Blender 2.63a

Blender 2.63 Release Notes

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.63. The 2.6x series is being targeted at including all work that happened in branches or patches past years.

This release was focused on integrating and stabilizing the long awaited BMesh modelling system, which has full support for N-sided polygons and many new modelling tools. New tools include Dissolve, Inset, Bridge, Vertex Slide, Vertex Connect, Bevel, and improved versions of Knife, Subdivide and Rip.

Check the list below for highlights and the full changelog.

Released: April 27th, 2012.








BMesh

BMesh is the new Blender mesh system with full support for N-sided polygons instead of only triangles and quads.

In particular there is a new Dissolve tool to remove vertices, edges and faces without making holes in the mesh, a new Inset tool to inset faces, and a much improved Knife tool which takes advantage of N-gons to generate clear cuts. Tools such as subdivide and loop cut will also generate clean topology because faces no longer have to be triangulated.


Sculpt Hiding

Portions of the mesh can now be hidden in sculpt mode to improve performance and sculpt parts of the mesh that would otherwise be difficult to access.


More Features

Other new features include a Movie Clip option for the Sequencer, a compositing node to output multiple files or multilayer EXR files, new tools for linking and detaching nodes, more particle rotation options, and Linux support for drag n' drop from external applications.



Cycles Render

Among the features added in this release are support for a panoramic camera, mirror ball environment textures, and float precision textures.

Also new are render layer mask layers, a shadow render pass, ambient occlusion, and viewport display of background images and render layers.




Motion Tracker

Motion tracking got a few smaller improvements, mostly related to 2D stabilization and a few smaller tools.


Addons

Various options were added to imports and exporters, an Atomic Blender PDB exporter was added, and Renderfarm.fi now supports Cycles.

Bug fixes

This release was mainly focused on stabilizing BMesh, but also includes 150 fixes for bugs that existed in previous releases.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.63/Bug_Fixes


Blender 2.63 Release Notes

Under Development
Blender 2.63 is currently being tested for release. See the release schedule and targets.

Release Candidate
A number of test builds and release candidates will be made available before the official release.

BMesh

BMesh is the new Blender mesh system with full support for N-sided polygons instead of only triangles and quads.

In particular there is a new Dissolve tool to remove vertices, edges and faces without making holes in the mesh, a new Inset tool to inset faces, and a much improved Knife tool which takes advantage of N-gons to generate clear cuts. Tools such as subdivide and loop cut will also generate clean topology because faces no longer have to be triangulated.
Cycles

Among the features added in this release are support for rendering environment maps, render layer mask layers, a shadow render pass, ambient occlusion and float precision textures.
Motion Tracker

Motion tracking got some improvements which are mostly relates on 2D stabilization and few smaller tools.
More Features
Other new features in this release include face hiding for sculpting, a compositing node to output multiple files at once or multilayer EXR files, new tools for linking and detaching nodes and more particle rotation options.
Addons
Bug Fixes
This release was mainly focused on stabilizing BMesh, but also includes 110 fixes for bugs that existed in previous releases.


Blender 2.62

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.62. The 2.6x series is being targeted at including all work that happened in branches or patches past years.

The Cycles render engine now has layers/passes, you can track objects inside videos now, have much better and faster boolean intersections and use great new UV Tools.

Check the list below for highlights and the full changelog.

Released: February 16th, 2012.

Cycles Render Engine

A number of new features were added, including render layers and passes, multi GPU rendering and selection of GPU device, improved sampling for complex environment maps, border rendering, BVH caching for faster rendering of camera fly-throughs, and new shading nodes for color correction and a checkerboard texture node.


UV Tools

Many new UV editing tools were added: an advanced interactive stitch tool, to align and join together UV islands. A subdivision surface aware UV unwrapping to reduce stretching. Seam marking in the UV editor, and a tool to compute seams for islands. Sculpting tools to grab UVs and relax or pinch unwraps.


Remesh modifier

The Remesh modifier is a tool for generating new mesh topology based on an input surface. The output follows the surface curvature of the input, but its topology is a uniform distribution of quads. It can generate smoothed output or tag sharp features to better capture corners.


Collada

A Second Life compatibility option was added for exporting armatures, along with a number of other fixes related to transformations and armatures. There is also a new development team that will try to improve the Collada integration further in following releases.


More features

Other new features include: improved bump map quality in the viewport, various new dynamic paint options, international text copy and paste and editing in the text editor, longer names and file paths, drag and drop parenting in the outliner, new theme's preset system and many more changes.


Motion Tracking

Object tracking support has been added, so that not only camera animation can be reconstructed from footage, but also the animation or transformation of objects in the scene. This comes along with many improvements to the tracking user interface and tools.


"Carve" Booleans

The boolean modifier now uses the Carve library, which should give much improved results. This library is more stable and faster, resolving old well-known limitations of our previous library. The general workflow and options available in the user interface are unchanged, usually the modifier will simply run faster and produces a better output mesh. However there also some changes in behavior.


Game Engine

The game engine user interface was polished, editing text objects in the user interface and through the python API has been made easier, full screen and antialiased rendering has been improved, along with various other changes.


Python API

Matrices and vectors math classes were improved in various ways. Column-major access was changed to more standard row-major access and easier access for rows, columns, translation was added. Vectors now can have arbitrary size, and matrices are now pretty printed in the console.


Add-ons

Network render now has support for version control systems, render engines, point cache baking jobs, and a new web interface was added, along with a number of other improvements. There were also features added to After Effects export, X3D export, Atomic Blender PDB import, MHX import, UV layout export, and Screencast Keys.

Bug fixes

As usual, each release includes a long list of bug fixes. For Blender 2.62, we have fixed 205 bugs in existing features.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.62


Blender 2.62 RC

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.62


Blender 2.61

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.61. The 2.6x series is being targeted at including all work that happened in branches or patches past years.

Most notable in this release is the new render engine Cycles, the Camera Tracker, Ocean Simulation texture and Dynamic Paint. Check the list below for highlights and the full changelog.

Released: December 14th, 2011.

Cycles Render Engine

Cycles is a new render engine that is available next to Blender Internal. It is a raytracing based render engine with support for interactive rendering, a new shading node system, new texture workflow and GPU acceleration. It is still in development, and more production features are planned to be added, this is the first preview release.

Dynamic Paint

Dynamic paint is a new modifier and physics system that can turn objects into paint canvases and brushes, creating vertex colors, image sequences or displacement. This makes many effects possible that were previously difficult to achieve, for example footsteps in the snow, raindrops that make the ground wet, paint that sticks to walls, or objects that gradually freeze.

More features

Camera sensor size and presets, improved image saving, 3D mouse color wheel editing, more translations to other languages, node muting improvements, region drawing tweaks, and many more small changes.

Add-ons

New Addons in this release are an Adobe After Effects exporter, Atomic Blender (Protein Data Bank) file importer, Acclaim and C3D motion capture importers, and Nuke camera animation exporter and importer.

Motion Tracking

Motion tracking support has been added, to reconstruct camera animation from real footage, and composite 3d rendered object into movie clips. A new Movie Clip editor for loading clips, tracking points and reconstructing motion was added. Constraints can apply this reconstructed motion into the scene, and compositing nodes are available for (un)distorting rendered animations or real footage.

Ocean Simulation

Ocean simulation tools take the form of a modifier, to simulate and generate a deforming ocean surface, and associated texture, used to render the simulation data. Ported from the open source Houdini Ocean Toolkit, it is intended to simulate deep ocean waves and foam.

Python API

The render engine API has been extended for closer integration, a mechanism to detect changes in scenes and persistent callbacks were added, the noise module was updated, and easier access to library datablocks was added, along with various other changes.

Bug fixes

180 bugs that existed in previous releases have been fixed!


Blender 2.61 Release Notes

Under Development
Blender 2.61 is currently under development and release notes are a work in progress, see the release schedule and targets.

Release Candidate is out!

You now can download release testbuilds for 2.61. Use these builds as reference before filing bug reports!

http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.61/

Prominent Features
Motion Tracking
Motion tracking support has been added, to reconstruct camera and object animation from real footage, and composite 3d rendered object into movie clips.
A new Movie Clip editor for loading clips, tracking points and reconstructing motion was added. Constraints can apply this reconstructed motion into the scene, and compositing nodes are available for (un)distorting rendered animations or real footage.
Cycles Render Engine
Cycles is a new render engine that is available next to Blender Internal. It is a raytracing based render engine with support for interactive rendering, a new shading node system, new texture workflow and GPU acceleration.
It is still in development, and more production features are planned to be added, this is the first preview release.
Dynamic Paint
Dynamic paint is a new modifier and physics system that can turn objects into paint canvases and brushes, creating each vertex colors, image sequences or displacement.

Ocean Simulation
Ocean simulation tools take the form of a modifier, to simulate and generate a deforming ocean surface, and associated texture, used to render the simulation data.

More Features
List of other changes.

