Cat Splash Fever

Blender 2.74 is nearly out (in fact, you can test out Release Candidate 1 already!) and as with previous releases, there was a contest held with the community for the splash image that appears when Blender first launches. The theme for this release? Cats!

The rules were simple (as posted in a thread on blenderartists.org):

  • All cat renders will be fine, but preferred are the hairy fluffy Cycles rendered ones.
  • One cat, many cats, cartoon cats, crazy cats, angry cats, happy cats. All is fine.
  • Has to be a single F12 render+composite (no post process in other editors)
  • The selected artist should be willing to share the .blend with textures with everyone under a CC-BY-SA or CC-BY.
  • Deadline Saturday March 7.

And we got a winner! This excellent image by Manu Järvinen (maxon) is what you’ll see in Blender 2.74’s splash:

maxon

You can download a .zip with the splash and .blend (public domain!), or watch the making-of video.

But wait! That’s not all. There were many, many fantastic entries that were submitted. It would be a shame not to share them all. Check out this gallery of the top 10 runner-up submissions (in no particular order):