Blender, the popular 3D graphics and animation software, has reached the 2.73 release with numerous improvements, stabilization and bug fixes.
A major upgrade was given to the Grease Pencil tool, which inter alia brought the ability to edit and animate strokes. The first developments from the Gooseberry Project like a Sequencer Backdrop, Cycles viewport world background and others were added. Cycles got various improvements and speedups, as well as support for cameras inside volumes, the UI got a new ‘minimalistic’ fullscreenmode and Input Method Editor support for textbuttons (used for complex Chinese and Japanese character input), the Knife-tool was improved, Freestyle got a SVG exporter, and many more features which are worth checking out!
While Ubuntu repositories provide an old Blender version, you can always follow this tutorial to install the latest release from the official package. Tested in Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04 and it should work in Ubuntu 10.04 and higher.
Blender is a professional free and open-source 3D computer graphics software product used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, interactive 3D applications and video games.
So far the latest stable release is Blender 2.72b, which was released a week ago. See the new features in its website.
While Blender in Ubuntu Software Center is old and there’s no PPA repository that always provides the latest binaries, follow the steps below to install the latest release with new features and bug fixes:
1. Click the link below to bring up Ubuntu Software Center and click the install button to install the package libsdl1.2debian:
2. Download Blender for GNU/Linux from the official link below. You may first check your OS type, 32-bit or 64-bit, by clicking on “About This computer” from shutdown menu (top-right corner gear button).
3. – a). For single use – If you have only one user on the Ubuntu system, just extract the package to user Downloads folder and run the executable from the result folder:
3. – b). To make all users to be able to run the blender release, extract the package to /opt/ directory.
To do so, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal, run command below to open your Downloads folder as root/administrator:
gksudo nautilus ~/Downloads
Install gksu from Ubuntu Software Center if need. Type in your user password when it asks.
When the folder opens, do:
Right click on Blender package and select open with Archive Manager.
When Archive Manager opens, select Extract to computer -> /opt/
When done, you should see the blender folder under /opt/. For shot, I’ve rename it from “blender-2.72b-linux-glibc211-x86_64” to “blender”.
4. Create a launcher for Blender so that we can start it from the Unity Dash or App Menu.
Press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal. When it opens, run command to create .desktop file and edit it with Gedit text editor:
When the file opens, paste below into it and save.
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Blender-2.7
Name[de]=Blender-2.7
Name[fr]=Blender-2.7
GenericName=3D modeller
GenericName[de]=3D Modellierer
GenericName[fr]=modeleur 3D
GenericName[ru]=Редактор 3D-моделей
Comment=Create and edit 3D models and animations
Comment[de]=Erstellen und Editieren von 3D Modellen und Animationen
Comment[fr]=Création et édition d'objets 3D et animations
Comment[ru]=Создание и редактирование трёхмерных моделей и анимаций
Exec=/opt/blender/blender
Icon=/opt/blender/icons/scalable/apps/blender.svg
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Graphics;3DGraphics;
StartupNotify=false
MimeType=application/x-blender;
Depends on step 3, you may replace path to Exec & Icon (words in red).
When done, you should be able to open Blender from the Unity Dash or App Menu. Enjoy!
This simple tutorial is going to show you how to install the Blender 2.70 in Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.04 and Ubuntu 12.10 via PPA repository.
At the moment, Blender 2.70 is at its second release candidate. New features include initial support for volumetrics in Cycles, and faster rendering of hair and textures. The motion tracker now supports weighted tracks and has improved planar tracking. For mesh modeling there are new Laplacian deform and wireframe modifiers, along with more control in the bevel tool. The game engine now supports object levels of detail.
The first results from the new user interface project are also in this release, with dozens of changes to make the interface more consistent and powerful. This is also the first release of the multithreaded dependency graph, which makes modifier and constraint evaluation faster in scenes with multiple objects. See the release note.
Install Blender 2.70
The IRIE Shinsuke’s PPA contains the 2.70 RC builds for all current support Ubuntu releases. You’ll be able to upgrade to the Blender 2.70 stable version via this PPA when it’s released.
To do so, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open the terminal. When it opens, run the commands below one by one to add the PPA, update system and install or upgrade the software.
Blender 2.69, the latest stable release of the popular 3D creation software finally is available for Ubuntu & Linux Mint via PPA one week after Blender 2.69 was official announced.
What’s New in Blender 2.69:
Modeling:
A new hidden wire display option was added to help with retopology. Mesh Bisect is a new tool to cut meshes in half. The Bridge, Edgenet fill, Grid fill and Symmetrize tools were improved. New curve and lattice editing tools were added too.
Cycles Rendering:
Hair rendering was improved with a new Hair shader and reorganized settings. Subsurface scattering uses a new sampling algorithm and now supports bump mapping and texture blurring. Sky rendering now uses a more accurate sky model. New blackbody, vector transform and HSV nodes were added. The non-progressive integrator was renamed to Branched Path Integrator, and is now available for GPU rendering.
Motion Tracker:
The Motion tracker now supports plane tracking, which can be used to replace billboards, screens and other flat things in footage.
More Features:
Lists in the user interface can now be resized, sorted and filtered. Further there are small improvements for vertex parenting, empty objects, the shrinkwrap modifier, mask editing, armatures, f-curves and drivers.
Addons:
FBX Import support has been added and FBX/OBJ can now export split normals (without the need for the edge split modifier).
Bug Fixes:
In addition to the new features, over 270 bugs that existed in previous releases have been fixed.
Install or Upgrade Blender 2.69:
The PPA has updated for Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy, Ubuntu 13.04 Raring, Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal, Ubuntu 12.04 Precise, Linux Mint 13/14/15/16.
PPA now works for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 14.10 and Linux Mint 17 / 17.1.
To get started, press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run commands below one by one:
NOTE that the packages doesn’t include pre-compiled CUDA kernel. If you want to use the Cycles renderer with CUDA support, you have to install the CUDA toolkit on your system to do runtime compilation of the CUDA kernel:
