Week highlights: new releases of Kdenlive, Ardour, Audacity, Brickworks, Dragonfly Reverb, new features in GIMP, Krita, FreeCAD, Mayo.
GIMP
GIMP is still getting small improvements despite the shift of the focus towards stabilizing for v3.0. Two new features this week:
- Middle Gray option for automatic filling of new layer, uses CIELAB’s 50% lightness (18.42% luminance)
- Photoshop-specific data like clipping paths and guides can now be loaded when opening JPEG and TIFF files
After a lot of help and review from @jacobboerema, the next version of GIMP will import PSD metadata from JPEGs and TIFF files! This includes clipping paths, guides, and (some) TIFF layers. I'm really happy we got this done in time! pic.twitter.com/vGhLtULcGA
— CMYK Student (@CmykStudent) April 30, 2023
Krita
The Krita team is pretty much in bugfix mode. One notable patch this week was eliminating the slowdown when adding mesh transform as a transform mask.
There are two more interesting patches in the works. One makes the Transform tool work on multiple layers, another adds a separate Dockers menu to control the visibility of dockable dialogs.
Krita 5.2 is scheduled for a release later this year, there will be at least one beta version first.
darktable
A new version of filmic (v7) was added by Aurélien Pierre. Two major changes in the algorithm are: removal of the color preservation mode and a new slider to control the highlights saturation.
FreeCAD
Not a terrible lot of user-visible changes to talk about this week:
- Jolbas refactored the navigation cube, fixed some bugs and improved the UX
- More i18n fixes by Chris Hennes et al.
Meanwhile, Yorik van Havre continued hacking on NativeIFC. Highlights from his weekly update on Patreon:
- Upon creating a new project you are now asked whether you want FreeCAD to create a default project structure for you, with Site, Building, and Storey.
- NativeIFC now supports IfcSpaces — bounded areas or volumes. Shape of an IfcSpace is displayed in wireframe view mode, and objects can be added.
- Initial loading of orphan objects now available, more work is left to do.
- It’s now possible to edit geometry of some IFC objects, these are just the first steps.
(Screenshot courtesy by Yorik van Havre)
Zolko recently released v0.50 of Assembly4 workbench. Not a lot of fancy stuff: “Model” root element in the project tree is now called “Assembly” following the recent discussion on default assembly workbench, and it looks like Zolko is about to dust off the A2+ solver port.
Mayo
Completely missed Mayo 0.7.0 release last month. This version brings a number of very welcome improvements:
- Reading and writing OFF files
- Reading VRML files
- Support for point clouds in PLY
- Better support for HiDPI displays
- New “Turn 3D View cw/ccw” commands
Linux (AppImage) and Windows builds are available.
The next version is likely to feature a configurable grid in the 3D view, the patch is already in the main development branch:
Screenshot: RC Car 1:8 two-speed transmission model by Nagy Imre
Kdenlive 23.04
This is a major update featuring:
- Nested sequences to simplify working on complex projects
- OpenAI’s Whisper support for subtitles generation
- Optional duplication or splitting of subtitles at the first line when cutting them
- New timer effect
- New transitions
See the official release notes for more information.
Ardour 7.4
Paul Davis et al. cut a new release that mostly fixes various bugs and adds several improvements:
- Support for MIDI subgroup busses
- Volume control to the clip picker (in the Clips sidebar)
- A new preference for the PPQN value in exported MIDI files
- An option to use a neutral color for new tracks & busses
- A Lua script to downmix 5.1 audio to stereo
Work on adding support for Launchpad Pro is temporarily on hold, most likely until work on tempo maps editing is complete.
One patch that also didn’t make it to this release is support for the Softube Console 1 control surface (patch by Holger Dehnhardt). It is currently undergoing code review (fingers crossed).
Audacity 3.3.0
I already covered this release in a dedicated post here, so to reiterate:
- Beta version of musical time support features: ruler, global BPM setting, snapping to musical time units
- New Shelf filter
- New Linear (dB) vertical ruler
- Built-in Bass & Treble, Distortion, Phaser, Reverb, and Wahwah effects are realtime-capable now
Here is a review from Learn Audacity:
Brickworks 0.4.0
Stefano D’Angelo released a new version of Brickworks, the open-source music DSP toolkit that is a major part of his Orastron startup. Changes:
- New modulation, delay (except reverb), and resampling modules
- Support for MIDI over UART on the Daisy Seed board
- Faster math and buffer utility routines
Dragonfly Reverb 3.2.10
There hasn’t been a new release of this amazing Reverb plugin by Michael Willis for a while. The new version has just one yet important change: denormals protection.
Tutorials
George Kayesi explains how to create an exploded view animation with Blender:
SouthernShotty demonstrates the use of his free Stop-Mo add-on for Blender, that simplifies stop-motion animation:
Sweater Cat Designs explains how to create a chalk effect with SVG filters in Inkscape:
MangoJelly Solutions does a rundown of the Curves workbench (NURBS tools) for FreeCAD:
Artworks
Shroom Shelter Pt.1 by Egor Kudashkin (Blender, Photoshop, Quixel Bridge):
Strange Cathedral by Morgan Marcadet (Blender, Photoshop):
Mechanical Impact 2.0 by Elena Conte (Blender, Photoshop):
Evening by Krzysztof Maziarz (Krita, AfterEffects):
Libre Arts is a reader-supported publication. If you appreciate the work I do, donations are once again possible. You can subscribe on Patreon or make a one-time donation with BuyMeACoffee (see here for more info).
