I am an Australian and I don't know a single person who finds the name awkward. But then again everybody I know is either intelligent enough from the context to figure out that I am talking about a computer program and not a sex slave or a cripple. Some of them are intelligent enough to know that the word gimp also has meanings other than the American slang meaning.
As best I can tell this essentially boils down to retrofitting directX 11 to an already designed engine after the fact and doing so in a limited time frame.
I don't really see it as a big deal as a) the game was originally designed for directX9 hardware so anybody trying to run the game on DirectX11 hardware will probably do just fine anyway and secondly the way that modern graphics cards are designed this extra geometry generated on GPU may not even be the bottleneck.
I think that engines that will really take advantage of these technologies are only really being built now. At work we use one of the engines that has had this feature for the longest (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F6zSgtRnkE). Other companies we know using the same engine aren't using these features because there are not enough people with the Graphics to support it. I think this will mark the beginning though.
Incidently the way that tesselation is implemented in the engine we are using. Is with two maps - the first is a displacement map and the second specifies the level of tesselation which significantly lowers the level of tesselation on flat surfaces.
Linux has supported USB3 since 2009 or kernel version 2.6.31... If your kernel is newer than that you should have usb3 supported.
-the tree of the file manager constantly auto-scrolls left and right (once you manage to discover the setting to actually get a tree in it)
Tree is largely surplanted by the column view mode and view splitting. I used view splitting rather than tree even in 3.5 so I guess I missed that one. Try column view mode though.
-in kate the search for text has its case sensitivity independent per file, and hidden behind something on which you must click first
this option is not hidden in the current version of kate, is still independent per file. down arrow gets you the last search term from any document however and there is a find in files command for searching in multiple documents at the same time.
-by default everything is huge and there don't fit many open window buttons in the panel
This was true of early versions of KDE is much less true now.
-it is extremely frustrating to create a launcher for a program in the taskbar. There are at least 3 systems, and all 3 are annoying, sometimes involving having to manually create a desktop file somewhere. How it should be: a single drag and drop movement
this can be done with drag and drop in the current version of KDE.
Ammendment to previous post
The configuration gives you more control than KDE 3.5 but is a little bit harder to figure out.
The taskbar sizing controls lets you set minimum and maximum sizing by default both these sliders are in the same position. Panels will auto expand from the minimum size(indicated by a _) to the maximum size (indicated by a V). Next time you try to set up the panel mouse over the sizing controls to see what they do.
> Also, I could have more than one KDE session without windows appearing clamming that it couldn't lock a file and closing
There are some KDE apps which are single instance only (off the top of my head, KDevelop and Kontact come to mind). Most of these apps (the ones that I use) have gotten a lot better about this over recent releases. They will still complain (if they weren't shutdown properly) but will give you the option to remove the lock file.
It's an improvement but it could be better.
Ultimately it's juggling the needs of full-time artists, users familiar with the old blender, the needs of casual and new users and the number of developer man hours available.
In particular the defaults could be set a lot better for new users. You will want to take a look at File->User Preferences and set things to your liking right away.
or you can hit middle mouse to constrain things to the closest axis.
start moving in the direction you want then hit the middle mouse button.
Not easily discoverable but very nice to use.
There are other methods but now you know.
FFS blendercookie -> it has pretty moving pictures and everything.
While you are at it Blendernation. Announcements of good new tutorials will almost certainly end up there.
1) import the obj file.
If that is done right you should show up with the textures on it (you may need to be in textured mode to see it [alt + z] or check the controls at the bottom of the 3d viewport.
2) Just to the right of the menus at the top of the application should be a control that will read default. This lets you switch layouts. Press the icon on the far left and choose UV editing. You can switch layouts using the CTRL key and the left and right arrow keys and create your own custom layouts.
3) in the 3d Viewport (right half of the screen) select the model and put it in Edit mode ([TAB] or use the controls at the bottom of this viewport). while you are at it check that the viewport is in textured mode (alt + z will toggle this also there are controls at the bottom of the viewport). Once in Edit mode the UVs should turn up in the UV/Image window.
4) if your texture doesn't show up you can select it by pressing the button to the very left of the set of controls at the bottom of the UV/Image window. Or you can create a new Image if you don't have one.
5) You need to enable texture paint mode. There is a button near the end of the controls at the bottom of the UV/Image window. You can pan these controls using the middle mouse button or you can hit CTRL + down arrow to maximise this view (the same keycombination will unmaximise it). Alternatively you can hit space which will bring up a menu. make sure that Image->Image Painting is selected.
6) if you want to paint directly onto the model then use the controls at the bottom of that viewport to enter Texture Paint mode.
If you check the blendernation website you will see a few good texture painting video tutorials have been put up in the last week or so.
blendercookie is not a terrible place to pick up video tutorials.
It wasn't so much reinventing the wheel. The core blender engine was written before the wheel was invented so to speak. This release Well 2.5 really marks the first rewrite of the ui code since then.
Yeah I have noticed a slowness on some workstations and not on other very similiar workstations. Basically KDE isn't perceptibly slow on my home computer or my work computer. But a friend set one up on his spare workstation and it felt like molasses (basically same video card as the work computer) while I was there we did a system update and the problem went away. I suspect video driver update was the culprite. I while back the oxygen theme was having issues with nVidia cards (not really familiar with running KDE on anything else. These machines are all 3d graphics/dev workstations and I don't trust anybody body else to give me a smooth experience)
Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue. - Seneca
