I remember back in 2000 when I found Blender 0.9 alpha in my Debian ports, and I could not believe there was an open-source 3D modeling application. When I came back to Blender earlier this year, I could not believe all of the functionality that had been integrated into it since then. It feels like I returned to Blender at the perfect time, since the 2.70 release, it has been nothing but non-stop amazing additions. In 2.70 they added cycles volume rendering, with the start of the new UI changes. Then with 2.71 they added Cycles baking, as well as more additions to functionality. Now, as 2.72 is upon it's stable release, we see a whole new group of added features.
Blender Foundation Changes
The reason I point out how upgrades have flourished in the past few versions, is that around the time 2.70 was released, the Blender Foundation revamped it's entire business model. The site was completely redone to help inform new visitors wanting to learn about Blender, and development split up into different groups. Since then, we've seen these waves of improvements in each release, as well as constant releases. I feel like I've been using Blender for a long time, since I came back 5 versions ago, but if you look at the timeline, there have been 4 versions in the past 6 months! Basically, Blender's new development model is working great, and showing end-users just how well they can produce great features, as well as filling the holes users tend to complain about.
Blender 2.72rc
Now on to the 2.72 release candidate. This is one release I've been spending a lot of time on, learning all of the new features. As you open Blender 2.72, you will notice a fairly noticeable difference in the UI itself, where tooltips are not squished into a panel, and looks quite polished. Not only that, a new radial menu has been added called "pie menus", which you have to enable via UI addons, just so it doesn't annoy any users; at least I'm guessing. I know how users get mad when you switch one thing, and so does Blender.
Aside from a much nicer UI, they did quite a bit to the whole painting system, meaning it effected Texture Paint, Vertex Paint, and Sculpt Mode. This is the reason I've been glued to this version. Apart from being able to paint without issue in texture paint, it now has a pen pressure opacity, gradient, color palettes, masking, fill, "curves" mode for both paint and sculpt, as well as "line" mode as well. If you use any of these modes, you know this is a huge improvement, as paint modes have been crippled for some time now. Needless to say, the update to the paint/brush system helps keep users in Blender, and not exporting sculpts to ZBrush, or 3DCoat as it has been done.
Since Blender has become a favorite tool for many digital sculptors, any additions to the workflow of sculpting beautiful 3D models is beneficial to Blender. With these changes, it's most likely we'll see users utilizing Blender's new paint system, and the ones that prefer manual retopology will probably completely switch over. Regardless, these additions help Blender move in the right direction to being a 3D application accepted by all.
You can find all of the changes in the 2.72 release notes.
Blender's Future
The whole reason I went so in-depth in this article was to show anyone reading, just how much the Blender Foundation has changed, and that we can expect even more great things from their development team in each version. It's almost as if Blender has finally left it's teenage years, and moved on to adulthood. Since Blender was finally involved in the 2014 Siggraph, other 3D artists are now more than aware of it's ability. We can only expect better things from here on out, and with many other Blender professionals stepping up to the plate to help the foundation with these changes, we will surely see changes that will benefit each and every Blender user out there, as well as continuing to bring people in from other realms of the 3D world.
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