Blender 2.62 (64-bit)

What's new in this version:

NEW FEATURES:
UV Tools:
- Many new UV editing tools were added: an advanced interactive stitch tool, to align and join together UV islands. A subdivision surface aware UV unwrapping to reduce stretching. Seam marking in the UV editor, and a tool to compute seams for islands. Sculpting tools to grab UVs and relax or pinch unwraps.

Cycles Render Engine:
- A number of new features were added, including render layers and passes, multi GPU rendering and selection of GPU device, improved sampling for complex environment maps, border rendering, BVH caching for faster rendering of camera fly-throughs, and new shading nodes for color correction and a checkerboard texture node.

Remesh Modifier:
- The Remesh modifier is a tool for generating new mesh topology based on an input surface. The output follows the surface curvature of the input, but its topology is a uniform distribution of quads. It can generate smoothed output or tag sharp features to better capture corners.

Boolean Modifier:
- The boolean modifier now uses the Carve library, which should give much improved results. This library is more stable and faster, resolving old well-known limitations of our previous library. The general workflow and options available in the user interface are unchanged, usually the modifier will simply run faster and produces a better output mesh. However there also some changes in behavior.

Game Engine:
- The game engine user interface was polished, editing text objects in the user interface and through the python API has been made easier, full screen and antialiased rendering has been improved, along with various other changes.

Motion Tracker:
- Object tracking support has been added, so that not only camera animation can be reconstructed from footage, but also the animation or transformation of objects in the scene. This comes along with many improvements to the tracking user interface and tools.

Collada:
- A Second Life compatibility option was added for exporting armatures, along with a number of other fixes related to transformations and armatures. There is also a new development team that will try to improve the Collada integration further in following releases.

More Features:
- Other new features include: improved bump map quality in the viewport, various new dynamic paint options, international text copy and paste and editing in the text editor, longer names and file paths, drag and drop parenting in the outliner, and many more changes.

Python:
- Matrices and vectors math classes were improved in various ways. Column-major access was changed to more standard row-major access and easier access for rows, columns, translation was added. Vectors now can have arbitrary size, and matrices are now pretty printed in the console.

Addons:
- Network render now has support for version control systems, render engines, point cache baking jobs, and a new web interface was added, along with a number of other improvements. There were also features added to After Effects export, X3D export Atomic Blender PDB import, MHX import, UV layout export, and screencast keys.


BUG FIXES:
Animation:
- fix #27898, #29461: bone with constraints not snapping to cursor correctly - r43450
- fix #28468: NLA, can't enter tweak mode on multiple objects at the same time - r43596
- fix #29629: uv animation stops working if edit mode entered - r43086
- fix #29822: driver target field doesn't update on bone rename - r43594
- fix #29869: NLA editor resets extrapolation mode when editing strips - r43597
- fix #29879: ctrl+B border select with handles in the graph editor not selecting the right keys/handles. - r43360
- fix #29940: stretch to constraint breaks scaling in transform constraint. - r43578
- fix #30019: copy rotation constraint with vertex group jittering when the object Y axis is colinear with the vertex group normal. - r43777
- fix #30051: constraint space conversion bug with disabled inherit scale property on bone. - r43840
- fix #29484: visual keying giving wrong results for bones with property local location disabled. - r43813
- fix #29947: a crash in duplicating bones in armature edit mode. - r43881
- fix #29104: keyframing motion blur samples did not work, these are now non-animateable. - r43827
- fix: wrong follow track constraint icon - r43102
- fix: wrong pose bone drawing in weight paint and wireframe draw mode - r43347
- fix: circle-select in pose mode disregarded layer visibility, selecting invisible bones - r43660

