Hi all, I've been poking about the caverns, and, well, since the news hit, I've been pondering ways to keep the community going, though, perhaps not continuing uru, but, rather the beauty of uru. The exploration, the community.
I'm a 3d artist. Organics are beyond my skills, but, I have at least /some/ skill with blender. I've contributed to open source projects in the past, and I truly believe art should be Free, too. (I contribute my models and textures under the terms of the GNU GPL v3)
In most cases, I cannot stand Planeshift. Its.. inadequately free, for the claim of the developers that they support the open source ideals.
However, in our case, for the creation of an Uru-like game/environment.. this restrictions that they have placed on their RPG ruleset, and their art.. do not matter. For one, why would we want the rpg ruleset? We'd be better off without it. The art, sure, we don't have avatars to work with, in that case, but, there is "Perago Tempus" possibly, for that. It uses the same engine, but, its content is Free.
The underlying 3D engine is Crystal Space, and, as I'm fairly sure you're aware, that works fairly well with Blender.
Here are some shots from Planeshift itself:
http://ebonrai.com/stuff/laanx1.jpghttp://ebonrai.com/stuff/hydlaa01.jpghttp://ebonrai.com/stuff/laanx5.jpghttp://ebonrai.com/stuff/tavern2.jpgand, here are some shots of some of my own GPLv3'd art.
http://ebonrai.com/sfz/asteroid-crystal ... render.pnghttp://ebonrai.com/sfz/crystal-generato ... erials.pnghttp://ebonrai.com/sfz/crystal-spacefolder-render.pnghttp://ebonrai.com/sfz/crystal-spacefol ... erials.pnghttp://ebonrai.com/sfz/floor-lamp-render.pnghttp://ebonrai.com/sfz/lift-uvmapped-te ... render.pnghttp://ebonrai.com/sfz/wall-lamp-example-for-fuzzie.png (example of facing for one of my models)
http://ebonrai.com/sfz/wall-lamp2-newuv ... erials.png (same model as above, just the original render, facing the wrong way.)