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Blender 2.42 Has Been Released

Posted by Zonk on Sat Jul 15, 2006 03:07 PM
from the makes-good-juice dept.
Graphics Software IT
bartv writes "Blender 2.42 has been released. It features an impressive list of new features for professional users. The most important improvements are: a new render pipeline, node editors for compositing and materials, support for anisotropic materials, improved fluid simulation and new character animation tools. Most of these features are the result of the production of Elephants Dream, the first Open Movie. During this project, Blender's lead developer Ton Roosendaal was coding the features that were required by the artists to produce their movie."
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  • I'd like to see more. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by suso (153703) * on Saturday July 15 2006, @03:09PM (#15725531) Homepage Journal
    See, the best invention really is neccesity. They should try to make a movie every year or two.

    • My impressions of Elephant's Dream. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by enitime (964946) on Saturday July 15 2006, @03:39PM (#15725629)
      "See, the best invention really is neccesity. They should try to make a movie every year or two."


      In future they should try to get better writers. I saw the Elephant's Dream movie, and technically it's not too bad. The models seemed fairly on-par with most "real" 3D animation feature movies. The animation was worse, but at least still around what you get on those 3D animated kids' shows or in-game cut-scenes. I was more impressed than I thought I'd be.

      But did anyone think that story was any good? I didn't. And with all the stories and fan-fiction out there surely there must be hordes of aspiring writers out there who would like nothing more than a movie based on one of their scripts, even if it means making it creative common licensed. If nothing else, it gets their name on IMDB. That's a decent foot-in-the-door these days, if they're looking for a career. Then you perfect it with collaborative writing, TV-show style, where a whole team of writing staff have input (or in this case the whole Internet.)

      Couldn't get open-sourcier than that.

      But get WRITERS to do it. I'd bet good money this thing was written by animators and modelers. If you're a professional-level animator/modeler you're probably not a professional-level writer. No one's good at everything. Get over your egos and suck it up.

      I guess it's the same problem open source programmers have with, for example, user interfaces or documentation. "It's just a minor detail, what really matters is this other aspect. Besides, how hard can it be? I'll do it myself."

      • Re:eh hem. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by ari_j (90255)
        You need a quote checker, too. "Necessity is the mother of invention." and "The best invention is necessity." do not mean the same thing. :)

        • Re:eh hem. (Score:3, Insightful)

          by suso (153703) *
          I wasn't quoting your mother. I wasn't quoting anyone. I was just SAYING IT ON MY OWN.
          • I was just SAYING IT ON MY OWN.


            Whether you were quoting someone or just have the verbal diarrhea, it makes no sense. It's kind of like saying "the best invention is starvation."
            • There are plenty of things in this world that don't make any sense. Especially things people say. Honestly, I've heard people say it both ways.

              If all of you want to get stupidly technical about all this, then try this on. To say that necessity is the mother of all invention implies that necessity is an invetion, since its other invention's mother and all. Unless of course necessity copulated with another species of concept in order to create an new hybrid species to create a new one which we now call inv

              • Re:eh hem. (Score:5, Insightful)

                by Score Whore (32328) on Saturday July 15 2006, @04:49PM (#15725826)
                It has nothing to do with being stupidly technical. It has to do with language. When it is said "necessity is the mother of invention" anyone with even a little bit of intelligence can identify that it's not a literal statement of fact, it's figurative. That same person will then think about what it might mean. Then being the marginally smart person they are, they will see the idea being expressed and the particularily articulate way that idea was expressed.

                Your statement of "the best invention really is necessity" makes very little sense. At it's most literal, no one will agree with you. What is so great about necessity? Even taken figuratively... well, there's nothing figurative about it. If you've heard people say that and you connected it to the famous "necessity is the mother of invention", then you either didn't understand what they said or both you and the speaker aren't very good at the english language.

                I realize that english is a living language, but even so if you want people to take you seriously and be persuaded by what you have to say, you need to use the language in a skilled fashion. Being articulate, forming complex ideas with efficient use of words, and constructing logical statements is the very basics of being a proficient communicator.
      • Well, there's the 10 second club: ( http://www.10secondclub.net/ [10secondclub.net] ), basically a monthly animation contest around a 10 second sound clip, meant to mimic actual production (where a character animator is given a single scene to animate). I do remember some blender users winning some of the rounds sometime ago. Haven't been following it much lately, but to give an idea of the quality of the competition, sometime ago I saw an ad looking for animators to work on Blue Sky (IIRC, it was about a year or more ago...

