New Blender Released 170
An anonymous reader writes "Blender, the cross-platform, open source 3d suite, has released version 2.43 along with a website redesign. This version brings powerful new features within reach of every person. These features include sculpt modeling, retopologizing tools, render passes, render baking, support for multi-uvs, enhanced fluid simulator with particles, new rigid body engine, numerous new compositing modes including defocus (DOF) node and much more. Feature videos are also available."
Goof Stuff! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Goof Stuff! (Score:4, Funny)
Wait a second... what's wrong with programming in vi? It's way easier to use than some random IDE with an overly-complex GUI.
I mean... a Unix CLI *is* an IDE - and it's not like a programmer should be complaining about needing idiot-proof tools.
Eclipse (Score:2)
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If you don't master the tool enough to unleash it's full power, that's another story.
Eclipse is also very useful, and it's power is easier to master. To each it's own.
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Re:Eclipse (Score:4, Insightful)
I consider this a failure of the programming language you're working in, rather than a beneficial feature of your IDE.
Languages like Java (the other offender being C#) *do* punish the programmer for working without a complex IDE. They require like a million lines of code before you can even start programming. They require method autocomplete because they have methods like "my_array.sortThisArrayInDescendingAlphabeticalOrd erUsingHeapSort()". They require that your editor supports having multiple files open because no non-trivial functionality can be implemented in a single file.
If you're working in C, or Perl, or Ruby, or Python, or Haskel, or even C++ then vi works really well. Sure, it's possible to argue that a programming language should be more verbose than Perl, but getting much more unnecessarily verbose and strict about form than Python is probably a bad idea.
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You can have encapsulation without having to explicitly declare hundreds of setters and getters, see Python. You only declare accessor methods for properties that do something more than internally store the provided parameters. For the other object attributes, you can use them directly - but later turn the attribute into a property if needed, by adding getter/setter "trigger" methods that use the same syntax as attributes.
They require like a million lines of code before
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I'm going to go with the python-esque:
The important thing for the reader here is that we're doing a sort in descending order. Normally it would be ascending order, so descending order is special. If we're sorting strings, it's *obviously* alphabetical. All we care about "heap sort" is that it's a stable sort - stable / unstable should be specified in the documentation of the sort function and we can c
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Almost all the time. Implicitly assumed sane defaults speed things up immensely, because they allow the user to think about only the unusual options that they've chosen.
I guess the key thing here is this: You're supposed to actually know the programming language yo
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ED(1) Unix Programmer's Manual ED(1)
NAME
ed - text editor
SYNOPSIS
ed [ - ] [ -x ] [ name ]
DESCRIPTION
Ed is the standard text editor.
---
Computer Scientists love ed, not just because it comes first
alphabetically, but because it's the standard. Everyone else loves ed
because it's ED!
"Ed is the standard text editor."
And ed doesn't waste space on my Ti
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"its UI and methodology are so vastly different to everything else out there that I doubt it'll replace the big boys anytime soon"
When I first starting playing around with it I nearly made the mistake of instantly dismissing it because, well, frankly, its GUI looks terribly confusing. After sitting through a tutorial for an hour everything made sense and it was exceedingly fast to work with. I think most people experience the same thing using Blender.
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Re:Goof Stuff! - Long Way Baby (Score:3, Insightful)
I like to use software after it has come its long way.
Woo-Hah! (Score:3, Funny)
Meh. (Score:5, Funny)
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Why, one might ask, is that so?
Does this group have a particularly bad reputation for releases or something?
Cheers
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*laugh* Thank you. Highly unusual; I guess if you need a blender measured in horsepower, good on ya.
Cheers
Yes, that'll render as well. (Score:2)
How about some user interface? (Score:1, Insightful)
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The interface is just fine. Yes there is a steep curve, but if you take the time you will see there is nothing wrong with it.
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I think blender is a wonderful project and it deserves our support.
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Which one is easier?
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Mod parent up. Blenders UI sucks balls. (Score:2, Insightful)
Anonymous coward not withstanding.
Blenders UI looks to be designed by sadists. There is a reason for UI standards. It's all standard stuff, Blender devs just do things their way (which isn't X's way or macs or Windows or anybodys)
If you don't believe in UI standards try using blender, it will make you a believer. Blender makes both Word Perfect and Autocad for DOS look intuitive and easy to learn in comparison. Sure if it's the only app you use you eventually get used to it.
Re:Mod parent up. Blenders UI sucks balls. (Score:4, Insightful)
I use both Blender and Maya and I can't help but laugh about what people like you say. By the time you have actually learned all of the concepts and methods the UI is about the last thing you'll be concerned with. No matter how good a UI is it cannot teach you how to use 3d modeling software.
Besides Blender is built around hot key usage which makes it much faster to model in, IMHO than Maya, but yes you have to learn how to use it.Re:Mod parent up. Blenders UI sucks balls. (Score:4, Funny)
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Care to reconsider who's really going to profit from this? [artlebedev.com]
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Blender' UI is there to point you at the keyboard (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree, Blender's UI could use a lot of work. gmax/3ds max have a much better UI. I've spent lots of time under both Blender and gmax, and Blender's UI makes it very hard to do anything well and quickly. Since then, I've kept Blender off of my computer...
