The BlenderDiplom Blog features test, doodles, previews for tutorials and various other things related to Blender.
Review of the book "Learning Blender – A Hands-On Guide to Creating 3D Animated Characters" by Oliver Villar. The book is targeted at beginners, intermediate users who want to learn about character creation and those who want to make the switch to Blender from another package.
The Blender Node Editor offers a variety of functions that are not obvious when you open it for the first time, see this article about where they are and why they can make your life easier.
With the upcoming meshing capabilities the fluid particles in Blender will get a lot more possible use cases. We created a really big fluid particle scene and tested the cubesurfer addon for meshing.
Mantaflow is a unified simulation framework for both fluid and smoke simulations. It is currently integrated into Blender. BlenderDiplom will provide demos of the state of integration whenever new features arrive.
More Cycles smoke and fire awesomeness in this demo video, this time including explosions!
Recently, I got contacted by a team of artists who wanted to do an exhibition in NYC with support from Eyebeam. I donated a simulation created in Blender.
Blender 2.71 will have the possibility to render smoke and fire in Cycles. This is a feature many users have waited for since Cycles was first shown to the public. Here are some demos: