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Blender 4.0.2
Released on December 5th 2023, Blender 4.0.2 features 41 bug fixes:

Adjust Real Snow addon to Principled BSDF changes #105040
Blender 4.0 crashes when trying to render scene strips #114982
Boolean behaves as if the object is on it's origin #115715
BSurfaces: 'ToolSettings' object has no attribute 'use_snap_project' #105026
Compose key sequences includes continuation keys on Wayland #114609
Crash deleting tool node group from outliner #115037
Crash opening files with particle boid goal objects #115471
Crash undoing painting on linked image from 3DView #115140
Crash when creating transition from last reiming key #115007
Crash when using snap to volume and clipping region #115570
Cycles: Avoid long wait times of compile-gpu step fe904e9ff9
Draw: Buffers never shrink #114742
Edge Crease Doesn't Transfer #115105
Error when trying to create texture with VDM Brush Baker #105028
FBX IO: Fix import of shape key animations without any keyframes db7a31b51f
File selector shrinks on each display under KDE#113059
Fix "make doc_man" not working 175991df4f
Fix Blender 4.01 crash "EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION" #115144
Fix build error on architectures without SSE or sse2neon 641b7808f2
Fix rare crashes when reading files with multi-levels of libraries. 6f625cedf1
Fix shape_key_remove operator leaves shared normals #115572
Fix VSE crash when editing retiming 4d0de9022f
FModifier.type enum 'NULL' item was renamed to 'nullptr' #115279
ID property's id_type enum is missing the SCREEN type #115151
Image Editor - Fill Tool doesn't work as expected #114963
Increase thread stack size for musl libc a33d2ce7bf
Keyboard layout sometimes ignored on Wayland #115160
Man page generation fails with Python error 90d4364b35
Man-page fails to build with non-portable install#115056
Missing normals on first chunk of array modifier #115526
OpenGL: Mark Legacy Intel Drivers Unsupported #115228
PyAPI: call 'sys.excepthook' for text editor exceptions #115090
RMB Select sometimes to enter pose mode when selected #115181
Scrollbars for template_lists in popups update issue #115363
Sheen renders incorrectly when viewed head on #115206
Snap Base in Camera View crashes Blender #115153
Snap to face nearest failing with transformed objects #114596
Transform operations not working in particle edit mode #115025
VSE offset drawing not working 6d324dbaec
Workbench: Negative scaled sculpt mesh artifacts #114918
Zero-sized curve leads to OptiX error #113325


Blender 4.0.1
Released on November 17th 2023, Blender 4.0.1 features the following bug fixes:

Crash opening old files with text objects #114892
Crash when adding specular texture slot in texture paint mode #114848
Cycles: MetalRT compilation errors on base M3 MacBook Pros with factory installed OS #114919
glTF: Fix regression in image quality option e5ad2e2c16
Incorrect display of Rec.1886 and Rec. 2020 view transforms #114661
Node Wrangler: Principled Textures Setup emissive texture #104999
Sculpt Multires drawing broken with no mask #114841
Sequencer: bpy.ops.sequencer.split ignores passed frame #114891
UI: Keep text field empty for global search #114758
Windows: Crash Loading Win32 Quick Access #114855
Windows: Invalid reuse of shell_link #114906


Blender 4.0

A Link to the Future
Blender 4.0 represents a major leap for rendering, creating tools, and more to take your Freedom to Create to new heights.
Blender 4.0 splash artwork by Gaku Tada
Blender Foundation and the online developers community proudly present Blender 4.0!

Released November 14th, 2023

Show-off
See how the community is pushing the Freedom to Create.


Show & Tell
Round-up of what’s new, in detail.


New features overview by Jonathan Lampel
by Gaku Tada

Principled BSDF in Blender 4.0
SHADING
BEAUTIFUL
BY DEFAULT

Meet the new Principled BSDF. More energy conserving, more efficient, and more flexible. Beautifully easy.

Layers of the Principled BSDF in Blender 4.0
The order of the different layers has been adjusted to allow for more flexibility when mixing between them.

PRINCIPLED BSDF
COAT

The coat layer is placed on top of all base layers, including the emission layer. This can be used e.g. to simulate emissive textures behind glass like a phone screen.

Coat tint and IOR inputs were added, so that it can be used for more than a white clearcoat like a tinted car paint coating.

Coat in Principled BSDF in Blender 4.0
Example showing Coat weight at 1.0, above emissive mesh.

PRINCIPLED BSDF
SHEEN

Sheen uses a new microfiber shading model, sitting on top of all layers.

Weight
Roughness
Tint
Weight
Sheen Weight from 0.0 to 1.0

Example showing the Sheen layer over a glossy surface.

Traditionally, sheen has been used for fuzzy cloth, but now it can also be used for dust on arbitrary materials.

Sheen in Principled BSDF in Blender 4.0
MORE PRINCIPLED BSDF
New Glossy BSDF with anisotropy control
New Subsurface Scale input
Edge tinting for metallic surfaces
New Specular Tint input
New IOR Level input for Specular reflection
Blender 4.0 AgX
COLOR MANAGEMENT
MORE THAN
MEETS THE EYE

A new view transform has been added: AgX, providing better color handling in over-exposed areas compared to Filmic.

Bright colors go towards white, similar to real cameras.

The following example demonstrates the improvement AgX makes in handling saturation, an area where Filmic struggles with. The image contains three fully metallic, fully saturated spheres lit only by the environment.

AgX (punchy)
AgX
Filmic
Standard
AgX (punchy)
View Transform AgX, using look “Punchy”.

Community Videos
AgX vs Filmic - Realistic Renders in Blender 4.0
AgX vs Filmic – Realistic Renders in Blender 4.0
by Bouncing Rays

AgX in Blender 4.0. It's coming, are you ready?
AgX in Blender 4.0. It’s coming, are you ready?
by Christopher 3D

AgX color profile, a better color management
AgX color profile, a better color management
by Wenbo Zhao

Voronoi Texture in Blender 4.0
TEXTURES
DETAIL TO INFINITY
AND BEYOND

The Voronoi Texture node has support for fractal noise.
Unlimited procedural detail in a single texture.

Voronoi Texture in Blender 4.0
The Voronoi Texture node now features three new inputs:

Detail: the number of layers to compute.
Roughness: how much influence the higher layers have on the final output.
Lacunarity: the factor on which each successive layer is scaled with.
Additionally a “Normalize” property was added, which remaps the Distance and Color outputs to a 0.0 – 1.0 range.

MORE RENDERING
Lights are now more energy preserving
New inputs in Noise Texture node
All lights now have UV in Image Texture node
Velvet BSDF is now Sheen BSDF
Better strength input interpolation in Normal Map node
Point and Spot lights are rendered as double-sided sphere lights
Sun light behaves better at large angular diameters
HDR Display on macOS
CYCLES
THE MISSING LINK

The long awaited Light Linking feature is here. Lights (and other emissive objects) can be set to affect only specific elements in the scene. Additionally, Shadow Linking gives control over which objects acts as shadow blockers for a light.

In the example above, Light Linking is setup in a way that the blue rim light and front-facing sun light only affects the character’s skin, ignoring the eyes and environment.

Light & Shadow Linking UI
EASY AS
DRAG & DROP

Setting up is easy: select a light or emissive object, drag and drop objects or collections you’d want the light to affect, from the Outliner into the Light Linking panel under Shading.

