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Blender 2.67 Released

51

blender_logo_shinyI just returned from a short vacation, so I'm a bit late to the party :) Here's this week's biggest news though: Blender 2.67 has been released!

From the release announcement:

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.67. New in this release is the Freestyle render engine for non-photorealistic rendering, which can generate 2D line drawings in various styles.

The paint and sculpt system is now much more consistent across different paint modes and has gained various new features. Motion tracking was made faster, and Cycles now has initial support for subsurface scattering.

The node system now support more flexible group editing. For developers of external render engine addons it is now possible to support node based materials.

For 3D printing an addon was added to analyze and export the meshes.

You can find the full list of improvements in this release in the 2.67 changelog, and download it here.

About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
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.

51 Comments

  1. I think 2.67 is a true milestone and for my humble purposes it's feature complete now.
    Big thanks to Ton and all the devs for the hard work.

  2. Fantastic to see how Blender is improving with each and every release.

    Thanks to the developers and the Blender Foundation for making Blender possible!!

  3. Blender newbie here! Very impressive piece of software once you get past the initial interface shock & how Blender works. When quitting Blender 2.67, the "unsaved data warning" is gone. It was there in v2.66. A pretty serious flaw IMO.

    • Sorry, I just noticed the "Prompt Quit" function in Preferences. Now I just have to memorize Blenders hundreds of shortcuts to avoid getting carpal tunnel syndrome :-)

  4. Question: Why is an unselected plane in side view invisible? Makes it hard to move an object down to a floor for example.

  5. talkingwabbit on

    hmm, a little disappointed blender's still not half as decent as the big players, but every release its getting better. maybe blender needs more developers? better developers?

    • McPandaBurger on

      What do you mean by not Half as decent? What is it that is missing. I'm not saying it's perfect obviously, there are things to improve but anyone who's used autodesk software like I have on a daily basis doesn't sing the praises of any of it at 3k a license. Considering it is free, it is very adaptable especially with the python implementation, I don't really get what it is that makes it bad in your eyes?

      I'm not being a fanboy here I just genuinely think it's a brilliant bit of kit and is obviously a labour of love. Maybe list off your peaves and we'll help you work around them or even point out that blender can do it.

      • hi every1, i think you both are right, blender is a powerful tool ( impressive ) awesome, we all know that, BUT blender is not perfect ( we all know that as well ), but in every release is more than anything around, blender has the ability for making anything

        the only obstacle is yourself

        Blender is an impressive software, it has a lot of bugs ( we know it ) but it is better than autodesk software

        it is freeware

        it has a tiny weight

        it has a portable version

        what else do you want ?

        you pay nothing for it

        blender in every release has better powerful tools but what blender needs is... add add-ons ( the best add-ons ) and put them in blender, that´s the worst that blender has, they have to put those essential add-ons in blender

        let´s help its development be better in every version, say where´s the bug and they fix it fast, very fast they fix any bug, do that and don´t fight

        let´s make blender be the only best software around

        right this moment, blender is better than others, but please let´s help and not do things backwards

        that´s all

        and welcome back Bart

        happy blending

          • hi Lawrence D’Oliveiro

            i know it

            it´s Free :)

            but i did write freeware but it´s the same in other words

            Example:
            GNU Lesser General Public License v.2.1.
            Mozilla Public License
            Open Source License.
            Apple Source License v.2.0
            CDDL.
            EUPL.
            Demo
            Shareware
            Free
            GPL
            BSD
            Debian
            X.org
            Property Software
            Comercial Software
            Adware
            Trial
            Crippleware
            Donationware
            Abandonware
            Careware
            Postcardaware (o cardaware)
            Etc...

            Excuse me but i dominate all that because I'm C/C++ Programmer

            i wrote freeware but it ain´t much difference

            Blender is 3D creation for everyone, free to use for any purpose. Free Software!

            Hugs...

          • the idea is trying to tell them that blender is free and they don´t need to pay for it

            :)

      • The viewport performance is a big issue if you're getting in any half "serious" project, that has nothing to do with the artist. It's just one example, and hopefully it will be improved not so far in the future

        • in the viewport what kind of issue are you talking about ? absolutely that´s not the artist but about software... please try to be more specific.

          kind regards

          • performance ? i have no idea what are you talking about because i don´t get that issue on the viewport

            any1 ?

          • Hapoofesgeli on

            I've got this view port performance issue too...
            Even in really simple scenes when i'm trying to select objects blender freezes and it takes for a long time to select that object...
            And if you add particles(even with small percentage of displaying them in view port) or fire then you can't navigate smoothly through your scene any more...
            don't you have these problems?

          • McPandaBurger on

            Hapoofesgeli, I've had that once it it turned out to be my graphics drivers, when the new update came out it was fixed, but I also rolled back to an earlier one at the time and that sorted it too.

        • winnertakesteve on

          Well I guess all my projects are less than half-serious, then ;)

          As for viewport performance, I've worked on some heavy environments, and if you work smartly in terms of subdivision level, particle replicator visualization, and generally isolating visibility to what you are working on, you can still build up incredibly detailed scenes. The Modo artist I've worked with seems to use similar tactics, so I hardly see blender as being that far behind the curve in that respect.

          I'm also reminded of a Jurassic Park featurette where they were showing viewport redraws that were measured in seconds per frame, not frames per second.

