The Blender Foundation has released the latest version of its open source 3D software. New features include:
- Viewport performance boost
- Initial support for Pixar’s OpenSubdiv geometry subdivision technology, offers GPU tessellation and greatly improves viewport playback performance
- Cycles volume density render
- Weight paint smoothing – new Smooth tool offers improved behavior: can smooth # iterations, option to expand/contract weights, optionally mix with all/selected/unselected
- Big file browser performance boost and arrow keys navigation support
- Node auto-offset feature that helps organize node layouts
- Absolute grid snapping in the 3D view
- Sculpting with tiled strokes
- Video editing tools
- Text effect strips for the sequencer, supporting subtitle export
Plus hundreds of bugs fixed and other improvements. Watch new features videos and find out more on Blender’s website.
Blender is a amazing tool, so many cool features getting added fast.
This is why I love open source!
blender is enought mature to be used at different leves of production intercepting a considerable percentage of CG market,C4D intercepts a great percentage too and 3ds Max…hey I finished the percentages available! 🙂
IMO For it to become a completely solid production tool with nowadays production tools it lacks OpenVDB and Alembic, with those two additions interoperability could be awesome and it could be integrated in nearly any pipeline.
Awesome release!
Both are being developed:
OpenVDB almost made it into this release
https://developer.blender.org/D1308
Alembic is advancing, too
https://developer.blender.org/T37578
Pipeline integration is also part of the planned 2.8 workflow release
https://code.blender.org/2015/07/blender-2-8-the-workflow-release/
I know, I was just saying 🙂
With those tools Blender will be enabled to be integrated in almost any pipeline, no matter if you need particles, volumes, characters, etc… One of the most important things is being able to render anything with Cycles, wich is also evolving at good pace.
Cheers!