  • Bite my shiny metal ass! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hey, I read that as Bender!

  • What have they done for the UI? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tablizer (95088) on Saturday July 15 2006, @03:13PM (#15725547) Homepage Journal
    The UI was natoriously difficult the last time I tried Blender. I agree that there may be a method to the madness, but why not have a mode for those who want instant gratification by using "expected" conventions? It could increase interest and hobbyists. I realize that some don't like watching impatient newbies infesting forums and fan sites, but if you want a product to survive, you need new blood. Today's snot-nosed newbie may be tomarrow's programmer for a great new feature.
    • but why not have a mode for those who want instant gratification by using "expected" conventions

      Maybe its because those that want instant gratification only end up making shiny metal spheres on checkerboard planes.
      • Ah! You're familiar with my work!
      • Working with spheres and checkered planes is a great way to learn the very basics of primitive shapes, shading, and materials. What would you suggest as a first step for someone learning a new GUI and workflow? Creating a full-motion feature film?

        And, if someone just wants to fool around with raytracing rather than producing a professional animation, what the heck is wrong with doing just that?

        Blender's GUI is totally different from other 3D apps I've used. I used to play with Truespace a lot (created elabo
    • Having spent many many hours playing with Blender, I can say that the UI is not the major hurdle. It takes at most one hour of sustained effort to get to grips with the UI — the main problem is actually doing creative things once you've mastered it. 'Modelling', the art of constructing 3D structures out of mere electrons is the most time-consuming part of the process. My advice is to steer clear of Blender, unless you find that your WoW addiction still leaves you with time to kill.
      • Wait, what? Steer clear from Blender or 3D modeling in general?
      • I have modelled in the past, and this poster above is nothing but a liar. You don't model from "electrons".. you model from vertexes, points and edges. You then use a smoothing tag to estimate a curv over the points, inwhich you can add more detail by adding more points.

        Blenders UI isn't great for a total newbie I agree, but that's not to say it's hard. I thought 3ds maxes interface was hard at first compared to maxon cinema 4d, but I got used to that.

        There's also lots of video tutorials for blender w
        • That's pretty funny. But you do model from electrons. Ultimately you're shifting electrons around inside your computer when you make things in Blender. The same as when you write a document in Word (or OpenOffice) or make a post on Slashdot. I was using figurative language [wikipedia.org], but I see that my figure of speech was entirely lost on you :(
      • the main problem is actually doing creative things once you've mastered it.

        You started me thinking about programs like Terragen, Poser, and Pixar's "Universal Man."

        Tools which help an artist to remain productive and focused on what he does best. Character animation, for example, is a form of acting and demands a very different set of skills than those needed for the basic construction of the model.

        • I agree with you. I was going for a Funny mod, but I guess the moderators were on crack again.

          Seriously though, I found that Blender ate up my life when I was using it. It can be very addictive to create and manipulate your own virtual world.

    • Re:What have they done for the UI? (Score:5, Informative)

      by SB_SamuraiSam (962776) * on Saturday July 15 2006, @03:37PM (#15725618) Homepage

      I've tried Maya (evaluation), 3DS Max (cad), AutoCad and Friends (cad), etc. They all have very different interfaces. These are the few that would seem to define "convention," yet they are totally different. They are also hardly within the "hobbyist" price range. Blender is well within the hobbyist price range, has some decent [wikibooks.org], free documentation. The "getting started" range of documentation is actually quite good.

      Not to mention people are free to, for example [wikipedia.org], fork the project and make it how they wish.

      If you watch "The Making of" for Elephants Dream, you'll see that they looked plenty productive and the new node compositing (think Shake) looks down-right sick!

      • Actually Maya, Max, and Cinema4D seem to be converging UI-wise. A lot of third party tools have been borrowing their UIs from Maya and Max.

        Blender and Lightwave are odd men out.
        • I found the interface to Blender to be a raging pain and not worth the effort. If you're a starving student Animation Master sells for $300

          I'd save my money. I bought A:M quite a few years ago, and abruptly stopped supporting it when the ego-maniacal moderator of their mailing list kicked a bunch of members - some of them quite well known in the A:M community - for complaining about bugs in the software that were causing some serious stability problems. I was one of those that got kicked, and I haven't look

    • Re:What have they done for the UI? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      > The UI was natoriously difficult the last time I tried Blender.

