Blender Changelog

What's new in Blender 2.91

Nov 27, 2020
  • Adding some color to your November, here’s the second release in Blender’s 2.9 series—and the fourth major release this year, including one Long-term Support.
  • The updated toolset of Blender 2.91 features improvements to cloth sculpting, boolean operations, mesh to volume and volume to mesh conversion, custom curve bevels, searchable UI panels and more. Combined with hundreds of bug fixes, Blender 2.91 is more polished and stable than ever.

New in Blender 2.90 (Sep 1, 2020)

  • User Interface:
  • Search:
  • Operator search will now search through menu entries, to better show relevant operators and where to find them in menus. Adding operators to quick favorites or assigning shortcuts is now easy by right clicking on search results.
  • For developers that need more low-level search, Developer Extras can be enabled after which raw operators will appear in search results as well. Add-ons that expose operators only through search need to be updated to expose them through a menu.
  • Layout:
  • Checkbox placements was reworked to place text on the right hand side, group together related settings and make layouts more compact. (219049bb3b, 7fc60bff14)
  • Shader nodes in the material properties editor now show socket colors matching the shader editor, and are positioned on the left side. (7ef2dd8424, 675d42dfc3)
  • Statistics:
  • Scene statistics available in 3D viewport with an (optional) "Statistics" Viewport Overlay. (fd10ac9aca).
  • Status Bar now showing only version by default, but context menu can enable statistics, memory usage, etc. (c08d847488).
  • Modifiers:
  • Modifiers and other stacks now support drag and drop for reordering.
  • Their layouts were completely rewritten to make use of subpanels and the current user interface guidelines.
  • Where they apply, the operation buttons ("Apply", "Copy" (now "Duplicate"), and "Apply as Shape Key") are now in a menu on the right side of the panel headers, along with new "Move to First" and "Move to Last" buttons.
  • There are now shortcuts for common modifier operations. (1fa40c9f8a) Enabled by default are:
  • Remove: X, Delete
  • Apply: Ctrl A
  • Duplicate: Shift D
  • About:
  • About Blender dialog added to the App menu to contain information like build, branch, and hash values. This declutters the Splash Screen and highlights only the release version. (5b86fe6f33).
  • Miscellaneous:
  • Area borders given much larger hit area to make them easier to resize. (4e8693ffcd)
  • Increased Border Hit Area:
  • Support for Windows Shell Links (shortcuts) in File Browser. Extended Mac Alias usage. Better display of linked items. (1f223b9a1f)
  • Pie menus support for A-Z accelerator keys, for quickly selecting items with the keyboard.
  • New "Instance Empty Size" setting in user preferences (e0b5a20231).
  • Text field buttons now support local undo and redo while being edited. (1e12468b84).
  • Outliner Delete operator added to delete all selected objects and collections using either the keymap or context menu. (ae98a033c8). Replaces the Delete Object and Delete Collection operators.
  • Outliner Delete Hierarchy now operates on all selected objects and collections. Additionally, the menu option is shown for objects in the View Layer display mode. (26c0ca3aa7).
  • Dragging outliner elements to an edge will scroll the view. (7dbfc864e6)
  • Dragging panels to the edge of a region will scroll it up or down. (859505a3da)
  • Move a few FFmpeg render properties from the scene properties to the audio output settings. (a55eac5107)
  • Update the terminology used in some properties. (1278657cc2), (3ea302cf8e), (ef0ec01461)
  • 3D Viewport: Add Edge Loopcut Slide to edge menu. (0fdb79fe58)
  • The interface for many operators was updated to be clearer and more consistent with the rest of Blender. (17ebbdf1c1)
  • Option to print text in bold or italics style, synthesized from a single base UI font. (b74cc23dc4)
  • Modeling:
  • Tools:
  • Extrude Manifold: new tool to automatically split and remove adjacent faces when extruding inwards. (b79a5bdd5a).
  • Ruler: snapping support for ruler tool. (1f7a7911f7)
  • Topology cleanup oriented tools Merge (including By Distance aka Remove Doubles), Rip, Delete, Dissolve, Connect Path, Knife and Tris To Quads now correctly preserve custom normal vectors. (93c8955a79)
  • The custom profile for the bevel modifier and tool now supports bezier curve handle types. (baff05ad1c)
  • The bevel tool and modifier have a new 'Absolute' mode for interpreting the 'amount' value. This mode is like Percent, but measures absolute distance along adjacent edges instead of a percentage. 466e716495)
  • The bevel tool and modifier use a new method to decide which material and UV values to use for the center polygons in odd-segment bevels. It should give more consistency in different parts of the model compared to the seemingly random choice made up til now. e3a420c477
  • UV Editor:
  • The new mesh editing options Correct Face Attributes and Keep Connected adjust UV's and vertex colors when moving mesh components. The option is activated in the top right corner of the 3d viewport in the mesh editing menu (rB4387affr)
  • Edge Ring Select: matching edit-mesh functionality of the same name using Ctrl-Alt-LeftMouse (1dd381828f).
  • Pick Shortest Path: hold down CTRL and select UV components with left mouse to select the shortest path between the UV components. (ea5fe7abc1)
  • Pick Shortest Path: grid type selection if you activate fill region or use Ctrl-Shift-LeftMouse when selecting UV components
  • UV Rip: separates UV components (vertices, edges, faces) from connected components. The operator is run by pressing the V hotkey. The components are ripped in the direction of the mouse pointer position. (rB89cb41fa)
  • Option to change the opacity of the UV overlay. (90d3fe1e4d).
  • Remove selection threshold for nearby coordinates, only select when UV coordinates are identical. (b88dd3b8e7)
  • Curves:
  • Curve Normals are disabled by default. (0bd7e202fb)
  • Curve Handles now can be Hidden/Selected or All. (49f59092e7)
  • The new default for Handles is Selected. For Nurb Curves, the handlers are displayed always as it was in previous version.
  • Transform:
  • Edge and Vert Slide now supports the other snapping types. (e2fc9a88bc, 9335daac2a)
  • The snap can now be made to the intersection between constraint and geometry. (d8206602fe)
  • Modifiers:
  • The ocean modifier can now generate maps for spray direction. (17b89f6dac)
  • Applying a modifier as a shapekey is now allowed even when the object has linked duplicates. (01c8aa12a1)
  • New menu option to Save As Shapekey, which applies the modifier as a shape key without removing it. (01c8aa12a1)
  • Sculpt:
  • Multires Modifier:
  • Multiresolution sculpting is now fully supported. It is now possible to select the subdivision level to sculpt on and switch between levels, with displacement information smoothly propagated between them. (d4c547b7bd)
  • Unsubdivide and Rebuild subdivisions:
  • The Multires Modifier can now rebuild lower subdivisions levels and extract its displacement. This can be used to import models from any subdivision based sculting software and rebuild all subdivisions levels to be editable inside the modifier. (f28875a998)
  • Subdivision Modes:
  • Multires can now create smooth, linear and simple subdivisions. This means that any subdivision type can be created at any time without changing the subdivision type of the modifier. Changing the subdivision type of the modifier is now and advance option only used to support legacy files. (134619fabb)
  • Tools:
  • The Cloth filter runs a cloth simulation in the entire mesh. It has 3 force modes and the area were the force is applied can be defined by a Face Set. (1d4bae8566)
  • The Face Set edit operator allows to modify a Face Set. The supported operations are Grow (Ctrl + W) and Shrink (Ctrl + Alt + W). (cb9de95d61)
  • Brushes:
  • The Pose Brush includes two more deformation modes: Scale/translate and Squash/stretch. They can be selected using the deformation property. Pressing Ctrl before starting the stroke selects the secondary deformation mode. (77789a1904)
  • The Pose Brush has a Face Set FK mode, which deforms the mesh using the Face Sets to simulate and FK rig. (3778f168f6)
  • The Pose Brush has a Connected only property. By disabling it, the brush can affect multiple disconnected parts of the same mesh. The distance to consider a part as connected can be tweaked with the Max Element Distance property. 438bd82371
  • Clay strips now has more predictable pressure/size and pressure/strength curves. Its deformation algorithm was modified to prevent geometry artifacts in large deformations. (560a73610b) (0a1fbfee2b)
  • The Topology Slide/Relax mode now has two more deformation modes for Slide: Pinch and Expand. They can be selected using the Deformation property. (878d191bae)
  • Miscellaneous:
  • The Automasking system was redesigned, so brush will not have and start delay when automasking options are enabled in a high poly mesh. (e06a346458)
  • Boundary mesh detection was redesigned. Now mesh boundaries are properly detected by the automasking system in both meshes and Multires levels. This means that the smooth brush does not longer automasks boundary vertices by default and its meshes and multires behavior now matches. (e06a346458)
  • Pen pressure modulation is now supported for the hardness property. The modulation can be inverted for achieving higher hardness with lower pressure. (69afdf6970)
  • Grease Pencil:
  • User Interface:
  • Onion skinning support for annotations in the video sequencer. (fda754145a)
  • Layer Mask and Use Lights properties are animatable. (221a7002a9)
  • New Material selector in Context menu and new Material menu using U key. (6a7e9f2b76)
  • New option to put Canvas Grid in front of any object. (b369d46eb7)
  • First keyframe is displayed only if the current frame is equals or greater (11ba9eec70)
  • This change can produce changes in old animations. Review your drawings and set the keyframe number to be displayed at the right time. Usually, The fix is as simple as move or duplicate the first keyframe to frame 1.
  • Keyframe type now is accessible using python. (326db1b7cd)
  • Default Vertex Color mode changed to Stroke and Fill. (e079bf6996)
  • Added missing UV Fill property to RNA. (f382109f38)
  • Operators:
  • Reproject stroke now allows to keep original stroke. (37d68871b7)
  • New Bevel Depth and Resolution parameters converting strokes to curves. (146473f083)
  • New Convert mesh and Bake animation to grease pencil. (bc7a4b126a)
  • Tools:
  • Annotate Line tool now supports different types of arrows. (668dd146f6)
  • Annotate tool now supports mouse stabilizer. (9a7c4e2d44)
  • New Brush options and curves to randomize effects. (b571516237)
  • When Using the Eraser tool a new frame is created if Additive Drawing is enabled. (29afadcb15)
  • Improved selection of strokes in the fill area (244ed645e0)
  • Improved fill paint in vertex color mode and Tint tool. (abeda01ac6)
  • Modifiers and VFX:
  • New Texture Mapping modifier to manipulate UV data. (a39a6517af)
  • New Restrict Visible Points Build parameter to define the visibility of stroke. (a1593fa05b)
  • New Antialiasing parameter for Pixel effect. (11a390e85e)
  • Cycles:
  • CPU Rendering:
  • Intel Embree is now used for ray tracing on the CPU. This significantly improves performance in scenes with motion blur. Other scenes with high geometric complexity also benefit on average, depending on the scene contents.
  • GPU Rendering:
  • OptiX is now available on all NVIDIA GPUs that support it, which is Maxwell or higher (GeForce 700, 800, 900, 1000 series).
  • NVLink support for CUDA and OptiX. When enabled in the Cycles device preferences, GPUs connected with an NVLink bridge will share memory to support rendering bigger scenes.
  • NVIDIA GPU rendering on macOS is no longer supported. Apple dropped support for CUDA drivers in macOS 10.14, and no recent Apple hardware uses NVIDIA graphics cards.
  • Hair:
  • Hair curves are rendered differently due to the switch to Embree. GPU rendering was made to match Embree. There are now two shapes to choose from:
  • Rounded Ribbon: render hair as flat ribbon with (fake) rounded normals, for fast rendering. Hair curves are subdivided with a fixed number of user specified subdivisions. This gives relatively accurate results, especially when used with the Principled Hair BSDF and hair viewed from a typical distance. There may be artifacts when viewed closed up.
  • 3D Curve: render hair as 3D curve, for accurate results when viewing hair close up. This automatically subdivides the curve until it is smooth. This gives higher quality than any of the previous primitives, but does come at a performance cost. Especially on the GPU this is slower than previous primitives.
  • Sky Texture:
  • The new Sky texture is an improved version of the Nishita single scattering sky model, and it accounts for altitude change as well as ozone absorption.
  • It includes a sun component with limb darkening effect.
  • Lighting from the Sky texture may be quite bright or dark depending on the time of day. Adjust the Exposure in the Film panel to compensate for this.
  • Denoising:
  • Intel OpenImageDenoise is now supported for interactive denoising in the 3D viewport and for final renders. This works on any recent Intel/AMD CPU (with SSE 4.1).
  • Previously viewport denoising was only supported for NVIDIA GPUs using OptiX, and final render denoising with OpenImageDenoise was only possible in the compositor.
  • Performance of tiled denoising in final renders is still poor, we will investigate optimizing this.
  • Shadow Terminator:
  • Per-object shadow terminator offset setting, to avoid artifacts with smooth normals on low-poly meshes. (c7280ce65b85)
  • Changes:
  • Depth render pass for perspective cameras was changed to be more standard, matching OpenGL, Eevee and other renderers.
  • Error messages are now propagated to the viewport status overlay (instead of it only showing "Cancel").
  • Denoising is now enabled in the Render Properties for all view layers, in the Sampling > Denoising panel. Settings can still be fine-tuned per view layer, including disabling denoising for specific layers.
  • EEVEE:
  • Motion Blur Improvement:
  • The motion blur has been done from scratch and now support mesh deformation, hair, and sub-frame accumulation for even better precision. For more details check out the manual. (f84414d6e1 439b40e601)
  • Improvements:
  • Fix texture node repeat & filter mode to match Cycles better. (b2dcff4c21)
  • Sky Texture:
  • Port of Preetham and Hosek/Wilkie sky models. (9de09220fc)
  • Import & Export:
  • Alembic
  • Matrices with negative scale can now be properly interpolated. This means that it is now possible to take an Alembic file that was saved at 30 FPS and load it into a 24 FPS Blender file, even when there are mirrored objects. (a5e176a8ed and demo videos in D8048).
  • Object data is now exported with the object data name (0d744cf673). Previously the Alembic exporter exported a mesh object to {object.name}/{object.name}Shape. Now it exports to {object.name}/{mesh.name} instead. The same change also applies to other object data types.
  • Spaces, periods, and colons in the names of particle systems are now replaced with underscores (f106369ce8). Other types already had spaces, periods, and colons replaced by underscores, and now particle systems are exported with the same naming convention.
  • Blender now always exports transforms as as "inheriting", as Blender has no concept of parenting without inheriting the transform (2dff08c8ce). Previously only objects with an actual parent were marked as "inheriting", and parentless objects as "non-inheriting". However, certain packages (for example USD's Alembic plugin) are incompatible with non-inheriting transforms and will completely ignore such transforms, placing all such objects at the world origin.
  • Alembic's obsolete HDF5 compression format has never been officially supported by Blender, but only existed as an optional build-time option that was disabled for all Blender releases. The support for HDF5 has now been completely removed (0c38436227, 0102b9d47e).
  • Blender now exports Alembic using the same approach as USD. This means that Alembic and USD files are more consistent, and that it's easier to solve (or even prevent) certain bugs (2917df21ad). Changes are:
  • Duplicated objects now have a unique numerical suffix (also see above).
  • Matrices are computed differently. This fixes T71395, but otherwise should produce the same result as before (but with simpler, more predictable code).
  • USD:
  • Hair particle systems are now exported using the Particle System name. Previously this was done with the Particle Settings name. This gives more control over the final name used in USD and is consistent with the Alembic exporter. (fc0842593f).
  • Instances:
  • USD and Alembic export can now correctly export nested instances. Further, numbers used to identify duplicated (i.e. instanced) objects have been reversed (98bee41c8a).
  • glTF 2.0:
  • Importer:
  • Enhancements:
  • Implement KHR_materials_clearcoat (rBA64d3439)
  • Implement KHR_mesh_quantization (rBA4b656b6)
  • Improve the layout of nodes in the material graph (rBA5b4ed4e)
  • Add option to glue pieces of a mesh together (rBAc7eda7c)
  • Code cleanup & refactoring & performance (rBAbb4dc6f, rBA9fd05ef)
  • Fixes:
  • Fix occlusion textures (rBAa29e15e)
  • Fix Crash on undo after glTF import (rBAd777821)
  • Exporter:
  • Enhancements:
  • Add joint / pre /post in hook for extensions (rBAe3bb132, rBA40db41a)
  • Allow combining different-sized textures (eg for ORM) (rBA09508f2)
  • Add check rotation + delta rotation both animated (rBAee2a083)
  • Code clean up & refactoring & performance (rBA2d8c1b2, rBA01186b0, rBA3ea1673, rBA9313b3a, rBA03e3ef7)
  • Refactoring Normals export (rBAbd8e1f3, rBA422c47c, rBA52f8896)
  • Add support for use_inherit_rotation and inherit_scale (rBA63dd849)
  • Export curve/surface/text objects as meshes (rBA47ea656)
  • Fixes
  • Prevent infinite recursion when mesh is skinned and parenting to same bone (rBA72227fc)
  • Make sure rotation are normalized (rBAfac4c64)
  • Add check when armature animation is binded to mesh object (rBA61f7f5f)
  • Fix extension panel appearance (rBAaea0541)
  • Fix draco UV export (rBAe47d2bc)
  • Fix lamp parented to bone (rBA1d29fc5)
  • Fix saving use_selection option in .blend file (rBA7cbb383)
  • Fix exporting with option "group by NLA" (rBA7a0a918)
  • Fix exporting EXTEND textures (rBAcbad930)
  • Fix export alpha scalar value (not coming from texture) (rBA48c8d6c)
  • Fix exporting aspectRatio for Perspective Cameras (rBA2b4bf94)
  • Fix to generate valid file when zero-weight verts (rBA386bb5e)
  • Python API:
  • Compatibility:
  • Operator Search:
  • With the new operator search that only searches through menus, add-ons that expose operators only through search need to be updated. In general it is good practice to always expose operators through menus so users can find them.
  • For more obscure operators that are for example intended mainly for developers, we recommend adding them in the TOPBAR_MT_app_system menu. This is accessible through the System menu under the Blender icon in the top bar.
  • Other Changes:
  • Libraries: bpy.data.libraries.write relative_remap boolean argument has been replaced by path_remap enumeration which can select different kinds of path remapping on write.
  • BevelModifier.use_custom_profile property is now part of a new a profile_type enum. (6703c7f7f1) This applies to the bevel tool as well.
  • The bevel operator's vertex_only property was changed to a new affect enum, with VERTICES and EDGES options. (4aa2a5481c)
  • The modifier apply operator's apply_as argument was moved to a new operator modifier_apply_as_shapekey. The new operator can also save to a shapekey without removing the modifier (01c8aa12a1)
  • User Interface:
  • Columns and rows can now group together related settings with a heading.
  • The layout system will try to insert the heading to the left column of a property split layout, but may insert the heading as usual column or row item as fallback.
  • UILayout.prop_decorator(data, property, index=-1) got added to allow manual insertion of decorators (to set keyframes or indicate other animation states for the property). There must be an item with the same parameters within the root layout for this to work.
  • Checkboxes respect UILayout.use_property_split now. With that some layout conventions changed:
  • Related checkboxes should be grouped together in a column with a heading (see above).
  • In cases where a checkbox controls the availability of a single property, the checkbox should be in a row together with the property.
  • Decorator items have to be manually inserted with some boilerplate code.
  • It is important that the decorator is inserted to a row-layout that is the parent of the row-layout for the checkbox and the actual property.
  • Checkboxes with property splitting often look bad if placed alone in a layout, or within flow layouts. In these cases UILayout.use_property_split should be disabled or a fixed, non-flow layout be used.
  • UILayout.menu(), UILayout.operator_menu_enum() and UILayout.prop_menu_enum() respect UILayout.use_property_split now.
  • Additions:
  • In the event a Python script causes Blender to crash, Blender's crash log will include a Python stack-trace so Python developers can find what caused the error (e9c4325515).
  • Mathutils: element-wise multiplication for vectors matrices and quaternions (fa7ace2215).
  • constraints.copy() methods for objects and bones to duplicate a constraint with all its settings, including from other objects. (64a584b38a)
  • Screen.is_scrubbing, indicating when the user is scrubbing through time in the timeline, dopesheet, graph editor, etc. (2be7a11e43)
  • Sequences.new_movie() support for creating movie strips with missing files, consistent with image and sound strips. MovieSequence.reload_if_needed() to try and reload movie strips, in case the missing file has appeared. This makes it possible to create a movie strip for video files that are synced between computers via some network connection. (b9f565881e)
  • Drivers get a depsgraph variable in their local scope. See the Animation-Rigging release notes for more details.
  • New bl_math module with lerp, clamp and smoothstep functions (inspired by GLSL mix, clamp and smoothstep), which are also made available to drivers. (f8cc01595d)
  • Option to use OpenGL context in RenderEngine.render. (52543be9a6)
  • Physics:
  • Fluid:
  • New Features:
  • OpenVDB fluid caching: Smoke (grids) and liquid (grids and particles) data will now be cached into a single .vdb cache file per frame. (9fe64948ab, 9951858942)
  • Usability:
  • Updated gravity: Matches world gravity now (fluid buoyancy behaves differently compared to 2.8x releases). (21485e94aa)
  • Simplified cache format options:
  • There are now only two cache formats fields (Volume data - grids & particles, Surface data - meshes). Cache format options for 'Noise' and 'Particles' have been deprecated.
  • Only two cache file formats are available ('.uni', '.vdb'). The '.raw' file format has been deprecated.
  • New UI Options:
  • Frame Offset: Read cache files with a frame offset. (Manual, fb0f0f4d79)
  • System Maximum: Define the maximum number of particles that are allowed in a simulation. (Manual, e76f64a532)
  • Important Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed issue with gas shading (shading in 'Replay' mode differed from shading in other cache modes). (f2b04302cd, 51f4bee5a5, 7e64f6cee4, 106e7654e8)
  • Cloth:
  • New option to apply a pressure gradient emulating the weight of contained or surrounding fluid. (b1f9799508)
  • Force effectors have a new Wind Factor setting to specify how much the force is reduced when acting parallel to the cloth surface (previously hard-coded as 100% reduction). (9e70129959)
  • Animation & Rigging:
  • Library Overrides:
  • Many more properties and data are now overridable (all constraints and modifiers, camera objectdata, etc.).
  • Overrides are now duplicated as well when copying an override data-block (e.g. if you select a whole object hierarchy and duplicate it in the 3DView, you will get a new override of the same linked data).
  • Python-defined properties and custom properties can also be overridden (as long as they are defined as overridable, and belong to some data that is also overridable).
  • Making override of an object or collection from the 3DView now does a complete check of dependencies and overrides everything needed (Note that this will override a lot of data-blocks in typical complex production characters e.g.).
  • From the outliner, you can override the hierarchy of linked data-blocks leading to the one you selected. It will also behave similar to the 3DView operation when applied on an object or collection.
  • 3DView 'make override' operator has been upgraded.
  • No more need to select a 'main' object when overriding an instanced collection (this was not used anymore anyway).
  • One can now override a linked, but not object-instanced, collection fro; the 3DView, by selecting one of its objects and calling the operator.
  • Overrides can now be reset from the outliner (i.e. all defined override properties are removed, except for those ensuring relationships between IDs, and override data-blocks get reloaded), either individually or as a whole hierarchy.
  • Overrides will now be reloaded when their linked library reference are reloaded.
  • Constraints:
  • Matrices with negative scale can now be properly interpolated. This means that it is now possible to use, for example, a Copy Transform constraint and target an object with Scale X=-1, without glitches when you dial down the influence slider. (a5e176a8ed and demo videos in D8048).
  • Graph Editor:
  • Using the scrubbing region to change the current frame only changes the frame, not the cursor (fc59febb1b).
  • Drivers:
  • New lerp, clamp and smoothstep functions, inspired by GLSL mix, clamp and smoothstep. (f8cc01595d)
  • The simple expressions subset now includes lerp, clamp, smoothstep, round and log(val,base). (f8cc01595d)
  • Dependency Graph passed to Drivers:
  • Drivers can now get to the current dependency graph (for example to get to the current view layer), via the new depsgraph variable that is available to them. This can then be used in the driver expression, and passed to custom driver functions (as registered in bpy.app.driver_namespace) if necessary.
  • Virtual Reality:
  • Landmarks:
  • In the 2.83 release, landmarks were already available, but had limited usefulness. With 2.90, landmarks should be much more practicable.
  • Tweaks to how landmarks are used to establish the viewer pose:
  • Changing to a landmark moves the view exactly to it, rather than keeping the current position offset.
  • Disabling positional tracking moves the viewer back to the exact landmark position.
  • New landmark type: Custom Pose. These allow specifying a position and rotation to use as base pose, without a camera.
  • New landmark operators:
  • Add VR Landmark from Session
  • Add a new custom pose landmark, based on the current position and rotation of the viewer.
  • Add VR Landmark from Camera
  • If a camera object is active, this adds a landmark with a position and rotation based on the camera.
  • Update Custom VR Landmark
  • Updates the selected landmark's position and rotation based on the current viewer pose.
  • Cursor to VR Landmark
  • Scene Camera to VR Landmark
  • Copy the position and rotation of the selected landmark to the scene camera.
  • New Camera from VR Landmark
  • Add a camera with the position and rotation of the selected landmark.
  • Show Landmarks 3D View option, available in the Viewport Feedback panel. Enables visual indicators for positions and rotation of landmarks.
  • Miscellaneous:
  • A warning is displayed in the Viewport Feedback, indicating that the feedback options may have a significant performance impact.
  • More Features:
  • Data Duplication:
  • Data-blocks duplication (or deep copy, full copy) has been improved.
  • Doing a full copy of a scene will now use the same preference settings as when duplicating a collection or object, to determine which sub-data-blocks should also be copied (T77255, rBeee35ebd).
  • Doing a full copy of a scene or collection now duplicates actions only if relevant option is set in the user preferences.
  • All usages of duplicated sub-data-blocks should now be properly remapped to their copies.
  • Doing a full copy of a local data-block will now never duplicate the linked sub-data it may use (this was already the case for scenes, but not for objects or collections before).
  • However, doing a full copy of a linked data-block will also duplicate all of its linked sub-data, if allowed (since user then wants to get a locale duplicate of its linked data).
  • Baking:
  • New Ray Length setting, which limits how far rays can travel before they are excluded from the baking result. Useful for baking meshes with holes in them. (27cac4a102)
  • Motion Tracking:
  • Added new lens distortion model which allows to solve motion in Blender and do compositing in Natron/Nuke. It is available in the Lens settings of movie clip and is called "Nuke" (which is the default model in Natron as well).
  • Sequencer:
  • Add frame interpolation option to speed effect. (99cb6dbe65)
  • Experimental Features:
  • The User Preferences → Developers Extra → Experimental options are now organized in different categories (rBdd9c0dbf).
  • They are also only available on daily builds of master. Beta and Final releases don't have their panels.
  • Linux:
  • Linux now has initial Wayland support, when building the WITH_GHOST_WAYLAND option. Some features are still missing in this implementation and X11 remains used by default for now.
  • Add-ons:
  • BlenderKit:
  • Perpendicular snap (in import settings) improves snapping to sloped surfaces or ceilings. Useful for trees on slopes/chandeliers under curved ceilings and similar.
  • A new fast rating operator was added. Accessible under F shortcut in asset bar.
  • Ui was reorganized to subpanels, with many small useful tweaks.
  • Asset menu is available also in the Selected Model panel. Enables 'search similar' and other commands for objects that are already in the scene.
  • Collection Manager:
  • New Features:
  • Added an option to align RTOs to the right. (rBA2aa4745)
  • Renamed the Filter Restriction Toggles popover to Display Options. (rBA2aa4745)
  • Added line separators to the tree view to better differentiate rows, especially when RTOs are aligned to the right. (rBA2aa4745)
  • Added a new Specials menu with items to Remove Empty Collections and Purge All Collections Without Objects. (rBA711efc3)
  • Added a new Apply Phantom Mode button, this will apply the changes made to RTOs and quit Phantom Mode. (rBAcee1751)
  • Added a linear renumbering option and a constrain to branch option to the Renumber QCD Slots Operator; all options can now be combined with each other. (rBA09133c5)
  • Added menu items for the Collection Manager popup and the QCD Move widget to the Object->Collection menu. (rBA52edc5f)
  • Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed removing collections not preserving the RTOs of their children. (rBA969e77e)
  • Fixed an error when removing a collection with a child that is already linked to the parent collection. (rBA0657e99)
  • Fixed the QCD Move Widget not accounting for the 3D View bounds when first called. (rBA2c9bc1e)
  • Vastly increased the performance when there are a large number of selected objects. (rBAadac42a)

