hello,
many users agree that blender sometimes grows fast and it’s hard to catch up with features from previous versions.
in this thread i hope enough people are interested to post what they have found to be a creative use of some of the new features or an example of where one would need it…
here is a simple one to start off… i often design table legs like the ones shown in the pictures… i used to select the top face of a subdivided cube and rotate it with proportional editing on to get the effect… it’s not the best solution but it worked well for the most part…
now with the SimpleDeform modifier, i can create them easily just by applying it to the subdivided cube and twisting it…
old way
new way
i know many of you deal with BIG projects, it would still be nice to know some simple and creative ways to use the new features…
Easier clothing for characters
I can make my notes on the computer instead of paper with grease pencil (Big Yay!!:D)
Lighting is faster to adjust
Outdoor scenes are easy now with the sky/atmosphere
The new wind will be good for me here soon for an outdoor thing
The colored shadows will make lighting setups more realistic for the outdoors
Better python editing, with the improvements to the ui (summer of code and the new python api, and templates) I won’t spend (as many) hours trying to figure out how to write a script.
Actually, this was the part I didn’t really think was that impressive, but then I looked and there’s loads of templates that cut out half the work, and easy autocompletion of any variables in the script. Amazing.
And the ease of assigning a shortcut key to a script. If only it was that easy in the rest of blender.
I love the Grease Pencil; but I wonder: Is there any way to export Grease Pencil drawings as image files? This could be a really fast way to create garbage mattes.
Its the GLSL stuff mainly. The Sky is a great addition too. I like to update ‘legacy’ game sprites to 3D models (like my cacodemon in the 2.48 is out thread). I used to have to use a 3rd party app to view and tweak my normal maps for the models. Now that we have the GLSL material previews, its all just amazingly wonderful to just see what you are doing and what it will look like directly in the viewport and not have to futz around with some other app. I love it.
I’m starting an animation project and the new animation and rigging stuff should come in handy (though I’ve not really investigated what they’ve implemented yet!!). The GLSL stuff should be great to ‘live preview’ your lighting setup before actually hitting the render button.
Infinite5ths: It can be converted to images if you use the OpenGL render function for 3d-View. Other views currently don’t have this capability though…
Rocketman: Interesting idea about using the Caps-Lock key. Definitely something to consider in future…
I would just love for the Windows clipboard to function again.
It (2.47) does not copy and paste correctly and often crashes on Windows when I paste into the N-KEY numeric input box.
If particles were fixed, that would be a blessing.
Oh, yeah and external linking to grouped particles systems does not work. Presently you can not created a spaceship or airplane or fireworks as an external scene and link it into another file and distribute that externally linked particle across the veritices of an emitter. All the externally linked in particles emitters always end up a 0,0,0.
