Dev:Ref/Release Notes/2.70/More Features

Blender 2.70: More Features

Breaking Forward Compatibility Changes

These changes introduce forward incompatibility, which means files saved from this version won’t open 100% correctly in previous versions.

Angles: Degrees to Radians Internally

Blender internally stores angles as radians (even though they are presented through UI as degrees), but in a few places degrees were still being stored, which added internal code clutter, and could generate bugs like T32843.

Here are affected properties:

• Data:
  • Lamp.spotsize:
    Game engine exposed this setting in degrees, to not break the API here I kept it as such (using getter/setter functions), still using radians internally.
    
    
  • Mesh.smoothresh:
    Didn’t touch to this one, as we will hopefully replace it completely by loop normals currently in dev.

• Modifiers:
  • EdgeSplitModifierData.split_angle, BevelModifierData.bevel_angle:
    Done.

• Postprocessing:
  • WipeVars.angle (sequencer’s effect), NodeBokehImage.angle, NodeBoxMask.rotation, NodeEllipseMask.rotation:
    Done.

• BGE:
  • bConstraintActuator:
    Orientation type done (the minloc[0] & maxloc[0] cases). Did not touch to limit location type, it can also limit rotation, but it exposes through RNA the same limit_min/limit_max, which hence can be either distance or angle values, depending on the mode. Will leave this to BGE team.
    
    
  • bSoundActuator.cone_outer_angle_3d, bSoundActuator.cone_inner_angle_3d:
    Done (note I kept degrees in BGE itself, as it seems this is the expected value here...).
    
    
  • bRadarSensor.angle:
    Done.

Armatures

• Added split tool to disconnect the selection, matching the same tool for mesh, curve and UV editing (Ykey). (r60981).
• Add select mirror operator so you can flip the selection from one side to another. (r61152).
• Path selection using Ctrl+RMB to select the path from the active bone to the bone under the mouse is now possible (matching the same shortcut for mesh editing) (a08750addf764c8)
• Recalculate roll can now calculate the roll based on the angle to the parent bone (0213a43562cd60f)

Animation

• CtrlAltRMB selects all keyframes in a channel in the DopeSheet (r60895)
• Selecting groups in animation editors selects corresponding bones (r60823)

FCurves normalized display (r60999)

In order to support a better animation workflow, two options are available in the header of the FCurve Editor editor:

• Normalize, which remaps curve values into a -1..1 range
• Auto-normalize, which probably is to be called "Lock" which "locks" curve normalization scale. This is useful to prevent curves from jumping around when tweaking it.

Example of FCurve Normalization

Time offset option for Noise FModifier (5cf987c)

FCurve Noise Modifer now has an extra float property which offsets the noise in time. This is useful for creating follow through in procedurally animated noise.

For example, if you've used a noise modifier on a parent bone to add additional movement, a quick and easy way to add overlapping motion is to create copies of that modifier on its children, and then offset the time those curves play at.

Modifiers

• Added "Reversed" option to Build Modifier. This is useful for making a set of dupli-objects gradually disappear (5c74ac2c2a)

Baking

Derivative Maps

Derivative map baker was added (r60631).

It is available as a dedicated baker method and implemented for both regular and baking from multires.

By default it does auto-normalization of derivative map, so data in it's channels is spread over 0..1 range. But it's also possible to apply user scale (the same scale is to be used for an influence when using this derivative map).

Vertex Colors

Support for baking vertex colors to textures was added (r60656)

It allows baking the active vertex paint layer to an image, allowing for effects like baking vertex based dirt maps.

Masking

Mask Overlay

Added mask overlay to both image and clip editors.

Mask overlay could be enabled from Mask Display panel and two modes of overlay are supported:

• Alpha Channel which displays rasterized mask as a grayscale image.
• Combined which multiples image/clip with the mask.

Mask Overlap, Fill Options

Masks can now fill self intersections and optionally disable calculation of holes.

Blender 2.69.

Blender 2.70.

There are 2 new layer options to control filling.

• Option not to treat overlapping curves as holes 108ad3442960ef6
• Option to detect self intersections ae8327dbf3afcdb

Weight Painting

• Added "Subset" option to "Normalize All". (r60655)
• Weight Quantize tool: to clamp each weight to a user defined number of steps between (0 - 1) (c9209de573ad)
• "Use All Faces" option was removed, it's always enabled now. (fd0825e7c4da)

Sculpting

• Added box flood fill for mask with B. Using MMB to drag after pressing B removes the mask from the selection. (r60952)

• Added lasso flood fill for mask with Ctrl⇧ ShiftLMB . (r61002)

• Added gravity influence after each stroke in sculpt options. To enable just increase the factor value. It is also possible to choose a custom orientation for gravity by setting an object to the Orientation field. The object's negative Z axis will act as the direction for gravity. (c740f1a792fd479)

• Changed some shortcuts to avoid conflicts with Grease Pencil shortcuts:
  • Draw brush is changed to X

Metaballs

• Select similar: radius, stiffness, rotation, Access from Select menu or Shift+G - (r60921)

Curves

• Curve recalculate handles (optionally recalculate handle length) Ctrl+N (c456cd94b23af53)
• Surfaces now have split Y and delete segment X options, same as Curve behaviour (4230b8f9c4cc0b7)
• Active vertex/point on curves and surfaces behave more like meshes equivalent e.g. active vertex resets on deselect all (299812f28d32950)
• Active vertex/point on curves and surfaces now persist between modes (fbc7ab30ff025ad)

Key Maps (Shortcuts)

• Exported keyconf should now load OK in future versions, even if they use some operator properties that get removed later (r61073).

Render

• "Render Audio" cleanup:
  • Removed audio-only options from ffmpeg render settings (added some versioning code too)!
  • Moved the Mixdown button from the Scene->Audio panel to the Render->Render panel.

• Blender Internal "Stars" feature has been removed. (30512d7c5586)
• Blender Internal: Add shader nodes "Separate HSV" and "Combine HSV", same as Cycles' ones. (98bf859efc18)
• Blender Internal: Add "Lamp Data" shader node that allows shaders to acquire information such as light vector from specified Lamp. (ab9822eff886)
• Blender Internal: texture clamp option. Disabling this option ensures negative texture values are not clamped to zero, which is useful for some uses like vector displacement to get the full range. (9f903208e800.)
• Blender Internal: Change the behavior of AO pass in shader/render node tree so that it becomes (1.0, 1.0, 1.0) when AO is disabled. (ba7fd8cd5c17)

Rigid Body Simulation

• Removed CtrlR, Ctrl⇧ ShiftR, and CtrlAltR hotkeys for creating and removing Rigid Bodies. We were getting many reports that users would create rigid bodies by accident and then wonder why transformations behave differently. (eda49cf58eed)
• Deformations and modifiers can be taken into account by selecing a mesh source for collision shapes (2260a7d)
• Mesh shapes can deform during simulation (ceb2430)
• Primitive collision shapes are shown in the viewport (1fef906)

3D View

• GLSL preview: Spot lamps use shadow buffer also for ray shadows. (09ce3c18ee70)
• Matcaps draw mode now applies to all objects (d34d7451a9ef52f)

Sequencer effect rendering

There's one change in sequencer editor which worth special mentioning to prevent possible frustration.

In previous releases effect in the sequencer editor used to blend with it's inputs. It might have been useful in some specific cases, but was unacceptable when blending transparent images.

Old behavior would have mix blend result with blend inputs, this issue was reported T38598.

Now effect wouldn't blend together with it's inputs which is rather expected behavior but which might break some setups which relied on the old behavior of sequence rendering.