Hand still broken. Posts still short. ;) Saw at Victor Navone's blog about the McGurk Effect, and how it matters for lip syncing:

I'm with a broken arm, so I can't write much. So, just watch it while it's online: :)

Via @pepeland3d

As most of you should know by now, Durian project was very successful. The next project from Blender Institute will focus and live action and visual FX, and is codenamed Mango, with the development with specific tools in Blender for that purpose.

In visual effects, there is a general rule that "the best FX are the ones you can't see". I'm sure that Mango will be a very challenging project, and I show below an outstanding making of the HBO's miniseries John Adams. Notice the great attention to details, giving us images in which is almost impossible to distinguish what is captured by the cameras from what was created by visual effects artists:

I have been recently invited by Packt Publishing to review the new book by Brazilian architect and author Allan Brito, called Blender 3D 2.49: Architecture, Buildings and Scenery.

Although I'm not an architect - my main focus is character animation - I've seen some very interesting information for various different uses, like for modeling, texturing, lighting and rendering assets for animation films or even games. Of course, if your are an architect looking for a book with the nuts and bolts of creating archiviz with Blender and Yafaray, this book have everything you would look for.

Although the book is mainly geared towards the current stable version 2.49, there is a chapter dedicated to the new development branch - 2.5 - which describes the main differences between those versions. Even if you don't know anything about Blender, you'll be able to start easily with the chapters, which cover from the basics of the interface to the hands on activities related to build your 3D scene. You'll be guided to the processes of modeling, texturing, lighting and animating virtual walkthroughs with Blender tools, along with the powerful Yafaray rendering engine and The Gimp for post-production work.

I believe it's a great addition to your library, specially if your work with architectural visualization with proprietary tools.

The book is available for sale at Amazon, and you can read a f ree sample chapter at Packt's website.

DISCLAIMER: I'm currently writing a book for Packt Publishing.

Ah... Aardman... I'm gonna change things a bit and show the making of before the actual short, which is the smallest character animation in stop motion ever, made with a Nokia cellphone attached to a microscope:

Via @empire_of_dust