If you wish to exclude certain elements, add them to that list and click on the checkbox on the right.

Same process applies to Shadow Linking.

CYCLES
GUIDE AND SHINE

Path Guiding now works on glossy surfaces in addition to diffuse surfaces. This can significantly reduce noise on glossy surfaces, and find otherwise missing glossy light paths.

Comparison between diffuse-only and the new glossy path guiding. Both renders took the same time.

MORE CYCLES
More efficient Multiple Scattering GGX
1.76x speed improvement uploading large meshes
Open Shading Language changes
Metal Hardware Raytracing
Hair BSDF for elliptical cross-sections
DIY TOOLS
Geometry Nodes can now be run as regular operators using Node Tools, an accessible way to expand Blender and customize tools without requiring Python.


Introduction to Node Tools by Simon Thommes
New Tools-specific Nodes
3D Cursor
3D Cursor
Get access to the 3D cursor location and rotation.

Selection & Set Selection
Selection & Set Selection
Edit mode selection is accessible and controllable with the Selection and Set Selection nodes.

Face Set & Set Face Set
Face Set & Set Face Set
Sculpt face sets are accessible as well with the Face Set and Set Face Set nodes.

What the community is already creating with Geometry Nodes Node Tools




Geometry Nodes - Node Tools blog post
Read the Node Tools announcement by the developers on code.blender.org

Repeat In - Geometry Nodes
Repeat Zones allow running nodes many times in a loop for an arbitrary number of times.

Repeat Output - Geometry Nodes
Geometry Nodes Repeat Zone work by the community




Rotation socket - Geometry Nodes
Simpler Rotations
A new rotation socket is introduced along with eight new nodes for simpler processing.

Rotation to Euler - Geometry Nodes
Euler to Rotation - Geometry Nodes
Rotation to Axis Angle - Geometry Nodes
Axis Angle to Rotation - Geometry Nodes
Invert Rotation - Geometry Nodes
Rotation to Quaternion - Geometry Nodes
Quaternion to Rotation - Geometry Nodes
Rotate Vector - Geometry Nodes
MORE GEOMETRY NODES
New node: Points to Curves
Simulation zones can now be baked individually
Mesh to Volume now generates proper fog volume
New debug utility to check for bad index
Geometry Nodes Volumes, Gizmos & More
THE FUTURE UNTANGLED
What's next for Geometry Nodes? Read about the latest workshop on code.blender.org

by Gaku Tada
by Gaku Tada

MODELING
OH SNAP
Several improvements have been done to snapping's user interface and functionality.

The Snapping popover has been restructured:

Snap With was moved to the top.
Align Rotation to Target and Backface Culling were moved closer to the snap targets.
Snap With, Target Selection and Align Rotation to Target are no longer hidden by varying the mode and options.
Project Individual Elements has been replaced with the Face Project option.
Face Nearest has been moved to stick together with the Face Project option.
Additionally, bones now support snapping with "Align Rotation to Target".

New Snap options in Blender 4.0
AT A GLANCE

The cursor now dynamically changes shape as you hover over the mesh, to see at a glance which type of snapping is being used.

The symbols used to indicate are:

Snap symbol square for Vertex
Snap symbol hourglass for Edge
Snap symbol circle for Face
Snap symbol triangle for Midpoint
Snap symbol perpendicular for Perpendicular snapping
ALL YOUR BASE
ARE BELONG TO YOU
You can now set a Snap Base (or "initial") point on the fly while transforming objects. Quickly move, rotate, or scale elements without changing their origin or setting the 3D Cursor.

In the video above the pillow is moved to the couch first using regular snapping (which by default uses the object's origin). In the second attempt, Snap Base is used to set the snapping point to the bottom of the pillow.

How: while transforming, press B, click to set where to snap from, where to snap to, done!

Combine it with transform, rotate, scale, axis constraints, you name it!

In this example the shelf is moved in object mode to align with the top of the fridge, then scaled in edit mode to align with the shelf underneath. Finally the pot is moved to the top of the shelf, using its base for snapping, even though the object's origin is in the lid.

THE SEARCH IS NOT OVER

Find what you're looking in Blender 4.0 with these new additions to search on menus.

Search inside the Add Object menu.
TYPE TO SEARCH

All Add menus can be searched instantly by typing. Speeding up workflow like never before.

This includes:

Add Object/Mesh/Curve, etc. (3D Viewport)
Add Node (Shader, Geometry Nodes, Compositor, etc)
Add Strip (Sequencer)
Add Modifier
Other menus can be searched by pressing spacebar.

MORE MODIFIERS
The Add Modifier menu got a major upgrade:

New shortcut: Shift+A
Supports type-to-search.
Includes custom modifiers made with Geometry Nodes.
Search inside the Add Modifier menu.
Search inside the File menu.
WORKS ANYWHERE
Press Spacebar to search inside any menu (and sub-menu).

For example, you can mouse hover the File menu, and type a file format you'd like to import or export. Or hover the "Open Recent" sub-menu to search for recently opened files.

IT REMEMBERS
Recenty searched items will be listed first, and disappear as you start typing to make room for relevant results.

These results are saved in your Preferences and shared across blend files.

Blender 4.0 Search Recent
Recently searched items are listed first
MORE ON USER INTERFACE
All rotational inputs now shown with maximum precision
Hierarchy lines in tree-view UIs
Color Picker now works outside of Blender (on Linux and Windows)
Increased Color Picker size
MEET YOUR NEW TYPE

Blender's UI now features Inter, a typeface carefully designed for computer screens.

Blender 4.0 UI Font Inter
FONT SIZE
DOESN’T MATTER

Regardless of the size of your screen, Blender will look tack sharp.

A new preference allows you to set subpixel anti-alising for even more control over hinting.

Blender 4.0 UI Font Inter
MORE ON TEXT RENDERING
Text output now uses correct hinting and subpixel positioning
Chinese, Japanese, and Korean punctuation recognized in word selection
Use multiplication symbol where appropriate
STREAMLINED KEYMAP

A few new shortcuts have been added, while some have been adjusted for usability and consistency across modes.


Tweak Tool: can now click-drag multiple objects at once
Ctrl + Comma to open Preferences
Double-click over markers to rename
Changes to Sculpt, Paint, Grease Pencil
Industry Compatible Keymap improvements
Bone Collections in Blender 4.0
RIGGING
BONE
COLLECTIONS
The concept of Collections, first introduced for objects in Blender 2.80, is now available for Armature Bones.

Replaces bone groups and layers.
No longer limited to 32 layers.
Colors can now be set per bone.
New collections can be added to linked armatures via Library Overrides.
Layers and bone groups get converted into Bone Collections automatically.
Accessible in all modes via the API.
GRAPH EDITOR
CLICK & SLIDE

Adjust keys with ease with these new slide operations.

Blend to Ease
Blend the selected keys from their current position to either an ease in or an ease out curve.

Blend Offset
Move the selected keyframes as a block so the first/last key align with the key before/after the selection.

Shear Keys
Shear the keys based on the position of the keyframe selection ends.

Scale Average
Scale selected key values by their combined average.

Push Pull
Exaggerate or minimize the value of the selected keys.

Time Offset
Shift the value of selected keys in time.