Audio, Image & Video:
- fix #26943: h264 lossless output missing - r43353
- fix #29388: problem reading certain compressed movie files, now work with new "free run no gaps" time code type - r42641
- fix #29615: crash in undo after toggling float buffer in image paint mode - r42638
- fix #29671: issues reading certain .mts video files - r43122
- fix #29676: alpha over node not working correct with emitting associated alpha images with zero alpha - r42814
- fix #29683: OpenEXR output compression settings not working - r42848
- fix #29684: video output presets and quicktime problems since last release - r42850
- fix #29694: quicktime export was not showing or respecting RGBA option even though some movie formats support alpha. - r43335
- fix #29707: sequencer presets corrupt audio scene settings - r42923
- fix #29796: poor screencast quality with AVI codecs - r43180
- fix #29824: error writing frame if 3D scene starts after first frame of animation and output is h264 - r43349
- fix #29828: reloading background movie clip crashes Blender - r43224
- fix #29905: extend transform a sequencer meta strip did not update the position and length of the meta strip properly. - r43457
- fix #30064: image editor undo crash after renaming image. - r43874
- fix: movie cache limiter not working with limits >= 4GB - r43791
- fix: sound mixdown could use outdated animation cache, now it is updated automatically - r42678
- fix: toggling premultiply or color management not updating packed images - r43290
- fix: improved ffmpeg error handling and syncing with export options, added QTRLE - r43964

Curves:
- fix #29577: curve duplication operator redo not working correct - r42637
- fix #30030: Tapered and beveled text won't update in realtime - r43779

Game Engine:
- fix #18883: softbody objects were being hit by ghost objects. - r43905
- fix #21947: softbody object not using objects size. - r43899
- fix #25834: no color of text objects in game engine when combined with textured objects - r43105
- fix #26893: corruption of debug/fps text when using animated/tile uv mode - r43105
- fix #29031: crash importing BGL in the game engine - r42838
- fix #29486: 2D filters make scene disappear when wire material is used - r42696
- fix #29911: crash reading BL_ActionActuator.channelNames on non-armature object - r43626
- fix #29133: render to texture not working in the game engine. - r43884
- fix #29381: memory leak in creating navigation meshes. - r43842
- fix: game engine font object relative path and packed fonts not working - r43151
- fix: duplicating an object in the game engine did not set the right action actuator - r43588

Meshes:
- fix #29599: mesh side of active tool silently not working for edges and faces, now gives warning - r42581
- fix #29620: missing refresh with topology mirror after mesh editing - r42660
- fix #29603: weight paint mode could be accessed on proxy objects - r42584
- fix #29686: weight painting was not disabled on locked vertex groups - r43000
- fix #29794: can't hide faces in weight paint mode - r43279
- fix #29832: weight painting with x-mirror and auto normalize fails for center bones - r43342
- fix #29835: a crashing joining meshes - r43235
- fix #30047: multires baking crash while mesh is in sculpt mode. - r43823
- fix #30062: entering paint modes did not refresh the 3d view header - r43917
- fix #30073: problem with proportional edit shortcut key in metaball edit mode. - r43903
- fix: creating a UV sphere with a large radius gave duplicated values. - r43983

Modifiers:
- fix #29543: hook modified combined falloff and vertex group influence not working - r42639
- fix #29556: shrinkwrap generates spikes if vertices fall exactly on the edge - r43056
- fix #29600: hook assign and remove not working with redo correctly - r42582
- fix #29636: vertex group modifiers apply not working - r42769
- fix #29957: texture generated mapping works as global with cloth modifier - r43732
- fix #30031: build modifier crashes when applied to bezier object - r43782
- fix #30037: curve modifier wrong results with negative axes, and incorrect bounds with vertex groups. - r43802
- fix #30094: problem with subdivision surface modifier and copy location from vertex group. - r43951
- fix: solidify modifier getting wrong UV/color/.. data on rim faces - r43230
- fix: ocean modifier icon missing in outliner - r43622
- fix: crash in weight vertex group modifiers with empty vertex groups - r43600

