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The Blender Foundation has released a first set of test builds for Blender 2.64! Check out the preliminary release log to see what's new. As always: test, test, test and be sure to report any bugs to the Blender bug tracker.
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.
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40 Comments
Excellent!
OMG, already?! :)
I don't get the skin modifier.
you don't get it meaning it isn't included or don't you understand what it does?
if second case is the case (case, now we got it three times :D) you need to work with edges, just connected lines, and create a rough basemesh. Later you can add all details in mesh editing (with skinmod applied) or sculpting
It´s included. As is Bsurfaces. This is christmas coming early!
If you are wondering how the 3d "skin" is thicker in some areas and thinner in others and how does one controls that is because there is an adjustable circle of influence at every point that according to the radius of the circle determines how thick or thin the outer mesh is going to be at those points. So you just make a stick figure (with mesh vertexes and segments) like your childhood drawings and it will generate an outer mesh following those paths of the mesh stick figure and at every point (at every vertex) of the "base skeleton" you will be able to specify the radius of influence to control the thickness and that outer mesh is generated automatically (parametrically) a bit like the way metaballs models parts can be joined together to form a single "blob" sort of like that.
Thanks pixel! I was kind of confused as well very cool modifier!.
The skin modifier is AWESOME!!!
Ideal for sketching, and easy to turn into a final low-poly model.
Thanks a lot ! It's amazing :)
Does Cycles OpenCL already work on AMD GPUs?
I believe OpenCL for AMD is slated to work after I'm dead... ;)
Careful, some people might put out a hit on you now. ;)
That a powerful spell you have there. Now tell me your address, name and send a picture.
it does even with 2.63. I *somehow* got it to work with a lot of messing around with different driver versions and tweaks and advice I found searching the internet about copying dlls around. I even tried Leshcat drivers. It now shows up as OpenCL and the compute device is "Turks". I really wish I could tell people how I got it to work, but I can't. All I can say is that if you don't mind installing and re-installing your drivers 100 times and trying stuff like Leshcat drivers you might get lucky like I did. I am afraid to touch anything with my setup now as I don't want to lose my precious OpenCL.
Will official 2.64 be a minGw compiled version ?
Those are so much faster than VB builds...
No, minGW 64 is experimental.
Also, I suspect that performance is hindered by thread locking microsoft malloc lib as Cycles uses a lot of "new" and "delete".
Alexk
will the masking tool be added to it, or is that for 2.65, i didn't see it in the preliminary release log.
Can you access the scale and rotation of a tracking marker? Only the location seems to transfer over when you link an empty to the track.
I looked at the release log. Nothing about BGE?
I thought Cucumber Tasklist and Harmony Phase 1 were approved for 2.64?
Yes there is:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.64/Game_Engine
My version says 2.63.13 - r48802. It has a 2.63 folder in the downloaded folder (blender-2.64-testbuild1-linux-glibc27-x86_64) and doesn't create a 2.64 folder in ~/.blender. I can't find any r48802 on graphicall either. Am I missing something, or is this the wrong version?
./blender -v
Blender 2.63 (sub 13)
build date: 2012-07-10
build time: 17:23:04
build revision: 48802
build platform: Linux:64bit
build type: Release
No. Just run it and see wether you can find the new features. Generally the new splash screen with the new version number are added last, in the final release.
Yup! Should've checked that. Thanks!
any news from the outline modifier?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5_huJm5vVo
i dont know how i can test it in other simple scens for bug tracking, but in this version is a mature bug in the texture coordinate node in cycles materials. Generated and UV is the same and thats wrong. Generated Texture Coordinates dont work. please fix it and dont forget it.
At last,the blender[dot]org developer pages are getting a better interface design.
The last previous release was heavy to render the work,
witch means the interface itself are not build correctly. Unnecessary renderings consuming the workflow.
*even disabling font,audio settings.
Very good to embed the previews interface color theme.
Thank you very much for the improved handling of bevel (Ctrl-B) and inset (I) !
Unfortunately, I'm still having rather poor results with the bevel tool.
...I hope this will be fixed in the final release.
I have been asking for a fix to that before bmesh was even merged to trunk so good luck with that
Masses of clever stuff, and the Cycles speed-ups sound incredible!
But I still wonder if it will ever be possible to use the 'decal' method to add logos to models when using Cycles? The problem is that the alpha channel in the 'decal' PNG renders as black in Cycles :-(
if you want check my Cycles tutorial here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCUXmgcgbmg&list=UUKDe8_5_-j7HvyS6p0QLlaA&index=4&feature=plcp on how to use an alpha mask for controlling the composite material of a leaf and you'll be down to business with this in no time
My dual nvidia gtx 670 are now working with cycles gpu compute. So much faster! Thank you, and I can't wait for the finished version! ;p
Amazing stuff... The new chromakey looks beautiful...LOVE it..We are very lucky people..How come no 32 bit OSX ? Is it harder to build?
"Added native motion blur support, still disabled atm."
So... How do you enable it? :D ;)
Can any one here tell me where the "samples" option for the defocus node in 2.64RC went? I made a post at blenderartists, but nothing yet....
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?260524-2.64-%28RC%29-Cycles-DOF-Defocus-Changes
erm... sorry to ask again!
Does anyone know why they don't relase a test build of a 32bit OSX version..
Is it harder to build? I've checked graphic all and there is no version on there.. Will I just have to be patient?
Just downloaded 2.64 to compare render times with 2.63 (both 64bit Windows)
Using this benchmark (for CUDA cards only): http://benchmark.cd3dtech.com/Benchmark/benchmark.html
2.63 = 6 min 22 sec 2.64 = 14 min 7 sec using Cycles with NVIDIA GTX 460 2GB.
I'm very surprised by the huge difference in render times(?) Have others found
2.64 to run slow with CUDA (compared to 2.63)?
Using just the CPU on my ASUS G-73 laptop with my own scenes, 2.63 and 2.64 rendered essentially at the same speed......although I don't like the bucket renders....prefer the progressive in 2.63.
Is the bucket system supposed to be faster or better somehow?
fyi, got much better render times (comparable to 2.63) when I changed the
default 8x8 tiles to 2x2.