Dev:Ref/Release Notes/2.58

Blender 2.58 update log

The majority of work for 2.58 went into fixes with over 200 bugs fixed since last release but there are also quite a few useful additions worth checking out.

Prominent features (the cool stuff)

Warp Modifier:

This deformation modifier can be used to warp parts of a mesh to a new location in a very flexible way by using 2 objects to select the "from" and "to" regions with options for using a curve falloff, texture and vertex group.

Render Baking:

For high polygon models it is now possible to bake multi-resolution models using much less memory than before. There are also new bake modes: specular color, specular intensity, mirror color, mirror intensity, alpha (transparency), emission (glow)

Empty Images Display:

Instead of using background images or creating meshes with materials and image texture it's now possible to assign images directly to empty objects to use as reference images. They display in all draw modes and can use object draw options like XRay to draw over other objects.

Sculpting:

Constructive modifiers (like subdivision surface, mirror and other) were supported for sculpting mode. Sculpting could be not very accurate with such modifiers enabled, so there is a new option in the toolbar to disable applying constructive modifiers in the sculpting session.

Mesh Inset (Addon):

Mesh inset is a very useful tool with the ability to inset individual faces or a selected region.

Camera Locking:

It is now possible to move the camera using normal view port navigation by enabling "Lock Camera" in the "View" panel.

Features

• Improvements to the point density texture, support for tweaking the falloff with a custom curve new falloff types based on the age or velocity of particles - R36399
• New Warp modifier, can be used in a similar way to a Hook but with an adjustable source - R36414
• Added support for sculpting on constructive modifiers - R36485
• Image support for Empty Objects - R36577
• Camera composition guides: center, thirds, golden rule, harmonious triangle - R36590, R36696
• View controls can now apply to the camera view (locked camera view) - r36690
  mousewheel zoom now zooms camera area when the camera is locked and in ortho view - R36783
• Now HDR textures can be used to displace - R36714
• New adjustment layer tracks in the sequencer - R36716
• Additional bake modes: specular color, specular intensity, mirror color, mirror intensity, alpha (transparency), emission (glow) - R36738
• Added option to baked named "Bake From Multires" which is avaliable for normals baking and displacement baking. - R37225
• Support for update callbacks in python-defined RNA properties - R37260
• Compositor math node round second value now changes the step to round by - R37292
• Snap option not to project onto the edit-mesh - #25598, R37591
• Operators which only define a directory are now treated as directory only selectors (no files) - R37552
• Added support for baking object movement to the "Bake Action" operator - 37500
• Added anisotropic filtering in viewport and Game Engine - R37521
• Game Engine: Allow to change the damping of the camera actuator - #27425, R37455
• Quick Explode operator: Sets up a particle system and an explode modifier. - R37431
• Fluid Sim: Enable the possibility to remove the "air bubble" around submerged collision object. This feature is enabled as standard for new files. - R37441
• Added support for tangent bump shading - R37644

Other Changes

	Windows Quicktime Support Dropped
	For windows it has been decided that we should use FFMPEG for video and to drop quicktime support. This also means some image formats such as GIF and PSD will no longer load.

Changelog taken from the output of:

svn log -r36335:37703 https://svn.blender.org/svnroot/bf-blender/trunk/blender
svn log -r1874:2054 https://svn.blender.org/svnroot/bf-extensions/trunk/py/scripts/addons