Blender 2.69

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trueBlue
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Blender 2.69

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XL.jpg
While Blender comes up with new versions of the software every two months or so, the new release 2.69 is meant to stick around for a while

By Gottfried Hofmann

The motion tracker got the ability to track planes. This is useful to replace for example billboards, plates or screens in in a video. Previously, one had to create a 4-corner-pin manually. The plane track can be parented to masks and also loaded into the compositor due to a new node that will automatically warp an image or video to the tracked plane and also output a mask from the track.

Subsurface scattering (SSS) in the Cycles render engine got various improvements like new falloff functions and sampling algorithms. It's also possible to render out passes (direct, indirect and color) from SSS. Note that subsurface scattering is only available on the CPU at the moment.

GPU support was added to the branched path tracing integrator (formerly non-progressive integrator) that allows artists to set the amount of samples based on shader types. To make choices easier, you can select presets in the sampling panel now. The total amount of samples is also displaced. Some artists prefer to use a squared instead of linear quantity of samples, which can also be selected now.

Rendering hair

The rendering of hair is now available by default with simplified UI and an own shader node in Cycles. A new sky model based on research by Hosek / Wilkie has been added that provides improved realism especially on sunset and sunrise.

For scenes where an accurate light color based of real-world values is needed, the new blackbody node can convert light colors from Kelvin to RGB. Various tools to convert vectors and mappings to different spaces have also been added to help making transformations of textures etc. more intuitive.

In early days of Cycles it had an option to apply film response curves to emulate the photographic look of films from Agfa and Kodak directly to the Cycles rendering in both the viewport and the final render. That feature had been moved to the compositor but is now back for viewport and direct rendering as “Looks”. It can be found in the color management panel under the scene tab.


Blender 2.69 can now import FBX files with support for cameras, lamps and mesh with UVs, vertex colors and textures. Armature or animation are not yet support, though. The export of FBX and OBJ has also been improved and supports split vertex normals now. This way sharp edges can be exported without the need to split the edges on mesh level. The FBX exporter has been refactored to better support lights, cameras and materials and for meshes it has become faster, generates in general smaller files and can handle polygons instead of just tris and quads converted to tris.

On the modelling side, the new mesh bisect tool can be used to cut a mesh in half and optionally remove one side. Another option is to fill holes that have been generated this way with materials, UVs and vertex-colors based on the surrounding geometry.

Cleanup

The mesh cleanup tools now have the option to automatically detect and fill holes in the mesh. Just like the new bisect tool, the operation automatically copies mesh data-like materials and Uvs from the surrounding geometry.

The new option “hidden wire” in GLSL mode will overlay wireframes on the visible geometry which is useful for retopology work. The bridge tools have been improved again and can fill non-square grids now. They also preserves Uvs and vertex colors better now.

This article only gives an overview of the more significant new features. In addition, a myriad of small features and improvements have been added and more than 270 bugs from previous versions have been fixed. Blender 2.69 is available for Windows, Mac and Linux in both 32 and 64 bit.
pugman 1
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Re: Blender 2.69

Post by pugman 1 »

Thanks TB ,I know blender is hard to learn but once you have its awsome .
I see online alot of max and maya users are switching over to blender ,that shows just how good blender
realy is.
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Draise
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Re: Blender 2.69

Post by Draise »

I like Blender, trying to get more into it, though it still is scary UI experience!!! I use it to sculpt and UV always now. Well kinda sculpt, still learning, but texture painting and UV, definately use often.
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Cellulo
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Re: Blender 2.69

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I have just learn to build blender myself and they move the source code on Git, and now i can 't build my own version :(

My last build is SVN number 61420 it's Blender 2.69.2 with SSE2 + FAST FLAGS + LARGE ADDRESS + CYCLES + OSL + CUDA + OPENMP + ADDONS CONTRIB + OSCURART TOOLS 3.1 for Windows 32bit compiled with VC++2008 Express. I can't test cuda because i have a old geforce 9800 GTX no gpu cycles for me :cry:

If someone is interest in my build i can host it on my homepage.

Blender is hard to learn and very capable, but i like truespace icons UI, it"s perfect for noobs like me.
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BNG
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Re: Blender 2.69

Post by BNG »

Same here I've struggled with Blender since version 2.42, but still scratch the ole noggin with 2.69. I still feel the developers designed Blender to joyfully confound casual 3D model makers like yours truly. Thank heaven for Caligari Truespace. :bananacool2:
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Dragneye
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Re: Blender 2.69

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Does anyone know if I can control how much processor power is used when Cycles renders? If I can have it render at 80% of full power, for example, because it goes full bore and temp goes upto 210 F, which is what I think burned out my computer.
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clintonman
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Re: Blender 2.69

Post by clintonman »

Dragneye wrote:Does anyone know if I can control how much processor power is used when Cycles renders? If I can have it render at 80% of full power, for example, because it goes full bore and temp goes upto 210 F, which is what I think burned out my computer.
There is a performance section in the render settings for threads. Threads are set to automatic by default and I guess that means "use em all".
Clinton Reese

http://clintons3d.com
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Cellulo
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Re: Blender 2.69

Post by Cellulo »

What happening about Blender 2.69a , b ,c ? , no new version before the release of blender 2.70 ?
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Re: Blender 2.69

Post by v3rd3 »

There does not seem to be any plan for any interim releases until 2.70. The developer docs do not seem to show any pending releases outside of the full release.
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