Love it !
So much features are added each releases.. mind blowing. And so much bug fixing, that's awesome too. When I look at what it was one-two years ago, I wonder where will be Blender in twelve months ?
I'd really love to see improvements on the viewport shaders/fx/lighting/glsl though but I'm sure it's comming. I heard next Blender Foundation project could be a new BGE oriented project but I'm not sure of that
The interface keeps getting better and better. You can now enable transparency for the side panels, and sculpting can push 25 million polygons with very little slow down if you toggle the right right settings. On Blender Artist forums, one user was showing off 100 million polys in sculpt mode. That's pretty darned impressive.
The interface keeps getting better and better. You can now enable transparency for the side panels, and sculpting can push 25 million polygons with very little slow down if you toggle the right right settings. On Blender Artist forums, one user was showing off 100 million polys in sculpt mode. That's pretty darned impressive.
Could you send me a link to the post on the blender forums?
the new build is real good, i love the new tools
but! i experienced the same bug i had some builds ago
"edgeslide" and "snap to" simply stopped working (actually, edgeslide still works, but only on roughly half the edges with no apparent reason)
restarting blender does not fix this issue
i'am using the official 2.66 build from blender.org
so this kinda sucks, guess i´ll have to go back to 2.65 tomorrow
the new build is real good, i love the new tools
but! i experienced the same bug i had some builds ago
"edgeslide" and "snap to" simply stopped working (actually, edgeslide still works, but only on roughly half the edges with no apparent reason)
restarting blender does not fix this issue
i'am using the official 2.66 build from blender.org
so this kinda sucks, guess i´ll have to go back to 2.65 tomorrow
"edgeslide" and "snap to" simply stopped working (actually, edgeslide still works, but only on roughly half the edges with no apparent reason)
restarting blender does not fix this issue
i'am using the official 2.66 build from blender.org
I can't seem to duplicate any issues with either on mine. File a bug report, and if possible send the blend file. They have a few other showstopper bugs and are planning a "2.66a" release, so you could possibly get a fix pretty quickly if needed.
Usually in textured mode (not glsl render preview) this would show the textures at the maximum size specified in that combobox, and was useful for character skinning as a low detail preview.
Knife Project is pretty cool. It is part of the tools added to help with creating models for 3D Printing, but obviously useful or modeling other things also.
In User Preferences -> Input find 3D View, twirl it down, then twirl down 3D View (Global) and Move View, Rotate View, and Zoom view should be in there. If you twirl those down you should see little check-boxes for alt, ctrl, shift, etc.
Somewhat related - A 3ds Max keymapping was added recently too; should be in next release.
The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.67. New in this release is the Freestyle render engine for non-photorealistic rendering, which can generate 2D line drawings in various styles.
The paint and sculpt system is now much more consistent across different paint modes and has gained various new features. Motion tracking was made faster, and Cycles now has initial support for subsurface scattering.
The node system now support more flexible group editing. For developers of external render engine addons it is now possible to support node based materials.
For 3D printing an addon was added to analyze and export the meshes.
2.67 release: May 7th, 2013.
Some of the better small improvements for 2.67 that people might overlook:
-Ability to turn on/off visibility for multiple objects by click-dragging over eye icons in outliner / graph editor / etc.
-Ability to show weights outside Weight Paint Mode (useful when assigning weights directly to selection in Edit Mode)
-Inset individual faces built in (was a plugin before)
-Search the Keymap by keybindings instead of names.
Damn, Blender's release cycle is so fast and they keep adding so many useful features.
Its very tempting to learn yet another 3d package...
I would recommend it. I used to hate blender, but then I discovered someone's maya to blender keymap file and suddenly everything started becoming usable (from a familiar control scheme point of view). Forced myself to use it for 1 week and now I'm hooked. There's just something about it that makes it far more enjoyable to work in than the usual maya max applications.
Its still lacking in some areas but as you noticed, the development is fast. Where other apps are often just "work", Blender becomes "fun" instead. Its a nice change of pace.