Then you are cutting yourself off from a very powerful tool. The Blender UI is simply a training aid to get you up to speed on the keyboard shortcuts. Once you realise that Blender is built around one hand on the keyboard firing up functions and the mouse in the 3D view to do the editing, you'll find that it is fast. However, like many powerful utilities, you must get up the learning slope to be productive with Blender.
It should also be pointed out that the Blender UI continues to be cleaned up and made
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Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS was a well designed piece of software. Like VI, if you took the time to learn it you were very productive in it.
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"The best improvement (because it doesn't seem to have happened yet) be a decent UI"
Harrr.. the best improvement be in me gettin' some readin' glasses, harrr!!!
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Blender's UI could use some visual feedback in places, and the usability of the widgets could be improved, but the UI isn't exactly GUI oriented, it's keyboard oriented. This makes Blender hard to learn, but once you get used to the interface, Blender is very powerful and efficient.
I believe anything lacking in Blender's UI is just as much (if not more) the fault of OpenGL as it is the Blender developers.
The fact that they don't publish a manual any more (it having been replaced with a Wiki) is another
Re:How about some user interface? (Score:5, Informative)
And you still can get the paper version, albeit the slightly off-colored first printing run edition: http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/product_info.php?
The manual will continue, after all, it's part of how the blender foundation is financed. (Clue the conspiracy theorists that say we make the software hard to use on purpose in 3... 2...)
~D.J. Capelis
Blender Dev
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Power users who assume they can just muddle their way through are the greatest enemy of any significant UI improvements in *any* software. Sometimes you can do that. Sometimes you have to suck it up and read a manual. Sometimes you even have to actively train yourself in something. That's OK... some things aren't trivial.
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Other people seem to be able to handle it.
It's possible that you're deficient mentally at some specific task that the Blender interface assumes humans are good at - focusing on what you need out of a larger set of info might be it. That would suck for you, but unless it can be shown to be common it's not worth changing the interface over.
If so, you get the standard special-ed speech "Suck it up and cope, you're probably exaggerating your problem". Sorry. =P
Re:How about some user interface? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've heard this critisism from people before, but usually because it is different to what they're used too rather than because it is actually bad.
I've sat and watched my brother, who is a professional 3D animator, using Max do do some relatively simple task with a path and was amazed at how long it took him. I'd been learning Blender and could accompish exactly the same result in at least a third of the time, and I'm a newb. I just happen to be uncorrupted by Max's UI.
He had tried Blender and found it difficult to use. I strongly recommended going through the tutorials, he took the time and now raves about how quick and easy it is to do complex tasks that used to take for ever.
I'd rate Blender up with Apache and Firefox as showcasing excellent OSS
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This has been similar to my experience as well, making Battlefield 1942 objects(models) with Kubuntu Dapper and Blender compared to my buddy with Win XP and 3D Studio Max.
I think it's all according to what you are used to.
I teach Firearms Safety and Marksmanship, and have found that the n00bs usually do much better than the 133t
bunch. With the n00bs, you don't have to break bad/inefficient habits, but it's at the same time tough to break out of the mold when you are accustomed to a certain concept
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The only problem is that the tutorials aren't being developed so much anymore. I got up to the dice tutorial on Wikibooks, but it pretty much stops after that.
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And yes, there is a great advantage to conventions and interface standards. If a program is going to follow interface standards, then it's quite bad if Ctrl+S is not the save key, for example.
But if a program is so radical that it says "OK, stop. We're throwing away the entire interface convention", then sure, it's going to have a steep learning curve. But given that a user has the time committment to learn
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If a program is going to follow interface standards, c-x c-s is used for saving a buffer. c-s does a search.
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oh no! (Score:5, Funny)
So Blender has become self-aware and is now rapidly releasing updates of itself, no doubt gaining strength and influence with each new version, until it is powerful enough to control the world's nuclear arsenal, so it can wipe out humanity and jumpstart the era of software...
Man, that sucks!
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Actually, the strong desire to nuke the planet may be considered a telltale sign of developing an IQ.
now I feel old... (Score:1)
Article is a dupe (Score:2)
Oh! I thought you said a new "Bender" was released!
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Question of the Moment (Score:2)
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~D.J. Capelis
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want to learn blender? (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_
Thanks!
spidey
No Changelog link? (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, I know it's in TFA, but come on, the story is about a release, so why not link to the changelog as well?
Well.. (Score:2, Funny)
In Soviet Russia, Blender release you!
GtkRadiant (Score:2, Interesting)
Now fully jargon-enabled (Score:3, Funny)
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Most of these features are surprisingly easy for anybody who knows their way around Blender to try out in about a minute. Watch the videos closely to see what buttons they press (or just look for a tutorial). For soft body for example, it takes about 5 buttons to get a cloth to realistically fall over another object.
