Overview of Blender 2.62 – New Features Tour

by Jonathan Williamson

Hello and welcome to the overview of Blender 2.62

This video tour showcases many of the new features included with Blender 2.62 to help get you up to speed with the new version as quickly as possible. Several of the most notable features include additions to Cycles, Motion Tracking and UV Unwrapping! You can see details on each of these below (and in the above video). Along with these features there were also over 200 bug fixes and numerous smaller features throughout.

Cycles

The Cycles render engine has a few major additions including render layers, render passes, multi-GPU rendering, better environment sampling, border rendering and more.

Rendering Wooden Barrels in Cycles

 

Motion Tracking

Following up with Camera Tracking in Blender 2.61, 2.62 adds the ability to track motion in a video file and apply that motion to an object. This makes is a breeze to do anything from digital makeup to cowboys with plasma cannons on their arms!

Motion tracking in Blender 2.62

 

UV Unwrapping

Blender’s UV Unwrapping tools have always been pretty good but now they’re even better! Several new tools have been integrated that were developed during the 2011 Google Summer of Code. This includes a full automatic stitching tool, UV sculpting, auto-seam generation by UV islands and more.

UV Unwrapping Stitch tool in Blender 2.62

 

Complete Feature List

Fore a complete list of new features and bug fixes be sure to check out the Release Notes

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Discussion

89 Responses to “Overview of Blender 2.62 – New Features Tour”
  1. Alejandro AR
    Posts: 11

    Amazing. Thanks for the overview, it’s important to keep updated.

    #
    1
     Feb 20, 2012 at 4:53 pm
  2. Joe Sav
    Posts: 17

    When will ATI cards be supported?

    #
    2
     Feb 20, 2012 at 5:15 pm
    • Jonathan Williamson
      Posts: 2957

      There’s no definitive date yet but hopefully fairly soon.

      #
      2.1
       Feb 20, 2012 at 5:22 pm
      • John D Smith II
        Posts: 234

        That would be nice…Keyshot is makin Cycles look BAD!lol It renders perfect clarity in a few secs on my ATI. Guess thats why its a thousand bucks…

        #
        2.1.1
         Feb 21, 2012 at 4:55 am
    • David
      Posts: 11

      cycle works on my gpu (ATI Radeon HD 5700)

      #
      2.2
       Feb 21, 2012 at 10:48 am
      • Hector
        Posts: 1

        How do you do that???, I’m almost going crazy to do it and after infinit tries i couldn’t make it, not even under OpenGL. (sorry for my very poor english, i speak spanish) ;-)

        #
        2.2.1
         Feb 21, 2012 at 11:44 am
      • John D Smith II
        Posts: 234

        Its a no-go with a Radeon HD 4200…

        #
        2.2.2
         Feb 21, 2012 at 6:23 pm
  3. Joao Paulo Abreu
    Posts: 8

    I pity the CUDA does not work on my graphics card, but no doubt that the cycles is amazing :)

    #
    3
     Feb 20, 2012 at 5:35 pm
  4. Joao Paulo Abreu
    Posts: 8

    well anyway this version 2.62 GPU mode works with my graphics card and faster cool :)

    #
    4
     Feb 20, 2012 at 6:25 pm
  5. Sebastian Brachi
    Posts: 8

    It’s great to have so many new features, and it’s also great to have blendercookie, I couldn’t find much documentation or “how to” manuals for every new blender feature released so far.

    #
    5
     Feb 20, 2012 at 7:11 pm
  6. Raphael Madoui
    Posts: 36

    I use GTX560 SLi is very cool and very fast render in cycle

    have fun !

    #
    6
     Feb 20, 2012 at 8:29 pm
  7. Thomas Sørensen
    Posts: 12

    GPU rendering is about 10x faster than CPU on my system (GTX560Ti). If I get two graphics cards in SLi will it render twice as fast?

    #
    7
     Feb 20, 2012 at 8:44 pm
    • Seeya
      Posts: 17

      I’m pretty sure you have to disable sli. SLI is not for gpu rendering. You cant reach 2x speed (ideal situation not realistic) but you will get close to it.

      #
      7.1
       Feb 21, 2012 at 8:56 am
      • DimitrisC
        Posts: 11

        Is it possible to disable SLI in your cards properties? I just ordered a dual GTX560 PC and they’ll probably bridge them when assembling the machine.

        #
        7.1.1
         Feb 21, 2012 at 9:40 am
      • Seeya
        Posts: 17

        @DimitrisC: from the nVidia Control Panel

        #
        7.1.2
         Feb 21, 2012 at 11:22 am
      • DimitrisC
        Posts: 11

        Thanks Seeya!
        Can’t wait to test it out!!!