New in Blender 2.83 (Sep 1, 2020)

  • Grease Pencil:
  • Completely rewritten from scratch, the new Grease Pencil is much faster and better integrated with Blender
  • Volumes:
  • OpenVDB files can now be imported and rendered with the new volume object.
  • Virtual Reality:
  • Initial native virtual reality, focused on scene inspection.
  • Cycles:
  • Adaptive sampling, OptiX viewport denoising, improved shader nodes, and more.
  • EEVEE:
  • New render passes, improved light cache and high-quality hair transparency.
  • Sculpt:
  • Face sets to control visibility, cloth brush, and many more improvements.

New in Blender 2.81 (Nov 21, 2019)

  • The much anticipated update of the Blender 2.80 milestone is here! With over a thousand fixes and several important updates that were planned for the 2.8 series. Most notable are the sculpting tools overhaul, support for NVIDIA RTX ray tracing in Cycles, Intel Open Image denoising, a better outliner, a new file browser and much more.

New in Blender 2.79 (Sep 13, 2017)

  • Denoiser
  • PBR Shader
  • Shadow Catcher
  • Filmic Color Management
  • Faster AMD OpenCL
  • Over 700 bugs fixed
  • so much more!

New in Blender 2.77 (Mar 20, 2016)

  • Cycles: Better Subsurface Scattering, GPU support for Smoke/Fire and Point Density.
  • Grease pencil stroke sculpting and improved workflow.
  • OpenVDB caching for smoke/volumetric simulations.
  • Reworked library handling to manage missing and deleted datablocks.
  • Redesigned progress bar.
  • Edit mode boolean tool, better decimate modifier.
  • Improved extruding and weight painting tools for sculpting/painting.
  • Support for Windows XP and the SCons build system was removed.
  • And: 100s of bug fixes and other improvements!

New in Blender 2.76 (Oct 10, 2015)

  • Initial support for Pixar's OpenSubdiv geometry subdivision technology.
  • A huge view-port performance boost.
  • Big file browser performance boost and arrow keys navigation support.
  • Node auto-offset feature that helps organizing node layouts.
  • Absolute grid snapping in the 3D view.
  • Sculpting with tiled strokes.
  • Text effect strips for the sequencer, supporting subtitle export
  • As usual, hundreds of bugs fixed and other improvements!

New in Blender 2.75 (Jul 2, 2015)

  • Blender now supports a fully integrated Multi-View and Stereo 3D pipeline
  • Cycles has much awaited initial support for AMD GPUs, and a new Light Portals feature.
  • UI now allows font previews in the file browser.
  • High quality options for viewport depth of field were added
  • Modeling has a new Corrective Smooth modifier.
  • The Decimate modifier was improved significantly.
  • 3D viewport painting now supports symmetry and the distribution of Dynamic Topology was improved
  • Video Sequence Editor: Placeholders can now replace missing frames of image sequences
  • Game Engine now allows smoother LOD transitions, and supports mist attributes animation
  • And: 100s of bug fixes and smaller feature improvements.

New in Blender 2.75 Beta (May 28, 2015)

  • Re-Designs:
  • Files saved in 2.74 subversion 3 or newer, when opened in 2.74 subversion 2 or older will lose their packed images.
  • The Baking-API now uses an object_id in the bake() function and in the pixel_array table.
  • Multi-View and Stereo 3D:
  • Real-time visualization of stereoscopic effect
  • Viewport feedback of stereoscopy cameras, convergence and volumes
  • Camera stereo settings (pivot, convergence, ...)
  • Render of multiple views
  • Compositor and Sequencer
  • Cycles support
  • And more!
  • Cycles Rendering:
  • Initial support for AMD GPUs
  • Support for Light Portals
  • Several Performance and Memory optimizations
  • Sculpting/Painting:
  • New: Symmetry painting support for texture painting in 3D viewport.
  • More Features:
  • Image metadata support and display
  • "Simplify" for scenes is now split into viewport/render

New in Blender 2.74 (Mar 31, 2015)

  • Cycles got a few optimizations, a new "Pointiness" attribute and objects can now use the texture maps from other objects, the Viewport is now able to display Ambient Occlusion and Depth of Field, the Outliner was improved in quite some ways, it is now possible to edit normals, the Hair tools developed for the Gooseberry Project are now available (including improved hair dynamics, child hair modifiers and various interaction tools), texture painting can now be done using Cavity Masks, Freestyle memory consumption was greatly improved, the Grease Pencil rewrite from Blender 2.73 was continued to make more editing tools available, improvements for animation interaction and many more features which are worth checking out!

New in Blender 2.73 (Jan 7, 2015)

  • Several Cycles Rendering updates, improvements and new features, support for GeForce 9xx GPUs.
  • New fullscreen mode, improved Pie Menus, 3D View can now display the world background.
  • Knife-tool now allows freehand smart cuts, and more improvements were made in selection tools, Bevel Modifier and Shapekeys.
  • Unwrapping UVs was improved, strength is now enabled for Grab and Snake Hook brushes, better visual feedback mode for painting with masks.
  • Sequencer now can show a backdrop, strips can be snapped to others along with other improvements.
  • Freestyle NPR Rendering has a new SVG exporter add-on, along with other improvements.
  • Grease Pencil had a major update, it is now possible to edit and animate strokes! New draw styles, and imporvements in user interface.
  • Collada Importer was updated, improving the compatibility with other software’s bone concepts.
  • Add-ons: FBX improved importing/exporting armatures, some Python API changes could need some Add-ons to be updated!
  • As usual several other minor updates and improvements, and lot of bugfixing also in this release.

