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Blender 2.44 Released

65
By on 3D News, Development

thumb1.jpg"Blender 2.44 was intended to be an upgrade release, mainly for plenty of bug fixes, but the developers took the effort of adding at least a few interesting new features."

Now there's an understatement.

They've done it again! Let's get right to the details:

  • This version now is fully 64-bits compatible, new modifers were added, a couple of composite nodes were added, and a revamp of the old mesh primitives was done. But most relevant to mention is Blender 2.44's new long-awaited but unexpected feature: subsurface scattering (SSS) support!
  • FFMPEG is now included in the Windows builds
  • Sculpt and MultiRes bug fixes and improvements
  • Subsurface Scattering is a new material option
  • There have been a large number of python script additions and updates, as well as API improvements
  • Two new Composite nodes have been added: Gamma and Bright/Contrast
  • Two new Modifiers: Smooth and Cast
  • The Action and NLA editors have now better control over visible channels. A new constraint was added, and a "preview range" option was added.
  • Blender now is 64-bits safe again. That safety is on two different levels.
  • The Bullet physics engine has had some changes which should give better reproducibility and precision/quality for physics simulations.
  • The mesh primitives have been revisited, improving their usability and pushing them a little beyond their previous state. This includes the addition of a new Torus primitive!

3D Window

  • Animated view option (User preset) allows interpolation of view changes, set the "Smooth View" milliseconds above zero to enable.
  • Fly Mode: Holding Shift decreases mouse wheel and panning influence to a 10th. Fly mode now respects the objects location axis locking, so you can fly over land and look down without flying into it.
  • Snapping: Editmode snapping now works to snap to vertices in another selected object as well.
  • Hide and Unhide can be done in Object Mode by pressing H to hide, Alt+H to unhide and Shift+H to hide unselected. This was only accessible in the outliner for version 2.43.
  • Hook menu (Object Mode) to recenter or center cursor for all hooks used by a mesh, This is the same as accessing from the modifier panel but useful when making adjustments with menu hooks.
  • SubSurf can be enable/disable in linked Library data. The subsurf setting will not be saved but changing the setting is useful for previews.
  • Transform properties panel now shows Parent bone (Object to Bone)

User Interface

  • Running Blender in debug mode now prints the subversion of .blend files.
  • "File" menu: Option "Load Factory Settings" added. This shows the original .B.blend as compiled in Blender. It doesn't save over things.
  • the recently saved files list now has a user preset to define how many entries it has.
  • Switch screen hotkey, CTRL+Left/Rightarrow now cycles.
  • Menus now scroll with mouse wheel. Activate menu items only with Enter key.
  • Blender in X11 (Linux, Solaris and Irix) will start with window decorations by default.

Various editors

  • In Outliner, shift+click on item with [Li] icon, gives name of Library file
  • Sound Window now has option "lock view to other 2d windows" too.
  • Create/delete vertex groups now is possible in Object mode too (using the buttons in editbuttons).
  • Sequencer, Add new strips: Selecting multiple movie/audio files in filewindow now adds each of them.
  • UV/Image Editor: "Add New Image": you now can set alpha and color, "Pack Charts" in the UVs menu to pack selected groups of UV coordinates into a non overlapping layout.
  • Composite: Blur Nodes now react to ESC properly.
  • Curve editmode: Ctrl Alt H: Hide Point(s), Alt H: Show All Points

Get more details at the official Blender release log webpage.

Get Blender 2.44 (32 bits)
Get Blender 2.44 (64 bits)

Also, you may want to download the demo files provided. They provide a good reference for bug hunting, and also serve as a valuable demo overview for new users.

Demo Files: NL USA

(additional demo files are available at the bottom of the download pages, in the Regression Files section.)

IMPORTANT: Help spread the word! Digg It!

ENJOY and A Special Thank You to the Blender Development Team!

65 Comments

  3. Sovereignncc-e on

    That was really fast! 6 hours after the splash screen gets chosen they release it... nice work:).

    Reply
  4. Bart on

    Congratulations, everyone!

    I'd also like to make a special compliment to everyone who helped with the release logs - I think the Blender release logs are among the best that I've seen on the web!

    Reply
  16. pyziual on

    Congrats!!

    Mesh Primitives great stuff, makes modeling alot quicker with a descent set of basic primitives at your finger tips. By no means a comparison, but it brings back memories of another proprietary 3d software.

    Thanks for the extra effort and adding the new features. Excellent all the way around.

    (gotta stop playing WoW and get busy :P)

    Reply
  17. simhar on

    Cool...

    But what happened to the developement of the two new comp-nodes -threshold and radial blur- blendermnation showed allready?

