An early timelapse video of Blender’s new Dynamic Topology system in action, created by tester Roberto Roch. The code has just been committed to the Blender trunk, and test builds are available now.

Developer Nicholas Bishop has just committed his ‘dyntopo’ Dynamic Topology system to the Blender trunk: the open-source 3D package’s main shared code base.

The feature, which has been in development for over a year, automatically subdivides a mesh where it needs more resolution, enabling you to draw out a model like clay, as with Sculptris or ZBrush’s DynaMesh.

Dyntopo won’t make its debut in an official Blender release until version 2.66 comes out later this year, but the code is available for anyone to compile and try, and test builds have already been posted online.

According to this thread on BlenderNation, there are still issues to be resolved with UVs – but nonetheless, this is an eagerly anticipated feature, and one that should significantly extend Blender’s sculpting functionality.

Read more about Dynamic Topology on the Blender wiki

Read Nicholas Bishop’s own blog posts on the subject

See models created using Dynamic Topology from the beta thread on BlenderArtists.org
(Includes the homepage image for this story, created by forum user michalis.)

Download a compiled version of Blender including Dynamic Topology from GraphicAll.org

Tags: Blender, Blender 2.66, Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, DynaMesh, Dynamic Topology, dyntopo, free, open source, sculpting, Sculptris