KatsBits Community

General Category => Blog => Topic started by: kat on May 03, 2010, 07:53:45 PM

Title: Should I switch to the Blender 2.5 alpha's?
Post by: kat on May 03, 2010, 07:53:45 PM
Short answer is "no". Long answer is still "no" (that should really be "not yet" rather than "no"). The application is still incomplete with a lot of work yet to be done. For example, the various 'bake' options available in 2.49 (and below) appears to be broken so, as of writing, it's not possible to bake normal, ambient occlusion and other 'baked' image maps, it's a bit too hit-n-miss right now, if you're lucky. 2.5's also got limited import/export capabilities right now in this early stage of testing so game developers and content creators are going to be well and truly stuck if switching now. For a complete list of 'missing' features see this post on BlenderArtists (http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=178149).

The upside is that Blender itself is pretty 'solid' as an application and doesn't in-of-itself just crash. Having said that though, if you do hit problems it's unlikely that you'll be able to 'cheat' and fix or get around issues by loading the *.blend file into a previous version of the app either; Blender, like all software, tends to be 'backward compatible' only in loading old files into newer versions, not the other way around. In other words it's unlikely to be possible to load a new file into an older Blender just to bake an ambient occlusion or normal map of a model you've been building or improved in 2.5 (don't even ask about trying that with an animated model either!)

Bottom line is this: if you're already using Blender for production of any kind, stick with what you've got for now; certainly install (extract) 2.5 and poke around to get familiar with it, but don't try doing anything more than that else you could find yourself with some major, major headaches at this point in time (especially so with Blender Game Engine).

Having said all of that, and based on what I've seen so far, this may very well be the true 'making' of Blender in terms of what has always been that illusive 'Pro' uptake of the application.
Title: Re: Should I switch to the Blender 2.5 alpha's?
Post by: ratty redemption on May 04, 2010, 11:56:43 PM
interesting and I'm glad you've said this on your main site kat, as it does sound like we should carry on using 2.49 until 2.5 has been at least brought up to date with all the old features.
Title: Re: Should I switch to the Blender 2.5 alpha's?
Post by: kat on May 05, 2010, 01:29:25 AM
Yeah, I tried using the ASE scripts today and just got a syntax error. As Goofos has been MIA for a long time I don't know if this will ever be fixed as a results it means that for a large part using Blender for game content will necessarily be stuck with 2.49 or below - if I knew how to fix it myself I would :o(  (I did do a bit of trail and error to do that but just got the same issue).

Overall though, and as mentioned above, what's been done is very good and I do think this may very well turn out to be the making of Blender as a professional application; it takes a bit of getting used to, and for game content a lot of the stuff seems too expansive, but, I can see why that's been done; it potentially means the tool is hugely customisable from every angle - interface, tools, game engine functions and so on. Should be an interesting year or two for Blender.
Title: Re: Should I switch to the Blender 2.5 alpha's?
Post by: ratty redemption on May 05, 2010, 03:19:58 AM
agreed, and from what I've seen of 2.5 in tutorial and tech demo videos it looks like I'll enjoy using it when it is stable enough. I wonder though if we'll ever give up our beloved 2.49 versions? I remember with the gtk level editors I mainly used the latest ones at the time (1.5 iirc?) but kept some of the versions on my hdd before the new gui was implemented.
Title: Re: Should I switch to the Blender 2.5 alpha's?
Post by: kat on May 05, 2010, 11:59:51 AM
From a *usability* point of view, i.e. how the app works, then no, there won't really be a reason to stay on the older versions. From a functional point of view, i.e. actually being able to do some things, it may be, but that's slightly biased in favour of the older versions compared to the incomplete alpha of 2.5 'as is'. So, if they fix and implement everything for public release, including script export and so on, then no, there would be no reason to keep using the older versions.
Title: Re: Should I switch to the Blender 2.5 alpha's?
Post by: ratty redemption on May 05, 2010, 12:26:41 PM
understood and cool :)
Title: Re: Should I switch to the Blender 2.5 alpha's?
Post by: kat on July 22, 2010, 04:54:06 PM
The dev team have just release 2.53Beta (http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.53beta/). I'm not entirely sure what's going on with releases but it looks like the 2.5[n] series is being used to develop *up* to 2.6, which would then be a production release. 64bit versions are available btw (alt download (http://www.blender.org/download/get-25-alpha/)).
Title: Re: Should I switch to the Blender 2.5 alpha's?
Post by: pazur on July 23, 2010, 06:37:26 PM
Any idea, info (or even gossip/rumor) when 2.5 final comes out?
Title: Re: Should I switch to the Blender 2.5 alpha's?
Post by: kat on July 23, 2010, 06:39:50 PM
From what I understand 2.5 series are 'development' releases, the 'proper' release seems to be 2.60, which is what they're aiming towards as being a production stable and full public release. From here on in 2.5's are going to be used to bug check and feature finesse.
Title: Re: Should I switch to the Blender 2.5 alpha's?
Post by: pazur on July 23, 2010, 06:44:37 PM
I see... that's good to know.