2.49 Preparations Started

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Silence! Ton speaks!

Thank God it’s not April 1st today, or you wouldn’t have believed this – the Blender Foundation have decided to release *one* more 2.4 release. If everything goes according to plan, we should see 2.49 at the end of April!

Ton Roosendaal writes:

On popular request (users banging on our doors!) but mostly because current sources have seen much improvements, we challenge fate by releasing the very last available number before 2.50.

On Blenderartists a contest for the splash already started:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=152631

Features of 2.49 include (from the top of my mind):

  • Texture node editor
  • Live Video Texture in Game Engine
  • Improved API to talk to logic bricks in GE
  • Etch-a-ton, sketching armatures
  • Bullet Physics update
  • Jpeg 2000 and EDL support in sequencer
  • Everything I forgot
  • And plenty of bugfixes of course

Most of the branches remain ‘branch’ for the time being. So no volumetrics, no BMesh, no new Nurbs, no Freestyle, although all these progress well. Dome rendering for the GE we look at to include though.

Within a week we define when the first Release Candidate becomes available, which is probably around April 15th. About 10 days later the real release then could follow. Just wait for further announcements.

-Ton-

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    • Tony Lane

      VERY exciting news!

    • Grzesiek

      That is quite surprising, but happy for the progress. Well done. Can’t wait.

    • http://www.taddmencer.com Tadd

      Sweet, can’t wait!

    • Leemstradamus

      Hopefully we get an x64bit installer, great news!

    • Nik

      I guess this is to keep everyone satisfied until 2.50:)

    • Ours

      splash screen contest?

    • http://filsd.deviantart.com Dilly

      I guess FFMPEG 0.5 will be on 2.49 too…?
      please… =)

      many thanks to the devs and community!

      ah, just one more thing:
      GO 2.5!!! GO! =D

    • SamCameron

      More than I expected from this version, so… VERY HAPPY, looking foward to see improvements in GE, also would be nice to have sometime in the future a feature to render from GE (similar as Maya has with Hardware Render).

    • ook

      Texture nodes! Woohooo!

    • RNS

      it goes to show that with the power of suggestion every thing is possible ” I Awesome”– (Rhino)

    • http://www.DreadKnight666.com Dread Knight

      Great news :)

    • Icono

      It wasn’t a door, it was a &$^#ing window. And it wasn’t a bang, it was more like a crash. And, and it wasn’t a request. It was a request with a gun.

      Watch yourselves blender programmers. You never know who’s bed I’m under next.

    • anycolorilike

      Amazing! I hope the tiles texture will make it and combine with the texture nodes.

    • bob2

      This is great news. I’m very exited about this.

      I have a question: Is there an estimated date for merging the branches of volumetrics, BMesh, Nurbs, and Freestyle? Will some of this be in 2.5?

    • HenryIII

      Hooray, JPEG2000! (I’m doing research related to that format at school, and it is a nice format) I’m glad that texture node editor made it in there, and the other stuff too, but the JPEG2000 was a surprise to me! I am glad to see that one more is making out before 2.5. One thing for sure now, there won’t be another 2.4x series! (not counting a 2.49a, I guess)

    • avalon33

      WoooHoooHoooooo! :D
      Thank you, great news :)

    • waystar

      Woo-Hoo!

      That is wonderful news.

    • http://www.yobro.nl Jasper

      Live Video Texture in Game Engine!
      Live Video Texture in Game Engine!
      Live Video Texture in Game Engine!
      this sounds so good!

    • Nathan Braswell

      Nice! I love video textures, they rock! (I compile my own svn version every couple of days)
      Can’t wait for volumetrics yet though. I want them in my svn but havn’t figured out how to do that and still keep a cutting edge version of everything else.

    • http://home.deds.nl/~mp/ ysvry

      great news , now lets see when we will get version 2,499 :P

    • Smuc

      Oh no!!!
      More wainting time for 2.5! Sounds like another “patch”!
      And who needs Jpeg 2000 and EDL?? What’s about PSD!!!
      It’s all about compatibility!!

    • Gryphon

      Hey, cool. I was right, for once!

      12/8/2008: Gryphon wrote:
      I’d be surprised if there wasn’t another intermediate release between now and “the big day.” :)

      Bart, I hope you’ll keep us posted on the 2.50 splash contest; I’ve been working on an image, and I’d like to at least enter it! It’s not quite ready for this version, and the theme is sort of relevant to 2.50.

    • MacGuyver

      What I’m hoping for is sound support on Intel Macs. Any chance we’ll get that in 2.49? If not, please, Please, PLEASE get it in by 2.5! Thanks!

    • Ricardo

      What is EDL?

    • Icono

      You want PSD? What specific advantage would that give you? What situation would it serve you better? WOuldn’t it be better to do you texture work in another program and then save your original PSD and your blender version PNG? I mean, why not make the GIMP a Blender plugin?

    • MmAaXx

      ok…2.49…meabe, 2.49a,2.49b….and finally 2.5 !!!

    • Tony

      MacGuyver, what kind of sound support do you mean, specifically? I have no problem working with audio in the sequence editor or rendering it with ffmpeg (provided I choose the right codecs.. Xvid with Mp3 works great). I haven’t experimented extensively with game engine sound on Mac though.

