News: Blender 2.57 Quick Effect Operators Demo

DEVELOPER NOTES (Janne Karhu)

Quick effects operators:

* A couple of operators to quickly create effects that would otherwise take some time to set up.
* Nice to use for demoing functionality or as a starting point for more complex effects.
* "Make Fur" - Gives every selected mesh object particle fur with a desired density and length.
* "Make Smoke" - Makes each selected object a smoke emitter and creates a new domain object around the emitters with the correct material to render the smoke. ** Has style options for "stream": constant smoke flow, "puff": only create smoke once from the volume of the emitter object, "fire": enable high resolution smoke and set a secondary fire color texture for the domain object.
* "Make Fluid" - Makes every selected object a fluid object (normal/inflow) and has the option to start fluid baking immediately.
* This should provide a nice base for extending these / adding more operators for different effects.

More info at the Blender Developer Blog...

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials

Feature Demo: Continuous Physics in Blender 2.46

The upcoming 2.46 version of Blender will be packed with so many new features it boggles the mind. Development is happening at a breakneck pace.

Here's a new feature that I only recently became aware of and it's definitely cool. It will be of great use when using Blender's physics simulation features. The new feature is call "Continue Physics" and it's available in the Playback menu of the Timeline window. Basically, it allows you to continue tweaking your scene while still seeing the real-time effects of any physics simulations that are in place!

From Blender.org:

For tweaking physics systems, it is useful to work with the timeline Play button enabled. Making changes will then be automatically be reflected in the results. Further, a new option in the Playback menu, "Continue Physics", will continue the simulating physics system regardless of the current frame. This makes it possible to interact with the physics system by moving collisions objects, shaking a softbody object, etc.

UPDATE - Faster loading video!:
Here's a video demonstration that shows the new feature in action. (MOV, 9.5MB)

The scene shown in the video is available as a downloadable .blend file from Blender.org. The new "Continue Physics" feature is only available in the very latest release candidate for Blender v2.46 (rc4) and, of course, the pending official release of v2.46.

For more info and a link to the .blend file, visit Blender.org.

technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, graphics, Blender tutorials