhere with original quality. The 30X converting speed makes the program a real life saver. You’ll also be able to download and convert online videos from popular online video sites such as Youtube and Hulu.

Features:

• Supports MPEG-4，XVID，DIVX, and more formats lossless conversion;
• Converts video 30 times faster than competitors;
• Converts DVDs and videos to over 150 formats to play anywhere;
• Burns videos to DVD discs, DVD folders or ISO files;
• One-click to download online video and record video with ease;
• Convert any 2D video to 3D for a 3D fun.

Download link available for today: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/iskysoft-video-converter/

Microsoft releases new Photosynth, 3D images into Video-Like experiences

There is a new generation of Photosynth (Microsoft) with 3D image technology. The software application generates a three-dimensional model of the photos and a point cloud of a photographed object.
The prior two versions of Microsoft Photosynth, which offer the original synths and stitched panoramas, are still available on the main Photosynth website.
Meanwhile, the updated technology now supports four basic experiences: “spin,” “panorama,” “walk” and “wall” - see Synth types bellow. As their respective names describe, each offers a different kind of 3D image viewing experience – a spin around an object as small as a teacup or as large as a glacial peak, Microsoft explains, a panoramic view, a walk – like down a path through the woods, for example – or a slide across a scene.

Synth Types

Photosynth : spin
Spin around an object as small as a seashell or as large as a mountain.

 

Photosynth : panorama
Put yourself in the center of a space and look in every direction.

 

Photosynth : walk
Follow a path through the woods or fly toward a destination.

 

Photosynth : wall
Slide across a scene, checking out every last detail.

Giveaway - iResizer 2.4 (for Win and Mac)

iResizer enables new smart ways of resizing images without deforming or cropping the content. It can scale an image without changing important visual content such as people, buildings, animals, etc. While normal resizing affects all pixels uniformly when scaling an image, iResizer resizing mostly affects pixels in areas that do not have important visual content.
It also can be used to remove portion of the image in a consistent way.

Download link available for today: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/iresizer-2-4-for-win-and-mac/

Alternative: Liquid rescale plugin for Gimp

Giveaway - Aiseesoft Blu-ray Ripper 7.1.16

Aiseesoft Blu-ray Ripper is one of the best Blu-ray ripping software that can help users rip their Blu-ray movies easily to High Definition video and common video files for editing, watching on computer/devices/HDTV, backup. It provides users as many output profiles as you can imagine, such as MP4, MKV, MOV, AVI, WMV, FLV, iPad, iPhone, iPod, PSP, Samsung Tablet, Samsung Galaxy Note, etc. With ATI and CUDA hardware acceleration tech, the HD output with h.264 encoder is no longer a problem. Aiseesoft Blu-ray Ripper will not let you to wait for a whole night just rip a Blu-ray disc to HD video and it provides a 6X Faster conversion speed.
With ATI and CUDA hardware acceleration tech, the HD output with h.264 encoder is no longer a problem. Aiseesoft Blu-ray Ripper will not let you to wait for a whole night just rip a Blu-ray disc to HD video and it provides a 6X Faster conversion speed.
In addition, Aiseesoft Blu-ray Ripper can also rip DVD and convert videos to any video format you want. It allows users to edit the output video’s effect, trim output video’s length, remove the black bars of the movie. You can easily choose your favorite subtitle and audio track from the Blu-ray/DVD movies when you convert the movie.

Download link available for today:  http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/aiseesoft-bluray-ripper/

Backup software Giveaway - Genie Timeline Pro 2013

Genie Timeline 2013 Pro is a backup/restore tool aimed at providing complete, seamless and reliable backups and restores. Genie Timeline makes it easy to continuously protect all your files no matter where they are stored; on your computer, external and network drives. Genie Timeline works automatically to protect new and changed files without any intervention.

Key features:

• Configure your backup in 3 simple steps and you’re done! It scans for all your file selections from any location, monitors for new and changed files, and backs them up;
• Use the Timeline to view and restore your files at a specific point of time;
• Secure your backup with the most secure 256-AES encryption algorithm;
• Recover versions of a file or deleted files with a right-click;
• Use Genie Timeline mobile app for live feedback of your backup status or get email notifications of your backup status to your inbox;
• Use backup without compression so you can view your backed up files in their native form from any computer;
• Genie Timeline offers advanced settings to ensure that power users have all they need in a simple, easy to use product. You can control when your backup runs or leave it to Genie’s IntelliCDP, power down your computer after backup, and much more;
• Use disaster recovery to keep your entire system safe from virus attacks, computer crashes, and more.

