March 19, 2016 Blender™ released the latest version 2.77. I’m just noticing the update. I haven’t tried to install AvaStar yet. I have a another project in progress. So, let me know if you have tried it.
Blender 2.77 – 3/19/2016
The noted changes are:
- Cycles: Better Subsurface Scattering, GPU support for Smoke/Fire and Point Density.
- Grease pencil stroke sculpting and improved workflow.
- OpenVDB caching for smoke/volumetric simulations.
- Reworked library handling to manage missing and deleted datablocks.
- Redesigned progress bar.
- Edit mode boolean tool, better decimate modifier.
- Improved extruding and weight painting tools for sculpting/painting.
- Better Auto-Normalize behavior
- Better Multi-Paint behavior
- Support for Windows XP and the SCons build system was removed.
- Blender now requires OpenGL 2.1 minimum
More details and a nice overview is here: Blender 2.77
For those with a design eye looking toward Second Life™ the improved weight painting tools should be of interest.