Blender 2.58 Released!
Hey, everybody! A new Blender release is fresh off the press! Find out the new changes and grab your copy now!
Super Blaireau
Hey, everybody! A new Blender release is fresh off the press! Find out the new changes and grab your copy now!
great :)
what ever happened to the built-in material/texture library idea? a couple dozen professional presets for only 1-2 MB in size would be awesome. then users could easily add in there own so they wouldn’t need to constantly append stuff.
I thought no one here would ever mention it. lol. you are late to the party.
anyway. thank you developers.
This is summer of love!
Thanks so much developers!
BUT, animating objects layer is still buggy and it’s a hassle to render my animations, has been since 2.50. please fix this!!
The bug goes like this: keyframe object to be in layer 1 in frame 1, and in layer 2 in frame 2. When you go forward in timeline, the object doesn’t go to layer 2 until frame 3.
…aaand, it blends.
Great to see this up and running!
*random thanks*
Thank you!
Great news!
8-bit agrees with Tidbit :0) Was wondering if/when material library would be implemented as well. Perhaps this may be looked into w/ “cycles” implementation?
Regardless, thanks for the amazing work guys! It’s very much appreciated! Looking forward to trying out the new release.
Cheers!
I especially like the Empty Images Display. It’s more flexible than background images, and it’s much quicker to implement than UV-Textured planes. It’s a real time-saver for working with blueprints or reference designs.
Viewport locking also pretty sweet.
Much pleased, of course (and I’m on a Mac) but,
why drop QuickTime support for Windows users?
And that implies no .gif either?
Huh?
“For windows it has been decided that we should use FFMPEG for video and to drop quicktime support. This also means some image formats such as GIF and PSD will no longer load.”
???
PSD is a common used professional format… Blender for noobs?
“For windows it has been decided that we should use FFMPEG for video and to drop quicktime support. This also means some image formats such as GIF and PSD will no longer load.”
???
PSD is a common used professional format… Blender for noobs?
It is now possible to move the camera using normal view port navigation by enabling “Lock Camera” in the “View” panel
Fresh!! Ive been wanting this in since 1998.
@endi go back to 3DS Max fan boy! You know that is your favorite! (sarcasm)
@Notacet go to the bug tracker listed in help menu and report it!
About the Quicktime support , what different video codec it is in Blender that support MPG4 compression and ALPHA mask ?! Rather Quicktime +16 million or Animation ?
If none then I give Endi his …..”for noobs” a respect! If not then Endi stays in his “fanboy” stage!
Hmm if we look more we se there it is a problem with Quicktime license “sdk” that means no Ouicktime in Linux 3.0 too ?
Some developer please clarify this!
CAD file importing isn’t fixed yet :/
+1 for material library!
Congratulations!
Like the splash screen, WAY better that 2.57
Gracias … totales
Saludos desde tiquicia!
lol. I have to agree with Endi. Quicktime is a crappy delivery format. often when you are playing it, the screen suddenly turns green and you are left with nothing but audio.
I hope people stop using it since there are much better video formats out there.
Endi: PSD is just a container with some features unavailable in opensource software (too specific to Abode suite, patented, etc…)
PSD is not an open standard moreover, the FLOSS community has enough and enough to do to waste their time in reverse-engineering a file useful only for proprietary software.
And honestly, i don’t see what you really miss from PSD in Blender.
@tidbit: “what ever happened to the built-in material/texture library idea?”
Is it even necessary?
Me: Good Morning, I’m a 3D artist. I’m looking for a job.
Employer: Nice, we’re in dire need of one. You can start today?
Me: Sure.
Employer: This is your first day here. An architect is going to show a project to a client who’s going to arrive here within 2 hours. So we need a 3D model done until there.
Me: Sorry, I just need 1 hour to download and make stuff for my library. I can’t make it in time.
Employer: You’re fired.
Me: D:
I think Blender is too awesome to miss a built-in material library.