      Try it now -- it's much better. The old keyboard-driven model still works, and the menu panels are still kind of weird, but now most major functions have a visible button or menu entry, the "spin buttons" have arrows that indicate that fact, and there are now actual handles on each axis you can see and grab. In short it's not any stranger than maya or softimage now, just slightly different.

      And it's still incredibly fast.
    • Suprisingly enough the majority of our new users actualy are these 'snot-nosed newbies'. It seems older people just don't have the drive to learn something new...and probably the fact that they can afford professional software. Building a seperate UI would require a massive undertaking on the part of our few coders, who are already busy enough trying to keep up with today's 3D application needs. Besides, we have a great community who would be willing to help you with any problems you have.
    • the UI is no more difficult than Maya or lightwave. All of these kinds of apps are simply really stinking hard to use to begin with because of the complexity you are looking at.

      The only things I find annoying about the UI was that if you accidentally clicked in the tools fram and tried to use your scroll wheel you can mess up the ui location and size. Everything else is pretty darn useable for the amount fo power thay hand you.

  • It should be named Blender 3.0 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 15 2006, @03:17PM (#15725560)
    Really, the list of new features and improvements is so impressive that, were it a company product, it would surely be named "3.0", not puny 2.42 (after 2.41)...

    • Re:It should be named Blender 3.0 (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Speare (84249) on Saturday July 15 2006, @03:56PM (#15725671) Homepage

      Seriously, look through the back changelogs-- there's a HUGE list of new features and capabilities and tweaks and improvements on EVERY dot release. Yet it's still binary-compatible with ancient .blend files (and the ancient versions of blender can load the newer .blend files ignoring for future parameters). Pretty impressive really.

    • In the past year or so, every single release has something that got the modeller in me excited. Each time, there has been at least one feature that is almost immediately applicable, usually more, and with a raft of bugfixes and minor features that I doubt I'll use. Blender has been for quite a while a very impressive piece of software, and that is ignoring the fact that it is free. It is one of the main, (in my opinion) achievements of the F/OSS movement, and is competable with professional applications. If development continues at this rate, I expect is will quite possible be better than its expensive competitors.
      • It is one of the main, (in my opinion) achievements of the F/OSS movement

        Except that it was developed by a company as a commercial product and later released as open source. I am not trying to diminish the (impressive) efforts made after they released the source, only stating the fact.

        (That is, Photoshop would also qualify as one of the most impressive OSS projects if Adobe released the source.)

  • Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dubmun (891874) * on Saturday July 15 2006, @03:27PM (#15725585) Homepage Journal
    Blender has really come a long way since we tried to use it to program our game Log Cabin Adventure in it back when I was getting my BS in CS. I always liked it's UI better than 3DSM but it seems like their feature sets are getting closer and closer as well.

  • Open Moves bad for America (Score:5, Funny)

    by MarkByers (770551) on Saturday July 15 2006, @03:28PM (#15725590) Homepage Journal
    Watching so called 'Open Movies' is Communistic and hurts the American economy. In particular it hurts us. There's no such thing as a free lunch. You get what you pay for. Open movies contain viruses and trojans. Sharing open movies is illegal in most countries.

    Don't download this movie or we will sue you. We know you broke the law when you were 14 years old. We have it on record.

    Your friends,
    The MPAA.

  • Cool (Score:2, Informative)

    by yfkar (866011)
    Great! Congrats to Ton and the rest of the developer team.

    It's always nice to see that every new release pushes Blender substantially forward. Especially the nodes are a nice addition.

  • just FYI (Score:3, Informative)

    by christurkel (520220) on Saturday July 15 2006, @03:35PM (#15725610) Homepage Journal
    This release also sees official support for Irix restored. It had been been built for Irix but unsupported

  • I'm not trying to troll, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by oldosadmin (759103) on Saturday July 15 2006, @03:39PM (#15725628) Homepage
    Has anyone seen Elephants Dream? It's a horrible movie. Sure the 3d stuff is cool, but that's not what I want advertised everywhere as "the product of open source". The movie is *bad*. We're talking worse than Gigli, seriously.
    • I haven't seen Gigli (and I think I'm glad), so I can't compare the 2.

      But Elephant's Dream does lack of a lot of the things that make a movie successful. You know, plot, good voice acting, good dialog... that stuff. the only things it DOES have going for it are pretty good CG and a neat idea. Oh, and it's free.
      • I agree wholeheartedly. This is also why most OSS games don't have good textures, they are made by programmers, not gfx artists.

