2017-10-28: Weekly News

Hello and welcome to another issue of This Week in Blender Development! Blender is the free and opensource 3D creation suite for the next generation of artist. Follow the development on Twitter @BlenderDev.

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Tip

Remember, you can test any changes done in master or blender2.8 by going to the developmental builds download page

Changes to Blender

master

  • Cycles: Disable progressive refine if denoising or save buffers is used rB6199a606
  • Modeling: Speed up Polyfill Beautify by 33% rB6dfe4cbc
  • VSE: draw grid lines at every second rBcc96cdd9
  • Cycles: use AO factor to let user adjust intensity of AO bounces rB171c4e98

blender2.8

  • Initial Tool System rBe1e7b6db
  • Manipulator: move ‘Scale Cage’ to its own tool rBd3fafa30
  • Tool System: add an experimental low-poly construction tool (see demo video) rBcd3c31b2
  • Remove background images from 3D view and add them to the camera rBef96f36e
  • Eevee: Volumetrics: Add volumetric support to alpha blended meshes. rB310f1db7
  • Eevee: Overhaul the volumetric system. rB66d8f82b
  • Eevee: Volumetrics: Add Volume object support. rB4f7665c8
  • Eevee: Volumetrics: Support Smoke simulation textures rBbc7c0335

topbar

  • Operator settings: Add simple “More…” button to show all settings rB3ebfd533

asset-engine

  • Amber: Add a way to remove Amber repo, and initial step for previews rBe5243701
  • Amber: Add initial real asset preview. rB7a68cd02
  • Amber: General development working on filtering and adding assets rB0f72a291
  • Amber: add new assets with relative path to repository rBdce7e076
  • Use a more ‘generic’ way to select datablock to add as an asset rBb9f4a8d7

New Patches

  • Cycles: combined CUDA + OpenCL rendering support. D2894
  • Normal Editing Tools - GSoC 2017 D2897
  • Blender2.8: Edit Mesh: re-enable text overlay (length, area, angle) D2901
  • HMD_viewport: oversampling / undersampling feature implemented. D2902

Other Projects

  • Top Bar Design T50845
  • Tool System: Where operators can take advantage of a tool system T53101

Documentation

Note

As a reminder please read the Blender 2.8 Design Document