Smile

As some of you might know, up to now there was a 3D version (please let me stress the fact that it was a version, not an official logo) of the the Igalia logo in the Cool stuff section of this blog. Such a thing was the humble result of me trying out blender for an afternoon some time ago, and did not intend to be an official logo of Igalia at all… just think of me being not very original and looking for something easy to try and I think you’ll get the point

Unfortunately, I found out during this years that this crappish version of the official logo was eventually used here and there as if it was the official one, even in banners at conferences or workshops we were sponsoring, which was not actually a good thing, as you can guess.

So, I’ve just removed today the 3D logo and its sources files from the Cool stuff section, so you’ll no longer find it there.

At last but not least, let me ask you that, if you already have a copy of that fake logo and were planning to use it at some point, it would be far much better and really appreciated if you could use the official one. If such an image is not enough for you in terms of size or quality, just ask us and we’ll provide you a better (and hopefully vectorial) version of it if needed.

As result of some personal needs, I spent some time this morning looking for some kind of free CAD program. After searching on the internet and in the apt-get repositories, I found the following free CAD programs: QCad and Blender. QCad is a program similar to Autocad, and Blender is closer to 3D Studio. Since I have sometimes tried 3D Studio in the past, I think I were more familiar to Blender, so I chose it for giving it a try.

The fact is that, nowadays, I have not too much spare time for playing with this kind of issues (not at least in a month), but this morning I decided to take a rest of my usual work plan and I was trying to learn the basics of blender modelling with the help of this book (spanish – creative commons licensed).

And this is the result of my test: a 3D version of the igalia logo (yes, I know… so much original )

I know it’s quite simple (and incorrect, since colors are not exactly those ones from the original logo), but I have not enough time for learning more about blender right now. Maybe in a future I’ll have it… but now it’s time to go back to my current work plan.

Anyway, the main objective this morning was not to get a high-level Blender knowledge and/or a high-quality 3D design, but just learning some basic concepts, and I think I had accomplished that mission. And regarding to model igalia logo… just because seemed to be an easy exercise to get myself familiar with the Blender interface at the same time I got an excuse for writting something on this blog since my last post.

In conclusion, I’d like to tell that, if you like the 3D design world and have a few spare time, I’d encourage you to try blender: it’s good, it’s funny, it seems not to be so much complicated as you can expect after a first look, and it’s free (GPL-licensed).

Update [11/09/06]: Here you can download the source and the text font used for this logo:

Blender source file
Text font used

Note: since my simple 3D logo is a too much basic example, you can take a look into a movie called Elephant Dreams if you are not sure about blender capabilities for making good quality 3D graphics or animations.