Slashdot Mirror
Blender 2.65 Released
skade88 writes "Blender 2.65 has been released. Here is a quote from the Blender team: 'The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.65. We focused on making this the most stable release in the 2.6 cycle yet, fixing over 200 bugs. Fire simulation was added along with many improvements in smoke simulation. In Cycles, motion blur, open shading language and anisotropic shading support was added. For mesh modeling, the bevel tool was much improved, a new symmetrize mesh tool was added, and new Laplacian smooth, decimate, and triangulate modifiers are available.'"
2.65 has been out for a week. Slacking, Slashdot.
I was fiddling around all last week to try to get a decent fire in Blender using particle systems.
This should make it a snap.
For those wondering what Blender is, according to Wikipedia it's "a free and open-source 3D computer graphics software product used for creating animated films, visual effects, interactive 3D applications or video games" with a built-in game engine.
The Cycles renderer in Blender 2.65 is coming along nicely. One can set it to render a viewport in realtime, which is cool. You make changes to your 3D scene, and Cycles will render them almost in realtime. That said, Blender still has a crappy, annoying, confusing UI that should be re-engineered from scratch. Blender has so much potential, but the commercial 3D apps trump it in terms of ease-of-use and good UI design. So Blender foundation... bite the bullet already and please give Blender a much needed UI redesign. I promise you that the number of Blender users will quadruple, or maybe octuple if the UI is redesigned to be more user friendly. My 2 Cents.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
As nice as Blender is, studios can still save money in terms of time by purchasing a multi-thousand dollar suite. Shadowing in particular still takes longer with Blender.
Blender is not a CAD/CAM software. It is a 3D animation software. Use the right tool for the job.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Blite my shiny little ass!
I still can't render a video. Yes blender, I know the video file doesn't exist, you're supposed to make it.
... and what is wrong with n-gons? You know a square or a triangle is an n-gon right?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
The last time I used blender you couldn't perform more that 3 Boolean operations on a model before the blender crashed. Is it fixed?
Nevermind, too easy.
> Have they added the ability to disable N-gons yet?
Haha, this is wildly ironic considering that many have been waiting a loooooonnnng time for N-gon support and it was only added in 2.63. Moreover, N-gons are needed to actually "create proper Geometry" in many cases, so I'm going to have to figure you're trolling :).
Anyways, I'd be quite surprised if you can't convert N-gons to tris/quads using the usual tools (Mesh->Faces->???, or Alt+J, IIRC). Odds are it'll happen automatically when you export to a tri-only format like STL. If your 3D printer 'supports' a format that allows N-gons (OBJ is one) but it chokes on them, that's a stupid bug on the printer's part; triangulating N-gons is trivial.
(Disclaimer: I haven't tried Blender's N-gons yet.)
Will it blend?
Since most people don't know what Blender is, the press release should have begun with a statement of purpose. ..."
"Blender, the number one open source bit masher,
Blender used to be somewhat lacking, but it kept getting better and better - until now it seems to be able to do everything that Max or Maya can do.
I wonder if there are any big game studios using it?
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Old fogies like me remember that back when Blender was commercially developed, they had an odd business model consisting of giving the software away for free (as in beer) and selling the documentation (see the old review here, for example). Documentation is now one of the weakest points of Blender, IMHO.
I stopped using blender a few years ago as I loved it as a hobby, but the ui radically changed every 6 months. I eventually went back to light wave.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Parent post, and two others of mine on this thread, have been modded down as "over rated". Which is the clear sign of a cowardly moderator, since none of these three posts had been modded upward at all.
I can think of two possible reasons for being downrated in such a way
I have occasionally posted stupid things that deserve to be down rated, since sometimes I think I know more about a subject than I really do. I accept those without comment, and as soon as I'm done fussing over the ego bruise, I am kind of glad for it, for it is a learning experience. But that is not what is happening here; if that was the case I would have seen a reply pointing out the error of my ways.
Sometimes I get down rated because I have trampled on someone's astroturf. I accept that there are persons abusing Slashdot by attempting to use it to control mind share of the audience, rather than rationally discuss issues or expounding upon their emotional allegiances. I also accept those without comment, since like wharf rats at a busy port, astroturfers will always be skulking about slashdot.
But I speak up here because I cannot determine whether I have been down rated by some freak Adobe astroturfer--- I am not even sure they exist--- or by some over-zealous defender of Blender as the True, Right, and Only Way. Maybe this post will trigger a response that helps clarify things.
Will
We use commercial and open source software in my animation studio, money is not a huge problem if it helps to deliver a project on time. I'm the boss, I pick the software we buy, and the animators choose what they want to use. Blender is so fast for rigging and animation. Animation is a blast to do in Blender. Fast posing, no gimbal locks, fast keyframe repositioning, etc. Blender renders faster in Linux than in Windows, and is very stable. Something I can't say for other programs.
We just delivered 15 minutes of animation for a recent Guns N' Roses concert in Las Vegas. We're talking a lot of frames, at full HD resolution. As part of the videos. the band singer asked if we could please create and animate a white, hairy wolf, and we did it in two days (that was our time limit).
I have to aknowledge its akward interface. Even with the 2.5 tweaks it feels strange. I think this is the only major feature you can say may alienate new users.
STFU!!!! Peole have beeen clamoring for N-gons for YEARS!!!! and now Blender finally has them ... and YOU want them disabled??!!! JERK!!
Anyhow, in blender N-gons don't STAY n-gons. Everything is ultimately converted to tris for rendering. Besides which, no one is FORCING you to model with n-gons.
re: "N-gons are needed to actually "create proper Geometry" in many cases," ... no ... just .. no
N-gons are a shortcut. They are BAD geometry. They are FAR to easy to make them non-planar, at whichpoint the rendering engine (regardless which one) has diffuculties shading it properly. They can be useful, but ONLY if you keep them 100% planar. If they are non-planar, you need to go in and re-topo for good edge flow and loops.
Blender is a blend of tools: modeling, animation, rendering, video compositing, game engine, and video editor.
As we all know, the Maya license expires on Dec. 21. Or so I heard something. After that, all animators need to switch to Blender.
Are you assuming polygon models? If you are making subdivision surfaces, there are some good reasons to use N-gons and it doesn't matter if they are nonplanar.