Blender 2.60

**guyke** · 20 October 2011, 08:08 AM

Blender 2.60 is out. Currently I'm using 2.58, which is my first release.
If I want to move on to 2.60 is there something I need to be careful about - saveguarding user preferences, add-ons ... from the current release ?

**ODdOnLifeItself** · 20 October 2011, 08:51 AM

Hello Guy,

I don't have a definitive answer to your question, but will comment on my experience. When I've upgraded to a new official release, the settings seem to have always migrated to the new installation. HOWEVER, when I have made a "RC" (release candidate) upgrade, they have NOT. If your upgrade makes a "Program Files" entry under Blender Foundation, then everything works okay. If it is a test-build, beta, or release candidate, it has separately installed into its own directory and therefore the settings did not make the move with it.

Hope this helps!

Peace

James

**ODdOnLifeItself** · 20 October 2011, 09:17 AM

Hello Guy,

Just checked the website, this does appear to be an official release, so I would be inclined to think that everything should make the transition. Upon making the download, though, I notice immediately the default scene, add-ons, and UI layout are changed from my defaults upon running. Looks like (at least) I will be resetting Blender to all my fave settings...

They've made many improvements and bug fixes. Since this is a major release (we've moved from the 2.5x series to 2.6), there are a LOT of additions/modifications. The 3D audio sounds interesting, though I haven't done anything with Blender and sound, yet. There are supposedly a lot of improvements in the animation functions, which I am anxious to explore.

Since this is a (relatively) major upgrade, let's comment if we see something has been significantly changed or something important is added.

One really cool addition is the Screencast Keys add-on. Now, with that enabled, Blender will show what keys were pressed...so all new tutorials should show all keyboard and mouse activity!!!

Peace

James

**guyke** · 20 October 2011, 12:25 PM

Hallo James,

thanks for the info. I will set aside the necessary files so I can retrieve them when needed.

**guyke** · 20 October 2011, 05:07 PM

I installed 2.60 and then tried to set everything to the same user preferences as in 2.58. It seems ok, except for the clay-render add-on. I copied it from the 2.58 add-ons directory to the 2.60 dir. It shows up in my user preferences but I cannot enable it. Could it be version-dependent ?

**ODdOnLifeItself** · 21 October 2011, 06:09 AM

Hello Guy,

Something else is at work. I moved the render_clay file to the 2.60/Scripts/add-ons and then enabled it in User Preferences and it works.

You can also set the color of the clay... I hadn't noticed that before, but it was probably there...

James

**guyke** · 21 October 2011, 06:59 AM

So I went back to your zip-file and took it from there, and it works.

re: color - the option was there in 2.58 as well.

**angelize** · 21 October 2011, 07:43 AM

Well I've downloaded and installed 2.60 and all went well. I haven't had much time to play with it, yet though.

**ODdOnLifeItself** · 21 October 2011, 09:13 AM

Re: Blender 2.60

There are quite a few additions.

Like a kid in a candy shop, I was looking over some of them. The one that really stands out as super-useful is the Texture Paint Layer Manager.

You can see a very good explanation of it in this video

Essentially, it creates Texture channels on the fly and sets everything up automatically. You just have to choose which Texture channels you need (Color, Bump, Specular, etc.). After this, you can go right in and paint on the object to affect it's color or to give it texturing, make part invisible, etc.!!!

It also makes it so that you can wrap around edges without having to (manually) UV unwrap it and monkey around in the UV editor.

I tried it already and it worked like a charm. I took a blue cube and painted parts of it red. Then, I went to the Bump map channel and brought in a rounded brick texture and painted right onto the Bump channel with that texture. Everywhere that I painted had this new rounded brick texturing. You could do it the old way, just importing a texture to use AS a Bump channel, but then you have to position everything right and if you want continuity at the edges, you have to be careful in unwrapping. Using this method, since you're drawing right on the UV texture, if you draw across the edges, then it is continuous.

Additionally, with this method, you can apply as much or as little as you desire. For instance, if you were making a large rock and wanted to apply some texturing, but wanted the rock smoother on the top part (from being exposed to the rain, it is smoother), then you can apply the texture (with a weak setting) and keep building it up until you have it the way you want.

This is VERY COOL and useful. It is worth learning how to do it, because you will find many uses for it. Another example. You put a large block in the middle of the scene, but you're wanting it to look like it's been there a LONG time. Normally, the edges of the block that are close to the ground would be darker from accumulated dirt/grease/etc. With Texture paint, you can just go right into the Color channel and very easily manually paint some "dirt" right onto the object, right where you want it, and with the amount that you want.

When reading the new features, I glossed over this one...but can see that this might be one of the very most useful ones of the bunch. This was do-able before, but it wasn't automated...everything had to be set up just right manually. Now, just click that you WANT a Specular channel (for example) and it is added to the Texture channel stack and is ready for you to just click on it and start painting specular highlights (as per this example).

Pass this one up to your own detriment.

Have fun!

James

**guyke** · 07 November 2011, 05:46 PM

Originally Posted by ODdOnLifeItself

You can see a very good explanation of it in this video

Meanwhile I watched the video a couple of times. I then started to reconstruct it - painting the cube. Unfortunately, in the 3d-view, nothing seems to happen when I apply some paint (eg. blue). I can see something happening in the material preview, but not in the 3D-window.
I tried with both solid and textured viewport shading. The only difference is that I get a grey cube in solid view and a bright white cube in textured.

I also tried other bump layers and alpha layers, but nothing seems to happen.

Any idea, anybody ?

I submitted the question also at the cookie helpdesk, but so far the only suggestion was to try textured viewport shading - which I already had done.