Now that you've worked with Blender 2.64 for almost a month, what's your favorite improvement? Are you still going back to an older version sometimes, or is 2.64 solid enough for what you do?
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About the Author
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.
57 Comments
Yes, 2.64 changed my life, I had to disable splash in Blender settingz.
Haha, you found it THAT horrible? :)
Many splashes before 2.64 were so beatiful, cool robot, fire flower, cute man on dandelion, and many before, when suddenly... stressful man, brains with totally unpleasant colors for static splash =( Too weird for so cool software.
I must agree, that new brain splash screen is hands down the worst blender splash. I'm sure the movie has been screen shots to use. Very un-inspirering.
2.65's splash screen will be picked by the Suzanne awards winners. Maybe that'll result in something better!
Cannot understand the problem. Where was your collective consciousness raised? Disneyland? I like the splash.
I agree too. I didn't disable the splash screen, but I always try not to look at it... Horrible...
There are many better shots in the movie.
Something I just noticed Bart. In the reply where you mentioned the Suzanne Awards panel picking the 2.65 screen, there is no reply button after that. Fancy admin trick? Or another WordPress bug?
The keying in the compositor has been a godsend. Definitely can't do without that anymore.
I found the new tracking tools revolutionary, and in my line of work (Film VFX), very, very useful. In addition, with the tile compositor, I will certainly be making blender a bigger part of my workflow. Lastly, but most importantly, I can't praise enough the new green screen keying node. Revolutionary, fast, totally awesome! Blender 2.64 is certainly the most useful update to blender I've gotten yet.
Definitely. The tracker is mind blowing-ly good. Have used other trackers before, like PF-Hoe & Boujou and have to say, Blenders new tracker is easily my first choice.
I'm just hoping for *some* kind of 3D-tracking automation like in Voodoo, placing so many tracks gets to be murder when you start getting up in the 100's of tracking points!
Me too.
Also, newest version can't be used on my Mac with OS X 10.5.8
:-(
there is, you can get blender to automatically place a large number of tracks. crt + t will track all of them, and the ones that die you can leave. I don't do it this way though, I usually pick 8-12 key tracking points and only track them fully
I fell in love with the tracker and new improvements of the smoke simulation, especialy adaptive domain. Hope to see more features in smoke like presets for a different kind of situations.
Cheers
Errr...as far as I know, adaptive domain is not in 2.64, although I do believe it is a 2.65 target. See here: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Projects
Apparently they will be implementing this (Which I was unaware of!): http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Genscher/Smoke_Development_Project_2012
And MiikaH's work: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:MiikaH/GSoC-2012-Smoke-Simulator-Improvements
I still have to use 2.49b ....
cause there is still no sync between action editor window and armatures
What!? XD
Didn't get that one, what do you mean? I've been animating stuff since the pre-2.5 versions and works great.
I mean I still cant select bones directly from dope sheet/action editor
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?231330-How-to-select-bones-directly-from-doPE-sheet
have been waiting since 2.50 ....
Ha! Ok, now I understood and it's explained my surprise :) It never was part of my workflow, so I never noticed you could do that what lead to don't miss it at all on 2.5+
Funny! Thanks for the clarification!
Masking features in sculpting. Great tool that I hope continues to develop (such as box selection masking, masking for texture painting, etc).
BMesh is great brings product design more to Blender but without a NGON OBJ exporter it still lacks some tools but with Cycles I never want to go back.
My fav splash was that flower oh and that alien on a ship in between crossroads. 2.64 did change mylife all foır the better . I like the current splash . Thank you .
The 2.64 splash gives me more nightmares than an b-mesh debate! :)
Loopcut sucks with B-Mash.
Go with blender 2.62 and be happy.
I agree with you, I'm having serious troubles getting used to b-mesh :/
I think the loopcut tools is the most important tool in blender, I have to use it with subsurf because you can't do things in another way (crease, edge split, knife or subdivide) all of these tools doesn't make the great job that loopcut does, so I think they need to improve this instead cycles (As you can see in changelog a lot of work was spent here), I mean.. I guess most people (like me) use other renders to do professionals job, so let's spend I little more time in fixing blender instead bringing more unfinished tools.
What sucks in loopcut, specifically?
It only work if you use quads, but sometimes you need to use triangles like that http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?271420-Hi-Whats-is-the-best-way-to-draw-this&p=2235975#post2235975 the loop doesn't work anymore where you put the X you know. Its a simple example, sometimes you get crazy because it doens't work in situations, and you brain sees that it should work because you think that is easy but you don't know why the loopcut stop. I mean, I think that with a little more work, loopcut can work in every situations, and its very needed when you use subsurf, because no other tool make the job that loop cut does.
I'd really prefer for a topology student like Jonathan Williamson to weigh in on this directly. I remember one of the many things he pointed out in an almost hour-long video was that loopcuts now actually terminate correctly under the new mesh system. I think that is something that could use more detailed explanation.
Blender becomes more and more awesome. I'm sure some issues with LoopCut will be fixed soon. Actually it's not so big drama for me... because generally Blender beats most of "industry-standard" programs like 3dMax in this part.
Probably I'll be using 3dMax on my work soon but for quick modelling, retopoing and fixing geometry issues I'll be using Blender.
Well, yes I suppose it has.Because I'm not doing professional work or anything though, I usually use the latest svn version of Blender, and that means that all these "great new features" that have been in svn trunk for a while are not so new to me anymore. But still, the tracking, masking, and all the compositing updates have changed my life when it comes to Blender.