MORE ANIMATION & RIGGING GOODIES
Pose Library now uses the asset shelf
Dope Sheet: Improved channel background colors
Graph Editor: Match Slope interactive slider
Butterworth Smoothing filter
Improved Bendy Bones
NLA: better handling of strips
Improved performance in Graph Editor
Multi-edit F-Curve modifiers
Rigify improvements
Adjust number of FPS playback samples
Weight Paint: Loop select faces
Graph Editor: Improved drawing of locked F-Curves
Graph Editor: Handle selection operators
Breaking Changes
Code Blog Animation Workshop
AWESOMENESS STRAIGHT AHEAD
The animation module is full speed with the "Animation 2025 project". Read about the latest workshop on code.blender.org

Pixar USD
USD
HYDRA
STORM

Storm is a realtime renderer part of USD. When enabling the add-on, it can be chosen as an alternative to Cycles, EEVEE or Workbench.

In production pipelines where Blender outputs USD files, it provides a preview of how the scene will be exported to other applications.

MORE USD
Skeleton and blend shape animation import through UsdSkel
Extended export with Python scripts through hooks
Generic attribute I/O for meshes
Light I/O improvements to follow USD conventions
Camera I/O improvements
ASSET LIBRARIES
COME PREPARED

The Human Base Meshes bundle got an update with new assets, improved topology, and several fixes. Get a head start on your sculpts.

Human Base Meshes Bundle v1.1
Still from Agent 327: view of Amsterdam.
INDUSTRY READY

Blender 4.0 is fully aligned with the VFX Reference Platform 2023, making it easier to integrate in studio pipelines.

Sprite Fright
Blender is and will
always be free, forever.

Releases are possible thanks to donations by the community.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE
Sculpt & Paint
Add Set Vertex Colors option to lock alpha
Sculpt: Remove dynamic topology "Smooth Shading" option
Sculpt: Expand Mask inverted fill

Core
Define data-block custom properties through the UI
Several improvements to Library Overrides
Link & Append potentially breaking changes
New blend file compatibility policy
Minimum system requirements changes

EEVEE & Viewport
EEVEE support for the new Principled BSDF
Support for navigation during transform
New preference to toggle fresnel in Edit Mode
Wire Color available in all shading modes
Canvas selector in the header in paint modes
Object/mode overlays settings have been split
Support for more nodes in Viewport Compositor
Compositor now supports node previews

Modeling & UV
Bones now support snapping with "Align Rotation to Target"
Blend From Shape and Propagate To Shapes now supports X symmetry
UV: Invert Pins

Import/Export
FBX I/O improvements
Collada: Armatures now include bone collections
Improvements to 3DS I/O

Text Editor
Support auto-closing brackets around the selection

Python
Python API breaking changes
Python API additions
Console: Support cursor motion, selection & more text editing operations
Console: Support tab-stops instead of expanding to spaces
API for Hydra Render Delegates

Sculpt & Paint
Sculpt: Expand Mask inverted fill
Sculpt: Remove dynamic topology "Smooth Shading" option
Vertex Paint: Add set vertex colors option to lock alpha
Weight Paint: Allow setting weights without paint mask enabled

Sequencer
New Retiming System
Much faster processing of sound strip waveforms
New sound modifier: Equalizer

https://www.blender.org/download/releases/4-0/#reel


Blender 3.6.4

Multiscatter GGX Refraction Roughness Bug. [#109907]
Blender 3.6 crashes when opening 3.5 files with library overrides / shape keys. [#112623]
Regression: Smart UV project stopped aligning islands vertically. [#110724]
Regression: Uv Unpacking creates diagonal pieces instead of straight ones. [#109906]
Crash backtrace missing on Linux. [#111186]
Fix (studio-reported) liboverride: hierarchy root ensure fails in some cases. [8a15a61e0f78e]
Fix: crash in liboverride hierarchy ensure. [e6b99c15dbaf5]
Fix (unreported) liboverride: Hierarchy corruption when making some override local. [c80b45f646289]
Rigify: fix unreliable interpolation of limb tweak roll. [bf936d59]
glTF importer: Fix custom attribute import. [8a4a56ea]
Fix incorrect cast for BLF_str_offset_from_cursor_position. [e785101e73317a8ff7c51ddd2974f1504b178639]
Line Art doesn’t render from Sequencer Perspective. [#100596]
Clear and Keep Transformation not working when keyed. [#97628]
Fix #93685: Allow Outliner Drag to Other Windows. [#105196]
Fix memory leak when the explode modifier is used with vertex groups. [30eb74ca48d]
Regression: Artifacts after importing fbx file. [#109599]
PLY export: Export broken result when mesh has faces with >255 vertices. [#112011]
Importing old theme crashes Blender on “Load X.X Settings”. [#113002]
Start getting Blender default Font in Text rendering after long use. [#113044]
Python: support the step and precision arguments in rna_idprop_ui_create. [74821371676]
Assertion fails when parenting a library override to a bone. [#112548]
OSL CheckBox socket not working in NodeGroup. [#106760]
Fix (unreported) crash in ‘startup.blend’ GP default update code. [b2c0e49bf3a]
Edit Mode: Memory Leak for Separate By Loose Parts. [#113387]
3.6 LTS: Fix text editor auto-close potentially auto-closing non-brackets. [8b5d0ba19f9ac14f5c68da6f7d2b7fc14b95b13e]
3.6 LTS: Fix crash converting spaces to tabs. [1f09031dc79a2fa2c334b95b321d804eadfab6dd]
Regression: Geometry Nodes: Merge by Distance node crashes. [#112909]
Bevel + Weld modifer Crash. [#112922]


Blender 3.6.4

“Jump to keyframe” grayed out. Unable to jump between keyframes. [#112673]
Transfer Mode operator doesn’t update outliner selection. [#101550]
Python modifiers.execution_time doesn’t work on curve objects. [#112397]
Fix #112399: Memory leak with exceptions from scripts in the text editor. [d9ab0a3ef7f]