@Numarul7
The bug have been acknowledged for a long time, for example here:
http://projects.blender.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=27183&group_id=9&atid=498
and mentioned in this tutorial also:
http://www.blendercookie.com/2011/03/04/tip-animating-an-objects-layer-relationship/
I think it’s a known bug but no-one has bothered to fix it yet. This is a big deal for me, since I do industrial animations, where machine parts appear and disappear in specific frames so that I can crossfade them in post-production.
thank you developers!!! I will donate from first sallary when I get the job :)
EA, huh? at first you sound like you’re against it, then your example sounds like you want it.
and 1 hour?? I did a test in 2.56. 6 planes with 6 different materials with 6 textures. uncompressed .blend: about 700KB. then I zipped it: about 250KB. then i doubled it and it was only about 300 KB compressed. 12 textures AND 12 materials was only 1/3 of a megabyte. so even if that was doubled or tripped (24 or 36) it’d be small.
but then you might want to add the pre-rendered sample images (much like the sculpting tools have), that’s only another 1KB-5KB per image.
I don’t think many people have internet so slow they get 1MB per HOUR download speed.
many many thanks to all the developers!…keep up the good work guys!…:-)
awesome!
Using it right now. Just amazing. Giant thanks to all developers.
Two things:
One: Even when you can allways build your own library, and if you want to be ready to go you SHOULD, a preset material library would be really freaking NICE, man, that’s for sure.
Two: I liked the psd support, but i don’t think nobody will suffer much not having it. Maybe i’m wrong, but at least i’ll be fine without it.
Best regards to all blender heads.
To the Quicktime/PSD nay sayers in general: for domestic and stand alone use, you’re right. Who needs it?
For people with professional tools – Adobe CS5, FCP, Avid – Quicktime is a useful transport file format, and PSD is a required graphics format.
In my opinion the message that dropping QT/PSD sends is “Blender is only interested in the domestic/student market. For professionals there’s Maya.”
tidbit: I don’t think many people have internet so slow they get 1MB per HOUR download speed.
You obviously never been to Africa, don’t know about it or don’t care. It sounds like it’s all about you – and judging from the 1-5KB per image example you gave above you are the lucky one who should have no trouble at all downloading it as a separate file. Who knows, maybe the creation of that file could be your little contribution to the greatest open source adventure ever?
A quick question for jwrl.
What are the real impediments not having psd support in blender? I mean, what you cannot do just converting the psd layers to, jpeg, targa, png etc? What a “pro” user is really missing?
I’ts not a retorical question, i have real interest in know the answer.
Thanks in advance.
regards.
Why is there no material library, perhaps the lack of decent looking user contributions? -1 anyway, it could be a nice external addon, and I think this should be a community responsibility.
.xcf or even .ora would be nicer supported options, but at the same time most Blender workflow involves png, jpg, or exr, correct?
Thanks to the devs, trying the sculpting now. :)
Would just like to say that psd files play a vital role in my texturing process, to have to convert the psd to jpeg will become time consuming when wanting to see how minor tweaks to a file affects a texture. How can blender hope to compete at a professional standard if it doesn’t use such a popular format? And don’t get me wrong I would recommend blender to professionals but I would be embarrassed to have to admit to no psd support.
What’s the real problem in supporting PSD?
Maybe a developer could answear.
Madog is right about time consuming, even to learn GIMP right now.
Thanks for all work done in Blender 2.58.
“you can do that with…”
Yes, certainly. You CAN (in the sense of being able to) do a lot of things. E.g., nothing prevents anybody from creating a program by typing the hex codes of the processor instructions using a binary editor. It is not impossible. It is just a tad… UNCONFORTABLE. Anybody not into BDSM probably prefers compilers and IDEs.
This is the point that Linux fans do not grasp: users want ease of use, efficiency, productivity, an intuitive workflow. Users have problems to solve in order to pay the bills, not crusades to fight.
E.g., dropping PSD means that instead of being able to create multiple planes in a drawing program, export them into a single operation and import them again in a single operation you have to split the planes into images and import then one by one. A simple and fast operation that becomes a kludge requiring scripting (in the graphics program, Blender and/or shell).
All right, I payed 0$ therefore I have no legal right to complain; I just hope that this is not the start of a period of “simplications”. Time to start looking a Luxology website?
Excellent work guys. Really appreciate you effort.
