Blender 2.63 Released! Includes BMesh and many Cycles improvements.
As of today, Blender 2.63 is now released and available to everyone! This is a monumental release that includes an enormous number of improvements, fixes and additions. Among other things, the mesh modeling system has been completely revamped, there are many improvements and additions to the Cycles render engine and there are over 150 bug fixes!
A big thanks goes out to all the developers and contributors that help to make Blender possible. Blender wouldn’t be here without them!
Download Blender 2.63
BMesh modeling system
This is the long-awaited modeling system overhaul that has been in development for many years. Bmesh brings a much less destructive, streamlined modeling workflow that will let you model faster than ever before in Blender. Along with a better modeling surface under the surface; Bmesh also brings about many new modeling tools:
- Full NGon support for faces with more than four vertices
- Bevel tool for creating rounded corners
- Inset tool for easy detailing
- Bridge tool for connecting two edgeloops
- Dissolve for removing geometry without altering the surface
- Knife topology tool for easily cutting in new geometry
- Vertex Connect tool for connecting vertices with edges without needing to remove the faces first
Cycles improvements
Blender 2.63 brings along many improvements to the Cycles render engine that help to make it a true, production-ready render engine. Cycles continues to get better and better and is maturing at an alarming rate. This release includes:
- Ambient occlusion support and render layer pass
- Shadow pass for render layers
- Integrator clamp option for noise and firefly reduction
Various features and improvements
Beside the major BMesh and Cycles improvements, Blender 2.63 also includes numerous small improvements and over 150 bug fixes! Some of these improvements include:
- Modifiers: Strength slider for the Lattice modifier, coded by our very own Patrick Boelens!
- Sculpting: mesh hiding support, allowing you to hide/unhide parts of your mesh while sculpting
- Sculpting: Clay strips brush for easy surface sketching
- Compositing: detach operator to disconnect a node from all others while maintaining original links. Use with ALT + D
- Compositing: improved File Output node with multiple input/output support
- Interface: various improvements, including icons for Vertex/Face normals display and a menu for delete in the toolbar
Even more!
is the bsurfaces in its full state in this version or is it not yet
A lot of the vimeo videos on this site seem to bug out on me for some reason.
What happens when they “bug out”?
-Jonathan
It’s kind of hard to explain and it doesn’t happen with every video for some reason. The BMesh video on this page is an example of one of the videos I have trouble with. If I play the video and skip forward to say 9 minutes. The little bar will take me to 9 minutes, but the video will still be playing from the beginning. It’s like the video is off-sync with the little buffer bar (or whatever you call it) at the bottom.
I should mention that it works fine when the video is fully buffered.
Hallelujah! Vertex slide and best of all Color Ramp! I’ve been languishing in creative material stagnation without a color ramp in Cycles.(OK…maybe that’s not true. It’s really more Skyrim’s fault than lack of Blender tools. lol I got my sweet roll back baby!) And I’ve been wanting vertex slide since 2.5 first came out. N-gons…(ooh! I just got a shiver!) Thank you Blender.
hey, this version has a bug in the game engine.
I created a game in the previous version, but now, my character can’t turn anymore
Can anyone help me?
That’s what is happening to me!
Maybe the pose library would work in pose mode (in animation)? I’m not sure.
Ok! Great work! Take a deep breath, Relax! Ok! break over. You mentioned making your own 360 degree backgrounds here. Any guide tuts planned for near future for that.
Thank you developers and thank you Jonathan
Im only a beginner but bmesh looks as if its going to be awesome when the little problems have been ironed out. Has the potential to build complex models quickly and cleanly. With this and the new cycles Blender is becoming a serious threat to leading software packages. Would like to see some tuts on modelling with Bmesh Jon, if possible
You can count on more bmesh modeling tutorials soon
I cant wait for the tuts, any ideas for the theme of them yet Jon ? I thought that ngons would be brilliant for things like Architecture, vehicles,weapons, things like that. But Im just at beginner level still and Im probably wrong. Whatever the case may be Im really looking forward to them.
Thanks again team
i must be the only one not thinking n-gons to be all that great
please do me a favor a try modeling something organic with it, try modeling a head with a good topology…
its crazy you don’t have any control unless you convert everything to quads, not to mention every time you DON’T want to make an n-gon you have to click on the button to convert it, time saving huh?
people look to the features they get with n-gons, which are great obviously, but you all forget what you lose
all would be awesome if there was an option to not make it default, the check mark doesn’t make it default
I would actually have to say that having NGons makes getting good head topology much easier! One of the benefits of NGons is you can use them as a temporary topology road-block, so as to have good control over where you’re adding cuts and such. I have a couple tutorials planned that will show exactly this.
Cheers,
Jonathan
I’m really anticipating those tutorials. I wish the “violin tut” had an accompanying commentary. I also wish it showed how they did the f-holes:)
Will the tuts showmodelling or just retopology?
This just isn’t so. Nothing is lost, and more is gained than you realize. And as far as I know, Blender does “remember” your preferences for using tris and quads, it’s just on a tool by tool basis.
You have to learn to use the right tools though. Think of it this way: Introducing nGons is like making it possible to type a double-spaced document in a word processor. If you use the wrong tool, it is like pressing the “Enter” key twice after each line in your document to make it double-spaced, which will mess up your formatting in a right hurry. Obviously nobody does this when typing a document.
With Blender meshes as your “documents”, learn to use the right tools and even your (“single-spaced”) quads-only meshes will be even faster to model than they ever were.
(Followup)
As far as “not having any control unless you convert everything to quads”, I think this is a misnomer. Control comes from planning your topology. It is not a byproduct of whether or not non-quads can be produced.
The way I remember this is to recall that there has never been a “subdivide without creating triangles” option that allows you to always have quads only. The modeler has always been required to redirect edge flow to remove stray triangles or to make them coplanar.
To me there is no significant difference between fixing unwanted nGons and fixing unwanted triangles. Both are byproducts of subdivision and both need to be managed. The good thing about bMesh is that it offers quicker ways to fix both of these than were possible under the old mesh codebase.
when i use subdivide in blender it goes up only to 6 how do i make it go higher
hi i have downloaded blender v. 2.63a
and then i open cycles and render.
then say Done path tracking samples 10/10
and you is it Done path tracking samples 200/200
so then render only 10 path tracking samples at all why
If I understand your question: Look in the right hand (Render) panel for “Integrator” and open it. You will see the default for Render Samples is 10. You can set this higher or if you set to 0 it will keep rendering until you stop it.
I am still not clear on what the “boundary” checkbox for the Inset tool does.
it stops the inset at non-manifold edges (holes)
this is good for insets over a mirror line.
-Alex