Archive notice: This article was originally published on March 18, 2013. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Although the Bullet Physics Engine has been part of the open-source 3D package Blender for many years, until now users could access it only through the integrated game engine. With the 2.66 update, the physics engine can now also be used for the normal animation workflow. The Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) Solver for fluid simulations has also been revised. Users can physically correctly define fluid properties such as rest density, viscosity or stiffness for the new SPH Particle Fluid Dynamics Solver using SI units.
The virtual sculpting tools, the Dynamic Topology Sculpting Tools, are another feature. According to the Blender Foundation, these can now be used to shape complex objects such as faces from a simple cube.
Completely new is a Matcap display for the real-time 3D preview of materials, which is intended to be modelled on Zbrush’s MatCaps. The integrated path-tracing render engine now supports the display of hair, bristles and strands. However, this function is still said to be at the experimental stage.
In addition, the Blender Foundation has improved the Lapliacian Smooth Modifier and the user interface by allowing keyboard shortcuts to be used for copying and pasting. Furthermore, 250 programming errors are said to have been fixed compared with the previous version.