Blender 3.6.3

Regression: File crashes the program. [#111235]
Fix (unreported) invalid memory access in new ‘newer blendfile version’ code. [5b6106f71aec]
Crash when switching to the Face select mode in 3.6. [#110136]
Regression: Files from last 4.0 can not be saved in 3.6.2 due to undefined region type. [#111332]
Fix: ensure bones are on at least one layer on blend file reading. [2fc04eaf4310e64ffbe713376e54df878c9a4279]
UV editor: show_gizmo does not switch off gizmos. [#110721]
Regression: OBJ Importer fails to import objects. [#110948]
Fix (partially) wrong RNA path for ‘ViewShading’ data. [4cf03b28b32]
Keyframe jump operator in the Graph Editor does not respect NLA offset. [#110789]
rna_prop_ui.rna_idprop_ui_create() fails to create new string property. [#110464]
Regression: Area resize cursor does not appear on minimized spreadsheet area. [#110085]
GPU: Fix signed/unsigned mismatches in shader code. [#111094]
Dropping object name on existing object socket in node editor not working. [#110723]
Swap Strips can delete strips if there is not enough space. [#109081]
Fix Weld modifier generating invalid mesh. [5b7af751fa5d1619c18fa1899cca885e9b8b79f0]
Regression: Blender Crashes On Scene Switch. [#111165]
Fatal crash with Freestyle SVG Export when rendering to a directory that does not exist yet. [#104723]
Fix #110053: Crash on linked animation data with drivers. [#110795]
Crash when changing asset icon. [#106976]
Vector displacement suspected to cause geometry artefact and CUDA error. [#111277]
UI: Error Logging for Some Screen Operations. [dd7f9749366]
Modifier’s Main Dropdown goes backwards. [#111238]
Unable to remove added keying set from context menu. [#94129]
Shortcut information missing in animation editors channel context menu. [#109427]
Crash accessing text style properties in object mode. [#110508]
Linked overriden o bject cannot be made local (if it has a parent in the sourcefile). [#111439]
Fix: Memory leak in Graph editor keyframe jump. [eb77eaa7d87]
VSE: appended modifier stack incorrectly deletes additional modifier. [#111601]
Fix: missing update when library override editable is toggled. [8dd151debcb]
Fix dangling pointer while scrubbing in the sequencer. [c3689c4235c840da78cfe8d815abe97b94679bb6]
Fix #111607: Do not unregister internal nodes. [#111615]
Sculpting problem Radius number during push the Shift + click force back to 1px. [#111490]
Control point Snap does not work for NURBS Surface. [#111548]
Measure tool snapping does not work. [#109454]
GeoNodes behaviour differences between 3.6.3 RC, 4.0 master, and 1 month ago. [#111933]
Regression: Edit mode weights panel shows incorrect values. [#111273]
Regression: Crash on COW delete of shared custom data. [#109583]
Fix: Customdata merging does not check layer limit on destination. [2a7d6d182c4]
Odd blender VSE crashes – Graph editor / Proxy sizes. [#111642]
Regression: Pressing Enter on the file name text will not confirm file selection. [#111645]
Overlay drawing issues on Intel HD4400/4600 (Only?). [#111162]
Regression: Crash on dragging a Speaker NLA strip. [#110161]
Regression: Adding nodes into node network causes strange placement and jump of node. [#111593]
Consistent mapping boundaries of brush textures. [#109201]
Fix error batch renaming light probes. [b8ab67827db]
Cycles: oneAPI: on Windows, embree on GPU may crash when rendering duration exceeds 3 minutes. [#109282]
Regression: Crash with assertion after delete scene when some 3D Views have Local Collection enabled. [#111970]
Compilation of GHOST_XrGraphicsBinding.cc fails with “invalid conversion” error. [#111820]
Vertex parenting broken on Curve object with multiple splines. [#112208]
Fix: Regression: Box select not working for GP/GPv3 channels. [9fc217cedfe]
Regression: Holding Ctrl + Alt + Scroll does not increment values of all selected objects. [#112028]
Regression: Graph Editor handle highlighting not working correctly. [#112144]
Sculpt Mode: Mask brush smoothing is broken. [#112285]
Regression: Split Edges node skips loose edges. [#109236]
Regression: Geometry Nodes Points of Curve is Outputting Unknown Result. [#112184]
Regression: Crash when loading with converted curves. [#112068]
The color attribute from Particle Instance Modifier is incorrect. [#112335]
Regression: Blender crashes when turning on a pass that has equally named AOV pass already. [#111166]
Regression: Crash when selecting an object with an orphaned geo node link. [#111411]
NLA Editor: “Hold Forward” for “Edited Action” track doesn’t work. [#100718]
Operator (e.g `bpy.ops.object.data_transfer()`) crashes when using `context.copy()` via addon. [#112299]
Cycles: support building with Windows ROCm 5.5 SDK. [2e1ab36]
Only some vertex weights can be modified via the UI panel. [#112123]
Sim Nodes: Don’t delete parent bake directory. [eba0d481bb5]
Regression: Menu Search crash if mouse is outside of the blender window. [#111212]


Blender 3.6.2

UILayout.template_node_view() doesn’t render UI properly. [#99569]
Accent Grave / Tilde key on Apple macOS not working. [#109630]
Regression: Using Grease Pencil Sculpt Grab Tool on a Stroke affected by Subdivide Modifier will Crash Blender. [#109986]
Blender 3.6 immediately crashes loading a GN hair model created in 3.5. [#110107]
Mesh Deform Modifier Vertex Count Error. [#110021]
Graphics Tablet Lag when in Texture Paint mode in Blender 3.0. [#93796]
LibOverride: Fix RNA handling of object parent-related properties. [8362d4aa3d5b072de801dccdd32d223c6fe81c88]
LibOverride: Reset object-parenting related properties in resync process. [cb31546c03b32b39f3a9e21f6eeebd8afc2bb48f]
LibOverride: Cleanup: Split log into dedicated output for resync code. [db2d14823952d11bda12b783fda425275c1ec92d]
LibOverride: Fix ‘resync enforce’ not working on RNA collections of IDs. [11c57f30166e0be116030353cba3d4d1fc5a0c6c]
LibOverride: RNA Apply code: Work around potential duplicates in names of RNA collections of IDs. [8736b6cc83012069f8f91f8a8e51e379be078764]
Fix (unreported) missing ‘need resync’ detection in overrides of overrides. [a6df00020630d42147cb7e341d4652ade5385611]
LibOverride: Extend unittest to cover more advanced/complex cases. [30943d710f2e447de5831410a9e9e6fcba1f6826]
LibOverride: Remove an override property when it has no operations. [cc325ad1ba5b39d89f2211063b2f4577b835a8c3]
LibOverride: Fix persistent override property in some RNA pointer cases. [f63ca4f7a82cf472cf1db59f18b810ddac2629cb]
LibOverride: Fix RNA API to access liboverride operation’s flag. [8c81327b84b545370631d96e37f8632d0d6c24f9]
Fix (unreported) incorrect behavior of liboverride hierarchy fixing code. [4bc512bc9d62e75151660c7cc6e4069bfa0cade3]
Window autofocus misbehaves. [#109886]
Regression: Pressing multiple modifier keys at the same time locks mouse click. [#109525]
Switching open windows ignores held modifiers on WIN32. [#40059]
Docs: Fix layout of bpy.types.Object Python API documents. [d47755f3c6e]
Spreadsheet does not update during/after playing animation. [#110164]
Windows + Intel Arc A770: Crashes if modifying the object after rendering image in rendered view mode. [#109771]
Animation: Fcurve Channel color band alignment. [0c4a3577469]
Geometry Nodes: Float Curve input limits are not working unless “reset view” is used. [#106139]
Appended text looses user (even if used in the Text Editor) after reload. [#110341]
deps_builder: Update USD repo and hash. [dca1dbbc6c3]
Regression: Speaker ignoring of the starting position in NLA track. [#110336]
`use spatial splits` does not display point cloud correctly on video card. [#110170]
Regression: Deadlock on render start. [#110426]
Fix #109417: Cycles HIP RT crash with multi device rendering. [#110512]
Snaping in solid mode (Xray 1.0) doesnt snap to “occluded” geometry. [#110259]
bpy.app.driver_namespace: no way to properly initialize for driver in material. [#109720]
How to Handle Forward Compatibility. [#109151]
Fix (unreported) minor bug in RNA/Liboverride apply code. [fbcaf7bf6f8]
blender 3.6.1 crashes on start with wayland. [#110627]
Regression: Gizmo stuck in place when I playback my animation. [#110041]
Fix #110615: missing GL dev packages in install_linux_packages.py. [#110609]
Regression: Loading a VSE .blend file created in older version into 3.6.0 loses information about video/audio clip cut lengths. [#110333]
vse separate image after import not working. [#110205]
Keyframes on values of linked data. [#109781]
Fix (unreported) missing handling of ViewLayer IDProperties in foreach_id code. [c426d5b084b]
Fix (unreported) collection ‘readfile’ expand incorrect assertion. [455683c838b]
Export_3ds: Fixed camera & spotlight target calculation. [c94cc788]
glTF exporter: fix missing animation hook parameter. [18d26d61]
Export_3ds: Fixed mismatched sign in target calculation. [82ce03ac]
Import_3ds: Fixed mismatched sign in target calculation. [90a7110b]
(Sun Position) – “North” indicator will not hide. [#104781]
Extra objects: Fix TypeError when torus knot added. [973e85bd]
Regression: Normal Edit modifier screws up UVs. [#110471]
Vertex weight slider not functional in a smooth way (weightpaint mode, editmode is fine). [#109460]
Make Line Tool Crashes Blender When Object Has Subdivision Surface Modifier. [#110601]
Keyframes on values of linked data. [#109781]
new gaussian smooth creates jagged keys. [#109799]
Graphic glitches while editing curves – Apple M2. [#110372]
Time to Interact

Blender 3.6 LTS splash by Blender Studio
Blender Foundation and the online developers community proudly present Blender 3.6 LTS!

