2018-03-03: 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 volume: fast empty space optimization (up to 2x speedup) rB7377d411
  • Collada: Adding support for Matrix Transformation export rBa024da55
  • Smoke: expose empty space clipping property to the UI rB4403ca80
  • Cycles: add Principled Volume shader. rB0aec2dcd
  • Cycles: Speedup rendering of dense volumes (30% speedup) rB5d5c6bb5
  • Animation: When scaling keyframes, merge (by-averaging) selected keys that end up on the same frame rBac717928

blender2.8

  • WorkSpace: show/hide opt-out support for add-ons rB61c8ed40
  • WorkSpace: UI filtering for add-ons rBd937d06c
  • Cycles: add back point density texture support rB000002e4
  • EEVEE: Compositing and rendering of multi-layers support rB06420c5f
  • Viewport: Speed up many unique objects (up to 3x speedup) rB241c90c9
  • Eevee: add Principled Volume shader rB38ccd1fe
  • WorkSpace: object-mode switching support rB4ab002bc
  • Viewport: Small speedup. rBc5eba46d

greasepencil-object

fracture_modifier

  • Add vertex group to influence metaball radii rBc381b3fa
  • Optionally restore old activation behavior with broken constraints rBfb8acd8b

New Patches

  • Freestyle: work in progress patch to show possible integration D3086
  • First steps for a User-Preferences/Settings redesign D3088
  • Array modifier: Do not merge vertex groups with different names D3092
  • Cycles: add anisotropy to random walk subsurface scattering. D3094

Other Projects

  • None

Documentation