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Blender 2.40 Released

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thu Dec 22, 2005 09:05 PM
from the new-and-improved dept.
Upgrades Businesses Google Graphics Software The Internet
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."
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  • free sculpting tool also (Score:5, Informative)

    by LetterRip (30937) on Thursday December 22 2005, @09:07PM (#14324021)
    There is also a way cool zbrush like sculpting available as an add on script, see this post for details.

    http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=56101 [elysiun.com]

    LetterRip

  • lots of new features, but... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Toaste (892190) on Thursday December 22 2005, @09:09PM (#14324029)
    ...does the new Blender come with a kitchen sink?

  • Awesome (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2005, @09:14PM (#14324053)
    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.

    • Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)

      by syphoon (619506) on Thursday December 22 2005, @09:33PM (#14324146)
      I don't think I've ever seen someone substitute "proprietary" with "capitalist" like that before. What are you implying? Blender has a little red book?

      Open-source software is not the opposite of capitalism. It's an orthogonal concept.

    • Re:Awesome (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Quarters (18322) on Thursday December 22 2005, @09:51PM (#14324236)
      and it is as versatile as a professional capitalist program like Maya, Lightwave, or 3DS Max.

      No, it's not. In terms of expandability and versatility Max has it beat hands down. Here, do these things in Blender:

      Script a new custom helper node that has a private parameter block to hold run-time specific information and uses the exposed viewport drawing commands to create a custom icon and transform gizmo for the helper object. Create a new material that has a global parameter block to hold settings for .FX (or .HLSL or .GLSL) shaders. Have those shaders work in the viewports. Have the settings be easily accessible both by the scripting language and the C++ SDK so that the data can be easily exported. Create the custom helper node and material in a scripting language, not C or C++ w/ an SDK.

      Now create an entire bipedal skeleton with head, neck, clavicles, R/L upper arms, R/L lower arms, R/L hands, 4 spin segments, pelvis, R/L upper legs, R/L lower legs, R/L feet, proper IK and joint constraints. Do that in less than 30 seconds.

      Still with me?

      Keyframe animate the new skeleton over 100 frames. Create a second skeleton of a totally different scale with a different bone count. Now map the animation from skeleton 1 to skeleton 2, taking into acount the differing bone counts and scale. Do that in less than a minute.

      Use a cloth simulation to create the animation of a person walking through a curtain. Use an extremely dense mesh for the curtain cloth. Now skin-wrap that animation on to a low-res version of the curtain with an IK bone setup instead of a cloth simulation (since cloth sim can't be use in a real-time engine). Quickly! The skin wrapping needs to be done in a minute or so.

      Blender isn't a bad product at all. It's actually a very nice product. That doesn't mean it's more versatile than Max, though. Autodesk has more man hours poured into Max each year than Blender has had for the entire time its been a product. Autodesk has the advantage of a huge customer base and the smarts to talk to those customers and incorporate new features that increase productivity. Max wasn't nearly as versatile 3 years ago as it is now. Except for the biped creation step above it couldn't do any of the things I listed either (except maybe the custom helper node).

      There's nothing wrong with "capitalist" software (eyeroll at the bad melodramatic turn of phrase). If Max provides features and options that fit a current or designed workflow and increases productivity then it is well worth the purchase price.

      • Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)

        by LetterRip (30937) on Thursday December 22 2005, @10:11PM (#14324319)
        [QUOTEScript a new custom helper node that has a private parameter block to hold run-time specific information and uses the exposed viewport drawing commands to create a custom icon and transform gizmo for the helper object.[/QUOTE]

        No problem.

        [QUOTE]Create a new material that has a global parameter block to hold settings for .FX (or .HLSL or .GLSL) shaders.[/QUOTE]

        Sure.

        [QUOTE] Have those shaders work in the viewports.[/QUOTE]

        Alas we will need Ogre or CrystalSpace integration for that yet...

        [QUOTE]Have the settings be easily accessible both by the scripting language and the C++ SDK so that the data can be easily exported. Create the custom helper node and material in a scripting language, not C or C++ w/ an SDK.[/QUOTE]

        Scripting and direct access to the C code no SDK.