New in Blender 2.72 (Sep 25, 2014)

  • Cycles Rendering:
  • Volume rendering and Subsurface Scattering are available on GPU, Volume and Glossy sampling was improved, new Ashikhmin-Shirley distribution for Glossy and Anisotropic BSDFs, memory usage during rendering was lowered, faster OSL rendering, Anamorphic Bokeh support, and better control over caustics.
  • User Interface:
  • The long awaited pie menus are available as an addon for ⇆ Tab, Z, Q, ⇆ Tab⇧ ShiftCtrl, ., CtrlSpace operators. New Tooltip design makes important information more noticeable. Python text is displayed in a monospaced font. Blender Internal preview now behaves like the Cycles preview, it starts rendering at low resolution and improves from there. Improved units parsing, even though devs claim Blender not to feature a units engine it does a better job now.
  • Modeling:
  • A new intersection tool was added, to quickly cut up geometry. It's a bit like boolean but not calculating interior/exterior.
  • The Bevel Tool and the Bevel Modifier now have the option to set the material of the newly created faces to the material in a given slot.
  • Sculpting/Painting:
  • Texture painting workflow has been streamlined with easy access to painted images and UV layers, ability to generate strokes with curves and lines has been added, more blend modes are available and new tools to fill and mask have been added.
  • Compositing:
  • A new Sun Beams node has been added to the compositor.
  • Game Development:
  • A new Mouse Actuator allowing between other things to do mouse look has been added.
  • The Property Sensor has new evaluation types.
  • The TrackTo Actuator has new menus to select up/track axis.
  • The Property Actuator has a new level mode.
  • The Mouse Over Any Sensor has a new X-Ray and Property/Material detection options.
  • A new BGE Debug and Contrainst Wrapper API have been added.
  • Freestyle NPR Rendering:
  • The Freestyle line rendering engine has been integrated into Cycles in addition to the Blender Internal (BI). Freestyle provides Cycles users with a versatile non-photorealistic (NPR) line rendering solution. Most Freestyle options work in the same way for both Cycles and BI. Line textures in Freestyle for Cycles are defined by means of shader nodes (unlike Freestyle for BI, which relies on the conventional texture mapping and influence panels). New per-material Freestyle line settings provide a reliable mean to specify line colors applicable to both Cycles and the BI. The Freestyle Python API also has user-visible updates for better code readability and run-time performance.
  • Animation:
  • Color ramps now support color interpolation in hue mode both clock- and counter-clock-wise. CtrlF in animation editors now works as a shortcut for activating the Filter by Name functionality. Weights now draw in wireframe mode in the 3D view. Temporary data gets deleted when closing Blender. The video editor got enhanced by a gaussian blur filter. New camera presets: Blackmagic Pocket Cinema and Blackmagic Production 4K.
  • Addons:
  • FBX improvements: Import now supports armatures, shapekeys, animations, with shapekeys also being supported for export.
  • New DXF importer with support for 3D(SubD) geometry, and geo-referencing. It imports curve types as curves and adds control over various geometry merge options.
  • New UV addon for align distribution and copy/paste (!!) of UVs.
  • New Game Publishing Addon is available for game developers!
  • New addon for named layers & grouped layer management.

New in Blender 2.72 Test 2 (Sep 12, 2014)

  • 3D View:
  • Fix for transparency issues in 3D Viewport. (a9bb96e)
  • Fix T40850: Object emitter of particles not visible in viewport when GLSL and "only render" checked. (4236e3b)
  • Fix T40867: Autokeyframe in camera view not working. (730a155)
  • Fix for image user count not being decreased when deleting a 3D View background image. (320b7a5, 0fc05c1)
  • Fix for an odd situation where you could assign a background image without increasing its usercount. (ed871df)
  • Fix T40364: Texture images are not properly displayed in the material preview in BI when using SSS. (7587e82)
  • Fix T40775: Clearing material texture slot through Python does not update 3D View render. (180a7ac)
  • Fix T40785: "Select Grouped" Pass Index mode is redundant. Revert "Object Select Similar tool now has a Pass Index option." (330633f)
  • Fix T40939: Border render and SSS doesn't work correct in rendered viewport. (e34e0c2)
  • Fix T40921: Gravity in walk mode hard-coded, cannot use alternate scene scale. (1aabbf8)
  • Fix T41128: Box selection bug with armatures. (6a43ee6)
  • Fix T41221: 3D View rendered mode crashes on new scene. (ff37a1d)
  • Fix T41206: Camera-only render border broken. (1a9252d)
  • Fix T41411: Undo crashing with background images set. (ca5c02f)
  • Fix T41421: "Add to Selection" mode locks. (513b8dd)
  • Fix T41137: Old render result from viewport render in camera view does not go away when middle clicking. (354b17d)
  • Fix T41499: Can't use Deselect/Select All tool while in Texture Paint mode. (f11057f)
  • Fix T41068: Viewport shading is different between material and rendered modes. (08c1408)
  • Animation:
  • Fix T40801: Selecting group objects by KeyingSets didn't work with builtin KeyingSets. (11e0ddd)
  • Fix T40991: Mirrored armatures not restored properly when cancelling. (b617d6d)
  • Fix for invalid memory access in graph editor when deleting the last vertex in a fcurve. (19f89a0)
  • Fix T41088: Canceling pose library preview does not reset to previous pose. (0fd194c)
  • Fix T41075: Segfault when attempting to escape from bone translation. (57a3403)
  • Fix T41227: Unselectable items are selected when they are unhidden. (e0fd1bf)
  • Fix T41228: Selection of bones bug. (9765265)
  • Fix T41409: Copy Custom Property function does nothing with pose bones. (561f375)
  • Modeling:
  • Fix for dissolve faces iterating over verts while removing. (0ea7302)
  • Fix T40813: Dissolve verts with adjacent regions, removes the dividing edge. (2aca720)
  • Fix T40823: Crash when using LoD operator without valid object. (92ecbd2)
  • Fix T40862: Numinput transform did not take into account scale_length. (cadf77d)
  • Fix T40556: Curve Modifier does not work when used in a Background scene. (61e5f81)
  • Fix T40823: LoD add and remove commands crash without a valid object. (241a9b5)
  • Fix T40877: Bezier Hook to a new object does not work properly. (f4cf845)
  • Fix T40164: Linking a Group of linked Groups don't take Dupli Visibility correctly. (c9ac51e)
  • Fix T41003: Object Info's Random socket produces erratic results when material is applied to multiple Dupli instances of an object. (5b0e4cd)
  • Fix T41019: Calculate Mass does not calculate actual volume. (4633e65)
  • Fix potential bug in loop normals code. (db1ab7b)
  • Fix for bmesh_vert_separate adding to visithash multiple times. (1ce15f8)
  • Fix T34664: Bevel face material can be set in tool and modifier. (70453c5)
  • Fix wrong index update when removing curve points. (543f7b7)
  • Fix T41039: Hook modifier sometimes fails to retain correct bezier curve point assignment. (397bc87)
  • Fix T41010: MetaBall duplivert unwanted movement bug. (e0d8e62)
  • Fix T40432: Scaling to zero with manipulate center points works precisely on second time. (1526620)
  • Fix T40839: Object font text rendering bug. (6a2cefc)
  • Fix T41149: Dissolve crash due to autoSmooth. (f5cee25)
  • Fix bug in validate mesh code (could use index out of range). (51120ef)
  • Fix T40831: Shrink wrap modifier causes very high CPU usage when targeting meshes with shaped keys. (5bfbe64)
  • Fix T41201: Blender crashes when UV editing. (d49b86d)
  • Fix T41191: Face snapping doesn't work properly. (c4b47b8)
  • Fix T40958: Align rotation + project individual elements not working. (4f18ab1)
  • Fix T41047: Text objects flipping. (ea30641)
  • Fix T40948: Fill holes fails in certain case. (e1819cc)
  • Fix crash on edit mode with multi-align project. (ee8dafe)
  • Fix T41360: Crash on Boolean Modifier. (0fe70b5)
  • Fix T41164: Knife creates duplicate verts. (1510d0d)
  • Fix T39387: Knife makes duplicate verts with subsurf. (818a036)
  • Fix T41443: Separate bug with Curves & Hooks. (ddb843a)
  • Fix T41085: Blender crashes when using "spline" or "segments" for bevel curve factor. (6c7467e)
  • Fix for BKE_deform_flip_side_name() getting fooled by extra separator characters. (1dbadf1)
  • Fix T41479: The function BLI_bvhtree_find_nearest() gives inaccurate results. (95ae98c)
  • Fix mesh validate skipping first vertex. (37da1da)
  • Fix crash in BKE_mesh_validate_arrays(). (5e6b79c)
  • Fix for BMesh fill using arbitrary face-flipping. (1706182)
  • Fix T41523: Mesh triangle fill creates flipped faces. (afa6d4e)
  • Fix T41507: Empty prevents image deletion. (e44cd30)
  • Sculpting/Painting:
  • Fix T40691: Dyntopo changes lost on save if sculpting on multiple objects. (dcc6300)
  • Fix T40758: Front facing not consistent in sculpt mode. (dbc04c5, bd777ff)
  • Fix T40997: Artifacts appear when unhiding part of the mesh in dyntopo. (f5caab2)
  • Fix T40981: Clipping border does not work with GLSL on ATI's or Intel GPU's. (a498d88, 4097f9c)
  • Fix T41193: Sculpting uses 100% CPU. (115458b)
  • Fix crash on dyntopo when show diffuse option + collapse is used. (05935b5)
  • Fix T41354: Cursor never gets reactivated in UV sculpting. (26dc8b7)
  • Fix T41385: Flag uses color transform by default, and it shouldn't. (8e86c41)
  • Fix undo in texture painting not refreshing float images in viewport if 16 bit float textures was off. (6e8e94d)
  • Fix T41386: Use Alpha bug. (ba345bc)
  • Fix T41414: The alpha setting of creating new image in the texture painting mode doesn't work. (ba345bc)
  • Fix crash on texture painting after new scene is added. (a2dfeea)
  • Fix uninitialized imagepaint values on new scene. (01c5a65)
  • Fix T41456: Soft light texture blend mode has zero effect. (b07ea2f)
  • Physics and Particles:
  • Fix T40733: Segfault with hair particles cache and vgroups. (d8b0470)
  • Fix T40815: Particle birth times not initialized correctly. (259a436)
  • Fix T40983: Particle texture use of generated coordinates is wrong. (06d943c)
  • Fix T41113: Hide doesn't work on particle systems. (8620008)
  • Fix T41114: Particle systems cause memory corruption due to invalid dmcache index (again). (b984489)
  • Fix T41295: Rigid bodyfield weights not working. (3cd2c61, 29e1592)
  • Fix T40047: The maximum value for smoke initial velocity is too low. (3225762, ce96002)
  • Fix T41403: Grid Particles only partially generated. (bd623d9)
  • Fix 'quick smoke' not rendering anything (texture coordinates was left unset). (da18019)
  • Tracking:
  • Fix incorrect 2d stabilization for masks. (569eafc)
  • Compositor:
  • Fix for broken subpixel sampling for render layers node. (ca8d8f5)
  • Fix T40878: Inconsistent translate node. (03929ae)
  • Fix T40903: Rendering alpha channel is broken. (ecc2e29)
  • Fix T40986: Crash on using the viewer node inside of group nodes. (a5902fb)
  • Fix T40658: UV map node not working for GLSL materials. (1161b00)
  • Sequencer:
  • Fix T40851: "Sequencer" auto-check after changing spaceview and scene. (0caee78)
  • Fix T41086: VSE separate images increases file size abnormally. (2e43617)
  • Fix T41241: Cropping strips puts a transparent line through the image. (fa8d38d)
  • Fix T41323: Video window taking all the space when switching to split view. (f37c3dd)
  • User Interface:
  • Fix T37478: Use cursor x-location for tooltip placement. (b9522e5)
  • Fix T40841: Copy and Paste objects no longer functions from one running instance of Blender to another. (4c83fae)
  • Fix for NLA editor not being updated on using "Make Links" (Ctrl)+(L). (481e8ab)
  • Fix T40885: "Reset Curve" is backwards on Custom Falloff Curves (Lights). (2e64b83)
  • Fix T40065: Pressing in separate render result window does not focus main window. (fef9463)
  • Fix T40895: Zooming out a lot on the Curves Panel crashes Blender. (f004893)
  • Fix T40888: Memory error when selecting Cycles render engine. (8c9c93c)
  • Fix T40945: Typo in tooltip for SSS property. (ce0596e)
  • Fix T40941: Hide bevel factor in the Text Panel. (ef801eb)
  • Fix for selecting object channels in NLA editor didn't make the object active. (89aee74)
  • Fix T40548: After canceling, F-Curve handlers don't go back to original position. (22fa831)
  • Fix T40791: Changing path to movie file does not mark the project as changed. (aa620b5)
  • Fix wrong interface flags combination in inverse kinematics panel. (e28ffaf)
  • Fix T41109: Reloading image that has been modified outside Blender does not update image in Image Texture nodes. (9a45c9d)
  • Fix T41100: Draw other object UV's doesn't work when both objects have no image. (1f3c846)
  • Fix T41077: Dope sheet's column select (Alt+RMB) gets ignored with NLA Strips. (c03d8a1)
  • Fix T41042: Irrelevant Bezier handles still affect Graph Editor Show All. (73d157e)
  • Fix T41156: UILayout.prop_enum() does not observe "text" parameter override. (cf9d5db)
  • Fix T41157: UI problems with GSoC 2013 Paint. (1134ca7)
  • Prevent dragging a popup from activating a button. (1cbe85b1)
  • Fix T40925: Hard limit on scene gravity. (de46298)
  • Fix T41223: F-Curve sliders won't update values during playback when mouse cursor is outside the left panel. (42ba931)
  • Fix T41240: Home key doesn't show everything on F-Curves. (3a4e8f8)
  • Fix T41258: Crash when entering edit mode while viewport render is enabled. (eb016eb)
  • Fix T41236: Rendered viewport doesn't update with material actions. (54472df)
  • Fix for glitch with menus not reliably setting an active item. (47e7ce6, 784c99f, 4c3b25e)
  • Fix T41175: Quad View - Properties Region - Clip option not updating. (6ba4db2)
  • Fix for out of bounds write while dragging. (9ece95d)
  • Fix T41173: CM view selection is difficult with multiple views. (9a8e889)
  • Fix T41379: Drag n Drop .txt files into the text editor fails. (5ad353b)
  • Fix marker selection margin ignoring DPI. (0219cf4)
  • Fix uninitialized memory use. (afe8a40)
  • Fix T41415: Lasso keymap not working in UV editor. (4bd252d)
  • Fix T40717: Screen does not update while scrolling or zooming with touchpad on a laptop. (2eebe61)
  • Fix T41425: UI wobbles using scrollbar. (5df2a98)
  • Fix T41435: Info-text lags changing space-types. (dae74d2)
  • Fix T41427: Region overlap moves into wrong window. (968e1b3)
  • Fix T41467: Modifier view buttons changing positions. (e85bcfa)
  • Fix T41462: "Reload from trusted" button not prompting for confirmation. (71ce415)
  • Fix T41426: Scroll issues with floating menus. (de12cd7)
  • Fix T40653: MMB not behaving like RMB in modified keymap. (eb10cda)
  • Fix T39630: Mouse Wheel doesn't detect Multi Window Focus. (adb08de)
  • Fix T41477: Some UI op buttons don't have an option to edit shortcuts. (28c6982)
  • Fix T41497: Colour Ramp UI bug causes invalid interpolations between RGB and HSV/HSL. (7a36251)
  • Import/Export:
  • Collada:
  • Fix T40829: Collada Export with 'Include Material Textures' selected crashes. (b5acd1a)
  • Fix T41528: Error message on trying to import COLLADA triangle strips is wrong. (8bb318b)
  • MPEG:
  • Fix T40980: Exporting animation in MPEG Matroska using ffv1 and FLAC codecs fails. (6c70559)
  • Game Engine:
  • Fix T40761: Bone constraints broken in the BGE. (c92c3ef)
  • Fix T40912: Collision callbacks don't work if set directly. (49aff41)
  • Fix T40923: An error from a python controller on a LibFreed object causes a crash. (4af848e, 04fdd35)
  • Fix T29419: Behavior of applyImpulse (GameObject method) doesn't match the behavior described in the documentation. (1f43b08)
  • Fix T40909: BGE softbodies broken. (3a9e588)
  • Fix T40257: Frustum culling not working properly. (315609e)
  • Fix T40146: BGE Compound parent crash. (dfe1b9b)
  • Fix T41204: Python KX_lightObject.distance bug. Patch by Jon Szabo (thatonejonguy). (a21a9dd)
  • Constraint wrapper using degrees instead of radians. (8f947ff)
  • Fix for a bug causing frequent crash on scene restart with Navmesh. (8aa203a)
  • Fix crash and return boolean from scene.replace(). (fb49c5a)
  • Fix T41272: KX_Light.color() returns wrong values. (a4c5570)
  • Render:
  • Fix T41395: Set Object As Camera causes strange renders. (5d1d23d)
  • Fix T41349: Muting texture nodes can cause crashes. (1743c81)
  • Fix T41457: Viewport resolution divider uses Freestyle for every resolution. (2184ac8)
  • Blender Internal:
  • Fix for when an object had dupliobjects children, it was never rendered at all, even if having particle systems. (80d3eb6)
  • Fix T40744: MIP Map is generating strange noise in texture. (1ca8684)
  • Fix T41408: Diffuse and specular passes were incorrect with combined/color passes disabled. (d425cb0, be755f3)
  • Fix T41060: Wrong texture 'Object' mapping in 3DView Rendered mode. (e9ef7a8)
  • Fix T40566: Light instances disappear in rendered viewport. (e5fd559)
  • Cycles:
  • Fix T40816: SSS brightness difference with Sample All Direct Lights. (8ef2314)
  • Fix T40797: Crash on render on specific file with volumentrics and 'use hair' clicked on render layer. (a8233d7)
  • Fix T40836: Cycles volume scattering shader crash. (cb95544)
  • Fix T40795: Dot output is inverted in viewport with Cycles. (7dbedf6)
  • Fix T40843: Cycles does not support viewport render override. (6ff6883)
  • Fix T40964: Massive shading failures with glass node mixing, whiteouts and blackouts. (e929dc2, a378f8d)
  • Fix for crash with environment maps and packed images. (dc40928)
  • Fix T40712: Duplicators don't generate orco and UV coordinates in Cycles viewport preview. (2fe0cf5)
  • Fix T39286: Display percentage ignored in Cycles viewport. (2fe0cf5)
  • Fix T41005: Seemingly random crashes with cycles rendering. (5e216a6)
  • Fix T40989: Intermittent crash clicking material color selector. (5e216a6)
  • Fix T41023: Specific material cause bad render result, different on CPU/GPU. (594ff72)
  • Fix T40987: Distant Lamps have no influence on Volumes. (e35845d)
  • Fix T41044: World space location affects object space normal pass during bake. (50d3014)
  • Fix T41122: Mask modifier followed by hair particles causes crash on render. (3ca78a4)
  • Fix T41141: Can't paint texture in Cycles. (c32a671)
  • Fix T41147: Static BVH shading problem. (9fcaac5)
  • Fix T41079: Solid black render of object with negative scale and smooth shading. (9fcaac5)
  • Fix T41116: Motion Blur causes random black surfaces on rigged models. (eb8f85d)
  • Fix T41115: Motion Blur renders objects black - but not in Viewport Preview. (eb8f85d)
  • Fix T41160: Rendering duplifaces crashed Blender. (638bb78)
  • Fix T41139: Cycles Hair BSDF roughness problem. (34937f6)
  • Fix T41174: Tangent space required UV map. (946f291)
  • Fix T41197: Blender freezes to infinite loop when switching to PAUSED Cycles rendered viewport. (42aef16)
  • Fix T41222: Cycles gives weird output when baking (4096*4096) resolution on GPU. (983cbaf)
  • Fix T41362: CPU and GPU rendering gives different results. (8bed4e6)
  • Fix for nested Cycles sessions. (db6d2a6)
  • Fix T41219: Cycles backface detection doesn't work properly. (bfaf4f2)
  • Fix T41314: OpenGL error when using Cycles engine. (8986883)
  • Fix T41474: Second render layer doesn't render if first one has "Use Surfaces" disabled. (a6ae12a)
  • Fix T41471: Setting small tile size results in wrong bake with stripes rather than the expected noise pattern. (8d3cc43)
  • Fix T40962: Ashikhmen Shirley shader has excessive fireflies. (7bc87a3)
  • Fix T41267: Wrong light distribution with when having objects with motion blur. (2e5e1e2)
  • Fix wrong image update tagging (float vs. byte images). (7c052a8)
  • Fix T41541: Cuda renders objects in black with MIS enabled in world setting. (a0600de)
  • Freestyle:
  • Fix for "cast shadows only" materials not handled properly. (ccfe845)
  • Fix T40833: Crash when rendering with freestyle. (ea3c2eb, 6c6fa74)
  • Fix for segmentation fault in pipeline. (cc13725, 3f1ed43)
  • Fix for crash in the constructor of freestyle.types.StrokeVertexIterator. (02eb03f)
  • Fix T41180: Crash when using motion blur with Freestyle. (698a9a2)
  • Fix for a crash during access to Scene properties from within Python. (622ef08)
  • Fix for vertex colors not working properly. (f7d3f2b)
  • Fix T41464: Material Boundary bug in Freestyle. (eb8964f)
  • Open Shading Language:
  • Fix T41013: Crash when using OSL in Cycles. (5e216a6)
  • Fix T41318: OSL compiler signature changed with 1.5. (b9e4929, b3e3ca7)
  • Fix T41276: OSL bug in getmessage ("trace", "geom:name", output). (a192fac)
  • Fix T41318: API change in OSL. (4cf531f)
  • Fix T41123: Crashing OSL when optimization level > O0 is used for osl_shaders.cpp. (c0c037f)
  • Python API:
  • Fix T41196: Calling Bake operator from Python causes a crash. (234ae0b)
  • Fix addon crash when trying listdir a directory we have no permission to. (3a58c46)
  • Fix T41284: The Python ops log doesn't work. (6fa6fa2)
  • Fix for mathutils.Euler on big endian systems. (a108532)
  • Fix T41454: Command "Dirty Vertex Colors" prompts Python error. (bb39925)
  • Fix missing tag for detecting changes with bpy.data.node_groups[...].is_updated(). (4ba0f44)
  • Miscellaneous:
  • Fix T40792: Blender reports missing files when those files have been packed into a blend. (50ca320)
  • Fix T39825: Crash on startup with tablet. (d5297b6)
  • Fix T41035: Scale Manipulator Ctrl+Alt+S issue with Maya shortcuts. (813ece7)
  • Fix T41081: Presets not working on pinned properties panels. (cf3bb40)
  • Fix T41133: Speakers with animated pitch cause clicks in rendered animations, crashes or huge filesizes in rendered audio. (31e1a31)
  • Fix crash in cases when first BA step happens with all zero-weighted tracks. (895f0f3)
  • Fix T40824: Emulate 3 Button Mouse option breaks some functionality in other places. (3ccd9b7)
  • Fix memory leak of main lock when reading from library files. (e4a13e4)
  • Fix for double freeing of MEM_guardedalloc'ed memory originating from BLF_lang_set(). (f0259d0)
  • Fix T41328: Saving a copy changes lib paths. (9855edc)
  • Fix T41062: "copy to selected" doesn't work for all attributes. (5336e68)
  • Fix T40766: Startup fails with UnicodeDecodeError on Windows. (d4599ff)
  • Fix out of bounds read when recalculating mipmaps. (e05567e)
  • Fix T41431: Min/Max custom property range mismatch. (7728ffa)
  • Fix T38722: Adding units in Imperial setting results in inconsistent values. (8535b9b)

