Blender 2.34 released

[shbaz]

This is kind of old news, but Blender 2.34 is out now. There are some pretty major improvements.

Changelist
Download page

Most notably, huge improvements in the particle system. Hair made with particles now recalculates in each animated frame. Particles can be assigned with force, so that you could make something like a water wheel, for example.

UV unwrapping is monumentally easier with a new LSCM tool.

Ramp shading allows much more freedom with organic objects, and now about the only thing missing that keeps Blender from rendering this kind of realism is the lack of sub-surface scattering and users who would spend 2 years working on such projects.

The game engine is further caught up with the old version (which was largely withheld when Blender was made open-source and the game engine had pieces that wouldn't allow it). Frustrum culling allows for much better framerates. The EXE export function is back, so that games don't have to be played through Blender. It still kind of sucks, but there's only one guy working on new features. In time, it will get better.

Something that is little known is that you could have had many of the above features months ago. I've been using LSCM unwrapping since just after the last release. You can download test compiles from the blender.org forums and play around with upcoming features before they are totally debugged. One toy I've been playing with is the real-time shadows for the game engine. I'm hoping that bumpmaps will follow. Another feature that is still in testing is integrated soft body dynamics. It was recently ported from a linux-only variant of Blender and is being debugged and improved upon. Previously there was only one plugin which could do this, and I recently found that it sucked hard compared to the new soft-body effects.

Anyway, enjoy, if you care for it.

EDIT:

Also, MakeHuman (poser for Blender) added muscle support right around the time 2.34 was released. I don't use it, so I don't know how good it is. Anouncement.

[[Cameron]]

[sarcasm] Gee... I didn't know shbaz was into blender.[/sarcasm]

[Al_Ninio]

I haven't used Blender for a couple of years now, and whoa.
Great improvement, at least feature-wise.
The thing that makes me really impressed by it now is the raytracing plugin.
That's neat.
I hope they made changes to the UI, because the was my (and as far as I know, a lot of other people) problem with it.
It's just very... un-intuitive.
I'm more of a 3D Studio Max person, but alas, I do not have enough HD space to install it.
One question though, does Blender have HDRI?
Because I *love* HDRI.
Hm.
Download's finished.
I shall tinker with Blender a bit now.

edit:
Well. The interface still baffles me.
And it sort of stutters, and crashes after a while. But that's probably due to my machine being a piece of crap.
Damn you, Voodoo 3.
I guess I'll have to wait until I get my new, ten times larger HD.
That will happen in two weeks.
Then we'll have a 3D showdown, or something.
And you'll obviously win, because my 3D skills are lacking.

[shbaz]

Pvt. Joker, dude, there's a new release, it's not like orgasming as I'm typing about this.

I haven't used Blender for a couple of years now, and whoa.
Great improvement, at least feature-wise.
The thing that makes me really impressed by it now is the raytracing plugin.
That's neat.

Blender's internal renderer will raytrace, and a lot of people like it better than Yafray because it is so much faster (scanline/ray combo).

I hope they made changes to the UI, because the was my (and as far as I know, a lot of other people) problem with it.
It's just very... un-intuitive.

That's what most people say, there is a manual though. It's linked through the help menu now. The shitty thing is that in the past two releases alone, the manual is nearly made obsolete. It is good for teaching most of the features, but includes nothing of some major additions in the past two releases. Development has been great in the past year or so, at the rate it is going it is going to "catch up" to the major apps and perhaps pass them up in only a year or two.

There has been talk of making skins, customizable hotkeys and etc for a long time, as far back as I remember. It seems like it would be a simple task, but no one has actually went in and done it.

I'm more of a 3D Studio Max person, but alas, I do not have enough HD space to install it.
One question though, does Blender have HDRI?
Because I *love* HDRI.

It's had radiosity for ages, but it's slow to render. I'm not entirely sure what HDRI is, just that it can be approximated by someone skilled with lighting and that it has a lot to do with radiosity. Also recently added (v. 2.33) is Ambient Occlusion, which is an effect that will allow global illumination and an approximation of photographic scattering in one package.

edit:
Well. The interface still baffles me.
And it sort of stutters, and crashes after a while. But that's probably due to my machine being a piece of crap.
Damn you, Voodoo 3.
I guess I'll have to wait until I get my new, ten times larger HD.
That will happen in two weeks.
Then we'll have a 3D showdown, or something.
And you'll obviously win, because my 3D skills are lacking.

That's weird that it would crash, it's very stable. It'll run find on computers with pentium 120s, depending on how many polys you try to make. ATI cards are known to cause problems, but that's been solved. Sometimes people solve problems like this by reducing the color quality or resolution.

[Meowster]

And still no bump mapping?

[Al_Ninio]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Blender ALWAYS have bump mapping?
I remember bump mapping on one of the first Blender tutorials I've read.
Before it was made open source and all.

[shbaz]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Blender ALWAYS have bump mapping?
I remember bump mapping on one of the first Blender tutorials I've read.
Before it was made open source and all.

Realtime bump-mapping, for the game engine.

I don't even know of any test builds with it right now. It's just one of the things they have on a list for future features. He's working on shadows at the moment, they work, they're just a little slow.

[InCreator]

Yay!
I don't give a heck about Blender, but It's always pleasure to see that free things could rule too. Same thing that we like about AGS.
But I'll stick to 3ds Max 6.

Anyway, the level of 3D graphics (See Shrek2 or Play Syberia 2 for example) today takes away any will to model -- I can't be never, ever good enough to be at least someone on this field...

Two dimensions are more than enough.

[shbaz]

Sorry to bring this crap up again - I don't think anyone cares - but I just found the Siggraph 2004 Blender reel. It showcases a lot of awesome Blender works, all rendered internally or with Yafray.

http://www.blender.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=158&mode=nested&order=1hold=0