      • Re:I'm not trying to troll, but... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 15 2006, @04:46PM (#15725814)
        Hate to point this out to you and ruin a perfectly good rant against hobbyists and open source jacks-of-all-trades, but they hired a professional screenwriter to write the script. They asked him for "artsy" and that's what he gave them. Sure, it's not Pixar by any stretch of the imagination, since Eddy Murphy's not providing the voice of a wisecracking fax machine, but there's a hell of a lot going on in ED. It's crafted like a puzzlebox, with multilayered symbolism hidden in the imagery and dialogue. It wasn't meant for saturday matinees, it was made for the art film festivals. If that not your cup of tea, that's fine, but don't decry it as "crap" and insist that just because you didn't see it, there must be nothing there. Film is subjective, not objective.

        (Disclaimer: I'm not really a huge fan of arthouse films. I know 'em when I see em, and I'll give 'em the respect they deserve, but I usually end up watching Hollywood's output.)

          Oh, and it's completely open. If you can do a mean Eddie Murphy Fax-machine voice, you're free to render your own Dream.
          • So you're looking down your nose at a strawman you think is looking down its nose at you.

            Gotcha.

            Lighten up. =) It is true that some people can eek out a deeper meaning in more abstract forms of communication; some people come out of a play going, "Okay, Tom ran away from his home, then screwed Lily underneath a tree in a park, then his brother came and got him, and they both went home." Some people (note I'm not saying better people, or more sophisticated, or more intelligent people) come away from some pla
  • I tried an earlier version of Blender and liked it, but I had to switch to 3DS max because blender didn't support an export format that I needed. I like 3DS max as well, but it suffers from a big focus problem that Blender doesn't have. There are mouse shortcuts for zooming panning and rotating, but they only work when the window has focus and the main window is always loosing focus.
    The one gripe with both packages I have is why is it so difficult to paint texture on an object?

  • Physics better, but still bad (Score:4, Informative)

    by Animats (122034) on Saturday July 15 2006, @04:51PM (#15725833) Homepage

    Tried the new physics engine, by dropping a cube and a cone onto a slanted plane. Things are definitely better than in 2.41, where the objects just hit the plane and stuck. Now they hit, bounce a bit, and slowly fall to align with the plane. They start to slide.

    Then the cone goes spinning and flying off into space. Huge conservation of energy violation. Oops.

    The Bullet Physics guys don't have sliding friction right yet. But they're making progress.

  • How about a Blender upgrade to a window manager that pipes graphics to Blender in realtime? Not just screengrabs, but any rendering being sent to the screen, before getting dressed in the widgets, or including them. With loopback to let us Blendo our desktops as we use them.
  • The program itself is awesome. Sadly, every tutorial, video or text, doesn't really help you. They just say "Do this, do that" without ever telling you why you're doing this task or that task, they only assume you know what each tool does and what it's primarily used for. Bad way to get people to use your program - I tried making a simple head using the step-by-step instructions in a tutorial, and failed miserably because the tutorial failed to mention that you need to select two certain regions for a loop cut.

    Blender hardly needs improvement (though the new particle/hair stuff is insanely cool,) it's the tutorials that need major improvement. You're not teaching anyone anything when you don't explain why you do this cut or select this part of the mesh. If you can't teach people the whys and hows, nobody can learn it. "Do this, do that" does nothing.

    • Re:Not even close (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Qbertino (265505) on Saturday July 15 2006, @06:02PM (#15726011)
      "support for anisotropic materials"

      Wow, so Blender is only 15 years behind the times now?

      Sorry, I think I'll stick with maya for making movies

      Sorry, but you're a dick. I hope Autodesk, Mayas new owner, makes you pay through the nose, Mr. Oh-I'm-so-professional Moviemaker. Allthoug I doubt you've got a legal licence. Then I hope they sue your ass off.
      Finally Blender has overcome the largest part of it's shortcomings compared to bizarely priced 3D Studio Crap and Co. and all you've got is a wiseass remark. Let's see you're great "Maya Movie Work". I doubt it comes even near Elefants Dream in any respect.
      In case you haven't gotten the drift yet: Blender is on the fast lane to becoming the 3D industries business model nightmare and allready is causing prices to drop and quality rising left, right and center. Try that with Gimp vs. Photoshop.

      Bottom line: Quit being a jerk and give the Blender team some credit and cudos allready. If anybody deserves it in the OSS design app dept. it's them first. Many times over.

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