Blender 2.5 Release Date

From the Blender Institute Press Release:

The Blender Foundation issued a press release at SIGGRAPH yesterday with information on Blender 2.5 and its relation to Durian. For the first time ever, an expected release date was included! New Release offers a new interface with full customization and a completely revamped animation system

New Orleans, August 03 — Siggraph 2009 – The Blender Foundation, the organization behind the free and open source 3D creation suite Blender, today unveiled the result of the Blender 2.5 project, a fully customizable interface layout system, with advanced access to all tools and options Blender offers.

During an almost two year process of design, review, and artist feedback, the Blender team has implemented a new core architecture for Blender. The key changes involve a high level of configurability of the interface and the ways tools are used, and a further elaboration of the original non-overlapping and non-blocking parallel working UI system. All of the interface elements in Blender are now defined using a scriptable layout engine, with scripted access to all of the data Blender provides. Keyboard layouts for hot keys and user input can be changed on the fly, including definition of macros, and reapplying tools with adjusted settings. Blender 2.50 also provides a upgraded animation system. Now every setting and option can be animated via function curves, higher level actions, the non-linear animation mixer, or scripting.

Blender Foundation is also preparing the third Open Movie project, "Durian", which will explore epic action content in 4k digital cinema. Six artists and two developers will work in the studio of Blender Institute, for a period of 6-8 months. A key goal of Durian is to ensure that Blender 2.5 series is production ready.

The first of the official 2.5 versions will be released in October, during the 8th annual Blender Conference in Amsterdam. The Blender team plans to give regular updates, with the 2.5 project to be completed with the Durian film premiere in 2nd quarter 2010.