Digital Art Zone

The next version of Blender has hit the streets…

Blender 2.65 is out.

http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-265/

Three big items (at least for me)...the Decimator modifier has been rewritten and now includes an ‘un-subdivide’, among other improvemets; the smoke simulator has many added features and Cycles has a long list of improvements.

The sad thing is, I’m barely using all the improvements that 2.64 has added…

I’m going to give it a few days before downloading, just because I’m in the middle of some things and don’t want to spend the time learning the new features.

Hi…

Downloaded and installed it last night…

The new Symmetrize tool is a little weird though, I’ll need to do some further testing of it, because it will add geometry across the axis if you’re not carefull…

The new Bevel is great, and the addition of OSL to Cycles should be fun…

nicci…

Downloaded and installed yesterday (^_^).

For me, the biggest excitement comes from the (now working) image refresh, so that when you’re baking textures you see the progress again (and the final result).  2.64 was a hit-or-miss affair on updating the image, even when baking had finished - you had to save it to disk and Reload it to see it >_<.

M F M - 11 December 2012 10:13 PM

Downloaded and installed yesterday (^_^).

For me, the biggest excitement comes from the (now working) image refresh, so that when you’re baking textures you see the progress again (and the final result).  2.64 was a hit-or-miss affair on updating the image, even when baking had finished - you had to save it to disk and Reload it to see it >_<.

For me, most of the texture painting is painfully slow…I really need to get my system update done. 

After I get the projects that I’m currently working on finished, I’ll be hopping on 2.65. 

It took a long time to get from 2.49 to 2.5, but things seem to be going full speed now. 

This update, along with the recent updates in GIMP have me really excited.

thanks mjc for the HU. Like you I am still working in 2.64 for the time being.

I have 2.64 as well, and I have finally fallen for Blender in a big way.

I think Cycles is terrific, and I love the Shader nodes as well.  Most of the tutorials are terrific to, and there are loads of them.  I think Blender is now a very enjoyable learning experience.

I have been learning Blander on and off for years now and it is only recently I have been doing more modeling in it. I dabbled with Cycles and Luxblend and while back. I think I am hooked on Daz Studio and Vue to start to learn how to render in blender. But I never say never. For me Blender will be my modelling app of choice now just for what it can do and for the amount of help out there for it.

At present I am just modeling simple things for a long term project I am working on but the objects are getting more advanced as the ideas flood in.

I wish it was more user friendly. It’s such a big learning curve. All of the key codes that you have to learn let alone the steps involved in creating something. But I agree there are many tutorials for every aspect and I worked with it a bit and like it’s capabilities. Maybe I just don’t have the patience for learning such an extensive program.

Thanks for the heads-up.  Going to download it now.

@Ledhead - Just remember, you could be trying to learning such an extensive program that costs a lot of big bucks . . . like Maya for instance.  At the very least, Blender’s free.    Just take your time with it.  I’ve been at it for over 4 years, and I’m STILL learning new things. 

Also of note: it’s constantly getting developed, and has tons of features.
I tried to use Hexagon and Carrara after Blender and I just couldn’t. I go back to it time after time, because once you learn it, it makes a lot of sense