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.

Out with the old and in with the new!  But what’s so different about picking your favorite color now?  The color picker seems to be working the same.  A little different UI to suit the new makeover, but overall it still functions the same as before.  RGB, HSV, HEX, Sampler … except one tiny new thing.  Tiny it is, because it’s the new mini color picker!  The Mini Color Picker is displayed when simply LMB clicking the color well to edit the color.  To bring up the full Color Picker, Shift+LMB click the color well.

We really haven’t seen much of the Game Engine additions to 2.5 yet, and it’s pretty cool to see the developers starting to add in the functionality for it with the new user interface.  And guess what, the Logic Editor is getting an overhaul!  You won’t find it listed in the Buttons Window anymore, because it’s now designed as it’s own window.  It has it’s own sidebar with some settings, which I’m curious what type of development lies in the works there since the menu’s are still empty yet.

In a way, it’s a little disappointing to see the old fixed layout being ported to 2.5.  Lots of us had hopes to see a Node based system with the freedom to move the Controllers, Actuators and Sensors around.  But, the UI improvements are nice.  We got curved connections between bricks now!  Woo hoo!

Keep up the great work developers!

Editing your layouts just got so much easier! Using Swap Views, you can drag and drop one view onto another to simply swap them. This is done by Alt+LMB (Left Mouse Button) Click and drag the handle in the upper right corner of the view, then drop it on the view you want to swap with.

Note: The upper right corner handle of a view is called an “action zone” in code. I’ve asked the developers for an official name for this, and the results were interesting none the less. It seems there really isn’t an “official” name yet.  I’d imagine it will be called the “Corner View Widget” or something similar.

This has got to be one of the coolest little features being added into 2.5.  It’s called “4-Split View”.  In a nutshell, it takes a single 3D View and automatically splits it into the traditional 4 views (Top, Front, Right, and Camera).  To enable this, you use the Transform Property menu (accessed the same way as before with the N key), and then click on “4-Split View”.  It has 3 options: Lock, Box, and Clip.  “Lock” prevents you from changing the view perspective’s.  “Box” will auto align each window scale to match the others.  As of currently, I can’t click on “Clip” and I’m actually not sure what it would do when it’s ready.  Any thoughts?

It has been a Blender trademark that the user interface incorporated a non-overlapping window layout.  Pre-2.5, it was impossible to move views so that they overlapped each other.  This is no longer the case.  Simply Shift+Click on the upper right of the view, and drag downwards and to the left.  This will copy the view into an overlapping window, which can then be moved/scaled where ever you prefer.

Pros: You can have multiple overlapping windows if needed.  This can be handy for running scripts in separate windows, or moving specific windows onto separate monitors.

Cons: Currently, there’s no way to keep a window on top while editing underneath.  When you switch windows, the underlying window is forced to the top as the active window.  You could use a hotkey to switch between the windows of an application (i.e. Mac OS X users can use Exposé to switch between the windows using F10, could be different depending on preferences).

Edit: I’m told there are some work-arounds for the overlapping windows to stay on top.  They involve using the operating system’s window manager to do it.  I don’t know of any way to do this in OS X, but I hear that linux users can do it.  If someone knows, feel free to leave a comment about it.

Blender 2.5 Search Menu

If you’re anything like me, you probably have hundreds of materials and objects in your scene that easily get lost.  Or you can’t really find that tool that you’re looking for.  Fear no more!  Today’s Blender 2.5 Featured Feature is the new “Search” tool.

There are several ways to access Search.  The more noticeable way is the new addition of the Search field in the User Preferences window header.  Search works by simply typing what you’re looking for, and the live search finds exactly what you need as you type.  It also displays the hot-key command for each tool.  This is the perfect way to find the second way to access Search.  Simply type “Search” into the Search field and you’ll find that it can be invoked by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F.  This will bring up a menu at your cursor’s location.

Search is also being worked into other parts of Blender too.  Have hundreds of materials to hunt through in your project?  Search is now integrated into the Material settings, so you can easily find the one you need.

The Search feature is one of the many new features shipping with Blender 2.5.  Each day I will be featuring another Blender 2.5 Featured Feature, here at www.bchynds.com.  Want to check out Blender 2.5 yourself?  Download a build from www.graphicall.org.  If you don’t know what Blender is, then checkout www.blender.org for more information.

I’m currently using an Arduino with my multi-touch table to control the IR Sensor Matrix, but I started brainstorming for other ideas on how to implement the Arduino board into my project.  Simply controlling an array of inferred sensors seemed like such a small task, I figured I should look into ways to utilize it more.  Since the table is being designed to allow developers to create multi-touch functionality with Blender (which I’ll cover later), I searched the internet and found this:

Blender with the Arduino:  http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1177789589/9

This is truly awesome and something I will look more into later in the project.  Some possibilities of this include using a Nintendo Wii controller with the Blender Game Engine, even with accelerometer support.  The controller has already had great success with interfacing with the Arduino.

I’ll be talking about multi-touch with Blender 3D very soon, so stay tuned.

Some of this development has already made its way into Blender 2.47. Logic Controllers now have a State Engine. A state is currently defined as a collection of controllers and connected Actuators and Sensors that are assigned to a specific actor. States can be activated/deactivated through a State Actuator. This allows for higher level Logic design and much more control over the game engine without the need for python scripts. More controllers, actuators, and sensors have been added as well. My only hopes is that this all gets converted to a Node based design. The mess of connections can be much easier to sort through using Nodes.

Anyways, the Yo Frankie! game has a TON of files in it. 1.95GB to be exact. And it’s loaded with some awesome files. New characters, level designs, graphics and textures, the list is endless. There’s even progress on making a cinematic. It looks more like an animatic right now, but neverless I’m sure it will be edited to look amazing.

Keep up the amazing work guys. I can’t wait to see the end result.