Blender PDF Release Log

Open Content License Open Content License

Blender PDF Release Log

This is an unofficial PDF version of the Blender Release Log pages you can find here:
http://www.blender.org/development/release−logs/

About this PDF

I produced this PDF copy for a test: I thought a release log should be a single document, in order to show
improvements from the current release backwards in time. Related pages on Blender.org site are separated and
so the timeline is not intuitive, i think. Being available as a single PDF, an thus much more readable, printable
and shareable, it could be a better promoting material in some occasions.Who knows? I am sharing this just to
see what other people thinks of it. I've read that Blender documentation is released under the Open Content
License (http://opencontent.org/opl.shtml). This license is reported at the end of this pages, below. I am trying
to stick to this licence, but i'm no licence expert: if you feel something is wrong, just let me know why and
possibly how to fix.

I did not modify the content of the web pages except for removing the navigational parts typical of a web
page, which are not needed in a "book", since you don't have to browse through web link, but scroll pages. In
the same way, I converted other sections of the wiki to PDF and you can find them in the same place where
this PDF was (see below). The release log web pages are updated, i think, after each release shows up in the
web site, so it doesn't make much sense to update this PDF if there is no news.

My modifications to web pages

The "processing" I'm referring to is, basically, remove graphical page headers, footers, navigational menus,
and other minor html tags that could alter the PDF page structure or distract the eye from the real docs text
and pics. The basic principle I follow is: I want to keep only the documentation text and pics, and external
links if needed, without anything else, and keep the readability as best as I can.

I hope to be able to be able to convert those web pages to pdf until there's a better alternative but, as web
content can obviously change, something may go wrong. I can't double check all the pages any time. It will
surely improve my Blender knowledge :D but there are simply too many pages. If you note some weirdness or
broken section, let me know, i'll try to fix it.

Where to find this PDF

Up to now, you should be able to find it here: http://www.letworyinteractive.com/b/category/blender/. If any
change should happen, i'll post on major forums/blogs for everyone to know.

How to contact me
I do this in the spare time so i can't spend too much time on it but if you want to suggest me improvements or
other ways to do this, or alternatives, please feel free to do so. Here's how: "m.ardito" is the username and the
domain is "libero.it". you know how to use them ;). Please don't post the "reconstructed" address, in no web
page, blog, mailing list or newsgroup, anywhere. I already have enough spam to deal with! Thanks.

Have fun! Marco Ardito

Open Content License

OpenContent License (OPL)

03/11/2008 19.42.31 1
Open Content License Open Content License

Version 1.0, July 14, 1998.

This document outlines the principles underlying the OpenContent (OC)

movement and may be redistributed provided it remains unaltered.
For legal purposes, this document is the license under which
OpenContent is made available for use.

The original version of this document may be found at

http://opencontent.org/opl.shtml

LICENSE

Terms and Conditions for Copying, Distributing, and Modifying

Items other than copying, distributing, and modifying the Content

with which this license was distributed (such as using, etc.) are
outside the scope of this license.

1. You may copy and distribute exact replicas of the OpenContent

(OC) as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously
and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice
and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to
this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other
recipients of the OC a copy of this License along with the OC. You may
at your option charge a fee for the media and/or handling involved in
creating a unique copy of the OC for use offline, you may at your
option offer instructional support for the OC in exchange for a fee,
or you may at your option offer warranty in exchange for a fee. You
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b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
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under the terms of this License, unless otherwise permitted under
applicable Fair Use law.

These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If

identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the OC, and
can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in
themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those
sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you
distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based
on the OC, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this
License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire
whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
Exceptions are made to this requirement to release modified works
free of charge under this license only in compliance with Fair Use
law where applicable.

3. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not
signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to copy,
distribute or modify the OC. These actions are prohibited by law
if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by distributing or
translating the OC, or by deriving works herefrom, you indicate

03/11/2008 19.42.31 2
Open Content License Open Content License

your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and
conditions for copying, distributing or translating the OC.

NO WARRANTY

4. BECAUSE THE OPENCONTENT (OC) IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE

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03/11/2008 19.42.31 3
Open Content License Open Content License

03/11/2008 19.42.31 4
Open Content License Open Content License

03/11/2008 19.42.31 5
Open Content License Open Content License

03/11/2008 19.42.31 6
Real−time GLSL Materials Real−time GLSL Materials

Download 2.48a

Feature videos

Contributors

Blender 2.48a
Blender 2.48 includes all the work done on the Blender Game Engine and the Apricot Open Game "Yo
Frankie!", with much better functioning game logic editing, character animation, and Blender Material based
real−time shaders. And as last minute surprise a Bullet physics update with Softbody support.

Also in this release; Windows 64 bits support, Grease Pencil for sketching annotations, Sun/Sky/Atmosphere
rendering, new modifiers, and an improved text editor with Python API support. And last but not least, an
enormous list of open bug reports were handled.

Blender 2.48a update:

A couple of important bugfixes has been done in Blender since the release, especially for using the Game
Engine and GLSL. Read more here.

October 2008
The Blender.org team

Real−time GLSL Materials

You can get many of Blender's Materials also drawing in real−time in the 3D window and the game engine,
including shadow buffers! It requires a more recent 3D card with good hardware shader support.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 7
Colored shadows Colored shadows

Game Logic
Game logic and game level editing has been improved in many ways. Most notable are the Logic States,
which allow to group logic bricks in simple"state engines" and activatate, deactivate, or smoothly make
transitions between them.

www.martinsh.co.nr

Bullet SoftBody
Blender's GE uses the Bullet physics library. The library has been updated to the latest version, supporting
soft body dynamics. Support has been added for flat cloth or volumetric soft bodies. Bullet allows interactions
beween soft bodies as well as rigid bodies and static collision bounds of all types.

Game Engine notes

The Game Engine is back, and better than ever! In this section you can read some of the backgrounds, and a
collection of other GE release notes.

Colored shadows
You can assign an RGB color to any lamp's shadow now. Although this isn't a feature supported "in the real
world", it's a cool trick to allow artists to present a more realistic shading and lighting in their work (without

03/11/2008 19.42.31 8
More 2.48 features and fixes... More 2.48 features and fixes...

need for GI).

Shrinkwrap Modifier
As one of the Google summer projects, you can now allow an object to be "shrinked" to match/touch another
object's shape. The modifier works based on vertex groups allowing a part of a model to shrink or be
projected

Simple Deform Modifier

This new modifier has been added to provide simple deforms. It works on Meshes and Curve objects, and
provides twist, bend, taper and stretch.

More 2.48 features and fixes...

Virgilio Vasconcelos

03/11/2008 19.42.31 9
Sun, Sky, Atmosphere Sun, Sky, Atmosphere

Grease Pencil
The Grease Pencil allows to sketch annotations, notes and even animated motion suggestions in Blender.
Great for collaborated work, remarks from directors or to draw key frame poses for characters.

Bassam Kurdali

Animation tools
A lot of work has been done on better management for inserting keys. Further you can read notes here about
rigging, bone locking and aligning. And there's a Mancandy reference rig update!

Daniel Salazar

Sun, Sky, Atmosphere

This new "sun/sky" feature allows to use Sun lamps to simulate sky color and atmosphere scattering. A lot of
options are available to achieve interesting artistic results, including blend modes and color space.

Giuseppe Canino

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Fluid Control Fluid Control

Sculpt mode improvements

A couple of new Sculpting options were added. Now brushes allow a custom falloff curve, and there are more
options available for textured brushes.

Python Editor
One of the included Google summer projects was to improve our texteditor with Python IDE features,
allowing much more advanced editing and integrated API lookup support for scripters.

Fluid Control
Fluid simulation can be controlled using particles which define local force fields and are generated
automatically from either a physical simulation or a sequence of target shapes. At the same time, as much as
possible of the natural fluid motion is preserved.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 11
Wind & Deflectors Wind & Deflectors

Wind & Deflectors

The Wind forcefield now has "noise" option. Force Deflectors now can also occlude or absorb forces.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 12
Blender 2.47 Blender 2.47

Download 2.47

Feature videos

Blender 2.47

Continuing Blender 2.4x series, Blender 2.47 is a bugfix release to stabilize the "Bunny Release", serious
effort has been put in tracking bugs and fixing them.

A complete list of bugfixes is available if you want to read all the nasty details. Or keep on reading for a quick
"short" version:

• New tools and improvement have been made to the Snapping tools.
• Better Game Engine logic.
• Revised alpha blending in the Game Engine.
• PyConstraints and PyDrivers are not executed unless scriptlinks are enabled (for improved security)
• Fixed an incorrect transformation for particle group visualization.
• Fixed negative value in the Gamma node with negative input.
• Tangent shading (which only affects specular) made bump mapping not work for diffuse.
• Fixed Mesh Deform Modifier not working on extruded curves.
• Fixed crash converting old particle system from a linked file.
• Object instancing didn't restore matrices correct for Environment Map, this could give object
rendering in the wrong position.
• Compositor nodes with use nodes disabled didn't properly redraw the node window on changes.

• Blender would crash if the user cancel the hair softbody bake.
• The Disable Tex option didn't disable textures for the Texface material option.
• Fixed data browse for image painting, which didn't work.
• Action Editor Border Select Channels no longer selects bones.
• Fix bug in X−Mirror for armatures. When a bone in a mirrored chain wasn't named propertly, it would
leave the head or tail in an invalid state.
• Fixed baking AO with greater then 16 samples.
• Fixed "Col" option for particle systems does not work correctly with Mat IPOs
• Fixed Particle mirror could fail on some faces.
• Bevel tool was hanging on certain geometry where the edge to be beveled was shared by two faces
that had more than one edge in common and caller was not checking return status of Bmesh eulers.
• Fixed Game Engine corrupts Pose data
• When your home directory is full, saving defaults would fail without raising an error.
• Fixed crash on grab/move on axis when nothing selected.
• Update−automatically option in IPO Editor now updates objects using the active IPO−block as their
ObAction when transforming keyframes.
• Shift+H would hide unselected objects on unseen layers.
• Color picker didn't always redraw rgb/hsv/hex values.
• Vertex parenting didn't work correct with multiple unconnected curves.
• Fixed crash in fluid bake with large amount of small fluid objects.
• Outliner doesn't update when changing parent in Transform Properties

03/11/2008 19.42.31 13
Blender 2.47 Blender 2.47

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Image Browsing Image Browsing

Blender 2.46
The work of the past half year − also thanks to the open movie project "Big Buck Bunny" − has resulted in a
greatly improved feature set, now released as Blender 2.46, the "Bunny release"!

This version supports a new particle system with hair and fur combing tools, fast and optimal fur rendering, a
mesh deformation system for advanced character rigging, cloth simulation, fast Ambient Occlusion, a new
Image browser, and that's just the beginning. Check the extensive list of features in the log below... have fun!

May 17, 2008

The blender.org team.

Hair and Fur

Many features have been added to make fur and grass rendering for Peach possible. Big improvements were
made in visual quality, rendering speed and memory usage.

Image Browsing
The new Image Browser is blazingly fast and stable, and not only allows to browse for images in your
filesystem, but can also show previews of materials, textures, world, lamp and image data.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 15
Physics caching and baking Physics caching and baking

Glossy Reflections
Reflections and refractions are now possible to be rendered with a glossiness factor, controlling the roughness
of material.

Render Baking
Great tools for making UV textures: you now can bake normal maps based on rendering a higher resolution
mesh, you can bake displacement (including 32 bits depth), and you can bake transparency.

Physics caching and baking

The softbody, cloth and particle physics now use a unified system for caching and baking. For real−time
tweaking, a new option "Continue Physics" will continue the simulation regardless of the current frame.

www.malefico3d.org

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Game Engine improvements Game Engine improvements

Armature Drawing
Armatures now support Bone groups, custom Bone colors, automatic colors, more custom shape options, ...
and many more goodies for our rigging department.

Armature Tools
Many new tools and improvements have been made to speed up the rigging and posing workflow. There are
now tools for more intuitive bone creation, various hotkeys to speedy batch−editing of bones, auto−ik and
auto−keyframing tweaks, and many more goodies.

Skinning improvements
Bone Heat Weighting is a new method to create vertex weights for bone deformation, it generates better
results, and does not require setting a radius for bones. Also added was Quaternion−Interpolated Deformation
for superior blends.

Game Engine improvements

The Blender GameEngine has seen a great deal of improvement with an increase in play−back speed, a
number of nice new features including 2D filter compositing, and of course attention to quality through bug
fixes.

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Python Scripts and API Python Scripts and API

Soft Shadows
Raytraced soft shadows are now possible for all lamp types; including spot, sun and point lights.

