Did you see the latest awesomeness being implemented in Blender just today!!!

I think we need a thread to post and talk about the additions being added to blender every day. Also because sometimes the changes are not present anywhere in the Wiki and people ends don’t knowing they even exist.

So I start:

3D ruler added to blender:
In the T panel click on ruler and protractor button, then click on screen and create the ruler. Click on the middle and move to change it to a protractor to measure angles. You can use Ctr to snap and Supr or Esc to delete the ruler/protractor.

Latest additions to the ruler (button in T panel, Enter to store it in a grease pencil layer, click and drag to create one)

(Graphic stolen from Sanne)

/uploads/default/original/3X/6/b/6b74e7edbbb80e616f95e778a2820463012b99f6.pngd=1362742814

Psy-fi is refactoring texture painting. He says in the next days perhaps something will break. So don’t cry and submit your bug reports if something breaks.

Ton did a magical change to the way the data is saved. For grease pencil animators save times go from near 1 minute to just one second.

And aligorith did the same with animation data

Nazgul has coded the “border rendering” for the compositor. (Ctrl + B)

Grease pencil layers can be moved up and down now. by Ton

People coming from 3dmax (like myself) have at last the preset and interface keys
(I am using now a mix of both worlds and my brain is just now hardwired, but newbies to blender from max will find this useful indeed!)

man, so much great stuff! My personal favorite: border compositing by sergey :slight_smile:

DingTo fixed the script to make automatic tests to know if cycles renderer continues to work correctly. It does renders of several scenes and compares the new renders with reference ones. This is a much more scientific and precise way of testing a renderer than just wait for bug reports of people complaining something was wrong after latest changes.

There was a change Campbell did to dropping an image on the viewport in blender.
Campbell changed it to create an empty showing the image. Someone complained they liked better the old way so Campbell brought back the dropping an image and showing as background image for the view (N panel), but added the option that holding Ctr it would create instead an empty. 54902

But then someone talked in IRC to campbell to change this holding Ctr and instead just dropping the image on an empty would change the empty to show the image. 54967 I have two comentaries:

  1. I liked more holding ctr because empty was created. Now you need to create the empty yourself. So more work for the user
  2. I for my life am unable to make it work. I create an empty working in image mode. I drop an image on it but the image goes to the background image on the N panel always. WTF? Someone knows how this works???

I just loved the holding Ctr option much better.

Campbell is called the housecleaning on IRC because he continually does cleaning stuff on the code. I don’t agree with some of the standards Blender Foundation uses on the code, for example they instead this:

myfunction()
{ my code
}

They do this instead:
myfunction() {
my code
}

And I just don’t like that because in many code editors when you place your cursor side by side one of the brackets the other highlights too and I like to have them in same column so I see both of them in red for example in my code editor. Instead with Blender Foundation scheme you see the brackets highlighting not in same column but in different columns that is confusing.

But at least this time I agree with Campbell cleansings forcing the appearing in brackets (to have an else without brackets is confusing and for me is a no, no too). I don’t like to stop to understand the flow, with brackets always you understand without having to think, that the code of the else is that between the two brackets. And as I said I would like the brackets in same column. I just don’t understand how the hell they like them in that way. Brecht I am sure prefers too in same column but because it is “blender foundation standard” he is oblied to follow the standard. The funny thing would be if all the developpers prefer it in same column and they are just following a silly convention someone not present already in blender development, created about the brackets…

I love to be on IRC when Nazgul (sergey) enters to complain of some Campbell cleaning that messed his next commit!!! LOL

Recursive selection in the outliner: Ctr + LMB and extending the selection Ctr + Shift + LMB

So if you have several parented objects you select all of them just Ctr + LMB on the one that shows in the outliner (but click on the icon, because if you ctr + LMB on the name it will edit the name instead).

Another recent addition to the outliner some people can’t be not aware of is that you can do LMB and drag on several items on the outliner for example to toggle rendering or hiding on them

Similar face creation awesomeness to the F2 addon by Campbell.

Well. I tested it and it is only working when only one face is to be created. If not it fails.
I really would like the mouse position were take in account and the two near edges were searched to create the new face. The new vertex in the mouse position would be created in the same plane the two edges near are on.

I like this thread very much. I read the commits but sometimes its hard to find the ones that add things. I guess you want to update this by yourself, but if you need help in the future, just ask.

awesome stuff,thanks for recording all these updates!

If I talk of commit N doing this and someone wants to say that commits n-3 also is spectacular because this or that can do it. Is not my thread but a thread to understand sometimes cryptic commits where is not clear the keys to be used until weeks later the developper creates a wiki to explain the new things added in new blender release.

So post what you want. Is not my thread but for all. Also I don’t care if it goes off-topic sometimes. We will end comparing this new feature to what Houdini or 3dsmax has and perhaps some hot discussion sometimes. I don’t care about being on topic all the time. Life is life.

I love this thread!! I have a suggestion, though. Could you include rev numbers in your posts, so if someone wants to go grab a new build from buildbot or graphicall they will easily know if a build will have the new feature or not? Thanks!

Edit: whoops, nevermind. Your linking every new feature to the corresponding commit page. Awesome. Thanks for doing the legwork on this!

Thank you Bao2 for this useful thread, I’m just using it as a guide to discover the latest changes.

I can’t get this, neither with left nor right mouse button.
What I can do is B+drag in the Outliner for highlighting several objects, then RMB (in my case) to perform one of the object operations. (r55141)

paolo

Create 3 duplicates of the default cube for example. Now in the outliner you see all these cubes listed consecutively. Click on the rendering of first one (camera icon) and drag down and you see all the cameras toggling as you move the mouse

Cool!
It works, thank you Bao2!

paolo

yeah that always bugs me as well…
or this…

function_a(){code here};

while this can save space, it causes someone to stop and change their visual digestion process…
as opposed to a more legible and very easy to read.
function_a()
{
if(test)
{
do stuff;
}
else
{
do nothing;
}
}