Python
The Render Engine API has been extended for closer integration, a mechanism to detect changes in scenes was and persistent callbacks were added, along with various other changes.
List of Python changes.
Addons
A new addon was added to export animation data to Adobe After Effects. The camera and placeholders for all of the objects you select can be exported and used to link After Effects' filters or layers basing on your scene created in Blender.
List of Addon changes.
Bug Fixes
While many new features have been added, 117 bugs have also been fixed, see the list of bug fixes.


The 2.60a release is a bugfix release for 2.60

3D window: Armature-bones with wire draw type were not displaying in solid view mode - r41113
3D window header: After collapsing the pull-down menus, no icon available to make them show again. - r41117
Dopesheet: Fixed crash when moving keys in editor - r41128
Audio export: 7.1 export was being miscalculated - r41132
Game Engine: Action actuator breaks animation. IPO options can be set too frequently - r41134
3D Window: missing updates when changing smoke flow settings - r41151
Node editor: missing updates when assigning/removing Materials on Objects - r41152
Adding a new pose to the Pose Library crashed - r41175
Fix for un-handled exception in audio library - r41203
Incorrect keying set names 'Scale' vs 'Scaling', where 'Scale' was hard coded in auto keyframe when 'Only Insert Needed' - r41211
Python: RNA/API, getting Event.ascii would crash - r41214
Addons / Exporter: Quake MAP export gives an error for UV textured geometry - r2504


Blender 2.60

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.60. This is the beginning of the Blender 2.6x series, targeted at including all work that happened in branches or patches past years.

Most notable in this release is 3D audio, UI translation, improved weight painting and a lot of animation system updates. Check the list below for highlights and the full changelog.

Released: October 19th, 2011.

Roadmap

We're reviewing with all branch/patch developers the status of their work and making a migration schedule for all new features. This could include projects like new Mesh editing (BMesh), paint/sculpt improvements, Rigid Body Physics, new Curve/Nurbs system (Nurbana), Ocean Sim render, Particle Nodes, OpenCL compositing, Cycles render engine, Camera/motion tracking, and so on.

We do this in a series of small steps; with stablest branches first. This is the "2.6x series" resulting in a number of releases named 2.60, 2.61, 2.62 and so on. Each release is supposed to be stable, only finished branches will be added. Plan is to make a very tight schedule for this, with a bi-monthly release.

For Blender 2.6x the UI, Python API and general design specifications will remain on 2.5 compatible level, although there are several 2.5 leftover projects to complete still.

3D audio & video

3D audio and speaker objects were added, along with various improvements to the sound system. It's now possible to place speaker objects in the scene, make an animation and mix down to an audio file. Sequence editor proxy support was restored, which can now work in the background, along with support for building timecodes to make scrubbing on all video types possible.

Vertex weight groups

Vertex group modifiers were added. There are three modifiers: one to edit existing vertex groups, one to mix groups together, and another to generate vertex groups based on proximity to other objects. Weight painting tools were added to lock vertex groups, automatically maintain the ratio between different bones, and for fixing poor deformation of vertices.

Game Engine

Navigation Meshes were added for the game engine, used for path finding, so that actors can find the path to a target or flee away. This functionality was implemented using the Recast & Detour libraries.

Texture Face settings moved to materials, for consistency and easier editing. Existing files may need some updates.

Game engine animation was improved internally, with as main external change the unification of F-Curve and Shape Action Actuators into a single Action Actuator, which now includes layering support.

Add-ons

Two new addons have been added to the release: Screencast Keys, to show key presses on the screen for making video tutorials, and Motion Capture Tools, which includes various tools for working with motion capture animation. There have also been various fixes and improvements to importers and exporters, the measure panel, paint palettes, renderfarm.fi uploader, ... see the list of addon changes for details.

Animation system

Animation system improvements were done, especially relating to usability and to polish the interface. Includes changes to the graph editor, dopesheet editor, NLA editor, curves, drivers, constraints, posing, ... Collada integration was improved, making import and export more complete and fixing various issues, especially related to armatures and animation.

UI translation

Internationalization and support for non-western fonts were added, to display the user interface in languages other than English. Efforts to translate in the most common languages is underway, and volunteers are welcome to contribute translations.

More features

Various other features have been added, including a frame node, sequence editor utility operators, improved outliner search, grease pencil poly line drawing, performance improvements, ... List of changes.

Python

New python API features include callbacks for various events, GLSL shader export, environment map texture load/save, texture evaluation and various other utilities.

The behavior of Vector() * Matrix() multiplication was also modified, this may require some script updates.

List of changes.

Bug fixes

While many new features have been added, many bugs have also been fixed, see the list of 165 notable bug fixes. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/changelog_260/Bug_Fixes


Blender 2.60 RC2

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/changelog_260

Since May 2011 we're reviewing with all branch/patch developers the status of their work, and make a migration schedule for all new features. This could include projects like new Mesh editing (BMesh), paint/sculpt improvements, Rigid Body Physics, new Curve/Nurbs system (Nurbana), Ocean Sim render, Particle Nodes, and so on.

Combining these upgrades with a redesign of shader/light system ("Cycles"), Open CL compositing, motion/camera tracking, and all the new Google Summer code projects... it'll become a massive amount of upgrades again.

We do this in a series of small steps; with stablest branches first. This is the "2.6x series" resulting in a number of releases named 2.60, 2.61, 2.62 and so on. Each release is supposed to be stable, only finished branches will be added. Plan is to make a very tight schedule for this, with a bi-monthly release.


Blender 2.59 update log

This is mostly a bug fix release with 140 fixes since 2.58a. Additions include improved keymap editing, 3D mouse support, some new addons and Node UI improvements.
Prominent features (the cool stuff)
3D Mouse support "NDOF"

Blender is now built with support for 3D Connexion devices, for more natural control during view navigation and fly mode - r38908
Custom Keymaps

User edited keymaps now no longer override the builtin keymaps entirely, but rather save only the difference and reapply those changes. This means they can stay better in sync when the builtin keymaps change.

Keymaps in blender are now separated so Addons can properly define their own keymaps without them conflicting with user keymaps

See commit log for details - r39084
Ivy Generator (Addon)
IvyGen-Example-marnal.jpg

This tools adds the ability to "grow" curves over an existing mesh with the option of adding leaves and adjusting many parameters for the final result - r2200

See: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.5/Py/Scripts/Curve/Ivy_Gen
Sapling (Addon)

This tree generator creates completely parametrically generated trees from curves - r2119

See: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.5/Py/Scripts/Curve/Sapling_Tree
Grease Scatter (Addon)
Object grease scatter.png

Grease scatter was used for sintel to place objects around the ally, using grease pencil lines as a guide as to where to scatter objects - r2125
Node editor enhancements

Several enhancements are done related to the node editor/compositor.

Material passes: Materials have pass-index. This pass-index can be used in the compositor to create mattes. It works the same as object passes.
Node insert: Nodes that have no connections can be inserted on a noodle. Just move the node over the noodle and release when the noodle turns orange.
Delete with reconnect: It is possible to delete a node that is connected in the tree, without loosing the connections. The node is deleted, but the links are reconnected as if the node were muted. Select a node and press CTRL-X.
Noodle curves: Some users like straight noodles, other like curved, in the user preferences the level of the curvation can be changed.
Node properties: The UI of the side panel and on the node can now be different. See the Color balance node in the side panel.

Additions

Material passes (like object passes), (See commit log for details) - r38090
New option for multires modifier: Subdivide UVs - r38783
Improved bleed option when baking for seamless edges on UV bounds - r38654
Node: Add delete with reconnect feature - r38344
Node: Curvature is now a setting - r39015
Node: On dragging a non-connected node on a noodle, it will insert it - r38609
UV Straighten tool - r38598
Object Align: high quality option for perfect alighment http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=15171 - r38511

Python API:

Object.closest_point_on_mesh() function - r38449
bpy.path.basename because "//" prefix breaks os.path.basename - r38528
Vector.length_squared to use instead of vec.dot(vec) - r39300

Fixes
Tools/Editors:

fix #27849 3D manipulator widget lost on mesh in edge mode - r38085
fix #27915 Relax Pose crashes blender on bone with ChildOf constraint in linked rig - r38257
fix #27883 object actions did not get duplicated on full scene copy - r38150
fix #27902 autokey bones with individual origins transform not working - r38229
fix #27891 IK stretch gives inaccurate results. Tweaked translation segment convergence weight a bit to match angles better at typical scales - r38232
fix #27866 Curve handle snaps/locks when it shouldn't - r38256
fix #28003 Unable to delete vgroup - r38471
fix #27927 Border select tool fails to select nodes in Node Editor using tweak mode - r38475
fix #28052 PET: Shift-O cycling skips "random falloff" - r38595
fix #28079 UV propertional editing was incorrectly influenced by the mesh X mirror option - r38699
fix #28066 Unchecking 'self project' messes up 'Snap to Vertex' - r38752
fix #28095 Select Pattern don't select all the bone in edit mode & some style changes - r38779
fix #27719 custom RNA properties fail to update drivers - r38793
fix #28117 Diffuse reflection IPO curve not imported correctly from 2.49b files - r38827
fix #28178 make single user copy of object data doesn't work - r39117
fix #27819 Unwrap Menu (U) -> Lightmap Pack throws Python Exception - r38212
fix #28197 Undoing Grease pencil removes last 2 strokes - r39235
fix #28186 textboxes properties not animatable - r39214
fix for crash undoing grease pencil session - r39237
allow bone transforms again for proxy'ed bones - r38071
corrected View Selected operator for image editor so now it works fine for images with different X and Y aspect ratio - r38559
Object Align now correctly computes a global bounding box for all objects - r38510

