Topic: Blender 2.5 discussion

[ratty redemption]

http://www.blendernation.com/new-script-surface-sketching/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Blendernation+%28BlenderNation%29

[kat]

*very* interesting, especially so when used in conjunction with Retopo as shown at the end there rebuilding the head in low res. For all the the crits people tend to level at Blender (not being industry standard, fuxy UI blah blah) the one thing it's always been exceptional at is trying out new tools.

[ratty redemption]

@ agreed, plus I think the desire to make blender as cool as possible rather then profitable gives the blender devs more freedom to take these kinds of risks.

[kat]

Ratty, I've changed to topic heading to turn this into a general 2.5 discussion thread as we need one.

Have you guys actually looked at 2.5 yet? My first impressions are that it looks like they've pandered to that illusive "industry standard" you often hear detractors of Blender complain about.. you know the type, the "it doesn't work like [insert app here]". I'm sure there's an element of getting used to the new design but personally I rather liked the old layout because once you knew it, it was blisteringly fast; everything seems to have been converted to a button now which feels kind of clunky to me.

Oh well.. got to get used to it I suppose 

[silicone_milk]

but can you record mouse click macros or keystrokes?

Would be nice to record a series of cumbersome actions and save it to a single button or keyboard shortcut.

[kat]

Not too sure if you can do exactly what you mention but it does appear like you can add custom actions, functions and/or macros written in *.py to a 'tool panel' to one side of the screen. I'll post a screenie in a few as I'm just doing a short tutorial on some essentials for 2.5.

[ratty redemption]

kat, np and agreed. also I've not tried 2.5 yet so interested to hear your thoughts of it.

[kat]

Tute on where some of the old pre-2.5 features have been moved.

[kat]

Just had a look at texture, AO and normal baking (was looking at AO more). Looks like it still needs a bit of work as the process crashes on me before its able to do anything on my Vista Machine - this is just doing a straight-up bake of the object on it's own and not a high->low bake. This is one of the reasons I don't like producing tutorials on pre-release versions of the app as it's more often than not incomplete.

[ratty redemption]

kat, interesing and I'm now using vista as well. I think I'll wait until 2.5 becomes a stable release before trying it but if you have the time and motivation, I'd like to hear more of your experiences with it.

[kat]

I'm going to post a news item addressing that.. brb

Should I switch to using Blender 2.5?