Blender 2.68 ships
The Blender Foundation has released Blender 2.28, the latest update to the open-source 3D tool, including new mesh modelling tools and updates to the physics system, motion tracker and Cycles renderer.
Improvements, not big new features…
Compared to some of the recent releases, Blender 2.68 is more a collection of updates to existing toolsets than big new headline features.
However, it does feature a fair number of modelling enhancements, including an improved bridge tool capable of bridging multiple loops at once; and a new grid-fill tool for filling a grid from edge loops.
Smoke simulations have been updated to reduce blockiness, with subframe simulation support when using fast-moving particle emitters.
The new motion tracker gets new automated features for improving solves, along with the option to refine the position of a marker that has been occluded by an object.
And last but not least, performance of the Cycles renderer has been improved, with scenes rendering “often 30% faster” on Windows, and around 10% faster on Mac OS X and Linux.
…but still pretty darn impressive
And, as ever, all of that has been added in just two months since the previous release. Major headline features or not, that’s still a pretty impressive achievement.