Render Pipeline
FSA gives superior anti−aliasing for high dynamic range and compositing. Zmasks allow rendering of
composite masks. Instancing gives efficient memory re−use for duplicates.

Shading features
• Cubic shading (to prevent discontinuity banding)
• Higher level texture coordinates for duplicates (like feathers)
• Lamp fall−off curves
• Softer Halos, premul alpha, multisample shadowbuffers, ...

Python Scripts and API

There have been a large number of script additions and script updates, as well as API improvements since the
last release.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 18
Approximate AO Approximate AO

Particle system rewrite

The particle system has been rewritten from scratch. It now allows advanced hair grooming tools, but also
much better physics, boid animation and even explosions!

Cloth simulation
Cloth simulation is available in Blender via a modifier on Mesh objects. Cloth then realistically and in
real−time interacts with other objects, the wind or other forces, all of which is fully under your control.

Approximate AO
Ambient Occlusion is a render option that darkens areas with less visibility, simulating the effect of
environment light. This new AO option is based on quick approximation, giving many factors of speedup.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 19
Constraint System Constraint System

Mesh Deform Modifier

This new method allows to use any random Mesh cage to become a deformation "lattice" for animated
characters. By layering − using both a MeshDeformer and an Armature, you can both achieve high level as
precise control.

Action Editor improvements

The Action Editor has been rewritten to have a more flexible codebase that is more future−proof and
extendable. This has enabled tools to be shared between the editing modes for Actions and ShapeKeys, and
now has many new features...

Constraint System
Constraints are crucial for setting up good character rigs. A wealth of new features have been added to
improve and extend this system. Most notable is the addition of PyConstraints, allowing full control to
animators.

www.promotionstudios.com

03/11/2008 19.42.31 20
UV texture editing UV texture editing

QMC & Adaptive Sampling

Blender now includes two new sampling methods, using a Halton sequence (Adaptive QMC) and a
Hammersley sequence (Constant QMC).
Raytracing now also supports adaptive sampling.

Sequencer
Many many new goodies in our Video Sequence Editor:

• UI made more accessible, new panels/views

• Built−in strip blending
• Color correction tools
• Markers, NTSC support, preview, ...

UV texture editing
UV texture coordinates now are accessible via regular Mesh editmode. And many more features were added
such as:

• UV draw types
• Solid opengl view with textures
• 2d cursor in Image window

03/11/2008 19.42.31 21
And more features And more features

Compositing Nodes
New compositing nodes have been added, including glare, lens distortion, directional blur, bilateral blur, tone
map, and more.

Shading Nodes
New shading node developments include a front side/back side mask, and extended material node.

And more features

• NDOF devices support
• Align to Transform Orientation
• Pole target for IK chains
• Pose Libraries
• Weight Paint visualization
Multi−Modifier support
Weight−group selecting
• Custom transform orientations
• Distributed rendering options
• External Paths Tools
• Automerge
• Recursive Dupli Groups
• Developer Credits

03/11/2008 19.42.31 22
About this release About this release

Download 2.45

Feature videos

Contributors

Blender 2.45

The 2.45 is a bugfix release, to stabilize the 2.4x series.

No new feature have been added, but serious effort has been put in tracking bugs and fixing them. Some
performance issues have also been addressed.

September 18th, 2007

About this release

Continuing Blender 2.4x series lets us do periodic bug fix releases while new features are focused on Blender
2.50 (two point fifty, not five), allowing developers to perform radical changes that require a longer
development cycle.

A complete list of bugfixes is avaliable if you want to read all the nasty details. Or keep on reading for a quick
"short" version:

• SSS now works with panorama render.

• Removed artifacts with negative lights when using SSS
• Disabled SSS for preview rendering, so it didn't slow down other preview render at all.
• Fixed error in "Transform Constraint" with planar constraints when the plane was perpendicular to the
viewport.
• Fixed the vector blur error in "Ztransp" that produce black lines (on edges) appeared, which didn't get
blurred away.
• Fixed an error in the Particle System that cause bad results for command line renders, especially when
rendering first frame of animation.
• Fixed Verse crashing in 64 bits Linux.
• Math node now has reflective behavior.

• Multires meshes with UV's and vertex colors would crash in many cases.
• Importing 3DS files with lamps failed.
• DXF Importer updated, includes stable support for 3d objects and blocks hierarchy.
• FBX Exporter updated, includes fixes for better compatibility with other applications and support for
exporting animation with armature deformed meshes and objects.
• Collada support updated for better armature support.
• Bundled python modules were not included in 2.44 by accident, making some scripts fail in 2.44 that
worked in 2.43 (Windows Only, when Python was not installed)

03/11/2008 19.42.31 23
About this release About this release

• Fixed bug in the shadow calculation that cause errors where specularity would ignore shadows.
• Changes to the insert keyframes method for determining when to replace existing keyframes with new
ones. Now, it shouldn't create so many keyframes stacked on top of each other.
• Blender would crash if boolean operations were done on objects wich resulted in an empty mesh. This
was due to accessing invalid memory.
• Remove the options "make local" in the Outliner. It didnt work properly and produced errors in the
linked data.
• Edgesplit crashes are fixed, the problem was that "bridge" vertices (which connect two or more faces
that don't share edges) were not being included in the maximum final vertex count calculation (used
for memory allocation, hence the crashes).
• Fixed Multires Editmode memory leak. Typo in Multires Editmode integration meant that far too
much memory was getting allocated for a pointer array (more than 10 times as much).

03/11/2008 19.42.31 24
Python Scripts and API Python Scripts and API

Feature videos

Contributors

Splash by @ndy

Blender 2.44
Blender 2.44 was intended to be an upgrade release, mainly for plenty of bug fixes, but the developers took
the effort adding at least a few interesting new features.

This version now is fully 64 bits compatible, new modifers were added, a couple of composite nodes were
added, and a revamp of the old mesh primitives was done. But most relevant to mention is Blender 2.44's new
long−awaited but unexpected feature: subsurface scattering (SSS) support!

May 12th, 2007

Sculpt and Multires

The previous release was the first Blender version to offer 3d sculpt and multi−res. Based on welcome
feedback and reporting, a lot of bug fixes and improvements were added.

Python Scripts and API

There have been a large number of script additions and script updates, as well as API improvements since the
last release.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 25
Subsurface Scattering Subsurface Scattering

New Modifiers
Two new modifiers are available now; "Smooth" and "Cast".

64 bits migration notes

Blender had been ported to 64 bits Dec Alpha in 1998 already, but since 2002 its 64 bits compliancy has been
gathering dust mostly. Time for a cleanup!

More features and fixes

Plenty of smaller features made it into this release.

Subsurface Scattering
Subsurface scattering is a new material option to render materials like skin, marble or milk. For these
materials light scatters under the surface and leaves at another position. This leads to a softer appearance, as
light is blurred out over the surface.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 26
Mesh primitives update Mesh primitives update

New Composite Nodes

Two new Composite nodes had been added, that can be accessed by the Add > Color menu, expanding further
the possibilities of the Composite node editor.

Character Animation
The Action and NLA editors have now better control over visible channels. A new constraint was added, and
a "preview range" option was added.

Physics Engine
The Bullet physics engine has had some changes which should give better reproducibility and
precision/quality for physics simulations.

Mesh primitives update

The mesh primitives have been revisited, improving their usability and pushing them a little beyond their
previous state.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 27
Retopo Retopo

Feature videos

Contributors

Mathias Pedersen

Blender 2.43
The 2.43 release could be nicked the "Multi" version; with multi−resolution Meshes, multi−level UV,
multi−layer images and multi−pass rendering, to name some highlights.

Much appreciated are the new Mesh Sculpt and Retopo painting tools. Artists using cvs versions have created
amazing models with it already. But seven months of development time have resulted in a giant list of features
& improvement & fixes, as you can find below.

February 17th, 2007

Sculpt Modeling
Sculpt Mode is a new mode for editing Mesh objects. Unlike Edit Mode, the model's shape is manipulated
with various brushes, rather than by editing individual vertices, edges, and faces.
(Sculpted Mesh by Giuseppe Canino)

Retopo
The retopo tools make it easier to completely change the topology of a mesh while preserving the same basic
shape. A typical usage of this tool is modifying a mesh to make it more suitable for animation.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 28
Multi−UV Multi−UV

Multi−res Mesh

Multires meshes store multiple levels of subdivision. In contrast to the Subsurf modifier, any level of
subdivision can be edited. These changes are then propagated to all the other subdivision levels.

Modifier upgrades
Modifiers have quickly become a very useful and popular system in Blender. The code for Modifiers was
fully refreshed, better integrated and new modifiers were added: Edge Split or UV Project or Displace
You can also read the Tech Paper about the implementation.

Multi−UV
Meshes can now have multiple UV and vertex color layers.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 29
Face Duplicators Face Duplicators

Mesh modeling
Mesh modeling was improved in many areas, worth mentioning here are:

• Triange to quad conversions

• Knife tool
• Seperate by Material
• Face creation tool

Image Painting
The image painting core has been rewritten, with a number of new options, a dramatic speed improvement,
and the ability to save brushes.

Face Duplicators
Blender now has four efficient ways to procedurally duplicate objects. Face duplicators allow to copy objects
on faces, and scale according to face size.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 30
Python API and Scripting Python API and Scripting

Softbody enhancements
Softbodies have seen a substantial improvement. Better collision and rigidity options allow for a much
greater range of effects, even to the point of emulating cloth to some extent.

Fluid Particles
The fluid simulator now supports several features that produce much better looking simulations, especially for
interaction with other objects.

Rigid Body Physics

Rigid body physics − the Bullet library − was further improved this release. Now hinges and other constraints
can be added.
Rigid body simulations can also be 'baked' to animation curves.

Python API and Scripting

The python API and scripts have both received a lot of attention this release. Some highlights include baked
motion data importing and exporting via the MDD format; a new DXF importer that has improved support for
DXF features; and a new tool for UV projection.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 31
More Render Features More Render Features

More highlights
And a lot of more work has been done... check this page for a listing of all the other features, improvements
and fixes in Blender.

Render Passes
In 2.40 the Render Pipeline was improved, introducing tile−based rendering, render layers and an integrated
compositor. For true pass render, the code that handles shading itself had to be reconfigured.

Render Baking
Blender's render pipeline supports rendering to UV texturemaps as well. Full Shaded information, Ambient
Occlusion, Normals or Texture Colors are supported.

More Render Features

Two point perspective rendering, normal map with tangent support, tangent shading, alpha
sub−sample−masked render, material node speedup, ....

03/11/2008 19.42.31 32
Composite: Defocus blur Composite: Defocus blur

Irregular Shadow buffers

Recently several papers have been published on a succesful alternative method for Shadow Buffers, giving the
same crispy quality as ray−tracing shadows.

Imaging & Playback

− MultiLayer image read/write
− Flipbook playback for compositing sequences or movie files
− Painting in Image Sequences, or while compositing
− Procedural Images

Composite: Defocus blur

This node can be used to emulate depth of field using a post−processing method. It can also be used to blur
the image in other ways, not necessarily based on 'depth' by connecting something other than a zbuffer.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 33
Walk cycles Walk cycles

Composite: UVmap, Displace, IDmask, Zcombine

Four wonderful new nodes for remapping, warping or masking images during compositing.

Composite: Matte, Key, Difference

This series of nodes is meant for special effect shots, when you need options to seperate images in
fore/background.

Check the documentation in Wiki or the tutorials.

Walk cycles
A new walkcycle system was added, allowing matching of forward walking characters. And to control
walkcycles more precisely, the walk can be deformed using a curve path.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 34
Sequencer Sequencer

Proxy Objects
Proxy Objects allow to make (parts of) Library−referenced data local. This allows for example an animator to
make a local 'copy' of the handler bones of a character, without having the actual rig duplicated.

Animation System
There have been improvements in armature editing and the IPO, Action and NLA editors. Ghost and path
drawing is now more customisable, and transform limiting constraints were added.

Transform Snapping
While transforming (translate, rotate, scale) vertices, you now can precisely snap a selection to other vertices.

Sequencer
Blenders sequencer (non linear editor) has had a number of nice additions including new effect strips such as a
color generator, transform strips, and speed control for things like retiming. There have also been a number of
usability enhancements.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 35
Material (Shading) Nodes Material (Shading) Nodes

The realization of the Elephants Dream movie has resulted in a big Blender development boost, especially in
areas required for 3D movie projects.

Impatient? Download Blender 2.42 here

Below you can find the highlights documented.