Sculpt/Painting:

fix #28096 Custom gradient for weight painting in mask mode not working properly - r38785
fix #28112 Vertex paint crash - r38890
fix #28061 Texture (paint) bleeding on edges - r38893
fix #28121 Linked Library objects or object->data should not allow to go to sculptmode - r38855

Modifiers:

fix #27839 UV 'Project from view' ignores camera lens shift - r38052
fix #27861 bevel angle limit at 90deg wasn't working well on cube - r38110
fix #27921 optimal display with 2 subsurf modifiers fails - r38298
fix #27930 many modifiers crashed when used on a lattice with a vertex group - r38300
fix part of #27858 crash trying to apply subsurf modifier as shape key - r38115
fix part of #26811 absolute shape keys should not show influence value in list - r38188
fix: uv project panorama mode was scaled 2x too high - r38054
fix: uv project scaled camera objects would incorrectly effect the result - r38054

Physics:

fix #27347 Particle x-axis mirror editing not working as expected - r38102
fix #27579 Particle cache problem with multiple systems - r38105
fix #27182 particle/collision kill interacting strangely - r38106
fix #27855 crash on enabling high resolution smoke - r38119
fix #27876 particles instancing a whole group didn't take group offset into account - r38141
fix #26962 softbody collision doesn't respect subsurf+displace modifiers - r38235
fix #27683 Blender hangs when baking a particle system when a driver is present - r38265
fix #26873 Animated displacement modifier on an object doesn't work with hair particle objects - r38285
fix #27289 Hair: Render Option - Object does not point objects to end of "hair path" - r38287
fix #27293 Group Instance of particle system is rendered wrong - r38292
fix #27398 Particle systems with animated groups render incorrectly in viewport - r38293
fix #26712 Particle group instance 'Use Count' value gets reset on file-load - r38413
fix #27307 Blender crashes when loading a new scene while baking fluid dynamics - r38408
fix: particle cache should only be cleared on the exact first integer frame, not in the case of a subframe between the first and second frame - r38463
fix: Effector calculations were not thread safe - r38663
fix: loading a file that had particles using a dupligroup from a liblinked file without the library file being present crashed - r38883

Display/Viewport:

fix #27862 OpenGL render animation don't respect .png RGB option - r38109
fix #27810 bones drawn blue in 2.49 file, was still checking stride bone, flag for drawing even though that feature is no longer in 2.5 - r38112
fix #27826 bone envelope head/tail radius not dynamically updated in viewport - r38114
fix #27897 mesh with negative scale disappears while sculpting, clipping planes were wrong in that case - r38236
fix #28037 Camera missing orange selection lines
fix #28206 Motion Paths shown in 3DView even when Only Render option is enabled - r39259
fix part of #27944 color managment discrepancy in GLSL materials with nodes - r38790

Sequencer (Video Editor):

fix #27846 time extend / E key not work in sequence editor - r38113
fix #27848 sequencer strip hard cut looses soft trim on second strip - r38122
fix #27880 sequencer separate images operator lost strip properties like blend mode, opacity, etc - r38145
fix #27879 sequencer didn't draw overlapping strips well, selected were drawn under unselected, and active strips red border color for active strips was not clear enough - r38151
fix #28018 Sequence Swap Data Operator does not work - r38500
fix #28160 Pressing Y on an image sequence to seperate the images takes them out of their meta strips
fix: add strips not checking for overlap by default - r38775

Collada:

fix #27854 Collada import doesn't handle UVW mapping - r38169
option to export only the selection - r38079

Rendering:

fix #27777 vertex color disabled when in a reused node material - r38128
fix #27873 nan pixels in render with degenerate faces - r38139
fix #27888 Render artifacts in 2.58.1 - r38258
fix #27761 Deleting a material output of many causes no output
fix #28034 0.0 Alpha transparency with Raytrace Mirror doesn't render - r38576
fix #27910 baking ambient occlusion, do not consider closer object - r38599
fix #28201 blender crashes when "mpeg" selected for animation rendering - r39243
fix for crash of multires baker when baking from sculpt mode - r38439
fix bug with multires baking to float buffers - r38555

Compositing:

fix #27875 different texture nodes result after decompose/compose - r38140
fix: bokeh blur in the blur node is wronlgy calculated - r38347

Game Engine:

fix #27348 blenderplayer showing a different viewport size in 2.57b - r38501
fix #28026 Copy Game Property broken - r38635
fix #23874 Custom projection matrix doesn't work in custom viewport - r38696

Python:

fix #27863 converting curve spline type from python crashes - r38111
fix #27922 using preset_paths() with an absolute path returns twice the same thing raise an error when an invalid subdir is passed to preset_paths() - r38543
fix #28035 point density texture doesn't bake - r38700
fix #28111 material.pop breaks mt->mat_nr - r38879
fix #28196 assigning RNA arrays such as face UV's would fail in some cases - r39233
fix #28191 error when enabling an addon newer then the blender version - r39212
fix for bpy.path.abspath(), if a path was passed it would get the last directory cut off - r38504
fix for crash when setting layers or saving when there is no active scene - r38077
fix for scripts with python 3.3 - r38294
fix for crash/assert on running dir() on a non collection property - r38850
bgl.Buffer: supports slicing again - r38447
bgl.Buffer: fix for crash with negative index access not being clamped - r38447
corrected matrix, vector multiplication order (was wrong!) - r38674
rna function calls with optional parameters were not giving correct default values for arrays - r38735
allow pose bone matrix to be set - r38193

Interface:

fix #27900 file browser filter, sort, .. parameters were not saved. This is useful if you have a screen setup with a file browser editor - r38233
fix #26704 activating a texture node inside material nodes did not show that texture in the texture properties - r38370
fix #28005 Python Add-Ons are constantly reloaded if twice in the path - r38468
fix #28098 Continuous Grab does not work for movement of the "Backdrop" in the Node Editor - r38761
fix #27951 armature edit mode transform panel shows "nothing selected" even when something is selected - r38356
fix #28172 Cannot restore Add-ons tab in user preferences after a failed attempt to install an add-on - r39117
fix #28213 Imperial unit for 0.001 inches inconsistently displayed as mils and thous - r39297
fix: icon scaling with the DPI setting - r39066
fix: python error in image sampling panel drawing when there is no texture slot available - r38371
fix: icon listview where the icons would only wrap once - r38743
include menu ID's in tooltips when python tips are enabled - r38723

System:

fix #27850 keyboards with a comma instead of a dot on the numpad now get converted to a dot when typing into number buttons, for easier number entry - r38080
fix #27865 weird mouse warping with continuous grab on OS X - r38129
fix #27877 writing .avi files > 4 GB not working on windows - r38142
fix #28109 Old issue with OSX Cocoa code: shift+scrollwheel should send a 'horizontal wheel' event to Blender - r38848
fix #28102 Typing 'C:' into the file selector's directory asks to make a new directory - r39046
fix #28087 Opening files in the text editor ignores the last newline 'n' - r38722
fix "Problem with clock" at 18:39:00, the overflow of the clock was causing crash in the game engine in Linux - r38495
fix Modifier key sticks after Alt-tab on Win32 - r38826

Blender Addons
Import/Export:

DirectX
Export fix for relative paths - r2084
fix for direct-x exporting vertex groups which had indicies out of the objects defgroup range - r2177

Make Human (MHX)
Importer Support for rigify - r2090
Added switch for ignoring Limit rotation and distance constraints - r2206

Quake MAP Export
fix 27860 Quake MAP export error for 2.58.1 - r2093
fix 27949 r2121 Quake MAP exports incomplete brush data from 2.58.1 - r2160
added options: scale, snap to whole value, face thickness, default brush - r2160

X3D
fix issue #1 27896 Names exported as "MA_Black".001 - r2108
fix issue #2 27896: zero length rotation axis exported - r2188
fix issue #3 27896: exporting dupli objects failed - r2189
fix 27833 X3D export incorrectly uses collision node - r2150
fix export non existing IndexedTriangleSet.creaseAngle - r2194
fix for exporting empty scene - r2220

OBJ
fix exporting dupli objects - r2197
fix 28146 OBJ export fails when mesh has no material - r2211