Thanks !!!!!!!!!!! blender rocks :)
fligh: seems the average African gets 108 KB/s. that means 1 MB every 10 seconds for an average user. I myself download 1MB in about 4 seconds (250 KB/s). sources: http://www.speedtests.net/world/africa/ & http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/
sure you could go on and say “think about the dial-up users!” but even then at extremely low dial-up speed of 2 KB/s (and yes, i know someone from Indonesia who gets this speed), that’s still only 8 minutes. nowhere near 1 hour. But as i said before, a couple dozen presets is only 1/3’rd of 1 MB, that’s only 2.66 minutes. You can’t please everyone. In this case I think more people, especially the newbies, would benefit from the few hundred exta kilobytes.
if that’s unacceptable, then maybe Blender Foundation could include the extra presets as an external file, or even make use of blenders new addon system. That way it’s 100% optional. avoid any hissy-fits.
this isn’t supposed to be an argument, i only asked “what ever happened to the built-in material/texture library idea?” and offered a couple ideas. Don’t acuse me of not caring.
w00t!
Dropping Quicktime support is a huge step backwards in our environment, where we use 32-bit lossless .MOV inbetween Avid, After Effects & Blender… :(
If GIMP can open and save PSD files, why can’t Blender?
I’d have to agree: PSD support is crucial. We use Adobe apps in our pipeline, so having PSD support dropped is a bummer. I would also be embarrassed to say that Blender does not support PSD. :(
That aside, good work developers on another exciting Blender release (I like the splash image… what is it?).
Blender 2.58 makes me feel happy today..**/
okay my bad about the mov format. you cannot predict a user’s workflow so i have to agree the Blender should support as many file format as possible (proprietary or not).
but anyway, looking forward to 2.59
Hey cool a new splash. hehehe
This is awesome I was actually waiting for a couple of these updates. You guys are the best but….
What’s up with dropping QT & PSD support? I thought new releases were about adding and fixing features not removing them. I don’t get it.
HA! I had just installed the inset mesh python script today to try it out and was pleased with the functionality. Really happy to see that its now part of the core.
@asd-asdf, sorry for the delay – I was trying to earn some money. I suspect that the responses from Madog, josiahbh, jpb06 et al have said pretty much anything that needs to be said. They’ve probably said it better than I could, too.
In summary, adding an extra step where previously none was necessary is a pain. Having to manually split layers is a pain. Being unable to export QT Animation is a real pain. Being unable to export Avid DNxHD which QT supports is an extreme pain.
I won’t continue. This release makes me feel that I’m being told to go away.
What, no PSD support!? D:
I like using PSD’s straight so that I dont have to “Save As” every time I paint…
With the drop in both quicktime and .psd support I wont be upgrading just yet :( this would effect my current workflow too much. I do understand that for education and non professional use this is not much of an issue, but for small design and animation production companies like mine it could cause problems if they upgrade.
In blender community “Say what you want”. :)
PSD support is not crucial for me and I use Photoshop and Blender everyday for work. Using Targa’s and PNG’s has always served me wel. Never used the PSD support, My PSD’s are always huge so I would have to flatten, rasterize and merge layer effects anyway to get it to work, youre better of just saving it to another file format.
If you need 32bit per channel footage use OpenEXR sequences, working with sequences is better anyway and After Effects can read them. No need for any container format.
Hey, Blender developers, why remove Quicktime support for Windows? Was it in the way or something? Unless it was seriously conflicting with Blender’s development, I don’t understand why needlessly remove such a useful options. Change is not good when it’s unnecessary. Would you consider creating an optional Add-On for it, or at least one for PSD support, because PSD support was useful. But otherwise, thanks for what you have done so far.
I have one question for folks here: Where in the world is the Camera Locking feature? I don’t see it in the View menu. I can’t find it anywhere. Do I need to activate an Add-On or something?
I have a strong feeling that with every new release blender is changing …for worse;/
Correct me if I am wrong.
the splash image is so much better now….. *whew*
Never mind about Camera Lock feature–I found it. It’s in the View panel in the Properties shelf in the 3D viewport when you press N. I was looking for it in the View context menu. :P
@ Questioer
You’re wrong.
You asked for it ;)
By the way, have you read the change log?
Looks like i do not liked their last open movie title. That impression influenced strongly my blender-fanboyism… Which has disappear ed.
I guess that change this attitude can only new Mango title: Retributiontel. Or Justicetel.