Array Modifier
The Array Modifier allows you create procedurally duplicated/merged Objects, to make chains, cogs, fractals
or even beautiful natural shapes.

It's all fully animatable, with control−Objects defining duplication methods. Check this 4 MB movie from
Matt Ebb and Campbell Barton.

Render Pipeline
The new rendering pipeline offers a wealth of new features. It has become tile−based and fully threaded,
supporting advanced preview renders, layer−rendering and pass render, with a tight integration to the
compositor.

Material (Shading) Nodes

Currently most 3D suites have some kind of "shader editor", typically represented as Nodes or Trees. To
easily allow current Materials to become layered or combined, but also to enable a Blender−compatible
migration, a hybrid version has been implemented in Blender now.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 36
The Nodes UI The Nodes UI

Composite Nodes
Without a doubt compositing is one of the hot topics in 3D computer graphics creation, especially to enable
efficient management and creative control of complex scenes and images. Blender now offers a feature rich
and flexible compositing system.

Vector Blur
One of the results of the Render Pipeline recode was the possibility to add vector−based motion blur, as a post
process available in the Compositor.

Blender uses for this a novel approach, based on turning the rendered image into a 3D model (with depth) and
accumulating all motion passes into a new image.

The Nodes UI
Description of the new Node Editor and all aspects of working with Nodes and linking them.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 37
High Dynamic Range Graphics High Dynamic Range Graphics

Generic Node editing system

Technical notes about the implementation of Blender's node system. This is used now for Shading and
Compositing, but allows future expansion in many different areas.

Transmissivity
While ray−tracing transparent materials, Blender now computes the length of each ray chord as it passes
through an object. This length of the ray chord can be used to measure how light gets filtered progressively
through the object.

Also solved was the 'total inner reflection' case, giving more realistic 'silvery−looking' appearance.

High Dynamic Range Graphics

Support has been added for 16 bits or 32 bits per component graphics files. Blender now supports ILM's
OpenEXR, Kodak's DPX and Cineon, and Radiance HDR.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 38
Game engine and physics Game engine and physics

Video Sequence Editor

A lot of work has been done to improve the non−linear video editor in Blender. The highlights include a much
better memory management (edit up to hours near−real time) and for Linux users, FFMPEG was added for a
wide range of video/audio codecs.

UV Unwrapping
With the new angle based flattening, complex meshes can be unwrapped with much better results. Seam
cutting tools to mark seams with a single click make it easier to cut up a mesh into charts, and the minimize
stretch tool allows to reduce area distortion.

Object Groups
Object Grouping allows to organize work much better. It is especially useful for duplicating entire animation
systems, creating custom primitive sets, or for more precise control over what light is used per Material.

Game engine and physics

The game engine new physics engine − Bullet − has been improved the past 6 months a lot.

Also new is support for loading Collada files, including support for basic physics and textures.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 39
Fluid Simulation Fluid Simulation

New Mesh tools

New Mesh modeling tools include; Merging & collapse options, better select mode conversions, Loop
multi−select, Path selecting, and improved Mirror modifier.

Material Features
Apart from node materials, a few assorted material features have been added, including tangent shading (to
give any shader an anisotropic effect), stress maps, and new layer blending modes.

Fluid Simulation
Blender's fluid simulator has had numerous updates, including support for animated (and deforming)
obstacles, integration with vector motion blur, improved smoothing and particles.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 40
Python Scripting Python Scripting

Curves UI Control
A new Blender UI control allows to create a mapping from any range to a new range. It is in use now for the
new Node Editor, but also as option available in the Image Window, to investigate or remap high dynamic
range images.

Character Animation Tools

Some features were in use during the Orange project that didn't make it in the 2.41 release. This includes
"Custom Bones", to create useful 3d interfaces to manipulate Armatures, and support for "Bone Layers",
allowing you to organize a rig much better.

Preview Icons
Materials, Images, Textures, Lamps and Worlds are now rendered as small icon to facilitate browsing them
easier.

Python Scripting
Many updates and additions in the API and available scripts, plus the introduction of Python button evaluation
and PyDrivers.

Python scripting has been an important part of projects like Elephants Dream and Plumiferos, whose
contributions, feedback and requests have in turn helped improve the API. But the usage of scripting has
increased in other fronts as well, adapting and expanding Blender to produce content for different needs and to
integrate it with other tools.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 41
Credits Credits

Library Linking
One of the ancient but powerful Blender features, to be able to share data from Blender files with other files,
has been gathering dust for a long while. Since it's a very important feature in a production environment, it has
been verified to work and fixed in many places.

More new features and fixes

Here you can read the highlights extracted from the almost 3000 commits since last release, and the over 1000
reports handled in the tracker.

Credits
Developers who contributed to this release:

• Alberto Torres Ruiz (Python 'get roll' fix)

• Alexander Ewering (3D Text improvements, bug fixes)
• Alfredo de Greef (Yafray export upgrade and bug fixes)
• Anders Gudmundson (Sequencer updates)
• Andrea Weikert (Preview Icons, string library, Windows Platform maintenance, bug fixes)
• Austin Benesh (OpenEXR, bug fixes)
• Ben Batt (Array Modifier)
• Brecht Van Lommel (UV unwrapping and UV Editing, bug fixes)
• Campbell Barton (Import/Export scripts, Fly mode, BPython API)
• Charlie Carley (Game Engine OpenGL Shader Language, and fixes)
• Chris Want (Object Dimension buttons, Makefiles, bug fixes)
• Davide Vercelli (Axis icon in 3D window)
• DJ Capelis (Linux platform maintenance, bug fixes)
• Douglas Bisschoff (Intel Mac endian fixes)
• Ed Halley (Transparent raytracing features, Intel Mac platform maintenance)
• Erwin Coumans (Bullet Physics, Game engine fixes)
• Fabien Devaux (SDL Audio fixes)
• Fred van Essen (New blending modes for materials)
• Geoffrey Bantle (Mesh tools, bug fixes)
• Gernot Ziegler (OpenEXR)
• Hans Lambermont (FreeBSD platform maintenance)
• Jean−Luc Peurriere (OSX platform maintenance, translation files, bug fixes)
• Jean−Michel Soler (Python scripts)
• Jens Ole Wundt (Softbody improvements, MSVC6 files, bug fixes)
• Jiri Hnidek (Blender−Verse, MetaBall fixes, bug fixes)
• Joe Eagar (port for Cineon/DPX, bug fixes)
• Johnny Matthews (bug fixes)

03/11/2008 19.42.31 42
Credits Credits

• Joilnen Leite (bug fixes)

• Joseph Gilbert (Python Armature API, Python Mathutils, bug fixes)
• Ken Hughes (Python API, bug fixes)
• Kent Mein (Solaris platform maintenance, Makefiles, bug fixes)
• Levon Hudson (Missing Ipos for textures)
• Matt Ebb (Sequence strip redesign, various UI controls and menu updates)
• Martin Poirier (Transform tools, bug fixes)
• Michael Reimpell (Python Shape Key fixes)
• Mika Saari (Font Object fixes)
• Nathan Letwory (SCons rewrite)
• Nils Thuerey (Fluid Simulation)
• Peter Schlaile (FFMPEG integration, Sequencer recode, bug fixes)
• Pieter Visser (Collada import/export)
• Ralf Hölzemer (Build fixes for Windows)
• Ricki Myers (Text editor fix)
• Roland Hess (Stride bone fix, Python Armature/Action scripts and fixes)
• Simon Clitherow (Window platform maintenance, bug fixes)
• Stefan Gartner (PPC Linux platform maintenance)
• Stephan Kassemeyer (Armature stride bone scaling fix)
• Stephen Swaney (Python API, bug fixes)
• Stephane Soppera (Python API)
• Tom Musgrove (Python import/export script maintenance, bug fixes)
• Ton Roosendaal (Render Pipeline, Node editor, Compositor, bug fixes)
• Toni Alatalo (Python API, bug fixes)
• Willian P. Germano (Python API, bug fixes, docs)
• Z: And the people we forgot to mention... sorry!

A special thanks to everyone who helped us by:

• Providing bug reports in our tracker

• Providing patches
• Helping testing in IRC
• Making test builds on forums
• Writing wiki and blender.org docs
• Creating demo files
• And... making stunning artwork and inspiring animations.

I has been a pleasure to work with all of you, now enjoy the release, and then let's go for the next one!

−Ton−

03/11/2008 19.42.31 43
GLSL Pixel and Vertex shaders GLSL Pixel and Vertex shaders

With less than one month of development time, this has been a short and sweet release cycle. The focus of this
release is the Game Engine which has added a number of nice new features such as GLSL shaders, the
capability of using multiple materials and uv maps; multiple viewports; as well as a number of important fixes
such as the return of the armature system. Of course Blender's core tools also have been improved, with
subsurf aware UV mapping; the addition of a live sculpting tool; set chaining; a number of python script
additions and improvements; and the addition of the python Pose module along with other python
improvements and fixes.

Game Engine
GLSL shaders, the ability to use Blender materials within the Game Engine, multiple UV sets, multiple
viewports, the return of the armatures, double sided lighting, alpha test sorting, restoration of sound, along
with work on the bullet rigidbody dynamics and collision system, and numerous game engine fixes, makes
this a great release for Game Engine aficionados.

See the demos for the eyecandy, and to see code examples in action

Game Engine Demos

GLSL Pixel and Vertex shaders

You can now program pixel and vertex shaders to be used in the game engine, allowing much more
sophisticated and attractive effects.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 44
Restored Functionality and Misc Restored Functionality and Misc

Blender Materials
Previous game engine releases had to use a special materials system that offered only a small subset of the
Blender Materials power. With this release users now have almost full access to Blenders material capabilities
including multiple textures, multiple materials, material IPO curves. Additionally game engine users can
utilize Multiple UV sets within the game engine.

Split Screen and multi−viewports

You can now split the screen into simultaneous views from different cameras, also embedded viewports are
allowed.

Physics
For this release a number of fixes were made to the physics system.

Restored Functionality and Misc

Two major improvements are the return of the armature capabilities (which were lost in the animation rewrite
of 2.40), and the return of sound capabilities to all supported platforms. Users will also notice smoother
interaction, and a number of general quality improvements.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 45
Python Tools Python Tools

Core Tools

Subsurf UV Mapping
Now UV unwrapping can utilize subsurfed UV coordinates, which can give much more accurate uv
unwrapping.

Set Chaining
Set chaining allows a main scene to contain 'sub−scenes'. You can then easily make adjustment of the main
scene by varying the sub−scenes that are included.

Python
A great deal of improvements happen in the python arena. A number of additions to the python API especially
the bringing back of the Pose module, and a number of other enhancements and fixes. Also there has been
added a sculpting and mesh relaxation brush, a tri2quads script, and a number of nice i/o scripts, as well as
many script updates.

Python Tools
Two great tools were added this cycle − mesh sculpting − that allows you to push, pull and stretch mesh as if
it were clay, as well as many other nice capabilities. There is also tri2quad which intelligently creates quads
from tris. Plus updates such as the texture baking script.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 46
Credits Credits

IO Scripts
Direct X script was updated to export animation, Collada also added some animation export, open−flight, and
other scripts were added.

Pose_Module & API_Misc

There were quite a few improvements in the Python API. Script authors should have what they need now in
order to import and export animation, as well as make full use of the mesh module.

Bugs Fixed
Death to all Bugz!