3DS
fix 28150 transformation matrix not exported - r2214

Lightwave
fix 27916 Crash adding EdgeSplit/Bevel modifier to imported lwo mesh - r2135

FBX
fix 27964 2.58 FBX Export can result in missing data and lost animation(s) - r2140
fix 28029 Exporting linked groups to FBX to load on Unity3D - r2141
fix error where armature connections were written out twice - r2205
added option not to export 'Default Take' - r2212
Add XNA compatibility mode - r2205
Option to export XNA compatible armature rotations - r2205
Option not to export mesh edges - r2205
Always export armatures as 'Limb' type - r2205

Other:

Netrender
fix 27796 Netrendering "path:" failing - r2167

Save As Runtime
Skip expoting python libs on OSX since its already included - r2091
fix 27995 phyton32.dll caused "Appcrash" => Runtime crashes - r2191


Blender 2.58a update log

This is mainly a bugfix release containing 25 fixes and various small improvements.
Additions

More flexible size options for particle billboards. This adds scale factors for width and height of billboards, relative to the particle size. It's useful when the particle size is primarily used for collision and the like, so the billboard appearance can be adjusted independently. Also allows non-square billboards.
In addition the billboards can be scaled by the particle velocity with optional head and tail factors (similar to line drawing options). This allows for pseudo-motionblur effects. - r37760
Addon UI: button for removing addons which are installed to user/home paths - r37950

Python API:

Python application event handlers - r37795
adds bpy.app.handlers which contains lists, each for an event type:
render_pre, render_post, load_pre, load_post, save_pre, save_post
each list item needs to be a callable object which takes 1 argument (the ID).
callbacks are cleared on file load.
mathutils.geometry.intersect_line_sphere(l1, l2, sphere, radius, clip=True) - r37820
RenderEngine API: add self.report() error reporting function for render engines, works the same as for operators. - r37916

Fixes
Essential Fixes:

fix: Tile-able displacement map / tile-able painting regression in 2.58 - [#27782], r37899
fix: bake crash with deep shadow, strand and children - [#27807], r37970
fix: incorrect use of GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object, could crash blender - r37881
Thumbnail save for .blend crashed, when being in editmode for a mesh that has other object users as well. - [#27765], r37810
fix: Multires lost from 2.49 file in 2.5x - [#27710,], r37837

Other Fixes:

CMake was installing .bfont.ttf in the config dir which made updating from the previous blender version fail - r37725
fix: Driven properties not checked for legal UI bounds - [#27726], r37744
GHOST Cocoa: move y origin top/bottom conversions out of windowmanager module and into GHOST. Also fixes a problem where e.g. the user preferences window would not open under the mouse cursor correctly. - r37765
revert commit 27133: Committing patch [#27133] "Fix for for Object Color in BGE" by Kupoman. This was causing a lot of backward compatibility problems and side effects. - r37773
W special menu for changing orthographic camera lens scale was missing - r37782
fix: Black and White Render doesn't work and/or Saves as a Blank screen, convert to grayscale when saving renders rather then only writing the red channel. - [#27746], r37783
fix: Modal operator in Special Menu (W) ignores continues grab - [#27747], r37784
fix: Smart UV project no longer works in 2.58 failed with active, unselected objects. - [#27742], r37785
free_bvhtree_from_mesh was incorrectly using sizeof() when clearing memory. - r37787
Fix undeterministic behavior of volumetric renderer - [#27748], r37802
Made clearer in the UI that the approximate multiple scattering always enables light cache
Fixed a potential problem in anisotropic scattering
Default startup theme used same node header color for "in/out" nodes as for "inactive or undefined" nodes. This made it impossible to see which of the output nodes in node setup was 'active' - [#27761], r37808
fix python errors when the sculpt brush is None - r37836
fix for a leak in sound_read_sound_buffer(), used when drawing the sequencer waveform. - r37845
fix: Set Bone Flags - No Scale - Toggle fails - [#27778], r37850
fix: On clicking in a non-active Blender window (when you activated others), the mouse position of the first click was still the old position. - [#27768], r37854
fix: Blender player on OSX not working - [#26850], r37861, r37862, r37865
fix: Smart UV Unwrap Results in Overlaps - [#27787], r37889
Closed regions didn't always draw the (+) icon right place, confusing for users. - r37986
fix: foreach_get was failing on readonly properties - [#27820], r38006
fix: Outliner does not update when parents are cleared - [#27816], r37999


Blender 2.58

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.58. This is the second stable release of the Blender 2.5 series, representing the culmination of many years of redesign, development and stabilizing work.

We name this version "Stable" not only because it's mostly feature complete, but especially thanks to the 1000s of fixes and feature updates we did since the 2.5 beta versions were published.

The next 6 weeks we will keep working on finishing a couple of left-over 2.5 targets and we expect to get feedback and bug reports from users to handle as well. If all goes well, the 2.59 version then can be the final release of the 2.5 series, with a massive amount of new projects to be added for an exciting cycle of 2.6x versions. Target is to release updates every 2 months this year.
The massive 8 page log with changes since 2.57 is here!

June 22, 2011
Blender 2.5 Series Roadmap

What to Expect in 2.58

Big improvements in stability. Since the last version 100s of bugs were fixed.
Feature complete - Although some of the 2.5 targets have been postponed, such as multi-window support showing multiple scenes, a full RNA data level dependency graph, or radial menus.
Changes - If you're used to the old Blender, Blender 2.5 may seem quite different at first. Be prepared to read a bit about this, how to reconfigure things, and learn to use the new built-in 2.5 search functionality!

Open todos: get involved!

There's still topics that needs to be worked on before reaching the final 2.5x release target

First: check this log, you can find Known Issues at the bottom of the following feature description pages.
Second: check if the bug or issue has been added on our todo list in wiki.

This will save you (and us!) from reporting known issues! Bugs can be posted in the bug tracker or using Help → Report a Bug from inside Blender 2.5.

User Interface
Updated GUI

Blender 2.5 has a new GUI layout, with updated graphic design and a new icon set. The GUI layout has been re-designed to be clearer, better organised and easier to navigate, and is fully customisable with Python scripting. Other improvements include a new file browser, customisable tool shelf and more. Read more...
Add-ons

In Blender 2.53 we've implemented a new method for extending Blender with Python Scripts. These now are being distributed and stored as 'Add-ons" which you can choose to enable or disable each individually. This helps to keep the interface clean and well organized.

Check out the complete Add-on repository.

And the changelog for Add-on scripts.
Custom keyboard shortcuts

Blender 2.5 has been designed from scratch to enable users to configure their own keyboard shortcuts. Key definitions are be grouped in "key maps", and each map can be fully customized and saved. Keymaps can also be configured for special input methods such as directional gestures and tweak events, any-key modifiers, or multi-key input. Read more...

Internal Architecture
Data access

Now all internal data in a .blend scene file, from individual vertices, to inter-object relations, to composite node UI positions, is fully accessible with a consistent system. This enables UI controls, Python Scripting API, the animation system and more, to access and edit all scene data consistently, while providing richer interaction and feedback such as contextual help, in-place keyframing and driver expression editing, and real world units of measurement. Read more...
64 bits for Windows, Linux & OS X

Next to Linux and Windows, we now support a 64 bits versions for OS X too. This required a full recode of the low level windowing library to support Cocoa, which is good news for Blender's future on Macs in general!
Tool system

An "Operator" is the new generalized definition of a tool in Blender. This ranges from file load/save, UI layout management to adding and editing objects and its data. Because the Operator is generic, it can be called uniformly by hotkeys, menus, buttons, or via Python. Operators can be searched, chained (macros) and can provide interactive editing with real-time updates. Read more...
Python Scripting

Blender 2.5 has a full re-implemented Python Scripting API. Anything a user can interact with via the UI - data, options and tools - is also available for scripters now. Scripts are being used for Importers/Exporters, for custom tools ("Operators"), for access to other render engines, and for extending the UI in various ways.

For the next 2.58 release the API will be completed with access to internal notifiers and events to track data changes or UI refreshes.

Modeling
Sculpt and Multi-resolution

Sculpt mode in Blender has been optimized, increasing drawing and editing performance significantly, and reducing memory usage to support more detailed models. New tools have been added and existing ones improved. Multiresolution meshes have also been rewritten, now available as a modifier to integrate better with the animation system, and preserving displacements when editing the mesh topology.
Paint Brushes

Blender's method of accessing brushes for painting tasks has been updated and streamlined. Brushes store all paint-related settings, such as size, strength, tool type, textures and influence curve, and can be switched between in the brush list box or with shortcut keys. As well as the preset brushes included with Blender, you can also save your own, and assign your own shortcut keys to them.

Sculpt Brush and Stroke Upgrade

In Blender 2.54 Beta the focus has been on bug fixing and stabilizing the scripting API in the form of a renaming operation to unify naming and changes to property creation and access.


