Getting Blender 2.5 Test Builds

Blender 2.5 is still live and in development, but the most recent builds are getting really close to a stable version that can take over for 2.49.  I’ve been updating my Blender on a semi-regular basis for some time now, and so far it’s actually been a fairly stable platform, with the occasional crash, mostly in the weird corner cases people who animate with textures and physics run into.

The sculpt tool in particular has seen an awful lot of tweaking and upgrading– it works with the subsurface modifier now, the different tools have better design, and of the several Google Summer of Code projects on Blender, several directly or indirectly affect the quality of the overall sculpting experience.  One project explicitly extends and enhances the tool.

Versions of Blender show up first on GraphicAll.org, a sort of repository site for Blender builds.  There’s a walkthrough of this process on BlenderCookie, but it’s pretty much self-explanatory, except for the part where, if you’re on windows, you need to get 7zip.  BlenderCookie also has a great intro to some of the new sculpting features that are in Blender– this site’s a great resource!

Blender 2.5 is, in my opinion, pretty much ready for prime time already, and well worth tracking down a recent test build to try out.