Blender 2.59 (64-bit)

What's new in this version:

Prominent features (the cool stuff):
3D Mouse support "NDOF":
- Blender is now built with support for 3D Connexion devices, for more natural control during view navigation and fly mode - r38908

Custom Keymaps:
- User edited keymaps now no longer override the builtin keymaps entirely, but rather save only the difference and reapply those changes. This means they can stay better in sync when the builtin keymaps change.
- Keymaps in blender are now separated so Addons can properly define their own keymaps without them conflicting with user keymaps

Ivy Generator (Addon):
- This tools adds the ability to "grow" curves over an existing mesh with the option of adding leaves and adjusting many parameters for the final result - r2200

Sapling (Addon):
- This tree generator creates completely parametrically generated trees from curves - r2119

Grease Scatter (Addon):
- Grease scatter was used for sintel to place objects around the ally, using grease pencil lines as a guide as to where to scatter objects - r2125

Node editor enhancements:
- Material passes: Materials have pass-index. This pass-index can be used in the compositor to create mattes. It works the same as object passes.
- Node insert: Nodes that have no connections can be inserted on a noodle. Just move the node over the noodle and release when the noodle turns brown.
- Delete with reconnect: It is possible to delete a node that is connected in the tree, without loosing the connections. The node is deleted, but the links are reconnected as if the node were muted. Select a node and press CTRL-X.
- Noodle curves: Some users like straight noodles, other like curved, in the user preferences the level of the curvation can be changed.
- Node properties: The UI of the side panel and on the node can now be different. See the Color balance node in the side panel.

Additions:
- Material passes (like object passes), (See commit log for details) - r38090
- New option for multires modifier: Subdivide UVs - r38783
- Improved bleed option when baking for seamless edges on UV bounds - r38654
- Node: Add delete with reconnect feature - r38344
- Node: Curvature is now a setting - r39015
- Node: On dragging a non-connected node on a noodle, it will insert it - r38609
- UV Straighten tool - r38598
- Object Align: high quality option for perfect alighment http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=15171 - r38511

Python API:
- Object.closest_point_on_mesh() function - r38449
- bpy.path.basename because "//" prefix breaks os.path.basename - r38528
- Vector.length_squared to use instead of vec.dot(vec) - r39300

Fixes:
Tools/Editors:
- fix #27849 3D manipulator widget lost on mesh in edge mode - r38085
- fix #27915 Relax Pose crashes blender on bone with ChildOf constraint in linked rig - r38257
- fix #27883 object actions did not get duplicated on full scene copy - r38150
- fix #27902 autokey bones with individual origins transform not working - r38229
- fix #27891 IK stretch gives inaccurate results. Tweaked translation segment convergence weight a bit to match angles better at typical scales - r38232
- fix #27866 Curve handle snaps/locks when it shouldn't - r38256
- fix #28003 Unable to delete vgroup - r38471
- fix #27927 Border select tool fails to select nodes in Node Editor using tweak mode - r38475
- fix #28052 PET: Shift-O cycling skips "random falloff" - r38595
- fix #28079 UV propertional editing was incorrectly influenced by the mesh X mirror option - r38699
- fix #28066 Unchecking 'self project' messes up 'Snap to Vertex' - r38752
- fix #28095 Select Pattern don't select all the bone in edit mode & some style changes - r38779
- fix #27719 custom RNA properties fail to update drivers - r38793
- fix #28117 Diffuse reflection IPO curve not imported correctly from 2.49b files - r38827
- fix #28178 make single user copy of object data doesn't work - r39117
- fix #27819 Unwrap Menu (U) -> Lightmap Pack throws Python Exception - r38212
- fix #28197 Undoing Grease pencil removes last 2 strokes - r39235
- fix #28186 textboxes properties not animatable - r39214
- fix for crash undoing grease pencil session - r39237
- allow bone transforms again for proxy'ed bones - r38071
- corrected View Selected operator for image editor so now it works fine for images with different X and Y aspect ratio - r38559
- Object Align now correctly computes a global bounding box for all objects - r38510

Sculpt/Painting:
- fix #28096 Custom gradient for weight painting in mask mode not working properly - r38785
- fix #28112 Vertex paint crash - r38890
- fix #28061 Texture (paint) bleeding on edges - r38893
- fix #28121 Linked Library objects or object->data should not allow to go to sculptmode - r38855