Credits
Developers who contributed to this release:

• Alexander Ewering ( fix in Armature.c)

• Bart ( vrml and x3d export updates)
• Ben Omari ( direct x exporter update)
• Brecht Van Lommel ( subsurf for UVs)
• Bruce Merry ( ply import and export)
• Campbell Barton ( Sculpt Tool, tri2quad, crash fix in python, misc python and script fixes, scripts
management)
• Charlie Carley ( Game Engine: return of Armatures, GLSL shaders, blender materials)
• Chris Want ( misc bug fixes)
• Dino Ghilardi ( xfig exporter)
• Erwin Coumans ( GE management, crash fixes and numerous bug fixes in physics and GE)
• Greg MacDonald ( openflight import/export)
• Hans Lambermont ( FreeBSD makefile maintainance, gameplayer fixes)
• jean−michel soler insertShapeKey and tex2ubaker, svg import, and hotkey script updates)
• Jean−Baptiste Perin bvh to armatures script update)
• Jens Ole Wund ( msvc6 build maintenance transform fix)
• JLuc Peuriere ( OS X makefile maintenance and GE build fixes)
• Joseph Gilbert ( crash fix in python, project file maintainance, Pose Module, misc python fixes)
• Jonathan Merritt (primary work on libtiff and dynamic loading support for 2.40)
• Ken Hughes ( large number of python fixes, many python API additions)
• Kent Mein ( compiler warnings fix, make file maintenance)
• Lagan ( Game Engine: Viewports / splitscreen, Alpha test (sorting), Double sided lighting)
• Levon Hudson ( additional material ipos, and blend types for Halo and Radial)
• Loic Berthe ( updated bevel center script)
• Martin Poirier ( pupblock for python, python fixes)

03/11/2008 19.42.31 47
Credits Credits

• Michael Reimpell to get/set relative key)

• Mika saari ( UI bug fix for unicode)
• Mikael Lagré ( Collada import and export updates)
• Nathan Letwory ( set chaining)
• Nils Thuerey ( misc fluid fixes)
• Njin Zu Chen ( gameplayer fixes)
• P−Luc Auclair ( quickstart guide update)
• Serhij Dubyk ( Ukranian tooltip translation)
• Stephen Swaney ( python bug fixes)
• s.a. ( bugfix get_constraint_target() )
• Tom Musgrove ( release management, release documentation, scripts management)
• Ton Roosendaal ( bump map fix, crash fix, misc fixes, Crazyspace fix)
• Tron Thomas ( getVertexInflueces fix)
• Willian Padovani Germano ( crash fix and script management)
• Yann Vernier ( crash fix in gen_utils.c)

03/11/2008 19.42.31 48
Dependency Graph Dependency Graph

Blender has had another long development cycle resulting in a release

packed with rewrites, new features and improvements. The major additions this release are the Character
Animation rewrite, the added Fluid Dynamics system, improved editing and rendering of Particle Based Hair,
and the Modifier Stack.

Character Animation
The vastly improved animation tools have taken character animation to an inspirational and competitive level.
Improvements include fast and easy rigging with added bone types, new display methods, easier and

faster skin weighting methods, improved and easier to use deformation methods, completely rewritten Inverse
Kinematics system, easier and faster posing, new IPO curves methods, and more robust Actions and NLA
tools.

Technical background on how Armatures and Posing work in Blender

Note The changes in the animation system have not yet been incorporated in the game engine, so armatures
don't work there. The Python API for Armature/Pose also has radical changes.

Dependency Graph
This is the first part of our Animation project, and although we cannot show cool images for it, work on the
new dependency graph system has proven to be extremely versatile, resulting in amazing speedup and
lag−free interactive redraws while editing.

(Image by: Schuh)

03/11/2008 19.42.31 49
Skin Weighting Skin Weighting

Rigging
Rigging is now much easier with mirrored extrusion and auto−naming, additional selection methods working
with bones such as loop and border select, and added bone types (Hinge, Bspline Bones).

All Armature Objects are immediate posable now, without mode changes.

Inverse Kinematics
With support from Googles Summer of Code ? Blender's IK system was fully reworked. Not only did it
become much faster, but it now supports Rotation Limits and Degrees of Freedom, Tree−IK, and IK Target
Rotation.

Options to use both (mixed) Forward and Inverse IK makes posing characters a pleasure!

Skin Weighting
Skin weights can now be automatically created from envelope based definitions. You can then further refine
them by baking them to vertex

groups.

Weight Painting now supports very fast weight group selections and can be applied using X−axis mirroring.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 50
Drivers Drivers

Armature Display
There are a number of additional display modes for bones, all tweaked for specific editing purposes. In
PoseMode, the bones draw color−coded now, to show constraint, actions or IK assigned.

Worth noting are the new "B−Bones" (B−spline bones), allowing control over flexible bones, like for spines.

Stride Support
Using the NLA editor, you can tell an Action Strip to use a specific Bone in an Action to define the striding
offsets. This enables characters to walk over a path without foot slipping.

Shape Keys
Meshes, Curves, Lattices and Surfaces already could store multiple shapes, animated using animation curves.

Access to these Shapes now has become better integrated in the UI, allowing multiple Object instances to 'pin'
individual Shapes and with use of Vertex Groups for blending Shapes.

Drivers
All animation curves in Blender (aka Ipos) now can get a "Driver" assigned, This replaces the time input for a
specific animated channel with any value from another Object. This way you can control Shape Keys with
custom sliders or tie them to specific Bone rotations.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 51
Fluid Simulation Fluid Simulation

Animation Curve Interpolation

New handle and interpolation types have been added to interpolation

(IPO) curves. Includes Auto Handles which prevent undesired overshoot.

Actions and NLA

An "Action" is a collection of animation curves, which now not only can represent a full walk cycle for a
character, but also include Shape keys or Object animation curves.

Using the "NLA" editor, you can layer and mix these actions with full control over timing.

Particles and Physics simulation

The 2.40 release offers support for physics based animation like an advanced Fluid Simulator, Particle based
hair with Particle guides, improved Softbody dynamics and Rigid body dynamics baking using the game
engine.

Fluid Simulation
The second of the Google Summer of Code projects that made it in our release is the exciting Fluid Simulator,
allowing to animate a physical correct flow of any fluid type.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 52
Rigid Body Rigid Body

Particle Guides and distribution

For the 2.40 release the Particle System got a big make−over as well, especially for better control over
motion, forces and distribution.

You can now also use Curve Guides to determine the flow of particles, and use Vertex Groups to define where
Particles start, and how fast they move.

Hair strand rendering

By default, the "Static particles" in Blender now generates screen−aligned 1 pixel wide "strands", which can
be shaded in 3d as regular geometry, or when using the new anisotropic options, to achieve realistic looking
hair.

(Image by: YamYam)

Rigid Body
The Blender game engine has a new physics part now, called "Bullet". This allows to simulate colliding and
moving rigid bodies, including baking them into Ipo curves for re−use in animation projects.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 53
Subdivide and Loop tools Subdivide and Loop tools

Tools, render, scripting, UI options

Modifier Stack
The modifier stack allows you to quickly apply, remove and change the

order of modifier tools. Allowing you to visualize and interactively

change complex operations on your mesh. Of particular interest are the

mirror modifier, boolean modifier, and many of the animation tools

becoming modifiers such as hooks, armatures and lattice deformations.

Subdivide and Loop tools

Blender's Mesh subdivide code has been rebuilt from scratch. It now supports correct subdivision in all
selection modes, arbitrary subdivision levels,

better support for the knife tool, loop cutting, edge loop deletion, edge ring selection, and edge sliding.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 54
UV & Image Editing UV & Image Editing

Boolean Operations
This Google Summer of Code project delivered us a full new and much better library for intersecting Mesh
models. Main target was to generate new models with the least amount of new faces, with regular and pleasant
subdivisions.

Booleans are available as a tool (Wkey) or real−time using the Modifier stack.

Mesh Ripping
The "Rip" tool can be used for tearing or ripping parts of a Mesh, in order to create seams to be filled in with
new faces.

UV & Image Editing

UV editing has had an astounding improvement with the addition of Live LSCM. A number of features have
also been added to the image editing such as a clone brush and smudging tool and built−in generating of
standard UV maps. Also there's support now for TIFF import and export, and for HDR Radiance export.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 55
Sampling and Filtering Sampling and Filtering

Revamped 3D Text Object

The 3D Text Object now supports Unicode (International Font types).

3D text now also allows to go over multiple collums, allows selecting parts of the text, custom kerning, and
setting styles per character such as Bold or Italic.

Radial Blend Texture

The existing "Blend" textures been suplemented by a blend type commonly found in digital imaging and
graphics applications: the radial blend type. This gradient allows an artist to fake anisotropic effects found on
objects like saw blades or CD's.

Sampling and Filtering

This article explains how Blender does sampling while rendering, for optimal anti−alialised images.

New in this release is menu to choose filter types: Box, Tent, Cubic, Quadratic, Gauss, Mitchel−Netravali and
Catmull−Rom.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 56
And a lot more... And a lot more...

Python Scripting
New or rewritten modules were added: Mesh, Armature, Key, and Mathutils.

The Python team has made sure new options in Blender are covered in the API too, resulting in a lot of work
on the main interface.

New bundled scripts include: Collada, 3DS and MD2 import/export, XSI exporter; Lip Sync, Shape Widgets,
Mirror Bone Weights and UV unwrapping tools.

User Interface
Improvements in the UI include: New Lamp drawing types, new Object−center drawing, New Camera view
drawing and Passepartout view, Easier window merging, new Toolbox layout, improved Text button, and so
on... check the article linked above for a full overview!

And a lot more...

wiki.blender.org

The Blender documentation project moved to a new wiki install (mediawiki). Here you find the entire Blender
manual, information about current projects and more extensive release notes and tutorials.

Wiki release logs

Organic (and quick) extrude

Transform tools

03/11/2008 19.42.31 57
Credits Credits

File Browser

Sequencer notes

Bug fix listing

Technical notes for developers>

Google Summer of Code projects

Credits
Developers who contributed to this release:

• Adam Katz (Turn−table fix)

• Alexander Ewering (3D Text improvements, bug fixes, color picker improvements)
• Alfredo de Greef (Radiance file support, Yafray export fixes)
• Andrea Weikert (string library, bug fixes)
• Austin Benesh (Python Scripts)
• Brecht Van Lommel (IK Engine, LSCM and UV Editing, bug fixes)
• Bill Currie (Bug fix)
• Campbell Barton (BVH I/O Update, Archimap unwrapper, BPython API)
• Chris Burt (Radial Blend texture)
• Chris Want (Tuhopuu cvs support, Makefiles, bug fixes)
• Daniel Dunbar (Mesh drawing recode, Modifier stack)
• DJ Capelis (Linux platform maintenance, bug fixes, 64 bits support)
• Eckhard Jaeger (Modifier UI icons)
• Erwin Coumans (Bullet Physics, Game engine fixes)
• Frederic van der Essen (Quickstart sheet)
• Jean−Luc Peurriere (Dependency Graph, OSX platform maintenance, bug fixes)
• Jens Ole Wundt (Softbody improvements, Image paint, bug fixes)
• Janne Karhu (Particles upgrade groundwork)
• Jiri Hnidek (Window merging tool, Blender−Verse, bug fixes)
• Johnny Matthews (Meshedit Subdivide Core, Edgeslide, Widgetmaker Script, Python api)
• Joilnen Leite (Sort by extension on window file select)
• Jonathan Merritt (Libtiff support and dynamic loading)
• Jorge Bernal (Game engine compile fix)
• Jospeph Gilbert (Python Armature API, Python Mathutils, bug fixes)
• Ken Hughes (Python API Mesh module, bug fixes)
• Kent Mein (libtiff support, various small fixes)
• Matt Ebb (Lamps, Camera and Object center visualisations, sequence strip cutting, text UI controls
and menu updates)
• Marc Freixas (Boolean recode)
• Martin Poirier (Transform tools, bug fixes)
• Matthew Plough (support for Swap−Copy OpenGL buffers)
• Mika Saari (Unicode character support for Font Object)
• Nathan Letwory (Bug fixes)
• Nils Thuerey (Fluid Simulation)
• Pontus Lidman (Python script)
• Roland Hess (Floor Constraint)
• Simon Clitherow (Bug fixes, Window platform maintenance)
• Shaul Kedem (File compression,Sequencer frame reversal)

03/11/2008 19.42.31 58
Credits Credits

• Stephen Swaney (Python API, bug fixes)

• Stephane Soppera (Python API)
• Tom Musgrove (Python scripts, Button code cleanup, Release logs)
• Ton Roosendaal (Animation recode project, particles, hair, bug fixes)
• Toni Alatalo (Python API, bug fixes)
• Vidar Madsen (Fix for animating static particles)
• Willian P. Germano (Python API, bug fixes, docs)
• Yehoshua Sapir (Python script)

03/11/2008 19.42.31 59
Transform Widgets Transform Widgets

A lengthy 5 months development time... so a release packed with interesting new features and improvements!
The most noteworthy additions are the Soft Body system, the new incremental Subdivision Surface code,
and the full recode of the internal Transformation system, allowing much more control and flexibility.

2.37a update
Even with careful testing and uploading pre−release binaries, we got our share of bugs reported... with over
100,000 downloads in the first week of release, nothing can beat testing on that level!

Fortunately only two issues could be noted as real bad bugs that absolutely required an update release. Most
of the other fixes are part of our standard maintenance anyway.

Transformation tools
New Transformation options include; To Sphere, Push/Pull, TrackBall, advanced constraint options,
Proportional editing with connection mode, ...

