Blender 2.62 is in BCON4 now (testbuilds, only essential bugfixes), and the developers are considering an expedited 2.63 release that contains only BMesh!
Ton Roosendaal writes:
1) Blender 2.62 progress
- Current planning in wiki.
- Blender bug tracker was brought down last week from 200 to 119 open issues! Kudos to Brecht/Campbell/Sergey who combined forces last week.
- We now move to BCon4 (Only crucial bug fixes), will do a call for an release candidate build tomorrow.
- Domino Marama and Juha Maki-Kanto have been working on fixing up Collada, last patch for this goes to svn within a day. It should now work fine for Second Life export again.
- Jens Verwiebe noticed a "Boost" library conflict in Blender, between Cycles - LuxRender add-on. He's working with Brecht on solving this now.
- Release log is in progress, please check if your work is there. (And we can use pictures too!)
- We decide whether to release (or not) on next Sunday's meeting.
2) Other projects
- Masks in blender: Sergey has updated document with data design.
- BMesh: is near final now! Campbell committed last big hurdle, for particle/hair support.
- Proposal: the next 2.63 release gets an exclusive BMesh-focus, other work should be done respecting it, or wait for 2.64 (especially bigger features that need testing time). Once BMesh is in trunk, we could move to BCon3 immediately (testing/fixing period, no new features added) and release 2.63 in less than two months.
- Next sunday and the sunday after we decide on a final 2.63 release plan.
- Google Summer of Code is starting up again. Ton will keep track of the process, but a coordinator volunteer is welcome again.
31 Comments
Don´t forget to fix traslation bug!!
2.61 does not traslate to spanish... I i want to traslate i must:
- traslate to chinesse
- change to spanish
Anyway you can´t save as user preferrences
Hola, Joaclint. Verifica esto en el bugtracker. http://projects.blender.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=498&aid=29494&group_id=9
Ya he reportado este problema y hace tiempo que está solucionado en el trunk. ¿El problema que tienes es por alguna build en particular o tienes compilada tu propia versión? (para ver si las traducciones funcionan, es recomendable). Si continúas teniendo problemas, no dudes en publicarlo en ese hilo. Es más recomendable reabrir un antiguo bug que crear un duplicado, además servirá para analizar el caso más de cerca. Ninguno de los que estamos en el equipo de las traducciones, tenemos ese problema. Por eso te aviso de antemano.
Saludos!
English:
Well, you could use Google Translate, but let's please Bart:
Hi, Joaclint. Check out this in the bugtracker http://projects.blender.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=498&aid=29494&group_id=9
I've reported this problem before, and it have been fixed a time ago. Is your problem because of a build or you've your own compiled version? (to see if translations works, it's recommended). If you still have problems, don't doubt to report it in that page. It is far more recommendable to reopen an old bug than to create a new duplicate, also it'll better serve to look at the case nearer. No one in the translations team have this problem. That's why I notify you.
Regards!
Huzzah for B-mesh!!!
And masks!!! Almost as much for masks!!!
Exciting news as allways!
Have been playing with box modelling and Bmesh.
Will certainly speed up my workflow, even though I try to end up with quads only.
Thx for your hard work, and these updates. (Don't understand the coding stuff, but glad that others do :-) )
81 bugs fixed in one week! Great!
Wow! they're speeding up! This is going to make a lot of people happy I guess.
Off topic editorial note: fAbruary? When is that?
It's probably because February is so Fabulous.
Again just exciting news. Thanks to Ton and all the Devs for working so hard.
I have 2 questions. If someone have the answers that would greatly help.
First. With cycle upgrade, we will be given the ability to control the renders passes. I'll be frank that I have never really understood node until 2.6. But this new feature seems really deep and complex. Will that enhance the quality of the renders and if yes can the common of mortals use it fully? And are the filters coming back with this for rendering effects?
Second. With Bmesh coming, this are gonna be different for modeling. That not really a problem as it going in the right way. But what about compatibility with other software. Will that be of any issue or is that gonna solve problem when exporting for other 3d software and game engines?
1. Blenders compositor can utilize the passes to make postproduction enhancements or changes to your renders. The passes are necessary for making any more enhanced compositing than eg. fullframe colorchanges.
2. Most modelling softwares have support for ngons. If you export to a game engine you would work with triangles anyway so triangulating the mesh before exporting would solve any possible complications.
Thanks for the reply
Good job as always. I think bmesh is a masterpiece but I also think it's better not to set aside cycles development.
