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Blender 2.40 Released
LetterRip writes "Googles Summer of Code has born fruit with the Blender 2.40 release. Thanks to their support and the hard work of the coders they supported Blender has fluid dynamics
simulation done by Nils Thuerey, a powerful inverse kinematics system done by Brecht Van Lommel, and much improved boolean tools done by Marc Freixas. Of course Blender has had a huge number of improvements aside from the work supported by Google. The animation system got a complete rewrite by Ton Roosendaal, as well as other major improvements like flive UV unwrapping LSCM, and a Modifier stack system. It also has seen greatly improved ease of use since the last Slashdot announcement addressing all of the complaints raised- things like 3d manipulators, full undo system, etc. There is also a quick start guide for new users, and nice video and written tutorials on new features and a fairly up to date manual."
There is also a way cool zbrush like sculpting available as an add on script, see this post for details.
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http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5610
LetterRip
...does the new Blender come with a kitchen sink?
I simply love this program. It's open source, and it is as versatile as a professional capitalist program like Maya, Lightwave, or 3DS Max. It has a great renderer, with support for external renderers built right in. It's perfect for people who want to express their creativity in modeling but don't want to shovel out the cash to pay for a capitalist program. Though, I prefer Wings 3D for the actual modeling. I use Blender for setting up textures, animations, scenes, and all that kind of stuff mostly. The only real problem with it is that the interface is intimidating to new users of it.
Is it written in Old Fortran beer???
If not, you can bite my shiny a... OH. BLENDER...
Never mind...
Anyone interested in Blender should be aware of the Libre Graphic Meeting. The plan is to get developers of Blender in one place, plus get developers of other free software packages like GIMP, Inkscape, and Scribus together too.
19 March 2006 in Lyon, France
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
You can't "pick it up and use it" because the original creators elected to head out in their own direction and explore different interface methods. Part of that involved eschewing more orthodox philosophies.. an act which will always provoke complaints such as yours.
;)
Once you force feed it to yourself, after a while you'll start to enjoy it and even respect it. I wouldn't call it better than 3dmax or any other modeller you can name, but it's definetly a damn good interface.
I've been using the 2.40 release candidates for the past month, and it's a splendid update to an already splendid program. I've watched people produce things equal in quality to the products of extremely expensive modelling programs with it. I've also seen a lot of newbies create complete crap but that's part of the risk of free software.
The animation and fluid simulator is nice and all but I think my favorite enhancement ended up being the particle system changes.
The particle guides made setting up effects I'd waste days trying to accomplish in 2.37 something that could be done in 15 minutes.
I have been using Blender since version 1.8. And I realize that a lot find the user-interface hard to use when you are a beginner.
...all 3D is hard to learn when youre new to 3d in general.
.3ds if you want to - and now with the new Collada protocol you can import/export even more information so virtually nothing gets lost in the pipeline - of course, theres still some improvements to be made here. But hey - thats what the community is all about - you want it? Participate - and Well come up with something great for us all to use - together!
...while in 3dstudio max...you get a lot of "boxes and cylinders" to draw-off straight away ...without learning anything at all...so yeah...3dstudio max is more "pleasing-straight-away". Maya is more professional and can handle bigger more complex jobs but is harder to work on smaller projects. Blender is sort of the "middle way"... I am not saying that Blender is better or worse than 3Dstudio max or Maya...but they all have their advantages - and you will all definetively do yourselves a HUGE FAVOR trying this application. Its a killer app!
The truth is however - even if it is harder to grasp as a beginner, most 3d applications are hard to learn - in fact
Blender isnt that hard compared to 3dstudio Max or Maya because of its better and more efficient workflow. I have bought 3dstudio max (a license) for over 4 years - but switched to Blender because I found that the modeling workflow was faster and more efficient. You can export/import
The main advantage That I think Blender has - in comparison to eg. 3Dstudio max is that once you get started it all becomes easier
It has - fluids (a really good one), Softbody, Some of the best rigging tools around and support that simply cant be beat. What do I mean by that? I mean - when I used 3dstudio max...I was an unsignificant "flea"... and when I complained about bugs in the software...It was always "my-fault" or "Windows fault"...but never Discreets fault.. And months later when the bugs finally got acknowledged and fixed - I had to purchase 1000 dollars in upgrades just to fix the bugs.