        [QUOTE]Now create an entire bipedal skeleton with head, neck, clavicles, R/L upper arms, R/L lower arms, R/L hands, 4 spin segments, pelvis, R/L upper legs, R/L lower legs, R/L feet, proper IK and joint constraints. Do that in less than 30 seconds.[/QUOTE]

        There are preexisiting skeltons with full constraint setups avialable already. Not automagic - but it is the weighting and morphs that are the big time consumers. We have very good morphs and weighting system now, and the rigging and constraints is quite easy and straight forward.

        [QUOTE]Still with me?[/QUOTE]

        Yep

        [QUOTE]Keyframe animate the new skeleton over 100 frames.[/QUOTE]

        Done.

        [QUOTE]Create a second skeleton of a totally different scale with a different bone count. Now map the animation from skeleton 1 to skeleton 2, taking into acount the differing bone counts and scale. Do that in less than a minute.[/QUOTE]

        Nope can't do this yet - motion retargeting will hopefully come by this summer - that is a pretty recent addition though to 3ds etc.

        [QUOTE]Use a cloth simulation to create the animation of a person walking through a curtain. Use an extremely dense mesh for the curtain cloth.[/QUOTE]

        Done

        [QUOTE]Now skin-wrap that animation on to a low-res version of the curtain with an IK bone setup instead of a cloth simulation (since cloth sim can't be use in a real-time engine). Quickly! The skin wrapping needs to be done in a minute or so.[/QUOTE]

        Haven't tried it but pretty sure is doable.

        [QUOTE]Blender isn't a bad product at all. It's actually a very nice product. That doesn't mean it's more versatile than Max, though.[/QUOTE]

        Absolutely agreed.

        [QUOTE]Autodesk has more man hours poured into Max each year than Blender has had for the entire time its been a product. Autodesk has the advantage of a huge customer base and the smarts to talk to those customers and incorporate new features that increase productivity. Max wasn't nearly as versatile 3 years ago as it is now. Except for the biped creation step above it couldn't do any of the things I listed either (except maybe the custom helper node).[/QUOTE]

        Well - with Blender you can accomplish most of what you listed now.

        [QUOTE]There's nothing wrong with "capitalist" software (eyeroll at the bad melodramatic turn of phrase). If Max provides features and options that fit a current or designed workflow and increases productivity then it is well worth the purchase price.[/QUOTE]

        Absolutely agreed.

        LetterRip
  • Does it run on Alcohol?

    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 [libregraphicsmeeting.org]. The plan is to get developers of Blender in one place, plus get developers of other free software [compsoc.com] packages like GIMP, Inkscape, and Scribus together too.

    19 March 2006 in Lyon, France

    • No disrespect meant, but your meeting hasn't recieved any exposure at all among Blender developers - I've seen a few posts at GIMP and other mailing lists, but not a single email on any of the Blender lists.

      LetterRip
      • If you could spread the word in the forums you know of, that would be helpful. It was a gimp mailing list where I heard about it, so I don't know how well-publicised it is in forums of other projects.

        I'm not actually involved in the meeting, I'm just interested because I think the conference is based on a good idea.

        (Correction: In my post I said the conference was on the 19th, but it's actually a 3-day event from the 17th to the 19th)

  • one of the few success stories of wikibooks? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bcrowell (177657) on Thursday December 22 2005, @09:29PM (#14324130) Homepage
    Browsing through wikibooks [wikibooks.org], wikipedia's sister project to try to write other books the wiki way, it's generally pretty difficult to find anything good, even though wikibooks is 2.5 years old. I recently did an unscientific study as part of my research for an article on free books [lightandmatter.com], and the Blender books on wikibooks [wikibooks.org] were one of the very few success stories out of the massive piles of junk [wikibooks.org] there. However, a lot of the best content on wikibooks seems to be stuff that was more or less just dumped into wikibooks after having already been written elsewhere, and comparing the wikibooks stuff on Blender with the stuff on the Blender site, it looks like that may actually have been the case here. There's nothing wrong with that per se (WP has a lot of 1911 Britannica articles that were just copied over), but it doesn't exactly help to convince me that the wiki book model has much potential for success outside of WP, which is uniquely well suited to the wiki approach.
    • Hi,

      the manual on Blenders wiki was indeed developed prior to being put on the wiki but the first version was for 2.33 - It is undergoing heavy development, and in particular all of the translations have happened afterwards. Also, some of the best pages are new additions (ie a superb page done on the hair system, another on the mesh tools etc.).