Yea ever since 2.63 came out last year with n-gon support (bmesh) Blender has started to shape up to be a really nice app. The GSOC projects for this year will be announced on the 27th and that should result in a lot of great new features too.
Been using Blender for half a year now (gamestuff and rendering) and coming from Max I can very much recommend it. It's amazingly fast and robust when you get over the steep learning curve at the start.
I've never used Modo before, but I can't imagine parting with $1500 when I can have what has shaped up to be an increasingly competitive tool that's free.
Not nearly as magical as Modo's Workplane, though! It's like an extended version of the 3d cursor concept, and is much more powerful because of it.
Honestly, I find both the workplane and blender's 3d cursor to be annoying, though they both can serve two different functions.
The workplane can easily be emulated btw via subdivided plane. I dont believe the 3d cursor can be emulated by modo, but then again Im not sure why it would want to.
There's something about modo that keeps me from buying a license for it, it has a weird look and feel, and the workflow is a bit annoying at first. Getting used to it and then switching over to other apps might create a conflict of muscle memory and habit. With Blender, I can make it feel very close to Maya...which makes going back and forth between the two less painful. Then you have to wonder if The Foundry will plan on taking Modo and putting it in the price range of its other applications.
Ultimately, Blender is more of a wild card. Ever couple of months you get hit with "Bam! new feature", some impressive some not so much. Learning Blender now might just end up being more rewarding in the long run compared to Modo.
There used to be an addon that hid the 3d cursor, it's still around actually but the hiding part is bugged, think it's called enhanced 3d cursor. In any case I just disable the left click part.
Shift+S in the 3D view explains the beauty of the cursor.
I find it far easier to just D + V(c or x) to snap the pivot point in Maya, then rotate than to fiddle with getting the 3d cursor to work.
In maya is extremely easy to move the pivot/center of any object and snap it right back, where as with blender its always a bit of a struggle. Thats one of the few peeves I have with Blender.
yeah they should just make you click on the thing and drag it, with automatic snapping options. It's a useful tool but I completely understand people calling it unintuitive, you have shift+s cursor to selected, then turn your pivot point to 3d cursor... then turn it back when you're done, just too many steps.
@fuiosg: yes! i totally agree! ive been using blender for a couple of years now and everytime i rotate or mirror something around a specific point (with the 3d cursor, of course), i wonder how other modelling apps do that or if there simply is no easier way to do that. maybe that is one of the few usability issues that remain in blender from the 2.49 days...
How do you guys add new shortcuts, I'm reasonably happy with the defaults but want to add some more. It's nice in the recent update I can search for key bindings but it's still too confusing because it shows all the key bindings for all the modes. Just as an example I want to add calculate and clear bone paths to hotkeys.
For most buttons you can just right click them and choose "Add Shortcut". Then you can search them up in the hotkey settings and and fix conflicts with other hotkeys, if there are any.
For "toggles" like proportional editing (soft selection) and similar stuff, it's a bit more tricky, but still doable. I think right click will do the trick for hotkeying bone paths though.
Replies
Agreed! I love this feature.
So much features are added each releases.. mind blowing. And so much bug fixing, that's awesome too. When I look at what it was one-two years ago, I wonder where will be Blender in twelve months ?
I'd really love to see improvements on the viewport shaders/fx/lighting/glsl though but I'm sure it's comming. I heard next Blender Foundation project could be a new BGE oriented project but I'm not sure of that
http://cgcookie.com/blender/cgc-series/overview-blender-266/
Could you send me a link to the post on the blender forums?
the new build is real good, i love the new tools
but! i experienced the same bug i had some builds ago
"edgeslide" and "snap to" simply stopped working (actually, edgeslide still works, but only on roughly half the edges with no apparent reason)
restarting blender does not fix this issue
i'am using the official 2.66 build from blender.org
so this kinda sucks, guess i´ll have to go back to 2.65 tomorrow
This thread may or may not help... Check this out http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?282621-You-can-press-G-to-slide!-%28The-Blender-situation-in-a-nutshell%29
I can't seem to duplicate any issues with either on mine. File a bug report, and if possible send the blend file. They have a few other showstopper bugs and are planning a "2.66a" release, so you could possibly get a fix pretty quickly if needed.
yes, i know you can tap double G for edgeslide, but it still doesnt work
@xrg
i will try to reproduce the error on the weekend, but i cannot upload any work related files because of nda (sadly)
if i recall right, snap and edgeslide stopped working somewhere after i used solidify and applied the modifier, but i wouldnt bet my life on that
The real action starts about 20 seconds in and just gets better and better!