    S.

    Reply
  19. Höhrer on

    I know I will start to sound whiny, but I just need to comment on this:

    "There have been a large number of python script additions and updates, as well as API improvements"

    Just too bad that there _still_ are a few broken scripts shipped with a release-version :(
    I don't want to blame anybody though, I know quite well how these things usually work.
    It's just getting frustrating when e.g the md2 export script (which I really depend on) won't even start because of a python error. And even fixing this will not help because the export is broken in its core (since 2.41 I think).
    Not even using older Blender version will work anymore, because uv-mapped meshes in blender files can't be opened in older versions (without the multiple uv-data) now (AFAIK) :(

    Ok enough venting ... other than that: Excellent news :D

    Werner

    Reply
  22. Hennell on

    Excellent; new blender options to get confused by! :P

    And well done to the developers and coders, and congratulations on yet another great blender release.

    Reply
  26. Daniele on

    HI, great news for the sss, but i've noticed a massive slowdown in the sculpt mode.
    Where can i report bugs? (sorry, i can't find the link right now)

    Daniele

    Reply
  33. Zxayant on

    One burning question: When, oh when will the cloth simulation be integrated in the 'official' Blender release???

    BTW. Like the splash screen! :)

    Reply
  34. ATK on

    "Running Blender in debug mode now prints the subversion of .blend files. "

    Oh dear, I didn't know that blend files were so subversive lol. :)

    Reply
  37. psychot on

    To all Mac Users out there with Intel chips...... get this now! The Border Select (Shortcut B) now works! This was a bug that needed to be fixed and it is now!!!!!

    Reply
  42. Peter Schlaile on

    @Kernon: maybe you should add to the list, that FFMPEG is now included in the Windows builds, too...

    Reply
  48. Renato Perini on

    Where is the source package? Don't tell me CVS, I mean the release source package "blender-2.44.tar.gz"

    Reply
  49. Digital FX Artist on

    Hi guys, great work getting this out so quickly. Just like panzi I was wanting to know if I can get a build with the pyNodes? I have some ideas to work on in the next few months that would work best with pyNodes.

    Once again, great job getting this out.
    - DFXA

    Reply
  50. Ublender on

    WOW! Those SSS options are awesome! Don't know how I ever lived without render times 20X the normal! :P Looks good though!

    Reply
  54. JimC on

    Is anyone else experiencing crashes when trying to load a video file (any type of video file) in the sequence editor on the Windows Build?

    Reply
  55. Tynach on

    They were going for 2.50, but they needed to add one more release to get a few things in. The next release is 2.50.

    Reply
  56. Neuralize on

    Hey, where are those 3D shiny buttons I saw a while back on Blender Nation? HUH? WHERE ARE THEY, SO SHINY AND OBVIOUSLY A MAKE OR BREAK FEATURE.

    Reply
  58. Wim on

    Thank you to all developers!
    Thanks for your time spending on the development. Blender is such a great application thanks to you guys(&girls?)!
    Keep up the great work, Blender is becoming really mature!

    Reply
  59. TomGleason on

    amazing. I'm still not done being impressed with 2.43, and this is yet another great gift. thank you.

    Reply
  60. epat on

    Hmm - It's good - the only thing i'm concerned about are the number of 'nearly finished' features that didn't quite make it - it seems an awfully long time to wait until 2.50 comes out and these features are (hopefully) included. There are also several projects that aren't being worked on at present but are already in quite an advanced stages of development and just need to be finished. I know that some projects are put on hold because of development targets and code rework but I think that the at least the wiki pages should be updated to show which of these are officially on hold or not and some project guidelines should be put up to encourage people who have wiki pages about their projects to provide status information if for some reason they cannot continue temporarily or perhaps permanantly. I have seen many a good project disappear and die because of 'volunteer' coder's not having the time to finish them - as a 'hobbyist' programmer myself (though not currently a blender developer or contributor) I understand the issues. However, if coders put up status reports when they had to discontinue a project and/or posted the code then other people could pick up on it instead and complete it saving time and effort since some things would not have to be rewritten from scratch when most of the code had been written already by somebody else! I suppose I could edit the wiki myself - but I wouldn't want to tread on anybodies toes and since I'm not a main developer I can't really say anything with authority. Just my thoughts!

    Anyway, for those people who have unanswered questions/concerns...

    @andiK:
    It's just you - try resetting the cache in your web browser as it might be interfering with more up-to-date versions of the page.

