Pretty much just a bug fix release:

 

Interface

• Fix #34357: Image editor scope and clip editor track preview did not resize properly with different DPI settings. (r54760)
• Fix #33466: Alt+MouseWheel changes frame as well as buttons (r54929)
• Fix UI/DPI: user preferences window size now takes into account DPI, otherwise the buttons don't fit properly. (r54945)
• Fix soft shadow at top edge incorrectly drawn (r54954)
• Fix #34418: Screencast could be started twice (r54961)
• Fix #34509: Panel color were not updated from old files properly (r54996)
• Allow trackpad and magic mouse swipes to control brush size for circle select. (r55027)
• Fix (regression) #34391: Window position not saving correctly for next start-up (r54879)
• Fix #34390: quicktime video codec menu showing blank (r54942)

 

Viewport

• Fix #34378: GLSL materials using multiple UV layers fail in editmode (r54783)
• Fix #34347: View3D Mini-Axis drawing in error with overlay (r54789)
• Fix #34426: Manipulator handles drawn incorrectly by depth (r54923)
• Fix glitch rotating the camera in camera mode drawing helper-line in random locations (r54928)

 

Animation

• Fix zoom for graph-editor (and other editors) (r54910)

 

Sequencer

• Fix #34439: Strip modifier - Mask multiply failure (r54901)
• Fix #34453: Added RGBA|RGB channels toggle to sequencer preview (r54904)
• Fix sequencer crash when pasteing strips after creating new file (r54935)

 

Composite/Nodes

• Fix #34356: Inputs list in file output doesn't appear properly. (r54754)
• Fix #34359: Crash when using image output node (r54746)
• Fix #34474: "Record Composite" image op segfaults in compositor code (r54948)
• Fix #34461: Inconsistent behavior of "Color Mix Node" and "Alpha Over Node" (r54960)
• Fix #34507: Adding reroute node into invalid links would crash the compositor (r55047)

 

MovieClip/Tracking

• Fix memory leak when loading multilayer EXR as movie clip (r54934)
• Fix for incorrect subpixel precision of marker when using track offset (r55028)

 

Render

• Fix #34351: Displacement map Bake margin does not work (r54748)
• Fix #34436: Node editor delete texture crash (r54908)
• Fix #34493: Image Sequence texture didn't allow "Offset" with fcurves. (r55012)
• Fix #34475: Weird noise bug with Texture nodes (r55021)
• Fix for texture preview render with show alpha enabled (r55026)
• Fix image transparency backwards compatibility. Now the texture datablock has a 'Use Alpha' option again. (r55022)

 

Render (Cycles)

• Fix #34421: viewport render stuck with no objects in the scene. (r54885)
• Fix #34480: hair render in dupligroup did hide the emitter properly in some cases. (r54959)

 

Modifiers

• Fix #34358: Shrinkwrap modifier project along normal did not work correctly (r54793)
• Fix #34369: applying screw modifier turns object to black (r55004)

 

Tools

• Fix #34384: Border select in UV Image window crashed (r54816)
• Fix for weight paint using values over 1.0 when blending (r54833)
• Fix for regression in 'object.shape_key_transfer' operator since BMesh merge (r54834)
• Fix #34415: Edge slide results in segmentation fault on certain mesh (r54875)
• Fix #34455: Origin to Center of Mass is missing in menu Object > Transform (r54891)
• Fix selecting linked faces (r54920 r54921)
• Fix #34366: mesh.select_mode operator could not be configure the use_extend and use_expand properly. (r54944)
• fix #34486: Selection of bones in armature edit mode only toggles between two bones (r54969)
• Fix #34534: Copy/Paste objects hangs (r55051)
• Fix (regression) #34438: Solidify crease error (r54882)
• Fix missing select menu for weight, vertex, texture paint modes. (r54883)
• Fix joining meshes could loose crease/bevel weights (r54899)
• Fix (regression) #34449: Edge toggline bevel failed (r54900)

 

Sculpt

• Fix #34370: Collapse-Edges crash in dyntopo (r54827)
• Fix #34431: Crash when dyntopo enabled and using view plane mode (r54971)
• Fix #34473: Blender Crashes on toggling modes, dynatopo sculpt/object mode. (r55007)

