- Particle duplicators: when an Object has an Ipo, the timing for each duplicated Object is corrected for the lifetime of particle.
Remark: this won't work for object location (is at particle) or for particle type 'Vect' which gives a rotation already. But now you can (for example) scale an Object small, and let it grow over time.
- Blender Meshes now have a limit of 2 Billion faces (instead of 64k). This doesn't break backward or upward compatibility, but will cause .blend files to grow about 30% in size.
- UI: all Blender versions (OS's) now have identical cursors.
- 3D Window: new preferences for display of grid, axes and floor. You can find it in the 3D View Properties panel (access with pulldown menu).
- Mesh editmode: new tool "Bevel" (WKEY) will give all faces (non selected too) a beveling effect. Move mouse to control the amount, which is drawn as a preview. After confirm, a requestor allows to indicate a subdivision level.
Remark: this is a first implementation, which is still slow for larger Meshes, or for higher subdivision levels.
- Mesh editmode; "Select non-manifold" option in "Select" pulldown menu, which select vertices to indicate which edges don't have exactly 2 faces.
- Mesh editmode: "Select more" and "Select less, in pulldown menus and accessible with hotkeys CTRL+PadPlus/Minus. It selects vertices having an edge with other vertex selected.
- Mesh editmode: "Select Random", in pulldown menu. It selects a random percentage of vertices, the percentage can be set with a requester that pops up.
- Mesh editmode: new Loop Cut functionality:
- after choosing a loop to cut you go into a second mode that lets you choose where exactly on the edge you want to cut. The placement is in percentages, so 0% is one side of the edge, and 100% is the other side.
- holding CTRL snaps the placement to whole percentages. 1.00 instead of the standard 0.01 of a percentage.
- Pressing S while you place the cut turns on Smooth-subdivide for the cut (or as I like to call it: Loopcutsubdividesmooth :)
- the percentages and the ON/OFF for smooth cut can be seen in the view3D header.
- Mesh editmode: press numpad-dotkey to center view around selection
- FaceSelect mode (UV textures):
Two new options to uv auto calculation added. "From window to sphere" and "From window to cylinder".
The differences to other sphere/cylinder mapping option is:
1. the "around" settings of the 3D view sets the projection center
2. the origin of the polar/spherical coordinate system always points out of the screen.
so the rotation of the view affects mapping.
3. in the cylinder case the radius of the projection cylinder is read by a popup button.
Basically what you need to do is rotate the viewport until the cylinder/sphere is aligned with the depth (Z axis) of the view, as if you where looking through the mesh from one end to another (makes more sense in the case of a cylinder), and choose the new mapping option.
- Armature editmode: support for hide and unhide of Bones added. Accessible via menus and hotkeys HKEY, shift-HKEY, alt-HKEY.
- Armatures: "Delay Deform" option added.
The button is under the X-ray bones button in the edit buttons. With this armature option selected, manipulations in pose mode will only deform children after the transformation is finished. While hardly an optimal solution, this gives about 4 times speed up.
- The main window header now displays the current file name.
- Delete key can be correctly used for text input in Blender now
- Blender now reads/writes BMP images.
We began to ship some scripts with Blender itself, starting with a few import/export ones;
these scripts can be accessed from Blender menus: File->Import, File->Export.
The new Scripts Window also has a menu where these plus 'Misc' can be accessed. More categories will be added later.
To be registered in Blender menus, scripts must have a special header and be either at the <user home or Blender installation dir>/.blender/scripts or the user defined Scripts dir (Info Window -> File Paths -> Scripts).
For more info, please check the top Announcement at the Python & Plugins forum at www.elysiun.com
Further new features:
- functions basename and splitext to Blender.sys;
- Blender.Registry module, for persistent data;
- Scripts Window, to substitute the Text Editor as the window to display script guis: now more than one running script can be accessed from the same window;
Known issue:
Blender still uses Python 2.2, and it doesn't include a Python library with all modules compiled in. This can cause some errors when people want to use external modules, but have Python 2.3 installed on their system. This will be addressed in the next release.
- Python 'make' system: Scons
Work has been done for a very promising new cross platform code building system for Blender. Especially to replace 'autoconf', which has maintenance and compatibility problems here. Scons supports all platforms and OS's, an even nicely generates MSVC project files.
The Scons files are in cvs now, but not approved yet to officially replace autoconf.
- Weight Painting now works for all painting modes. It used not to with option "Area" set in Paint Panel.
- Pressing F12 (or other keys) during render caused crashes, this because the event queue was evaluated without keeping track of a rendering already being in progress.
- Texture Paint mode didn't work in 2.31a, restored.
- MacOSX: calling up Quicktime dialog doesn't freeze anymore when you choose "options".
- MacOSX: texture plugins and sequence plugins now work (check directory plugins in distribution directory)
- Armatures: constraint targets inside other Armatures weren't transforming correctly (grab, rotate, scale).
- Armatures: update issues solved with Armatures being parent of Lattice.
- Armatures: general overhaul of Armature constraint/parenting code which resulted in faster drawing and less lag.
- Mesh editmode: Loop Cut tool now doesn't affect hidden vertices and faces.
- Add a new Scene, with option "Full Copy" now also create new Ipos.
- 3D Window: 'draw extra' axis for Lamp was on wrong location.
- 3D Window: in EditMode CTRL+RightMouse allows for selection of other Objects again. This is useful for assigning vertex parent.
- 3D Window: FaceSelect mode, the 'unwrap UV' pulldown menu option doesn't crash anymore
- Code that limited zooming in and zooming out for spaces like sequencer, audiotimeline, etc. was accidentally removed in 2.30, causing crashes in extreme zooms. This has been put back.
- Numerical input while 'transform': using it for scaling works correctly now. In previous release it reset other values to zero.
- Fixed B&W images saving (R G and B were not correctly converted, causing wrong brightness of colors).
(During the past month a lot more bugs were fixed as reported using the tracker on projects.blender.org. It's just too much to mention all, thanks & keep reporting!)
- Pulldown menus added for Image, Sound, Action, Oops, NLA windows. This as part of ongoing UI project. In current version most buttons from headers have been moved to pulldowns now. For a next release we'll look at methods how to bring back pulldown options (user-defined) as icon buttons in headers again.
- 3D Window: Nkey menu now displays the 'w' value for Nurbs curves again
- translations: added simple first Chinese translation for UI, Czech translation file fixed, added Brazilian Portuguese
- laptop users: option 'no numpad' now accepts minuskey for numerical input while in transform mode.
- Decimator tool for Meshes: display-list is correctly updated now, and it frees deform weights (vertex groups) correctly
- All 'number' buttons in UI: pressing Enter key with mouse pointer over the button increases/decreases value again.
- Freetype fonts: when using it for 3D font object, it now corrects the character size for the linedist as set in Blender. This only shows for non-standard fonts.
- Context switching for 'Shading buttons' now happens when these buttons are invisible as well, causing the F5 hotkey to always show the correct buttons.
- TextWindow: HOME and END keys work here now.