Week highlights: new releases of BeeRef’s fork, Armory3D, and topologicpy, new features in GIMP and FreeCAD, Inkscape is looking for an experienced GTK4 developer.
GIMP
We shouldn’t be expecting lots of new features at this stage of development, but CmykStudent squeezed a few things in anyway. GIMP now loads indexed ILBM, Amiga PBM, and ACBM images.
Inkscape
Not much going on in terms of new features as the dev cycle is wrapping up for v1.3 release. The big news is that the team is now looking for a full-time developer to boost GTK4 migration. The project is expected to last 16 weeks.
BeeRef fork 0.3.1
Callum Hart forked currently unmaintained BeeRef program and made a few releases with features originally added by Rebecca Breu (original BeeRef developer) but never released in the upstream project:
- Image cropping (Shift+C or Transform > Crop)
- List of recent files on the welcome screen
- Keyboard shortcuts now configurable, but by editing a text file
- Window size and position now saved when closing the program (patch by David Andrs)
The fork retains the upstream’s project name, at least for now.
Armory3D 2023.04
Completely missed the monthly update of this game engine in early April. Highlights:
- New Ray Cast On and Convex Cast On nodes
- New Clear console option and a logic node
- Various node group improvements
Meanwhile ArmorPaint keeps getting a steady (yet low) amount of fixes and smaller improvements.
FreeCAD
Much of the work this week was about making various parts of FreeCAD translatable. One notable new feature is various task boxes merged into Image Plane Settings panel where you can set X/Y offset for an image, rotate it on its plane, change transparency etc.
Yorik van havre posted a weekly recap of his work on the NativeIFC add-on. Dragging and dropping objects now creates IFC objects, NativeIFC was improved, and there’s further progress towards per-view working planes.
IFC-Git
Bruno Postle recently started working on IFC-Git, a Blender add-on designed to work on top of BlenderBIM. The idea is that if the IFC file you opened is in a local Git repository, you will be able to browse branches and revisions, and if it isn’t, you will be able to create a Git repository.
topologicpy 0.4.11
The new version of topologicpy allows interpolating the value of the input vertex based on the values of the n nearest vertices. This has some interesting uses, see this Twitter thread:
1/2 Today's Progress: The new 0.4.11 release of #topologicpy Added Vertex.InterpolateValue. This allows you to specify the value of a vertex based on a weighted average of the n nearest vertices from an input list. pic.twitter.com/ZDyhYFr9bY
— Topologic (@topologicBIM) April 23, 2023
Tutorials
Nebula Photos demonstrates processing Pillars of Creation with Siril (stretching) and GIMP (combining and color-mapping):
Sweater Cat Designs explains how to create an embossed logo with Inkscape:
IfcArchitect uploaded a revised version of his “Floor plan with BlenderBIM” tutorial to match recent UI changes:
A very good extensive explanation by Alex on Story how to get the run cycle right in Blender:
Artworks
Mountain lake by Philipp Urlich (Krita)
The Wreck Village by Gnyan (Blender, Photoshop)
Punk of Damnation by [Tell (Blender)
The Belltower Environment by Charlotte Kügler (Blender, Photoshop)
In time for ubuntu 23.04 release, Lunar Lobster by Sylvia Ritter (Krita)
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