Argent Stonecutter
Emergency Mustelid Hologram
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Blender news
- Thread starter Dakota Tebaldi
- Start date
Knutz Scorpio
Well-known member
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Which is still around in a sort of pathetic state. I don't know why, but everyone there seems to have a bad attitude, so negative.
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According to the report, at the peak of the attack the Blender website was receiving 100,000 requests per second, sustained. I know Blender is popular, but it's not like, THAT popular. 
Plus there was evidently some clear response activity by the botnet to mitigation attempts, like IP range shifting. The DDOS-blocking service they finally ended up hiring graphed the traffic and it definitely wasn't organic:
Plus there was evidently some clear response activity by the botnet to mitigation attempts, like IP range shifting. The DDOS-blocking service they finally ended up hiring graphed the traffic and it definitely wasn't organic:
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- Sep 19, 2018
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- Gulf Coast, USA
- Joined SLU
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- Joined
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Blender 4.2 is going to have a big change that might confuse you if you don't see it coming, so here it is: what are currently known as Addons are becoming Extensions, and they don't be installed by default.
Up to now, Blender ships with a big package of like a couple hundred addons, accessible in the Preferences window. A few of these are enabled by default - like the Cycles rendering engine (yes, it's technically an addon!) and the scripts that enable you to export a .blend as like an FBX file for example - but most are not. You have to go into Preferences and enable the ones you want. There's some that practically everyone I know who uses Blender will have enabled, like Node Wrangler, F2, maybe LoopTools, and so on. But by far you're probably not enabling most of them because they're things that you in particular just don't need (or maybe just don't know about).
Well anyways, that's changing. Now they're called Extensions; and only the ones that up til now have been enabled by default are going to be included with Blender anymore - actually, those particular addons, like Cycles, are finally being actually integrated into Blender directly. But for all the others, rather than including the whole kit and caboodle with every Blender download, "Extensions" will now be hosted in an online repository; when you search for them in the Extensions tab, you'll basically download and install only the ones you specifically choose.
Functionally once you've downloaded the extension and enabled it, there won't be any difference to how you use them in Blender. Just be aware that you'll be downloading and installing them one by one rather than just switching them on. For purists, there WILL be a bulk download available so that you can install the whole lot if you really want to.
Up to now, Blender ships with a big package of like a couple hundred addons, accessible in the Preferences window. A few of these are enabled by default - like the Cycles rendering engine (yes, it's technically an addon!) and the scripts that enable you to export a .blend as like an FBX file for example - but most are not. You have to go into Preferences and enable the ones you want. There's some that practically everyone I know who uses Blender will have enabled, like Node Wrangler, F2, maybe LoopTools, and so on. But by far you're probably not enabling most of them because they're things that you in particular just don't need (or maybe just don't know about).
Well anyways, that's changing. Now they're called Extensions; and only the ones that up til now have been enabled by default are going to be included with Blender anymore - actually, those particular addons, like Cycles, are finally being actually integrated into Blender directly. But for all the others, rather than including the whole kit and caboodle with every Blender download, "Extensions" will now be hosted in an online repository; when you search for them in the Extensions tab, you'll basically download and install only the ones you specifically choose.
Functionally once you've downloaded the extension and enabled it, there won't be any difference to how you use them in Blender. Just be aware that you'll be downloading and installing them one by one rather than just switching them on. For purists, there WILL be a bulk download available so that you can install the whole lot if you really want to.
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Blender 4.2 LTS is out!
There is SOMETHING VERY IMPORTANT that you NEED TO BE AWARE OF if you are a content creator for Second Life. And that is that the Collada (.dae) exporter is now considered legacy in 4.2, and is going to be removed in a future version of Blender. This impacts you because as you well know Collada is the format you need to export mesh from Blender as, if you intend to upload it to SL or OpenSim.
Collada is being discontinued because, as explained here,
All is not lost; the comments also point out that LL has been implementing portions of the glTF format as part of its new PBR system and while they haven't quite gotten all of it in there yet, hopefully it will be by the time Collada is finally dropped from Blender.