New in Blender 2.71 (Jun 26, 2014)

  • Cycles Rendering:
  • Cycles now includes support for rendering volume textures, fire and smoke, deformation motion blur, baking textures from cycles materials, more texture interpolation modes and a dedicated UV layer node.
  • Animation:
  • More easing equations added to the IPO editor for better animation control, locking time to other windows is again possible, auto snapping is now independent from display type.
  • The user interface now offers more feedback, especially on errors, updates driver expressions automatically on editing, includes more icons and offers more editing tools.
  • New tools also include lasso selection support, non-linked duplication for strips, and setting preview range based on selected strips.
  • Modelling:
  • The new per-face normals feature allows blender to display and export sharp edges correctly without geometry duplication.
  • In addition, selection tools offer more options.
  • Sculpting/Painting:
  • New features include a HSL color wheel for color selection and tools to handle homogenous density in dynamic topology sculpting.
  • Dyntopo and matcap display for sculpt mode have also had performance optimizations.
  • Game Engine:
  • UI to deactivate logic bricks, multi-threaded animations, shadows-only materials and more action layers are among the new features for the game engine
  • Freestyle NPR Rendering:
  • Freestyle has been upgraded with textured stroke support. Textured stroke support makes it possible to apply patterns to the lines and simulate rough surfaces or different kinds of brush tips for the strokes themselves.
  • Line sorting also gives artists more control over the order of line drawing
  • User Interface:
  • Interface features include new icons for texture painting, resizeable preview widgets and draggable popups.
  • More Features:
  • More control for curve bevelling, explicit shadow cast control for blender internal materials, new distortion model for motion tracking and better handles for mask editors.

New in Blender 2.71 RC1 (Jun 16, 2014)

  • Includes massive FBX fixes, Cycles baking, and more.

New in Blender 2.71 Test Build 2 (May 28, 2014)

  • CYCLES RENDERING:
  • Deformation Motion Blur
  • Fire and Smoke Rendering
  • Baking API
  • Volume Rendering
  • Optimizations
  • Branched Path
  • Nodes
  • CUDA
  • USER INTERFACE:
  • OpenGL Render options are now available inside the Info Editor -> Render menu, among the OpenGL Render / Animation operators. This is consistent for Blender Internal and Cycles now, before these settings were in different panels.
  • Dragging popups by their title area is now possible.
  • Mat/tex/etc. preview widgets are now resizable.
  • ANIMATION:
  • F-Curves
  • Drivers
  • Armatures
  • Constraints
  • Transform Constraint - Backward Compatibility Issue
  • Dope Sheet Editor
  • Graph Editor
  • Animation Editors:
  • Decouple auto-snapping behavior from time display type
  • Jumping between key-frames only considers selected data by default
  • 2D Views: Lock Time to Other Windows option restored
  • NLA Editor:
  • UI Changes
  • Tools
  • Equations:
  • The New Interpolation Types
  • Easing
  • MODELLING:
  • Selection:
  • Loop-select on edge boundaries now extends to select all boundaries if the current boundary is already selected 276ef3b3b5192aad5c3e5e02c69246
  • Switching modes can optionally contract selection (Holding Ctrl while switching from Face -> Edge, Edge -> Vertex)
  • Tools:
  • Set edges smooth/sharp is now in the Shading panel of 3DView tools, together with already existing smooth/flat faces, and new smooth/sharp vertices (which simply tag vertices’ edges as smooth/sharp).
  • Split Normals, Stage I:
  • Blender can now use “split normals” (i.e. normals per vertex per face) to draw smooth/sharp edges/faces in the 3DView, and both Cycles and BI renderers. In Edit mode, it also can draw split normals as lines, just like usual vertex or face ones.
  • SCULPTING/PAINTING:
  • HSL Color Wheel:
  • Support for HSL (Hue, Saturation, Lightness) based color wheel.
  • Sculpting:
  • Support for constant detail in dyntopo sculpting.
  • Working with constant detail:
  • Constant detail is a tool to help maintain the same level of detail across the mesh. Dyntopo allows flexibility in how detail is handled during sculpting, so setting the mode to constant will not immediately convert the whole mesh to the detail value displayed in the topology panel. However, further strokes will utilize that setting while in constant detail mode.

  • GAME DEVELOPMENT:
  • Blender Game Engine:
  • Deactivating Logic Bricks
  • Multi-Threaded Animations
  • Skinning Profile Time Moved
  • Cast Only Material Option
  • FREESTYLE NPR RENDERING:
  • New feature #1: Textured strokes:
  • Using textures through the Freestyle GUI
  • Using textures in Python scripting
  • New feature #2: Sorting:
  • Sort options
  • MORE FEATURES:
  • 3D Text:
  • Text-boxes can now be selected in editmode
  • Curves bevel factor mapping:
  • Bevel Factor Mapping allows to control the relation between bevel factors (number between 0 and 1) and the rendered start and end point of a beveled spline.
  • ADDONS:
  • Python API:
  • Sequencer.elements.push renamed to append

New in Blender 2.71 Test Build 1 (May 23, 2014)

  • CYCLES RENDERING:
  • Deformation Motion Blur
  • Fire and Smoke Rendering
  • Baking API
  • Volume Rendering
  • Optimizations
  • Branched Path
  • Nodes
  • CUDA
  • USER INTERFACE:
  • OpenGL Render options are now available inside the Info Editor -> Render menu, among the OpenGL Render / Animation operators. This is consistent for Blender Internal and Cycles now, before these settings were in different panels.
  • Dragging popups by their title area is now possible.
  • Mat/tex/etc. preview widgets are now resizable.
  • ANIMATION:
  • F-Curves
  • Drivers
  • Armatures
  • Constraints
  • Transform Constraint - Backward Compatibility Issue
  • Dope Sheet Editor
  • Graph Editor
  • Animation Editors:
  • Decouple auto-snapping behavior from time display type
  • Jumping between key-frames only considers selected data by default
  • 2D Views: Lock Time to Other Windows option restored
  • NLA Editor:
  • UI Changes
  • Tools
  • Equations:
  • The New Interpolation Types
  • Easing
  • MODELLING:
  • Selection:
  • Loop-select on edge boundaries now extends to select all boundaries if the current boundary is already selected 276ef3b3b5192aad5c3e5e02c69246
  • Switching modes can optionally contract selection (Holding Ctrl while switching from Face -> Edge, Edge -> Vertex)
  • Tools:
  • Set edges smooth/sharp is now in the Shading panel of 3DView tools, together with already existing smooth/flat faces, and new smooth/sharp vertices (which simply tag vertices’ edges as smooth/sharp).
  • Split Normals, Stage I:
  • Blender can now use “split normals” (i.e. normals per vertex per face) to draw smooth/sharp edges/faces in the 3DView, and both Cycles and BI renderers. In Edit mode, it also can draw split normals as lines, just like usual vertex or face ones.
  • SCULPTING/PAINTING:
  • HSL Color Wheel:
  • Support for HSL (Hue, Saturation, Lightness) based color wheel.
  • Sculpting:
  • Support for constant detail in dyntopo sculpting.
  • Working with constant detail:
  • Constant detail is a tool to help maintain the same level of detail across the mesh. Dyntopo allows flexibility in how detail is handled during sculpting, so setting the mode to constant will not immediately convert the whole mesh to the detail value displayed in the topology panel. However, further strokes will utilize that setting while in constant detail mode.
  • GAME DEVELOPMENT:
  • Blender Game Engine:
  • Deactivating Logic Bricks
  • Multi-Threaded Animations
  • Skinning Profile Time Moved
  • Cast Only Material Option
  • FREESTYLE NPR RENDERING:
  • New feature #1: Textured strokes:
  • Using textures through the Freestyle GUI
  • Using textures in Python scripting
  • New feature #2: Sorting:
  • Sort options
  • MORE FEATURES:
  • 3D Text:
  • Text-boxes can now be selected in editmode
  • Curves bevel factor mapping:
  • Bevel Factor Mapping allows to control the relation between bevel factors (number between 0 and 1) and the rendered start and end point of a beveled spline.
  • ADDONS:
  • Python API:
  • Sequencer.elements.push renamed to append

New in Blender 2.70 (Mar 20, 2014)

  • New features include initial support for volumetrics in Cycles, and faster rendering of hair and textures. The motion tracker now supports weighted tracks and has improved planar tracking. For mesh modeling there are new Laplacian deform and wireframe modifiers, along with more control in the bevel tool. The game engine now supports object levels of detail.
  • The first results from the new user interface project are also in this release, with dozens of changes to make the interface more consistent and powerful. This is also the first release of the multithreaded dependency graph, which makes modifier and constraint evaluation faster in scenes with multiple objects.
  • Cycles Rendering:
  • Cycles now has initial support for volume rendering including emission, absorption and scattering. Volume rendering can be used to render effects like fire, smoke, mist, absorption in glass, and many other effects that can't be represented by surface meshes alone.
  • CPU rendering performance was improved, particularly for hair, textures and Open Shading Language.
  • Motion Tracker:
  • Trackers can now be weighted, to keep the result stable as feature disappear or become difficult to track. The plane track workflow was improved to be easier to control. Automatic feature detection was made more robust using a new detector algorithm.
  • User Interface:
  • The toolbar now has tabs to organize tools in categories. Multiple buttons can now be edited at once, for example for XYZ axes or color channels. Transform tools now have a mode to enter expressions and units. Other changes were done to improve lists, header menus, tooltips, buttons, menus and more.
  • Modeling:
  • The Laplacian Deform modifier was added to pose a mesh while preserving geometric details of the surface, and a new wireframe modifier allows you transform your mesh into a wireframe representation. The boolean modifier now supports ngons, and there are improvements to the bevel, screw and triangulate modifiers.
  • The bevel tool now offers more control over the bevel profile and results, and the knife tool was improved as well.
  • Threaded Dependency Graph:
  • An important change that happened under the hood is the threaded dependency graph. This means that object modifiers and constraints, among other things, can now be computed with multiple threads taking advantage of multicore processors. This will be most noticeable with scenes that have many objects, or multiple objects with heavy modifiers. This is the first step in making the dependency graph in Blender more powerful.
  • Game Development:
  • The Blender game engine now supports discrete level of detail for meshes. For game developers, support for working with Photoshop PSD files has been added.
  • A new view navigation walk mode has been added, which has a control scheme as typically found in first person shooter games. This can be useful for game developers to navigate levels as if in a game.
  • Freestyle NPR Rendering:
  • The Freestyle Python API is an essential part that makes it a highly programmable NPR rendering engine. This API has been reorganized.
  • More Features:
  • Many small changes and features were done all over Blender. Some notable new feature are normalized display for FCurves, derivative map baking, baking to vertex colors, better visualization of masks and control over mask filling, gravity option for sculpting, negative texture values to support vector displacement and a Lamp Data shading node to create more customized NPR shaders.
  • Feature Videos:
  • For a visual demonstration of some of the new features in this release, check out the feature videos created during the development of this release.
  • Addons:
  • Several addons have been added and updated, including Node Wrangler (aka Node Efficiency Tools) and a new Sketchfab Exporter addon.
  • Bug Fixes:
  • In addition to the new features, over 560 bugs that existed in previous releases have been fixed.

New in Blender 2.70 Test Build 1 (Feb 21, 2014)

  • New features include initial support for volumetrics in Cycles, and faster rendering of hair and textures. The motion tracker now supports weighted tracks and has improved planar tracking. For mesh modeling there are new Laplacian deform and wireframe modifiers, along with more control in the bevel tool. The game engine now supports object levels of detail.
  • The first results from the new user interface project are also in this release, with dozens of changes to make the interface more consistent and powerful. This is also the first release of the multithreaded dependency graph, which makes modifier and constraint evaluation faster in scenes with multiple objects.

New in Blender 2.69 (Oct 30, 2013)

  • Modeling:
  • A new hidden wire display option was added to help with retopology. Mesh Bisect is a new tool to cut meshes in half. The Bridge, Edgenet fill, Grid fill and Symmetrize tools were improved. New curve and lattice editing tools were added too.
  • Motion Tracker:
  • The Motion tracker now supports plane tracking, which can be used to replace billboards, screens and other flat things in footage.
  • Addons:
  • FBX Import support has been added and FBX/OBJ can now export split normals (without the need for the edge split modifier).
  • Bug fixes:
  • In addition to the new features, over 270 bugs that existed in previous releases have been fixed.
  • Cycles Render:
  • Hair rendering was improved with a new Hair shader and reorganized settings. Subsurface scattering uses a new sampling algorithm and now supports bump mapping and texture blurring.
  • Sky rendering now uses a more accurate sky model. New blackbody, vector transform and HSV nodes were added. The non-progressive integrator was renamed to Branched Path Integrator, and is now available for GPU rendering.
  • Tone mapping now works in the viewport, with photographic film emulation.
  • More Features:
  • Lists in the user interface can now be resized, sorted and filtered. Further there are small improvements for vertex parenting, empty objects, the shrinkwrap modifier, mask editing, armatures, f-curves and drivers.

