Blender 2.65 Released 93
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.'"
Re:Old News (Score:5, Funny)
2.65? My blender goes up to 9. I think that's puree.
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Our blender is 50 years old. It has two settings, "Usually enough" and "Always enough". The thing is built like a tank. I love it.
I have wanted to learn Blender (the software) for a long time. I've been an on-and-off avid POV-Rayer for more than 20 years (mostly off these days), and as much as I love POV-Ray, I wouldn't mind learning a powerful modeller with modern features, but every time I've sat down and started to mess around with Blender (or pretty much any other 3D package), I am quickly overwhelm
Re: Old News (Score:5, Informative)
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Well, someday I will give it another shot _with_ tutorials. I've known that tutorials exist and that I'm going to really have to use them, it's just that 99% of software can be figured out, as another poster said, by messing around with it.
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Thanks for the encouragement. I will definitely have to check out the tutorials.
And I totally understand about "messing around with it". I'm working on a contract fixing bugs for some network management software. I've only been there for 4 months. One of the support people I'm working with was asking me recently if I'd had any training in the software. My response was something to the effect of "Heck, no, I've just messed around with it." (Actually, I probably just laughed.) Yes, I don't know much an
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In a nutshell - use numberpad for view manipulation, ABC for selections, tab to s
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Thanks for the encouragement... it's definitely something I want to do... in my ever-shrinking free time.
I also know a couple of my kids would get a kick out of using it as well. One of them has done some stuff with Google Sketch and some other simpler tools. We have several times commented to each other that we would love to try to conquer the basics of Blender.
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Your blender only goes up to 9? Mines goes to 11.
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Well, it looks like I need an update. Where can d/l that from?
Re:N-gons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly (Score:2)
Blender is a blend of tools: modeling, animation, rendering, video compositing, game engine, and video editor.
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... and what is wrong with n-gons? You know a square or a triangle is an n-gon right?
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> 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 expor
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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.
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Oh, sweet (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
3D Comp[uter Graphics Software (Score:5, Informative)
Re:3D Comp[uter Graphics Software (Score:5, Informative)
Or in fewer words, Blender is to Maya what GIMP is to Photoshop.
Re:3D Comp[uter Graphics Software (Score:5, Informative)
Blender is based around the modifier-stack philosophy present in 3DS Max, which is probably my biggest complaint about it tbh. Max is, and always has been, very inflexible compared to Maya. It's great for getting some stuff done quickly, but if you're not careful, you can easily run up against the boundaries of what's possible with the software. Maya is a very different beast in this regard (along with XSI & Houdini). It's organised around a node/attr dependency graph which can easily be reconfigured to solve whatever problem needs solving. If you hit a problem in Maya, there is always a way around it (which may be horribly hacky, but at least there is a workaround). That's the main reason Maya/Houdini/XSI are used extensivley within the VFX world, and why you'll never find anyone using Blender or Max.
That's not to say Blender isn't good at what it does, but it's not something that can really compete with Maya. It's great in the games arena (especially indy games), but it's core level architecture is not an approach that would work nicely in VFX world sadly....
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If you don't like using a modifier stack, you are always free to 'apply' the modifiers as soon as you find the parameters you want. It's just one extra step...
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I don't get it. You want both ways?
Re:3D Comp[uter Graphics Software (Score:4, Interesting)
I use Maya professionally and Blender personally. I love that there 's powerful and free 3D software, and for my own creative uses I like how Blender has odd little features that can turn wonderfully abstract in a flash (array modifier I'm looking at you, lovingly).
However, when doing work that other people are telling me to do, it's Maya all the way because you're going to get to the point where you need, *need*, NEED to hack it to get it out the door and Maya never lets me down there.
(The one exception is text. I used Blender once in actual production to create text objects which were exported to Maya. Anyone who's tried to use Maya's text will know why.)
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Blender is use a lot in the pro world. I suggest you check out their website and read up on who is using it.
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Assuimg VFX includes modern game development, then you'd be wrong about max in a very extreme way. Especially when Crytek uses it for it's 3D assets.
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I don't think Blender is much like any of the Adobe products. The entire orientation of the development effort is different.
The Adobe products are designed for industrial use, where perhaps a hundred different artists are working simultaneously on the same 5 second animation scene, each doing some small piece of the whole. Blender is designed for an individual artist who exerts total control over every aspect of the work for as long as it is in his hands. That does not mean that Blender cannot be used coll
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I don't think Blender is much like any of the Adobe products. The entire orientation of the development effort is different.
Adobe doesn't make any 3D modelling or animation packages, although Autodesk do....
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Blender retains the modifier stack approach, but it is also increasingly adding nodes as an alternatve. As parent post points out, stack modifiers are easier to work with, while nodes are more versatile.