Solidify Modifier

Blender 2.5 now includes a Solidify modifier, used to non-destructively add thickness to thin meshes (similar to 'shell' modifiers in other applications). Solidify allows you to model a simple thin mesh surface, and have a solid thickness automatically extruded by the modifier.





Animation System
F-Curves, Actions, NLA

One of the 2.5 specs is "make everything animatable". The implications of this didn't make it easy to just port things over, so a couple of important redesigns were needed: Individual properties are animated with F-curves, grouped into actions, and can be instanced and layered and mixed non-destructively in the NLA editor. Effects such as noise and enveloping can be added to animation curves and NLA clips with F-curve modifiers. Read more...
Spline IK

Spline IK is a constraint which aligns a chain of bones along a curve. It is particularly well suited for rigging flexible body parts such as tails, tentacles, and spines, as well as inorganic items such as ropes. Read more...
Animation Editors

The animation editors have had a complete refresh in Blender 2.5 with a new graph editor, supporting multiple objects and F-curves simultaneously, a scene-wide dopesheet, a redesigned Non-Linear Animation editor and new functionality for shape animation, driver, expressions and keying sets. Read more...

Physics
Smoke Simulation

Blender 2.5 includes a new fluid-based smoke simulation engine. Alongside this is capability to scale up a low-resolution sim, maintaining detail with wavelet turbulence. Smoke can be generated by input particle motion, and can be affected by colliding obstacles and force fields. The smoke data is output as voxels, which can be rendered as a volume. Read more...
Particles

Particle systems have had a refresh, now taking advantage of fully interactive animation playback and editing. New additions include particle path editing with brush tools, a new point caching system, new boids physics and hair dynamics using cloth simulation. Read more...

Rendering
Volume Rendering

Blender 2.5 includes a volume material, intended for rendering particles and gases such as smoke, clouds, and fire. All procedural textures are supported as data sources, as well as two new textures for rendering voxels (such as smoke sims) and point clouds. Various shading options are available from wispy mist-like volumes, to physically based scattering and self-shadowing. Read more...
Ray tracing optimization

As part of the google summer of code, the ray trace acceleration system has had a complete overhaul, making it significantly more efficient and with support for new features such as instancing. Now multiple BVH based acceleration structures are available, in artists' terms, rendering some scenes up to 10x faster! Read more...

Color management

Blender 2.5 includes a first version of Color Management. Currently this is limited to ensuring Linear Workflow during the render pipeline - gamma corrected inputs are linearized before rendering, the renderer and compositor work in linear RGB color space, and is gamma corrected back to sRGB color space for display in the image editor.

Future work may include support for display profiles, LUTs, and finer grained control over input/output conversions.
Other rendering features

Additional rendering features in 2.5 improved bump mapping and image texture filtering, an initial version of deep shadow maps, color management (integrated linear workflow). Read more...

More

More new features, that still needs to be documented on this page:

Installation paths and OS conventions
Windows version: Blender now starts with Command Prompt hidden
External Render Engine API
Python interactive console.
Scopes Display in the Image Editor
Non-blocking Reports in top header
Screw Modifier
Fluid Particles
Network Render
Game Engine Mode in UI
Approximate Indirect Light
Improved sequencer core: it's faster and needs less memory
GameLogic/Audaspace GSoC project merged
load binary data as .blend from memory
Installer for Windows installs since 2.56 in %USERPROFILE% by default
COLLADA support has been stabilized considerably, with improvements to mesh, material, light and node structures
BVH Motion Capture Export
SVG Vector Graphics Import
Blend file thumbnails for Windows and Gnome Desktop Environment.


Blender 2.57b update log
Essential Fixes

* fix crash when pressing Enter on menu item which load a file: Ctrl+N,Enter or Ctrl+O,Enter r36287
* fix crash appending/linking objects #27158, r36313
* fix crash for files saved with file selector open r36321
* fix crash with edge split modifier #26993, r36330
* fix for numerous cases where material links would be lost when making object data local #27178, r36332
* fix for crash getting the vertex weight from object types which don't support this vertex groups. r36291

Rendering:

* fixed a memory leak on canceling bake r36284
* fix for memory leak with node group members that have multiple ouputs some of which are unused #27104, r36290
* fix for node socket bug which lead to incorrect black/white output levels r36306
* fix 3d text and simple deform modifier giving bad results #27048, r36301
* fix for boid particles getting Z clamped to 0.0 when "Allow Flighting" is on. #27112, r36325

Tools:

* fix changing selected shapekeys in editmode causing badly deformed keys #26959, r36296
* mesh.dupli_extrude_cursor (Ctrl+Click extrude), failed when the selected vertex was behind the view #27091, r36279
* fix all mesh normals being recalculated when adding meshes in editmode #27121, 36323
* skip displace modifier when no changes are needed r36319
* setting subsurf with Ctrl+1/2/3/4 now works in editmode too. #27126, r36299

Python:

* fix for crash exporting Collada files to an invalid path #27162, r36326
* RegionView3D.view_rotation was inverted, view_matrix is now writeable r36317

Interface:

* slider widget was showing strange colors with some themes #27139, r36324
* fix for text editor syntax highlighting glitch when changing tab width. r36294

Additions:

* added support for sculpting on blended shape keys r36295
* new view 'dolly', zoom which moves the view port forward in perspective mode, not restricted by the view rotational pivot. (Ctrl+Shift+MMB). r36283
* continuous zoom now uses dolly settings for horizontal/vertical mouse & inverted movement.
* convenience button in modifiers panels to allow switching to the physics tab r36327

Blender Addons

* Unreal Engine Format
o fixed error on export single/all/select action sets.
o added weight when import into blender and filter out the ext.

* OBJ Format
o fixed importing OBJ groups as vertex groups. [#27149], r1865
o fresnel setting was broken on import [#27170], r1869
o importing vertex order was not maintained (added option back) [#27145], r1867

* Povray Render Support: Detect povray binary on unix.
* DirectX Export: Improved phong shader setting. r1871


Blender 2.57a update log
Essential Fixes:

sculpting partial redraw glitch #26932, r36161
crash on entering 3D text editmode (OSX only) #26930, r36179
crash on loading 2.4x files #26904, r36148
loading file with packed audio crashes #26990, r36213
loading large blend files speed-up r36241, r36244

Rendering:

black dots with raytrace reflections & bump mapped dupli-objects #26902, r36165
render crash when tangents are used with modifiers that remove orco coordinates #26933, r36170
incorrect errors for panorama & orthographic camera combination #26906, r36184
no output from texture node group #27034, r36251
crash setting voxel data to negative resolution #27083, r36256
crash when loading invalid voxel data and resource leak - never closing files #27084, r36257
wrong sequencer alpha gradient #25713, r36197

Interface:

top bar 'Add -> Mesh -> UV Sphere + Enter' - crashed #27058, r36242
buttons with centered text truncating the first characters when there wasn't enough space #26937, r36174
single grease pencil points drawing very large in the image editor, r36154
incorrect relative path used when opening audio #26949, r36209
unpacking sounds with a long ID name #27015, r36214
ambiguous operator names in the search popup #26977, r36221
crash copying datablocks with ID Property arrays #26967, r36229
console is not hidden when start blender #26884, r36243
outliner objects showed "active" or "selected" in confusing ways #27026, r36248
freedesktop icons, incorrect install location and copying SVG #27086, r36260, r36261
sunsky presets used deprecated property names #27094, r36268.
non-functional user preference for clamping texture #26955, r36186
smooth tangent iteration field in curve panel not responding #26989, r36198
text editor indentation correction when when line contained ',' or ':' in a string, r36187
text editor copy/paste breaks formatting of script #27014, r36236

Tools:

"make fur" gave errors with multiple selected objects. r36250
mesh editmode de-selecting edge loops #26931, r36159
dupli-extrude-cursor added wrong location when nothing selected #27016, r36216
mesh rip tool access from menu fail #26936, r36226
crash copying mesh, armature, lattice and metaball datablocks while in editmode #27096, r36263, r36264
explode modifier - apply as shape impossible #27075, r36249
add object, localview and undo error #27044, r36245
buffer overflow with string lengths for operators that took ID names, r36219

Compositing:

'Hue Correct' composite node saturates #26945, r36201
'Displace Node' composite node crashes Blender when connected to Z-Buffer #26896, r36202
lens distortion composite node delivered RGBA out with alpha zero #26901, r36212
timeline camera switch failed with compositor renderlayers #26900, r36217
rendering non active scenes from the compositor used wrong frame, r36218
modified nodes inside edited groups not updating the view #27018, r36227

Python:

bpy.context.object.collision access crash #26995, r36204
crash running the transform operator from python #27011, r36215
button input could do incorrect unit system replacements of valid python expressions r36199, r36206
bpy.utils.blend_paths(True) crash #27072, r36246

Game engine:

blenderplayer wasn't finding bundled python #26951, r36208
game engine radar sensor broken #26795, r36234