Motion Tracking:
- fix #29688: movie clip timecode not used in tracking - r42898
- fix #29729: crash when camera solving with a disabled marker - r42992
- fix #30020: movie clip editor crash when changing panel size - r43763
- fix #29970: crash trying to track disabled marker - r43646
- fix #29975: track preview color channels not filtering correctly - r43661
- fix #30021: crash rotating tracker markers - r43764
- fix: incorrect behavior of 2d stabilization preview in clip editor when proxied resolution is used - r43399

Nodes:
- fix #29801: various compositing nodes not working correct after translate, e.g. separate HSVA node. - r43178
- fix #29806: world nodes not available in animation editor - r43197
- fix #29827: crash with translate node and blur - r43259
- fix #29887: Alt+G in a node group results in crash - r43381
- fix #30018: can't tab out of empty node group - r43762
- fix: issues with toggle buttons in node headers - r42705

Objects:
- fix #29640: make duplicates real keep hierarchy and parent properties not working for multiple objects - r42677
- fix #29735: crash when snapping cursor to camera - r43021
- fix #30017: make dupli-face operator not working without active mesh object - r43752
- fix: adding metaballs and lamps in local mode was broken. - r43351
- fix: link/append not working well in edit mode, now disabled - r42604

Physics:
- fix #29696: crash on exit of edit mode after deleting contents of fluid domain - r42942
- fix #29793: cloth and softbody simulation exploding when skipping frames - r43234
- fix #29965: a memory corruption in particle systems - r43659
- fix #29265: hair particle rotations weren't calculated properly for particle locations along a path - r44044
- fix #29530: entering particle mode on baked key particles with empty cache could crash - r44045
- fix #29737: can't edit particle hair if particle count is 0 - r44046
- fix: explode modifier created invalid faces if "unborn", "alive" or "dead" setting were unchecked - r44063
- fix: dynamic paint brush not painting particles hidden by display percentage setting - r43745
- fix: dynamic paint smudge and brush velocity settings didn't work for image sequence surfaces unless any paint effect was enabled. - r43029
- fix: dynamic paint substep update failed when brush was parent to a canvas vertex - r43669
- fix: dynamic paint wave "open borders" option didn't work for image sequence format - r43669
- fix: dynamic paint, if multiple displace/wave surfaces were used simultaneously, displace was applied using wrong normal. - r43429
- fix: possible dynamic paint crash when changing surface format to image sequence - r43669
- fix: editing baked cache for softbody and cloth now updates in 3d view properly - r43357
- fix: incorrect subframe result for physics point cache, noticeable with motion blur - r42663

Python:
- fix #27589: crash defining operating while drawing UI, disallowed now - r43502
- fix #28733, #29885: missing scene in context in python in callbacks and after file load. - r43772
- fix #29631: frame is lost from driver namespace after reload - r42658
- fix #29635: attempts to import the site module are met with a TypeError exception - r42657
- fix #29734: crash calling bpy.ops.file.direrectory_new() - r43022
- fix #29864: crash running blender in background mode with non-default key configuration. - r43322
- fix #29878: running bpy.ops.render.opengl() from console not starting new line or printing output. - r43358
- fix #29889: simple deform missing lock x/y axis option - r43380
- fix #29892: properties of objects in nested custom collections stop being animatable once an object get added to an unrelated custom collection. - r43692
- fix #29987: scene.frame_set method doesn't take in account camera change done via markers - r43701
- fix #30025: a crash when using python to load a .blend and .obj file - r43786
- fix #29666: bpy.types had duplicate operator entries. - r43835
- fix #29910: crash reading KX_SoundActuator.sound - r43948
- fix #30045: mesh.uv_textures.new() not returning correct layer when a layer with the requested name already exists. - r43828
- fix #30060: operator self.report printed twice in nested operator. - r43875
- fix #30099: wrong path printed for bpy.data.shape_keys - r43958
- fix: possible memory leak when creating a vector using Vector.Range. - r43834
- fix: Object.to_mesh was losing materials when there were more than 16 - r42704
- fix: matrix * vector multiplication not working correct for non-square matrices - r42793
- fix: assigning enum properties non-string types did not throw error - r42977
- fix: crash when calling bpy.ops.render.render('INVOKE_DEFAULT') from the python console. - r43403
- fix: mathutils matrix/vector access crash when matrix size changes - r42873
- fix: is_orthogonal check for matrices not working correct - r43733
- fix: creation of non-square matrices using uninitialized memory - r42720
- fix: false positive comparing some API data members - r43352

