Tour the major new features in Blender 2.66
Blender 2.66 was released Thursday, February 21st 2013, and it comes with a load of great new features, improvements, and over 250 bug fixes from previous versions.
Some of the most notable features are Dynamic Topology sculpting, Rigid Body physics simulations, Cycles Hair Strand rendering, Vertex Beveling, and several new modifiers. Beyond these there’s also a huge number usability enhancements to improve your user experience, such as split preferences, MatCap object display, Retina display support for Macbook Pros, and overlapping and transparent toolbars for the 3D viewport.
You will also find improvements to the handling of image transparency, particle fluid dynamics, game engine options, Collada exporting, and a series of misc other features.
Release Notes
For a complete list of all new features, improvements, and bug fixes in Blender 2.66 check out the release notes.
Hi, I’m wondering if there is anyone who uses a MacBook and with this new version it has changed the view manipulation, i mean, in the previous version I orbit pressing alt+dashboard, now i must press sift. It quite silly but its slowing me while im working. If there’s someone as me or know some solution to bring the old presets I would be really grateful. Anyway, nice presentation guys!!
Hi Arnau,
The navigation controls changed a bit in this version to give better control and flexibility for MacBooks users and Magic Trackpad users. The trackpad is far more powerful now. However, if you’re not happy with the changes then you can always adjust them to your liking via User Preferences > Input.
Cheers,
Jonathan
this is so great! Thanks Jonathon for getting this out so fast.
Can these videos make there way to the official wiki? It would be great if you could broker something with the developers to expose new functionality as it makes it’s way into Blender. I feel like this is somewhere that Blender is lacking, tonnes of awesome new features but often people don’t hear about them or they lack basic documentation.
When you think about it, it’s a win, win situation. Developers have their work show cased, and Blender Cookie has a constant stream of content:)
Jonathan, doesn’t dynamic topology put Blender into Zbrush’s ability range? I’ve never used Zbrush. Will I ever need to now?
Actually I think this resources do increase our productivity, despite it is “only” improvements on the user interface. A few years ago, use Blender used to be a painful experience because there wasn’t concerns about the UI. The ideia was that Blender is a software to ultra-experts. A more friendly interface presumably could be interpreted by them as an insult to their superior intelligence. I think Blender lost time with this false idea. Fortunately, the philosophy now changed.
Interesting theory. This new version of Blender looks simple amazing. The developers have done an extraordinary work for the Blender community. I’m very excited to work on it. Blender is growing to become the very best 3D software, as it develops it’s underdeveloped areas, like sculpture.
Great overview of Blender’s new features. Thanks!
Seh ich das richtig? Dynamic Topology ist nicht für Animationen durch fehlende normal bake Funktion ??
Könnte mir das evtl jemand übersetzen da mein Englich nicht das beste ist. Danke euch.
MFG
Dynamische Topologie ist gut für die Erstellung von Ideen, ist es nicht die beste für die normale Karte Backen, sondern kann hierfür verwendet werden. Ich benutze dynamische Topologie meine Silhouette und Form bekommen, dann retopolgize und formen auf einem Multi-Resolution Modifier.
Google Translate
– Alex
Thank you Jonathan for your videos; I love “Blender Feature” ones: they keep me on the bleeding edge of Blender advances
After watching the video about Rigid Body Phisics Simulator, I started creating a demo scene: a ball falling down in a sloping tube.
I wanted a longer simulation so I set the last frame to 1000 but… tada! The simulations always stops at 250th frame: an orange bar at bottom of the timeline confirms it.
I tried to search a parameter in the settings, in the object properties, … nothing. Deleted and re-activated rigid body properties: nothing. Tried to bake 1000 frames… still nothing.
Any idea?
To fix this problem, simply locate the Rigid Body Cache panel under the Scene settings in the Properties window. In this panel, increase the End value to 1000.
Hi, I downloaded 2.66 and I have been having a problem that I don’t have with 2.65. all the little thumbnails (e.g. the ones beside all the names of the objects in the outliner) look as if they have been scaled massively and only a small portion is shown. Here look. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0KVLULGEieWSnQ3SkEwUnhGLXc/edit?usp=sharing If you find the problem please tell me.
Can’t access file, but you might need to disable the new retina display option
-Alex
You can view the picture now. I don’t know how to turn the retina display on or off. But I’m pretty sure that is not the problem.
Oh, ok I have no idea whatsoever. bug report time!
-Alex
Did you guys change your site? I used to be able to d/l the videos and enjoy them on my lunch time (my company blocks youtube, and all streaming content.)
Hi Gary,
With these series posts, that have all videos on the same page, you can find a “Download HD Video” link below each video thumbnail.
Hello Jonathan and thanks for good tutorials. This tutorial RigidBody was easy to follow.
Can I animate with cycle. http://player.vimeo.com/video/61043749
Jonathan thank you for another excellent video. I have been watching many of the CG Cookie tutorials and there are comments throughout about Cycles not being able to do this or that and recommending that Blender internal render be used instead.
It seems obvious that we should use Cycles as much as possible, especially since Blender render is going to become obsolete. With the newest release of Cycles, is there anything left that can’t be done in Cycles? At this point do you still recommend that Blender render be used for some things? If so, which things? Do you anticipate that we won’t need Blender render soon?
I’m new to Blender so learning and focusing on only one render engine would make it much easier.
Most things use cycles now, but internal will always have it’s place for things like baking, or speed renders such as vector, normal or depth passes.
Similar to how maya now uses mental ray as it’s primary engine, but software renderer still has it’s uses.
-Alex
Hi There, I am having a problem with cycles Hair rendering, It renders hair ok when I have Viewport shading set to “rendered”, however when I attempt to render a still image no particle hairs show up. What did I forget to do?
In the render panel you need to set the Feature Set to ‘Experimental’ in order to render hair in Cycles.
Thanks Richard W , There must be a bug in Blender, because I have it set to experimental and was unable to render hair. I came back to Blender after a few days and now it renders the hair with the exact same settings. I read your help and went right to the blender file, I made no changes. Go figure???? Thanks Ron
i’ve downloaded 2.66 but the experimental feature and the cycles hair renderer is missing,i notice the 1st video introduction had it missing too but this hair particle video now has the feature experimental on, what am i missing, is this an experimental build? i’m using mac btw..
You need to be using the Cycles render engine for the supported/experimental options to show. You can change render engines in the top most header; the one with File, Add, Render, Window, Help.
Once you’ve done that, you can go to the properties panel set the feature type to ‘Experimental’ in the render tab. To add a particle system, hit the plus sign in the particles tab; it will be emitter by default, but you can change it to hair.
Sorry it took so long to reply.