I use Blender professionally, and I couldn’t care less about PSD or QuickTime support (even though I have PS CS5). I always render animations as frame sequences to ensure any problems can be fixed with minimal re-rendering. They can then be rendered into multiple video formats much more easily.
As for PSD, why does anybody want to use that bloated proprietary format within Blender? Sure, create some artwork in PS and keep the PSD file, but simply export as PNG for Blender; it’s hardly time consuming.
Quicktime support in Windows is still available – it’s just handled by FFMPEG now and now longer by native Quicktime. Which means that codecs like Quicktime Animation are now longer available but you can still use the Quicktime container for H.264 and the likes.
I try open blend game and found some problem. the graphick look blank just text. . . why?
I’ll join half of the crowd here.
PSD – necessery!
otherwise, I need now to go back to all my project files and change them to tif…
and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
Reaction: I can understand why you prefer not to use it, but what is the advantage of NOT having psd support if it was already implemented?
Is it removed maybe because of ‘legal’ reasons?
Gottfried: does it mean we need to install FFMPEG codecs as well?
For reading PSD no need Quicktime… Many programs can read PSDs without using Quicktime.
We need use only the composite (“compatibility” option)…
Material library is useful because, for example, architects students finish their project at 4 a.m, and at 7 a.m they must print them to show to the prof at 9a.m(and since they are the future worker in this business, i think that actual architects have little time to do their work too). So there is no time for making the material, or their own library. I live with a student of architectural engineering, and he uses v ray nor because it is fast or it makes good renders, but because it has great built in materials and in no time he can import the file from autocad and render it. And it doesn’t matter if the library is 40GB, since they have all the time to download it once while they are making the project, and once it is downloaded, it can be reused and reused and reused once again. So, if blender wants to become a tool that simply works out of the box in really few steps, it must have a built in library material (something more easy to use that a .blend with many material, that doesn’t not allow preview, etc..) FOOS should be as simple as commercial products.
Always be thankful to developers, but never hesitate do underline a problem “only” because blender is free. Without criticism there isn’t improvement.
Said that, good job developers, keep up the good work!
I must add my voice to the chorus.
Removing PSD and Quicktime is not a smart move.
I work on windows and use these all the time.
Why are we going backwards?
Material editor? Yes, Yes, Yes!
Maybe because original blender was so small that it can fit on one floppy? And that Mr Roosendaal was known for removing anything unnecessary? And because that was made blender unique i strongly oppose for including preset libraries. It can be “optional download”.
And i think too that title for “durian” was a mark in change of Blender development…
References to “bad feeling themes” always influence user and developer mental state:)
“Forgivetel” would be a nice catch!
I think removing PSD is a big mistake, I use PSD in blender all the time!
PSD removal is really stupid.
All of you who argue that PSDs can just as well be made into a PNG, TIFF, JPG .. whatever. Imagine that:
You are using Photoshop. Don’t asky why – some people here just DO use photoshop and don’t bother going to another progam beause it’s just not feasible to comepletely change your existing workflow. So just accept that there ARE people using Photoshop.
Now everybody who wants to retain all their image layers has to “export” the texture to another format everytime something’s changed.
What’s that? TIFF supports Layers? Yes – it does. Does it support curve layers? No? Hm.
So there’s another thing to export if you want to retain your adjustment layers.
So the options are now: use photoshop only with the features that can be reatained in other file formats or have double the textures for every PSD file you can’t merge down.
Yes – PSD is important. Just ignore that it’s ust a “proprietary” file format. double standards, guys. You can’t cry for open source to be implemented in all the big software and then be ignorant if a free software does a similar thing in reverse.
+1 to disapproval of PSD format support abolishing.
A Material-lib would be a nice feature, on the other Hand, it’s nice to have the small download of full Blender.
Sometimes my Blender leaves for several Months, but sometimes, when lots of things happen in development that I’m interested, I find myself downloading from Graphicall several times a week.
So the Lib should be a separate download.
But anyways, it should be more than a .blend with a bunch of Materials, there should be comfort in precompiled (precompilable) material-previews, easy assignment of Materials.
SO I think it should be a kind of Plugin providing some elementary Functionality, which is included in Blender, combined with a certain Kind of .blend files that will incorporate the materials.
