Log Message:
Update to 2.70

Changelog:

New features include initial support for volumetrics in Cycles, and faster \ 
rendering of hair and textures. The motion tracker now supports weighted tracks \ 
and has improved planar tracking. For mesh modeling there are new Laplacian \ 
deform and wireframe modifiers, along with more control in the bevel tool. The \ 
game engine now supports object levels of detail.

The first results from the new user interface project are also in this release, \ 
with dozens of changes to make the interface more consistent and powerful. This \ 
is also the first release of the multithreaded dependency graph, which makes \ 
modifier and constraint evaluation faster in scenes with multiple objects.

Cycles Rendering

Cycles now has initial support for volume rendering including emission, \ 
absorption and scattering. Volume rendering can be used to render effects like \ 
fire, smoke, mist, absorption in glass, and many other effects that can't be \ 
represented by surface meshes alone.

CPU rendering performance was improved, particularly for hair, textures and Open \ 
Shading Language.

Motion Tracker

Trackers can now be weighted, to keep the result stable as feature disappear or \ 
become difficult to track. The plane track workflow was improved to be easier to \ 
control. Automatic feature detection was made more robust using a new detector \ 
algorithm.

User Interface

The toolbar now has tabs to organize tools in categories. Multiple buttons can \ 
now be edited at once, for example for XYZ axes or color channels. Transform \ 
tools now have a mode to enter expressions and units. Other changes were done to \ 
improve lists, header menus, tooltips, buttons, menus and more.

Modeling

The Laplacian Deform modifier was added to pose a mesh while preserving \ 
geometric details of the surface, and a new wireframe modifier allows you \ 
transform your mesh into a wireframe representation. The boolean modifier now \ 
supports ngons, and there are improvements to the bevel, screw and triangulate \ 
modifiers.

The bevel tool now offers more control over the bevel profile and results, and \ 
the knife tool was improved as well.

Threaded Dependency Graph

An important change that happened under the hood is the threaded dependency \ 
graph. This means that object modifiers and constraints, among other things, can \ 
now be computed with multiple threads taking advantage of multicore processors. \ 
This will be most noticeable with scenes that have many objects, or multiple \ 
objects with heavy modifiers. This is the first step in making the dependency \ 
graph in Blender more powerful.

Game Development

The Blender game engine now supports discrete level of detail for meshes. For \ 
game developers, support for working with Photoshop PSD files has been added.

A new view navigation walk mode has been added, which has a control scheme as \ 
typically found in first person shooter games. This can be useful for game \ 
developers to navigate levels as if in a game.

Freestyle NPR Rendering

The Freestyle Python API is an essential part that makes it a highly \ 
programmable NPR rendering engine. This API has been reorganized.

More Features

Many small changes and features were done all over Blender. Some notable new \ 
feature are normalized display for FCurves, derivative map baking, baking to \ 
vertex colors, better visualization of masks and control over mask filling, \ 
gravity option for sculpting, negative texture values to support vector \ 
displacement and a Lamp Data shading node to create more customized NPR shaders.

Feature Videos

For a visual demonstration of some of the new features in this release, check \ 
out the feature videos created during the development of this release.
Addons

Several addons have been added and updated, including Node Wrangler (aka Node \ 
Efficiency Tools) and a new Sketchfab Exporter addon

Bug Fixes

In addition to the new features, over 560 bugs that existed in previous releases \ 
have been fixed.