 

Game Engine

• Fix projection clipping (r54733)
• Fix #34349: Character walkDirection ADD mode -#INF error. (r54738)
• Fix #18967: Enable alpha buffer (useful for TV broadcasting). (r54745)
• Fix #34353: Ray cast on Triangle mesh bounded Rigid Body Object crashes (r54757)
• Fix #34219: Webcam support under Linux in Standalone broken (r54764)
• Fix #34330: Action Actuator "caching" the previous ran actions (r54766 r54767 r54769)
• Fix error using actions with multiple scenes (r54767)
• Fix object color channels can now be animated separately without zeroing out the other channels (r54772)
• Fix error using uninitialized variables for rendering (r54776 r54781)
• Fix #34377: Game-Engine - Multi UV mesh's materials not backwards compatible (r54780)
• Fix Game-Engine crashing when on material conversions (r54837)
• Fix #34440: Motion blur (2d filter) not working in osx (r54912)
• Fix #34428 #20856 #20281: converting multi-uv layers. (r54972)
• Fix #34523: 2D-Filter produces render error (r55010)
• Fix #34517: 2D-Filter causes mouselook script drifting effect (r55011)

 

Rigid Body

• Fix motion paths calculation being incorrect for rigid bodies (r54799)
• Allow rigidbody collision groups to be animated (r54818)
• Fix #34410: Planes with Rigid Body always keep distance to colliding objects (r54855)
• Fix #34420: Rigid objects not resetting original properly after running a simulation. (r54862)
• Fix inconsistency with world rebuilding with the start frame (r54990)

 

Text Editor

• Fix Fix text editor bug: ctrl+F is not configurable (r54878)
• Fix #54907: freeze when turning on syntax highlight (r54907)
• Fix crash when overwriting ascii character with multibyte character (r54917)

 

Python

• Fix Python console bug: "autocomplete" doesn't advance cursor properly when completion includes UTF8 characters (r54824)
• Fix #34423: foreach_get crash for any non existant attribute (r54865 r54866)
• Fix #34372: mesh.verts.foreach_set not working with normals (r54943)
• Fix for python exception getting the ID from an operator button (r54835)

 

Other

• Fix freeing all bakes in particle mode (r54822)
• Fix file with packed images crashes on load (r54790)
• Fix image alpha version patch with library linked files (r54794)
• Fix #34427: Collada export crash with armature (r54856)
• Fix X3D import error loading UV's (r4325)
• Fix X3D import for images (r4327)
• Rigify fixes (r4321 r4334 r4335)

 

You can head on over and download it here.

News, Art Blender

 

One of the themes of this site has always been to focus on low cost (or free) game development technologies.  As a result, you will tend to find content here tends to focus more on products like Blender or Wings instead of 3D Studio Max or Photoshop.  I will of course share any game development related news regardless to price tag, but I tended to focus on the tools available to the most people, especially when it comes to tutorials.  As a result, one product certainly comes to the front of the pack, GIMP.  While Paint.NET is nice, the GIMP is really the only affordable (free) product that comes close to feature parity with Photoshop.

 

When I first started this site, I looked at compiling a list of resources for getting started with the GIMP and noticed well… it was a bit of a wasteland.  There were a couple books, mostly far out dated at this point.  Today on Safari Books, this title(Safari link), The Artist’s Guide to GIMP(Amazon link) was just added, although it was published a few months back.  So I decided to take a look at how well the GIMP world is represented in books since I last looked a couple years ago.  The answer is, surprisingly well.  So what follows is a list of books about GIMP, in chronological order of release date:

 

Book Title	Publish Year	Safari Link
The Book of GIMP	2013	Link
The Artists Guide to GIMP	2012	Link
GIMP For Absolute Beginners	2012	Link
GIMP 2.6 for Photographers	2011	Link
GIMP 2.6 Cookbook	2011	Link
GIMP Bible	2010	Link
Beginning Digital Image Processing using Free Tools	2010

 

 

There are more books of course, but these are the ones released in the last 2 years.  Anything much older would be rather out of date at this point. 

