Download Blender 2.43 RC1

The Blender Foundation is busy 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 finished this page read for interested readers. The package was used by, among others, the Orange Movie Project for the animation movie Elephant’s Dream released under the creative commons license. Ton Roosendaal has released the first release candidate of version 2.43 a few days ago with the following announcement:

Release targets and schedule
On this page in blender.org wiki we update the latest stats for the release. Current status is “BCon3”, meaning we freeze cvs for new projects, and only work on completing what was scheduled already.

Modelling

• Modifier stack upgrades, new modifiers: Edgesplit and Displace and UV Project
• Sculpt Modeling, multi-resolution Mesh and Remake Topology Tools
• Fluid Dynamics supporting animated Objects
• Multiple UVs and vertex colors
• Image Painting
• Face Duplicators

Animation

• Walk Cycle Modifiers
• Proxy Objects, for local control over referenced data from Libraries

rendering

• Render features: alpha masks, node shader speedup, tangents and normal maps
• Irregular Shadow Buffers
• Shadow buffer, Half way average
• Render Baking
• Render Passes

composition

• UV Map, Index Mask and Z-Combine
• The focus
• Matte Nodes
• Matte Nodes Tutorial

Imaging

• Multi-layer images, Sequence images, flipbooks, …

Physics

• New physics examples including constraints and compound objects