Have you been using the pre-releases of Blender 2.42? Have you also been testing or creating astounding works utilizing the latest and greatest features? Well today is your time to shine. Matt Ebb (broken) is calling on us to show what the great new developments can do.
From the thread:
Yes, it's that time again, the lead-up to a new release, which means the release notes have to be written. The release notes provide documentation of the new features, and give examples of how they work.
Of course, the release notes are also used as marketing, to show off the great new developments and for that there needs to be great looking images, movies and demo .blend files that can be displayed and offered for download from the blender website (credited, of course). I've already made a worked on some for node materials and the array modifer but we need more!
The current WIP release notes are still being written, but the examples there already could definitely use a facelift.
There's a load of new features that could use examples with an artist's touch:
- Compositor node (example node setups for various tasks would be great!)
- Vector blur
- Node materials (lots of scope here to show what's possible)
- Preview render
- Render layers
- Float render pipeline
- Transmissivity
- Anisotropic and fresnel shaders
- New blending modes
- Object Groups
- Angle Based UV unwrapping
- Array modifier
- Fluid sim moving objects, Ipos and motion blur
- Mesh modelling tools such as merge/collapse, path select, region to loop, 'around active' and 'individual face centers' transformation pivots
- Sequence editor updates (caching, ffmpeg support, video scopes, UI facelift)
- Python drivers
- The various bullet/game engine updates
- And more!
If you've ever wondered how you could give back to Blender development without being a coder or writer, this is your chance. If you can contribute, please post your work, (or links to it) and permission to distribute it in [the]thread or mail me. Thanks in advance for helping to make 2.42 another mind-blowing release!
8 Comments
Hey all,
So, hopefully, the reason why there are no posts yet, is because we're all too busy exploring all of the new features in 2.42...
...at least, that's my excuse.
I just wanted to comment now, because after looking at Matt's postings of the Array Modifier and Node Editor demos - I'm just blown away. Ton and co. deserve all of our respect. And Matt, love your work - you're an inspiration. Like you, I've begun to "rediscover" some of the fundamentals - and it's been real fun. Look for me on conceptart in the near future...
This is truly a great time to be a blenderhead!
Hello!!!
WOW I like the new Freatures ......
I work many Years with other 3D Software but now...... I thing I´m switch to Blender.
2.42 is becoming a great release!! Nice feature list!
does anyone know whether ffmpeg is compiled in the RC3-release?
Oh man, it's getting increasingly hard to keep up with development from an artists perspective. Blender is moving forward at supersonic speed. I'll try to get someting setup to day nonetheless (fluids would be nice).
I've given up Windows for Linux, even though I have been programming on the looney Microsoft series for years--best change I ever did. The Gfx engine is fast despite not using hardware acceleration (eg: like directmedia for movies) and blender is an excellent examble of that. On this system I get over a 200% increase in speed between windows and linux versions. dang...
Well, since I'm new to linux and pretty much up the proverbial creek without a paddle in linux programming, I'll enjoy taking this RC for a run to show what it can do.
I have a .blend showing how to create depth of field with compositing nodes and Z depth. I'll write a few things down in the file as a readme and e-mail it to you. It would be handy though if there was a "driven" compositing input node so i could control the camera distance via ipo or expression.
I have a few (bunch of scattered, unorganized) other examples i will have to consolidate and polish before submitting. People bitch that blender has no included examples / presets if everybody chips in a little that can change.
Sounds good to me. Actually, I haven't been on the Blender sites long enough to know, but is there a place/repository/open gallery where artists can submit their own textures and/or materials? The Blender texture CD is fine, although there are a lot more additions that I could make to it (eg: larger texture sizes, procedural textures, etc.)
Just wanted to say thankyou to all people who submitted demos. Not all of them could be used of course, but it was a fantastic response, the release notes look great, and I hope we have just as much if not more great content for the next release too!