The last long-term support release of the 3.x series.

Released June 27th, 2023

Show-off
See how the community is pushing the Freedom to Create.


Show & Tell
Round-up of what’s new, in detail.


ENTER THE SIMULATION

The Geometry Nodes project takes a leap with initial support for simulations.


Basic Particle Simulation
TRY IT YOURSELF
Get the file used in this video to play with.

GET IN THE ZONE
Simulation is defined by the “Simulation Zone”, connecting the Simulation Input and Output.

Geometry Nodes Simulation Input node
SIM IN

On the first frame, the inputs of the Simulation Input node are evaluated.

In later frames the inputs aren’t evaluated anymore, the node outputs the result of the previous frame.

SIM OUT

The Simulation Output node saves the state for the next frame.

Geometry Nodes Simulation Output node
BAKE N’ CACHE

KEEP CONTROL

Simulation results can be cached or baked to storage, this is controlled via a new “Simulation Nodes” panel in the physics tab in the Properties editor.

Geometry Nodes Simulation Nodes panel
Visualization of Simulation Nodes cache in the Timeline editor
Visualization of Simulation Nodes cache in the Timeline editor.
KEEP AN EYE

The baked or cached results can be visualized in the Timeline editor, together with other types of caches.

The color of the simulation cache matches the Simulation Zone in the nodes editor.

TIME TO PLAY

See your simulations in realtime.

Interactive 2D smoke puffs simulation using the draw curves tool.
Simulations can be interacted with in realtime, simply hit play and move your objects around!

MORE DEMO FILES
Index of Nearest
Index of Nearest
Mesh Fracturing
Mesh Fracturing
What the community is already making with Geometry Nodes




MORE GEOMETRY NODES
New Index of Nearest node
Several performance improvements
Pet Projects
CYCLES
SYNC FAST

Loading large geometries into Cycles is much faster, meaning rendering can start more quickly after geometry changes or switching to rendered view.

Up to 60x
Faster copying mesh attributes.

10x
Faster loading curve objects.

9x
Faster loading point clouds.

4-6x
Faster loading large meshes.

The Light Tree feature introduced in Blender 3.5 is now much faster thanks to multi-threading and instancing support.

Up to 11x
Faster Light Tree building thanks to multi-threading.
Tested on Apple M1.

Up to 190x
Faster Light Tree building on a scene with many instances.

CYCLES
HARDWARE
RAY TRACING

Support for hardware ray-tracing acceleration has been added for AMD and Intel graphics cards.

Added experimental support for AMD hardware ray-tracing acceleration, using HIP RT. This improves performance on RX 6000, RX 7000, W6000, and W7000 series GPUs.

Known limitations:

Windows only, as HIP RT doesn’t support Linux yet.
Degenerate triangles may causes crashes or poor performance.
Shadows in hair are not rendering accurately.
Requires driver version 22.40.51.06 for Blender 3.6, along with enabling HIP RT in Preferences > System.

HIP Ray Tracing
HIP
Pavillion
Secret Deer
Sample rendering performance (higher is better)
Hardware ray-tracing acceleration for Intel® Arc™ and Data Center GPUs, using Embree 4.

Known limitations:

During their first use with oneAPI device, Ambient Occlusion and Bevel nodes will trigger a GPU binaries recompilation that will use around 9GB of memory and take several minutes. Improvements on this may come from future GPU drivers.
Blender 3.5.1
Blender 3.6 LTS
Scanlands
Pavillion
Render time in seconds (lower is better)
PLUS
Reduced memory usage of volumes in Apple Silicon GPUs
OSL: support for new standard microfacet closures from MaterialX
Byte color attributes are now supported for point clouds and curves
Improved Fresnel handling of the Glass BSDF
Added support for Light Trees in AMD GPUs
Pet Projects
It’s a keeper.
The LTS in Blender 3.6 LTS stands for “long-term support”, meaning it will get fixes for up to two years, until June 2025.

UV EDITING
TIME TO PACK

Packing UV islands has been greatly improved thanks to a new UV packing engine.

Dramatically improving performance on large meshes and improving support for non-square materials. On many real world cases, efficiency of the layout has also been increased.

UV Packing in Blender 3.5
Pack Islands in Blender 3.5 (default values)
UV Packing in Blender 3.6 LTS
Pack Islands in Blender 3.6 LTS (default values)
Shapeshift
Choose the final shape of the UV packing between Exact Shape (Concave), Convex Hull, or Bounding Box, giving layouts that use available space depending the geometry.

Better Together
The new Merge Overlapped option makes overlapping islands stick together during UV packing.

Bounding Experience
Pack To > Original Bounding Box allows islands to be packed back into the original bounding box of the selection.

AND MORE
Support for manual seams in UV Sphere/Cylinder Projection
New select similar options: winding, and object
ASSET LIBRARIES
BUNDLE UP

Blender Studio and the Blender community put together an asset bundle with a collection of human base meshes ready to use for sculpting, animation, texturing, you name it.

Human Base Meshes Asset Bundle
Get started with 17 assets
HEAD START

The default cube is great, but it can be challenging if your goal is to sculpt a character. Worry no more, the Human Base Meshes bundle is here for you.

Featuring:

Multi-resoluton levels for realistic assets
Quad topology for multi-resolution sculpting
UV maps (including UDIMs)
Creased edges and Subdiv modifiers for planar assets
Closed volumes for voxel remeshing
Face sets
Human head with topology ready for animation, rigging, or texturing.
Human skull.
Drag, drop, go.

Download the bundle, add it to your Asset Libraries, and start drag and dropping from the Asset Browser into your scene.

Parent Space Transform
ANIMATION
PARENT
SPACE

This new space transformation allows you to move child objects using the coordinates of their parent.

MORE ANIMATION
Alt+S for smoothing operators
Alt+D for blending operators
iTaSC IK solver supports keeping root bones
Graph Editor improvements
Fixed scroll when clicking search box in NLA/Graph Editor
Ctrl+LMB to extend channel selections
NLA editor improvements
Graph Editor: Frame channels
Display scene duration in the status bar
Weight Paint: Extend paint mask selection
Copy Global Transform add-on improvements
Graph Editor settings moved to Preferences
Head/Tail drawing of bone relationship lines
Drivers: Introduce Context Properties
Key menu cleaned up
Gaussian Smooth Operator
Graph Editor keyframing improved
Dope Sheet improvements
Sprite Fright
Blender is and will
always be free, forever.