New in Blender 2.69 RC1 (Oct 8, 2013)

  • Modeling:
  • A new hidden wire display option was added to help with retopology. Mesh Bisect is a new tool to cut meshes in half. The Bridge, Edgenet fill, Grid fill and Symmetrize tools were improved. New curve and lattice editing tools were added too.
  • Cycles Rendering:
  • Hair rendering was improved with a new Hair shader and reorganized settings. Subsurface scattering uses a new sampling algorithm and now supports bump mapping and texture blurring. Sky rendering now uses a more accurate sky model. New blackbody, vector transform and HSV nodes were added. The non-progressive integrator was renamed to Branched Path Integrator, and is now available for GPU rendering.
  • Motion Tracker:
  • Motion tracking gathered such feature as plane track, which is used to replace billboards, screens and other flat things on the footage.
  • More Features:
  • Lists in the user interface can now be resized, sorted and filtered. Further there are small improvements for vertex parenting, empty objects, the shrinkwrap modifier, mask editing, armatures, f-curves and drivers.
  • Addons:
  • FBX Import support has been added and FBX/OBJ can now export split normals (without the need for the edge split modifier).
  • Bug Fixes:
  • In addition to the new features, over 270 bugs that existed in previous releases have been fixed.

New in Blender 2.68 RC1 (Jul 2, 2013)

  • Cycles Rendering:
  • Hair:
  • Hair rendering is now available on the GPU as well. (r56600)
  • Nodes:
  • Added a wireframe node to get access to Mesh wireframe data. (r56928)
  • A Toon BSDF with Diffuse and Glossy component is now available for Cartoon like effects. r56980)
  • Added a Wavelength node, to convert wavelength to rgb colors. r57368)
  • Open Shading Language:
  • Added Westin Sheen and Westin Backscatter closures for testing, useful for Cloth like effects. (r56900)
  • Render Passes:
  • Mist pass added, with start, depth and falloff control. If the pass is enabled in a render layer a Mist Pass panel will be shown in the world properties. (r57278)
  • Ray Visibility:
  • Ray visibility is now supported for all light sources: lamps, emitting meshes and the world environment. Using these options it's possible to let light from these sources only selectively affect diffuse, glossy or transmission shaders.
  • Performance:
  • Official Blender on Windows has become significantly faster, getting closer to performance on Linux and Mac OS X. Especially scenes with much geometry will benefit from the optimization, rendering often 30% faster. Linux and Mac OS X also benefit but more on the order of 10%.
  • CUDA:
  • Support for NVidia Tesla K20, GTX Titan and GTX 780 graphics cards was added.
  • CUDA performance is also improved, rendering 25% faster on various graphics cards and scenes.
  • For users making own Blender builds: please upgrade to CUDA toolkit version 5.0 for best performance.
  • Motion Tracker:
  • Reconstructed scene scale ambiguity:
  • Improved algorithms which deals with reconstructed scene scale ambiguity (r56632).
  • This is done by scaling reconstructed scene in a way so reconstructed cameras variance is unity with a median in the 3D scene origin.
  • Such approach helps in cases when different keyframe pair gives the same exact reconstruction from math point of view but some of which could be considered bad by artists because of bad scale.
  • Scene Orientation:
  • Added a button to apply scale on scene solution (r56635).
  • This is an alternative to using camera to scale the scene and it's expected to be better :solution because scaling camera leads to issues with z-buffer.
  • Apply scale on scene reconstruction when applying scale on camera (r56764)
  • This means when you've got reconstructed scene assigned to a 3D camera (via camera solver constraint) and applies scale on this camera from Ctrl-A menu, scale will be applied on the reconstructed scene and reset camera size to identity.
  • This is very useful feature for scene orientation, when you'll just scale camera by S in the viewport to match bundles some points in the space, and then you'll easily make camera have identity scale (which is needed for nice working motion blur without loosing scale of bundles themselves.
  • Behavior of apply scale for cameras without clip assigned to them does not change at all.
  • Refine Markers Position:
  • Added Refine Markers Position operator (r56716).
  • This operator will run a tracker from previous keyframe to current frame for all selected markers. Current markers positions are considering initial position guess which could be updated by a tracker for better match.
  • Useful in cases when feature disappears from the frame and then appears again. Usage in this case is the following:
  • When feature point re-appeared on frame, manually place marker on it.
  • Use Refine Markers operation (which is in Track panel) to allow tracker to find a better match.
  • Depending on direction of tracking use either Forwards or Backwards refining. It's easy: if tracking happens forwards, use Refine Frowards, otherwise use Refine Backwards.
  • Automatic Keyframe Selection:
  • Added an option to select keyframes used for initial reconstruction automatically (r57133).
  • This option enables some fancy math algorithms which tries to find a keyframe pair with minimal reconstruction error and best scene scale guess.
  • Smaller improvements:
  • Made bundles in 3D viewport have constant size (they're not affected by camera scale anymore) (r56633)
  • Set scene frames operator for clip editor (r56664). This operator will set scene's start/end frames to match clip's start frame and footage duration.
  • Marker placement for motion tracker by clicking on a desired location (r57138).
  • Track Position node now could output absolute position of track at a given frame (r57414)
  • Tools:
  • Particles:
  • The Emission panel now has a Use Modifier Stack option to emit particles from the mesh with modifiers applied. Previously particles would only be emitted from faces that exist in the original mesh. Emitting from faces in the original mesh is mostly useful for hair, to preserve it through mesh editing operations and changing subdivision surfaces levels for viewport and rendering. For emitter particles it can be more useful to take all modifiers into account, but one must be careful to always use the same number of subdivision surface levels for this to work correctly.
  • Usability and Tools:
  • Improved mesh editing tools: Improved bridge tool, grid-fill tool, options to selectively apply weight paint tools, TODO more.
  • Bug Fixes:
  • 3D View:
  • Fix #35617: cycles GLSL object texture coordinates were wrong. (r57231)
  • Fix #35602: VBO + dynamic topology sculpt did not show specularity. (r57234)
  • Fix #35629: Incorrect Rendered Viewport Horizontal Splitting. (r57241)
  • Fix #35650: Fly mode with parenting was broken for both locked/unlocked parent mode. (r57267)
  • Fix #35663: Some object types don't draw bounds other than "Box". (r57324)
  • Fix #35694: Lattice; Display Type: "Bounds" not working. (r57456)
  • Fix GLSL not showing shading properly on the backside of faces. (r57702)
  • Fix unnecessary 3D viewport redraws in various cases, in particular when editing node materials. (r57714)
  • Fix incorrect GLSL bump mapping in editmode when the UV coordinates are flipped, was not passing sign on to GLSL shader. (r57906)
  • Animation:
  • Fix #35378: Shape Key Animation Data still linked when creating full copy of scene. (r57221)
  • Fix #35613: Dopesheet, Graph Editor Trouble Selecting Channels. (r57240)
  • Fix #35643: Animated textures are invisible in Graph Editor if it is not linked via material. (r57332)
  • Fix #35263, #35382: NLA Animated Influence is ignored if strips below have zero total influence. (r57333)
  • Fix #35382: NLA "Multiply" Blend Mode calculated incorrectly. (r57345)
  • Fix #35887: Keyframes inserted at wrong time on offsetted NLA Strips when using "Auto Keying" + "Insert Available Only". (r57902)
  • Fix #35744: FCurve select changes on Graph Editor Resize. (r57905)
  • NLA Bugfix: When clicking on a channel name in the channel list while still in tweakmode (r57907)
  • Armatures:
  • Fix #35671: automatic armature weights assignment crashed with an empty mesh. (r57296)
  • Fix #35901: Hooks on armature bones are calculated in wrong space. (r57843)
  • Fix #35856: Bones gets scaled chaotically when during NLA Strip Blend In/Out. (r57904)
  • Audio:
  • Fix #35230: CPU freeze at playback after cutting/deleting/duplicating audio strip. (r57598)
  • Collada:
  • Fix #35555: Collada: export destroys mesh in some cases. (r57208)
  • Fix #35592: Collada (DAE) exporter messes up vertex colors. (r57209)
  • Fix crash during collada export when armature has animation data. (r57761)
  • Constraints:
  • Curves:
  • Fix #35686: Grease pencil to curve conversion causes NAN weights on vertices. (r57308)
  • Fix #35670: Selectionmode LMB dont change the controlling for putting curve points with strg+lmb. (r57329)
  • Fix #35669: Snap curvepoints dont work correct when another object is selected. (r57330, r57371)
  • File I/O:
  • Fix #35656: Crash on File Browser (r57370)
  • Fix part {{BugReport|35859}: lib linking errors were not shown when opening files through open recent. r57736
  • Game Engine:
  • Fix #32218: logic.addScene() Not Adding Scenes in Order. (r57536)
  • Fix #35479: OSKEY (Command Key on Mac) not working. (r57593)
  • Fix #34781: bge.texture.ImageRender does not show Font object. (r57594)
  • Fix #35447: LibLoad Meshes and Scenes causes crash of blender. (r57596)
  • Fix #33163: Text Font Bug. (r57623)
  • Fix #32775: LibFree crashing. (r57626)
  • Fix #35815: makeScreenshot() relative path not working in Blenderplayer. (r57645)
  • Fix #35811: Blenderplayer crash on closing if file saved with an actual version. (r57680)
  • Fix #35737: Action actuator in property mode don't work with values lower then 1. (r57681)
  • Fix #34185: billboard scale problem in groups. (r57691)
  • Fix #30450: F-Curve on bone not working. (r57692)
  • Fix #35884: Evil bge.types.BL_Shader.setUniformMatrix3() (r57815)
  • Fix game anaglyph colors are inverted. (r57646)
  • Image / UV Editing:
  • Fix #35453: "copy mirrored uv coords" doesn't work. (r57244)
  • Fix #35645: UV Stitch often crash Blender (hidden faces related). (r57266)
  • Fix #35611: 'Quick Edit' in Texture mode + RGBA16bit gives bright results. (r57313)
  • Fix #35658: OpenEXR (from Maya) - missing passes. (r57353)
  • Fix #35749: Image Editor: "Replace Image" operator didn't refresh icon for image. (r57476)
  • Fix #35548: Island selecting mode problem in UV editor. (r57508)
  • Fix #35900: Image editor save multilayer EXR was not using the compression codec specified by the user. (r57847)
  • Mesh Editing:
  • Fix #35578: New bridge tool; bowtie crossing when destination edges form one half of an 'X'. (r57159, r57163)
  • Fix #35603: Crash with "Tag Freestyle Edge Mark". (r57210)
  • Fix #35311: Planar Decimate / Limited Dissolve fails to merge some adjacent faces optionally limit by face flipping. (r57216)
  • Fix #35623: separate mesh operator did not redraw the outliner. (r57232)
  • Fix #35636: bridge tool: error symmetry. (r57259)
  • Fix #35648: Loop cut, smoothness showing wrong symmetrical. (r57331)
  • Fix #35738: Delete edge loop removes extra vertices when working on small scale objects. (r57445)
  • Fix #33374: Extrude and mirror editing 2.65 RC1 (r57494)
  • Fix #35902: Build navigation mesh crash with multiple meshes selected. (r57848)
  • Fix #35551: The topology mirror setting affected shape key and vertex group but this was confusing as there was no setting visible for it. (r57856)
  • Fix #35914: Blender crashes when trying to use vertex selection masking on a copy directly after using SHIFT+d (r57888)
  • Fix #35936: Can't create new vertex group when using Ctrl G menu. (r57901)
  • Fix for crash in edgering subd when 3+ disconnected edge rings were found. (r57196)
  • Fix for sculpt distortion happens when flipping mesh normals. (r57373)
  • Fix for editmesh transform connected, the distance checks could get into a feedback loop so that the result depended on the order of verts/edges. (r57527)
  • Fix for vert/face mask modes using last used select option when using the select-all key shortcut. (r57752)
  • Modifiers:
  • Fix #35678: Duplicating an object with Displace modifier does not increase the reference count of the texture. (r57354)
  • Fix #35710: Mesh explodes while using solidify modifier with tubular non-manifold base mesh. (r57405)
  • Fix #35911: Show weights not working with a weight edit modifier in edit mode. (r57891)
  • Fix for problem with creating weight-paint preview. (r57419)
  • Movie Clip Editor:
  • Fix #35773: Drag-to-Open failed in Movie Clip Editor. (r57568)
  • Nodes / Compositor:
  • Fix #35570: Old group nodes with empty socket name strings crash. (r57139)
  • Fix #35599: MovieClip node crashes when using multilayer exr (r57202)
  • Fix #35625: Blender crashes after texture bake complete. due to missing node group. (r57247)
  • Fix #35633: Cannot Add Group Node In Blender 2.67a. (r57249)
  • Fix #35640: Linked Node Materials appear to be editable. (r57252, r57253, r57401)
  • Fix #35400: Dilate Erode Feather Bug - feathering wraps around image. (r57297)
  • Fix #35703: Viewer node doesn't updates image sometimes. (r57410)
  • Fix #35724: Backdrop zoom can be set to a very small value, making the backdrop disapear. (r57453)
  • Fix #35439: Render Border have weird influence on compositing. (r57604)
  • Fix #35546: clicking cycles "Use Nodes" did not do a proper undo push. (r57741)
  • Fix #35809: Dragging a non-active node in the node editor did not work reliably. (r57823)
  • Fix #35922: RGB Input Node doesn't work properly. (r57885)
  • Fix crash when passing non-existing socket type to sockets.new() function. (r57430)
  • Objects:
  • Particles:
  • Physics / Hair / Simulations:
  • Fix #35477: Clicking "Connect Hair" button translates a mesh by it's object location. (r57213)
  • Fix #35628: Dynamic paint waves over ocean modifier doesn't work (r57254)
  • Fix #35609: Hair cut tool cuts in a wrong place, draw steps should default to 2. (r57698)
  • Fix particle hair display percentage not properly getting restored after rendering. (r57717)
  • Python:
  • Fix #35434: Segmentation fault switching screen layout from python. (r57204)
  • Fix #35489: mode_set() not working in background mode, Scene change doesn't change mode either. (r57205)
  • Fix #35683: Addon working fine in console. But crashed when click GUI button. (r57336)
  • Fix #35346: Python: still UI issue with popup and dropdown list (r57425, r57562, r57563)
  • Fix #35850: Documentation error for mathutils.Vector. (r57674)
  • Fix #35507: BMesh module: Crash on to_mesh() if faces.layers.tex is used but no loops.layers.uv. (r57755)
  • Fix #35860: Crash if pressing <F8> in import dialog. (r57852)
  • Render:
  • Fix #35497: Rendering preview range gives wrong duration. (r57157)
  • Fix #35624: Rendering to a new window, then switching scene in the main window, would still continue to render the previous scene in the render window on F12. (r57229)
  • Fix #35405: Properties editor preview render restarted unnecessarily after F12 render. (r57377)
  • Fix #35664: Blender internal material index pass + ztransp + multiple materials assigned to a mesh did not work correct. (r57439)
  • Fix #35768: Crash in with "free image textures" option and 3D viewport with textured draw mode open. (r57474)
  • Fix #35848: Render crash in background mode due to missing G.main. (r57663)
  • Fix #35807: Blender internal motion blur render without antialiasing would give black speckles (self intersection errors) in raytraced shadows. (r57606)
  • Fix #35846: Crash rendering with dupligroups visible in 3D viewport during render in some cases. (r57740)
  • Fix #35882: Render to image editor, ctrl+up fullscreen, click back to previous did not work. (r57787)
  • Fix #35412: Blender internal "from dupli" texture coordinates not working with particles in linked groups. (r57851)
  • Render: Freestyle:
  • Fix #35561: Freestyle + read full sample layers = crash. (r57369)
  • Fix #35353: Freestyle + Compositor + Auto-render renders freestyle lines in the wrong place. (r57415)
  • Fix #35883: Freestyle + envmap render crashed. (r57782)
  • Fix #35808: Blender internal viewport with freestyle would keep continuously rerendering for no reason. (r57839)
  • Render: Cycles:
  • Fix #35591: Rendering with OSL seems to cap "weird" numbers in certain places in the nodes. (r57178)
  • Fix #35587: Cycles: image movie to single image crashing. (r57192)
  • Fix #35614: Cycles objects on mask layer in render layers were writing passes such as motion/uv/normal but they should have been excluded from them. (r57230)
  • Fix #35644: Lamp specials menu still showed blender internal energy and falloff distance when cycles was selected as renderer. (r57265)
  • Fix #35672: Missing update when changing light ray visibility during viewport render. (r57290)
  • Fix #35677, #35525: , #35525: cycles viewport not updating properly in some situations. (r57306)
  • Fix #35653: Manual texture space location and size not working in cycles viewport. (r57349)
  • Fix #35681: Cycles excluded layers still got evaluated before and after rendering even if they were not used on any render layers. (r57352)
  • Fix #35251: Cycles crash rendering with a particular user preferences configuration. (r57378)
  • Fix #35733: Lamps on render layers that are both excluded and used for masking should not be used, same as emissive meshes. (r57432)
  • Fix #35729: Cycles normal maps not showing properly in preview render. (r57434)
  • Fix #35730: Cycles not rendering dupliverted metaball, needs another special exception. (r57437)
  • Fix #35771: "Specials" ->"Size Y" doesn't work for Cycles area lamp. (r57539)
  • Fix #35812: Cycles image texture node not doing proper alpha handling of PNG images with open shading language enabled. (r57637)
  • Fix #35847: Cycles group nodes did not work well exposing inputs like normal or texture coordinate. (r57676)
  • Fix #35896: Cycles crash with OSL image textures and viewport + preview render running at the same time. (r57846)
  • Fix related #35681: Avoid some unnecessary cycles updated when using exclude render layers. (r57307)
  • Sequencer:
  • Sculpting / Painting:
  • Fix #35545: Weight paint with mirror modifier does not accurate represent bone influence (r57206)
  • Fix #35638: Object disappears when rotating after using the simplify brush. (r57311)
  • Fix #35793: Crash When Painting Gradient Weight. (r57564)
  • Fix #35457: Mirror the U texture coordinate does not work in projection painting regression since 2.61 (r57706)
  • Fix #34909: Texture paint mode does not correctly update when using textures larger than 2048x2048. (r57735)
  • Fix #35858: Weight Paint: Hiding faces isnt flushing the flag to the vertices. (r57751)
  • Fix #34837: Texture Painting using Face Selection Mask fails to show texture if more than 1 texture is used (r57764)
  • Fix #35583: Smooth brush ignores hidden parts. (r57768)
  • Fix #35365: Texture cloning not behaving correctly in perspective view. (r57776)
  • Fix #33068: Can't paint weights of some vertices in some situations. (r57781)
  • Fix #35858: Weight Paint: Hiding faces isnt flushing the flag to the vertices. (r57895)
  • Text Editor:
  • User Interface:
  • Fix #35567: Shift+LMB doesn't toggle selection when using the Maya preset. (r57154)
  • Fix #35468: Screen list shows temp layout (r57214)
  • Fix #35610: Multiresolution Modifier Complains About Sculpt Mode. (r57220)
  • Fix #35646: Image offset value in empty image display mode should be unitless (r57263)
  • Fix #35668: Tooltip for Euler Discontinuity Filter was misleading (r57411)
  • Fix #35713: Set Origin not waiting for user input when invoked form search menu. (r57422)
  • Fix #35741: Material shows WORLD texture_context by default. (r57497)
  • Fix #35774: Confusing Text in Texture Paint Panel. (r57504)
  • Fix #35790: Panel Section Arrows Wrong Theme Colors. (r57694)
  • Fix #35767: Transforming nodes in the node editor changed the wireframe color of the active object in the 3D view. (r57715)
  • Fix #35715: Graph editor > channels > move.. menu item showed wrong keyboard shortcut. (r57734)
  • Fix #35750: List items in properties editor (text colors not following list item theme). (r57760)
  • Fix #35880: Popup menus like F6 redo did not use the right theme color for highlighted text, (r57771)
  • Fix #35880: Theme color of enabled option buttons in popups was still controlled by the wrong color, now it's controlled by "Menu Back" text color. (r57785)
  • Fix #35802: Searchbox menu not opening when opened from a popup near the bottom of the window. (r57822)
  • Fix OSX "Life resize" was also being called during opening of windows - when things are not initialized yet. (r57181)
  • Fix a few DPI/retina scaling issues in the graph editor and movie clip editor. (r57819)
  • System:
  • Fix #35728: "Load Factory Settings" changes temp fonder to "/temp/\" (r57479, r57500)
  • Fix #35825: "Find missing files" seems to search for files which are not missing Made finding paths for files that exist optional (and off by default), since its handy for relocating projects. (r57678)
  • Fix #35824: finding missing files not working correct for filepaths with special characters on Windows. (r57739)
  • Fix #35890: memory leak in OS X ghost locale detection. (r57821)
  • Fix #35904: On Windows force NVidia Optimus, which does automatic graphics switching between an integrated Intel and a dedicated NVidia card, to use the dedicated card for Blender. (r57857)
  • Other:
  • Fix #35501: Operator log: some property changes log as [...].(null) = ... (r57211)
  • Fix #35661: Maya key config - select operations are skipped by "undo". (r57338, r57340)
  • Fix #35691: Context Override replaces instead of overrides. (r57346)
  • Fix #35704: Simplify on scene with dupli recursion crashes. (r57376)
  • Fix #35574: Export Key Map issue. (r57380)
  • Fix #35747: Lasso select could crash if there was an Armature in PoseMode somewhere. (r57475)
  • Fix #35590: Connected proportional editing gives unexpected results (r57532)
  • Fix #35855: Change "Scene" crashes randomly. (r57689)
  • Fix #35844: "Blender User Preferences" window don't save size font. (r57703)
  • Fix #35884: Crash opening .blend with generated color grid image and preview render. (r57845)
  • Fix missing compositor refresh due to missinfg mask notifiers, (r57668)
  • Fix for crash reading from a freed scene when exiting blender. (r57810)
  • Avoid crashes running screendump and screen editing operators in background mode. (r57842)
  • Fix for Make Local -> All not working correct with multy-user datablocks (leads to crashes). (r57896)