Definitely, both as BMesh Cycles are significant advances for the blender community. Congratulations to those involved in such brilliant projects.
When the BGE is the focus of the Foundation's efforts for improvement? After all, many would like to only use the blender as a suite for Game Dev but the slow processing speed of BGE bar any attempt to more serious projects, using GLSL inclusives, not to mention that it does not support languages with special characters (accents), as pt-tt/pt-br, among others, and this inhibits thing for users without advanced programming.
I am just only starting with the BGE. From what I have read and saw, the BGE is quite capable of producing nice small games and even big ones.
I do not know how far you can push it or how difficult it is to use it for a commercial game or just a fully functional one. But if there was a lot of good game, like "Krum" that is being made now, that may encourage Tom and the Devs to pass more time on the BGE.
What I mean, is that if there's really a great demand for it maybe they would consider it more.
I personally don't really like the idea of trying to put everything in blender. BGE will only be a good choice only for small projects or free projects. For a commercial project it will never compete, the competitors are advancing way too fast.
But as a 3D creation tool blender as a chance in the professional world, so that should be the main focus.
And because blender is open source, anyone can donate/program/help in any way any module in blender.
Unlike autodesk, blender foundation's resources is much more limited, therefore they should be invested in the most important areas first, while the community can be active anywhere.
Looks like a superb update. Congrats to team. What caught my eye was the drag and drop parenting in the outliner - really useful
Great, thanks to the devs.
One question, on the Cycles bvh caché, http://projects.blender.org/scm/viewvc.php?view=rev&root=bf-blender&revision=43422, I see that it says:
"This is useful for rendering animations where only the camera or materials change.
Note that saving the BVH to disk only to be removed for the next frame is slower
if this is not the case and the meshes do actually change."
Does that mean that if you do facial animations with shape keys, the renders will be slower? will be a way to turn caching off if so?
Yes, in the case of facial animation the render will go slower because Blender will reexport the cache for every frame, when any mesh vertex will change its position. This kind of cache will speed up rendering of animation only if all the mesh data don't move at all. ;)
awesome!
Bmesh! Can't wait!
I've been intending to create a character in blender from start to finish to test out Blender, but I was waiting for this feature before starting (hate modeling without ngons).
Bmesh is going to bring about a kind of revolution in the quality of blender-produced work, since there will be SO MANY users turning from other software to blender as a full fledged poly modeling suite. And this is an understatement. Calling it an understatement is an understatement in itself.
Joe Eagar is a true open source champion!
yeah i hope so :D
I'm not a blender user (I've just tested it a little bit) but I'm looking really forward to it.
The modeling in tools in almost all 3D applications are very sucky. You can easily see it when you compare the modelling features of the bigger tools like 3Ds Max and Maya with the modeling tools from silo. Silo was very groundbreaking in the beginning and still has some of the most awesome selection/tweakTools of all :)
If blender will have the selection tools from silo I'm sold :D
Go BMesh!
People are playing with the term "game-changer" a lot these days so I'm reluctant to: however, have BMesh in Blender WILL be a game-changer. I was saving up for modo for no other reason, really. With NGon support, Blender has catapulted into the mainstream. I'll be very interested to see what Blender modellers develop after they've had a play with BMesh in Blender for a while...
Great game plan on 2.63! BMesh is definitely a release in and of itself.
how long till masking makes the trunk?
I can say, that I'm waiting for BMesh like for a real salvation!
Blender is such a cool 3D tool, that I prefer it over some commercial 3D programs, but with a limitation of tris and quads only there is more things, that are difficult to do and that I never saw to be mentioned anywhere so far. For example making LODs (Level Of Details) from one already textured model is a real pain - the UV coordinates get constantly broken when you start to reduce the geometry (except for edge collapsing and partial UV preservation in certain loop operations). You can't just select an edge or vertex and dissolve it preserving texture mapping, which is exactly what BMesh can manage (A BIG HOORAY!!!). I just wanted to point that example out, because LODs making is a common task for almost every serious game developer.
A big THANKS to all Blender developers!!!
The UV issue gave me some trouble too, so I'm very glad to hear I won't have to stitch something together twice :)
BMesh almost done == :)
BMesh!. Im so happy I could bust.
I think I'll quit my job and blend forever!
Such a long wait for Bmesh but it'll be soooo worth it. Thanks to all the devs that have stuck with it this whole time.