Cycles is wonderful - although the crazy default Bounce settings for Diffuse, Glossy and Transmission (128) were giving me woefully slow render times... until I read the Wiki and found that these settings are not only slow but also add noise! Switched to the Limited Global Illumination integrator preset and my render times dropped by 60%, noise virtually disappeared, and I could barely notice any difference in image quality! Cycles can also render small details perfectly, something that was sometimes impossible with Blender Internal.
But... I still get a fundamental bug when selecting vertices using the C or B selection tools. I carefully select a group of vertices (in 'Z' wireframe view), only to find a load more have been randomly selected elsewhere on the mesh! Clear that bug, and I'd be well pleased with 2.64.
can you link that wiki article?
Probably somewhere around these two;
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Cycles/Integrator
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Cycles/Light_Paths
But, like he said, try switching the "Integrator" preset to "Limited Global Illumination", although you may still want caustics on. ;)
It was this page:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Cycles/Reducing_Noise
Fascinating!
Thus far, I haven't noticed that in the 3D modeling window,
but, yes, it does happen to me in the uv editor!
[Mac OS 10.6.8, using BF2.64a 64-bit]
BTW, since I only have 3GB of RAM, I'd prefer the 32-bit version,
but that one crashes on me; has anyone else noticed?
The selection bug happened to me as well when I had enabled AA for blender via the Nvidia control panel for some reason. When I turned it off it worked normally again. Maybe it's not that but that's the only time I've encountered a similar bug.
Selection bug: ah, yes; now I've seen it!
One thing I LOVE, in recent versions of Blender, is the Mask modifier.
I use it extensively when fine-tuning messy meshes.
Bummer is, in 2.64, it sometimes happens that, when I select vertices in the 3D view,
other vertices get selected that are not in view because they are hidden by the Mask modifier!!
My favorite improvement is advanced Bevel tool. [sarcasm]
will I see it before I die?
I agree for b-mesh : These bad loop cuts are a nightmare. And I still hate Ngons. When converting into triangles you get a very bad topology that can't be repaired by converting to quads. I often and have to spend more time to fix than to model directly in Blender 2.49b !
This is not an either-or situation. If you hate ngons, don't use them. Everyone says the whole point of the new mesh system was to make ngons, but it was much more than that. Many of the problems with the legacy boolean tools are reported to have been due to the old mesh storage structures, to give just one non-trivial example. I really wish that was better understood by both the defenders and bashers alike.
It is entirely possible to use Blender 2.64 without having to use ngons. Just specify Quad/Tri when you subdivide. It's one little checkbox. Only use it during the stages where it is appropriate. You don't use only a spoon or only a fork when dining, you use each when the situation calls for it. Still... it sure doesn't stop some people from eating everything with a spoon, regardless.
(Also, another big hint for peoplel who do have ngons that they decide to clean up later. *Don't* do "convert to tris" and make a big mess out of it. Use the proper tools like vertex-connect or edge dissolve, and *control* your retopology. Since the most common reason people give for disliking *any* version of blender (new or old) is "controls too difficult to learn", I believe that most people who have already learned blender well can learn those three simple things: "use quads/tris" checkbox, "vertex connect" tool, "edge dissolve" tool. Those who can't? Yeah, stick with 2.49, or something even simpler like Sketchup.)
Hello, I have to check again on my workstation, because I have tested on a 32 bits previous 64 release, but i didn't notice that this Quad/Tri Mode now remains checked !
In previous works versions, I have to enable it again for each subdivision, and obviously at some moments I forgot and got unwanted ngons ! If it remains enabled now, the topology will be much cleaner !
That's great! I remember that getting the tools to "remember" changed settings was something that was lost going from 2.49b to 2.50alpha. This is a good sign. I like the "set it and forget it" approach.
+1, great post. You forgot the great new knife tool though.
First version I've really started to use properly, so yes :)
one word, "character kinematic" for BGE, well 2 words, thanks for that, keep up the good work!
I upgraded to latest BLender 2.64 and noticed that using multiple textures gave very strange (and incorrect) results. After working with it for 3 nights I threw up my hands and reinstalled 2.62
2.49B is great!!
I'm still getting a lot of random crashes and have been jumping back and forth between version. But then again, I'm a migrant of other 3D software so I haven't quiet figured all the ways to not tickle the beast yet. XD
I forgot to mention this in my previous post, but I think data exchange is probably the biggest hurdle that migrants have to face when trying to switch over to Blender and it should really be addressed with great attention.
Collada?
I've been building my own from svn starting with this version (2.64x)... noticed in DingTo's links on BA to the OSL additions to trunk that we're still using Boost libraries 1.34. Boost is now at 1.51. Is there any relationship between that and the lack of support for jpg images in Cycles?
Could you expand on that, please?
I'm having no problem with jpg textures nor jpg output.
No, this has to do with OpenImageIO being compiled with a different jpeg library than the one on your system. To solve this you will have to download and build your own OpenImageIO.
Well, it didn't change my life, but 2.64, to me at least, is a change for the worse. Hardly any of the changes effected me. I don't use Cycles and I won't until I can upgrade my graphics card, I don't sculpt, I don't work with video footage, I don't use the game engine, and other than just messing around when I'm bored I don't use the smoke simulator, and BMesh was a version or two old (maybe more) when 2.64 came out.
The one change that effects me is the change to the inset faces tool, which I used a lot when it was added. It was great back in the day. Select the tool, type in a couple of numbers, and you could do amazing things. Now it's a bit cumbersome. If you press Ctrl to snap to increments of 0.1 like you can with other tools it doesn't work. It just raises/lowers the face. If you want to get it precise you have to confirm it and then type in the numbers like in the previous release. I know it only adds a single mouse click to use it the easy way but it's still kind of a hassle.