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.'"
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.
2.65? My blender goes up to 9. I think that's puree.
HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
confusing UI that should be re-engineered from scratch.
They have done exactly that while going from 2.4 to 2.5 (or something, don't remember the exact version numbers). The GUI of current Blender is completely new and reorganized and has very little resemblance with what was there before.
Less reliance on video tutorials in lieu of documentation would be nice, too.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I'm not sure this is the best argument (as I am sure there are others), since a multi-thousand-dollar seat cost is probably easily outweighed by investing in more render nodes, which you'd probably end up wanting anyway.
With as far as Blender has come from its early days, though, I'm guessing the day is coming when it will simply be the best. The Free(tm) nature and easy extensibility could make it the preferred target for academic and other research.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
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!
I have worked with plenty of small animation and videogame studios that use and love Blender (in fact Blender is so well integrated to Unity that it's the modelling package of choice). They do so because of the love for the software and the productivity advantages it provides.
The problem with Blender in business is not so much the features. At this point, Blender is superior to most other 3D packages in tasks such as poly modelling, rigging or uv mapping and the Cycles renderer is awesome. The ability to model while, at the same time, having GLSL and Cycles viewports is also far beyond what is available in other packages, and the integrated sculpting tools are very mature.
The real reason why Blender is not adopted in large studios is because of the support contracts provided by Autodesk. When you sign with them, they provide from software licenses to render farms, all covered with phone support. There is no way the Blender Foundation can compete with that unless they become more like RedHat.
Yes, was indeed from 2.4 to 2.5, and was long due.
Right now I'd say that it's a lot easier to use, though for a newbie it still takes some time to get used to the whole swapping around of the left- and right- mousekey.
Blender is one of the few open source tools where in the long run I could see myself permanently switching to it (currently also using 3DSMax/Maya). For now it suits me perfectly for making renders, but game compatibility still seems to be a chore. One of the downsides of it being open source, or better said: free, is that a lot of plugins aren't made commercially, and as such no support is to be expected. It happened a few times over the years where I was working on a game/modification, and a new version of Blender would completely break a plugin (for instance, for properly exporting animated MD3-files), and no official update of said plugin would be made. Thus having to choose between working with an outdated modeling app, or going back to 3DSMax. I hope that the future will bring more dedicated plugin writers; or better, native exporting support for the various games on the market.
Lets not forget the python scripting.
I may just not know of it, but letting you script at all is a feature relatively unique to Blender. But to choose something so powerful and 'easy' as python... yea.
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...
> 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.)
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
With 99% of software packages you can indeed just "mess around with it" and pick up the basic usage. Not with 3D packages. Install Blender and then do the Complete Newbie tutorial. You'll be glad you did!
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
Blender is a blend of tools: modeling, animation, rendering, video compositing, game engine, and video editor.
Amen to that! I'm ten hours into the tutorial for 2.5 and it still feels like gibberish - and I used to use Shade so it should be easy enough but it just ain't.
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.