My own use of Blender is relatively simplistic; I don't attempt anything on the scale of __Tears of Steel__ or __Sintel__. For real estate fly-throughs, architect modeling, and most other commercial work, the limitations of modifier stacks do not get in the way.
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Or in fewer words, Blender is to Maya what GIMP is to Photoshop.
What's Maya? You mean those calendar people?
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Oh goodie! Now can you tell me what this Firefox thingy is?
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Nope...there's karma here too.
Great Renderer, Lousy UI... (Score:1)
Re:Great Renderer, Lousy UI... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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If I could find the 2.4 key mappings for 2.5+, I would use it more.
Re:Great Renderer, Lousy UI... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Great Renderer, Lousy UI... (Score:4, Insightful)
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You must not use Blender much.. they redesign the UI every release. It's a way to keep people buying their books. A book on blender you bought 6 months ago is useless with the next release.
That is my biggest complaint, STOP FRIGGING REDESIGNING THE UI!.
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You don't have to spend a dime on trainig. They have excellent, free documentation all over the internet.
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Good, but still for hobbyists (Score:2)
Re:Good, but still for hobbyists (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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.
You just don't. (Score:4, Informative)
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Blender is unlikely to fill the needs of Big Studio Productions, for the simple reason that there is no good way to handle security with it. In an environment where $$millions are invested in the product and the product involves development of new animation techniques, the risks of industrial espionage have to be managed. Blender is not designed with that kind of management in mind. Adobe's products are.
Blender will become the best software for a 3D artist, if it is not already that. But it is not being de
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There is no convenient way with Blender to give just the one piece of a project to some day worker while withholding access to those parts that need not concern him, and which he should not have access to. That is inherent in the Blender database, which is a single file all neatly zipped up and without any mechanisms for password protection or other security.
You hire some monkey off the street to do a week's worth of work for you and keep things on schedule while the artist who should be handling that pie
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Is it not that the smallest level of granularity that git works with is the individual file? Is there some way that git can manage changes to records within a single file object-oriented database like a .blend file?
I agree that Blender proxies could be used within a .blend file that was specially prepared for a temp employee. I don't see any other way of doing it. As to using links, they would expose as much as append does.
But it remains true that you need to use an artist who understands Blender to pre
Re:Good, but still for hobbyists (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Is it? hmmm...just googled this: "The Rebus Render Farm instantly provides you with 1,700 XEON CPUs to render your animations and still-images. No matter which 3D-application you're using: Our Render Farm supports them all! 3ds Max , Maya, Cinema 4D, Softimage ,Maxwell,MODO,Lightwave, Blender"
source: http://www.rebusfarm.net
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I work as a 3d artist in a game company. My take on this is as follows.
For the time being I'd say the main barrier to entry for blender is simply finding people who use it. Schools teach mostly Maya or Max, and anyone wanting to work in the industry is going to focus on learning what the industry uses so they can get a job. It's a catch 22 that means a studio that wants to make the switch basically has to make a conscious decision to absorb the productivity cost of having their team learn a new tool. Which
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There is no way the Blender Foundation can compete with that unless they become more like RedHat.
They should. This is exactly the kind of software which could actually make some money from selling support while producing the software as open source at the same time.
they used to, sort of (Score:2)
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 [linuxlookup.com], for example). Documentation is now one of the weakest points of Blender, IMHO.
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For hobbiests, and also for individual artists, Blender is top notch.
But to meet all the needs of Big Studios, Blender would need some serious redesign. Much of which would destroy features that are good for individual artists.
For instance, the .blend file is THE database that holds everything related to the scenes it contains. It is designed as a library so that an artist can easily take ("append" in Blender terms) something from his prior work and put it into his current work. Like a texture, or an arma
Somewhat off topic (Score:1)
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
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"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."
Keep in mind that there are at least a few asshats here on Slashdot who will disagree with you in print, then login with another account or as AC and mod you down (or the other way around). I have been the victim of that more than once. That kind of sockpuppetry is disgusting, however, and on a couple of occasions I actually caught who was doing it.
More than a hobbyist tool (Score:1)
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 minut
Did they fix the boolean operations? (Score:1)
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The new Boolean modifier is fantastic (based on the Carve? library). Very fast and keeps your UV coords.
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There was new boolean modifier code that was put in a few versions ago. It is considerably faster, but the some of the same mathematical problems exists in the new code as well. Namely, you can't have nonmanifold meshes in boolean. ie: no open mesh, must be closed.
Before, it would just crash, now it gives errors in the console, last I checked.
Try it again I guess, just keep in mind the limitations. Also, don't be a noob and try boolean two 1 million poly cubes and wonder why your system grinds to a halt fro
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Any big game studios using it? (Score:1)
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?
Did they change the ui again? (Score:2)
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.
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That happened exactly once in recently times in the transition between 2.4->2.5 what on earth are you talking about.
Just in time (Score:1)
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.