The Blender Foundation announced the release of the latest version of its open source 3D software. New features include: Cycles renderer now has initial support for volume rendering and offers performance improvements, trackers in the Motion Tracker can now be weighted to keep the result stable as features disappear or become difficult to track, UI enhancements, modeling improvements (new Laplacian Deform and Wireframe modifiers, plus additions to existing tools), multi-threaded calculation for object modifiers and constraints, plus a number of smaller enhancements (gravity option for sculpting, normalized display for FCurves, derivative map baking, etc.). More on Blender.org.
Blender 2.70
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Clever idea for quick animation sketching… impressive how blender implements a lot of research concepts so quickly…
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Modifiers/Deform/Laplacian_Deform
After only a few months, this 0.01 increment packs more punch than anything ADSK put on table after a year (+big subscription fee). A slap in the face? Compare how amazing and functional CYCLES has become in such a short time vs decades of nonfunctioning activeshade implementations(iray) – that is only one facet of too many to count.
Truth of the matter is that the more I try blender, the more i love it. Its modeling, rendering and some simulation tools already cover majority of the challenges an average cg artist would face daily. To adapt it professionally It would really need to work on some better I/O so it’s shortcomings could be better complimented with another application( support for alembic, better fbx; think Houdini or even max).
I also believe that when it comes to open source, giving the ability for users to develop their own tools, in ICE like fashion, would be a gamechanger. Luckily something called FLAKES is in works.
Understandably a lot of artists fear that they need to know industry standards to have any chance of employment. For smaller studios though, tools are secondary to result and efficiency. Maya, though forced upon as by ADSK as single “entertainment” solution, is still a pipeline tool that is simply inefficient for many of our needs and deadlines.
The bottomline is that blender camp have done a great job and they deserve a lot of credit! There may be a way to go to address your specific professional needs, however show support where you can, it truly deserves it!
@rs Autodesk would expect $1,500 in subscriptions for such a feature :
@Grant
I know… But maybe Marius or another of these brilliant independent developers gives Laplacian Deform a go 🙂
compare with max update :
max 2014 to 2015 new tools (after 1 year) < blender 2.9 to 2.7 new tools (after about 3 month)
……
I’ve been keeping an eye on Blender over the last few month’s and with the announcement of 3ds Max 2015 which was rather a damp grey day in the release history I’ve taken a closer look and now downloaded Blender 2.7 and started to have a serious play.
The thing that kicked this off was a fur and hair tutorial in blender that kicks 3ds Max hair and fur’s tool into next week!
http://lesterbanks.com/2013/11/blender-creating-animal-fur-with-hair-particles-and-cycles/
Blender isn’t perfect but it’s pretty cool on some stuff, enough for me to spend time learning it.
Very nice blender rig:
http://vimeo.com/89851691
http://vimeo.com/89889901