      LetterRip
    • were one of the very few success stories out of the massive piles of junk [wikibooks.org] there.

      Junk? Dude, that's the coolest thing I've read for ages! You just made my day. Lemme find some toilet paper, I'll be back later...

  • So amazing that its hard to realize its free. (Score:5, Informative)

    by MindPrison (864299) on Thursday December 22 2005, @09:35PM (#14324155) Journal
    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.

    The truth is however - even if it is harder to grasp as a beginner, most 3d applications are hard to learn - in fact ...all 3D is hard to learn when youre new to 3d in general.

    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 .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!

    The main advantage That I think Blender has - in comparison to eg. 3Dstudio max is that once you get started it all becomes easier ...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!

    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.

  • Yay! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by komodotoes (939836)
    I tried to get into Blender a few times over the past while and I was always turned off by the lack of an undo system and the weird UI. People who are learning something new, especially something as complicated as Blender, need to be able to erase a mistake easily. I haven't tried it in some time, so maybe I'll give it a whirl again now that I am free to bugger up my work at will.



    NeverEndingBillboard.com [neverendingbillboard.com]

    • Re:Yay! (Score:4, Informative)

      by 3dr (169908) on Friday December 23 2005, @01:35AM (#14325072)
      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.

    • Lots of goodies awaits.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by MindPrison (864299) on Friday December 23 2005, @01:50AM (#14325114) Journal
      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.

  • and it's completely useless on OS X because... (Score:4, Informative)

    by SuperBanana (662181) on Thursday December 22 2005, @09:55PM (#14324252)
    ...none of the menus work in 10.4.3! [blender.org]* Looks like we'll have to wait for 10.4.4 to be released by Apple, as developer previews of 10.4.4 apparently resolve the issue.

    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.

    • Re:and it's completely useless on OS X because... (Score:4, Informative)

      by lancelet (898272) on Thursday December 22 2005, @10:07PM (#14324301) Homepage Journal
      Blender broke on OSX so severely because its entire user interface is built using OpenGL. Most applications you're familiar with probably use OpenGL only for the 3D displays, not for buttons, list-boxes, etc. Blender is notorious for pushing the OpenGL implementation much further and requiring a much more complete coverage of The Standard than other applications (games, for example). Don't point fingers unless you've looked at the code!
      • Isn't building the interface on OpenGL exactly what Apple says Mac OS X can do? Apple itself uses OpenGL for many of its core technologies, like Expose, Core Video, Core Image, etc. Check it: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/opengl/ [apple.com]

        As far as the "finger-pointing" goes... I'm not going to look at the code, and I'm not a Blender user, but I have to ask: If Apple says Mac OS X can support an OpenGL API (which is a standard), and hasn't set some arbitrary limit on the support the OS gives to that standard,

    • Re:and it's completely useless on OS X because... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      There's similar problems with Modo when upgrading to 10.4.3, and also Alias is advising Maya users not to upgrade to 10.4.3 for some nvidia cards. Doesn't seem like a coincedence to me.
    • Well that's surprising. For reference, it is ONLY with an nVidia card (my 15" PB's Radeon 9700 shows menus under 10.4.3, I just tested with the new download).

      How odd that one graphics card would work while the other wouldn't. Are they drawing their own menus and stuff in OpenGL or something?

      • Actually, yes, they are. They use OpenGL for all the 2d parts of the interface as well as the 3d display. So if your driver has broken 2d OpenGL rendering (many do, since it's not commonly used), Blender's menus will be broken to some degree.

