Good news, everyone! Blender 2.71 Release Candidate with its sexy splash screen is now available! Quite possibly by the time you read this, the final version will be out, and quite possibly other versions besides.

And now for another video – still a build timelapse, but for a short proof of concept test for a surreal/absurdist project I want to do after “A moment in the sun”. It involves a metamorphosis. I wanted to be able to morph not just the mesh but also the textures and materials. This is a timelapse of a quick “first draft” attempt and shouldn’t be considered in any way authoritative about anything.

In this video, you can watch me:

• modelling a cartoon bear’s snout based off reference art
• repositioning the snout’s vertices to turn it into a human face
• setting up driven shape keys to go between the two
• altering the driver’s curves to give more character to the morph
• setting up an armature for character animation
• unwrapping the mesh and getting it ready for texturing
• painting three different materials using Texture Paint 
• failing to save one of the textures and having to paint it again >:|
• fading between the different materials dynamically using drivers

Done in Blender 2.71 test version.