New in Blender 2.67b (May 31, 2013)

  • Interface:
  • fix stack corruptions in special cases for search popup r56982
  • fix #35547: incomplete tooltips in node editor r57072
  • fix #35374: Region overlap + bugs, was missing keymap for REGION_TIMER, which ended up in missing updates happening. r57118
  • Viewport:
  • fix #35459: global texture coordinates not working with GLSL shaders. r56967
  • fix #35473: Using Redo panel in View3D after Grease Pencil action moves GP layer to that area r57074
  • Animation:
  • fix #35443: : Animation player doesn't play some movie formats r56943
  • fix getting selected bones: wrong list member size for memory setting r56968
  • * fix for confusion switching active group when running mirror r57101
  • Composite/Nodes:
  • fix for node-searh menu r56594 r56595
  • fix for node item polling r56596
  • Fix #35495:, Material preview don't update (PyNodes regression) r57050
  • fix for node menu: Show the group input/output nodes in the Input/Output categories respectively, so they can be added with the usual UI in case the user deletes them. r57073
  • Render:
  • fix #35458: crash in image sampling r56960
  • fix #35500: Material Copy Crash on specific scenes r57009
  • Render (Cycles):
  • fix #35506: enter local view, enable render draw mode, exit local view would keep rendering in the background r57057
  • Render (Freestyle):
  • fix for a crash due to de-referencing of a StrokeVertex Python wrapper object r56956
  • fix #35478: Spatial Noise crashes Blender on Render r56991
  • fix #35493: Blender crash when rendering freestyle in background mode r56994
  • fix for freestyle bug which happened when the sketchy chaining is used, stroke geometry may contain a 180-degree U-turn. r57068
  • Modifiers:
  • fix #35450: bevel make large spikes sometimes. r57004
  • fix #35513: Multires modifier normal corruption on apply base r57071
  • Tools:
  • fix #35451: crash with extrude, grab, grab r56935
  • fix regression in 2.67a, crash in loop-select r56977
  • fix #35462: own regression with ortho-camera adding points r56990
  • fix #35518: UV Mapping crashes the Blender with specific image file r57043
  • Fix #35504: Blender crashes on separating curves with different Evaluation Time / keyframes r57046
  • fix #35503: Bug with edit-mesh and mirror modifier - extruding was creating faces where it shouldn't. r57063
  • fix #35543: Bezier curve width and twist fail to apply when more than 1 point is edited r57067
  • fix #35509: Edit-mesh manipulator median point used bad orientation r57083
  • Paint:
  • fix error where selecting mask brush once lead to changes in behavior of other brushes hotkeys. r56957
  • Fix #35426:, masking works wrong in projection painting. r56986 r56989
  • Game Engine:
  • Fix #35480: object without material crash blender when starting game engine r57052
  • Physics:
  • fix smoke noise tile was saved in Blender executable directory r56930
  • Python:
  • fix/workaround installing addons (problem with osx permissions) r56971
  • Other:
  • Collada: was missing recalculate of normals after mesh import r57077

New in Blender 2.67a (May 21, 2013)

  • Interface:
  • Fix #35286: 'Reset to Default Theme' makes some node titlebars go black (r56647)
  • Fix #35261: double clicking the up arrow in the file browser to go up multiple directories fast would start drag and drop (r56653)
  • Fix #56662: files with numbers higher than 2147483648 or with different numbers of leading zeros would show in random order in the file browser. (r56662)
  • Fix #35284: outline name edit textbox did not show properly in some cases. (r56670)
  • Fix #56672: search menu buttons (with an X on the right side to clear) had text overlapping the X icon (r35281)
  • Fix #35273: click in empty space to deselect as used by the Maya keymap gave a python error when used in pose mode. (r56673)
  • Fix #35262: assigning shortcuts from e.g. delete or selection mode menus (r56676)
  • Fix #35307: popup menus in nodes, with nodes outside window boundary, were clipped (r56688)
  • Fix #35342: multi-sample antialiasing makes tooltips look blurry (r56766)
  • Fix #35415: multi-sample don't work in 2.66 and newer (regression) (r56912)
  • Fix for toggle drag not working in popups (r56747 r56881)
  • Change to drag-lock behavior, only use with outliner (this way layers can be changed all at once) (r56748)
  • Viewport:
  • Fix #35259: Fix crash when enabling mesh analysis intersect with wire edges (r56539)
  • Fix eternal loop with background scenes (r56689)
  • Animation:
  • Fix #35253: Fix failure to animate X, Y, Z values in nodes with vector sub-menu (r56581)
  • Fix #35384: animation to enable/disable render layers was applied one frame too late when rendering animations. (r56851)
  • Fix #35398: changing render layer name causes animation to be lost. (r56868)
  • Fix material/lamp drivers not working sometimes when they were used by multiple objects (r56707)
  • Fix for shape-key drivers executing for every call to derivedmesh (r56880)
  • Sequencer:
  • Fix #35390: the verticel line indicating scene end frame was off by one (r56872 r56882 r56894)
  • Composite/Nodes:
  • Fix #35252: Fix crash with the node placed partially behind the screen (r56572)
  • Fix #35291: crash deleting 'Group Output' node in compositor (r56654)
  • Fix #35327: compositing Z combine node was not giving the same result as previous versions when the Z values were the same (r56755)
  • Fix #35330: Blur node crash due to size overflow (r56759)
  • Fix #35349: multiple viewers nodes crashing during render (r56791)
  • Fix #35376: node editor throwing python error on some files saved with 2.66 test builds. (r56830)
  • Fix #35388: grouped nodes not editable in properties ui. (r56857)
  • Fix #35369: crop node or FileOutput node bug. (r56879)
  • Fix #35313: object and ID anti-aliased masks are incorrect when using border render + crop (r56898)
  • Fix string escaping when building python expression for nodes (r56610)
  • Fix crash loading node groups caused by versioning error (r56611)
  • Fix for add_node operator, prevent it from re-using settings from a previous call (r56613)
  • Fix note add operators were not using UNDO option (r56648)
  • Render:
  • Fix #35219: Fix blender internal auto ray bias to avoid the terminator shadow problem was giving light flickering on a mesh with animated hair strands. (r56577)
  • Fix #35280: crash when setting Environment Map imagefile (r56620)
  • Fix #35335: Crash when rendering a text object with a remesh modifier and a material texture (r56749)
  • Render (Cycles):
  • Fix #35272: GPU crash with anisotropic shader in group node. (r56650 r56663)
  • Fix #35282: color ramp set to constant interpolation did not work well (r56651)
  • Fix #35306: normal mapping not working with flat shading. (r56682)
  • Render (Freestyle):
  • Fix #35352: geometry spatial noise freezes on render (r56836)
  • Fix #35385: rendering crash with modifiers (r56839)
  • Fix #35245: Freestyle getting stuck on view map creation + memory leaks. (r56905)
  • Fix crash when closing blend files with no line styles (r56711)
  • Fix for a copy-and-paste bug in a Freestyle Python API helper function (r56806)
  • Fix for memory leaks in Freestyle Python API components (r56778 r56807)
  • Fix for missing finalization of memory blocks allocated in the Freestyle module (r56826)
  • Fix for built-in style module sketchy_multiple_parameterization.py not working correctly (r56867)
  • Modifiers:
  • Fix #35317: crash with boolean modifier using an object whose library linked mesh datablock went missing (r56698)
  • Tools:
  • Fix #35257: 'Brige > Merge' sometimes flips result (r56606)
  • Fix #35292: edge slide slow with big image in image editor (r56671)
  • Fix #35289: UV layout export to image was extremely slow for large meshes (r56674)
  • Fix #35326: even edge slide on open edge crashes (r56735)
  • Fix #35308: Edge Split operator splits unselected edges (r56760)
  • Fix for strange behavior with loop select involving ngons (r56773 r56783 r56784 r56785), See: comparison
  • Fix loopselect-slide (with multicut enabled) changing from vertex-select to edge-select. (r56863)
  • Paint:
  • Fix part of #35372: distorted strokes when painting zoomed out with a small brush size (r56816)
  • Fix #35057, #35372: slow texture painting performance. (r56823)
  • Fix #35355: 2D image paint View mapping mode was dependent on zoom, this was wrong, it should just fit the texture in the brush circle. (r56833)
  • Fix #35372: sculpting/painting long brush strokes with small brush size would take up a lot of memory. (r56834)
  • Fix #56901: calling any paint operator from operator search menu with mouse crashes blender. (r56901)
  • Fix crash on 2d painting when no active object is present (regression), (r56892)
  • Fix Painting / Sculpting: improve pressure sensitivity (regression) (r56896)
  • Fix crash due to shared paint cursor function (regression). (r56902)
  • Sculpt:
  • Fix #35337: sculpt performance regression, partial redraw was not working anymore due to paint cursor redraw problem. (r56763)
  • Fix sculpt getting slower as you paint a longer stroke. Partial redraw was redrawing the whole area that was painted on from the start of the stroke (r56767 r56828)
  • Fix #35364: 'D Key' shortcut inconsistency (r56815 r56873)
  • Fix #35354: dyntopo - materials and UI display issues (r56820)
  • Game Engine:
  • Fix #31757: Fix setGLSLMaterialSetting has no effect (regression) (r56605)
  • Fix #34382: vertex position doesn't update when set through Python and "Cast Buffer Shadows" is disabled (r56639)
  • Fix #35204: new alpha-enabled shadows fail when UVs Change (r56643)
  • Fix #34631: error displaying texface (r56679)
  • Fix #34044: error displaying texface for objects with no material (r56680)
  • Fix #35320: crash when adding property without setting material (r56745)
  • Fix #35329: action actuator crash with replacemesh, pointers got outdated. (r56756)
  • Add missing python properties on ActionActuator: layer, layerWeight (r56906)
  • Particles:
  • Fix #35296: particles crash with long object name (r56668)
  • Rigid Body:
  • fix #35403: Highlight not updating instantly when removing from Rigid body
  • Python:
  • Fix #35319: 2x2 matrix inverse and adjugate were wrong. (r56700)
  • Fix #35336: added a warning in the doc string for nodetree.nodes.new() (r56800)
  • Other:
  • Fix OS X build with 10.6 SDK, was not working due to recent fullscreen bug fixes. (r56601)
  • Fix #35255: Fix build for older OpenCollada versions failed (r56537 r56538)
  • Fix #35267: cmd+v, cmd+c on OS X for copy/paste worked in some editors like the 3D view and text editor but not in the animation editors(r56661 r56678)

New in Blender 2.67 (May 8, 2013)

  • Freestyle:
  • Freestyle is a new non-photorealistic (NPR) rendering engine integrated into Blender. Originally developed as a stand-alone program in an academic research project, Freestyle provides artists with a new tool set for generating 2D line drawing out of a given 3D scene prepared with Blender. Generated lines can be stylized by a variety of stylization options for tweaking line color, alpha transparency, line thickness, and line geometry.
  • Motion Tracker:
  • Camera and object motion solver motion are much more accurate and faster because the Ceres library is used now for the bundle adjustment step. In addition the tripod solver is finally fixed and has become usable for longer footage. Smaller fixes were done as well.
  • 3D Printing:
  • An addon to help with 3d printing is now bundled as well as a new ruler tool and mesh-analysis display attributes such as thickness, sharp-areas and distortion.
  • Cycles Render:
  • A Subsurface Scattering shader is now available, to create materials such as Wax, Marble or Skin. Minimum pixel width was added to hair rendering and several performance improvements have been made, to render scenes without hair or motion blur faster. The OSL shading system received performance improvements as well.
  • Paint System:
  • The stroke system and brush texture access has been unified and as a result there are many more tools now shared across paint modes. Brush angle control, better brush overlays, separate texture control for alpha and a brand new stencil mapping mode with direct mouse control have been implemented. Many improvements and bug fixes have also been made.
  • Compositing:
  • Added border for compositor viewer node, which restricts what is to be composited for faster previews. Also border rendering and cropping are finally working as expected. Some optimization was done as well.
  • Node Editor:
  • Node Groups editing is less cluttered and more consistent with other nodes. Multiple node editor windows can be used independently. Nesting node groups is fully supported. Pinning is supported as well in the node editor to disable context switching.
  • Python Nodes:
  • The API now supports custom node types. Nodes can be defined and registered in python scripts like other UI classes. This allows the creation of entire new node systems for addons, external render engines and the like.
  • Tools:
  • New mesh modeling tools: Individual Face Inset, Poke Face and Knife Project. Faster image display in the image and movie clip editors. Better support for UTF-8 text in the text and console editors, and various improvements to other editors.

New in Blender 2.67 RC (Apr 29, 2013)

  • Compositing Nodes:
  • Added border for compositor viewer node, which restricts what is to be composited for faster previews. Also border rendering and cropping are finally working as expected. Some optimization was done as well.
  • Cycles Rendering:
  • Major Cycles improvement is subsurface scattering, which is used for materials like skin and milk. Hair also had some improvements.
  • Motion Tracker:
  • Camera and object motion solver motion are now much more accurate and faster because of Ceres library used for bundle adjustment step. In addition tripod solver is finally fixed and became usable for longer footage. Smaller fixes were done as well.
  • Paint System Refactoring:
  • Changes for Usability, tools, interface
  • FreeStyle - NPR Render:
  • Freestyle is an edge- and line-based non-photorealistic (NPR) rendering engine. It relies on mesh data and z-depth information to draw lines on selected edge types. Various line styles can be added to produce artistic (“hand drawn”, “painted”, etc.) or technical (hard line) looks. The two operating modes - Python Scripting and Parameter Editor - allow a powerful diversity of line styles and results.
  • 3D Printing Toolset:
  • Addons
  • Bug Fixes:
  • In addition to the new features, lots of bugs that existed in previous releases have been fixed.

