Bforartists 2 is now in development for one and a half year. And we reached the beta status now. So time to spread the word here too.

Blender 2.82a is out. And so there is also a new version from us. Bforartists 2 Beta 0.9.1.

The binary downloads can as usual be found in the download section of the official webpage. www.bforartists.de/download/
The source for this version is located at Github: github.com/Bforartists/Bforartists/releases
And the release note is here: www.bforartists.de/release-notes/

This release comes with the latest changes from Blender 2.82a, wich is a small point upgrade to fix some showstoppers. The changes in Bforartists are just minimal therefore. A few new icons, a few checkboxes aligned left again, and some other small changes. And we enter officially the Beta status now. The software is feature complete, the initial development goals are mostly fulfilled. Now comes the polishing. And we work towards a stable version now that can be used in production. The development focus shifts now to the documentation for a while.

A big thanks goes as usual to the team. Have fun with the new version – Reiner

This is it. Version 1.0.0 is gold. This development cylce is finished. Many thanks for all the help and support. Thanks to the team members. Enjoy Bforartists 

The download can as usual be found in the download section. www.bforartists.de/content/download

We have also as usual first the Windows binaries ready. The Mac version will most probably follow this weekend. We have unfortunately still no good news for Linux. No maintainer anymore. But you can always build it by yourself. The source code is at Github. And the advice how to compile Blender works for Bforartists in the same way.
The release notes are located here: www.bforartists.de/wiki/bforartistsreleasenotev100

The changes between RC1 and the full version aren’t really worth mentioning it. We just catched two last minute things.

I have still to point at Cuda in the 32 bit Windows version. GPU rendering may or may not work for you. Cuda 9 doesn’t support the outdated 32 bit architecture anymore. I have compiled the 32 Bit version with Cuda 8 now. But it throws still an error with my Nvidia 1060. So expect GPU rendering not to work in the 32 Bit version. Please upgrade to a 64 Bit Windows in this case. It is more than time!

Bforartists is a complete 3D suite to create 3D content. It offers you the full 3D art pipeline to create game graphics, prerendered movies and stills. From modeling, sculpting, texturing, rigging, animation, rendering, up to post processing. Have a look at the features page to find out more.

Bforartists stands for Be For Artists. A reminder to develop for the user, not the programmer.

Bforartists is a fork of the popluar open source 3d software Blender. With the goal to improve the UI and usability. Bforartists 1.0.0 is based at Blender version 2.79b.

– Reiner

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqkLOMEvh2E

We have a new version of the Blender fork Bforartists ready. This version of the 3D software is a release candidate for the upcoming version 1.0.0. It marks the end of the initial development cycle. Nearly three years of work comes to an end. And most of the initial goals are fulfilled.

The download can as usual be found in the download section. We have as usual first the Windows binaries ready. Please be patient. www.bforartists.de/content/download
The release notes are located here: www.bforartists.de/wiki/bforartistsreleasenotev100rc1

There aren’t this much changes in this release. Just around 40, and most of them small ones. The Bforartists 1.0.0 RC1 release is mainly cleanup work and last fixes to prepare the final version. We have catched a few bugs, extended the material library vx by more materials, added some last icons, and did some last changes. There were for example still two “are you really want to delete” dialogs around.

A note to Cuda in the 32 bit Windows version. GPU rendering may or may not work for you. Cuda 9 doesn’t support the outdated 32 bit architecture anymore. I have compiled the 32 Bit version with Cuda 8 now. But it throws still an error with my Nvidia 1060. So expect GPU rendering not to work in the 32 Bit version. Please upgrade to a 64 Bit Windows in this case. It is more than time!

The further road map is to wait until the Blender 2.8 development at the UI is finished. Makes no sense to change something that is under a permanent change anyways. A first incarnation of Blender 2.8 should arrive at the next Siggraph. And then we can have a look at it, and will continue the development. But we don’t run out of work. We need a new homepage since Drupal 7 is now EOL. And at the documentation front there is years of work waiting.

As usual, a big thanks to the team!

Bforartists 0.9.7 is ready. The binaries can as usual found here: www.bforartists.de/content/download

The release note can be found here: www.bforartists.de/wiki/bforartistsreleasenotev097

The Bforartists 0.9.7 release brings mainly small tweaks and improvements. All in all we have 100 changes in this release. We have added some missing icons, made some panels more compact, and so on . And it comes with the changes from Blender 2.79b. We have added two new addons. One for the VSE. And one to create a primitive with adjustable subdivisions. See create tab in the tool shelf. Most tools are now in the tool shelf too. And not longer in header menus. The biggest change is the new Full keymap. Now you can have the navigation from Bforartists with most hotkeys from Blender. Big thanks for creating this keymap goes to Draise here.

As you may have noticed, we have moved to the Github tracker. As a consequence the release note now not longer contains links to the issues. The listed titles in the release note are the commits.