    • http://kubuntulover.blogspot.com Blendiac

      Does anyone know anything more about:
      “Improved API to talk to logic bricks in GE”?

      This sounds like the most intruiging feature to me, and yet I hadn’t heard anything about anything like this?

      Tell me more!

    • http://freshsurge.com RH2

      -Yay for real time reflections in blender GE!

      Adding the ability to run Gimp or other programs as plugins would be awesome!

    • http://kubuntulover.blogspot.com Blendiac

      @Ricardo – EDL = Edit Decision List. Very, very common in editing suites.

    • http://www.sfinksfilms.com/ Dane

      this new Live video texture feature sounds like something that is going to be a lot of fun to mess around with :-D

    • http://www.free3dmodels.fleshsoft.eu iulian flester

      this is really good news… i don’t have words to say how much I can wait the new version :D

    • TxRx

      Nice one! I wonder what “Everything I forgot” covers lol :D

    • http://www.fahassani.blogspot.com Fahassani

      Cool news..
      LOL I think Bart may used it before us! ^^

    • http://www.blender3d.at Carlinhos

      WOW, great new features!!

    • CG_Tiger

      Will Multires modifier be included in 2.49?

    • Vilem Novak

      one forgotten thing is projection painting! ;)

    • Stamem Worlslmore

      @Icono, one advantage of PSD support (for example in 3dsmax) is the ability to rapidly preview textures with multiple layers, without collapsing them.

    • fraek

      _cool“~…

    • http://ghigiblend.wordpress.com Ghigi123

      Hello !
      It’s a goud new, but I thought that Blender 2.50 will be the next release ! Is there a date for Blender 2.50 ???

    • MacGuyver

      Tony,

      To be honest, I haven’t tried working with sound on my Intel Mac yet. I just keep seeing the note on the downloads page: “NOTE: Intel Mac versions have no sound support yet!”. Luckily, my latest projects haven’t gotten that far that we’re working on the sound yet. I did try the Intel Mac version of “Yo Frankie!”, which had no sound at all. I got sound when I ran the PPC Mac version on my Intel Mac, even if the whole thing ran even slower than the Intel version. In any case, I’m really looking forward to these updates.

    • Kintaro

      Srsly? How many want to bet there will be a blender 2.491A before there’s a 2.5?

    • http://www.ronbravo.com ronbravo

      This is great news! Thanks for the update.

      Is someone going to update the images on the features section of the blender site, or are they waiting until version 2.5?

    • Fire Angel

      Good news, less of a wait for some of the new features and yet more bug fixes. :D

      I’m a bit puzzled by the comment about .PSD support, I routinely use .PSD files as textures in Blender renders, and have been doing so for years.

    • flagus

      Hi all. Like you guys I’m really happy that a new version of Blender gonna be out soon. But I’m still discovering amazing stuff and little tricks everyday on the2.48a, :-/ or was it there even before??? :). What for me would really be great would that a book with an update of all the new stuffs accompanied with examples, dreaming of one that would explain the all soft might take too long to make, for the release of 2.5. I’ll surely by this one too. Take care all of you.

    • Icono

      Stamem Worlslmore, Thanks for pointing that out, I forgot 3DS’ multi layer texture effect. But, I’d also like to have some support for GIMP native format and other formats that already allow layers. Granted this might explode a .blend file size, it would let us have a handy way to work with layers without using stencil textures.

    • http://robo3d.com MetaBlue

      2.49 sounds interesting! I can hardly wait for the release!

      Now will this video texture for the game engine work on Linux?

    • zaghaghi

      what about Ocean Texture?

    • http://okno.be Olm-Z

      @ MetaBlue :
      Yes, VideoTexture works well in linux… actualy it was developed by Benoit on basis of Ashsid plugin specialy for it to works on that platform, and that’s why it’s now in the trunk, ‘cos it’s crossplatform and using FFmpeg for decoding. You can also use video4linux input (like webcam) or streams, or anything that can be read by ffmpeg. or a virtual camera, that gives you the realtime reflection feature.
      This was the interactive installation it was developed for on a linux system, back in nov. 08 in okno.be : http://tinyurl.com/cydv5r (ogg video)

    • http://www.barbatron.com barbatron

      well,

      STOP SPOILING US!

      if you continue with such nice suprises, i’ll get used to it too much and i’m going to expect the inclusion of a free ‘personal cgi assistant’ within the next version.

    • blenderman0815

      In the new ffmpeg, there is an MXF support. Is an updated ffmpeg in planning?

    • mechul asker

      hello ıam türkiye

      merhaba ben ingilizce bilmiyorum ve blender 2.49 kullanıyorum
      fakat dil seçeneğinde türkçe olmadığından kullanımım kısıtlı
      acaba rica etsem türkçe yama sını ekleye bilirmisiniz dil seçeneği olduğunda türkiyede inanılmaz derecede kullanıcı olacaktır bu program ve bu siteyi kurduğunuz için teşekkür ederim tahnk you ıam mechul asker :)