 

I have to admit, the body of work available for GIMP is vastly improved, as has the GIMP in general.  If you haven’t checked it out in a couple years, you really should.  The UI is a lot nicer now, although it still has a ways to go.

Art GIMP, Book

 

I’ve been at a bit of a loss for what to work on next.  I am still going to be working on game math recipes, as well as the HTML based level editor, but I wanted to start a new tutorial series and couldn’t really decide what to work on.  Then I realized how heavily I’ve been ignoring the artist side of the fence… perhaps because I am no artist.  I do of course follow it as a hobby and have since I got 3DS for DOS way back in the 90s.

 

Programmer art is a tricky thing, especially when it comes to the world of 3D.

 

In 2D, you can download a spritesheet from the web and use that as a placeholder.  In 3D, this becomes a bit more difficult.  There exist tons of premade 3D models, some even completely animated, that you can download and plug into your game.  This sounds wonderful… in theory, in practice it is anything but wonderful.  After importing you will often find the animations don’t work, textures are missing, the scale is all wrong, the orientation is all wrong, etc.. 

 

That’s why it’s often handy for a programmer to be able to create their own art.  That is exactly what this tutorial series is going to cover.  From beginning to end on how to model, texture, animate and export your own 3D models or levels.  The results aren’t going to be pretty…  that part requires years of experience… but it will be functional and will teach you all the basics and you can take it from there.  There are also a ton of resources available for Blender, I will point to or include them as I go.

 

Of course, you won’t need to be a programmer to follow this series, I am just making the assumption that my target audience is composed of programmers.  This series should be useful to anyone looking to get up to speed with Blender.

 

Hope you enjoy it.  Any and all suggestions, recommendations and feedback appreciated.

 

Stay tuned for part one shortly.

News, Art Tutorial, Blender

So I fired up Steam today and lo and behold, what's under the new release section?

 

Silo 2.

 

 

 

If you've ever read the GameFromScratch list of 3D Applications  you will see I am a fan of Silo.  It's mostly a 3D modeller, its very good and previously used to be 200$.  Now a gigantic word of warning, Silo has been pretty much abandoned, with no new updates for years.  This is unfortunate, because it was a great product at a great price.  Even abandoned, for 50$ it's still awfully tempting, if you want a modeller on the cheap… it's a lot like Modo with a fraction of the price tag.

 

Maybe the Steam sale will encourage them to put some more effort into developing Silo again.

 

If you are interested, there is a 30 day trial available.

Art, News

Whoops.  I generally keep on top of new Blender releases, but this one slipped past my radar.  So, this new is a bit dated.

 

Anyways, Blender 2.65 was released a couple days ago.  This post takes a look at what's in this release of interest for game developers.  At first glance, not too much.  At second glance, quite a bit actually.  At third glance, you are glancing too much and it's time to simply look!

 

 

First off, stability.  Over 200 items were knocked off the bug list.  More stability is always nice.

 

Stuff not really all that gamedev related

• Fire simulation and smoke flow force field added
• Open Shading language support added to Cycles renderer
• anisotrophic shading node added
• anti-aliased viewport drawing

 

Game dev related additions

• decimator modifier rewritten and now preserves UV 
• new smooth modifier that can preserve edges and volumes
• triangulate modifier which can be used for creating baked normal maps
• bevel now includes round and no longer sucks
• a symmetrize tool was added
• a tool for transferring vertex weights between objects

 

Bevel

There is not a ton to the bevel controls:

 Basically you have offset and segment.

 

 Offset is the amount to bevel by

 

 Segments is the number of iterations or edges to use when composing the bevel

 

 

More impressive are the results, before bevelling multiple edges was… ugly.  Now:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Symmetrize 

So how exactly does Symmetrize work in Blender?  Remarkably well actually…  Check this out.

 

Before:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Too damned cool.  So, basically it's like a mirror modifier… that you can apply after the fact.  I like.  Options are pretty simple over all. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Basically you just pick the axis and direction you want the symmetry applied along.  Again, very cool.

 

Great job on the release Blender team.  Head on over and download it here.

Art, News