Transform Widgets
As result of the Transformation Tools recode, we can now finally add widgets to have easy access to
(constrainted) translation, rotation and scaling. Widgets can be aligned global, local to Objects and to normals
in Edit Mode as well.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 60
Transparent Filtering Transparent Filtering

Soft Body
Each Object in Blender now can get a "Soft Body" effect applied. Once applied, the softbody system converts
vertex locations to free moving particles... great for animating flexible objects, for wriggling skin and even for
cloth simulations.

Force Fields and Deflection

Especially for Soft Body a new force field, Wind, has been added. Also deflections (collisions) are possible
between soft objects and Meshes.

Incremental Subdivision Surfaces

Best feature of Daniel Dunbar's new "CCG" SubSurf system is its tremendous speed improvement. This
mostly thanks to detecting incremental changes while editing. Also creases and UV texture support has been
improved.

Transparent Filtering
Blender now supports transparent rendering with filtering, by use of a new method which uses both Alpha and
Filter combined. Ray−traced images now also deliver correct a alpha layer.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 61
Game Engine Game Engine

Render threads, true color & true ortho

Three more options in the render core. Owners of dual CPU systems can now render twice as fast! Color
definition internally is full 4x32 bits (was 4x16) and the ortho render code was refreshed.

Timeline
The new Timeline window allows access to all animation timing features, with non blocking animation
playback. Edit keys, materials or Soft Body while it moves!

Python Scripting
Another long list of new features in the Python API, with new modules and advanced integration of scripts in
the Blender Window system using "Space Handlers".

With a special thanks to Jacques Guignot, we've dedicated this release to him.

Game Engine
New Python Armature options, Z−offset materials, and SDL support for Joysticks.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 62
Development notes Development notes

And what's more new!

Creating full pages with logs per new feature would postpone the release another month. So check this page
for a full listing of all new features in 2.37.

(Image from blender3d.org gallery, Sacha Goedegebure)

Bug Fixes
In the past 5 months, over 600 reports were handled. Still, the total amount of open issues for Blender is less
than thirty at the moment of release, quite impressive!

(Image from blender3d.org gallery, Alex Cope)

Important notes
New TimeLine window isn't upward compatible... that means that older Blender releases crash on reading
files with a TimeLine window active. This crash has been fixed in 2.37 to not happen again when we add new
window types, but that won't help older versions. :)

Yafray: Support was added for options for the upcoming release of Yafray. At this moment we're still waiting
for that... documents will be published later too.

Development notes
• OSX XCode project files added in cvs
• BIG warning hunt with 100s of fixes.
• Cleanup of ImBuf code
• Added FTGL to extern/ modules
• Added texture draw support for icons, not used yet
• OpenEXR preparations were uncommitted and postponed to next release
• Cleanup of wrong inclusion of BLI_winstuff.h in files. NOTE: BLI_winstuff.h was meant to be a
wrapper around windows.h to handle undefining various crap that windows.h defines.
• Mesh drawing code now is abstracted with the DerivedMesh system. Check blenkernel/intern/.
• Use the BLI_string functions! in blenlib/BLI_blenlib.h

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Credits Credits

• First implementation for dependency graph solving added. Now only used to sort the object list in
Scenes, for correct order of evaluation.
• Makefile changes for future support of 64 bits compile, testing with SGI Prism.
• Makefile fixes for Windows Cygwin compiling. Improved dependency checking.
• Tests were done with adding the ZBlur option in render core. Results of this method are very limited
and too unsatisfying. Was commented out, and will be moved as built−in option in the Sequencer.

Hidden stuff

• Code was added for testing the pickle matrix

• Try (Button in Render Buttons, Animation panel) to set "rt" to 52 before entering EditMode on
subdivision subsurface
• Try rt=2 or 3... rotate manipulator goodies.

Credits
People who have contributed code for this release:

• Alexander Ewering (Bug hunting & fixes)

• Alfredo de Greef (Yafray export)
• Andrea Weikert (Bug fixes)
• Brecht van Lommel (UV editing)
• Campbell Barton (Mesh stats drawing, Python fixes)
• Chris Burt (Textures, bug fixes)
• Chris Want (Makefiles, bug fixes, Irix, Tuhopuu sync)
• Daniel Dunbar (CCG Subsurf, Mesh drawing recode)
• DJCapelis (Linux release)
• Gergely Erdelyi: (Python fixes)
• Hans Lambermont (FreeBSD release)
• Jean−Luc Peurriere (Dependency graph, code cleaning, OSX)
• Jens Ole Wund (Soft Body, fields)
• Joseph Gilbert (Python API)
• Jiri Hnidek (Meta Objects, TimeLine)
• John Aughey (Turn table)
• Johnny Matthews (Mesh tools, Python)
• Joilnen Leite (Python API)
• Jorge Bernal and Jonathan Merritt (WardIso & Minneart shaders)
• Ken Hughes (Python API)
• Kent Mein (Imbuf, Sun Solaris)
• Kester Maddock (Game engine)
• Matt Ebb (TimeLine, menus)
• Martin Poirier (Transform recode, constraints)
• Nathan Letwory (Scons, bug fixes)
• Ricki Myers (Text editor)
• Rob Haarsma (UI Texture font, Quicktime)
• Simon Clitherow (bug fixes, Windows)
• Stefan Gartner (Linux PPC)
• Stephen Swaney (Python API)
• Tom Musgrove (Extrude menu)
• Ton Roosendaal (Render, Soft Body, TimeLine, bug fixes)
• Willian Padovani Germano (Python API)

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Credits Credits

And of course thanks to those who helped with demos, testing, docs, bug hunting, webpages, bug reports,
testing builds, and so on... great work all!

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Normal Map Support Normal Map Support

Normals and Textures

Significant improvements have been added for control over how textures generate normals and get applied.

Normal Map Support

Normal Maps directly store normals in the RGB values of images. By using this as a normal−mapping texture
you can get an extremely realistic appearance of 3D reliefs.

2.36: Bugfix Release

Due to the amount of work done in the past year, we decided to keep CVS frozen for new projects, and
instead go over all pending and new reports that kept coming in.

Thanks to a lot of help of everyone providing tests and reports, we could handle over 200 issues in Blender,
with many of them over 2 years old.

Even while "bug free" is impossible to achieve, we can proudly present a stable 2.36 now! Especially useful to
have this out with new projects already starting to review/redesign and improve many parts in Blender, so we
can start breaking things again!

For the upcoming release(s) work will be done on the entire animation system (especially armatures, actions
and NLA), a new dependency graph system, a recode of all transform tools (grab, rotate, scale), an update of
the render system (full 4x32 support, threading support, lotsof cleanup), redesign of the Panels/button layout,
softbody dynamics added, 64 bits versions,... and I bet I missed some.

The notes below illustrate the most relevant fixes since the 2.35 release, and include all fixes as was
temporally released with 2.35a/b and the 2.36 release candidates.

Release Notes:
• New In This Release...
• New Texture Features

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Normal Map Support New In This Release...

• Game Engine
• Python API
• Platform Specific Fixes
• Static Particles
• 3D Window
• Other Editor/Window Types
• Tools
• Mesh Edit Mode
• Interface
• Rendering
• Import / Export
• Yafray

New In This Release...

• Using CTRL+C or CTRL+V copy/paste on buttons now also works for the "color swatches" in
Blender, copying and pasting the RGB values.
♦ Note: on OSX you can use Apple Command key too
• In RenderWindow, press AKEY to toggle 'alpha view'.
• Fixed selection of Objects in Solid draw mode. Selection was just always not what you wanted, the
rules for wireframe (cycling) can't be used then. New rule is:
♦ it always selects the frontmost visible item (wires too), unless:
♦ frontmost is active/selected already, then it picks the 2nd
♦ mouse didnt move 2 pixels while selecting, then it starts cycling
• Mesh EditMode: Removed co−planar restriction for creating FGons. These now can span an entire
tube.
• AO Render: "Use sky" or "Use tex" now also take option "Use distances" into account, so you can
control shades of AO better
• Render Static animated particle systems now allow to be animated with Material and Texture ipos.
Only shows in render.
• Render: Material option "Ztransp" now can be reflected in raytraced mirror.
• Global Undo: Using number buttons gives better Undo push names (check ALT+U menu)
• Game Engine: Objects without texture faces now render in their assigned Material colors, and with
lighted faces. This shows with ALT+Z textured view mode too.
• Added more cases to update "Shaded View" on changes with buttons or tools.
• Lasso Select now works in UV FaceSelect and Edit Mode Curve, Surface, Lattice. Missing still:
MBall and Armature Edit Mode.

New Texture Features

• All textures (Material, Lamp, World) now have 10 channels. Exports to Yafray too.
• Added: support for normal maps.
• Textures now have a "nabla" slider to control sharpness (resulution) of calculated normals.
• All procedural textures now accept "ColorBand", which gives much better control over how normals
are being calculated.
• Stucci texture now accepts "ColorBand" too, to control the texture normal being calculated.
• Magic texture also accepts "ColorBand".
• New "Warp" channel for "Map to" added:

Use the slider next to the option to set amount of influence the texture will have on the coordinates of
the next texture channel.

Warp uses for this the same values as for Normal or Displacement mapping and remains active for all
channels, until replaced (or zeroed).

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Normal Map Support Game Engine

Note: this is not "parallax mapping", that's for another release.

• Lamp texture mapping "View" now works on all Lamp types (not only Spot). Nice for projected
textures.

For more information on these features see:

• Normal Maps
• Normal Maps and Textures

Game Engine
• Objects without image textures now use Material color and get lit by the available lights by default.
Also works in Textured 3D View.
• OpenAL was generating a signal that killed Blender when audio stopped. This caused issues with
starting Blender from desktop icons in Linux systems.
• Update in the physics engine: interpolate between frames so track to/camera actuators work properly
• Support added for Windows screen saver in Blender player: <indent>Any blenderplayer.exe (with the
patch applied) can be renamed into something.scr, and it will behave as a Windows screen
saver.</indent><indent>(Right−click the .scr file, and select "Install". Then, it will appear in the
screen saver properties dialog part of the display settings, including small preview et al).</indent>
• The screen saver functionality does not affect the executable when it is NOT named .scr
• The screen saver automatically exits when the mouse/keyboard is moved/pressed. There is no more
need to wrap blenderplayer.exe into a bat file and use python quit controllers, or whatever else is
suggested at this page.
• World option "Physics engine" now is set to Sumo by default on reading older files.
• Fix for stereo window creation in Unix X11
• Fix for forces with new timing system
• Fix for using Python delattr() or 'del Obj.Attr'
• Alpha sort now works for linked (ALT+D) objects
• Uses Polytope collision now for faster mesh intersection tests
• Mouse over sensor does work now for ortho cameras.

Python API
• World.setIpo() method now checks for OK Ipo type
• Ipo_woIcuName() used CAM instead of WO constants
• Removed obsolete getCurveBP() method (Bspline Ipo is not supported in Blender)
• BOOL properties were returning True always, small mistake in logic.c's getData
• Crash solved in Window.ViewLayer when no 3d window was visible or initialized.
• Mathutils.Euler constructor failed to initialize class variables
• Removed Object.get and .getSelected (deprecated long ago, we use .Get and .GetSelected)
• Fix for wrong initialization with newQuaternionObject
• Crash fixed with Meshes having edge data
• Crash fixed with unlinking Text block being in use by ScriptLink

Platform Specific Fixes

Windows

• When starting an animation render, and the output directory doesn't exist, Blender now correctly

03/11/2008 19.42.31 68
Normal Map Support Static Particles

creates the full directory path.

• Fixed crashes caused by trying to pop up Blender error menus while the render window is still active.
It now prints errors in the DOS command window.
• When saving to a Quicktime movie, and a drive letter is missing, Blender will assume it's on the drive
where the Blender.exe resides.
• Curve Deform, in Windows only, deformation was flat (2D) with default settings

Linux

• F11 to switch between render window / main window didn't work anymore in some window
managers (e.g. FluxBox), after fixing it to work in KDE.
• Curve deform (after using CTRL+P) crashed in Linux

OSX

• DANGEROUS BUG! Errors in saving "runtime" game; the runtime.app was copied or deleted
without keeping track of spaces in names, causing in potential loss of data when runtime.app name
starts with a space (rare occasion, but still!).
• Hiding the Blender window (using Apple−H) caused this modifier key to hang in Blender.
• Fixes for potential crashes in audio (OpenAL).
• On some systems (like with ATI 9600), using "1000s of colors", the backbuffer selection method
didn't work because of a different rounding of drawn color codes. This caused vertex−paint, face
select mode or zbuffer−hidden selection in Mesh edit mode not to work.