      • Re:and it's completely useless on OS X because... (Score:5, Informative)

        by LetterRip (30937) on Friday December 23 2005, @12:13AM (#14324810)
        [QUOTE]The fact that Blender uses OpenGL for it's GUI basically means that unless your video card is relatively new, and your drivers implement the spec perfectly, you will have problems, either with performance or graphical bugs. Of the five Win boxes in my house, Blender runs usably on none of them; it's either too slow, or the interface is corrupted.[/QUOTE]

        You can put a software only driver in your blender folder that will fix pretty much any card. For ATIs that are buggy turn off 'full hardware accelleration'. S3 and Intel on board graphics also have issues. Pretty much all other cards in the past 10 years should be okay, but NVidia tends to work best on Windows.

        LetterRip

  • Grammar Nazi (Score:5, Funny)

    by Geoffreyerffoeg (729040) on Thursday December 22 2005, @10:08PM (#14324312)
    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".

    • Unless they went into labor before releasing their product, I'm pretty sure they meant "borne".

      I'm sure they labored quite a bit before they could release.

  • bloated? (Score:4, Funny)

    by AvitarX (172628) <me@@@brandywinehundred...org> on Thursday December 22 2005, @11:27PM (#14324638) Journal
    at 6MB isn't blender starting to get bloated?

  • Replacing the Game Engine: CrystalBlend (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jorrit (19549) on Friday December 23 2005, @12:30AM (#14324877) Homepage
    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/ [crystalspace3d.org]). This project is called CrystalBlend (more information on that project here: http://www.crystalspace3d.org/tikiwiki/tiki-index. php?page=CrystalBlend [crystalspace3d.org]). 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,

  • CAD? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Trogre (513942) on Friday December 23 2005, @04:11AM (#14325428) Homepage
    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.

    • There were interface improvements, a quickstart guide, and 3d manipulator - so yes interface improvements.

      LetterRIp
    • While I've never used Maya, I don't think anybody sane characterises Max as easy to pick up sans manual. That app is just mindboggly (justifiably so - it's very powerful).

    • Re:Great... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I can also fly a 747, decode Sanskrit, and map the human genome without reading a single manual!

    • Re:Great... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Xzzy (111297) <sether@NOSPAm.tru7h.org> on Thursday December 22 2005, @09:21PM (#14324090) Homepage
      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. ;)

      • "I wouldn't call it better than 3dmax"

        Ok so it's not better, it's just harder. Not exactly a plus :)

        User friendliness matters a lot. 3D packages have complex interface by their nature - you can't just grab any of them and start making animated furry jungle animals straight out.

        But with my few attempts of trying Blender I had tough luck even creating a sphere and moving and rotating it around.

        When you're hit with such a steep learning curve, you can either give up a lot of your free time and learn it (which
    • 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 :)

    • Re:Can someone translate for me? (Score:5, Informative)

      by LetterRip (30937) on Thursday December 22 2005, @09:49PM (#14324228)
      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

    • Basically, LSCM unwrapping lets you "skin" a model (not in the 3D skinning sense, but in the animal skinning sense) so you end up with a flat covering. Actually, the method is similar too -- just mark the "seems" where you would cut with a knife to remove the skin in one piece. Then, you can export that covering to a paint program, draw on it, and put it back on your model :)
    • Displaying a null and valueless digit with nothing preceeding it seems redundant. If a previous version was 2.39, this version would still be titled 2.4 not 2.40.
      2.0
      2.1
      2.2
      2.3
      2.4
      2.5
      .
      .
      .
      .
      .
      2.39
      2.40
      2.41
    • You seem to suggest that people can't produce work of equal or better quality - which I'm sure you know is complete bunk.

      Did Ansel Adams need the equivalent of a fully-automated camera with a motor drive to produce the work that he did? Not even. His tool of choice, in many ways, reflects Blender's approach to 3D. It's a hands on, nuts-and-bolts approach that keeps the distance between you and your work at a minimum (few interface abstractions to interfere)- much like the potter and his/her potter's wheel.

    • Re:Still no smoothing groups? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Fireflymantis (670938) <martin&remote,net> on Friday December 23 2005, @04:24AM (#14325457) Homepage
      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.

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