Otherwise, it's always possible that someone can create a new Blender addon for exporting as Collada. And remember that you can always download and use older versions of Blender that still have the functionality, although you'll always run a risk especially now of models using more current shaders and certainly other features like geometry nodes not being fully backwards-compatible with those older versions of Blender.
Anyways, with all that out of the way, this video goes over all the changes in Blender 4.2 LTS:
The EEVEE render engine has been redone. It's now EEVEE Next, and it has raytracing, better lighting, better shadows, and it's faster too. It now produces results in some situations that are really close to Cycles, but with EEVEE speed. That's awesome. EEVEE Next was the change I was personally looking forward to most in this release.
Geometry nodes are continuing to expand and improve. There's some modeling and compositor improvements too.
There's also the whole "Addons are now Extensions" thing I went over in the last post. Do note though that in order to be able to download extensions from within Blender itself, you need to enable online access in Blender's preferences. This option is turned off by default, because BLENDER ACTUALLY RESPECTS YOUR PRIVACY AND AGENCY AND DOES NOT PRESUME YOU WANT IT TO BE ABLE TO CONNECT TO THE INTERNET. And you only need it enabled while actually downloading or updating extensions, by the way - once the extension is downloaded it's yours, it's local, you won't need to stay connected to the internet or reconnect every so often in order for Blender or any downloaded extension to work. This is how things SHOULD be.
There is SOMETHING VERY IMPORTANT that you NEED TO BE AWARE OF if you are a content creator for Second Life. And that is that the Collada (.dae) exporter is now considered legacy in 4.2, and is going to be removed in a future version of Blender. This impacts you because as you well know Collada is the format you need to export mesh from Blender as, if you intend to upload it to SL or OpenSim.
Collada is being discontinued because, as explained here,
In other words it's old, nobody's working on it, and nobody uses it. Like, seriously, someone points out in the comments of that dev post that as far as they know Linden Lab are literally the only people who use this file type anymore.
All is not lost; the comments also point out that LL has been implementing portions of the glTF format as part of its new PBR system and while they haven't quite gotten all of it in there yet, hopefully it will be by the time Collada is finally dropped from Blender.
Otherwise, it's always possible that someone can create a new Blender addon for exporting as Collada. And remember that you can always download and use older versions of Blender that still have the functionality, although you'll always run a risk especially now of models using more current shaders and certainly other features like geometry nodes not being fully backwards-compatible with those older versions of Blender.
Anyways, with all that out of the way, this video goes over all the changes in Blender 4.2 LTS:
The EEVEE render engine has been redone. It's now EEVEE Next, and it has raytracing, better lighting, better shadows, and it's faster too. It now produces results in some situations that are really close to Cycles, but with EEVEE speed. That's awesome. EEVEE Next was the change I was personally looking forward to most in this release.
Geometry nodes are continuing to expand and improve. There's some modeling and compositor improvements too.
There's also the whole "Addons are now Extensions" thing I went over in the last post. Do note though that in order to be able to download extensions from within Blender itself, you need to enable online access in Blender's preferences. This option is turned off by default, because BLENDER ACTUALLY RESPECTS YOUR PRIVACY AND AGENCY AND DOES NOT PRESUME YOU WANT IT TO BE ABLE TO CONNECT TO THE INTERNET. And you only need it enabled while actually downloading or updating extensions, by the way - once the extension is downloaded it's yours, it's local, you won't need to stay connected to the internet or reconnect every so often in order for Blender or any downloaded extension to work. This is how things SHOULD be.
Argent Stonecutter
Emergency Mustelid Hologram
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Zaida Gearbox
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Masochism is not my thing, but I don't shame.
Zaida Gearbox
Member
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I don't know Cody. I just downloaded the most current version of Blender, but based on what you've posted about it up above - it's been a long time since Blender made me cry.Masochism is not my thing, but I don't shame.
Adeon Writer
Member
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Last edited:
Sheera Khan
Mostly lurking
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