Render:
- fix #25775: crash using border render from external render engines - r42764
- fix #27120: bake glitch when image used for baking is also used as input, show warning now - r43554
- fix #29687: normal baking from multires gives distorted results - r42979
- fix #29708: crash in cross dissolve sequencer strip - r42975
- fix #29723: wrong IOR for raytraced refraction after reflection inside mesh. - r43187
- fix #29836: stress not working as input for displacement texture. - r43302
- fix #29922: invalid pixels due to bump map in degenerate case. - r43509
- fix #29960: fields option should not be used for external engine rendering. - r43728
- fix #29999: hide image and alpha outputs in render layer node when combined pass is disabled - r43761
- fix #30015: keyframing render resolution not working correct, disabled now - r43748
- fix #30026: errors rendering material with ambient zero and AO/env/indirect light. - r43778
- fix #29921: render rasterization error with camera parallel to face. - r43861
- fix: crash rendering scene strips without a scene linked to them. - r43849
- fix: opengl render in quadview wasn't using camera. - r43373
- fix: OpenGL render save ignored alpha settings - r43410
- fix: material vertex color light option not using alpha - r43030

Render: Cycles:
- fix #29653: fix wrong cycles depth of field distance when rendering with a scaled camera - r42731
- fix #29695: cycles particle emitter not being properly hidden. - r43085
- fix #29715: cycles and glsl normal node not working correct. - r42947
- fix #29740: missing cycles viewport update with animated node socket values. - r43084
- fix #29755: cycles crash with array modifier that can produce material indices that are out of bounds. - r43076
- fix #29803: cycles image texture node refresh issue with image editor. - r43325
- fix #29848: cycles not respecting dupli group visible layers - r43292
- fix #29860: cycles musgrave scale input not working correct. - r43327
- fix #29935: missing cycles update/crash when removing world datablock form scene. - r43604
- fix #30009: cycles translucent BSDF direct lighting not working correct. - r43775
- fix #30034: bug in multiple importance sampling + transparency, would give slightly wrong lighting behind transparent objects. - r43792
- fix #30049: cycles noise texture producing nan values with some texture coordinates. - r43966
- fix #30089: crash with cycles viewport rendering while in text edit mode. - r43968
- fix: cycles camera dof object with non-uniform scale gave incorrect distance. - r42983
- fix: cycles nested groups nodes and empty groups were not doing correct type conversions - r42707

Sequencer:
- fix #27847: sequencer scene strip rendering crash after certain operations - r42674
- fix #29743: sequence editor wipe effect giving wrong result - r43200
- fix #29692: sequencer scene rendering with color management disabled giving wrong colors - r42948
- fix #29764: crash with border rendering scene strip in sequencer - r43130
- fix #27953, #30052: sequencer extend tool not working correct with meta strips. - r43864, r43954
- fix #30028: sequencer crash when pasting a strip with a missing datablock. - r43819, r43870
- fix crash adding movie strips that were not a supported format - r44035
- fix #30136: adding sequencer plugin strip failed - r44039

Transform:
- fix #29611: crash scaling one vertex with snapping enabled - r42879
- fix #29626: warp transform tool stuck at certain angle values - r42659
- fix #29873: transform with individual origins not working in edge select mode. - r43355