Animation:

apply scale to armature offset bone children #27006, r36211, r36233
action/NLA editor issues with animation data context #25960, r36222
particle group object viewport and render scale mismatch #27008, r36224
action editor header doesn't update when entering tweakmode on NLA strips #25960, r36225
bugs when linking particles/collision/softbody modifiers #27038, r36228
separate armature would also separate active, unselected bone r36232
available keying set fails in armature pose mode #27090, r36258
b-bone doesn't resize correctly with numeric input #27095, r36270

Additions

API for exporters to write paths with different absolute/relative options. r36155
image and compositor now show the color under the cursor as well as HSV and luminance. r36239

Blender Addons
Fixed

Add Corrective Shape Key: api update. r1830
Fracture Tools: api update r1835, r1836
Povray render export fix for writing invalid names r1842.
Unreal Engine (PSA / PSK):
fixed mesh rebuild for face id materials and vertex groups. r1839
fixed vertex group support r1844
fixed uv's and tri and quad mesh rebuild button r1832
View3D Copy Menu: fixed for new api r1845
3DS Import: support for files which reference non-existing materials. r1846
OBJ Import: loading when in pose mode failed #27019, r1848
RenderFarmFI: Added guidelines for submitting the render and fix error where hasSmokeSimulation lacked parenthesis r1850
Add Mesh Extras: missing argument to menu operator r1850

Additions

added OBJ & FBX options for exporting paths - relative/absolute/automatic/copy-file/strip-path r1828


Blender 2.57
April 13, 2011

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.57. This is the first stable release of the Blender 2.5 series, representing the culmination of many years of redesign and development work.

We name this version "Stable" not only because it's mostly feature complete, but especially thanks to the 1000s of fixes and feature updates we did since the 2.5 beta versions were published.

The next 2 months we will keep working on finishing a couple of left-over 2.5 targets and we expect to get feedback and bug reports from users to handle as well. If all goes well, the 2.58 version then can be the final release of the 2.5 series, with a massive amount of new projects to be added for an exciting cycle of 2.6x versions. Target is to release updates every 2 months this year.

What to Expect

Big improvements in stability. Since the last beta almost 500 bugs were fixed.
Feature complete - Although some of the 2.5 targets have been postponed, such as multi-window support showing multiple scenes, a full RNA data level dependency graph, or radial menus.
Changes - If you're used to the old Blenders, Blender 2.5 may seem quite different at first. Be prepared to read a bit about this, how to reconfigure things, and learn to use the new built-in 2.5 search functionality!

Open todos: get involved!

There's still topics that needs to be worked on before reaching the final 2.5x release target

First: check this log, you can find Known Issues at the bottom of the following feature description pages.
Second: check if the bug or issue has been added on our todo list in wiki.

This will save you (and us!) from reporting known issues! Bugs can be posted in the bug tracker or using Help → Report a Bug from inside Blender 2.5.

User Interface
Updated GUI

Blender 2.5 has a new GUI layout, with updated graphic design and a new icon set. The GUI layout has been re-designed to be clearer, better organised and easier to navigate, and is fully customisable with Python scripting. Other improvements include a new file browser, customisable tool shelf and more. Read more...
Add-ons

In Blender 2.53 we've implemented a new method for extending Blender with Python Scripts. These now are being distributed and stored as 'Add-ons" which you can choose to enable or disable each individually. This helps to keep the interface clean and well organized.

Check out the complete Add-on repository.

And the changelog for Add-on scripts.
Custom keyboard shortcuts

Blender 2.5 has been designed from scratch to enable users to configure their own keyboard shortcuts. Key definitions are be grouped in "key maps", and each map can be fully customized and saved. Keymaps can also be configured for special input methods such as directional gestures and tweak events, any-key modifiers, or multi-key input. Read more...

Internal Architecture
Data access

Now all internal data in a .blend scene file, from individual vertices, to inter-object relations, to composite node UI positions, is fully accessible with a consistent system. This enables UI controls, Python Scripting API, the animation system and more, to access and edit all scene data consistently, while providing richer interaction and feedback such as contextual help, in-place keyframing and driver expression editing, and real world units of measurement. Read more...
64 bits for Windows, Linux & OS X

Next to Linux and Windows, we now support a 64 bits versions for OS X too. This required a full recode of the low level windowing library to support Cocoa, which is good news for Blender's future on Macs in general!
Tool system

An "Operator" is the new generalized definition of a tool in Blender. This ranges from file load/save, UI layout management to adding and editing objects and its data. Because the Operator is generic, it can be called uniformly by hotkeys, menus, buttons, or via Python. Operators can be searched, chained (macros) and can provide interactive editing with real-time updates. Read more...
Python Scripting

Blender 2.5 has a full re-implemented Python Scripting API. Anything a user can interact with via the UI - data, options and tools - is also available for scripters now. Scripts are being used for Importers/Exporters, for custom tools ("Operators"), for access to other render engines, and for extending the UI in various ways.

For the next 2.58 release the API will be completed with access to internal notifiers and events to track data changes or UI refreshes.

Modeling
Sculpt and Multi-resolution

Sculpt mode in Blender has been optimized, increasing drawing and editing performance significantly, and reducing memory usage to support more detailed models. New tools have been added and existing ones improved. Multiresolution meshes have also been rewritten, now available as a modifier to integrate better with the animation system, and preserving displacements when editing the mesh topology.
Paint Brushes

Blender's method of accessing brushes for painting tasks has been updated and streamlined. Brushes store all paint-related settings, such as size, strength, tool type, textures and influence curve, and can be switched between in the brush list box or with shortcut keys. As well as the preset brushes included with Blender, you can also save your own, and assign your own shortcut keys to them.

Sculpt Brush and Stroke Upgrade

In Blender 2.54 Beta the focus has been on bug fixing and stabilizing the scripting API in the form of a renaming operation to unify naming and changes to property creation and access.


Solidify Modifier

Blender 2.5 now includes a Solidify modifier, used to non-destructively add thickness to thin meshes (similar to 'shell' modifiers in other applications). Solidify allows you to model a simple thin mesh surface, and have a solid thickness automatically extruded by the modifier.





Animation System
F-Curves, Actions, NLA

One of the 2.5 specs is "make everything animatable". The implications of this didn't make it easy to just port things over, so a couple of important redesigns were needed: Individual properties are animated with F-curves, grouped into actions, and can be instanced and layered and mixed non-destructively in the NLA editor. Effects such as noise and enveloping can be added to animation curves and NLA clips with F-curve modifiers. Read more...
Spline IK

Spline IK is a constraint which aligns a chain of bones along a curve. It is particularly well suited for rigging flexible body parts such as tails, tentacles, and spines, as well as inorganic items such as ropes. Read more...
Animation Editors

The animation editors have had a complete refresh in Blender 2.5 with a new graph editor, supporting multiple objects and F-curves simultaneously, a scene-wide dopesheet, a redesigned Non-Linear Animation editor and new functionality for shape animation, driver, expressions and keying sets. Read more...

Physics
Smoke Simulation

Blender 2.5 includes a new fluid-based smoke simulation engine. Alongside this is capability to scale up a low-resolution sim, maintaining detail with wavelet turbulence. Smoke can be generated by input particle motion, and can be affected by colliding obstacles and force fields. The smoke data is output as voxels, which can be rendered as a volume. Read more...
Particles

Particle systems have had a refresh, now taking advantage of fully interactive animation playback and editing. New additions include particle path editing with brush tools, a new point caching system, new boids physics and hair dynamics using cloth simulation. Read more...

Rendering
Volume Rendering

Blender 2.5 includes a volume material, intended for rendering particles and gases such as smoke, clouds, and fire. All procedural textures are supported as data sources, as well as two new textures for rendering voxels (such as smoke sims) and point clouds. Various shading options are available from wispy mist-like volumes, to physically based scattering and self-shadowing. Read more...
Ray tracing optimization

As part of the google summer of code, the ray trace acceleration system has had a complete overhaul, making it significantly more efficient and with support for new features such as instancing. Now multiple BVH based acceleration structures are available, in artists' terms, rendering some scenes up to 10x faster! Read more...

Color management

Blender 2.5 includes a first version of Color Management. Currently this is limited to ensuring Linear Workflow during the render pipeline - gamma corrected inputs are linearized before rendering, the renderer and compositor work in linear RGB color space, and is gamma corrected back to sRGB color space for display in the image editor.

Future work may include support for display profiles, LUTs, and finer grained control over input/output conversions.
Other rendering features

Additional rendering features in 2.5 improved bump mapping and image texture filtering, an initial version of deep shadow maps, color management (integrated linear workflow). Read more...