I still dont.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Creating an object while having it placed where some 3d cursor is without having a option to tell it "No create it a the center of the scene like every other peice of 3d software known to man" is just crazy to me. Even more crazy then that is not being able to select an object and have a window show its properties. When I say that please don't point me to the crude layouts to see a objects properties all over the place, instead go use Autodesks Maya, Softimage XSI, or 3DS Max and thats what I'm looking for. On top of that the floating property windows which are in blender have very small text and the input values are a pain in the ass to edit. Most of all though they way you select objects, polygons, vertices etc are just wtf. I don't know how many times I have accidentaly hit a mouse button on a high res mesh which moved a vertex without me even knowing it.
These are just personal opinions and obviously some people like it the way its currently done, why though I have no damn clue. Blenders a piece of software I'd truely like to see go far, hell it already has in many aspects. Mabye this is why I tend to bitch so much, because I'd realy like to see them succeed. I just don't like how many of the open source projects that end up geting past the crash every 2 mins phase, always end up reinventing the wheel when it comes to how things are done and have been done. Why can't they see "Hey every other 3d app has done it this way since the beginning of time. Maybe theirs something good about that method" instead of saying "No this is open source freedom of choice roxors so lets do it the opposite regardless if it helps you with work or not". It's sad they do things so far from the norm with certain interactions and presenting data to the user, because all it means to me is Softimage and Autodesk will continue to get my money next year and the year after and etc etc.
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I find that for some reason, commercial packages insist on being idiot-proof. This, however, us
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Speaking as someone with 10 semesters of teaching 3ds max to undergrads under his belt, if Max and Maya feel idiot-proof to you, Blender must be really goddamn confusing.
PS to grandparent - 3ds max creates objects where the cursor is, and can even align the object's pivot and local coordinates to the face normal under the cursor. The lack of that feature has always been one of my pet peeves about Maya.
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Personally, I abhore the attitude of "that's how it's always been done", and although I'm not a blender power user, have found many of it's features to just make sense once you understand the basic concept (which does have a fairly steep learning curve.
Continuing stupidity (Score:2)
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Even with the program as is, the user interface have taken leaps forward in re-organization of it's features.
The thing that many people become frustrated with Blender is going to be that 3D mesh creation is a skill
There are many people who download Blender, Add a Sphere, hit Render and then
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Maya changed this "feature" in version 7 because people complained so much, and 3DS Max has always created objects at the cursor. Not sure about every other package, but personally, I think creating objects in the center adds steps, because you have to first create the object, then move it to where it needs to be.
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Once again: The Blender philosophy is not to copy other software so that people can easily switch. It's creating something good from the ground up, hoping that peo
Oh, just great. Thanks. (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW:
1.) The new website (a new template for Typo3 [typo3.org], their CMS, looks cool but it's way to wide and/or inflexible.
2.) Blender seriously rocks and is closing in on the big players in 3D quickly in terms of usability and featureset. Amonst the new ones: The integrated compositor now has alpha blending and pass rendering which has me ditching my video tools. No need for Final Cut Pro for Renders anymore.
Support the team. And thanks to them for yet another great Blender release. Can't wait to lay my hands on the 2.43 final.
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Typo3... Inflexible? Are you kidding? There are hundreds of different extensions and you can do everything you want with their built-in script language.
The biggest typo3 problems IMHO are the lack of a serious debug tool and a structured objects environment (now it looks a bit like a mess).
Anyway this is by far the most powerful Open source CMS i've ever used. I'd recommend it for any project such as Blen
ack! (Score:2)
But is it safe? (Score:2)
We also have a new webserver for the website dubbed 'Emo'...
That doesn't sound very safe.
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Emo is the old dude in the official Blender movie, Elephant's Dream [elephantsdream.org].
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It's the old guy who keeps incessantly chanting, "Emo, it's not safe, Emo. Emo!".
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In fact that whole movie was so weird and confusing. I liked certain parts of it, but not the overall story.
Cool but... (Score:2)
How odes it compare to Bryce, Vue, and Poser? (Score:2)
Why are their two Mac Blenders? It's a drag. (Score:2)
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You are running both ppc and intel machines from a shared
The question is... (Score:2)
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If you prefer raytracers, blender actually allows yo
i'm going offtopic.. (Score:2)
Hm, I suppose I should download it and check it out.
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Luckily my brother is an ace with Blender. I'm going to get him to make some realtime animations and export them so I can make a 3D game
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The first link is to a blender-specific news site. I wouldn't call it a blog.
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Perhaps you should see if the problem presents itself on the previous version of blender and on the current version with a retail release of Vista, and post a bug if the problem is still present. I would put my money on it being a bug in your OpenGL implementation.
* I haven't had a chance to try this release out yet.
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Here [wikibooks.org] is a list of wikibooks on Blender, including:
And most importantly, here [ibiblio.org] is a repository of video tutorials, which I learned off. You want to go down to "Contributed Tutorials" and start from the top of that list. It's very slow - it takes the first 2 tutes just to