Releases are possible thanks to donations by the community.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE
Modeling
New Retopology overlay

I/O
FBX: Faster import/export
FBX: Export active color layer first
New add-on: 3DS import/export
New C++ based PLY importer/exporter

Performance
Faster oject linking and unlinking
25% less memory usage in large geometries
Better performance when exiting edit mode
75% faster mesh conversion with multiple UV maps
Up to 80% improvement in memory usage of face corner “split” normal calculation
Extracting UV map data up to 3x faster
Better Subdivision Surface performance on large meshes with no loose vertices
Up to 44% performance improvement in meshes with custom split normals data

Add-ons
New: VDM Brush Baker
Storypencil improvements

Library Overrides
Major improvements to the resyncing process

Python API
Custom Script Directories
Improvements to Blender handlers
Several changes to internal mesh format
New utility to create links between virtual sockets
FCurve key changes

USD
Curves/Hair export
Path Mask import support for multiple primitive paths
New “Prim Path” export option
Set emissiveColor USD Preview Surface material input when exporting
Author opacityThreshold USD Preview Surface material attribute when exporting
Fixed texture alpha on export
Fixed duplicate shader nodes

Grease Pencil
New Weight Paint tools

Sculpt
Adjust Last Operation panel in Mesh/Color Filters
Added trim orientation to Box Trim
Transform, Trim, Project, Fairing, Filter operations in header menus

Viewport Compositor
Support for more nodes and features

User Interface
Support for sub-types in float custom properties
Quick tooltips for Properties Editor tabs
Cancel drag & drop with Esc/RMB
Highlight list elements on hover
Widen search boxes when needed
Increased length of Open Recent menu
New emojis in fallback font
Fixed Color Picker position
Alt-click support to edit multiple string properties
Better positioning of text in Measure/Ruler
Quick Favorites: Support operator enums
Many operator confirmations can be now be disabled
Set Proportional Size in the Proportional Editing popover

EEVEE
New: Transparent Pass

Node Editor
Custom subtypes for group sockets
Support for smooth view
Added shortcut to Online Manual in node’s context menu
Link-drag search can copy values of basic socket types
Move data-block default values with link-drag search

Outliner
Filter Grease Pencil objects

Assets
Show tooltips with full name and description
Clear Asset now works for all selected assets
Hide meta-data fields if asset is read-only
New Relative Path option per asset library

File Browser
List mode items can now be dragged by the name
New “External” context menu for performing operations outside Blender

Windows
Auto-focus child windows on hover
Copy/paste images in Image Editor

macOS
Show recently opened/saved files in Dock context menu and App Expose

Text Object
Double-click to select words
Select text by click-drag
“To Uppercase/Lowercase” support for more languages
Operators to move cursor to top/bottom


Better in every way.
Blender 3.5 splash by Nicole Morena
Blender Foundation and the online developers community proudly present Blender 3.5!

Featuring a viewport compositor, vector displacement sculpting, built-in hair assets, many lights sampling for Cycles, and so much more.

Released March 29th, 2023

HAIR

THERE

EVERYWHERE

The curves-based hair system first introduced in Blender 3.3 takes a major leap in this release.


Procedural Fur
KEEP WATCHING
Follow the full step-by-step tutorial.

Creating and grooming fancy hairdos is easier than ever.

Hair styles demo file by Daniel Bystedt
Animal Fur Examples by Simon Thommes
Any kind of hair, fur, or grass is possible. Powered by the flexibility of Geometry Nodes.

With great power comes great complex-ability, so Blender now includes hair assets to make your life easier.

POWER WITHIN

For the first time ever, Blender ships with built-in assets!

The Essentials asset library comes with 26 Hair assets split into categories: Deformation, Generation, Guides, Utility, Read, and Write.

Simply drag and drop from the Asset Browser onto your setups.

What can they do? A video and link to the manual is worth a thousand words.

GENERATION
GENERATE
HAIR CURVES

Generates new hair curves on a surface mesh from scratch at point locations.

If creating curves that depend on existing curves is desired, use Interpolate Hair Curves.

GENERATION
INTERPOLATE
HAIR CURVES

Interpolates existing guide curves on a surface mesh.

The Duplicate Hair Curves node is a similar option with simpler behavior that may offer better performance.

GENERATION
DUPLICATE
HAIR CURVES

Duplicates hair curves a certain number of times within a radius.

UTILITY
ATTACH
HAIR CURVES
TO SURFACE

Attaches hair curves to a surface mesh, with options for snapping, alignment, and blend along curve.

GUIDES
CLUMP
HAIR CURVES

Clumps together existing hair curves using guide curves.

GUIDES
CURL
HAIR CURVES

Deforms existing hair curves into curls using guide curves.

GUIDES
BRAID
HAIR CURVES

Deforms existing hair curves into braids using guide curves.

DEFORMATION
FRIZZ
HAIR CURVES

Deforms hair curves using a random vector per point to frizz them.

DEFORMATION
SMOOTH
HAIR CURVES

Smoothes the shape of hair curves.

DEFORMATION
ROLL
HAIR CURVES

Rolls up hair curves starting from their tips.

and many more!

Trim Hair Curves
DEFORMATION
Trim Hair Curves
Straighten Hair Curves
DEFORMATION
Straighten Hair Curves
Shrinkwrap Hair Curves
DEFORMATION
Shrinkwrap Hair Curves
Rotate Hair Curves
DEFORMATION
Rotate Hair Curves
Hair Curves Noise
DEFORMATION
Hair Curves Noise
Displace Hair Curves
DEFORMATION
Displace Hair Curves
Blend Hair Curves
DEFORMATION
Blend Hair Curves
Attachment Info
READ
Attachment Info
Curve Root
READ
Curve Root
Curve Tip
READ
Curve Tip
Curve Segment
READ
Curve Segment
Curve Info
READ
Curve Info
Set Hair Curve Profile
WRITE
Set Hair Curve Profile
Create Guide Index Map
GUIDES
Create Guide Index Map
Restore Curve Segment Length
UTILITY
Restore Curve Segment Length
Redistribute Curve Points
UTILITY
Redistribute Curve Points
EVEN MORE NODES & PHYSICS
New Image Info node
New Image input node
New Blur Attribute node
Store Named Attribute node can now store 2D vector attributes
New mirror extension type for Image Texture
Field utility nodes have been renamed
Improved modifier user interface
New Move to Nodes operator
Drag & drop node group assets in the viewport
New Interpolate Curves node
Trim Curves now has selection input
Faster procedural changes
Hold Alt to disable automatically attaching nodes
New Edges to Face Groups node
UV map output in mesh primitive nodes
Split Edges is now over 2x faster
Faster display of many geometries instances
Improved context menu in Node Editor
Copy & Paste nodes at mouse position
Reorganized Geometry Nodes add menu
Hold Alt to swap node links while connecting them
25% faster cloth simulation using self-collision
Sculpt VDM
SCULPT
VECTOR
DISPLACEMENT
MAPS

Support for Vector Displacement Maps (VDM) brushes has been added to the Draw brush in sculpt mode.

This type of map provide an easy way to create complex shapes that can have overhangs in one brush dab.

For the best results, VDM textures should be in OpenEXR format, with Color Clamping disabled.