When I switched to Blender and had problems - guess what? 2 days after "mentioning" possible bugs - they got fixed. And it kept going that way. Blender rarely chrashes and its a dream to work with the passionate developers.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Sorry for the technobabble, UVs are a way to map an image/texture to a 3d model. LSCM is a way to create your mapping to the model in a way that it is of good quality - live means that you can tweak it as you go instead of tweak recalculate, tweak recalculat. A modifier stack - is changes that are modifiers are 'virtual' ie can easily be done and undone at any point in the models life.
LetterRip
While some people would point the finger at Apple, I find it highly curious that Blender broke so severely (if you read the thread, lots of other things don't work) and far as I know, nothing else did...
Yes, I verified the bug- on my 17" Powerbook (with an NVidia card) none of the menus or popup listboxes appear. If you have a machine with 10.4.3 and an nvidia card, don't bother...yet.
Please help metamoderate.
There's a couple of errors in the post, but they're not important, except one whose rule many people don't know:
has born fruit with the Blender 2.40 release.
Borne fruit. "Borne" is the past tense of "bear". "Born" is a defective verb that's used as the passive voice of "give birth". Unless they went into labor before releasing their product, I'm pretty sure they meant "borne".
Here are mirrors please use them
e /Blender2.40/
http://public.planetmirror.com/pub/blender/releas
I'm guessing the article was submitted by a linux fan.
Why? It's a Windows and OSX app too.
at 6MB isn't blender starting to get bloated?
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
There *is* a lot of work being done on the interface, which will be in the next release. Reorganizing the buttons window is a very big task, and something that can't be rushed... hopefully you'll be pleased with version 2.41 :)
Some of you may already know but we are aiming to make a new GameEngine for Blender using the Crystal Space 3D Engine (http://www.crystalspace3d.org/). This project is called CrystalBlend (more information on that project here: http://www.crystalspace3d.org/tikiwiki/tiki-index. php?page=CrystalBlend). The idea is (just like with the current game engine) to be able to make full games from inside Blender without the need to program. The current logic system for the game engine is a bit limited so you often have to resort to Python scripts to make the full game but with CrystalBlend we will make a totally new logic system that still allows for this fallback but makes it less needed.
The reason I post here is that I'm looking for developers who want to help me with this project mainly on the Blender side. As the project manager of Crystal Space I will take on the Crystal Space side of CrystalBlend (i.e. 3D engine specifics). I will also work on the logic system itself but I would like some other people to help me with both the integration of Blender and Crystal Space as the development of the new user interfaces for the new logic system.
Give me a mail (jorrit dot tyberghein at gmail dot com) if you are interested!
Greetings,
Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4
Please do try it. Undo does work, and Blender has really improved during the 2.3x releases. I've not tried 2.40 yet.
To other Slashdotters who've mentioned UI difficulty:
The interface in blender is designed around having the right hand on the mouse, and the left hand on the keyboard. UI actions are very terse, and therefore slow to learn and easy to forget. Find, read, and do the available tutorials! There is plenty of info to get going, and once you get over the initial hump you'll find Blender *fast* to use.
Then youll be happy to know that - not only do we have full undo functionality , but theres even an UNDO-HISTORY function with a menu to go (Alt + U) so you can go anywhere in the history and redo from wherever you wish...heck...you can even browse through the various changes you made and go forward again if you still change your mind :)
:)
Blender even has different undos for different systems. Example: Global Undo and Local Undo - Meaning if you change stuff in you scene...you can just do the normal Ctrl + Z to undo there...or if you where editing your mesh you can undo/redo stuff with U in meshedit mode (Tab).
Blenders all about safety and workflow these days, if all above wasnt enough security for you - you can adjust your preferences to save "xxx-number-of-versions-back". Theres even a separate "Reopen last" and "Recover last session" system so if you for some reason stopped in the middle of it all..can continue your work where you left it - or select the last file you worked on. Hows that for total paranoia?
Want more? I could go on an on...but Ill leave that to you.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Will I finally be able to model my new house with this version?
I was sad to see the BlenderCAD project die a slow death, as it addressed a lot of the CAD issues that Blender 2.3 was missing.
I'd still like to see persistent units, measurements and materials BOM.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Yes there are smoothing groups, although as per the blender philosphy, it is hard to figure out how to do it. One has to select the verts (or side, or faces) of the group and turn it into a material group. From there, you can assign in a unique texture, have it be automatically be made into a seam group for LCMS unwrap and UV texturing, and set it as a smothed group, amongst other different nifty things.