This way, one can easily build his own Lib (either on Top of a pre-Built version or completely selfmade) and easily use across different Blender-Installations
(Think of a File-Box in Preferences saying [location of .blend file containing standard Material lib])
(and another one saying: [render/bake all Material previews now and save them in Material lib])
I honestly haven’t used the PSD or QT support so that doesn’t affect me at this point, but I can see why people who’ve been using those formats for their projects are now SOL. That’s too bad.
With every new release of Blender I get a bit more excited.
Also, I’m all for the material library .. but I agree with what’s been said. If we want it done, let’s just .. DO it.
I’m willing to work with anyone who wants to put together a library. I have a slew of textures that can be put to good use.
If you’re wanting to work on this, hit me up.
Hi can anyone tell me if 3dconnexions mice will work with this release or do I have to wait for a add on for 3d mice to work??
We can’t ignore the industry’s most common standards just because we use FOSS, or else It’ll be a hobbyist software forever. We want Blender to grow and blossom and it can’t be achieved with isolating open source (same thing about GIMP and Inkscape etc.).
The PSD support is crucial in a professional material workflow. Of course you don’t want to render the final scene with RAM consuming bunch of Hi-res PSDs, but till than you need a smooth material tweaking work-flaw and you can achieve this with PSDs through Photoshop. At most animation and design studios people use photoshop and It will take some time till other software will cut through it’s domination.
Stop isolating open source.
shot_nose: You don’t need to install FFMPEG because it’s compiled directly into Blender. And it’s cross-platform. I guess that’s why the native Quicktime support was dropped – it’s an external lib not available on all platforms on which Blender is working and FFMPEG supports most of Quicktime already.
I am asking myself whether BF is involved in hard-open source front; it means that it seems to support all “anarcho-communist” circles of Free software, Do not expect in this situation any kind of support for normal, commercial, propertiary, copyright, intellectual property oriented
kinds of things. For that circles isolation of open source is normal, and free software should mean “commune”, where no one owns property etcetera… It would be funny to get some closer information on this, because for now this is only my own impression…
Dan,
Select the plane with the texture(s) and then press ‘n’ and under ‘Display’/Shading toggle the drop-down from GLSL to Multitexture or to Texture Face.
Worked for me.
Pam
quote:
dan Jun 24th, 2011 at 10:47 am
I try open blend game and found some problem. the graphick look blank just text. . . why?
Well alright then! You’ll get your precious PSD and Quicktime in 2.7. But it’s going to cost you, we’ll be removing the particle system then. How do you like that? Post your votes in this thread if this will make you happy. Doh!
HaHa….If you need to make room, go ahead and take the physics panel out also!
Is there any tool to migrate phython-scripts from 2.4x to 2.5x?
Great release guys. I’ve been fooling with some of the new stuff, and it’s great to finally have the inset tool, among other things. I also am excited about trying the corrective shape keys add-on, as soon as I get my alien rigged. Great job as always, guys. I must admit I liked having PSD support, but for me it’s no biggie.
a small preset shader library might be good for learning purposes (eg node setups). but no bitmap-textures!
What happened with the console??? Not hidden by default anymore??? Damn!
Hooray to Blender!
Happy I’m doing my work on a mac … so I still have quicktime and PSD support!
Ton Roosendal said:
Was that Ton, really?
What does the particle system have to do with it?
Are we trying to meet some “small footprint” goal?
He can’t be serious!
Thanks a lot to the developers for the great work. You deserve more congrats than complaints of course :-)
On second thought, guys, I actually won’t really miss the PSD support in Blender 2.57+.
Come to think of it, there IS an easier alternative than supporting PSD files, which ARE rather bloated. I’ll have to agree with Reaction. Just export the PSD image as a .png file and import it into Blender. I’m not so concerned with the loss of QuickTime though, since I barely use that format myself. Also like Reaction, I use rendered frames sequences for composing my animation, or use MPEG or H.264 for rendering animations as video clips. (I think that what Gottfried has been saying about FFMPEG is something to consider, as well. I didn’t know this, but, again, I don’t use QuickTime as an animation format.)