Modifiers:
- fix #27839 UV 'Project from view' ignores camera lens shift - r38052
- fix #27861 bevel angle limit at 90deg wasn't working well on cube - r38110
- fix #27921 optimal display with 2 subsurf modifiers fails - r38298
- fix #27930 many modifiers crashed when used on a lattice with a vertex group - r38300
- fix part of #27858 crash trying to apply subsurf modifier as shape key - r38115
- fix part of #26811 absolute shape keys should not show influence value in list - r38188
- fix: uv project panorama mode was scaled 2x too high - r38054
- fix: uv project scaled camera objects would incorrectly effect the result - r38054

Physics:
- fix #27347 Particle x-axis mirror editing not working as expected - r38102
- fix #27579 Particle cache problem with multiple systems - r38105
- fix #27182 particle/collision kill interacting strangely - r38106
- fix #27855 crash on enabling high resolution smoke - r38119
- fix #27876 particles instancing a whole group didn't take group offset into account - r38141
- fix #26962 softbody collision doesn't respect subsurf+displace modifiers - r38235
- fix #27683 Blender hangs when baking a particle system when a driver is present - r38265
- fix #26873 Animated displacement modifier on an object doesn't work with hair particle objects - r38285
- fix #27289 Hair: Render Option - Object does not point objects to end of "hair path" - r38287
- fix #27293 Group Instance of particle system is rendered wrong - r38292
- fix #27398 Particle systems with animated groups render incorrectly in viewport - r38293
- fix #26712 Particle group instance 'Use Count' value gets reset on file-load - r38413
- fix #27307 Blender crashes when loading a new scene while baking fluid dynamics - r38408
- fix: particle cache should only be cleared on the exact first integer frame, not in the case of a subframe between the first and second frame - r38463
- fix: Effector calculations were not thread safe - r38663
- fix: loading a file that had particles using a dupligroup from a liblinked file without the library file being present crashed - r38883

Display/Viewport:
- fix #27862 OpenGL render animation don't respect .png RGB option - r38109
- fix #27810 bones drawn blue in 2.49 file, was still checking stride bone, flag for drawing even though that feature is no longer in 2.5 - r38112
- fix #27826 bone envelope head/tail radius not dynamically updated in viewport - r38114
- fix #27897 mesh with negative scale disappears while sculpting, clipping planes were wrong in that case - r38236
- fix #28037 Camera missing orange selection lines
- fix #28206 Motion Paths shown in 3DView even when Only Render option is enabled - r39259
- fix part of #27944 color managment discrepancy in GLSL materials with nodes - r38790

Sequencer (Video Editor):
- fix #27846 time extend / E key not work in sequence editor - r38113
- fix #27848 sequencer strip hard cut looses soft trim on second strip - r38122
- fix #27880 sequencer separate images operator lost strip properties like blend mode, opacity, etc - r38145
- fix #27879 sequencer didn't draw overlapping strips well, selected were drawn under unselected, and active strips red border color for active strips was not clear enough - r38151
- fix #28018 Sequence Swap Data Operator does not work - r38500
- fix #28160 Pressing Y on an image sequence to seperate the images takes them out of their meta strips
- fix: add strips not checking for overlap by default - r38775

Collada:
- fix #27854 Collada import doesn't handle UVW mapping - r38169
- option to export only the selection - r38079

Rendering:
- fix #27777 vertex color disabled when in a reused node material - r38128
- fix #27873 nan pixels in render with degenerate faces - r38139
- fix #27888 Render artifacts in 2.58.1 - r38258
- fix #27761 Deleting a material output of many causes no output
- fix #28034 0.0 Alpha transparency with Raytrace Mirror doesn't render - r38576
- fix #27910 baking ambient occlusion, do not consider closer object - r38599
- fix #28201 blender crashes when "mpeg" selected for animation rendering - r39243
- fix for crash of multires baker when baking from sculpt mode - r38439
- fix bug with multires baking to float buffers - r38555

Compositing:
- fix #27875 different texture nodes result after decompose/compose - r38140
- fix: bokeh blur in the blur node is wronlgy calculated - r38347

