Blender 2.66 adds Bullet physics, Dynamic Topology
The Blender Foundation has released Blender 2.66. In keeping with recent releases, the latest update adds more high-end features to the open-source 3D package, including Bullet physics and Dynamic Topology.
Blender 2.66’s implementation of Bullet – previously integrated into Maya, LightWave and modo – enables rigid-body simulations created with the physics system to use constraints and interact with Blender’s force fields.
You can see more videos of things being made to collapse or collide in the Blender 2.66 documentation. As far as we can tell, Bullet’s soft-body dynamics hasn’t been implemented yet.
True claylike sculpting, better hair rendering
The other major new feature in Blender 2.66 is the new Dymamic Topology system, which automatically subdivides a mesh as required while sculpting, as if you were working with real clay.
We wrote about Dynamic Topology when the source code was committed to the Blender trunk earlier this year, but the release notes flesh out more of the details, including which brushes the system works with.
There are also a lot of ‘smaller’ features, including support for hair rendering in Blender’s new Cycles raytrace render engine; a new SPH particle fluid solver; and support for MacBook HiDPI screens and future 4k displays.
It’s another impressive release, and one that maintains the Foundation’s ambitious update-every-two-months schedule. Blender 2.66 is available now on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD.