Blender 2.73

Blender is een professioneel, maar toch gratis, programma voor 3D animatie dat in diverse speelfilms gebruikt is. Blender is een zogeheten 3D content creation suite die uitgebreide mogelijkheden biedt voor 3D modeling.

Blender 2.73 is gisteren verschenen. In deze versie worden verschillende verbeteringen doorgevoerd en nieuwe functies geïntroduceerd. Met name de Grease Pencil tool is sterk uitgebreid. Ook cycles rendering, sculpting/painting, animation, modeling, sequencer, freestyle npr rendering en de gebruikersinterface zijn vernieuwd. Verder zijn heel veel kleine aanpassingen en verbeteringen gedaan en honderden fouten opgelost.

Blender is te downloaden voor Windows XP, Vista, 7 en 8, Mac OS X en Linux.

Uitgaveopmerkingen:
A major upgrade was given to the Grease Pencil tool, which inter alia brought the ability to edit and animate strokes. The first developments from the Gooseberry Project like a Sequencer Backdrop, Cycles viewport world background and others were added. Cycles got various improvements and speedups, as well as support for cameras inside volumes, the UI got a new 'minimalistic' fullscreenmode and Input Method Editor support for textbuttons (used for complex Chinese and Japanese character input), the Knife-tool was improved, Freestyle got a SVG exporter, and many more features which are worth checking out!

Cycles Rendering
Volume Rendering:
Rendering with cameras inside volume meshes is now supported
Cubic voxels interpolation is a new option helping to avoid artifacts on low resolution smoke simulations
Faster rendering of homogeneous volumes

Support for GeForce 9xx GPUs
Improved rendering with area lights
Viewport specularity for the viewport is now also implemented for Cycles
And more!

User Interface
A new fullscreen mode without any buttons or other "annoying" elements to improve the UI
The 3D View got an option to display the world background right from the viewport
Pie Menus:
Confirm Threshold to confirm a pie menu without releasing the original key
Nested Pie Menus (a Pie Menu within a Pie Menu) are now supported

Chinese and Japanese complex character input:
General support for Input Method Editors (IMEs) has been added
Only supported for text buttons for now
Only supported on Windows and Linux for now
Supported is Sougou (Chinese), Bing (Chinese), QQ (Chinese) and Microsoft integrated (Japanese)
And now guess why we have a Chinese Splash! ;)

And more!

Modeling
Knife-tool:
Cuts can now be created using free-hand drawing
Cut-loops can now be closed by double click

Selection:
A new selection method "Select Similar Regions" was added
You can now skip adjacent faces while using the select more/less function

And more!

Sculpting/Painting
Texture Painting:
The Add Simple Uvs operator for texture painting now uses a simpler unwrap method for better quick UV layouts
Face-mask edges are now hidden to give proper visual feedback while working with masks

Brushes:
Changing brush size, detail size and strength can now be done using numeric keyboard input
Brush strength can now also be changed for Grab and Snake Hook brushes

Sequencer
A Backdrop similar to Compositor is now implemented for the Sequencer as well
Strips:
Strips can now be snapped to other strip's start- and endpoints
A new slip Tool allows moving content within the strip itself

And more!

Freestyle NPR Rendering
Freestyle got a new SVG exporter, implemented as an add-on
View maps can now be cached
More options for chain selection and chain sorting were added

Animation
Grease Pencil (which got a major upgrade):
It is now possible to edit and animate strokes (!!!)
New draw styles were added, e.g. filled stroke interiors, volumetric strokes, ...
The Grease Pencil's user interface (which is now completely defined via Python) has gotten a general overhaul
Two quick access pie menus were added

Graph Editor:
Revised the set of operators for showing/hiding curves from the keyframe area
Circle selection for Curves was added

And more!

Add-ons
Collada Importer:
Importing rigs previously caused problems with leaf bones (end bone of a bone chain) so a fix was created for that.
Added an experimental bonechain Finder to predict the longest possible chains of connected bones.

The FBX Add-on now uses some advanced handling/tweaking options for importing and exporting armatures
The Copy and Paste Add-on is now using version 2.0

To Add-on developers: Some changes were made to the Python API, make sure to check them out and update your Add-ons if necessary!

More Features
There are a lot more features that are new in Blender 2.73, so make sure to check them out!

Feature Videos
Look at many of the above features in the Blender Developer Sneak Peeks - a video podcast series that showcases important milestones in the development of every Blender release.

Bug Fixes
As for every Blender release, hundreds of bugs were fixed, thanks to the hardworking Blender developers.