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Blender 2.43 is the latest release from the Blender Foundation; and it is free.
Tuesday, 20 February 2007
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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.
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.
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.
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. The image painting core has been rewritten, with a number of new options, a dramatic speed improvement, and the ability to save brushes.
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.
The fluid simulator now supports several features that produce much better looking simulations, especially for interaction with other objects.
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.
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. 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.
