Dev:Ref/Release Notes/2.72

Blender 2.72 Release Notes

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.72. Cycles GPU rendering now supports Volume and Subsurface Scattering. The User Interface comes with optional Pie Menus and the Tooltips have been improved. For Modeling, a new Intersection Tool has been added in Edit Mode. Texture painting workflow has been streamlined with easy access to painted images and UV layers. The Compositor has a new Sun Beam node. Freestyle NPR rendering is now available with Cycles as well. Additionally, Blender 2.72 features three new addons.

Cycles Rendering

Volume rendering and Subsurface Scattering can be rendered with GPUs.
Volume and Glossy sampling is improved.
New Ashikhmin-Shirley distribution enhances Glossy and Anisotropic BSDFs.
Memory usage during rendering is improved.
OSL rendering is faster.
Anamorphic Bokeh support added.
Caustics are under better control.

User Interface

The long awaited pie menus are available as an addon for ⇆ Tab, Z, Q, ⇆ Tab⇧ ShiftCtrl, ., CtrlSpace operators.
New Tooltip design makes important information more noticeable.
Python text is displayed in a monospaced font.
Blender Internal preview now behaves like the Cycles preview; it starts rendering at low resolution and improves from there.
Units parsing has been improved, even though developers claim Blender does not feature a units engine, it does a better job now.

Modeling

A new Intersection Tool was added to quickly cut up geometry. It's a bit like Boolean Tool but does not calculate interior/exterior.
The Bevel Tool and the Bevel Modifier now have the option to set the material of the newly created faces to the material in a given slot.

Sculpting/Painting

Texture painting workflow has been streamlined with easy access to painted images and UV layers.
The ability to generate strokes with curves and lines has been added.
More blend modes are available and new tools to fill and mask have been added.

Compositing

A new Sun Beams node has been added to the compositor.

Game Development

A new Mouse Actuator that can achieve a mouse look effect (among other things), has been added.
The Property Sensor has new evaluation types.
The TrackTo Actuator has new menus to select up/track axis.
The Property Actuator has a new level mode.
The Mouse-Over-Any Sensor has new X-Ray and Property/Material detection options.
A new BGE Debug and Contraints Wrapper API have been added.

Freestyle NPR Rendering

The Freestyle line rendering engine has been integrated into Cycles in addition to the Blender Internal (BI). Freestyle provides Cycles users with a versatile non-photorealistic (NPR) line rendering solution. Most Freestyle options work in the same way for both Cycles and BI. Line textures in Freestyle for Cycles are defined by means of shader nodes (unlike Freestyle for BI, which relies on the conventional texture mapping and influence panels). New per-material Freestyle line settings provide a reliable way to specify line colors applicable to both Cycles and the BI. The Freestyle Python API also has user-visible updates for better code readability and run-time performance.

More Features

Color ramps now support color interpolation in hue mode both clock-wise and counter-clock-wise.
CtrlF in Animation Editors, is a convenience shortcut to activate Filter by Name functionality.
Weights now draw in wireframe mode in the 3D view.
Temporary data gets deleted when closing Blender.
The Video Editor has a new Gaussian blur filter.
New camera presets: Blackmagic Pocket Cinema and Blackmagic Production 4K.

Addons

FBX improvements: Import now supports armatures, shapekeys, animations, with shapekeys also being supported for export.
New DXF importer supports 3D(SubD) geometry, and geo-referencing. It imports curves as curve obkects and adds control over various geometry merge options.
New UV addon for align distribution and copy/paste (!!) of UVs.
New Game Publishing Addon is available for game developers!
New addon for named layers & grouped layer management.