VDM Examples
Snails Dream by Pablo Vazquez
COMPOSITOR
WHAT YOU COMP
IS WHAT YOU GET

A new GPU-based compositor backend takes
the 3D Viewport to the next level.

You’ll never see the viewport the same.

A VIEWPORT EXPERIENCE
NEVER SEEN BEFORE

Overlays are drawn on top of the compositing result, allowing you to see and interact with your mesh and other objects.

Modeling while compositing is on? Sure thing!

Note: this is considered the first milestone of a large project. View Layer passes and some nodes are not supported yet, further work is planned for future releases.

macOS
POWER METAL

On macOS, the 3D Viewport now makes native use of Metal, leading to massive performance improvements for animation playback and EEVEE rendering.

EEVEE real-time interactive viewport performance.

Metal
OpenGL
Wanderer
Tree Creature
frames per second (higher is better)
Mac Studio M1 Ultra @ 3840×2160
Scene export (shaders pre-compiled)

Metal
OpenGL
Wanderer
Tree Creature
milliseconds (less is better)
Mac Studio M1 Ultra @ 3840×2160
CYCLES
LIGHT UP

Cycles can now use a light tree to more effectively sample scenes with many lights. Get nicer results, faster.

Both renders took the same amount of time. With the light tree turned on the noise is significantly reduced, at the cost of a somewhat longer render time per sample.

Best Practices
Light tree works best in scenes with physically correct lighting.

Avoid custom falloff or ray visibility tricks, these may interfere with heuristics used in the light tree.

Tweak It
The Multiple Importance Sample toggle in Materials has been replaced by a new Emission Sampling setting.

By default it’s set to Auto. For single sided emitters or closed meshes setting this to Front can help to reduce noise.

Different Results?
It’s most likely caused by light clamping. Clamping is a biased method that depends on the sampling strategy.

Generally if the light tree works well, there will be less clamping and the render will be closer to the unbiased result.

FLEXIBLE
SPOTS

Spot lights now support non-uniform object scale,
matching how EEVEE renders them as well.

Before
After
Before
Disk-shaped area light
(16 samples per pixel)

AREA
SPREAD

The spread property in Cycles area lights mimics a gridded softbox in real life, but it could be noisy to render when the area light was Disk or Ellipse shaped.

In Blender 3.5 the result is significantly less noisy. Smooth renders no matter the shape!

Additionally, the Anisotropic BSDF with Beckmann roughness using isotropic sampling has been improved.

PLUS
OSL support with OptiX on the GPU
Improved adaptive sampling for overexposed scenes
ANIMATION
EXTREME
POSES

The Pose Library got improved with new options and shortcuts to speed up your worfklow.

While blending a pose:

Hold Ctrl to flip the pose.
Press E to “exaggerate”, go beyond 100%!
Drag to the left to substract a pose.
ANIMATION
EASY
EASING

The new Ease operator in the Graph Editor helps you align keys on an exponential curve, useful for quickly making an easing transition on multiple keys.

MORE ANIMATION
Improved Propagate Pose operator
New “Select Linked Vertices” in Weight Paint mode
Pin Dope Sheet channels
Sub-frame jumping to next/prev keyframes
Fixed Invert Vertex Group toggle in Armature modifier
Motion Paths can be set to update a custom range
Add F-Curve modifiers to multiple channels at once
Pre-3.0 Pose Library system has been sunsetted
GREASE PENCIL
NATURAL
BEAUTY

The new Natural Drawing Speed timing mode in the Build modifier replays strokes using the speed of the stylus when it was performed, giving it a more natural feel.

MORE GREASE PENCIL
Sculpt Auto-masking moved to Global setting
Offset Modifier improvements
New auto-masking pie menu (Shift+Alt+A)
Copy & Paste now works in multiframe mode
Vertex Opacity available under Overlays in Sculpt mode
Interpolate Sequence operator improvements
New option to show the brush size in Draw tool cursor
Fixed radial control display size
New layer menu [Y] now highlights name field
Material popover now display Fill color for Fill materials
Pixar USD
USD
COMPRESS
TO IMPRESS

Blender 3.5 adds support for importing and exporting USDZ files.

A .usdz file is a zip archive that can contain images, audio, and other .usd files for convenient sharing.

MORE USD
Support importing USD Shapes
USD export changes to pass usdchecker
Add scale and bias for exported USD Preview Surface normal maps
Convert USD camera properties to mm from USD units
Author extents on exported UsdGeomMesh
Charge Open Movie
INDUSTRY READY

Blender 3.5 is fully aligned with the VFX Reference Platform 2023, making it easier to integrate in studio pipelines.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S EVEN MORE
UV Editing
UV Copy & Paste between meshes
Improvements to Constrain to Image Bounds in Shear Operator
Better handling of poles in Sphere/Cylinder Projection
Support for Fan or Pinch UVs
Several fixes

Core
Added support for boolean custom properties

Video Sequencer
New filtering mode Nearest (3×3)
Copy drivers when duplicating/pasting strips
VSE: New “Update Scene Strip Frame Range” operator

Motion Tracking
New workflow for optical center

Linux
Require glibc 2.28, including Ubuntu 18.10, Fedora 29, Debian 10 (Buster), RHEL 8 and derivatives CentOS, Rocky Linux, Alma Linux

User Interface
Font previews for Korean, Japanese, Simplified & Traditional Chinese
Cancel Viewport orbit/pan/zoom with RMB
Fix UI freeze with linked material previews
Fix menus alignment with mixed icons

Assets
New asset library “All”
Improved Asset Libraries list
Set a default Import Method in Preferences

macOS
Minimum macOS version is now 10.15 Catalina
Removed user notifications

Python API
New bundled libraries
Breaking changes
Order and time modifiers
Internal Mesh Format updates
See all changes

OBJ I/O
Added “Split by Objects” and “Split by Groups” import settings
Import polylines with more than 2 vertices
Exporting is now up to 1.6x faster

Add-ons
glTF: Several Import & Export improvements
Rigify: Generate Action Constraint layers
Storypencil: Several improvements
Sun Position: Analemmas & Surface display

Modeling
Flip Quad Tessellation
New Set Attribute operator
Faster editing when using modifiers

Sculpt
“Extrude Mode” for Box Trim tool
“Extrude Mode” for Lasso Trim tool
Plus hundreds of bug fixes, code cleanups and refactors to make Blender more stable and easier to contribute to.


https://www.blender.org/download/releases/3-5/


Blender Foundation and the online developers community present Blender 3.4, featuring path guiding in Cycles, new sculpt and paint masking tools, Geometry Nodes viewport overlay, new UV Editing tools, improved performance and much more.

Released December 7th, 2022

WHAT’S NEW IN 5 MINUTES

CYCLES
PATH GUIDING

Blender 3.4 integrates Intel’s Open Path Guiding Library, adding support for path guiding in CPU to help reduce noise in scenes where finding a path to light is difficult for regular path tracing, for example when a room is lit by light coming through a small door crack.

Path Guiding setting in Sampling panel
Guiding is supported for surfaces with diffuse BSDFs and volumes with isoptropic and anisotropic scattering.

Important light directions are learned over time, improving as more samples are taken.

Find it in the Sampling panel in Render properties.

The following images took the same render time.

Note that while Path Guiding helps to render scenes containing simple caustics (e.g., water surface), it is not designed to be a caustic solver, such as MNEE, meaning it might not help render scenes containing complex caustics.

Same render time, with and without Path Guiding.

