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Blender 2.43 Released, Blender.org Redesigned

103

splash_243_starrynight02.jpgWell, this wasn't easy but it looks like it's done: Blender 2.43 has been released and we (finally!) have the new blender.org website online. This release is already dubbed by Ton as the 'Multi' release because there are so many Multi functions: multi-resolution Meshes, multi-level UV, multi-layer images and multi-pass rendering.

I did the implementation of the Typo3 Content Management System for the website and it has cost me a lot of time over the last few weeks and this weekend. By now, we're all pretty much spent - so I'll keep this very short.

2.43 Release

Lots of goodies here - check out the 2.43 release log to get an impression of just how much has changed. Also, for the first time we have a series of Feature Videos demonstrating the power of some of the most important new features. Very cool stuff. Download 2.43 now!

Website

A lot has changed behind the scenes: obviously we redid the entire website with a design by Matt Ebb. We also have a new webserver for the website dubbed 'Emo' (the new projects box will be 'Proog') and we'll say goodbye to our old faithful Xserve. Marco has spent a lot of time getting this box installed.

We also have three separate download servers (not counting our international mirrors), bringing our total download capacity up to 300mb. Slashdot and Digg? Bring 'em on!

So! I guess we'll now have to make sure Ton remembers to buy us a dinner :-)

Thanks to everyone who was involved and to the rest of you: enjoy!

f

About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
Bart Veldhuizen

I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.

103 Comments

  1. Hey this is great that 2.43 is being released! I can't wait to download it and also to see the new blender.org website. Unfortunately I'm getting a '404 Not Found' error on the provided links, and http://www.blender.org is failing to show anything besides a white screen... I'm hoping it's just extraordinarily high demand. Maybe the "Slashdot and Digg? Bring ‘em on!" quote should still be thought about a bit more? :)

  2. Thank you very much for everyone's hard work in making this available to myself and other Blender users. I will enjoy all of the new features.
    Now I must go and start my download!

  3. blender site still doesn't work... too bad because many people are waiting biteing their nails :)
    unfortunately i am not patient... :) greetings

  4. Howdy everyone. First time poster, long time reader. For those trying to get to blender.org to download, good luck to you. Another option is to look up the google cache of blender.org and get a list of mirrors that way and download 2.43. I'm getting it at around 90k/sec.

    Later.

  5. At this time, the new Blender web site it's still "somewhere incognito" :)
    Maybe you should return to some "basics":
    Old computer - old Debian Sarge - old Apache - old WordPress ?? :)
    Just kidding...thank you to all of you that contribute to this great adventure
    Bye

  6. This is what I get when trying to go to the download page via the link above :

    Database Error
    The current username, password or host was not accepted when the connection to the database was attempted to be established!

    will try again in a little while...

  7. Great! We've been waiting a long time for this great update! And it's a big step further ahead from 2.42 already, sculpt, retopo, render passes, and and and!!

    And congratulations to Mathias P, great splash screen!

  8. Really really nice, new site design is a lot easier on the eye and gives Blender a more professional ambience to it. Well done to the designers.

    Another congrats to Mathias P for the splash.

  9. Great job guys, it looks like a labor of love - outstanding to say the least. I just can't get over now that the splash screen and my wallpaper is the same picture. Must say a due now, many new things to play with!

  10. So many things all at the same time, new Blender version, new web site, new gallery ... too much at once ! But hehe, we will survive :-)
    Once again, congrats to the Blender team for this great work.

    Have fun and bring us some great stuf with this new toy guys

    So Mathias, you got it ! Well deserved, congrats ;)

  11. Great release, just dugg it.

    Little heads-up: the videos in the release log for Composite: UVmap, Displace, IDmask, Zcombine are pointing to the wrong location. The slashes in download/blender/org should be turned into dots.

    Anyway, time to blend some more.

  12. Niiice, new release - must download now :)

    IMO it would be a good idea if the blender.org page would also link to the wiki somewhere (at least I couldn't find any link to it yet) .... especially the manual and tutorial sections provide vast amounts of information for new and experienced users.

  13. One can never thank all those people who make it possible for us to enjoy Blender enough. Rest well B@rt : we'll take it from here... now that it is all fun ;)

    I see that there is quite some work left like completing the release notes, reconnecting the links in the help menu to something better than the home page and a lot more than what I know. So rest well, take courage, be happy and hopefully users like me will make you proud of the work you're doing.

    Jean

  14. About the new design, I know that blender.org contains loads of information, about documentations, features, websites, communities, source of blender and loads more, but when I checked the new theme, I just went totally nuts about the content readability, it's horrible. I like the color theme but the content makeup (whatever it's called) needs defently loads more work as well someone needs to think seriously about how they want to style the content.

    Also I think loads of people won't be really pleased with the width of the website, but well that's something where people have been arguing about for ages on different websites, schools or companies. Anyways, I like the theme and colors, but that's all about it, ooh wait and ofcourse the new blender 2.43 which is just awesome.

    That was my opinion, I hope you don't take it too personal, but I just wanted to say it.

  15. Excellent work guys. The website looks really terrific and the release is as always a great step up. Is it just me or is there more buzz than ever around this release? Very exciting stuff.

    The new feature videos are terrific! Excellent idea for documenting new features. One thing I wanted to ask though was, are any of them available for download? I think the flash player suits the site very well, but it would also be nice to study them on my portable vid player... If anybody knows where these can be found please let me know.

