[Bf-marketing] Re: Blender Press Release

[Tom M]

Some notes - I leave the mention of the Blender name out of the title
till after cool features have been mentioned - the reason is that lots
of people have tried past releases and found Blender so frustrating to
use that seeing Blender in the title might leave them to skip the 
article entirely (this has been a big problem at CGTalk for instance,
where 95% of page views and comments are from current blender users
for recent release annoucements and other news).  It can be added back
though if desired.

We will probably have a few images embedded - our total target size is
about 50k to maybe 100k.  Probably a sample hair; fluid; and morph
targets, or other animation related pic.

Feel free to point out things you think should be changed and to make
other suggestions.

Those of you in the CC list are encouraged to join the bf-marketing list

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Title: new animation system - another dimension set free


While the main focus of this release was animation tools improvements,
there have been a number of big improvements throughout our 3D suite.

Animation system :
 - Arm yourself - new fast and easy Armature and rigging system
 - Get Moving - completely retooled Inverse Kinematics. with instant
IK transforms
 - Freedom - all IK joints can now have degree of freedom limits
 - You're in the Driver seat - The new Driver system allows things
like a bones rotation to effect a muscles bulge
 - Things are beginning to take Shape - reworked Shape keys allow
intuitive blend shape creation and storage
 - Bad to the BBones - Bones that can curve and twist giving natural
feeling spines
 - Pushing the Envelope - Envelope based skin weighting, and new
armature and constraint visualization capabilities
 - Take it in Stride - new stride bone system let you create
walkcycles in a simple and fast way
 - Get into the action - Non linear action editor was fully revised

Particle System and Simulation :
 - You're all wet - you can now easily create realistic water and
other fluid simulations.

 - Now your stylin - with new particle hair and particle guide tools
you can create realistic hair.

Other improvements:
 - Modify this! - new Modifier stack lets you experiment with
decimation, booleans without long term commitment.
 - Watch the knife - subdivide tools have been greatly expanded, new mesh tools
 - Make a Difference - we now have high quality boolean based editing
 - Bouncy Balls - softbody objects can now can collide with other objects.
 - Bullet time - the new physic library let you bake game engine
results to your animation
 - Looking Sharp - new oversampling options means higher quality
rendering results
 - Get Unwrapped - LSCM unwrapping now has interactive updating

  Oh, we didn't change the name, it is still blender !

  so, follow the monkey <link>

  The inverse kinematic improvements, fluid dynamics, and the high
quality booleans work was done with the sponsorship of the Google
Summer of Code program.  We greatly appreciate their support, and the
wonderful results achieved by the hard work of Brecht, Niels, and
Marc.  You can look forward to other great Summer of Code projects
being released with the next version of Blender such as a greatly
improved NURBS code base, and real time collaboration.