http://www.blender.org/download/get-25-alpha/
http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-250/

Thanks for that. I would have missed that for quite some time, although I'm looking at the Durian Blog almost every day.

I downloaded and tried it.
I was a bit puzzled about this:

"While sculpting, meshes are now internally split into smaller parts, for quicker editing of local parts of the mesh. Sculpting, multiresolution and subdivision surfaces have also been fully multithreaded."

I expected that the split parts are dynamically different in their resolution depending on the details of the mesh, but now I understand how it is meant.

I will see how far all these optimizing will speed up the workflow.
At the moment I guess I'm still faster with sculpting in Sculptris, but within blender it is already integrated with a lower poly version of the same mesh and its animations etc. Hm.

Hiya.

I'm wondering if anyone has created a "fully XSI-to-blender GUI/Hotkey setup"? Basically, I'm wondering if someone has used the power of the new 'GUI customizability' stuff to make Blender look as close to the XSI gui as possible, and also ported the hotkey's as close as possible.

Is there some specific site someone has created so people can share gui/hotkey setups? What about other major 3D package 'conversions'? (Lightwave, Maya, 3DS MAX, Cinema4D, etc.).

I also checked the new Blender 2.5x release. I like the GUI very much, it is somewhat similar to Modo and more easy to understand. But at the same time I still wonder about some design decisions:

The GUI works like all interfaces work. You select things and you activate options with the left mouse button. But in the 3d interface you select with the right mouse button.

If you ask me I would rather select with the left mouse button because you select often. I would rather rotate with the right mouse button instead of the middle (scroll wheel) button. So it would also be easier to switch between different applications.

And by the way: How do you import models into Blender? I had a hard time. It can read LWO, but it loses uv-maps. The same happens with other formats. And there are less import and export options available than in the 2.4x versions.

i like the right click selection in blender. it has the advantage that selection doesn't collide with using the transform widget. in modo you always have to toggle the mode. that's annoying.

all of this can be customized now in blender... for xsi hotkey setups i would look or ask on the blenderartist forum.

blender 2.5 still is quite unfinished. i had hoped to have a polished version with gi and n-gons included in the main branch by now. but it definitely goes into the right direction and it is very useful nevertheless already...

http://farsthary.wordpress.com/
i think farsthary is working on sculptris-like features for blender.

I worked hard to get used to blender, and now I like the way of it.
I feel way more comfortable with 2.49b than with the new version 2.53, but I discovered already a bit of how the things changed.

When I tried to use old blend files in the new version, some buttons/functions don't show up and can't be used.
This can be avoid by linking them instead of opening them. But not every part can be linked, f.i. I didn't manage to link actions to an already linked armature.

http://vimeo.com/13812115

this is quite awesome. (it's part of a summer of code project.)

when you sculpt models with millions of polygons a nice side effect is that there are enough vertices for using vertex colors instead of texture mapping. advantage: no need to mess with uv-maps and no seams. afterwards you can bake it to a texture of the low resolution version of the mesh.

Programming with nodes is also very interesting.
http://vimeo.com/13495148

Another link, that can be useful for the blender builders.
http://www.graphicall.org/builds/

Anyway, I like the new GUI.