User Interface:
- fix #25581: no pressure sensitivity in sculpt mode with some tablets on X11 - r43489
- fix #28011: popup menus with scaled down user interface show wrong text - r43794
- fix #28978: disabled mode switching in panning in 2d - r43218
- fix #29233: Windows accessibility feature "sticky keys" for disabled people not working - r42644
- fix #29494: problem loading translation after restart -
- fix #29494: problem loading translations on start with some locales - r42830, r42878
- fix #29537: file save crash when target path not found - r42583
- fix #29568: adding or removing scenes not working correct with undo/redo - r43203
- fix #29652: operator redo region can't be expanded when editor too small - r42843
- fix #29655: keyboard shortcuts missing from text editor text menu - r42730
- fix #29670: color picker draw issues with RGB values out of soft range - r42798
- fix #29761: texture painting with interpolation ignores texture use alpha setting - r43088
- fix #29762: columns in long enum property menu's were in the wrong order. - r43456
- fix #29884: splash screen displaying revision number cut off - r43738
- fix #29895: fast alt-mousewheel toggling of menu buttons also changes time - r43723
- fix #29946: recover auto save now filters .blend files and sorts by data by default - r43670
- fix #29958: search menu keeps hiding first character(s) after long input - r43724
- fix #24767, #27129: knife tool operator redo not working correct. - r43797
- fix #27213: editing color ramp "Pos:" number value did not update the ramp properly. - r43851
- fix #28296: crash with opening file selector from operator redo properties. - r43838
- fix #29056: keymapping NDOF motion events not working correct. - r43850
- fix #29433: particle drawing issue with circle/axis/cross display and size/vel/num/health enabled. - r43815
- fix #30043: typing ctrl+Z in text field added a square. - r43862
- fix #30076: scrolling properties editor scrollbar when mouse is over list widget - r43962
- fix #30110: outliner view: restriction icons not updating when toggling from groups view - r44059
- fix #30122: tweak mouse event values were not loaded from keymap files - r44037
- fix #30151: allow negative frames option not affecting arrow key shortcuts - r44055
- fix #30152: crash with drag and drop of images onto a mesh - r44052
- fix: missing refresh inserting keyframes on visibility/selectivity/renderability in outliner - r44069
- fix: collada export missing mesh name in exported files. - r43845
- fix: non-power-of-two-textures were incorrectly disabled on modern ATI graphics cards on Mac. - r43885
- fix: theme alpha value for button triangles was ignored - r43350
- fix: file browser typing enter on an empty path would ask to create a new directory. - r43767
- fix: X11 showing brief flash of random data when starting blender on some systems - r42880
- fix: crash with with (among others) Russian translation and some buttons - r42825
- fix: jobs progress display in taskbar incorrectly flashing on/off with multiple jobs active. - r43257
- fix: zoom camera 1:1 and center camera view operators can now run from menu - r43411


MORE FEATURES:
Animation:
- Follow path constraint with a cyclic curve can now loop - r43005
- Change how translated unconnected child bones with no inherit rotation are positioned. Now, disabling inherit rotation/scale will no longer move the bone, only affecting its rotation/scale. - r43450
- Bake action tool is now available in menus, previously was only available when searching. - r43985
- Note that blenders ffmpeg-ff1v ( FFmpeg Video Codec #1 ) codec supports transparency now , which makes a player that support it mandatory for external watching ( based on ffmpeg >= 0.10 )
- Export: ffmpeg h264.mov is now compatible with OSX Finder Quickview and Quicktime-Players ( 7.x and X )

Bump and Derivative Maps:
- 16 bit float textures. This feature allows users to load 16 bit per component textures for display in the 3D view when working with float images. This feature is mostly notable when working with the new bump map painting capabilities of blender. To enable the feature, check 16 Bit Float Textures under User Preferences -> System (on by default).
- Bicubic bump map filtering in the viewport, for improved bump quality. To use, "best quality" must be set as method for bump mapping under texture options, and the graphics card must support OpenGL 3.0 or later. The filtering helps on close ups of bump mapped surfaces. - r42647
- Derivatives maps now are automatically scaled based on object size - r42648