Sun Solaris

• Added support for audio (OpenAL)

• Error in refreshing buttons in frontbuffer (on highlight) has been defined to be a bug in Sun OpenGL.
Is reported, Sun engineers work on it.

Static Particles
• Particles added to a Mesh, which was being deformed by Armature, crashed or caused extreme CPU
time. Bug introduced in 2.33 with collision code.<indent>Note: dynamic particles added while
deforming a Mesh with Armatures will only shoot particles from original locations. What does work
correctly are static particles though.</indent>
• Static particles that are being deformed (curve/lattice/armature) now display correct in 3d window. It
only updates animation when the particle system updates normally though.
• On exit edit mode, static particles on SubSurf now display OK
• Static particles without "animate" set didn't deform even
• Static particles used as duplicators had errors with extreme low "life" value for particles. Also, still
cases could happen with unrotated duplicates at the end of a static particle line (with Vect option).

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Normal Map Support 3D Window

• Static particles now are selectable in a 3d Window

• After render particle system with Material Ipo, values for material were not restored correctly
• Meshes with particles didn't draw axis (draw extra) on correct location or color

3D Window
• Options "Home" and "View selected" (numpad dot) now show identical
• Using Border Select had a limit of maximum 500 objects. Now goes to 2500.
• Playback and display of Mesh objects with "Wave" effect, and with other objects vertex−parented to
this Mesh, now shows animation correctly.
• Objects being vertex−parented to a mesh, which in turn was being deformed by a curve or lattice, now
update correctly.
• Option "Align active camera to view" in pulldown messed up modifier key state.
• In PoseMode, selecting multiple bones and using transform (Grab, rotate, scale) crashed.
• Join Meshes (CTRL+J) now accepts Vertex Groups to be joined properly
• Lasso select on objects didnt work with multiple views, due to lack of calculation of screen
coordinates.
• 3D Window: using SHIFT + hotkeys to set layers in Layer menu (MKEY) only accepted last hotkey
with using "OK" button.
• 3D Window: the "Render this view" option (OpenGL preview render) sometimes crashed in shaded
mode and/or with Armatures.
• MetaBalls: using particles to duplicate Metas caused crash on adding new Meta Object

Other Editor/Window Types

• DANGEROUS BUG! In FileWindow, when copying/deleting/renaming files (C, R, N hot keys), files
or directories with spaces in it didn't always get handled OK.
• The image output window didn't update always correct on clicks in Sequencer.
• Crash solved when using Scene strips in the sequencer, and deleting the scenes itself.
• Combining "panorama" Scene strip and Sequencer effect on Scene (like glow) crashed.
• IpoWindow (animation curves): NKEY panel "XMin" and "Xmax" buttons didn't work proper on
large changes (>100 frames).
• Outliner: AKey toggles open/close all items.
• Outliner: crash fixed on Alt+D (linked duplicate) of Armature
• Outliner: crash on selecting Script icon (Windows/Linux)
• Oops Schematic Window: switching from Outliner gave wrong transformed view
• Oops Schematic Window: (not Outliner) didn't show Lamp textures nor Material Ipos − correctly

Tools
• Calculation of vertex normals now gives correct draw and render results when mixing smooth and
solid faces. For example on a cylinder with the caps set to solid. Please note that vertex normals are
only recalculated all over after leaving Edit Mode. Using the button "Set Smooth" in Object Mode
might require to do TAB−TAB in some occasions. This is an issue for 2.37.
• 3D Text edit mode: "Clear text" (SHIFT+BackSpace) + Undo caused text to become un−editable.
• Objects with negative scale were drawing texture faces front/back inverted in UV Face Select mode.
• Vertex Keys on 3D Bezier curves now support animating the "twist" value. This already worked for
Nurbs curves.
• Unpacking a file with sounds now saves sample files correctly. This didn't work when the samples
were not used yet (shown in UI or played in game).
• Appending Objects with Constraints from another Blender file, now correctly loads other Objects too,
when used by the Constraints.
• Appending data from other files accidentally cleared current Scene ScriptLinks

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Normal Map Support Mesh Edit Mode

• Appending data in PoseMode crashed Blender

• When a font for 3d Text Object doesnt exist anymore, Blender could crash.
• Global Undo: buttons sending redraw events gave extra undo push called "Make single user or local".
• Global Undo: crash solved in large changes of Lattice resolution button.

Mesh Edit Mode

• Expand/shrink selection (CTRL + numpad−plus/minus) did not work with edge/face selection modes
correctly yet.
• CTRL + H hook menu, the "select" option now works with all selection modes
• Separate command (P) in new select mode 'face' still used selection as based on vertices, causing
errors or a crash.
• "Add UV Sphere" now aligns with view, as for all other primitives
• Face "dots" (in face select mode) didn't update on a "snap to" command.
• Entering Mesh edit mode, skipped adding the Original situation to the undo stack, when editing
multiple vertex keys.
• The "Rotate Edge" option on quads didn't give correct flag in edge for drawing it in Object Mode.
• NKey (Transform properties) Panel: entering values for "Crease" now goes OK when multiple edges
are selected with different crease values. Was also missing an undo push.
• Bevel tool sometimes failed to create new faces.
• After "Extrude" pressing MiddleMouse will move to axis constraint as usual.
• Edge select mode, now allows to (alternate) select edges that are overlapping or extremely close.
• SHIFT + F "Fill" didnt set default vertex color (as in Paint Panel).
• Selection buffer (zbuffered selection clip) now supports full 24 bits range (was 18 bits).
• Edge Rotate didn't copy smooth or material flags
• Loop Cut (ALT + T) now works with partially invisible (clipped outside window) vertices
• "Separate loose parts", crash on empty mesh (with no verts)
• ALT + B loop select could go haywire on certain cases
• Hide/Reveil damaged FGon flags
• EditMode Undo: converting Curve to Mesh, entering editmode, and invoke an "undo" crashed.

Interface
• Added several Undo "pushes" where it still missed.
• With mouse cursor over a screen−edge (between windows) none of the hotkeys worked. Now it
checks for the global list of keys, including screen−switch,
• quit, frame change, Fkeys, load/save, undo/redo, etc.
• Opening submenu levels in Blender now uses different heuristics, keeping the sub−level open for as
long you move into the submenu direction.
• Frame−sliding (using LMB) in Ipo, Action, Sound, NLA, Sequence windows now nicely idles CPU.
It could cause a very tight loop using 100% CPU time.
• Button used for Constraint names could cause crashes due to wrong string size assumption.
• Using CTRL + Up/Down in Buttons Window now correctly re−scales and restores view.
• Option "Erase all" (CTRL + X) didn't load UI when that option was used for loading files before.
• User Settings menu (behind top "Info" header) now draws correctly on window sizes larger than 1280
pixels.
• Translation Error: text buttons or buttons showing names were accidentally translated too.
• Texture Buttons: image blocks now can be unlinked with "X" button.
• When new panels get created (like choosing "Yafray" in Render panel) the new panels align and
restore location as good as possible.
• Option to switch left/right mouse didn't work for floating panels. It then still selected stuff behind the
button.
• Added code to disable "Emulate 3 button mouse" when "Left mouse select" option is chosen. This
can't work together unfortunately... because of 1 button mouse owners.

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Normal Map Support Rendering

Rendering
• Critical bug! Deformed mesh didnt give correct 'orco' (original texture coordinates) anymore on
render.
• "Unified" render uses different sampling method for OSA render now, going much faster when many
faces cover each other (unified render stores full list of all faces/halos that cover a pixel).
• Saving BMP images now adds correct extension on file save.
• Using Quicktime movies as textures, now loads it in highest quality. Also added support for interlaced
fields for DV movies.
• Saving Quicktime movies without indicating output path, will now save it in the directory where
Blender itself resides. When a movie cannot be created, it will stop rendering and print an error in the
DOS window.
• Static particles, rendered with lighting, now checks for "Layer" Lamp option.
• Halos (particles) with a texture map, but only mapping it to "Alpha" were rendered black, instead of
Material color.
• Rendering a Movie file, using a "Border" and set "Crop" (for output in smaller picture size as
indicated) crashed Blender.
• Using "Dupli Frames" objects now render correctly with Motion Blur.
• Rendering ray traced transparency ("glass") now sets face normals correctly on the fly, removing the
need to manually edit normals in the correct directions. Allows a camera to fly inside for example.
• Nurbs surfaces now give correct normals for ray tracing too.
• When rendering the inside part of "glass", specularity is being calculated now. Reflected rays inside
of transparent models will keep bouncing inside now.
• Stencil in World textures didn't work on RGB channel yet.
• "Unified" Render: now supports "Edge" render on wire frames too. Also solved crash in "Edge"
render.
• "Unified" Render: now fills in zero alpha for sky.
• Issue solved with using background images for render with Alpha, and adding over halos or lens
flares.
• With material slider "Ray Mir" set not zero, but with option "Ray Mirror" off, Blender accidentally
entered a part of ray tracing code, screwing up the alpha value of the result.
• "Unified" Render: halos with Flare option didn't render correct, they were added twice. Also corrected
errors in applying alpha for 'Premul' alpha.
• "Unified" Render: now doesn't render Halos that are behind the 'far' clipping range correctly.
• "Unified" Render: AO with option "Sky" could give black dots, caused by an overflow due to division
by zero.
• Render option "Gauss" now works for "Parts" rendering too.
• Solved several cases of unitialized variables, causing black scanlines or other render errors. Windows
only.
• With multiple 3D windows in a Screen, with one having its own layers "unlocked" and set different,
caused wrong render results. Now it only renders Local View or local layer settings with F12 hotkey
and mouse in the specific window.
• Invoking render in Mesh EditMode gave wrong texture coordinates on Subdivision Surface
• Transparent raytracing didn't make specular transparent
• Crash fix on render cyclic Nurbs Surface with Cube mapping

Import / Export
• DXF Polyline import fix, for Cinema4D files (among others).
• DXF import from 3DS files stored triangles with duplicate vertices in quads, corrupting the Mesh for
editing.
• Multiple errors fixed in .obj importer
• Vertex normals now export in .obj format
• VRML 1.0 and Inventor import now supports up to 750k faces or 1 M vertices per "node".

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Normal Map Support Yafray

• Fixes in .ai and .svg importing

• Updates in blender2cal3d.py
• Update to off_import: support for uv data

Yafray
• Rendering using plugin returns zbuffer info for post processing
• Support added for Material UV TexFace option
• Normal map support added
• Crash fix caused by improper check if plugin was loaded
• Closed Nurbs surface crashed on render
• Added nearly full support for Blender's procedural textures, with the exception of 'envmap', 'magic',
and 'plugin' modes. The stucci texture also is not exact match, since it cannot be fully emulated in
yafray because of implementation issues. It will work best for low turbulence values.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 73
Outliner Outliner

A new release, with loads of new features and documentation! Check the links below for in−depth
descriptions.

Below you also find the notes for the 2.35a upgrade.

New Feature Documentation and Notes:

• Undo
• Outliner
• Mesh Editing
• Object Hooks
• Python API
• Curve Deform
• Taper Curves
• Particle Duplicators
• Rendering Updates
• Stretch To Constraint
• UI Drawing
• Game Engine
• Bug Fixes
• But wait! There's more!
• 2.35a Upgrade

Undo
A new global undo system has been added, giving full multiple level undo capabilities in all areas of Blender.
The new global hotkey for undo is Ctrl Z, and Ctrl Shift Z for redo (Cmd Z and Cmd Shift Z also work on
Mac OS X).

Outliner
The Outliner is a new hierarchical diagram displaying a list of data in Blender and its dependencies. It can
currently be used to select and activate various parts of Blender data for editing and visualisation.

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Curve Deform Curve Deform

Mesh Editing
Blender's mesh editing has been given a huge overhaul, with new vertex, edge and face selection modes,
direct editing of the subdivision surface and not just the poly cage, Zbuffer clipped (ignoring occluded)
selection, new extrusion types, new edge/face loop selection, FGons, edge rotation, and much more.

Object Hooks
Hooks are a new way to deform the underlying geometry of Meshes, Curves, Surfaces or Lattices, at an object
level, allowing you to manipulate groups of vertices or control points with weighting, using 'hook' objects to
influence them.

Python API
Blender Python is going through general clean−up and internal restructuring of the code. Many modules have
been added and upgraded, bundled scripts have been updated as well, with documentation built−in via the
new script browser.

Curve Deform
As with Lattices and Armatures, Blender now supports deforming meshes with curves. The new option is
found when parenting an object to a curve (Ctrl P).