Game Engine:
- fix #27348 blenderplayer showing a different viewport size in 2.57b - r38501
- fix #28026 Copy Game Property broken - r38635
- fix #23874 Custom projection matrix doesn't work in custom viewport - r38696

Python:
- fix #27863 converting curve spline type from python crashes - r38111
- fix #27922 using preset_paths() with an absolute path returns twice the same thing raise an error when an invalid subdir is passed to preset_paths() - r38543
- fix #28035 point density texture doesn't bake - r38700
- fix #28111 material.pop breaks mt->mat_nr - r38879
- fix #28196 assigning RNA arrays such as face UV's would fail in some cases - r39233
- fix #28191 error when enabling an addon newer then the blender version - r39212
- fix for bpy.path.abspath(), if a path was passed it would get the last directory cut off - r38504
- fix for crash when setting layers or saving when there is no active scene - r38077
- fix for scripts with python 3.3 - r38294
- fix for crash/assert on running dir() on a non collection property - r38850
- bgl.Buffer: supports slicing again - r38447
- bgl.Buffer: fix for crash with negative index access not being clamped - r38447
- corrected matrix, vector multiplication order (was wrong!) - r38674
- rna function calls with optional parameters were not giving correct default values for arrays - r38735
- allow pose bone matrix to be set - r38193

Interface:
- fix #27900 file browser filter, sort, .. parameters were not saved. This is useful if you have a screen setup with a file browser editor - r38233
- fix #26704 activating a texture node inside material nodes did not show that texture in the texture properties - r38370
- fix #28005 Python Add-Ons are constantly reloaded if twice in the path - r38468
- fix #28098 Continuous Grab does not work for movement of the "Backdrop" in the Node Editor - r38761
- fix #27951 armature edit mode transform panel shows "nothing selected" even when something is selected - r38356
- fix #28172 Cannot restore Add-ons tab in user preferences after a failed attempt to install an add-on - r39117
- fix #28213 Imperial unit for 0.001 inches inconsistently displayed as mils and thous - r39297
- fix: icon scaling with the DPI setting - r39066
- fix: python error in image sampling panel drawing when there is no texture slot available - r38371
- fix: icon listview where the icons would only wrap once - r38743
- include menu ID's in tooltips when python tips are enabled - r38723

System:
- fix #27850 keyboards with a comma instead of a dot on the numpad now get converted to a dot when typing into number buttons, for easier number entry - r38080
- fix #27865 weird mouse warping with continuous grab on OS X - r38129
- fix #27877 writing .avi files > 4 GB not working on windows - r38142
- fix #28109 Old issue with OSX Cocoa code: shift+scrollwheel should send a 'horizontal wheel' event to Blender - r38848
- fix #28102 Typing 'C:' into the file selector's directory asks to make a new directory - r39046
- fix #28087 Opening files in the text editor ignores the last newline '\n' - r38722
- fix "Problem with clock" at 18:39:00, the overflow of the clock was causing crash in the game engine in Linux - r38495
- fix Modifier key sticks after Alt-tab on Win32 - r38826

- Blender Addons
Import/Export:
DirectX:
- Export fix for relative paths - r2084
- fix for direct-x exporting vertex groups which had indicies out of the objects defgroup range - r2177

Make Human (MHX):
- Importer Support for rigify - r2090
- Added switch for ignoring Limit rotation and distance constraints - r2206

Quake MAP Export:
- fix 27860 Quake MAP export error for 2.58.1 - r2093
- fix 27949 r2121 Quake MAP exports incomplete brush data from 2.58.1 - r2160
- added options: scale, snap to whole value, face thickness, default brush - r2160

X3D:
- fix issue #1 27896 Names exported as "MA_Black".001 - r2108
- fix issue #2 27896: zero length rotation axis exported - r2188
- fix issue #3 27896: exporting dupli objects failed - r2189
- fix 27833 X3D export incorrectly uses collision node - r2150
- fix export non existing IndexedTriangleSet.creaseAngle - r2194
- fix for exporting empty scene - r2220

OBJ:
- fix exporting dupli objects - r2197
- fix 28146 OBJ export fails when mesh has no material - r2211

3DS:
- fix 28150 transformation matrix not exported - r2214

Lightwave:
- fix 27916 Crash adding EdgeSplit/Bevel modifier to imported lwo mesh - r2135