New in Blender 2.66 (Feb 21, 2013)

  • Dynamic Topology Sculpting:
  • Dynamic topology is a new sculpting mode that subdivides the mesh as needed, whereas regular sculpting only affects the shape of a mesh. This makes it possible to sculpt complex shapes out of a simple mesh, rather than just adding details onto a modeled base mesh.
  • UI and Usability:
  • Support for MacBook "Retina" Displays was added, proper DPI scaling in all editors, new high-res icons and transparent tool and property regions. User Preferences and Startup File have been split up, new ways to recover sessions were added and copy & paste of objects inside the 3D View is supported now.
  • Mesh Modeling:
  • The Bevel tool supports bevelling individual vertices in addition to edges now, with one or more segments.
  • Modifiers:
  • New Mesh Cache modifier can apply animation from external files onto a mesh, a new UV Warp modifier can rotate, scale and translate UV maps on a mesh using objects or bones, and the Laplacian smooth modifier now supports shape enhancement.
  • Particle Fluid Dynamics:
  • A new SPH particle fluid solver was added, designed for more physically accurate results.
  • Addons:
  • Added MilkShape 3D format support and EDL Video Import.
  • Rigid Body Simulation:
  • The Bullet physics library has now been integrated into the editor and animation system, which makes rigid body simulations available also outside of the game engine. This results in a much simpler workflow and gives more control over the simulation.
  • Cycles Render:
  • Initial support for hair rendering was added, with triangle strips, cylinder or bezier curve primitives.
  • Multiple importance sampling for lamps, preview rendering is available inside the properties editor, new closures and optimizations for OSL, non-progressive integrator was improved and support for packed, generated and movie textures was added.
  • Image Transparency:
  • The image pipeline has be refactored to handle transparency in images better and compatible to standards. There are two alpha types for images that are useful for different purposes, and we now try to automatically do the right conversions and operations.
  • Game Engine:
  • The character physics type received a number of new options, profiling and debug information has been cleaned up, and simple shadow maps can now take clipped alpha transparency into account.
  • Collada:
  • Collada import and export was improved for animation: shape keys are now supported, and the armature modifier has been made more stable, respecting axis orientation and scene scaling.
  • More Features:
  • New features include vertex color baking, more efficient ambient occlusion baking for multires meshes, edge based UV stitching, more control over mapping texture brushes for texture painting, gradient tools for weight painting, and a translate node for the compositor.
  • Bug fixes:
  • In addition to the new features, over 250 bugs that existed in previous releases have been fixed.

New in Blender 2.65 (Dec 11, 2012)

  • Fire and Smoke:
  • Fire simulation was added to the Smoke Simulator. The domain received major updates to improve performance and usability. Smoke can be emitted from mesh surfaces, without the need for a particle system. A smoke flow force field was added to improve interaction with other simulations. Colored smoke simulation and mixing is possible and the interaction of smoke with collision objects has been improved.
  • Mesh Modeling:
  • The bevel tool now includes rounding and was otherwise much improved, preserving the requested bevel width more evenly and generating better topology. A new symmetrize tool was added to make mesh topology and data symmetric.
  • More Features:
  • New features include: a tool transfer vertex weights from one mesh to another, antialiased viewport drawing, connected proportional editing in UV editor, improved DPX file read and write, more control over curve taper, collision masks in the game engine and improved camera title safe drawing.
  • Cycles Render:
  • Support for writing custom shaders in the Open Shading Language is now available. Motion blur rendering was also added, to make moving objects and cameras appear blurry. There is also an anisotropic shading node, and BSDF nodes can now have different normals, which can be set using the new bump and normal map nodes.
  • Modifiers:
  • The decimator was rewritten, and now preserves UV's and vertex colors, has an un-subdivide and a mode to dissolve vertices to create planar n-gons. A new laplacian smooth modifier can reduce noise or smooth the mesh while preserving edges and volume. A triangulate modifier was also added, which can be useful for creating game assets with baked normal maps.
  • Addons:
  • UV texture to vertex color baking was added, the PDB atomic visualization addon was improved, and film response curves were added for the RGB Curves node in the compositor.
  • Bug fixes:
  • In addition to the new features, over 200 bugs that existed in previous releases have been fixed.

New in Blender 2.64 (Oct 4, 2012)

  • This release was targeted at improving Blender for the Mango open movie project, along with integrating branches and patches from the past years.
  • The focus was on creating a full VFX pipeline, with improved motion tracking using a planar tracker, easier green screen keying, and a new mask editor. A new tile based compositing system was added, along with more advanced color management. Cycles rendering got dozens of smaller features and improvements resulting from its use in production.
  • Sculpting now supports masks, and a skin modifier was added to quickly create a model from skeletons. The game engine got improved shadows and physics options, and Collada export now has more options to tune for exporting to other game engines.

New in Blender 2.62 (Feb 17, 2012)

  • Cycles Render Engine:
  • A number of new features were added, including render layers and passes, multi GPU rendering and selection of GPU device, improved sampling for complex environment maps, border rendering, BVH caching for faster rendering of camera fly-throughs, and new shading nodes for color correction and a checkerboard texture node.
  • UV Tools:
  • Many new UV editing tools were added: an advanced interactive stitch tool, to align and join together UV islands. A subdivision surface aware UV unwrapping to reduce stretching. Seam marking in the UV editor, and a tool to compute seams for islands. Sculpting tools to grab UVs and relax or pinch unwraps.
  • Remesh modifier:
  • The Remesh modifier is a tool for generating new mesh topology based on an input surface. The output follows the surface curvature of the input, but its topology is a uniform distribution of quads. It can generate smoothed output or tag sharp features to better capture corners.
  • Collada:
  • A Second Life compatibility option was added for exporting armatures, along with a number of other fixes related to transformations and armatures. There is also a new development team that will try to improve the Collada integration further in following releases.
  • More features:
  • Other new features include: improved bump map quality in the viewport, various new dynamic paint options, international text copy and paste and editing in the text editor, longer names and file paths, drag and drop parenting in the outliner, new theme's preset system and many more changes.
  • Motion Tracking:
  • Object tracking support has been added, so that not only camera animation can be reconstructed from footage, but also the animation or transformation of objects in the scene. This comes along with many improvements to the tracking user interface and tools.
  • "Carve" Booleans:
  • The boolean modifier now uses the Carve library, which should give much improved results. This library is more stable and faster, resolving old well-known limitations of our previous library. The general workflow and options available in the user interface are unchanged, usually the modifier will simply run faster and produces a better output mesh. However there also some changes in behavior.
  • Game Engine:
  • The game engine user interface was polished, editing text objects in the user interface and through the python API has been made easier, full screen and antialiased rendering has been improved, along with various other changes.
  • Python API:
  • Matrices and vectors math classes were improved in various ways. Column-major access was changed to more standard row-major access and easier access for rows, columns, translation was added. Vectors now can have arbitrary size, and matrices are now pretty printed in the console.
  • Add-ons:
  • Network render now has support for version control systems, render engines, point cache baking jobs, and a new web interface was added, along with a number of other improvements. There were also features added to After Effects export, X3D export, Atomic Blender PDB import, MHX import, UV layout export, and Screencast Keys.
  • Bug fixes:
  • As usual, each release includes a long list of bug fixes. For Blender 2.62, we have fixed 205 bugs in existing features.

New in Blender 2.58 (Jun 23, 2011)

  • Prominent features (the cool stuff)
  • Warp Modifier:
  • This deformation modifier can be used to warp parts of a mesh to a new location in a very flexible way by using 2 objects to select the "from" and "to" regions with options for using a curve falloff, texture and vertex group.
  • Render Baking:
  • For high polygon models it is now possible to bake multi-resolution models using much less memory than before. There are also new bake modes: specular color, specular intensity, mirror color, mirror intensity, alpha (transparency), emission (glow)
  • Empty Images Display:
  • Instead of using background images or creating meshes with materials and image texture it's now possible to assign images directly to empty objects to use as reference images. They display in all draw modes and can use object draw options like XRay to draw over other objects.
  • Sculpting:
  • Constructive modifiers (like subdivision surface, mirror and other) were supported for sculpting mode. Sculpting could be not very accurate with such modifiers enabled, so there is a new option in the toolbar to disable applying constructive modifiers in the sculpting session.
  • Mesh Inset (Addon):
  • Mesh inset is a very useful tool with the ability to inset individual faces or a selected region.
  • Camera Locking:
  • It is now possible to move the camera using normal view port navigation by enabling "Lock Camera" in the "View" panel.
  • Features
  • Improvements to the point density texture, support for tweaking the falloff with a custom curve new falloff types based on the age or velocity of particles - R36399
  • New Warp modifier, can be used in a similar way to a Hook but with an adjustable source - R36414
  • Added support for sculpting on constructive modifiers - R36485
  • Image support for Empty Objects - R36577
  • Camera composition guides: center, thirds, golden rule, harmonious triangle - R36590, R36696
  • View controls can now apply to the camera view (locked camera view) - r36690
  • mousewheel zoom now zooms camera area when the camera is locked and in ortho view - R36783
  • Now HDR textures can be used to displace - R36714
  • New adjustment layer tracks in the sequencer - R36716
  • Additional bake modes: specular color, specular intensity, mirror color, mirror intensity, alpha (transparency), emission (glow) - R36738
  • Added option to baked named "Bake From Multires" which is avaliable for normals baking and displacement baking. - R37225
  • Support for update callbacks in python-defined RNA properties - R37260
  • Compositor math node round second value now changes the step to round by - R37292
  • Snap option not to project onto the edit-mesh - #25598, R37591
  • Operators which only define a directory are now treated as directory only selectors (no files) - R37552
  • Added support for baking object movement to the "Bake Action" operator - 37500
  • Added anisotropic filtering in viewport and Game Engine - R37521
  • Game Engine: Allow to change the damping of the camera actuator - #27425, R37455
  • Quick Explode operator: Sets up a particle system and an explode modifier. - R37431
  • Fluid Sim: Enable the possibility to remove the "air bubble" around submerged collision object. This feature is enabled as standard for new files. - R37441
  • Added support for tangent bump shading - R37644
  • Fixes
  • Rendering:
  • World starfield generation would hang - #27174, R36349
  • General error in coderivative for orthogonal camera. Culprit was new bump failing on orthogonal cameras - #27492, R36987
  • Stamp text would not display some lower lines - #27221, R36390
  • Renderslot missing - #27285, R36503
  • Fix memory leak caused by re-making mipmaps - R36569
  • fix for DDS textures in DXT1n format - patch #21590: R36541,R36546
  • Support for rendering local view camera has been added back - R36384
  • Fixed: Volume Material Density Inaccuracy - #27438, 37227
  • Displacement mapping did not do linear interpolation between pixels, causing render artefacts. - #27081, R37342
  • Fixed: Scene's render.filepath gets cropped to 159 characters - #27607, 37363
  • Fix for: Full Sample AA (FSA) was failing in cases - #27519, R37433
  • Fix: bug with bump mapping + reflection texture coordinates + nodes. - #27540, R37453
  • Fix: When adding renderlayer nodes in a composite, without having own scene render, the renderlayer nodes were not tagged as changed, causing compositing to give previous result. - #27692, R37669
  • Compositor/Nodes:
  • Fix: RGB color node supports to set alpha too but never put alpha in the output - #27305, R36598
  • Fix: color key hue flipping error (composite node) - #27510, R37051
  • Fix: socket connection issue with node groups not working right - #27511, R37054
  • Fix: group nodes with a linked datablock that was missing would crash - #27309, R37106
  • Fix: Scaling in compositor down to 1 pixel size crashed Gaussian blur. - #27601, R37318
  • Fix for compositor round math node not working correctly - R37292
  • Node editor: collapsed node did not allow sizing it using the right hand side grab thingamabobs. - #27105, R37409
  • Display/Viewport:
  • GLSL color management + vertex color was not working right - #26697, R36443
  • GLSL diffuse/specular was not clamping negative values - #26807, R36444
  • Missing 3d view updates when editing GLSL material nodes - #27098, R36439
  • Fix: GLSL filter uniform variable not set for group instance. - #27635, R37446
  • Fix: reflection texture coordinates + nodes not working right in GLSL - #27703, R37655
  • Fix: crash drawing zero length motion paths - R37671
  • Tools:
  • Crash fix when removing IK constraints - #26920, R36473
  • Skeleton Sketching - Unclear UI for converting sketches into bones - #25886, R37006
  • Empty proxy did not maintain draw type and size - R36449
  • Creating a new UV layer in edit mode failed to copy previous one - #27176, R36350
  • When The FONT object is blank, the dimensions are calculated wrong - #27346, R36579
  • "Make single user Material+Tex" does not work for textures - #27443, R36822
  • Missing Live LSCM Update after Aligning of pinned vertices - #27198, R36376
  • Copy Mirrored UV Coords missing the reverse option - #27199, R36379
  • UV unwrap was stretching - #27164, R36348
  • Create new shapekey on lattice was always adding the mixed shape - #27485, R36906
  • adding shape keys now creates shapes from base mesh instead of from the current shape mix - R36692
  • Fix for difficulty selecting bones with boneshapes enabled and some bones made un-selectable - #27194, R36367
  • Extrude Repeat Mesh does not have options - #27224, R36397
  • Translation constraint was broken - #27333, R36806
  • Transforming with the center point directly on the view location would fail when constraining the axis - #27057, R36378
  • Bezier control points move incorrectly - #27217, R36573
  • fcurve/boolean evaluation, values below zero are no longer evaluated to true - R36903
  • converting grease pencil now works in the camera view - R36765
  • loopcut now follows "Release confirms" user preference - R36491
  • Flymode moving the camera or its root-parent is now a preference- #27459, R36824
  • Fix: Linked object (camera) should not be able to set position by using camera to view operator - #27557, R37091
  • Fix: vertex groups could have duplicate names set - #27554, R37199
  • Fix Mirror Shapekey and Mirror vertex Group not working for Lattice. - #27572, R37239
  • Fix for incorrect edge slide snapping - R37294
  • Fix vertex group copy to selected when some objects had no vertex groups R37302
  • Fix P key for setting playback range is clamped to > 0. - #27586, R37315
  • Fixed: Box select of mesh object disabled or translated due to curve object - #27615, R37327
  • Ending localview was not updating layers correctly - #27136, R37370
  • Fix: non-active object in weight paint mode does not free memory. - #27594, R37448
  • Fix: Script error for UVs->Copy Mirrored UV coords - #27707, R37685
  • Sculpt/Painting:
  • Going into sculpt mode could crash - #27271, R36464
  • Texture paint face selection mask did not work on multires - #27230, R36432
  • face mask selection in texture paint mode was broken since 2.4x - R36440
  • Fix: Sculpt data is lost after editing base mesh - #27539, R37087
  • Fix Color picker fails with a very small brush - #27559, R37242
  • Fix projection painting on float images, added color correction and improved speed. - R37276
  • Fix for float projection painting, now updating correctly. - R37276
  • Select vertex groups under the cursor in weight paint mode was missing from 2.4x- #27479, R36891
  • Fix: the radial control would fail, in sculpt mode, to set size if object-space sizing was enabled - R36975
  • Fix: Sculpt and Paint undo steps kept hanging in the sculpt/paint modes. - #27573, R37473
  • Modifiers:
  • Crash fix for edge split with certain topologies - #27266, R36455
  • Wave modifier falloff was incorrect compared with 2.4x - #27186, R36361
  • boolean intersects would give invalid results with no intersection - #27392, R37005
  • Armature multimodifier was not working in edit mode - #27480, R36913
  • Fix: vertex parenting not working with constructive modifiers. - #27654, R37503
  • Physics/Simulation:
  • Fix: particle Instance modifier does not work correctly with Hair Dynamics. - #27461, R37116
  • Keyed physics did not work properly if the first key was not the keyed particle system itself - R37430
  • Subframes cause dampened particles to behave differently - #27294, R36504
  • Fix: crash with point density texture when using particle age/velocity fallof for object vertices - #27241, R37103
  • One particle could be generated twice at vertex - #27131, R36701
  • Fix: Hair Combing intersects emitter when combed fast - #26939, R37693
  • Library System:
  • Make Proxy ignored group offset - #26727, R36375, R36456
  • Appending armatures with custom bone shapes brings no custom objects into scene.. impossible to edit - #27437, R36810
  • Append objects with linked materials disappeared after save when linking in files to an unsaved blend file, make all library paths absolute - #27405, R36735
  • Used light groups did not get linked in with materials automatically - #27465, R36914
  • Appending could crash with preview enabled - #27158, R36757
  • Fix f-curve generator modifier file read missed endian switch - #27541, R37073
  • Python:
  • Support for adding copies of existing drivers to other animdata blocks via PyAPI/RNA - R36342
  • Support for dynamic items in bpy.props.EnumProperty(), the items keyword argument can optionally be a function rather then a list - R36928
  • Loading data with bpy.data.libraries.load(), now swaps out the strings in the list to load with the actual datablocks - R36869
  • Fix WindowManager.invoke_search_popup() crashes blender and does not work - #27324, R36548
  • 3 problems: crash and enum "REGION" not found in ('VERTS') - #27035, R36741,R36743
  • screenshot operator can now be executed directly, python can screenshot with: bpy.ops.screen.screenshot(filepath="some_image.png") - R36770
  • Fixed: Python interactive console incorrect autocompleation - #27495, R37358
  • Fix: Python: crash assigning a 'set' to an array - #27681, R37575
  • Fix: Python memory leak converting ID Property groups to dictionaries - R37581
  • Fix: Memory leaks when creating popup window - #26621, R37589
  • Game Engine:
  • Crash when physics constraint is defined on non-active objects - #26775, R37026
  • Fix for broken embedded game engine viewport when not using letterboxing - R36964
  • No material rendered differently in View3D compared to the game engine - #27414, R36723
  • fix for Object Color in BGE - patch #27133, R36543
  • Python API: PhysicsConstraints ID was cast to an int on 64bit systems - #26753, R36970
  • Fix: audaspace not playing files in blenderplayer - #27562, R37110
  • Fix: Replace mesh for gfx in "Edit Object" actuator acted illogically + other booleans that are flipped - #27556, R37117
  • Python Controller, Clear "Script" when setting Script Controller mode to "Module" - R37427
  • Support for anti-aliasing and embedding for blenderplayer on windows - R36470
  • Sequencer:
  • Crash fix for large M4V - #27353, R36717
  • Strobe setting did not work with effect strip - #27422, R36734
  • Some settings of adjustment layers were not functional - #27421, R36734
  • Sequencer strips.elements was broken when strip was trimmed - R36909
  • Fix: effect sequence strips could have negative lengths, crashing with animated opacity #27568, R37172
  • Fix: Weird results when animating opacity on (color) strip - #27553, R37090
  • Fix sequencer effect transform resulting in overlapping strips - R37299
  • Fix: Transforming sequencer effects strips crashes - #27671, 37550
  • Fix: Add effect strip ignore channel argument - #27700, R37654
  • Interface:
  • 2D view panning and zooming is now fully keymappable - #27181, R36643
  • Shaded checkbox is not working - #27160, R36465
  • Menus disappear particle edit mode wireframe draw - #27257, R36441
  • Added missing seed button for halo materials - #27243, R36430
  • Text editor "Find" does not locate words - #27319, R36539
  • Tooltip text renders incorrectly - #27218, R36463
  • *Invalid Path* in all "operator presets" dropdowns - #27148, R36448
  • Global Pivot Option was not functional - #27268, R36462
  • Manipulator in particle mode does not work - #27142, R36703
  • Crash on image editor after loading exr images - #27478, R36895
  • Crashes with some high-res image thumbnail generation skip generating thumbs for images over 100mb - #27203, R36433
  • StringProperty with sub_type of FILE_PATH not updated correctly from icon - #26618, R36827
  • Fix menus getting closed too quick when moving mouse not exactly towards them, noticeable for the vertex groups or material slot utility menus - R36769
  • view/camera/set active object as camera sometimes "disabled" in gui (grayed out) - #27193, R36366
  • uvedit mesh selection sync did not handle click / shift+click for switching selection modes in the header - #27165, R36436
  • uiItemsFullEnumO: operator missing srna - #27304, R36508
  • Texture preview fails when path to custom brush icon is set - #26590, R36345
  • Fix direction properties not showing the right direction editing widget - R36771
  • improved image sequence usability by displaying the requested frame even if it cannot load - R36413
  • Image Editor toolbox menu has been removed (was an experiment and not in any other space) - R36435
  • Undo history added back, hotkey alt+ctrl+z (alt+apple+z for mac) - R37185
  • Popup menus now scroll when they dont fit in the screen - R37185
  • Interface DPI now scaled the entire UI - R37185
  • Avoid accidentally hideing headers (such as the file menu), when the header takes up the entire space - R37203
  • Fix: Manual save kills actual .blend file if disk space is low - #27410, R37098
  • Fix: export key configuration gave error when trying to export properties from an unknown (e.g. removed) operator. - #27490, R37075
  • Fix: texture node editor header was still showing texture datablock selector even if there is no active texture slot or node, now it's disabled in that case. - #27550, R37078
  • Fix: resetting default values on buttons: shortcut key changed from numpad 0 to delete, fix missing undo push - R37043
  • Fix for crash opening the file selector twice with multiple windows open - R37232
  • Fix keymap items created in python being added with the python operator names instead of the internal names. R37249
  • Fix for small button values displaying as zero - R37286, R37289
  • Fixed: Operator redo: F6 menu did not work for macros yet - #26886, R37339
  • Fixed: Turning off all OpenGL lamps gives strange behavior - #27627, R37373
  • Theme color fix for button type "Value slider". On text editing mode, the selected part of the text was invisible. - #27138, R37407
  • Fix: Color sliders greater then 1.0 dont show their ratios correctly - #27673, R37543
  • Fix: texture space panel was missing for curve & metaballs - #27660, R37592
  • Crash when closing new render window with render error message showing in the main window - #27522, R37022
  • Collada:
  • Fix: light quadratic attenuation exported wrong - #27463, R37454
  • Fix: crash on collada import if input_set is missing - #27474, R37658
  • Transparency texture import support - R37662
  • Fix: instance_node import incorrectly handled - #26821, R37663
  • Fix: Collada incorrect names/ids on import - #26912, R37664
  • System:
  • Fix crash with load/save on Mac, on files that close & open a window when loading them - #26728, R36840
  • Pasting long text crashes blender (Windows) - #27359, R36645
  • Command window was not opening (Windows) - #26981, R36426
  • Zoom not working after startup (Windows) - #26938, R36426
  • Fix crash when opening in Windows, non-latin char in path - #26715, R36507
  • Fixed scrolling lists with the mousewheel for some X11 windowmanagers - R36573
  • Various operators were missing with some non-english system languages - #27445, R36912
  • Could not import key configuration with systemwide install - #27143, R36460
  • Fix: windows uninstaller could remove files unrelated to blender when installing to a folder that already existed. - #27481, R37074
  • Fix: Python/Windows issue: "import uuid" results in an error popup - #27666, R37573
  • Blender Addons
  • Additions
  • Added Quake3 Map export back from blender 2.4x - r1976, r1977, r1978, r1979, r1981
  • Added mesh inset tool added - r1934
  • Added Paint Palettes: See here - r1954
  • Misc Changes:
  • Fix: PSK/PSA action option - r2047
  • Fix: DirectX Export parent/child relationships - r1890
  • Fix: STL import in Win 7 64bit - [#26895], r1895
  • Fix: Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file importing incorrectly - [#27456], r1960
  • Added visual and local copying for object transforms - r1953
  • Netrender:
  • Fix: Linux network render error - [#25387], r2041
  • Fix: Netrender Blacklisting slaves - [#25888], r2043
  • Fix: The Network Renderer renders black images - [#26241], r2045
  • Add rna callback to server address property so that it correctly checks if the server exists when the value changes. - r2044
  • X3D/VRML Format:
  • Fix: Export uses incorrect and node names - r1888
  • Fix: Export of fog is incorrect - [#27364], r1933
  • Fix: Export would not ensure unique names - r1999
  • Fix: Extra line segment added on import - [#27697], r2040
  • Added export support for writing IndexedTriangleSet meshes rather than IndexedFaceSet - r1984
  • Added export option to write normals - r1987
  • Added support for exporting parent/child hierarchy - r2001
  • Added support for exporting different path modes and optionally copying on export - r2031
  • FBX Format Export:
  • Was exporting with 100x scale, use 1.0 instead - r1896
  • Write out deformed meshes as parentless since the bones `own` them - r1897
  • Do not write a global root object anymore - r1897
  • Fix: Writing files with parented empty fails - [#27595], r2010
  • PLY Format:
  • Fix: PLY importer fails with windows line endings - [#27369], r1917
  • Fix: PLY importer does not support float based vertex colors - [#27691], r2049
  • Wavefront OBJ Format:
  • Fix: Normalmap imports with Color ticked - [#27325], r1908
  • Fix: Import fails with international characters in path - [#27338], r1911
  • Fix: Exporter doesn't export bump, spec/ importer wrong shader settings - [#27332], r1912
  • Fix: Export, export wardiso spec value not used. - [#27367], r1945
  • Fix: Export regression in 2.5, unable to export curves as edge-list anymore - [#27617], r2023
  • BVH Motion Capture Format:
  • Fix for importing euler rotations - r1927
  • Added support to export different rotation orders as well as pose bone native order - r1926
  • Povray Render:
  • Fixed a bug with Fresnel diffuse shader not working correctly - r1903
  • Fixed a bug preventing some scenes to render was due to an indentation error - r1959
  • Fixed a minor bug with SSS property - r2003
  • Added spacing_multiplier to object photons block so per object photon count tuning is now possible - r1915
  • Added instance support - r2002
  • 3D Coat Integration:
  • Fixed but with inverted normals - r2007
  • Fixed the bug when two or more objects doesn't have materials - r2022
  • Added ability to multi-select objects and press import button and it will update all selected objects. - r2012
  • Rigify:
  • User can disable control and deform rig generation on copy and copy_chain - r1940
  • Users can now specify layer names in the metarig armature properties - r2037
  • Fixed bug in default human metarig that caused generating to fail - r1990
  • Added a 'copy_chain' rig type, useful for bone chains that need their parent-child relationships preserved exactly - r1928
  • Added a new spine rig which replaces the old spine rig, and has a super-set of the old spines features - r2034
  • Added bend hinting to the arm and leg rigs - r2036
  • Add Mesh, 3D Function:
  • Changed how wrapping is done to avoid generating unnecessary vertices and make the result more intuitive - r2026
  • Added helper functions the results of which can be used in x(u,v), y(u,v), z(u,v) - r2026
  • Added ability to close the ends of an U-wrapped surface - r2026
  • It's now possible to create multiple objects with one set of formulae properly even when they start with an entirely straight chain - r2026

