I know there are a few Blender users around here so just in case you missed it the first official Blender 2.5 has just been released. It's in alpha stage so still a lot of work to do but it's looking like this is going to be the best Blender release yet.
http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-250/
Thank you for the heads up. - Bill .
I have been using it for a month or more. I go back to 2.49b when I want to render. The 2.5 build I have has some issues still. It does render a little faster.
Quote from: reck on November 24, 2009, 04:07:44 PM
...but it's looking like this is going to be the best Blender release yet.
...even better, it looks like it will be the first release of Blender with a sensible and comprehensible user interface >:( for human beings (and not penguinistas).
Bye...
P.S.: got it and, as soon as updated tutorials are out, I will try again to learn it (may be this time manage to do so).
Quote from: latego on November 25, 2009, 03:21:06 AM
...even better, it looks like it will be the first release of Blender with a sensible and comprehensible user interface >:( for human beings (and not penguinistas).
Bye...
P.S.: got it and, as soon as updated tutorials are out, I will try again to learn it (may be this time manage to do so).
Yeah I've been there myself latego. Blender is notorious for it's difficult to grasp interface. Many a time over the years I've tried to "learn" Blender and given up. But after 3 or 4 attempts and reading lots of tutorials I finally managed to make (some) sense of how it works. A lot of Blender pros actually swear by the UI and say once you know your way around it's a very rapid and efficient way to work. The problem is most of us never get that far.
The new User interface in 2.5/2.6 is a complete replacement to what has come before. Not only have the icons, buttons general layout been rebuild but also how it works under the hood. Over the years the Blender code had become a bit of a mess and they are spending time with this release rewiring all the tools to work in a much cleaner easier to understand (for coders) fashion. Also improvements have been made to the speed of the software as well, the raytracer is a lot faster in some scenes and sculpting is being improved in both speed and memory usage as well.
I'm going to follow the development of this and also the new open source short they are making with 2.5 at the same time called Sintel.
Blender 2.6 will be available in x64 for Windows, Linux and for the first time (I think) MAC.
Blender was very hard to learn. I picked one part of the program to learn it. I used the primitives and text. Then I moved onto learning the materials. After I learned where some things were, I tried simple models.
I just hope they have changed how boolean operations work...
i may try it out sooner or later... the old interface was my struggle, but then again i may not.. i already know LightWave 3d and 3D Studio Max, and a couple of other programs :-\
Blender has a very good compositor. I am just beginning to get a handle on it.
Here's a couple of tut videos.
http://totallyblended.com/New/?p=722
http://tinyurl.com/ycseao3
The compositor is very good.
Blender is getting really interesting :P
- Terje
Quote from: reck on November 26, 2009, 02:58:57 PM
Here's a couple of tut videos.
http://totallyblended.com/New/?p=722
http://tinyurl.com/ycseao3
The compositor is very good.
I did follow them and the thing is starting to make sense; may be THIS is the time I can jump on Blender wagon.
B.t.w., a hint for some homework for Blender and TG2 gurus: exporters from Blender to TG2. Just image the pairing TG2+an application like Blender: it would be much more powerful than, e.g., Vue...
Thanks a lot for the links, reck!
I have made a couple of tutorials on exporting Blender objects. Here's the link.
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=7567.0
I played around with the Alpha last night. It will take a while to get used to whee things are now. My first impression was good, though a wide screen monitor will help alot.