Week highlights: new features in GIMP and HDRview, new releases of Armory 3D, Blender BIM, VCV Rack, and plugdata.
GIMP
CmykStudent added a checkbox that temporarily disables the floating on-canvas toolbar for the Text tool. The patch is currently sitting in the Merge Requests queue.
An even more interesting patch is coming from a new contributor, mr.fantastic. How would you feel about GIMP being able to snap borders of layers to borders of other layers? Or equidistant distribution? That’s exactly what’s in the pipeline right now. There’s no snapping visualization yet, but the snapping and equidistant distribution actually work.
HDRView
Wojciech Jarosz continues improving HDRView and recently added a command palette in a branch that seems really close to being merged to the main development branch.
Inkscape
Martin Owens resumed his weekly overviews of changes and fixes in Inkscape, much recommended:
Armory 3D 2023.03
Lubos Lenco released a new version of the Armory 3D game engine. Highlights:
- Improved node groups (more Blender-like now, with nested groups)
- New Array Filter and Array Display logic nodes
- New
Add Vec4 moveTowardsfunction and a logic node for it
Blender BIM v0.0.230304
New version of Blender BIM is now out. Some of the changes are:
- Easier alignment of parametric walls
- Parametric doors and windows generation
- Further progress on IFC4X3 support
- Cost schedules can now be exported to CSV, ODS, and XLSX
- 57 bugs down
IFC Architect did an overview of the release:
FreeCAD Rocketry Workbench
David Carter moved the next iteration of his Rocketry Workbench to beta. It’s somewhat unusual, but the changes are explained in a Twitter thread:
New Rocket Workbench is now in Beta! Testers wanted. Installation instructions are available here: https://t.co/FyVtYjBJss
— DavesRocketShop 🇨🇦 (@DavesRocketShop) March 12, 2023
The current testing branch is dev3_0_beta1_03112023#RocketWorkbench #FreeCAD @FreeCADNews
There's a lot in this one, so here's a 🧵
To sum it up: triangular and canted fins now available, improved rounded fins, and various other improvements.
Outline to SVG 3.0
Mr. Maker Tales published an update of the Outline to SVG add-on for Blender. The add-on simplifies exporting any mesh object to a scale-accurate SVG file for laser cutting. The new version features grouping and perspective exports.
Here is a video:
VCV Rack 2.3.0
Andrew Belt released an update to VCV Rack, featuring new UI themes (light and high-contrast dark) and various fixes, here is the full changelog.
plugdata 0.7.0
I already mentioned plugdata in one of the previous recaps. It’s a nicer UI wrapper around Pure Data, built with JUCE and available as a plugin. The new version has a lot of improvements, here are just the ones I personally find interesting:
- Split view to see multiple patches at the same time
- Built-in General MIDI synth now available
- Further UI cleanup
- More customization options for the grid
- CLAP plugin now available
- Unicode text now supported
Tutorials
A timelapse from grafikwork of painting still life with Krita:
Hard surface modeling tutorial for Blender users from Ponte Ryuurui:
Artworks
Emal by Philipp Urlich (Krita)
Absolutely stunning “A glimpse of the beginning” work by Marco Tal, made with Krita. This Instagram reel demonstrates one part of the painting process.
Learned some magic by aprikosh (Krita):
Flower courier by magicwand (Blender)
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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://librearts.org/2023/03/week-recap-12-mar-2023/