Blender 2.65 Released

skade88 writes "Blender 2.65 has been released. Here is a quote from the Blender team: 'The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.65. We focused on making this the most stable release in the 2.6 cycle yet, fixing over 200 bugs. Fire simulation was added along with many improvements in smoke simulation. In Cycles, motion blur, open shading language and anisotropic shading support was added. For mesh modeling, the bevel tool was much improved, a new symmetrize mesh tool was added, and new Laplacian smooth, decimate, and triangulate modifiers are available.'"

Re:Good, but still for hobbyists

[oGMo]

I'm not sure this is the best argument (as I am sure there are others), since a multi-thousand-dollar seat cost is probably easily outweighed by investing in more render nodes, which you'd probably end up wanting anyway.

With as far as Blender has come from its early days, though, I'm guessing the day is coming when it will simply be the best. The Free(tm) nature and easy extensibility could make it the preferred target for academic and other research.

Re:Good, but still for hobbyists

[goruka]

I have worked with plenty of small animation and videogame studios that use and love Blender (in fact Blender is so well integrated to Unity that it's the modelling package of choice). They do so because of the love for the software and the productivity advantages it provides.
The problem with Blender in business is not so much the features. At this point, Blender is superior to most other 3D packages in tasks such as poly modelling, rigging or uv mapping and the Cycles renderer is awesome. The ability to model while, at the same time, having GLSL and Cycles viewports is also far beyond what is available in other packages, and the integrated sculpting tools are very mature.
The real reason why Blender is not adopted in large studios is because of the support contracts provided by Autodesk. When you sign with them, they provide from software licenses to render farms, all covered with phone support. There is no way the Blender Foundation can compete with that unless they become more like RedHat.

Re:3D Comp[uter Graphics Software

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Maya professionally and Blender personally. I love that there 's powerful and free 3D software, and for my own creative uses I like how Blender has odd little features that can turn wonderfully abstract in a flash (array modifier I'm looking at you, lovingly).

However, when doing work that other people are telling me to do, it's Maya all the way because you're going to get to the point where you need, *need*, NEED to hack it to get it out the door and Maya never lets me down there.

(The one exception is text. I used Blender once in actual production to create text objects which were exported to Maya. Anyone who's tried to use Maya's text will know why.)