          Im not saying that improvements arent welcome and encouraged, but I stand by my claim that blender gives you the tools to accomplish A LOT. To be overtly dismissive of it and the developers who have made such a tool freely available to everyone, both reeks of entitlement and a flawed belief that great work is dependant on having the most advanced features.

        • the animator on

          I think he's right about viewport performance. I love blender and have been using it avidly for 2 years now. I was experiencing lagging in the viewport when working with over a half a million verts, so I went out and bought my self a high performance laptop (a laptop because I travel alot), with a 3rd gen. i7 4 core processor, and alltho my render times have improved radically, the viewport is still sluggish when working with lots of verts and or simulations!

          • now i got your point

            YES... at the beginning i was having that problem with the viewport as well but now i don´t have any trouble like before, i have but not like before because i did an upgrade to my PC

            mmm they need fix that but if you increase and make an upgrade to your PC, i think that trouble shouldn´t be the same

            now i have

            16 GB Ram
            2 Video Card ( 4 GB )
            1 TB ( HDD )
            power supply VERY powerfull hahaha or your pc blowsup :S
            i7 intel

            like i told you, now i don´t have any trouble like before in the viewport performance

            hope that help

            hugs...

          • the animator on

            i have 4 core i7 3rd gen
            nvidia 680m 4 gb
            32 gig ram 1600 mz
            1.5 tb HD
            and the viewport is still sluggish and lagging when working with a million verts and simulations.

          • the animator on

            @McPandaBurger

            My graphics card is Nvidia 680m, I've heard theres issues with the 680 but those seemed related to the cycles rendering with gpu, not the 3d viewport, which I understand it's performance is not so much graphic card related,,,is my understanding wrong.

          • McPandaBurger on

            No you're not wrong with the 680 mainly affecting the cycles performance. What I'm referring to though is the screen up date feature in the driver, I've had this slow down a few time in the past and it's always been linked to the graphics card driver being messed up, So I either rolled back the driver or updated if there was a new one and that normally sorted it. I'm still running a GTX 580 on my rig (due the the reasons you listed in cycles and the fact I'm not up for sinking a grand on a titan) But that has never had any issues at all. My laptop though, is running a 675 m which is a mobile chip, but that was having slow down in the viewport with very few poly's, but this was resolved with a driver update. I think that is what people are seeing, it sometimes happens in the desktop environment too the mouse will look like it's stalled, this is all normally driver related.

          • the animator on

            @McPandaBurger,,,,,Well, I just updated my drivers for my geforce 680m and there's definetly an improvement in my viewport, I'm currently working on a scene with 4,671,409 verts, and navigation is better, and I can move both objects and pose bones with noticably less lag than before. Thanks for your advice McPandaBurger!

  6. Hey, What happen to "Voronoi Explode Modifier"?
    I want to try blow-up a tree like in a movie "Star Wars".
    Has anybody seen?

  7. Although it's not part of the release logs, the 2.67 feature that will most affects me is the fix to using projection paint on transparent images.

    Previously, this would create a fringe around the stroke in the color of the image's background. For example, if you painted a red stroke on a completely transparent green image, the stroke would be red and outlined in green.

    Now, it behave as one would expect. The scenario above would result in a red stroke with the edges fading off into an alpha of zero. All paint on the image would have an r, g, b of 1, 0, 0. No green would appear in the image.

    This is a HUGE improvement to 3D image painting. It actually makes painting with multiple image layers practical. Before, it could be done but not without the destructive fringe artifacts making the whole exercise pointless.

  8. the animator on

    Are there any advantages of Freestyle over Jot, or has Jot pulled the rug out from under the 2.67 release?

    • There's tradeoffs to both, but I would say Freestyle has some advantages over Jot in terms of flexibility. I'd say that Freestyle is far more customizable and seems to better allow you to produce pretty much any NPR effect you can think up. Jot seems to me as minimal effort to use, though, I think it can produce some rather unique results in its own right. I personally just keep both around. (I love having options in life.) Also, if you have Linux or Mac, Freestyle is your only option (unless you use a virtual machine), as Jot is Windows only. Hope this helps!

      • the animator on

        I haven't used either yet, and will definitely be trying and keeping both around, like you I also like to have options. But I must say the Jot video was very impressive.

        cheers

  9. Awesome release!
    Thank you, this is an awesome release!

    I love toon shaders!

    Alas though, we really need something to compete against Zbrush and Pixar's Open Subdiv. Until we have some magical-near-infinite poly engine, the buck stops at the poly cap. Most especially on lower end systems. Is there any R&D going into this?

  10. I guess I'm few days late.

    First, congratulations to BF devs and contributors. 2.67 is a big release!!!

    I worked on the FreeStyle documentation on the wiki along with T.K. and Bastien, referencing document done by Flokkievids. Also few contributors to jazz the write up. Thanks to FreeStyle artwork contributors, the release log looks very fun and shows variety of styles that FS can achieve. There has been a big misunderstanding surrounding FS doing toon, I hope the write up can clear them off.

    In short,
    FreeStyle = Lineart
    http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.67/FreeStyle

    Personal thanks to Antony Riakiotakis (psy-fi) and Brecht Van Lommel (blendix) for fixing texture paint of alpha fringe and the big painting system refactoring. Painting makes more sense now.

    For future improvement, I'm compiling a comprehensive proposal for new toon shaders with the help of everyone interested and those with big stakes on it. Ton gave the green light for that to move forward. To those who are into advance toon shading do check the proposal out. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:LightBWK#Advanced_Toon_Shader_Proposal

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