today blender 2.46 will be released. the downloads aren't ready yet but here you can read about the new features in the meantime:

http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-246/

<edit> the downloads are available now: http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/ </edit>

They still forgot to implement a human UI ...

this discussion again... compared to truespace's gui the blender one is pure bliss. :p

i agree, blenders gui is so natural feeling once you get the basic concept.

too true i just wanna know why it slows down my system so much if i have directories with hundreds of files listed in blender's file explorer... it becomes unusuable. and UV editing has become really awkward after 2.4something (2.42?)

really? i love there uv mapping setup, also i wonder what your issue is with the directories, since i dont seem to have taht issue... i know you use some nontypical (if i remember right) os's i wonder if that has something to do with it.

well, that problem only occurs on winXP, not on any linux distro i have installed i guess it's my AMD dual core, it likes to drive me crazy from time to time. however, it's only on winXP.

Was the UI update done in the meantime? Last time I checked I hesitated learning it because I was told the next release would change some things on the UI - so I decided to wait until that point...

Enjoy your meal
Toast

if you have a slowdown problem you should file a bug report.

uv mapping is totally awesome now in 2.46. it's an area where blender trumps most other applications.

2.50 will be the event system refactoring release which will make everything more customizable. this will also make it easier for the developers to work out some inconsistencies and problem areas in the user interface but altogether there probably won't change that much on the surface. blender will still be blender.

Thanks for this link.

I am amazed about the features. There are some features that I even miss in commercial tools. At my mind Blender will become a good alternative for outsourcing some tasks.

But if I have to work fast on a huge amount of models I will stick to Lightwave. The reason is simple: Speed. Even opening a file takes much longer in Blender. I cannot copy the address from clipboard and clicking though the tree is a nighmare there. Some other tasks also take a few steps more.

I have to check the im- and export again. I read that Collada still cannot save animations. So the only way is FBX to transfer animations. I hope it works well.
I will give it another try when I start to create my next character.

Regards