Download Blender 2.37a

The Blender Foundation is developing Blender, an open source software package for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback. The many features with screenshots and examples are on this page to read for interested users. Version 2.37a was released a few days ago with the following changes:

Critical fixes!

• Appending from files now does not set the string for “last loaded file”. That could give an accidentally save over of used library files.
• International Font support was broken for non-Latin fonts

Mesh Edit Mode:

• Drawing option for Face Area didn’t work correctly.
• Option Remove Doubles also included hidden vertices.
• Adjustment in wireframe optimizer code; it now only removes edges with 2 faces, not with more.

Traffic jams:

• Recursively linked Blender files (using as Library) now really works, also with relative paths. (was reported to be fixed in 2.37)

render:

• Ortho rendering gave incorrect sub-pixel samples, causing wrong shadow or depth calculations.
• Made Area Lights render threading safe
• Area Light soft shadow now renders transparent shadows soft as well
• AO rendered incorrectly when AO samples was lower than OSA amount of samples
• Using Environment Map option with loaded images is thread safe now
• The Stars option (World buttons) caused to swallow and misinterpret an ESC key event
• Small tweak in Ward-Iso specular. It didn’t work correctly on backfacing light.
• When a scene had “do sequence” set, the OpenGL preview render option crashed.

Transformation:

• Precision error could cause rotation (RKEY) to start with 0.02 degrees
• Calculus of window projected center failed on extreme zooms
• In Proportional Mode, pressing Minus or Plus keys now default to numeric input. Press ALT+Minus/Plus key for adjusting size of Proportional area, or use PageUp/PageDown keys.
• Local Axis constraints in transform working incorrectly on objects that have object constraints.
• Crash fixed on transform_conversion with Proportional and hidden CV in a curve.

Interface:

• Windows: a mouse-button release event could be executed as button press on Blender buttons.

animation system:

• Armature option “Delay deform” now works again
• SoftBody/Particles: collisions now work for non-rectangular quads.
• On exit Mesh EditMode, the other objects using same Mesh data now get signal to recalculate SoftBody. This could result in crashes.

3D Window:

• Fixed wrong colors for Shadeless Objects with vertex colors
• Nkey properties Panel and Do-Centre options now update normals and face-centers

Python:

• API documentation updated (see blender.org menu)
• Access to Lamp Ipo enabled
• Blender.sys.dirname() had windows/unix slash problem
• Python/Fileselector fix: moving from fileselector called by script to another space caused script to hang around open but not accessible
• 2.37 python scripts gui: event 8 is now ignored
• gui-less scripts with calls to progress bar inside fileselector callbacks didn’t return to the previous space on exit.
• added syntax colors access to Window.Theme module.
• reference count of two pyobjects not being decremented in slider callback
• setText() in Text3d module was not updating str length var, leading to mem corruption
• Misc Curve API fixes and updates

scripts:

• updates by Jean-Michel Soler: svg2obj (svg paths import), eps, tex2uvbaker, fixfromarmature;
• updates by Campbell Barton: obj import / export, console, skin (bridge/skin/loft)
• tiny: converted vrml97 export to unix line endings;
• updates in ac3d exporter, help browser, save theme.

yafray:

• WardIso specular amount scale to match Blender output.
• Updated halo spotlight ‘samples’ to use new yafray syntax.
• When using HDR backgrounds for lighting (‘SkyDome’ or ‘Full’ GI methods), it is currently not always possible to get smooth lighting results. Especially HDR images with small lightsource can be very noisy, because currently yafray still relies on brute force random sampling. As a temporary simple solution (better options will be available in the ‘next generation’ yafray), yafray can do some processing on the image to smooth out all (or most) noise. Besides smooth lighting, this also has the advantage that AA will have less work to do, GI quality can be set to the lowest level and still get reasonably good results. Disadvantage however is that shadow definition is lost. To switch on this option, set the world image texture filter parameter to any value greater than 1.0. When ‘filter’ is 1.0 or less, normal hdr sampling is done as before.
  So, current fastest possible render settings for IBL: set texture image filter parameter of the background image to any value greater than 1.0, set GI to ‘SkyDome’ type, enable ‘Cache’, (possibly enable ‘NoBump’ when scene uses lots of bumpmapping), set ‘Quality’ menu to ‘Use Blender AO settings’, make sure AO is enabled in blender World buttons and set there the number of AO samples to 1. Should at least be good enough for previews.