The Blender Foundation has released Blender 2.46 - a very impressive update. As the result of the Peach Open Movie project, some of the new features are hair and fur combing tools, fast and optimal fur rendering, a mesh deformation system for advanced character rigging, cloth simulation and fast Ambient Occlusion (for a full overview of the new features, see the 2.46 release log).

Blender's X3D exporter has also been updated and this introduces a bit of an issue with Shapeways, unfortunately. For the technically minded: each object is now wrapped in a <collision> node. While this is valid X3D, our importer can't read those files. The problem has been reported and I expect a solution shortly.

In the mean time, you can fix things by downloading our patched X3D exporter script and installing it manually. Instructions for Windows, Mac and Linux are provided in our tutorial 'Exporting from Blender'.