More

More new features, that still needs to be documented on this page:

Installation paths and OS conventions
Windows version: Blender now starts with Command Prompt hidden
Experimental declarative UI: bpyml, bpyml_ui
External Render Engine API
Console and Reports Editor
Scopes Display in the Image Editor
Non-blocking Reports in top header
Screw Modifier
Fluid Particles
Network Render
Game Engine Mode in UI
Approximate Indirect Light
Improved sequencer core: it's faster and needs less memory
GameLogic/Audaspace GSoC project merged
load binary data as .blend from memory
Installer for Windows installs since 2.56 in %USERPROFILE% by default
COLLADA support has been stabilized considerably, with improvements to mesh, material, light and node structures

Fixed Issues

http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-257/


Blender 2.57 official release candidates online
March 31, 2011

First non-beta of the 2.5 series is going to be released soon, help testing our builds on the http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.57/ !


Blender 2.56a Beta

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.56a Beta. This release is a fix release for Blender 2.56, and thus the fifth official beta release of the Blender 2.5 series, representing the culmination of many years of redesign and development work.

This version is called a "Beta" because it's now for the most part feature complete. The Python API has had some extensive changes, most notably in naming conventions and in creation and access of properties.

Since Blender 2.55 beta over 440 bugs were fixed!

IMPORTANT: Between 2.53 and 2.56 an extensive renaming operation has changed the scripting API a lot, with repercussions also for loading 2.53 .blends with animation into 2.56. Make sure you try the FCurve/Driver 2.54 fix entry from the Help menu.

IMPORTANT 2: This fixes a very bad bug in "undo" for using Cloth/Fluid sim in Blender 2.56 beta


Blender 2.56 Beta

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.56 Beta. This release is the fourth official beta release of the Blender 2.5 series, representing the culmination of many years of redesign and development work.

This version is called a "Beta" because it's now for the most part feature complete. The Python API has had some extensive changes, most notably in naming conventions and in creation and access of properties.

Since Blender 2.55 beta over 440 bugs were fixed!

IMPORTANT: Between 2.53 and 2.56 an extensive renaming operation has changed the scripting API a lot, with repercussions also for loading 2.53 .blends with animation into 2.56. Make sure you try the FCurve/Driver 2.54 fix entry from the Help menu.

IMPORTANT 2: The day after release, a very bad bug in "undo" for using Cloth/Fluid sim has been solved. We'll probably release a 2.56a update soon.


Blender 2.55 Beta

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.55 Beta. This release is the third official beta release of the Blender 2.5 series, representing the culmination of many years of redesign and development work.

This version is called a "Beta" because it's now for the most part feature complete. The Python API has had some extensive changes, most notably in naming conventions and in creation and access of properties.

Since Blender 2.54 beta over 340 bugs were fixed!

IMPORTANT: Between 2.53 and 2.55 an extensive renaming operation has changed the scripting API a lot, with repercussions also for loading 2.53 .blends with animation into 2.55. Make sure you try the FCurve/Driver 2.54 fix entry from the Help menu.


What to Expect

* Big improvements - This software has been used extensively in production of the Durian open movie project "Sintel".
* Feature complete - Although some of the 2.5 targets have been postponed, such as multi-window support showing multiple scenes, a full RNA data level dependency graph, or radial menus.
* Exciting improvements in Sculpting - Faster, much more stable and better brushes.
* Missing/Incomplete Features - Although really most of it is there, not all functionality from 2.4x has been restored yet. Some functionality may work in a different way. Some features are still slower to use than before.
* Bugs - We've fixed a lot lately, but there are still quite a few bugs. For this second beta around 200 bugs were fixed.
* Changes - If you're used to the old Blenders, Blender 2.5 may seem quite different at first. Be prepared to read a bit about this, how to reconfigure things, and learn to use the new built-in 2.5 search functionality!


Blender 2.54 Beta

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.54 Beta. This release is the second official beta release of the Blender 2.5 series, representing the culmination of many years of redesign and development work.

This version is called a "Beta" because it's now for the most part feature complete. The Python API has had some extensive changes, most notably in naming conventions and in creation and access of properties.

IMPORTANT: Between 2.53 and 2.54 an extensive renaming operation has changed the scripting API a lot, with repercussions also for loading 2.53 .blends with animation into 2.54. Make sure you try the FCurve/Driver 2.54 fix entry from the Help menu.

What to Expect

* Big improvements - This software has been used extensively in production of the Durian open movie project "Sintel".
* Feature complete - Although some of the 2.5 targets have been postponed, such as multi-window support showing multiple scenes, a full RNA data level dependency graph, or radial menus.
* Exciting improvements in Sculpting - Faster, much more stable and better brushes.
* Missing/Incomplete Features - Although really most of it is there, not all functionality from 2.4x has been restored yet. Some functionality may work in a different way. Some features are still slower to use than before.
* Bugs - We've fixed a lot lately, but there are still quite a few bugs. For this second beta around 200 bugs were fixed.
* Changes - If you're used to the old Blenders, Blender 2.5 may seem quite different at first. Be prepared to read a bit about this, how to reconfigure things, and learn to use the new built-in 2.5 search functionality!


Blender 2.53 Beta

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.53 Beta. This release is the first official beta release of the Blender 2.5 series, representing the culmination of many years of redesign and development work.

This version is called a "Beta" because it's now for the most part feature complete. The main topic we still work on is the Python API.


What to Expect

* Big improvements - This software has been used extensively in production of the Durian open movie project "Sintel".
* Feature complete - Although some of the 2.5 targets have been postponed, such as multi-window support showing multiple scenes, a full RNA data level dependency graph, or radial menus.
* Exciting improvements in Sculpting - Faster, much more stable and better brushes.
* Missing/Incomplete Features - Although really most of it is there, not all functionality from 2.4x has been restored yet. Some functionality may work in a different way. Some features are still slower to use than before.
* Bugs - We've fixed a lot lately, but there are still quite a few bugs.
* Changes - If you're used to the old Blenders, Blender 2.5 may seem quite different at first. Be prepared to read a bit about this, how to reconfigure things, and learn to use the new built-in 2.5 search functionality!


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, including fractal based systems. And even better, a Texture Nodetree can even become a Brush for painting.

Projection Painting

Painting in the 3D view has been improved to support projection painting which allows you to paint directly onto your model without having to worry about UV mapping or seams.

Etch-a-ton armature sketching

Etch-a-ton is a development snapshot for sketching techniques applied to rigging. It can be used both for creating chains of deformation bones through various subdivision techniques or through retargetting templates

Boolean improvements

In 2.49 you can put a Boolean Modifier on any level in the stack, allowing you to intersect deformed or subdivided models too. You can also insert multiple Booleans in one stack now.

Creative Commons, from Wikipedia

JPEG2000 support

Blender now supports the new high quality JPEG format. It has much better compression, supports Alpha layers, and HDR color up to 16 bits per channel. JPEG2000 support is available in Blender everywhere, including Sequencer, Compositor and UV texture editor.

Bolt generator script

Python Script extensions

New scripts have been added, tools such as Landscape or Bolt generators, and the importer/exporters had several updates and fixes.
Also worth visiting is the very complete (over 300) Scripts Catalog in our wiki.

Featurettes & Fixes

A lot of smaller features and bug fixes were done for 2.49 as well. Hundreds of reports were handled the past 6 months.


Blender 2.48a update:

A couple of important bugfixes has been done in Blender since the release, especially for using the Game Engine and GLSL.


Blender 2.48

Blender 2.48 includes all the work done on the Blender Game Engine and the Apricot Open Game "Yo Frankie!", with much better functioning game logic editing, character animation, and Blender Material based real-time shaders. And as last minute surprise a Bullet physics update with Softbody support.

We also included a lot of new development in this release; Windows 64 bits support, Grease Pencil for sketching annotations,Sun/Sky/Atmosphere rendering, new modifiers, and an improved text editor with Python API support. And last but not least, an enormous list of open bug reports were handled.

Bug fixes

In the past months the bug trackers went down from 220 (Blender) and 110 (GE) to a wonderfully low 28 (Blender) and 8 (GE). Recently it's been rising though, but still very acceptable and definitely deserving to call this a stable release!

With about 500 commits per month, the list of fixes would not be interesting anymore... we better spend the time on better documentation, clearly having mapped out what's intended to work and how.

Find below the gems we didn't have a document or page for.

* Boolean modifier now results in more optimal result with fewer faces.
* DXF exporter (python) much improved
* Copy/paste text (buttons, texteditor) supports OS clipboard too.
* Snapping includes group duplicators
* Outliner now shows Sequencer strips
* Halo render with lines/circles was broken in 2.47
* Outliner can now toggle visibility/renderability for bones and modifiers
* New UV editor selection mode: Island


Blender 2.47

Continuing Blender 2.4x series, Blender 2.47 is a bugfix release to stabilize the "Bunny Release", serious effort has been put in tracking bugs and fixing them.