        #
        7.1.3
         Feb 21, 2012 at 6:09 pm
    • Chris Skinner
      Posts: 40

      I’ve got a GTX 470 in my PC and sometimes use Octane Render (will certainly be switching to Cycles when I get chance).

      I did a test borrowing another GTX but it was a 460 that had the same amount of Cuda cores which in the 470 is 448 and in Octane and Cycles it did pretty much render at twice the speed. In Octane my scene was rendering at 12 samples per second with one card and then at 24 samples per second with 2 cards. You do need to disable SLi though.

      #
      7.2
       Feb 28, 2012 at 9:38 am
    • Chris Skinner
      Posts: 40

      Sorry another thing worth mentioning is that the cards don’t necessarily need to be the same either if you are not bothered about SLi. However it will probably only use the vram from the lowest spec card.

      #
      7.3
       Feb 28, 2012 at 9:40 am
  8. Christopher Archer
    Posts: 29

    One thing I notice is when you render, your image is display after it is done ! This is not the way it worked before :(

    #
    8
     Feb 20, 2012 at 9:06 pm
    • Jonathan Williamson
      Posts: 2957

      I am not quite sure what you mean by this?

      #
      8.1
       Feb 20, 2012 at 10:09 pm
      • Chris Skinner
        Posts: 40

        Hi Guys, I’ve experienced a similar thing.

        When trying to render a scene in 2.62 using Blender Internal it doesn’t show the progress of the render as it normally does, i.e. the squares representing the processors on your machine building up the rendered image. It does however still render the image but only reveals it after the render is complete. Not great for previewing/workflow.

        Now I’ve only had a quick look into this, the scene I was having problems rendering was created in 2.61 so I don’t know if that is causing the problem. And I’ve just created a very simple scene in 2.62, hit render and it works fine, as it normally does.

        So not quite sure what is going on.

        #
        8.1.1
         Feb 21, 2012 at 4:50 am
    • Christopher Archer
      Posts: 29

      Thanks ‘skinnercreative’ – you explain it better then me:(

      #
      8.2
       Feb 21, 2012 at 12:28 pm
  9. Chris
    Posts: 1

    Hi Jonathon,

    Thanks for the overview. Not so keen on watching it on You Tube.

    Why have you chosen to embed a You Tube rather than Vimeo? I find You Tube frustrating to use and aesthetically ugly.

    Best regards,

    Chris

    Chris Seibold

    #
    9
     Feb 20, 2012 at 9:28 pm
    • Jonathan Williamson
      Posts: 2957

      Vimeo was having trouble with uploads today and so in order to get the video posted today I opted for YouTube. I’ll be replacing it with the Vimeo version soon :)

      #
      9.1
       Feb 20, 2012 at 10:08 pm
    • Adam
      Posts: 1

      frustrating to use? You just press the play button. I actually much prefer youtube as the videos buffer much faster on my slow internet on youtube than on vimeo.

      #
      9.2
       Feb 22, 2012 at 2:39 pm
      • Jeremy Deighan
        Posts: 263

        Not for me, Vimeo seems to work better for some reason. And doesn’t have all the annoying ads. lol

        #
        9.2.1
         Feb 22, 2012 at 9:58 pm
      • Bryan Crochet
        Posts: 8

        I agree, I have fewer problems with youtube and better scrubbing Vimeo seems to rebuffer when I scrub… When watching a tut I tend to scrub a lot and rewatch the magic!

        #
        9.2.2
         Feb 25, 2012 at 7:14 pm
  10. Bruce Martin
    Posts: 13

    ANT landscape addon + block remesh modifier = awesome minecraft style landscapes. BAM! There’s your practical use. :D

    #
    10
     Feb 20, 2012 at 10:14 pm
  11. Joshua Godwin
    Posts: 27

    thanks a million for the overview. can’t wait to download this version.

    #
    11
     Feb 21, 2012 at 1:11 am
  12. colezero
    Posts: 8

    Hey Jonathan,

    frist things first: This is a great Video. Thank you! I love the overview-videos. A great way to get informed and see the new features in action!

    But now 2 questions:

    Did Blender crash during the UW Unwrap after you selected the “Use subsurface data” and then the iteration of 2? Because there was a cut and you just startet a new topic.

    Second one:
    There is a problem if i try to log in when the video is an embedded youtube video, since everything dims, but the login screen is still behind the youtube video. So if a watch this video for example and press “Login” everything dims, except the video itself and the login screen is behind the youtube video.