Color Management:
- Color Unpremultiply option for images and render settings. For premultiplied alpha images, this makes any color space conversion for the image or render output work on color without alpha multiplied in. This is typically useful to avoid fringing when the image was or will be composited over a light background. If the image will be composited over a black background on the other hand, leaving this option off will give correct results. - r43004
- Accelerated sRGB linear conversion using lookup table, this can speed up loading of images in the compositor and simple renders quite a bit. - r43222
- Dithering now uses the Floyd-Steinberg algorithm. Previously it would simply randomize each pixel slightly, adding noise, now that should be reduced. - r43222

Dynamic Paint:
- Added "Project" option also for "Volume + Proximity" brush type. - r43525
- Added per surface options "influence scale" and "radius scale" for tweaking brush settings individually for each surface. - r43429
- Added option to completely disable drying, useful for indefinitely spreading paint.
- Improved paint mixing algorithm.
- "Paint effects" now work in relative mesh space instead of global. This means that effect speed remains same for identical shapes regardless of their size.
- Improved spread effect algorithm, to avoid artifacts and stopping spreading too early.
- Improved dripping algorithm to work better with transparent paint.
- Added a new "color dry" setting. It can be used to define wetness level when paint colors start to shift to surface "background". Lower values can be useful to prevent spreading paint from becoming transparent as it dries, while higher (default) values give better results in general.

Editing:
- Removing snap points now support removing points other than the last added, Alt+A can be used to select the point. - r42882
- Weight painting Vgroup option restored to paint only vertices already in the group, remove unused All Faces option - r43397
- Weight preview option for weight editing modifiers, to show the weights generated by the modifier in weight paint mode - r43610
- Improved computation of sculpting center and normal - r42683
- Added option to fill caps of beveled curves. Works if bevel object is set only - r43852

International Text Editing:
- Text editor can now edit UTF-8 text - r43427
- UTF-8 copy & paste support on X11 and Windows - r43273, r43424

Longer Names and File Paths:
- Increase file path length limit from 239 to 1023 - r43582
- Increase datablock and other names length limit to 63 - r43283

Nodes:
- Double edged mask compositing node added to combine an inner and outer mask into a single feathered mask. - r43265
- Removed buttons in node headers for hiding unused sockets and for hiding the (non-socket) option buttons. These operators can still be accessed from the properties panel, and in the Node menu in the node editor. - r42708
- Automatically hide unused node sockets in collapsed nodes. - r42726

Outliner:
- Drag and drop parenting object in outliner - r43601
- Border select tool in outliner - r43504

Physics:
- Fluid simulation speed control option is back, which means the speed option can be animated to slow down or speed up time. - r43593
- Fluid simulation cache reading now has an offset option, to display baked fluid simulation at a different time. - r43822
- Cloth: velocity damping option added. This helps avoid "cloth wobbling" problems with animated characters with cloth. - r43627
- Baked editing: make particle edit mode more usable for softbodies and cloth - r43588
- Fluid particles can now take advantage of multiple processing cores (multithreading). For simulations dominated by SPH calculations (i.e. lots of particles but few collision mesh faces), this results in almost a 4x speed-up on a 4-core machine. If needed, the number of threads can be limited by setting the OMP_NUM_THREADS=n environment variable. - r43069
- SPH fluid particles are more stable and symmetrical now. Previously, the limit on the number of neighbouring particles was too low; this resulted in a bias towards one direction. For simulations that used an adaptive time step, the stability improvements also result in a speed-up, as shown below. - r43068

Render:
- Quicktime: add more codecs (Animation, Uncompressed, PNG, ..) - r42897, r42900
- OpenGL render now uses antialiasing samples setting - r43325
- World textures support for equirectangular mapping - r42742

User Interface:
- Running operators now uses last used settings, added reset button to set defaults. - r43308
- Number button copy/paste support for units and python expressions - r43574
- When splitting editor using right click menu, Tab key can be used to switch the direction - r42744
- Search match color in outliner can now be themed - r43599
- 3D mouse support for USB Spaceball5000 and 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse Pro - r43706, r43518
- Quick jump to scroll area with middle mouse clicking on scroll area - r43404, r43420