Giveaway available today at:  http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/genie-timeline-pro-2013/

Giveaway - Picture Collage Maker Pro 4.0.1

Picture Collage Maker Pro is a versatile and user-friendly collage creator with which you can make collages and greeting cards from digital photos and share them with friends and family. It provides 140+ collage templates for various occasions and holidays such as birthday, baby, wedding, anniversary, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year and more.
Picture Collage Maker Pro is extremely user-friendly. Unlike photography software that takes days to master, Picture Collage Maker Pro lets both seasoned collagers and new hobbyists become productive in minutes.

Giveaway available today at: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/picture-collage-maker-4-0-1/

Krita 2.8 (digital painting) expected to be released in December

The Krita team is working really hard on the next release -- Krita 2.8, expected to be released end of December, early January.  And it's shaping up to be a memorable release! There is a host of interesting features, and many, many bug fixes as well. Let's take a look at what's coming!

Tablet Support

Krita has relied on Qt's graphics tablet support since Krita 2.0. We consciously dropped our own X11-level code in favour of the cross-platform API that Qt offered. And apart from the lack of support for non-Wacom tablets, this was mostly enough on X11. On Windows, the story was different, and we were confronted by problems with offsets, bad performance, no support for tablets with built-in digitizers like the Lenovo Helix.
So, with leaden shoes, we decided to dive in, and do our own tablet support. This was mostly done by Dmitry Kazakov during a week-long visit to Deventer, sponsored by the Krita Foundation. We now have our own code on X11 and Windows. Drawing is much, much smoother because we can process much more information and issues with offsets are gone.

OpenGL and Shaders

Krita was one of the first painting applications to support OpenGL to render the image. And while OpenGL gave us awesome performance when rotating, panning or zooming, rendering quality was lacking a bit.
That's because by default, OpenGL scales using some fast, but inaccurate algorithms. Basically, the user had the choice between grainy and blurry rendering.
Again, as part of his sponsored work by the Krita Foundation, Dmitry took the lead and implemented a high-quality scaling algorithm on top of the modern, shader-based architecture Boudewijn had originally implemented.
The result? Even at small zoom levels, the high-quality scaling option gives beautiful and fast results!
 
http://krita.org - Corel Painter / Adobe Photoshop alternative.

Using Blender NLE video editor

Brief tutorial (23 minutes) by Paul Caggegi that explains the basics of video editing, and shows you how to set up Blender as a Non Linear Editor. A .blend file with the windows layout and a key configuration file are available for download via the blog post.


Adding transitions

Fragmentarium, free fractal worlds explorer

Fragmentarium is an open source, cross-platform IDE for exploring pixel based graphics on the GPU. It is inspired by Adobe's Pixel Bender, but uses GLSL, and is created specifically with fractals and generative systems in mind.

Download link: http://syntopia.github.io/Fragmentarium/get.html

Features:

• Multi-tabbed IDE, with GLSL syntax highlighting
• User widgets to manipulate parameter settings
• High-resolution (tile) renderings
• Progressive rendering, for high quality AA, and distributed ray tracing.
• HDR (RGBE .HDR) support and tone mapping
• Support for simple animations
• Modular GLSL programming - include other fragments
• More than 100 examples, including 3D fractals (Mandelbulb, Mandelbox, Quaternion, Kaleidoscopic IFS), 2D fractals (Mandelbrots, Ducks, spherical Julias), Heightmaps, Knots and Hyperbolic Tesselations.

