Hynds|Studio

The new full screen, feature loaded, File Browser is serious about productivity.  Finding what you want, where you want, and quickly is what we all been waiting for.  Thumbnail previews of images make it easy to figure out which file you’re looking for.  The new sidebar gives fast access to your system directories and files.  Bookmarks can be set to really speed up finding things, and it also remembers what you opened recently.  But the fun doesn’t stop there.  The header provides several new viewing and sorting options, along with filters for common file types!

Edit: It’s been brought to my attention that the animated viewport switching is actually in the 2.49 release.  You can find it under User Preferences > View and Controls > “Smooth View”.  I guess I never really noticed this until the 2.5 UI enabled it by default.  I’ve been using Blender for the past 6 years and I still learn something new every day.

Something I didn’t notice right away until I started doing some modeling in 2.5 is the animated viewport switching.  When switching in a 3D View in both Orthographic and Perspective, using the Number Pad 0, 1, 3, and 7 keys, the viewport is actually animated.  It doesn’t matter what view angle you’re at either.  The animation effect will move from any User view angle, even from a Camera view.  This will be very helpful, especially for beginners, to understand where you are in relation to your scene and/or model.  It’s great to see a lot of work is being done like this to help the user learn and understand 3D space and the application itself.