The answer is: Hugo Shelley, and his crew, having reached the final stages of the Cubesat Challenge with their LSAT system.
The project is a very interesting (little) satellite, capable of helping out soldiers on the battlefield. Read on to find out from Hugo himself how the team got there.
Update: Team LSAT has won one of the four $5000 prizes of The Cubesat Challenge’s 3U category.
Congratulations to all involved for their exceptional work!
For a lot of Blender people (myself included), the end of October is a time of joy. This is when the annual Blender Conference takes place, in Amsterdam. It’s that moment of the year when friends meet again, to learn about the new things that happened in the Blender world and to hang out together in the evenings.
This year was no exception. The 3-day weekend started on Friday as usual in downtown Amsterdam at De Balie with a keynote from Ton Roosendaal. Then Daniel Lara talked about the new Hero movie, created with the new Grease Pencil feature in Blender 2.8.
My first contact with Roman’s work was through blenderartists.org forum. Being a car aficionado 
myself, I naturally took a liking to his art. The things that really impressed me though, were the close-up and outdoor renders. The reflections were just right, the light spot on (pun intended) and the overall look was worthy of a manufacturer’s catalogue. In fact, at a certain point I thought they could be easily mistaken for real photos of a car.
Read on to find out how he works and his very interesting views about modelling and more.
Hi Roman, you told me that 3D art is currently a hobby of yours. Tell us a little bit about how you got into it.
Oh, it’s a long story. From my very childhood I liked drawing and freehand modelling. When studying in school, this passion gradually moved into a digital world.
My first steps in 3D art
“Renderstreet is an intelligent solution to the digital artist’s
dilemma of painstakingly slow renderings. If you want
to make a deadline or just have your work done sooner
this is the smartest way to achieve those things. The cost is
affordable and the customer service is excellent!”
Joe Friedel,
Digital Artist
A new feature is now available on RenderStreet: 3rd party funding. It allows you to receive funds intro your RenderStreet account from another person or company.
Such a feature can be used for:
We know how important RenderStreet One has become to our users. And we also know that, for many of you, it’s the only affordable way to accelerate your renders. We’re always listening to your feedback regarding the program. So, today we’re releasing an update with two of the options you requested. These are: support for Modo rendering and for rendering longer frames when needed.
Just used @RenderStreet for the first time. Completely blown away. Turned a 20 hour rendering nightmare into a 30 minute coffee break. 10/10
— Matt Jones (@mattwgc) August 24, 2017
We have just released an update to the RenderStreet One subscription payment module. The new version adds the possibility to subscribe using Paypal and AMEX – two features you have been asking for.
@RenderStreet Amazing service guys! You've just saved me a lot of time. Consider me a regular customer now. And the fantastic price! Superb!
— Pather Thomas (@pather23) May 26, 2017
With a German precision, the International Conference on Animation, Effects, VR, Games and Transmedia (or FMX, in short) happens every year when the spring is considering a comeback to Stuttgart. I’ve attended the past 4 editions and this is my favourite moment of the year to get updated on what studios and software publishers in the industry are doing. Plus, there’s a lot of eye candy, too – a lot of the latest blockbusters have their VFX broken down and explained by the studios that worked on them.
The reason for which I decided to write about this edition – after last writing about the 2014 one – was that this year, the industry seems to be finally committed to a few important directions:
Today we are proudly launching our new website and we’re very excited about the changes that are rolled out in this new version. It’s the most important release since our service has been launched and it’s something that all of you will benefit from. Read on for more details:
We followed the discussion around the new Filmic OCIO configuration, we’ve seen the samples and we understand what difference it can make in a project. So we added a special build of Blender 2.78a with support for it on our farm. To use it, simply select it from the supported build list when you launch a job from our interface.
Happy Blending!
Update 06 February 2017: Microsoft OneDrive has been added to the list of supported cloud services.
We are aware that many artists and teams are using online storage accounts for their projects. It’s an easy way to work together on the same files and it also has the advantage of being able to access the project from any location.
At the same time, we are aware of the fact that internet connections are not always the fastest thing on the planet. And if your project is already online, it would be a nice shortcut to have it downloaded to our render farm directly from there. So we added support for Dropbox and Google Drive, right in our interface.
It’s been four years since our official launch, almost a lifetime in ‘technology years’. We have come a long way in understanding you and your needs and in developing our tech to suit these particular needs. We have grown into a mature, established company now and we are changing our looks to match this reality.
Today we are releasing the new theme for our blog, which is also a preview of what is to come for our public site. Enjoy – and keep close for the main site update.
We’re a couple of weeks into 2017 now, and it’s time for our yearly retrospective. As we are doing every year, we’re looking back to see what we have accomplished, and we’re hinting some of the things to come in the current year. You’re walking the path with us, so we’re sharing the experiences.
2016 has been a year defined by growth and focus for RenderStreet. Those two simple words have brought a number of interesting challenges, which were the driver for a sustained technology push. As a result, we have become even more flexible in addressing your needs and more efficient at the same time. This means we are now very well equipped to handle everything you can throw at us, including those awesome 360/VR images and videos you will be making this year.
Let’s see what this meant in numbers for 2016:
Rendering at home or on the office workstation is how most of us start in our careers. It’s the obvious solution for an easy start and it continues to represent a viable option for every artist during their evolution. And because of these very reasons, most people don’t ever consider the costs associated with it.
If you have been using LionRender and are looking for a viable alternative for your rendering needs, see what RenderStreet can do for you:
Read more about switching from LionRender to RenderStreet.
I’ve been fascinated by Reynante’s work ever since I first saw one of his renders. Each of them tells a story, and I was curious to know how these stories take shape. Read on to find out how Reynante creates his art, about his entrepreneurial side and about what it meant to launch a product in the Blender world: the Cycles Material Vault .
“My overnight 12 hour laptop render for a client meeting was once ruined half an hour before it was needed. Popped into www.render.st and uploaded the file. 15 minutes later my render came in with an email. Client loved it. Boss loved it. I have been using it ever since!.
RenderStreet has saved my back more than once! I totally owe those guys!”
—Ejnar Brendsdal
www.ejnaren.com