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Stretch To Constraint Stretch To Constraint

Taper Curves
Tapering is a new feature that works alongside bevelling on curve objects. Similar to how BevOb is used to
define the cross−section of a curve, TaperOb defines the width along the length of the curve.

Particle Duplicators
Mesh objects with static particles can now use dupliverts to duplicate other objects along the length of the
particle trail, useful for making plants or other interesting things.

Rendering Updates
New additions to the renderer include dithering to prevent coloured banding, and support for ambient
occlusion in Only Shadow rendering.

Stretch To Constraint
Stretch To is a new constraint that lets a bone stretch between its root or an object stretch from its center point,
targeting another object, making it much easier to set up automatically bulging muscles in an armature.

03/11/2008 19.42.31 76
Bug Fixes Bug Fixes

UI Drawing
Live updates of buttons and menus have been recoded to not use frontbuffer drawing anymore, resulting in
substantial speedup, better compliancy with OpenGL and enabling interesting new features like transparent
drawing.

Antialised drawing for buttons and fonts has been improved too.

Game Engine
The internal time system and collisions have been improved, which gives nice speedup in physics. Work on
stereo display has been done plus lotsa bug fixes were done. All releases as offered now include the stand
alone player too, including saving content as a 'runtime'.

Bug Fixes
Hats off for the dev team, again!

Of the hundreds reports we got in since the last release in August, we verified about half of them as valid
bugs, and fixed almost ALL of them. So we still have a clean tracker with less than 30 pending reports.

BTW: you need to subscribe to projects.blender.org to submit a report, that's of great help to communicate
with the reporter. So please keep reporting!

But wait! There's more!

• Full listing of small additions and relevant bug fixes

2.35a Upgrade
Just 4 days after 2.35 release we decided to make an upgrade. This is especially for Linux (wrong gcc used)
and to solve an Outliner crash. Here's the full list of changes;

• Linux: recompiled using different gcc

• Outliner: crash on selecting Script icon (Windows/Linux)
• Curve deform (CTRL + P) crashed in Linux
• Oops Schematic Window: switching from Outliner gave wrong transformed view
• 3D View: options "Home" and "View selected" (numpad dot) now show identical

03/11/2008 19.42.31 77
Bug Fixes Bug Fixes

• Mesh EditMode: selection buffer (zbuffered selection clip) now supports full 24 bits range (was 18
bits).
• Mesh Editmode: Edge Rotate didn't copy smooth or material flags
• Mesh Editmode: Loop Cut (ALT + T) now works with partially invisible (clipped outside window)
vertices
• Rendering: Ray−trace transparant for Nurbs surfaces didn't work
• Game engine: World option "Physics engine" now is set to Sumo by default on reading older files.
• Yafray: rendering using plugin returns zbuffer info for post processing
• Yafray: support added for Material UV TexFace option

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Yafray improvements and further integration Yafray improvements and further integration

Blender 2.34 release

A fresh release packed with new features, and documented as never before! Check the links below for
in−depth descriptions.

Particle forces and deflection

Particles can now interact with objects in two more ways: by making an object act as a force field or vortex
field, or by making an object's faces deflect particles. This is useful for many things, including water or fire
effects, and swarming 3D objects using duplicate objects (dupliverts).

UV unwrapping with LSCM

LSCM (Least Squares Conformal Map) is a new UV tool that is capable of unwrapping arbitrary surfaces,
preserving local angles in geometry to ensure a smoothly fitting UV layout. LSCM is available with the
existing UV tools in UV Face Select mode, with Face −> Unwrap UVs ("U" key) or in the UV Calculation
panel (Edit buttons). Like the existing UV unwrap methods, it unwraps the currently selected faces.

Yafray improvements and further integration

Yafray, the advanced raytracer with global illumination and photon mapping, is now integrated with Blender
as a plug−in. Once installed, you now can use this render engine as easily as if it's built in. Further support for
Blender features in Yafray has been added, as well as better control over these features from Blender, like the
new Photon Light for caustics rendering.

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Full oversampling for render Full oversampling for render

Weighted creases for subdivision surfaces

With "SubSurfs" as today's standard for organic modeling, the addition of edge creases now allows users to
model fine details in SubSurf meshes without needing to add more control points.

Python API
The transparent integration of Python scripts in the UI now offers not only import or export, but also menu
and button access for scripted tools.

Read the release notes with the link above, or the general introduction to bundled scripts.

Game engine
New features were added, as well a lot of maintenance work was done on the game engine, and saving
stand−alone 'run times' is now possible again. On Windows, Blender can save a project as .exe, on OSX as
.app, and on Linux/Unix as a regular binary.

Full oversampling for render

Blender's OSA (oversampling) render option in Blender was always heavily optimized for scanline rendering.
The new "Full OSA" option now enables rendering all samples, giving full antialiasing for specular
highlights, shading and textures as well.

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Sequence editor wipe transition Sequence editor wipe transition

Ramp shading
The new "Ramp" controls in Blender lets a user set a range of colors for a material's diffuse and specular
components, define how that range will vary over a surface, and how it blends with the 'actual color'. This can
enable more realistic appearance for natural materials like skin.

Misc rendering features

* Blender's 'static particles', which can be used to for a fur or grass appearance, can now be animated to
deform along with characters

* New blending modes for layering textures or ramp shaders

* Improved phong shading model to prevent raytraced shadow errors

Color picker
Each button in Blender showing an RGB color now invokes the new color picker menu... and not only that,
pickers can be integrated anywhere in the UI as for example the Nkey menu while 3d painting.

Sequence editor wipe transition

Blender's hidden treasure, the built in video sequence editor, now supports effects for creating a variation of
wipe transitions.

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And what's more new! And what's more new!

Interface additions
− Help menu calls internet browser with important links to documentation

− Further python integration in menus allows any scripter to make own tools

− Left/Right mouse usage can be switched

− New zoom methods

Bug fixes
Hats off for the dev team!

Of the almost 300 reports we got in since the last release in May, we verified about half of them as valid bugs,
and fixed almost ALL of them. So we still have a clean tracker with less than 30 pending reports.

BTW: you need to subscribe to projects.blender.org to submit a report, that's of great help to communicate
with the reporter. So please keep reporting!

And what's more new!

• OpenGL normals and negative scaling
• Small additions and fixes

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Ambient occlusion Ambient occlusion

2.33a Update
With one week of testing and feedback, we managed to do so many essential fixes in 2.33 that an update was
required.

The download page now links to the 2.33a version. The list of fixes can be found here.

With this release we met another milestone; all of Blender's functionality from the period the sources were
closed now have been restored. Of course that means we can welcome the 2.25 game engine back!

Further the release is packed with new features, results of three months frantic coding by our development
team. Enjoy!

Blender regression test files zip 2.9MB

Game Engine
Not only the game engine is back, here you can also find cool demo downloads and the full html reference
from the Blender GameKit book.

The picture to the left is from the HardMashed demo, showcased by NaN on the Game Developers
Conference, and one of the best productions of the NaN content team ever.

Ambient occlusion
Ambient Occlusion is a more sophisticated ambient trick, which takes nearby faces into account by firing a

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More Features More Features

hemisphere (cone) of shadow−rays around.

Combined with using "Spherical Light Probe" images very realistic results can be achieved.

Musgrave, Voronoi & Noise

The entire internal procedural texture system has been revised, allowing now much more control, and several
new types which makes it a true Image Synthesiser.

UV and Image editor

Finally we've got a new team very active on improving features for assigning and calculating UV texture
coordinates.

Check out the long list of new features here.

More Features
• Python API
• Render engine
• Editmode
• YafRay Export
• Interface
• Localisation

Important note about compressed files

As code cleanup we removed the old file layer as being used by Blender 2.25

Publisher. This also means saving/reading compressed files isn't supported anymore.

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CVS Statistics CVS Statistics

Kester has written a python script to get around this. You can find it here: blenderdecompress

The bugfixes
bug fixes are in the following categories:

• render engine
• Armatures
• Meshes
• NLA
• YafRay export
• Tooltips
• Python API
• Other interface
• Uncategorised

Changes for the developer

The following contains features and changes of the code itself, including buildsystems and other auxiliary
code.

code changes
• Build systems
• code cleaning

code features
• SCons

CVS Statistics
commits since release: 324

first commit since release, dated: 2004/02/03 17:52:10 CET

first commit since release by: SirDude (Kent Mein)

last commit since release, dated: 2004/04/23 00:33:58 CEST

last commit since release by: hos (Chris Want)

For more cvs statistics: bf−blender cvs statistics

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Displacement mapping Displacement mapping

Splash by @ndy

With this release Blender has not only been extended with a lot of new options, such as ray tracing and
displacement mapping, but also offers the beta−test of an integrated support for the famous Yafray renderer.

Below you will find the full release notes, additional (html) documentation and sample files.

Download Blender 2.32 and Yafray from www.blender3d.org

Rendering improvements
• new: ray tracing
• area lights
• soft shadow
• improved bumpmapping
• gaussian filter

Displacement mapping
• any texture actually deforms rendered geometry
• including new procedural subdivision

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Other release notes Other release notes

YafRay support
• external rendering engine
• Global Illumination
• photonmapping

Other release notes

• Mesh beveling
• Python pulldown menus for import/export
• Armature speed improvements
• Etc etc etc
• And bugs fixed!

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Bug fixes Bug fixes

New in Blender

− Added buttons drawing Theme 'Rounded'. This uses a new feature in button code that enables aligning
buttons in groups together. Will be implemented for the default 'Shaded' theme later.

− New default startup file built in. Only shows when you delete .B.blend in your home directory. It has mainly
been designed to match the 2.3 manual best. Most obvious change is not starting with a 4−split 3D Window
anymore.

− Important note: all buttons to call an "Image Select Browser" have been removed from Blender. This is
instable code, and caused far too many crashes.

The functionality is still accessible though by holding CTRL while pressing a "Load" button for images. This
as 'undocumented' feature for power users. :)

− Mesh Subdivision Surfaces: now supports 'hide' option as well (HKEY).

Python
− New module: Lattice

− New module: Texture (mostly done already, only missing access to Ipo, EnvMap, ColorBand & Plugin)

− Bugfix: Object.makeParent

− NMesh: new vertex grouping methods: .renameVertGroup, .getVertGroupNames

− Doc updates

Bug fixes
− Interface: removing a window edge (Join Areas) sometimes removed the wrong edge. Was a very old bug...
but showed up in new standard default file.

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Bug fixes Bug fixes

− 2.30 error: clicking to select Objects at same location now correctly cycles through the available Objects
again.

− Rendering specular highlights for Sun light works correctly again.

− 2.30 error: CTRL+SHIFT+F3 allows screen capture of entire Blender window again.

− 2.30 error: the "Emulate 2 button mouse" option, allowing ALT+LeftMouse for MiddleMouse now works
again.

− Pressing ESC during rendering now reacts immediately again. This was reported fixed before, but
accidentally un−committed from the code.

− Rendering shadeless Material with UV "TexFace" option had a wrong gamma.

− F6 TextureButtons: the "Default Vars" now resets the environment mapping settings as well.

− IpoWindow: using the new Transform Properties Panel, some buttons caused the event being handled
double, giving weird results.

− F6 Texture Buttons: browsing a new texture for a Lamp only gave the "Add New" option.

− UV Image Editor: saving an image (after using Texture Paint) now is in same type as original image (was
Targa only).

− Rendering started with mouse cursor in a 3D window now renders "Local View" or unlocked layer settings
again.

− Removed old hack from rendering, which enabled a "Border" render in a previously rendered image. It was
badly implemented and crashed too often. Related to this, code was cleaned up which prevents errors as
reported in rendering with "Border" and "Fields".

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Bug fixes Bug fixes

− Converting a 3D closed curve (Bezier or NURBS) to a Mesh (ALT+C) the result was a bunch of
unconnected vertices.

− When rendering a 'square spot' it displayed rotated wrong in an Environment Map.

− When rendering Material with option "Wire", rendering in parts gave errors.

− Fixed in unified render (now is actually usable!):

− alpha was wrong for halos with lines or rings

− halo rendering wrong combined with spothalo

− no antialiasing with sky when rendering spothalo

− cleaned some weird usage of gamma for spothalo and sky

(when rendering sky + spothalo, sky got gamma corrected

− When rendering a Mesh with multiple users (linked−duplicates) it caused a crash when it used UV faces.

− Constraints: Fixed the lag with Follow Path.

− Mesh Vertex Keys: now can have up to 64k vertices, was 32k.

− Mesh Editmode: using Undo caused vertex colors and UV texture information to get lost.

− Mesh Editmode: using Undo caused 'hide' status of vertices being lost. Solved by storing this in the Mesh
themselves, so the 'hide' status will be restored when leaving/entering EditMode.