 

EArt Audio Editor - free audio editor

EArt Audio Editor is a all-in-one audio editor, recorder, converter, splitter, joiner and player. A full set of effects and editing features are included for professional sound production. When editing audio files you can copy, cut, paste and mix any portion of audio files. If required, you may add effects like Amplify, Fade In, Fade Out, Delay, Reverse, Noise Reduction, etc. MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG, VOX, RAW and many more audio formats are all supported for direct audio editing. With EArt Audio Editor you can: Edit audio files visually (Cut, Copy, Delete Selection, Delete Silence, Paste, Paste From File, Mix, Mix From File). Apply various effects (Amplify, Compressor, Delay, Equalize, Invert, Normalize, Phaser, Reverb, Reverse, Fade In, Fade Out, Flanger, Silence, Shrink, Stretch, Vibrato, and more). Apply different filters (Brand Pass Filter, High Pass Filter, Low Pass Filter, High Shelf Filter, Low Shelf Filter, Notch Filter, FFT Filter) to any selected portion of audio files. Add silence or noise. Save any portion of a audio file to disk as a new file). Play audio files or any portion of the files (Play, Pause, Continue, Stop, Play loop). Complete, multi-level undo and redo capabilities. Record audio from a microphone or any other available input device and save to WAV, MP3, WMA, OGG, VOX, RAW, etc. files. Display audio data waveform (Zoom Full, Zoom In, Zoom Out, Zoom Vertical). Open CD tracks for editing and format conversion. Add information into audio files (Album, Artist, Copyright, Genre, Title, Year, etc.)
Download link

GIMP 2.8.8 Released

GIMP 2.8.8 (Photoshop alternative | Windows, OS X, Linux) is a release in the stable 2.8 series, featuring lots of bug fixes and translation updates.

Core:
- Make sure indexed images always have a colormap
- Fix language selection via preferences on Windows
- Don’t crash on setting a large text size  
GUI:
- Keep the same image active when switching between MWM and SWM
- Make sure all dockables are properly resizable (particularly shrinkable)
- Add links to jump directly to Save/Export from the Export/Save file extension warning dialogs  
Libgimp:
- Fix GimpPickButton on OSX  
Plug-ins:
- Properly document plug-in-autocrop-layer’s PDB interface
- Fix importing of indexed BMPs  
General:
- Fix lots of places to use GIO to get proper file sizes and times on windows
- Add an AppData file for GIMP
- Backport lcms2 support from master, because lcms1 is not getting bug fixes any longer
- Lots of bug fixes
- Lots of translation updates

More details about Gimp 2.8 http://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.8.html

Gimp download link

Blender 2.69

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.69 (3D computer graphics software).
More about Blender http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/features/

FBX import is now supported, along with improved export. New mesh modeling tools were added and existing ones improved. Cycles subsurface scattering and hair shading were improved, along with the addition of a new sky model, shading nodes and tone mapping in the viewport. The motion tracker now supports plane tracking, to track and replace flat objects in footage.

We have been testing this final release using three 'release candidates'. The official release is now available, published October 30th 2013.

Hugin 2013.0 panorama stitching

Hugin 2013.0 simplifies panorama stitching

New version of the popular panorama stitcher is now even friendlier towards beginners.
Now the user interface of Hugin has three modes: Simple (default), Advanced, and Expert. The simple UI is basically the old panorama preview dialog with panorama stitching wizard added on top of it, so you can still create a panorama in just three steps.
If you are not familiar with the procedure, it's all dead easy.
1. Add original images.

2. Launch alignment of the pictures. Hugin will attempt to discover matching features in pairs of images and re-align them.

This step is also where you pick mapping (e.g. Panini is great for architecture) and set cropping to remove "leftovers" — bits of the original images mashed with black background due to transformmations.
3. Finally, choose how you want Hugin to handle stacks of exposure bracketed images, if you have those, pick a file format to save the panorama in, and let it build the final image for you.

All the extra things like editing control points, creating masks to remove objects etc. are only visible in Advanced and Expert modes. Which is where you see the old main window of Hugin.
Frankly speaking, if you are already faimiliar with Hugin, you will probably find the user interface related changes not exactly dramatic. After all, Hugin developers preserved most of what already was there and rearranged guts in limbs in a different way (still, no drama).
Typically for Hugin, the release comes with a few new command line tools:

• pto_var, changes image variables inside PTO files;
• pto_lensstack, modifies assigned lenses and stack in PTO files;
• geocpset, sets or adds geometric constraints for multirow panoramas with featureless images.

There's of course, a number of bugfixes and smaller improvements all around. Source code and builds for various systems are available on SourceForge.

Source: Libregraphicsworld.org
Author: Alexandre Prokoudine