Please check out the CHANGELOGs and the doc/ directory for basic
documentation of new features or changes.

The demo/ directory contains a few simple blends showing some of
the features unique to instinctive-blender.
----------------------------------------------------------------



What is [instinctive.]-blender?
===============================

instinctive-blender is a fork of the official Blender Open-Source Modelling,
Animation and Rendering package which can be found at 
http://www.blender3d.org.

It is being maintained by me (Alexander Ewering, ae@instinctive.de) as an
in-house tool for a small animation studio in Germany.


Why do you maintain a seperate tree of the Blender package?
===========================================================

Back when the Blender source was opened, I quickly started implementing
a few minor changes that better suited the workflow we were used to.

Development soon went further though, as I added a lot of minor tweaks, 
and also major new features such as the Audio Sequencer/Sync, Mesh
Editing Undo, or recursive environment mapping.

The main reason for maintaining a seperate tree is the absolute freedom
of being able to do anything you want with it - change how the UI works,
change default behaviours, introduce new bugs ;-), without having to
worry about syncing development with a large userbase.
It also enables me to bypass any "foundation politics sessions" that 
often slow down development speed unnecessarily.

Apart from that, recent changes to the User Interface in the official
Blender releases (2.30 and upwards) didn't match my understanding of an
efficient, workflow-oriented interface. Since then, it has become another
motivation to continue development (and porting features from the official
release) on instinctive-blender.


What are the main differences?
==============================

In short, clear words, instinctive-blender:

 - has an interface closer to the OLD user interface (2.2x),
 - has features the official release doesn't have (unless they have
   already been ported by me or a third party),
 - does not have binaries for all the platforms the official release supports
   (unless you are willing to compile it for your platform)
 - is not taylored towards newbie-friendlyness
 - is aimed at stability and efficiency


Main features
=============

Shortlist of the main features that have been developed in
instinctive-blender (some of these have been ported to the official
release, so they might not be new to you)

For a detailed list, please see the CHANGELOG.

 - Audio strips in the sequence editor, Audio subsystem with A/V Sync
   and Framedrop to maintain framerate

 - Undo for mesh editing (has now been replaced by global undo)

 - Envmaps can now see other envmapped objects

 - Recursive Envmap rendering for more realistic reflections

 - Automatic Mesh edge bevelling tool (with help from Martin Poirier)

 - DOF (Depth of Field, Focal blur) with Autofocus, emulated focus lens
   motor lag

 - "Soft Meshes" - Meshes can be deformed by other meshes in a manner
   similar to Metaballs (now only works during ALT-A, not in realtime)
   
 - Softbodies with collisions (these are *not* the softbodies being
   developed in the official version)
 
 - "Boat" effect for the "Waves" effect (can use any object as
   boat floating through the water and causing waves)
   
 - Layer Manager
 
 - Internal Network rendering support

 - Object grouping
 

Compatibility
=============

Interchanging projects between official and instinctive-blender should be
no problem, except in the case when instinctive-blender specific features
are used. These cannot work in the official versions, of course. The files
will read fine, though.

NOTE: Due to UI incompatibilities, instinctive-blender will *not* load
UI settings (screen setups, buttons window setups) from non-instinctive-
blender files!


...to be continued...