    #
    12
     Feb 21, 2012 at 2:31 am
    • Psy-Fi
      Posts: 3

      Hi, I am also interested in whether you had a crash. I have had a few cases of crashes while developing the tool that I tried to address. If you repeatedly get crashes a bug report would be nice. Thanks a lot!

      #
      12.1
       Feb 21, 2012 at 4:34 pm
      • Jonathan Williamson
        Posts: 2957

        I didn’t have a crash but it stalled for a minute while processing the change, I ended up canceling it instead of waiting. I will be sure to keep testing it though in the case of bugs and report them :)

        #
        12.1.1
         Feb 21, 2012 at 6:16 pm
  13. Seeya
    Posts: 17

    Hi jonathan. You can’t find normal and checker nodes just because you’re on compositor and not in cycles material nodes. Anyway, very useful video expecially for uv tools. Thanks.

    #
    13
     Feb 21, 2012 at 3:37 am
  14. Jan Sandahl
    Posts: 2

    Great overview!

    I have searched, but haven´t found what the letters BVH stands for?

    #
    14
     Feb 21, 2012 at 4:30 am
  15. masoud
    Posts: 1

    awesome
    thank Thanks for the overview.

    #
    15
     Feb 21, 2012 at 5:07 am
  16. benjamin
    Posts: 2

    this is quite nice – especial very inspiring for my featurevideos ;) THX

    #
    16
     Feb 21, 2012 at 5:21 am
  17. Koenn Becker
    Posts: 1

    Great!!!

    #
    17
     Feb 21, 2012 at 11:34 am
  18. Andrew Adams
    Posts: 4

    I’m not going to watch these videos on break at work anymore. I want to go home sick and try out these new features. Thanks again J!

    #
    18
     Feb 21, 2012 at 1:55 pm
  19. Chris H
    Posts: 2

    Rendering a single render layer in cycles with the very first render layer disabled results in either the image being completely blank or sky color, or the objects are black.

    Anyone know if cycles just can’t handle that? Internal allows you to render any layer with the first layer disabled, which is very useful for making alpha maps.

    #
    19
     Feb 21, 2012 at 2:06 pm
  20. Nicholas Tindall
    Posts: 96

    Cheers, Jonathon.

    High time that opencl was supported – imo should have been done first as both ati and nvidia support it.

    #
    20
     Feb 21, 2012 at 3:03 pm
  21. J C Roberts
    Posts: 12

    Good to see the new features demoed. I just wish the whole thing wasn’t tainted by the removal of simplify while in cycles. I don’t know why they did it, but it really cripples my modeling and posing routine having add the extra step of jumping in and out of Blender Render to use switch simplify.
    And it’s kind of spoiled the cool factor to have such a regularly used feature broken. I still wonder why they did it.

    At least I can see what else 2.62 brings other than that.

    #
    21
     Feb 21, 2012 at 4:04 pm
    • J C Roberts
      Posts: 12

      Should have been “having to add the extra step”, and “to switch to simplify” in the spots where the grammar makes no sense. I really need to proof-read better before clicking.

      #
      21.1
       Feb 21, 2012 at 4:22 pm
    • Jonathan Williamson
      Posts: 2957

      I would imagine this will be added back in in the near future.

      #
      21.2
       Feb 21, 2012 at 4:24 pm
  22. Andy Davison
    Posts: 38

    Thanks for pointing out how to switch on GPU rendering. It never used to be in User Preferences and that had me scratching my head for a bit. Of course, I hadn’t looked at the release notes as real blokes don’t read the instructions :)

    #
    22
     Feb 21, 2012 at 5:31 pm
  23. Beauregard Heimer
    Posts: 2

    But when will we be able to do rigid body physics without the game engine?

    #
    23
     Feb 21, 2012 at 7:36 pm
  24. Brian Lynn
    Posts: 2

    I can’t get Booleans to work. I keep getting an error “Modifier is disabled, skipping apply”. The poor boolean performance and handling in Blender made me sad before, I was hoping to give the new Carve library a run and see how its improved but I can’t get it to do anything!

    #
    24
     Feb 21, 2012 at 9:28 pm
    • Brian Lynn
      Posts: 2

      nvm im silly. haven’t used boolean in Blender in so long I forgot how!

      #
      24.1
       Feb 21, 2012 at 9:37 pm
  25. Mehmet PINARCI
    Posts: 228

    thank you this was very nice

    #
    25
     Feb 22, 2012 at 4:34 am
  26. Timo Rychert
    Posts: 10

    Thanks for the overview, very helpful!
    One question though. When you demonstrate the boolean, how do you tab into edit mode showing the altered mesh without applying the boolean? When I tab into edit mode, I only see the original (unaltered mesh).