− Mesh EditMode: the Knife Tool sometimes cut unselected edges as well

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Bug fixes Bug fixes

− Mesh object: "Subdiv" level 0 and draw type "Optimal" caused Mesh not drawing in EditMode.

− MS Windows, Blender text editor: Using clipboard to copy/paste text (CTRL+C and CTRL+V) works with
correct line endings.

− 3D Window: when using a SpotLight in 'Textured Draw mode' (aka Potato mode) the 'Solid Draw mode'
turned out black. (Bug since 2.0!)

− Armatures/Meshes: using "Parent Armature−>Name Groups" puts the Mesh in a state that is ready for
weight paint.

− MetaBalls: the displaylists were re−created for each redraw of 3d window, causing an enormous slowdown.
Now it runs smooth again. (Old bug!)

− 3D Window: the MKEY 'movetolayer' option doesn't close anymore on numeric input. Somewhere before
2.25 this was changed... weird. Now you can set layers with numeric buttons, including using ALT for
numbers larger than 10, and using SHIFT for extend−select buttons. Press OK or Enter to close the menu.

− Blender didn't rename 'temp save' file to quit.blend at quit. Was reported on OSX and Linux.

− Materials: The stencil option only worked for one channel with normal−mapping. Now it works for all as
it's supposed to be.

− The default built−in font was not rendered when using background rendering (blender −b on commandline).

− IpoWindow: Sometimes the Transform Properties Panel was drawn with zero size. Added a more strict
version check for this to prevent it.

− OSX: using the F10 RenderButtons "Play" option now pops the window to the front. This also for starting
blender from command line.

− OSX: the preferred AntiAlias font couldnt be written in .b.blend (unless you manually install the font in

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Various fixes Various fixes

~/.blender/)

− AntiAlias fonts: file paths longer than 64 characters caused crash. Is 256 now.

− Mesh Editmode: Fixed crash when try to faceloop−cut (SHIFT+R, CTRL+R) with a Mesh having an edge
that didn't belong to any face. These tools now also update the vertex counter as displayed in 'Info header'.

− Themes: switching main Theme didn't update button draw type for Theme buttons themselves.

− Constraints: prevented creating endless loops.

Various fixes
− In render output window; using Pad−plus and minus zoom now always includes a zoom level 1.0 now.

− 3D window, when setting a render border in camera view (SHIFT+B) the associated render option is set as
well.

− 2.30 error: in 3D window selecting Objects wasn't updated correctly in all situations.

− 2.30 error: CTRL+LeftMouse click allows selecting Objects in EditMode again.

− Action Window: zooming in increased with factor 5.

− Buttons Window: the Panel background color+alpha is part of Theme settings now.

− 3D Window: OpenGL render option is icon in window header again, and now uses Theme Color for
background as well.

− Image Window: the buttons in header were messed up in 2.30

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Various fixes Various fixes

− 3D Window: a Constraint now draws a blue dashed line to its parent.

− Knife tool now has correct cursor, for all platforms.

− cleaned up aligning and positioning of buttons in most Panels

− Added decorations to 'Minimal' buttons Theme to make it usable, also restored the 2.2x drawing style for
buttons as 'OldSkool' Theme.

− fixed error in 2.30, the new toolbox and floating menus were closed when mouse left the menu immediately.
Is now a safety of 40 pixels again.

− Theme for TextWindow now allows color for text as well.

− Mesh EditMode, Knife Tool: ESC for pop−up menu was not handled, and pressing ENTER at pop−up menu
caused 'mouse trail' call to exit.

− F6 TextureButtons: "Crop and Anim" Panel had wrong name... now "Anim and Movie". This Panel now
draws buttons always, because it is for the 'anim option' (sequence of files) which is different from 'movie'
option (single file).

− F9 EditButtons: moved vertex group buttons to first Panel. These buttons should be available outside
editmode as well.

− F6 ObjectButtons: added to the Constraint Panel buttons indicating the 'Active Bone' or 'Active Object', like
previously (2.2x) was drawn in constraint buttons header.

− F6 TextureButtons: Colorband color sliders didnt update the colorband

− 3d Window: Enter EditMode from FaceSelect mode correctly selects vertices again

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Various fixes Various fixes

− 3d Window: transform option (SKEY) allows typing in zero scaling value.

− 3d Window: Warp transform option (SHIFT+WKEY) allows typing in values.

− 3D Window: the header didn't display 'Mesh' pulldown menu when VertexPaint mode and EditMode were
both active.

− 3d Window: modes 'VertexPaint' and 'Weightpaint' and 'Texturepaint' allow drawmode wire−extra again.

− TextEditor window: the hotkeys ALT+N (new) and ALT+O (open) now also work when no 'text block' is
active or available in Blender.

− F5 MaterialButtons: when you set "Halo", and "Star", then disable "Halo", the "TexFace" button was set.
The fix also prevents RGB from being reaset to 1.0.

− F5 MaterialButtons: "OB" and "ME" buttons in 2nd Panel didnt work properly. Also the "1 Mat 1" buttons
didnt display in all situations.

− F9 EditButtons: changed decimator slider into number−button, with only 1 vertex in Mesh the slider didn't
display OK. The slider also provided insufficient space for the full text.

− Constraints: sometimes its data was not available (null) after reading file, causing a crash. Code has been
secured.

− File Browse window: text sometimes was drawn over outer border.

− OSX: is now compiled with optimizing, giving a speed gain of 10−20%.

− OSX: using the Apple Quicktime dialog when choosing a movie format (F10 render buttons) still can cause
a freeze when you choose the "Options" button. This has been verified by Apple as a system bug. We added a
warning when you choose this option in Blender.

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Various fixes Various fixes

03/11/2008 19.42.31 95
Knife tool Knife tool

Welcome to this first release of the 2.3x series! Based on feedback and research the past months, we've finally
started with updating and improving Blender's interface. Most of the work has been in good old code cleaning
and reorganizing, in adding complete new UI functionality and in a thorough information design process to
make both navigating and learning Blender easier. The "looks" has changed as well, matching better with
contemporary desktop environments. Work on all of this is still in progress, expect more updates in upcoming
releases.

But this is not all! We now have real Undo in the modeler, improved functionality for our
Grabber/Rotate/Scale tools, improved drawing of 3d models, a Knife tool, new interactive methods for
selection and subdivision in Meshes, fixes and new functionality in the Python API, and a lot more...

The changelog for this version is huge, and has been split in several sections, these links can be found below.

Blender 2.3 UI redesign

With the 2.30 launch, we present the first results of work on an improved user interface for Blender. Since
most of Blender's code *is* UI, a huge task to accomplish, and something that will grow more mature over the
upcoming releases.

Knife tool
This is a tutorial for the new "knife subdivide" (KS) tool added in Blender in rev 2.30.

It is somewhat misnamed. Probably its most usefull applicationis not to simply cut a mesh into smaller peices,
but to selectively allow additions of geometry (subdivisions) to a mesh.

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And what's more new! And what's more new!

Mesh Undo
While the stoic nature of working with out an undo key has been claimed as a great character builder for
Blender users, we have to admit that we all make mistakes. Blender 2.30 has integrated Alexander Ewering's
(intrr) editmesh undo code. (And future releases may see this implimented for other edit modes.)

Mesh drawmodes
• drawmode 'Wire Extra'
• 'Solid' draw mode
• extra option for SubSurf

And what's more new!

New 'Transform' functionality

1. Constraining transform to an axis:

This applies all tools like Grab, Rotate and Scale.

• you can still switch to a constrained transform with a single press of middle mouse key. Blender
calculates the dominant axis based on current mouse position.
• new modes: Press X, Y or Z once to constraint to global axes
• new modes: another press of X, Y or Z will constraint to local axes
• a third press of X, Y or Z will go back to normal.
• while entering a constrained mode, helplines will be drawn to indicate the current constrained axis. In
local constraint mode, an additional axis will be drawn.

2. Numerical input:

Numerical input applies to modes Grab, Rotate, Scale, Warp, Shear, Shrink/Fatten:

• when starting a transform mode, just typing a numerical value, or pressing NKEY will invoke
numerical input
• check the window header of the 3D Window to show which of the values currently is active for input
• press TAB to move to the next input value
• press NKEY to leave, or to start it again.
• pressing ENTER will apply the values
• pressing ESC will leave the transform mode without changes
• Backspace will clear the value to zero
• Pressing 'Minus' (keyboard) will negate the value

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And what's more new! And what's more new!

• Only the normal 'Period' key allows switching to decimal input. Numerical Pad only allows number
input now.

3. Flipping sizes

The old convention was that pressing X, Y or Z flipped the axes while in Scale mode. This has been solved
with two new options:

• in Edit Mode, pressing MKEY will provide a menu with choices.

• Object Mode...

Face Loop selection & subdvision

Press SHIFT+R in Mesh EditMode to invoke a selection mode that enables selecting entire loops in a model.
Move the mouse cursor over the Mesh to see the active edges to be used as loop. Pressing left mouse or
ENTER adds to the selection. Press ESC to leave the mode without changes−> Loop Subdivide

Press CTRL+R in Mesh EditMode to invoke a mode that enables subdividing an entire loop in a model. Move
mouse over the Mesh to see the proposed subdivision. Pressing left mouse or ENTER adds to the selection.
Press ESC to leave the mode without changes

Python API

Fixes:

• obj.name access in Object

• bone.getParent in Armature/Bone
• unchecked pointer when adding sitedirs to sys.path
• added more types to obj.shareFrom

Additions:

−NMesh:

• a set of vertex group related methods

• face.normal, expanded .Modes dictionary, .get/setMode methods

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And what's more new! And what's more new!

• nmesh.get/setMaxSmoothAngle and nmesh.get/setSubDivLevels methods

−Ipo:

• ipo.getCurve(string)

−Object, Camera, Material, World:

• .get/set/clearIpo methods

Docs:

• updated with all additions + a few fixes

• added huge reference for BGL functions

A new version of the docs should be available with or soon after the new

Blender release.

Radiosity render

• Rendering with material without radio flag sometimes caused scanline errors.
• The color didn't truely match the color when using 'radio tool'.
• When adding new radiosity block, 'max iterations' is set at 120. this prevents new users from going
into radio−solving with a long itteration time

Audio window as 'frame slider'

• extreme small or narrow windows in Blender didn't accept mouse input. This disabled the possibility
to make a (screen wide) 'frame slider' by adding a header−less wide and narrow 'Audio Timeline'

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And what's more new! And what's more new!

window.
• An example can be found in the default .B.blend startup file, first screen.
• sliding the frame in an Audio window now displays current frame number next to mouse pointer
• right mouse click in Audio window gives option to switch between seconds, or frames display.
• check on Render Buttons (F10), to set the right value for 'frames per second'.

Smaller fixes

• the 'shaded 3d view' (SHIFT+Z) will correctly display smoothing using vertex normals now.
• default grid drawing in 3d window has been improved, it keeps drawing grid lines; independent of
how far you zoom in our out
• standard 'solid' drawmode is fully configurable, up to three lights. Check User Settings Menu for it
(pull down top window edge).
• OSX: closing the render output window now works
• Texture channels in Material editor can be switched on/off each individually. This replaces the old
'SepTex' button
• Using the Stencil option in Material Textures, normal−mapping now can be controlled as well.
• Removed built−in maximum for rendering vertices/faces/halos/lamps. It now allocates dynamically
the tables. Watch your memory!
• fixed overflows in unified render, caused by extreme values for specularity. This gave bad
anti−aliasing.
• MS Windows version: usage of new Font draw library gives crispier anti aliased fonts, and solves
crash at exit
• Sequencer: fixed a bug that prevented volume envelopes from being applied to the Mixdown WAV
• Meta Balls: Lattice as parent now affects correctly deformation

Things that were not restored yet:

• Pressing NKEY in buttons window, gave options for hexadecimal input.

• In Edit Mode, toolbox doesn't give option to add another object type

Contributors to this release were, in random order:

Joseph Gilbert, Michel Selten, Jacques Guignot, Stephen Swaney, Willian Padovani Germano, Martin Poirier,
Roel Spruit, Robert Wenzlaff , Alexander Ewering, Matt Ebb, Simon Clitherow, Jiri Hnidek, Kent Mein, John
Walton, Rob Haarsma, Wouter van Heyst, everyone on the bf−funboard mailing list, the one I forgot, and
your humble servant,

03/11/2008 19.42.31 100

And what's more new! And what's more new!

Ton Roosendaal

Amsterdam, october 30, 2003.

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