FBX:
- fix 27964 2.58 FBX Export can result in missing data and lost animation(s) - r2140
- fix 28029 Exporting linked groups to FBX to load on Unity3D - r2141
- fix error where armature connections were written out twice - r2205
- added option not to export 'Default Take' - r2212
Add XNA compatibility mode - r2205:
- Option to export XNA compatible armature rotations - r2205
- Option not to export mesh edges - r2205
- Always export armatures as 'Limb' type - r2205

Other:
Netrender:
- fix 27796 Netrendering "path:" failing - r2167

Save As Runtime:
- Skip expoting python libs on OSX since its already included - r2091
- fix 27995 phyton32.dll caused "Appcrash" => Runtime crashes - r2191



What's new in Blender 2.58a:
July 5th, 2011

Additions:
- More flexible size options for particle billboards. This adds scale factors for width and height of billboards, relative to the particle size. It's useful when the particle size is primarily used for collision and the like, so the billboard appearance can be adjusted independently. Also allows non-square billboards.
- In addition the billboards can be scaled by the particle velocity with optional head and tail factors (similar to line drawing options). This allows for pseudo-motionblur effects. - r37760
- Addon UI: button for removing addons which are installed to user/home paths - r37950

Python API:
Python application event handlers - r37795:
adds bpy.app.handlers which contains lists, each for an event type:
- render_pre, render_post, load_pre, load_post, save_pre, save_post
- each list item needs to be a callable object which takes 1 argument (the ID).
- callbacks are cleared on file load.
- mathutils.geometry.intersect_line_sphere(l1, l2, sphere, radius, clip=True) - r37820
- RenderEngine API: add self.report() error reporting function for render engines, works the same as for operators. - r37916

Fixes:
Essential Fixes:
- fix: Tile-able displacement map / tile-able painting regression in 2.58 - [#27782], r37899
- fix: bake crash with deep shadow, strand and children - [#27807], r37970
- fix: incorrect use of GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object, could crash blender - r37881
- Thumbnail save for .blend crashed, when being in editmode for a mesh that has other object users as well. - [#27765], r37810
- fix: Multires lost from 2.49 file in 2.5x - [#27710,], r37837

Other Fixes:
- CMake was installing .bfont.ttf in the config dir which made updating from the previous blender version fail - r37725
- fix: Driven properties not checked for legal UI bounds - [#27726], r37744
- GHOST Cocoa: move y origin top/bottom conversions out of windowmanager module and into GHOST. Also fixes a problem where e.g. the user preferences window would not open under the mouse cursor correctly. - r37765
- revert commit 27133: Committing patch [#27133] "Fix for for Object Color in BGE" by Kupoman. This was causing a lot of backward compatibility problems and side effects. - r37773
- W special menu for changing orthographic camera lens scale was missing - r37782
- fix: Black and White Render doesn't work and/or Saves as a Blank screen, convert to grayscale when saving renders rather then only writing the red channel. - [#27746], r37783
- fix: Modal operator in Special Menu (W) ignores continues grab - [#27747], r37784
- fix: Smart UV project no longer works in 2.58 failed with active, unselected objects. - [#27742], r37785
- free_bvhtree_from_mesh was incorrectly using sizeof() when clearing memory. - r37787
- Fix undeterministic behavior of volumetric renderer - [#27748], r37802
- Made clearer in the UI that the approximate multiple scattering always enables light cache
- Fixed a potential problem in anisotropic scattering
- Default startup theme used same node header color for "in/out" nodes as for "inactive or undefined" nodes. This made it impossible to see which of the output nodes in node setup was 'active' - [#27761], r37808
- fix python errors when the sculpt brush is None - r37836
- fix for a leak in sound_read_sound_buffer(), used when drawing the sequencer waveform. - r37845
- fix: Set Bone Flags - No Scale - Toggle fails - [#27778], r37850
- fix: On clicking in a non-active Blender window (when you activated others), the mouse position of the first click was still the old position. - [#27768], r37854
- fix: Blender player on OSX not working - [#26850], r37861, r37862, r37865
- fix: Smart UV Unwrap Results in Overlaps - [#27787], r37889
- Closed regions didn't always draw the (+) icon right place, confusing for users. - r37986
- fix: foreach_get was failing on readonly properties - [#27820], r38006
- fix: Outliner does not update when parents are cleared - [#27816], r37999