  16. Home now and WOW!! There are new videos too!? Get Out!! Now help me out here...seeing that at least some of this has come about because of the Summer of Code with Google…where should one post this most important fruit from so many talented people within the Google machine so the world can see what it is that has come about from last summer? Or is that a bad idea? (NOT!)
    In the back of my mind the thought that my SUB controller within my laptop was fried because of the static discharge at work proves to be fouls, thank you Lord! It is good to have a mouse that lives.
    With all involved with the new version and website with wives, husbands, kids, dogs, cats or plants thanks again. Spend some time at home, they MUST miss you! I’d love to keep this going but there are a lot of video’s to checkout, later!

  17. while still kind of new to blender i keep being amazed by what you can do with it as well as by the development side of things. so great...

    one small suggestion: on the ...features-gallery/requirements page it says you need a 3 button mouse. i am still using my one button mouse with this new release and it works just fine. maybe it should be mentioned that you can use blender under os x with the standard apple mouse...? this kind of information might make the difference for mac users when it comes to downloading and trying out blender or not.

  18. Is there a place that shows Blender.org's server statistics?
    For example, what technology is powering the new site? Software/hardware? Is it still Typo3? Was it ever? :)
    also, in terms of hits and visits, is it something the BF is comfortable making available to the public?
    Just curious about it, as the site seems very fast.
    Congrats to all involved, Blender has evolved once again.

  19. Another great release, it seems in almost no time since the last one
    So many great new bits to indulge our creative fancy :)
    Thanks everyone for your contributions to 2.43 and for the website revamp

    speaking of which....I find the new look is well organised but a little difficult to read....sort of like blender artists when it first got its makeover...dunno sorta needs visual separation or something.
    Still I know this was a lot of work so I wont complain too loudly ;)

    Thanks again people :)

  20. Fantastic, and I love the introduction of the new features video demos, that is really a great addition, one that makes me want to get started with 2.43 right now... ahh, can7t do 'til work is finished, but still a great web design and a great new release from the Devs.

  21. Wow! So many new stuff in this release, it's amazing!
    It will take me days to explore all the new features.
    Also the new blender.org's design is gorgeous. I find it very clean with a very professional look.

    Great job.
    Kudos to all the contributors!

  22. Kodram:
    the archives can be reached but it is in a strange fashion. Use the 'submit an image' link first : on the page that opens there will be a link to the archives near the top.
    I guess that this will be corrected eventually.

    Jean

  23. Wierd seing your own picture when you start up Blender... :)
    Thanks for the kind words, guys!

    And thanks to the developers for getting this release done! Another bulls eye! Great new features!
    //Mathias

  24. WOW! 2.43 is already out? I wasn't here yesterday to see the countdown, so you guys have given me a very nice surprise. Thanks to all of you great developers!

    I assume Bassam's Mancandy update will run mighty-fine on 2.43.

  25. Argh... flash video. Why do people use it? For some reason the video stops frequently before it gets done.

    Could you please, please, please use an open format for future videos? Flash is annoying, since I can't store it for later viewing.

  26. I try to download, I just get redirected to http://emo.blender.org/ which is a very white page with boxes and no links working what-so-ever.

    Tried using Netscape 8.1, Firefox 2.0.0.1 and IE 6, all with the same results.

    Can't get to the download via the page either. :(

  27. Can anyone get the mac intel .dmg to mount? I've downloaded it several times, but I can't get it to mount on my Mac Pro. I keep getting a "not recognized" error.

  28. chris:
    I accept Google as my friend so please tell how one can save these? They seem just first rate but flow so fast as to not make out just what all the menus are being used? Is it possible to slow them down once saved? Will I have to sell my arm and leg to be able to save them?

  29. If you use something like firefox, you can simply find the embedded video From the "page info ->media" and click and download the file from there. There are other ways to capture flash and if you can't find them, you aren't looking. Once again, google google google before you assume something cannot be done.

  30. i found changelogs very useful, but now they seem to be gone :( that makes separating brand new features from recent ones harder...

  31. are crap. they're too fast and they probably have too high bitrate. you can't control well speed with swf, what about plain od mov, avi thing? just see videotutorials...

  32. DimitrisChristou on

    Ive been checking Blender since the first days of 2007. What we got here is an 8.5 MB 3D bomb that brings even 3D packs that cost thousands of $ to shame. Ive been using Cinema 4D since ver.5 GO! but this little piece of software here is amazing! I cant find words to thank Ton and the rest of the team.

  33. I just checked out the new gallery, Reyante, youre a beast! Amazing pieces man, original and thought-provoking.
    Cant wait to see your future work!

    Peace
    Drew

  34. Well im like some other people i read lol i keep getting the white screen from the links.I've tried blender 2.43 its pretty sweet.

  35. >>This release is already dubbed by Ton as the ‘Multi’ release because there are so many Multi functions: multi-resolution Meshes, multi-level UV, multi-layer images and multi-pass rendering.

  36. Why does this site crap out on quotes within arrows? Really annoying. Anyway, so it's multi-this and multi-that, but is it multi-threaded?

  37. BeBraw: Why should the x86_64 version come when 2.50 is released. The only version I've got now is 2.41 and that's a year old now.

    A pitty for my processor to calculate on this in 32-bit modus, ah well, maybe it comes sooner than the next big release.

  38. Can anyone get the mac intel .dmg to mount? I've downloaded it several times, but I can't get it to mount on my Mac Pro. I keep getting a "not recognized" error.

    If anybody is having this problem...rename the .dmg.bz2 to .dmg and mount it... and it should work.

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