[ame="
I use that option to look for mipmap edge bleeding
Usually in textured mode (not glsl render preview) this would show the textures at the maximum size specified in that combobox, and was useful for character skinning as a low detail preview.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Modeling/Meshes/Editing/Subdividing/Knife_Subdivide#Knife_Project
It works this way: you select the boundary edges on the object you wanna project, and then the object you will project unto.After that with the second object selected enter edit mode and hit knife project command.:) pretty cool.
Other stuff for 3D Printing:
Print Toolbox Add-on
Ruler and Protractor
Somewhat related - A 3ds Max keymapping was added recently too; should be in next release.
I started up a topic with some other questions:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=118936
Blender 2.67 has just been released.
DL: http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/
Release notes: http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-267/
-Ability to turn on/off visibility for multiple objects by click-dragging over eye icons in outliner / graph editor / etc.
-Ability to show weights outside Weight Paint Mode (useful when assigning weights directly to selection in Edit Mode)
-Inset individual faces built in (was a plugin before)
-Search the Keymap by keybindings instead of names.
Its very tempting to learn yet another 3d package...
I would recommend it. I used to hate blender, but then I discovered someone's maya to blender keymap file and suddenly everything started becoming usable (from a familiar control scheme point of view). Forced myself to use it for 1 week and now I'm hooked. There's just something about it that makes it far more enjoyable to work in than the usual maya max applications.
Its still lacking in some areas but as you noticed, the development is fast. Where other apps are often just "work", Blender becomes "fun" instead. Its a nice change of pace.
For those thinking of learning Blender though and have access to Max/Maya, here's a post I made over at the BlenderArtists forum detailing some of the limitations to watch out for:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?290630-Shifting-from-3DS-Max-to-Blender-for-Game-Asset-Creation&p=2365679&viewfull=1#post2365679
Also, I need to check out Knife Project. I started writing that script, so glad somebody beat me to it!
Blender is kinda quirky sometimes, but the more I use it the more I love it, and this is after 10+years of Max.
Still doesn't hold a candle to Modo in the world of modeling and scripting customization though.
The 3d/2d cursorthingy is magic I tell ya, magic.
Honestly, I find both the workplane and blender's 3d cursor to be annoying, though they both can serve two different functions.
The workplane can easily be emulated btw via subdivided plane. I dont believe the 3d cursor can be emulated by modo, but then again Im not sure why it would want to.
There's something about modo that keeps me from buying a license for it, it has a weird look and feel, and the workflow is a bit annoying at first. Getting used to it and then switching over to other apps might create a conflict of muscle memory and habit. With Blender, I can make it feel very close to Maya...which makes going back and forth between the two less painful. Then you have to wonder if The Foundry will plan on taking Modo and putting it in the price range of its other applications.
Ultimately, Blender is more of a wild card. Ever couple of months you get hit with "Bam! new feature", some impressive some not so much. Learning Blender now might just end up being more rewarding in the long run compared to Modo.
I love blender, the new wireframe view is cool.
I find it far easier to just D + V(c or x) to snap the pivot point in Maya, then rotate than to fiddle with getting the 3d cursor to work.
In maya is extremely easy to move the pivot/center of any object and snap it right back, where as with blender its always a bit of a struggle. Thats one of the few peeves I have with Blender.
For "toggles" like proportional editing (soft selection) and similar stuff, it's a bit more tricky, but still doable. I think right click will do the trick for hotkeying bone paths though.