We’ve been beating the notion that Blender is “not just for static modeling” like a dead horse. (An animated dead horse, anyway.) But here’s yet another example, just because it’s cool – and because following the video gives you a basic sense of how to replicate the effects yourself. I’m curious: any visualists out there using Blender yet to produce content for live visuals, interactive visuals, or even VJing with the Blender engine live?

Blender is now up to 2.49b (it had been 2.49a last I checked), so the march to the major 2.5 milestone continues. We’re still waiting for a mainstream build of Blender 2.5, though obviously it worked well enough here to video on the Mac.

Officially, testing began Saturday, as updated on the 2.5 status page on the dev wiki.

For more 2.5 goodness, see this hair particle system from the BlenderNation blog.

Odd as its UI may be – and that gets smoothed over dramatically in 2.5 – I think Blender long ago left the state of being something you used just for the sake of using free software, to something that shows open source can produce a tool you’d want to use in place of more commercial offerings, even excepting philosophical or financial reasons. Now, if someone could just send me on a week retreat to do nothing else… (I know you know that feeling!)