    Thanks!

    #
    26
     Feb 22, 2012 at 6:52 am
    • Joe Bloggs
      Posts: 19

      There a little button on the top of the modifier like a triangle with 3 dots on t. Click that :)

      #
      26.1
       Feb 23, 2012 at 1:23 pm
  27. Psy-Fi
    Posts: 3

    Hi Jonathan, an extra comment to clarify something when using stitch: I see you leave the two boundary uvs out when stitching. This is a typical case when stitching circular edges and to fix this behaviour I have kept the “limit” option. what this means is that each uv can stitch a uv belonging to the same vertex only if its inside the limit, and each uv checks against that limit independently. So in your example, if you activate limit and increase the limit, stitching should work fine and those boundary uvs should stick only to their nearest one instead of the one around the corner. To make this work correctly you will most likely have to reposition the uv islands close together so that the limit won’t include another uv. I hope that makes sense…
    Anyway, thanks for testing and I am glad there were no crashes on unwrap :) .

    #
    27
     Feb 22, 2012 at 7:14 am
  28. Gal Narunsky
    Posts: 7

    Hi Jonathan,
    Thanks for the overview :)
    By the way, what screen capture software do you recommend?

    #
    28
     Feb 22, 2012 at 8:16 am
  29. nevbms
    Posts: 9

    Hi,Jonathan.

    If anyone wants to use their non compatible GPU cards,there’s some compile kernels out there,that supports nvdia computing capabilities architecture 1.0,1.1,1.2. >>just copy and paste the kernels to the lib folder in cycles.

    #
    29
     Feb 22, 2012 at 11:30 am
  30. Isaac Anderson
    Posts: 3

    Quick question, how do you get rid of the border rendering after you use it?
    Thanks!

    #
    30
     Feb 22, 2012 at 12:39 pm
  31. Bertus
    Posts: 1

    Great demo! One question on a detail in the Youtube clip: from 17:40 onwards, you show the different layers/passes by ‘cycling’ through the different outputs of the Image (exr) node, connecting them to the viewer node (and the backdrop) in turn. I couldn’t find the key/combo for that, what is it?

    Thanks!

    #
    31
     Feb 22, 2012 at 4:07 pm
  32. Tairony Lozer
    Posts: 3

    This perfect, I love Overview New Features Tour.

    #
    32
     Feb 22, 2012 at 4:41 pm
  33. thiago kolb
    Posts: 136

    thx Overview of Blender 2.62

    :D

    #
    33
     Feb 22, 2012 at 11:20 pm
  34. Alex Delderfield
    Posts: 2

    Nice video, I vote that something like this is done for every major Blender release in future :) Good to have a more of a demonstrational summary, rather than just reading the release notes.

    Also, had to give the new boolean a go, cant believe its taken so long to update, but its super smooth and awesome now, the auto updating is epic!

    #
    34
     Feb 23, 2012 at 2:34 am
    • Jeremy Deighan
      Posts: 263

      “Nice video, I vote that something like this is done for every major Blender release in future Good to have a more of a demonstrational summary, rather than just reading the release notes.”

      I really agree with this! I think you did an amazing job explaining the new features and would love having one of these for each major release.

      #
      34.1
       Feb 24, 2012 at 6:18 pm
  35. Joe Bloggs
    Posts: 19

    A whole new Boolean system to get to grips with… Not again!

    On a side note I’ve always wanted to make money out of blender, and now I am by selling renders and animations to my schoolmates lol, I suppose it’s thanks to this awesome site so cheers! :P

    #
    35
     Feb 23, 2012 at 1:20 pm
  36. unkwon
    Posts: 1

    Nice tutorial.
    This is a post that might interest you.
    http://cd3dtech.com/the-blender-benchmark/
    It compares the perfromance of differnet gpu’s in blender.

