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Blender 2.44 released with subsurface scattering effects

blender.org — A new version of Blender has been released with improved sculpt tools and gorgeous subsurface scattering rendering plus a number of other great updates.

Who dugg this? Made popular May 14, 2007

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  • Seifey, on 10/11/2007, -3/+49But will it blend?
  • LetterRip, on 10/11/2007, -3/+27congrats to the Blender team for another great release, have a look at some of the demo images for this release...

    http://www.blender.org/typo3temp/pics/b01f6f5cbf.jpg

    http://www.blender.org/uploads/pics/tomato.png

  • hsaito, on 10/11/2007, -2/+23> But will it blend?

    Yes it will, using composite nodes!
    It'll produce a lot of mesh, curve, and vertex smoke, don't breath this.
  • Duositex, on 10/11/2007, -1/+17It should be noted that the Subsurface Scattering feature has only existed in the official source tree for something like a week or two. Just goes to show you that people who know how to use Blender pick up new features quite quickly...
  • Duositex, on 10/11/2007, -2/+16I'm a huge supporter of Blender and I've been using it for years. 2.44 is an intermediate release intended to make it 64-bit safe and clean up a few things. New features *always* manage to sneak in and thats great because it stirs up excitement. However, Blender 2.5 will be a very exciting release. There's a great deal of work on the roadmap for it. It might take six months or so, but the wait will be worth it. Blend on!
  • theOster, on 10/11/2007, -1/+14but will it...oh. right.
  • supermajic, on 10/11/2007, -1/+12I've been using blender for a few weeks and am finding it difficult to progress. Anyone know of any *good* tutorials? I've been looking around, and have been fairly unsuccessful.
  • mukiex, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10It really isn't. At least for modeling, what it comes down to is that you know how to model. It also helps to use Lightwave, as they're REALLY similar. Blender's a no-nonsense modeler, and all the functions you need are available via hotkeys, the only exception being the "junk drawer" known as the w key, which has a few not-as-commonly-used-but-still important functions, such as merging vertices. Seriously, go to #blender on Freenode IRC with blender open and try to make a good polygonal model, with a copy of the hotkey reference sheet. Ask about anything you have trouble with, and you'd have modeling in it down in a day. And then you'd see how FAST blender is in that regard.

    Material editing works well, Blender's only major fault is that there's no material/texture manager, so I usually make a cube when I want to create a new material or texture, and apply it to other models as needed.

    Character rigging and animation is AMAZING. It really needs a solid guide, maybe some day I try that. The options you have are insane. It's no XSI, but it's easily better than Maya and Lightwave combined.

    One final note is that blender does a LOT of things, asanine simple *****, that a lot of 3D apps don't do. Simple things like fixing normals, bone orientation, and mirroring models (including UV!) or skeletons correctly, blender does so inteligently it hurts. It seriously makes you lose respect for modern commercial 3D apps.
  • poked, on 10/11/2007, -2/+11great stuff, blender is just getting better and better!
  • willistg, on 10/11/2007, -1/+10Check these out

    http://showmedo.com/videos/series?name=blenderMoyesSeries001

  • Loyke, on 10/11/2007, -1/+9About the interface:
    there are 2 ways people think about it:
    1: people invest some time in it, and love it, or
    2: people turn it down as they see it for the first time, and hate it.
  • dshPls, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8Here's a better examples of SSS, http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-244/subsurface-scattering/

    See how the light actually penetrates the skin(lol) and brightens the outer side of the other side?
  • MrBone, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7I think Blender is great but it needs better tutorials! I've looked at Blender quite a lot of time the last years and there's always something, some new feature, some old trick, that is poorly described. I know, I suck for not sitting down and learning all the hotkeys and procedures but damn, Blender is getting so big (as in full of features, not bloated) that it's getting harder and harder to get to grips with.

    This is me begging the Blenderheads out there, make more tutorials, gather them in one place, pleeeease!
  • BlackBoe, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8They all belong to the same category, yes. Anyway, Maya and Blender are very close to comparable now, there are a few core issues, but they'll be cleaned up in the 2.5 release anyway.

    http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/features/ Here, if this helps.
  • jedihe, on 10/11/2007, -4/+9and now you can add your own primitives via python scripts! cool!

    jedihe
  • hsaito, on 10/11/2007, -2/+7One thing that not really mentioned very well in this release is support of FFmpeg compiled into the Windows binary.
    This change increases usability of its video sequencer, as well as output flexibility of rendered animations.
  • ilobmirt, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6I'd like to see the next version of blender to support the animation of (vertex/texture) weight values. This would allow for many more effects to happen in Blender without having to resort to a bunch of python scripts and linking them to events.

    What I am looking forward to in version 2.5 is the separation of interface and internal code and the ability to render to more external renderers besides yafray.