I guess I reacted over the idea of the PSD feature being dropped more than actually thinking about how much I’ll really be using it. It’s easy to get caught in the complaining. There are alternatives around this problem, for both the PSD and QuickTime support. It’s no biggie when you think about it. So I’m sorry about my comment earlier, Ton and team! I certainly hope you were just kidding, Ton! LOL And again, I do commend you guys on what they’ve done and what they’re doing towards Blender 2.59 soon!
PNGs? since when PNGs have layers? AFAIK MNGs can be used (the usual hack) as multilayers assuming 1 frame equals 1 layer.
Don’t worry, it was not Ton; being he Blender benevolent-dictator-for-life he does not need wasting time discussing his decisions, he just has them enacted.
The real problem with this “improvement” is that it might signal the beginning of a “streamlining” period and who knows what other “replaceable” features are going to be dropped?
…We have dictature here? And i thought that we all use a software that is democratic, and
egalitarian. Looks like i was terribly wrong.
Lol, don’t worry guys that’s not Ton. I doubt he would typo his name. :)
The spelling of Tons name was wrong :P hahah
…and of course – thanks to the BF people who made open source 3D into reality.
But still, I think isolating blender will do no good.
Are you actually sure PSD support is entirely dropped? For what I read it seems only *rendering to PSD* doesn’t work any more, which nobody uses anyways. I can’t try it out because my graphics card exploded (;p) a few days ago, but you should check that before ranting here.
Bye,
Sven
I would much prefer to have a standardized way to “connect to” and “browse” online material repositories. I believe this would be an effective compromise, and better overall solution, while giving something for the community to play with.
@scummos: Tried to load a PSD Texture and it failed
First of all thx to all the developers.
Nobody has mentioned it yet but it seems that Blender 2.58 comes with morphing capabilities!
On the other hand it makes no sense at all to cut out file formats that have been in Blender before if there is no reason. If someone has established a certain work flow it is not user friendly at all to cut off features with a minor software-update. I don’t see the necessity for using Photoshop- files as there is no multi-layer feature for importing pictures in Blender, however if someone has built up a library of PSD-textures this unexpected developer move will at least cost some additional work.
Why can’t these incompatibilities be limited to major upgrades and be communicated with a certain lead-time? I guess everybody has to and will accept some feature shifts in major revisions.
However one of Blenders unique concepts has been the possibility of .blend-files being compatible up- and downwards the Blender-line. This feature has been lost between 2.57 and 2.58.
Perhaps somebody should revisit the decision on behalf of user-friendliness.
You know, I didn’t even notice that typo with “Roosendal” there!
Well anyways, I guess we’ll need an Add-On for PSD support then. Any volunteers? I would, but I’ve got my hands already full. (Maybe I’ll take a whack at it when I’m not so darn busy! :P)
Morphing capabilities??
Could you expand on that, please, Mac-PPC User?
So… PSD dropping was a HUGE mistake. Someone said (Sorry, I don’t really have time to re-read all comments) said, that he want to know WHY we (By we, I mean Photoshop users) use PSD? Because Photoshop is fast, easy and smooth program. Ok, I’ll anger all OpenSource fans here, but GIMP is cumbersome to use (Inkscape too, btw). AND it is an industry standard. What I was doing all the time, I was creating texture in .psd. Tweaking. CTRL-S. Refreshing. DONE! No data loss, smooth, efficient workflow. So either You’ll restore .PSD support, either by addon or re-enabling QT-SDK, or many people workflow is going to break. Seriously, why turning back from ‘PROS’?
Material lib… Great idea. BUt I’m against using it via Addon. Why? Because IMO sample textures/scenes/lighting setups are just MUST-HAVE in every 3d app. Like the… Er, how-it-was-named zip for bugtesting. It should be merged within installer. Why? Because the best apps outh there are doing this. And Blender? Is for hobbyist. But we need very little effort to create PRO app.
We have very fast application, with intuitive UI.
Very fast renderer (…Look my note in PostScriptum)
Very strong, enthuistiastic community
PS.
About renderer. Cycles WILL be next main renderer? IMHO it is bad decision. It should be developed alongside BI.
BTW people! Look at blenderstorm! And share You ideas :)
I too think that dropping the .psd support was not a good Idea. I always use Quicktime export/render and was quite surprised when I went to export and it was gone. Hmmm….. I know it is free but this doesn’t seem like a step forward.