    #
    36
     Feb 23, 2012 at 4:14 pm
  37. michael brock
    Posts: 2

    hello my name is Michael, me and some friends are planing to make some console games using this program. we are making a iPod/Pad/Phone app to kinda of get into grips with the program first then we are moving on to a console game.
    i don’t know what your out look upon this is but if you need to tell us something feel free to either make note of it in a response of contact us @ [email protected] thx for reading

    #
    37
     Feb 24, 2012 at 3:39 pm
    • Kevin Moore
      Posts: 15

      Michael,
      I am by no means an expert, however I am also into game development and I’m trying to learn how that is all supposed to work. The best advice that I have for you and your friends is to use Blender completely. Blender can be used to model, sculpt, simulate physics, animate, render, and even has a built-in game engine (although there might be a Blender feature that I’m missing on here). Blender uses the Python language, so I highly recommend looking at the game engine tutorials here on Blender Cookie because there are a few good scripting tutorials specifically for creating games (that’s where I’m starting, anyways). That way, unless I’m mistaken, you could build your entire game through Blender. Finally, Blender has a HUGE resource for Python scripting that lists a bunch of functions, values, and other things to help you get on the right track. I hope this helped, and the best of luck to you! :)

      #
      37.1
       Feb 25, 2012 at 9:58 pm
      • michael brock
        Posts: 2

        thank you, maybe we could get in touch some time over skype? i will be primarily doing all the stuff withe the game and need some input on story line and programming. my skype name is michael.burgason if u decide to add me please let me know your name so i know to accept you, thx for the help bye

        #
        37.1.1
         Feb 27, 2012 at 8:37 pm
  38. alexds
    Posts: 39

    yes, it would be a very highly appreciated a tutorial about the new Layer Passes for Cyles!

    #
    38
     Feb 25, 2012 at 10:11 am
  39. Kevin Moore
    Posts: 15

    Wow, a new version of Blender came out pretty fast! I’ll be sure to download it and check it out!

    #
    39
     Feb 25, 2012 at 9:52 pm
  40. Jonathan Torres
    Posts: 12

    It seems that the Import option doesn’t work in 2.62 :( I guess I’ll just wait for the bug to be Fixed

    #
    40
     Feb 28, 2012 at 9:50 am
  41. sarkhamy
    Posts: 35

    Dear person out there who can answer me.
    can anyone tell me why I can’t load, or save any kind of image in blender 2.62? What do I do to fix it?

    #
    41
     Mar 1, 2012 at 3:21 pm
    • Jonathan Williamson
      Posts: 2957

      Hi there, I’ll be happy to help you! However I’ll need a bit more info about what you’re trying to do, what you’ve tried so far, etc. Are you trying to save a render, composited image or something else?

      #
      41.1
       Mar 1, 2012 at 4:27 pm
      • sarkhamy
        Posts: 35

        I’m trying to load an image background for a model. A refrance image. But when I go to my image folder, nothing shows up. I have no Idea whats happening.

        #
        41.1.1
         Mar 4, 2012 at 8:36 pm
      • Jonathan Williamson
        Posts: 2957

        What format are the images in? GIFs are not supported as background images.

        #
         Mar 4, 2012 at 9:43 pm
      • sarkhamy
        Posts: 35

        their .jpg and .png images.

        #
        41.1.2
         Mar 5, 2012 at 3:35 pm
      • Jonathan Williamson
        Posts: 2957

        I would suggest making sure they are no more than 956 pixels wide and less than 1MB in size.

        #
         Mar 5, 2012 at 5:07 pm
      • sarkhamy
        Posts: 35

        yup they all fall into that category. or at least they did in all the previous blenders.

        #
        41.1.3
         Mar 6, 2012 at 2:12 pm
  42. sharif ahmed
    Posts: 7

    nice……………..please more tutorial upload………………thanks

    #
    42
     Mar 10, 2012 at 4:06 am
  43. sarkhamy
    Posts: 35

    can someone please give me an answer!

    #
    43
     Mar 11, 2012 at 6:06 pm
  44. Arguz
    Posts: 1

    HELP… i downloaded the newest version blender 26.2 but under
    User-preferences/System/compute device i cant find the other two options (CUDA,OPENCL) i have an i7 processor and a switchable graphics card ati radeon 6770M/IntelHD graphics family…

    why cant i find the other 2 options? (Cuda/opencl)

    #
    44
     Mar 12, 2012 at 4:47 pm
  45. Ivan Krastev
    Posts: 2

    to me it seems that the UV Subsurf Data thingy is picking the data of the posed model which makes it distorted to one side is that right?

    #
    45
     Apr 5, 2012 at 11:07 am
  46. Berat Tatlici
    Posts: 49

    Dear Jonathan,

    I design models but i can’t save.When i Press “Save” In My Flash Memory Blender Say : “No Space Left On Device”. But when i press “Save” In my Desktop or other normal files save. Is problem My flash memory?? Please help me.:( (I am sorry i am Turkish and i have interesting sentences :D )

    #
    46
     Apr 7, 2012 at 12:00 pm

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