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Blender 2.42 Has Been Released
bartv writes "Blender 2.42 has been released. It features an impressive list of new features for professional users. The most important improvements are: a new render pipeline, node editors for compositing and materials, support for anisotropic materials, improved fluid simulation and new character animation tools. Most of these features are the result of the production of Elephants Dream, the first Open Movie. During this project, Blender's lead developer Ton Roosendaal was coding the features that were required by the artists to produce their movie."
I've tried Maya (evaluation), 3DS Max (cad), AutoCad and Friends (cad), etc. They all have very different interfaces. These are the few that would seem to define "convention," yet they are totally different. They are also hardly within the "hobbyist" price range. Blender is well within the hobbyist price range, has some decent, free documentation. The "getting started" range of documentation is actually quite good.
Not to mention people are free to, for example, fork the project and make it how they wish.
If you watch "The Making of" for Elephants Dream, you'll see that they looked plenty productive and the new node compositing (think Shake) looks down-right sick!
Hate to point this out to you and ruin a perfectly good rant against hobbyists and open source jacks-of-all-trades, but they hired a professional screenwriter to write the script. They asked him for "artsy" and that's what he gave them. Sure, it's not Pixar by any stretch of the imagination, since Eddy Murphy's not providing the voice of a wisecracking fax machine, but there's a hell of a lot going on in ED. It's crafted like a puzzlebox, with multilayered symbolism hidden in the imagery and dialogue. It wasn't meant for saturday matinees, it was made for the art film festivals. If that not your cup of tea, that's fine, but don't decry it as "crap" and insist that just because you didn't see it, there must be nothing there. Film is subjective, not objective.
(Disclaimer: I'm not really a huge fan of arthouse films. I know 'em when I see em, and I'll give 'em the respect they deserve, but I usually end up watching Hollywood's output.)
Oh, and it's completely open. If you can do a mean Eddie Murphy Fax-machine voice, you're free to render your own Dream.
Tried the new physics engine, by dropping a cube and a cone onto a slanted plane. Things are definitely better than in 2.41, where the objects just hit the plane and stuck. Now they hit, bounce a bit, and slowly fall to align with the plane. They start to slide.
Then the cone goes spinning and flying off into space. Huge conservation of energy violation. Oops.
The Bullet Physics guys don't have sliding friction right yet. But they're making progress.