It’s also a milestone release. We getting close to version 1.0. Most of the initial development goals are reached. What is now missing is some last changes and fine tuning. And this means this version should be functional enough for production. As a consequence this release is also not longer marked as Pre Production. There are surely still some problems around. But there aren’t this much big changes ahead anymore. At least not in this development cycle, Blender 2.8 is a completely different beast then.

Many thanks to the team! And have fun with the software 

– Reiner

It took a while. But now Bforartists 0.9.6 is here. The Windows versions are already up and running. You can find it in the downloads section. Mac and Linux versions will hopelfully follow soon.

The download can be found here: www.bforartists.de/content/download

The Bforartists 0.9.6 release brings the changes from Blender 2.79a. Which are around 200 fixed bugs. Bforartists adds around 260 resolved tasks on top of it.

The biggest change is that it brings around 450 new Icons. Now nearly every menu item has icons. It brings also updates to the addons. We have removed quite a few double menu entries again. And quite a few properties have moved from the header menus into tool shelf and properties sidebars.

We have again some changes at the keymap. We mapped Y, X , C for mesh select mode to X, C, V instead because of the american layout issue where Z and Y are flipped compared to the european keyboard layout. Lasso select works with LMB now everywhere. The hotkey to view selected is assigned to D now. This one was formerly Numpad 0, and is now much better to handle. The caveat is that we ran into another hotkey conflict that way, which we still have to fix. Holding D is also grease pencil draw.

Another big redesign ist the whole nodes toolshelf. It comes now with icon buttons. We have reduced the tabs from 13 in Blender to three tabs in Bforartists. And the categories have become panels. This is now much better organized, and you can easier find what you are looking for.

And finally we have fixed a few bugs.

Another change is that we switched to Inno Setup to build the installer. We loose the ability to connect the *.blend file association with Bforartists while the update process. But we win with a much simpler update process.

At this point as usual a big thanks to the whole Bforartists crew, which made this release possible. Many thanks folks.

There is also a short youtube video about the new things

www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/2monmvnz1Q8

I have now finished the work at the page. I may return to recolor the menu a bit better. But the page is fully functional again.

Once again we have fun with the WordPress installation. Images have lost their size, users reports about shot down layouts, and the FLV videos have quit working. I have no idea how long this one is around. The page displayed fine at my main pc.

I have temporarily switched to another theme now. And hope this will fix the issue with the shot down layout for some users. It has already fixed the issue with the images. I will fix the FLV issue as fast as possible. And i will have a look for a better fitting theme. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Merging the 2.79 features into Bforartists didn’t work as flawless as expected. We had fixed a showstopper regression with 0.9.4 already. Now we stumbled across even more. Which made a quick version 0.9.5 necessary. Some important Cycles settings were missing. We hope that this was it in terms of merge regressions. Sorry for the inconvenience.

The release note is again rather small with its 10 fixes. It can be found here: www.bforartists.de/wiki/bforartistsreleasenotev095

The download is as usual located in the downloads section: www.bforartists.de/content/download

We had a showstopper bug. The bake panels were gone. And so we quickly made this emergency relase 0.9.4.

Windows installer and zipfiles are up and running. Mac and Linux versions still needs a bit more time.

Bforartists 0.9.3 is released. The windows binarires can now be found in the download section. I cannot say though when the Linux and Mac versions will follow.

The download is here: www.bforartists.de/content/download
Release Note can be found here: www.bforartists.de/wiki/bforartistsreleasenotev093

The new version brings all the goodies from Blender 2.79. Like Denoiser, PBR Shader, Shadow Catcher, Flimic Color Management, etc. . Please have a look at the Blender 2.79 release note at the Blender page for the new features. Important is the compatibility note. Blender 2.79 is not fully backwards compatible to earlier version anymore. And this affects of course Bforartists 0.9.3 too.

The changes in Bforartists itself sums up to over 100 changes again, but are each rather small. The last weeks and months were in big parts spent at documentation and tutorials. Unbelievable how time consuming this chapter is. That’s why Bforartists 0.9.3 brings mainly fixes and some small changes and cleanup operations. And we had some inconsistencies in the hotkeys again. F2 to call the console is removed since it conflicts with Linux build. The Properties sidebars now all opens with Ctrl T, not longer with N. And we have readded the hotkey to Loopcut and Slide, since it is a fundamental modeling tool, and often used.

Bforartists 0.9.3 is the merge of Blender 2.79 into Bforartists. And it’s a big one. Such merges brings always the danger of regressions. Some features can quit working, or some Blender features doesn’ t work in Bforartists then. We did our best, and i hope we have not too many of them. When you find something, then please report in the tracker. www.bforartists.de/project/issues/bforartists_bugtracker

The updated manual chapters will shortly follow.