New in Blender 2.57b (Apr 27, 2011)

  • Essential Fixes:
  • fix crash when pressing Enter on menu item which load a file: Ctrl+N,Enter or Ctrl+O,Enter r36287
  • fix crash appending/linking objects #27158, r36313
  • fix crash for files saved with file selector open r36321
  • fix crash with edge split modifier #26993, r36330
  • fix for numerous cases where material links would be lost when making object data local #27178, r36332
  • fix for crash getting the vertex weight from object types which don't support this vertex groups. r36291
  • Rendering:
  • fixed a memory leak on canceling bake r36284
  • fix for memory leak with node group members that have multiple ouputs some of which are unused #27104, r36290
  • fix for node socket bug which lead to incorrect black/white output levels r36306
  • fix 3d text and simple deform modifier giving bad results #27048, r36301
  • fix for boid particles getting Z clamped to 0.0 when "Allow Flighting" is on. #27112, r36325
  • Tools:
  • fix changing selected shapekeys in editmode causing badly deformed keys #26959, r36296
  • mesh.dupli_extrude_cursor (Ctrl+Click extrude), failed when the selected vertex was behind the view #27091, r36279
  • fix all mesh normals being recalculated when adding meshes in editmode #27121, 36323
  • skip displace modifier when no changes are needed r36319
  • setting subsurf with Ctrl+1/2/3/4 now works in editmode too. #27126, r36299
  • Python:
  • fix for crash exporting Collada files to an invalid path #27162, r36326
  • RegionView3D.view_rotation was inverted, view_matrix is now writeable r36317
  • Interface:
  • slider widget was showing strange colors with some themes #27139, r36324
  • fix for text editor syntax highlighting glitch when changing tab width. r36294
  • Additions:
  • added support for sculpting on blended shape keys r36295
  • new view 'dolly', zoom which moves the view port forward in perspective mode, not restricted by the view rotational pivot. (Ctrl+Shift+MMB). r36283
  • continuous zoom now uses dolly settings for horizontal/vertical mouse & inverted movement.
  • convenience button in modifiers panels to allow switching to the physics tab r36327

New in Blender 2.57a (Apr 22, 2011)

  • Essential Fixes:
  • sculpting partial redraw glitch #26932, r36161
  • crash on entering 3D text editmode (OSX only) #26930, r36179
  • crash on loading 2.4x files #26904, r36148
  • loading file with packed audio crashes #26990, r36213
  • loading large blend files speed-up r36241, r36244
  • Rendering:
  • black dots with raytrace reflections & bump mapped dupli-objects #26902, r36165
  • render crash when tangents are used with modifiers that remove orco coordinates #26933, r36170
  • incorrect errors for panorama & orthographic camera combination #26906, r36184
  • no output from texture node group #27034, r36251
  • crash setting voxel data to negative resolution #27083, r36256
  • crash when loading invalid voxel data and resource leak - never closing files #27084, r36257
  • wrong sequencer alpha gradient #25713, r36197
  • Interface:
  • top bar 'Add -> Mesh -> UV Sphere + Enter' - crashed #27058, r36242
  • buttons with centered text truncating the first characters when there wasn't enough space #26937, r36174
  • single grease pencil points drawing very large in the image editor, r36154
  • incorrect relative path used when opening audio #26949, r36209
  • unpacking sounds with a long ID name #27015, r36214
  • ambiguous operator names in the search popup #26977, r36221
  • crash copying datablocks with ID Property arrays #26967, r36229
  • console is not hidden when start blender #26884, r36243
  • outliner objects showed "active" or "selected" in confusing ways #27026, r36248
  • freedesktop icons, incorrect install location and copying SVG #27086, r36260, r36261
  • sunsky presets used deprecated property names #27094, r36268.
  • non-functional user preference for clamping texture #26955, r36186
  • smooth tangent iteration field in curve panel not responding #26989, r36198
  • text editor indentation correction when when line contained ',' or ':' in a string, r36187
  • text editor copy/paste breaks formatting of script #27014, r36236
  • Tools:
  • "make fur" gave errors with multiple selected objects. r36250
  • mesh editmode de-selecting edge loops #26931, r36159
  • dupli-extrude-cursor added wrong location when nothing selected #27016, r36216
  • mesh rip tool access from menu fail #26936, r36226
  • crash copying mesh, armature, lattice and metaball datablocks while in editmode #27096, r36263, r36264
  • explode modifier - apply as shape impossible #27075, r36249
  • add object, localview and undo error #27044, r36245
  • buffer overflow with string lengths for operators that took ID names, r36219
  • Compositing:
  • 'Hue Correct' composite node saturates #26945, r36201
  • 'Displace Node' composite node crashes Blender when connected to Z-Buffer #26896, r36202
  • lens distortion composite node delivered RGBA out with alpha zero #26901, r36212
  • timeline camera switch failed with compositor renderlayers #26900, r36217
  • rendering non active scenes from the compositor used wrong frame, r36218
  • modified nodes inside edited groups not updating the view #27018, r36227
  • Python:
  • bpy.context.object.collision access crash #26995, r36204
  • crash running the transform operator from python #27011, r36215
  • button input could do incorrect unit system replacements of valid python expressions r36199, r36206
  • bpy.utils.blend_paths(True) crash #27072, r36246
  • Game engine:
  • blenderplayer wasn't finding bundled python #26951, r36208
  • game engine radar sensor broken #26795, r36234
  • Animation:
  • apply scale to armature offset bone children #27006, r36211, r36233
  • action/NLA editor issues with animation data context #25960, r36222
  • particle group object viewport and render scale mismatch #27008, r36224
  • action editor header doesn't update when entering tweakmode on NLA strips #25960, r36225
  • bugs when linking particles/collision/softbody modifiers #27038, r36228
  • separate armature would also separate active, unselected bone r36232
  • available keying set fails in armature pose mode #27090, r36258
  • b-bone doesn't resize correctly with numeric input #27095, r36270
  • Additions
  • API for exporters to write paths with different absolute/relative options. r36155
  • image and compositor now show the color under the cursor as well as HSV and luminance. r36239
  • Blender Addons
  • Fixed
  • Add Corrective Shape Key: api update. r1830
  • Fracture Tools: api update r1835, r1836
  • Povray render export fix for writing invalid names r1842.
  • Unreal Engine (PSA / PSK):
  • fixed mesh rebuild for face id materials and vertex groups. r1839
  • fixed vertex group support r1844
  • fixed uv's and tri and quad mesh rebuild button r1832
  • View3D Copy Menu: fixed for new api r1845
  • 3DS Import: support for files which reference non-existing materials. r1846
  • OBJ Import: loading when in pose mode failed #27019, r1848
  • RenderFarmFI: Added guidelines for submitting the render and fix error where hasSmokeSimulation lacked parenthesis r1850
  • Add Mesh Extras: missing argument to menu operator r1850
  • Additions
  • added OBJ & FBX options for exporting paths - relative/absolute/automatic/copy-file/strip-path r1828

New in Blender 2.56a Beta (Jan 7, 2011)

  • Updated for a crash with physics and undo.
  • 24 bugs have been fixed since 2.56.
  • A bvh motion capture exporter has been added.

New in Blender 2.56 Beta (Jan 2, 2011)

  • The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.56 Beta. This release is the fourth official beta release of the Blender 2.5 series, representing the culmination of many years of redesign and development work.
  • This version is called a "Beta" because it's now for the most part feature complete. The Python API has had some extensive changes, most notably in naming conventions and in creation and access of properties.
  • Since Blender 2.55 beta over 440 bugs were fixed!

New in Blender 2.54 Beta (Sep 13, 2010)

  • This release is the second official beta release of the Blender 2.5 series, representing the culmination of many years of redesign and development work.
  • This version is called a "Beta" because it's now for the most part feature complete. The Python API has had some extensive changes, most notably in naming conventions and in creation and access of properties.
  • IMPORTANT: Between 2.53 and 2.54 an extensive renaming operation has changed the scripting API a lot, with repercussions also for loading 2.53 .blends with animation into 2.54. Make sure you try the FCurve/Driver 2.54 fix entry from the Help menu.