    However, for now, this upgrade will keep me entertained for awhile. I'd have a blast spending a few hours pushing this application to its limit.
  • jm9206755, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4Ah. I am guessing by your username that you are a troll. *block*
  • dshPls, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5All you need is time, of course tha's rendering. The complexity of a model will also affect the time it takes to refresh its preview.
  • mukiex, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6Did the capability to bake high-res meshes onto low-res meshes (e.g. to create tangent normal maps) not make the final cut? :(
  • Prathik89, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Do we need fancy powerful comps to use this?
  • Duositex, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Isn't it implicit that submitter wanted this dugg? Sorry Joe..
  • spyres, on 10/11/2007, -5/+7New sub surface scattering looks very nice.
  • CDMJ, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Cool release content, and a quick turnaround on the SSS by Brecht. As for the other apps, they do what they do, but this is Blender, a tool grown by the artists that use it. Really love the FFMpeg integration, just need time to practice using it. The sculpt tools are easier to use, and they function more smoothly now. Awesome work, and a great bunch of devs!!
  • ShiftingClouds, on 10/11/2007, -3/+5Nice, solid, some goodies like SSS, perfected snaps, lots of enhancements to the Python API and more...
    Jean
  • BlackBoe, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_Character_Animation

    Here's a really good intro to all the tools. It's sort of a crash course, really. Great stuff.
  • CyberGlitch, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2My comp is 7 a seven year old Dell and I can still run blender fine. Just expect to leave it on for a night for those extreme renders.
  • ToonScheur, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3I don't know Maya or Max but there are a lot of long time Maya and Max users that turned their backs on their old apps because of Blender!
    It seems that with every release Blender attracts more commercial apps users because of 1) the stability of Blender and 2) the new features are added more frequently than commercial counterparts. The equalizer was the animation refactoring and the turnabout came with the Fluid simulator, further fueled by Sculpting and composition nodes. There is a total particle refactoring in the works (with industrial strength hair modeling), cloths and many more features to seriously threaten the pull of the commercial apps. What Blender still really lacks a lot is decent NURBS modeling (which is half done since the Nurbana engine is already in place).
    Blender 2.44 shines. I really like the way you can adjust how your model spins in the 3D viewport when changing views and SSS.
    Blender 2.50 will blow some competition clear out of the water if the developers can finish only half of what is set out in the roadmap (including Toronto project, camera tracking, Summer of Code 2007 and projects from the regular developers).
  • bugman2000, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3They all belong to the same category of tools. They all do modeling, texturing, lighting, and animation, and they all have a lot of features. Maya and Max are used more in industry and are well supported with some powerful plug-ins, but each package has areas it's strong in. Here's an example of an animated short film done in Blender (you can download it free):

    www.elephantsdream.org

    Here's another project, a feature film, that's in the works:

    www.plumiferos.com

  • joeedh, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Maya? have you ever modeled something in maya? eek!

    Of course, as I understand it there are some really cool maya modelling plugins. Also I've heard their animation stuff is good; blender's animation needs a little work still (I've been doing some coding trying to figure out how to do twisting limbs properly, as you can't really at the moment).

    Joe
  • TritonX, on 10/11/2007, -2/+3Not really, but as your project gets more complex, a good comp is never a luxury.
  • streetstealth, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1The wiki tutorials are great. It took me quite awhile, but there was a moment where I finally came to the realization that Blender's UI design is actually way more sensible than using floating palettes!
  • swrostmore, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2No, but there's plugins to do that. Maybe itll be integrated in 2.5...
  • polyGone, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1Ya know, I always come on here and bash blender because of the interface, but some of these changes are starting to catch my eye. I, do, wish they would change their interface to operate more like Max or Maya, though. I already own Max, but I'll give it another whack.
  • kernond, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0check out BlenderNewbies at http://blendernewbies.blogspot.com
  • BlackBoe, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0I have had no problems getting it to work. In fact, I have a nearly perfect arm rig right now. It's still a bit manual, but that's nothing that maybe an extra bone and a copy constraint or two won't fix.
  • Ratteler, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1If any one ever cleans up MakeHuman so it can use Poser CR2 files as a source for rigging info, I would never have to go back to Windows.
  • mydave, on 07/26/2008, -0/+0oh guys soon we will forgot that all this we can make it without any blender.

    http://www.chasr.org/
    http://www.danielrhodes.com
    www.toyotaemployeepricing.com

  • bugman2000, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0As other posters have pointed out, there are a lot of tutorials. There are also some books, if that's more your style. Shameless plug, but if you're interested in Character Animation, you might want to check out this one (full disclosure, I'm the author):

    http://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Character-Animation-Blender-Mullen/dp/0470102608

    It's also available at the Blender e-Shop, and buying it there helps support Blender development.

    http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/

    You'll also find the new "Essential Blender" book there (so new it hasn't even shipped yet) which will provide a lot of great introductory tutorials, so that also will help a lot with getting Blender better documented.
  • joeedh, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0blackboe: no it does not work. I've spent a while working with this, and the only way is to use a bbone setup that isn't natural or realistic. Other methods have problems being used in practice.

    note that I am currently working on pyconstraints, a system that'll allow you to write python script constraints, specificially so I can write custom constraints to deal with this problem :)

    Joe
  • crossers, on 05/14/2008, -0/+0I think it willn't work!
  • bogdan77, on 10/11/2007, -6/+4Torus primitive!!! Mmmm... donuts...
  • Ozeki, on 10/11/2007, -7/+4There's some dude (or dudette) roaming around this entry, digging people down for absolutely no reason.
  • Markpdotcom, on 10/11/2007, -7/+2Its just a shame its sooooooooo difficult to get into! :( Its learning curve his greater than Cinema4D, Maya or Max for that matter.
  • prettypenis, on 10/11/2007, -10/+0i was hoping for frozen daiquiri's :(
  • joeedh, on 10/11/2007, -23/+2come on! digg it!
  • ElitistSnob, on 10/11/2007, -23/+1Meh! Blender is decent if you can't afford a real commercial 3D creation tool like Maya. But having used it I am not impressed. Lacking tools, poor UI.

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