3D Blending arrives in Ghana

with first trainer certified

By Oral Ofori

The past few years have seen Ghana chalk remarkable successes in many facets of the Information Communication Technology world (ICT). The expansion of technological infrastructures and systems have brought with it a burning desire among young Ghanaians to exploit the positives that comes with ICT. Rexford Nkansah is one of such many Ghanaians who are specializing in areas formerly known to be dominated by people in the more advanced parts of the world. One of such areas is the 3D modeling and animation.

For the first time in West Africa, Ghanaian born Rexford Nkansah, has been recognized as the Blender Foundation Certified Trainer after he went through the rigorous requirements and training to get to this point. Persons holding this certification are officially recognized by the Blender Foundation and can go ahead to run training courses to help others learn how to use the Blender softwares. Find out more about Rexford Nkansah via his Google+ page .

3D simply means three-dimensional, i.e. something that has width, height and depth or length. Our physical environment is three-dimensional and we move around in 3D every day. 3D applications today allow their experts to create intricate end products for uses in games, entertainment, computers, architecture, industry, education, medicine and a whole lot!

Blender is one of the key software players in the 3D industry open source 3D animation and modeling. The Blender Foundation develops and maintains this vibrant 3D software for use by tens of thousands of 3D enthusiasts across the globe. The software has detailed and extensive applications similar to other proprietary 3D softwares on the market such as 3D Max.

Other Africans who have been certified by the Blender Academy besides Rexford are Stefan van deer Vyver, Willem Verwey and Allan Liddle, all of whom are from South Africa. Rexford, who recently received this certification has been a curious student and user of the Blender software. He has used it in creating a lot of still images and relative short 3D animations, many of which could be found on his Google Plus page.

'I want Ghana to have many more certified Blender academicians in Africa because even though South Africa has 3 already, I feel it is not enough. With the knowledge and expertise I have acquired through my training, I hope to pass on my knowledge to more Ghanaians because I believe the 3D world and its accompanying 4D technology is a very powerful tool we can use in areas like education architecture and medicine' Rexford says.

Thomas Sorensen of the Denmark based Blender Academy in collaboration with Rexford have started work on gathering materials that will be used in a training course that will look at helping to expand the user base of Blender in Ghana and other neighboring countries in West Africa.

The course will be an in-depth one that will include modeling, animation, dynamics and simulations, particle system, vfx and scripting (python) among other 3D-must-know for all who want to explore this exciting world of technology. As he looks forward with excitement to meeting and teaching his first students, Mr. Nkansah called on all unknown 3D and blender enthusiasts or experts in Ghana to join hands with him in accelerating the spread of the knowledge of this all important technology today.