    @Höhrer:
    If you detail the problem and provide a bug report the script or blender are more likely to be fixed - also, if it's the script that's at fault (which is what it sounds like) then it's just a simple matter of downloading an older version of the script that did work and putting that in place the current one packaged with blender and fixing any compatability issues that arise. (there shouldn't be anything major) If you still can't fix the problem, I might be able to help since I can code reasonably well in python - although I don't know about the md2 file format. If, on the other hand, the problem is with blender, I still might be able to help but as I'm not (yet) as good at C as I'd like, I might not - however, you can give me a try as I'd love to feel useful and it might inspire me to learn C properly and contribute fixes/features to blender. My email address is 90mins.tdk*a*googlemail.com+ (simply replace the *a* with an @ sign and remove the trailing +) if you want to contact me. On the other hand, you could just as easily ask the script author or maintainer as I'm sure they'd be more than able to help or you could contact some developer of blender (via the bug tracker) if it really is a bug!

    @Daniele:
    Yes, it's a bug - sculptmode should be faster now. (it could be your graphics drivers though perhaps)
    Anyway, the blender bug tracker can be found by going to http://projects.blender.org and clicking on the link that says "bug tracker". Alternatively, you can just go straight to: http://projects.blender.org/tracker/?atid=125&group_id=9&func=browse
    The second one is quicker but the first one is more reliable if the site changes in future. One day the web site maintainer will fix it so that you can just go to projects.blender.org/bugtracker but at the moment it won't work. That's if you haven't found it already of course!! ;)

    @gord and Renato Perini:
    The source code can be found at: http://www.blender.org/download/source-code/ or by following the little link at the very bottom of the main page at http://www.blender.org that says "Source Code" under the heading 'Download' - the reason for this is that the main site has only quite recently been redesigned so as to be more user friendly and look more asthetically pleasing. Unfortunately, the source code link has become a little bit less obvious - maybe it should have it's own box on the download page (just a suggestion - this is OSS after all!) - unfortunately, I'm not sure who to mention this to as there are several people involved with the maintenance of blender.org; perhaps Bart since he did the Typo3 integration - then again, equally, Matt Ebb or anybody else who was involved (and has time as well - an uncommon commodity among blender developers!).

    @Zxayant:
    I think this project is on hold (as mentioned above) but I'm not sure how much time zaz and/or genscher actually have - or whether they will be able to finish the project at all. Anyway, as the softbody code is becoming more robust and able to simulate cloth resonably well and probably better in future it is doubtfull whether it will ever make it.

    @panzi and Digital FX Artist:
    AFAIK, pyNodes are still in development and should be in the next release of blender. There is a patch on the patch tracker if you wanted to build a version with them included although the code in development has changed a bit since it was put up I think - best to wait until it becomes available in CVS. (or SVN - whichever comes first lol!) The wiki page at http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/PyNodes has been updated a lot by Nathan recently and I think he is focusing on the ShadeInput part so that scripts can actually get access to the internal data that would be required for python shaders to function correctly - somebody please correct me if I'm wrong! Also, there are testing builds at http://www.graphicall.org that contain pyNodes if you want to check them out although I'm not sure if there are any recent builds.

    @JimC:
    Unfortunately, I don't run windows so I can't say; but if you have a problem that is caused by blender, feel free to post it on the blender bug tracker. Or attempt to fix it yourself first!

    @Neuralize:
    I don't know about the shiny buttons - it could be that Snark hasn't finished them or that he hasn't put the patch on the patch tracker - etc etc... just because they were featured on blendernation doesn't mean they'll make the official release - for now, just cross your fingers and hope!!

    Anyhow, it's a great release and the new features that have crept in can only do more to promote blender as free open source software over it's commercial rivals!! :) - and a very big well done and thank you to all the developers who helped to make the realese what it is!!
    -epat. :)

    Reply
  61. JimC on

    Thanks epat... I just thought I'd post the question first to see if it's just me or others too. I have found out that it just seems to be limited to avi files using the Indeo 5.1 codec (too bad.. that's the one we use the most at school). I wanted to narrow it down to make sure it isn't just a "network" thing at the school or , indeed, a real bug. I'm experiencing it here at home also. I'd still like to know if others are experiencing this problem before I go off looking for bugs that don't exist.

    I'd like to thank the developers for this release... Lots of nice things. I've been waiting for the ffmpeg in Windows for some time to make life easier for my students. Now we can do it all in Blender! (once I figure out this crashing issue or change our process)

    Reply
  62. Redfender on

    Will high-poly normal baking be implemented in 2.5? I noticed it was on the possible projects list for 2.44 but didn't make it, which makes me a sad blenderer :(

    Reply
  63. Jonas on

    ATTENTION! For all Blender-Newbies (like me): Installation of the new version in the same directory like the old will delete all files of the old version. Also your .blend-files!!! :-((((

    Reply

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