Blender

Blender 2.49

While one half of the developers were busy with the 2.5 project, the other half happily continued working on directly usable and useful features in Blender. Especially advances in the Game Engine justifies having a well tested, bug fixed and stable 2.49 release.

Check this impressive long list of features!

blender.org team, May 2009

Video Texture

The Game Engine now supports multiple streams of video textures for interactive playback in environments. You can use video files (also from URLs), image files, video captures, memory buffer, camera render or a mix of that.
Real-time Dome rendering

This feature allows artists to visualize their interactive projects within an immersive dome environment. Blender supports Fulldome, Truncated domes (front and rear), Planetariums and domes with spherical mirrors.

by Vitor Balbio, Brazil

Game Engine speed-up

Significant speedup has been achieved in several areas;
- Scene Graph optimizes static objects
- View Frustum culling
- Occlusion culling
- Faster Bullet physics initializing
Overall improvement is signifacent, a complex game like YoFrankie runs 3x faster now.

Bullet Physics

The Bullet library upgrade in this release includes brand new generic 6dof constraint with run-time configurable limits, motors and springs to allow for physics-based vehicles, forklift, robots and ragdolls. And more...

Game Engine Modifier support

Support for non-time dependent modifiers in the GE: no need to apply the modifiers before running the game! Works for physics shape too.

Improved Game Logic and Python API

Improve stability, documentation and completeness for the python API.
* Attribute access
* GameObject properties of any type.
* OpenGL and Geometry modules
* New logic and the rendering functions
* Better error feedback

Texture Nodes

Next to Compositing and Materials, Blender Textures now support Node editing. You can use it to create advanced procedural textures, incl...