A complete list of bugfixes is available if you want to read all the nasty details. Or keep on reading for a quick "short" version:

* New tools and improvement have been made to the Snapping tools.
* Better Game Engine logic.
* Fixed an incorrect transformation for particle group visualization.
* Fixed negative value in the Gamma node with negative input.
* Tangent shading (which only affects specular) made bump mapping not work for diffuse.
* Fixed Mesh Deform Modifier not working on extruded curves.
* Fixed crash converting old particle system from a linked file.
* Object instancing didn't restore matrices correct for Environment Map, this could give object rendering in the wrong position.
* Compositor nodes with use nodes disabled didn't properly redraw the node window on changes.

* Blender would crash if the user cancel the hair softbody bake.
* The Disable Tex option didn't disable textures for the Texface material option.
* Fixed data browse for image painting, which didn't work.
* Action Editor Border Select Channels no longer selects bones.
* Fix bug in X-Mirror for armatures. When a bone in a mirrored chain wasn't named propertly, it would leave the head or tail in an invalid state.
* Fixed baking AO with greater then 16 samples.
* Fixed "Col" option for particle systems does not work correctly with Mat IPOs
* Fixed Particle mirror could fail on some faces.
* Bevel tool was hanging on certain geometry where the edge to be beveled was shared by two faces that had more than one edge in common and caller was not checking return status of Bmesh eulers.
* Fixed Game Engine corrupts Pose data
* When your home directory is full, saving defaults would fail without raising an error.
* Fixed crash on grab/move on axis when nothing selected.
* Update-automatically option in IPO Editor now updates objects using the active IPO-block as their ObAction when transforming keyframes.
* Shift+H would hide unselected objects on unseen layers.
* Color picker didn't always redraw rgb/hsv/hex values.
* Vertex parenting didn't work correct with multiple unconnected curves.
* Fixed crash in fluid bake with large amount of small fluid objects.
* Outliner doesn't update when changing parent in Transform Properties


Blender 2.46
The work of the past half year - also thanks to the open movie project "Big Buck Bunny" - has resulted in a greatly improved feature set, now released as Blender 2.46, the "Bunny release"!
This version supports a new particle system with hair and fur combing tools, fast and optimal fur rendering, a mesh deformation system for advanced character rigging, cloth simulation, fast Ambient Occlusion, a new Image browser, and that's just the beginning. Check the extensive list of features in the log below... have fun!
May 17, 2008
The blender.org team.

Hair and Fur
Many features have been added to make fur and grass rendering for Peach possible. Big improvements were made in visual quality, rendering speed and memory usage.

Image Browsing
The new Image Browser is blazingly fast and stable, and not only allows to browse for images in your filesystem, but can also show previews of materials, textures, world, lamp and image data.

Glossy Reflections
Reflections and refractions are now possible to be rendered with a glossiness factor, controlling the roughness of material.

Render Baking
Great tools for making UV textures: you now can bake normal maps based on rendering a higher resolution mesh, you can bake displacement (including 32 bits depth), and you can bake transparency.

Physics caching and baking
The softbody, cloth and particle physics now use a unified system for caching and baking. For real-time tweaking, a new option "Continue Physics" will continue the simulation regardless of the current frame.


www.malefico3d.orgArmature Drawing
Armatures now support Bone groups, custom Bone colors, automatic colors, more custom shape options, ... and many more goodies for our rigging department.

Armature Tools
Many new tools and improvements have been made to speed up the rigging and posing workflow. There are now tools for more intuitive bone creation, various hotkeys to speedy batch-editing of bones,auto-ik and auto-keyframing tweaks, and many more goodies.

Skinning improvements
Bone Heat Weighting is a new method to create vertex weights for bone deformation, it generates better results, and does not require setting a radius for bones. Also added was Quaternion-Interpolated Deformation for superior blends.

Game Engine improvements
The Blender GameEngine has seen a great deal of improvement with an increase in play-back speed, a number of nice new features including 2D filter compositing, and of course attention to quality through bug fixes.

Soft Shadows
Raytraced soft shadows are now possible for all lamp types; including spot, sun and point lights.

Render Pipeline
FSA gives superior anti-aliasing for high dynamic range and compositing. Zmasks allow rendering of composite masks. Instancing gives efficient memory re-use for duplicates.


Shading features
Cubic shading (to prevent discontinuity banding)
Higher level texture coordinates for duplicates (like feathers)
Lamp fall-off curves
Softer Halos, premul alpha, multisample shadowbuffers, ...

Python Scripts and API
There have been a large number of script additions and script updates, as well as API improvements since the last release.
Particle system rewrite
The particle system has been rewritten from scratch. It now allows advanced hair grooming tools, but also much better physics, boid animation and even explosions!

Cloth simulation
Cloth simulation is available in Blender via a modifier on Mesh objects. Cloth thenrealistically and in real-time interacts with other objects, the wind or other forces, all of which is fully under your control.


Approximate AO
Ambient Occlusion is a render option that darkens areas with less visibility, simulating the effect of environment light. This new AO option is based on quick approximation, giving many factors of speedup.

Mesh Deform Modifier
This new method allows to use any random Mesh cage to become a deformation "lattice" for animated characters. By layering - using both a MeshDeformer and an Armature, you can both achieve high level as precise control.

Action Editor improvements
The Action Editor has been rewritten to have a more flexible codebase that is more future-proof and extendable. This has enabled tools to be shared between the editing modes for Actions and ShapeKeys, and now has many new features...

Constraint System
Constraints are crucial for setting up good character rigs. A wealth of new features have been added to improve and extend this system. Most notable is the addition of PyConstraints, allowing full control to animators.


www.promotionstudios.comQMC & Adaptive Sampling
Blender now includes two new sampling methods, using a Halton sequence (Adaptive QMC) and a Hammersley sequence (Constant QMC).
Raytracing now also supports adaptive sampling.

Sequencer
Many many new goodies in our Video Sequence Editor:
UI made more accessible, new panels/views
Built-in strip blending
Color correction tools
Markers, NTSC support, preview, ...

UV texture editing
UV texture coordinates now are accessible via regular Mesh editmode. And many more features were added such as:

UV draw types
Solid opengl view with textures
2d cursor in Image window

Node editor
New nodes have been added for shading and compositing.

And more features
NDOF devices support
Align to Transform Orientation
Pole target for IK chains
Pose Libraries
Weight Paint visualization
Multi-Modifier support
Weight-group selecting
Custom transform orientations
Distributed rendering options
External Paths Tools
Automerge
Recursive Dupli Groups


The most important Bug Fixes in 2.45 are:

* SSS work with panorama render
* Remove artifacts with negative lights using SSS
* Disable SSS better for preview rendering, so it does not slow down other preview render at all.
* Fix error in Transform Constraint with planar constraints when the plane was perpendicular to the viewport.
* Fix a Vector blur error in "Ztransp" that produce black lines (on edges) appeared, which didn't get blurred away.
* Fix a error in the Particle System that cause bad result in command line renders especially or in rendering first frame of animation.
* Fix Verse crashing in 64 bits Linux.
* Math node now has reflective behavior.
* Importing 3DS files with lamps failed.
* Bundled python modules were not included in 2.44 by accident, making some scripts fail in 2.44 that worked in 2.43 (Windows Only, when Python was not installed)


Blender 2.44

Blender 2.44 was intended to be an upgrade release, mainly for plenty of bug fixes, but the developers took the effort adding at least a few interesting new features.

This version now is fully 64 bits compatible, new modifers were added, a couple of composite nodes were added, and a revamp of the old mesh primitives was done. But most relevant to mention is Blender 2.44's new long-awaited but unexpected feature: subsurface scattering (SSS) support!

May 12th, 2007

Sculpt and Multires

The previous release was the first Blender version to offer 3d sculpt and multi-res. Based on welcome feedback and reporting, a lot of bug fixes and improvements were added.

Python Scripts and API

There have been a large number of script additions and script updates, as well as API improvements since the last release.

New Modifiers

Two new modifiers are available now; "Smooth" and "Cast".
64 bits migration notes

Blender had been ported to 64 bits Dec Alpha in 1998 already, but since 2002 its 64 bits compliancy has been gathering dust mostly. Time for a cleanup!

More features and fixes

Plenty of smaller features made it into this release.

Subsurface Scattering

Subsurface scattering is a new material option to render materials like skin, marble or milk. For these materials light scatters under the surface and leaves at another position. This leads to a softer appearance, as light is blurred out over the surface.

New Composite Nodes

Two new Composite nodes had been added, that can be accessed by the Add > Color menu, expanding further the possibilities of the Composite node editor.

Character Animation

The Action and NLA editors have now better control over visible channels. A new constraint was added, and a "preview range" option was added.

Physics Engine

The Bullet physics engine has had some changes which should give better reproducibility and precision/quality for physics simulations.
Mesh primitives update

The mesh primitives have been revisited, improving their usability and pushing them a little beyond their previous state.


2.43
http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-243/


2.42
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Blender_2_42.727.0.html


2.41
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Blender_2_41.731.0.html


2.40 alpha
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Blender_2.4_pre-release_notes


2.37a
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/2_37a_Release_Notes.597.0.html


2.37
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Blender_2_37.496.0.html