AND MORE CYCLES
Sampling
Added Sobol-Burley sampling pattern
Improved Progressive Multi-Jittered sampling

Graphic Drivers
Intel Arc on Windows: upgrade to driver version 101.3430 or newer to fix user interface crashes
For AMD HIP on Linux, upgrade to ROCm 5.3 or newer to fix issues with textures on Vega and RDNA1 graphics cards
For Apple Metal, Intel GPU rendering is now supported starting with macOS 13

Attribute Node
Access Geometry Nodes instance attributes
New mode for accessing attributes of the current View Layer, Scene or World

Baking
New option to bake specular effects from the active camera view, instead of above the surface. This may be useful when baking textures that will be viewed from a fixed position or with limited camera motion.
AUTO
MASKING

The auto-masking settings in Sculpt mode are now accessible from the header in the 3D Viewport.

New methods have been added for automatically masking by cavity, viewpoint, and area.

SO DEEP

Instead of manually creating a cavity mask, this auto-masking option provides a faster way of painting and sculpting with Cavity.

Use the “Create Mask” button to convert the auto-mask into a regular mask attribute (to edit it further or just visualize it).


Blur: 2
Blur: 5
Blur: 10
Blur: 2
MASK FROM
CAVITY

“Inverted”, “Factor”, “Blur” and a “Custom Curve” give extra control to fine tune the cavity mask.

Mask from Cavity
Mask from Cavity operator using the default settings.
AUTO MASKING
IN ACTION

Combine different methods to easily sculpt and paint little details.

1. View Normal
2. Area Normal
3. Cavity
Automatic mask based on the viewing angle.

AND MORE
Faster reprojecting attributes using the Voxel Remesher
Performance improvements when not using Face Sets and Masks
Weight and Vertex painting will use the whole modifier stack if it produces no topology changes
Face Sets are now opt-in, meaning that primitive objects do not have a Face Set attribute by default
UV & CHILL

UV EDITING
SCULPT
RELAX TOOL

The new geometry-based relax brush method helps you improves the quality of the UV mapping by making the UVs more closely follow the 3D geometry.

As this is a brush, the user can drive the relaxation process.

UV Relax tool using Geometry method.
Non-uniform grid.
ON THE GRID

Several improvements in the UV Editor grid include:

Non-uniform grids
Pixel spacing
Draw grid on top of the image
Align Rotation
Rotate UVs to follow the geometry orientation in the 3D Viewport, or aligned to a selected edge, or automatically guess the best orientation.

Randomize Islands
Randomize Islands
Quickly set a random value to the scale, rotation or offset of selected UV islands.

AND MORE
Live Unwrap support for Grab tool
Support for pinned vertices in UV sculpt tools
Fix boundary edges for Relax tool Laplacian method
Constrain to Bounds for UV sculpt tools
UV selection support in many operations
Prevent orphaned islands in UV sculpt tools
Support constrain to bounds in Rotation operator
Add option to use Blender 2.8 margin calculation
Many UV Packing operations now work with non-manifold geometry
Several fixes
GEOMETRY NODES
WHAT YOU SEE IS
WHAT YOU GET

Introducing: Viewport overlay for Geometry Nodes Viewer Node.
Preview attributes without affecting the final result.

The intensity of the overlay can be adjusted from the Overlay popover in the 3D Viewport header.

SAMPLE UV SURFACE

A new node to get attribute values based on UV coordinates.
A simple concept that opens endless opportunities.

Sample UV Surface node. Download this file.
PLUS THESE NEW MESH NODES
Face Set Boundaries
Face Set Boundaries
The new Face Set Boundaries node finds the edges between different patches of faces.

Corners of Face/Vertex
Corners of Face/Vertex
Corners of Face retrieves corners that make up a face, and Corners of Vertex retrieves face corners connected to vertices.

Edges of Corner/Vertex
Edges of Corner/Vertex
Edges of Corner retrieves the edges on boths sides of a face corner, while Edges of Vertex retrieves the edges connected to each vertex.

Face of Corner/Offset Corner in Face
Face of Corner/Offset Corner in Face
Face of Corner Retrieves the face each face corner is part of. Offset Corner in Face Retrieves neighboring corners within a face.

Vertex of Corner
Vertex of Corner
Retrieves the vertex each face corner is attached to.

NEW CURVE NODES
Curve of Point/Points of Curve/Offset Point in Curve
Curve of Point/Points of Curve/Offset Point in Curve
Curve of Point Retrieves the curve a control point is part of. Points of Curve Retrieves a point index within a curve. Offset Point in Curve Offset a control point index within its curve.

Set Curve Normal
Set Curve Normal
The Set Curve Normal allows choosing the normal evaluation mode for curves.

Sample Curve
Sample Curve
The Sample Curve node now has inputs for the curve index and a custom value to sample.

AND NEW GENERAL NODES
Self Object
Self Object
Retrieves the current modifier object for retrieving transforms.

Sample Index
Sample Index
Retrieves data from specific geometry elements by index.

Sample Nearest
Sample Nearest
Retrieves the indices from the closest geometry elements

Sample Nearest Surface
Sample Nearest Surface
Interpolates a field input to the closest location on a mesh surface.

EVEN MORE GEOMETRY NODES
Node Group assets are visible in the Add menu of the node editor
Trim Curves node now supports cyclic curves
Data-block users count visible in the Context Path and Group node header
New Preference to duplicate Node Groups
Better looking node links
Input sockets are reused when creating new node groups
Node Groups can now be duplicated with Alt+D
Trim Curves 3-4 times faster
Attributes of instances are now accessible from materials through the Attribute node
New, faster evaluation system
GREASE PENCIL
FULFILL

The Fill tool has been greatly improved with new options, shortcuts, and introducing a new algorithm to close gaps.

The new method uses the Radius of circumference to determine how close the strokes for filling. This new method is very effective when the extension done by the previous method (now renamed as Extend) of the strokes never cross.

Use the mouse wheel or PageUp/Down to adjust length of the strokes, S key to toggle extend method, use D key to toggle extended stroke collision.

Radius method to fill gaps.
AND MORE
Import multiple SVG files at once
New Offset parameter in reproject operator for surface mode
Set Start Point operator for cyclic strokes
New “Chain” mode in Time Offset modifier
LineArt: Forced Intersection
Python: New Trace Frame parameter in Trace operator
New “Outline” modifier to generate perimeter stroke from camera view
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE
Animation & Rigging
Adjust Last Operation panel in NLA, Dopesheet and Timeline
NLA: Draw track background based on strip’s extrapolation
NLA usability improvements
Mute Drivers

Core
Override Resource Directories
Several improvements to fonts handling
Metaball objects are now evaluated as meshes
WebM videos frame extraction
Support FFmpeg AV1 codec encoding
Higher resolution thumbnails in Windows Explorer

Performance
Improved performance in Subdivision Surface Modifier
Major speed up when batch creating objects
Performance: Optimize evaluation of disabled modifiers
Faster WebP thumbnail creation

EEVEE & Viewport
Headless rendering support on Linux

Pipeline, Assets & I/O
Support for PBR extensions in .mtl files
OBJ Importer: New global scale factor

User Interface
Improved font thumbnails
Improved caret when editing Text objects
New shortcuts in Python Console editor
Detect existing file and add auto-increase for output filepaths
Improved editing of text containing non-precomposed diacritical marks
Select objects menu now sorted by distance
Outliner improvements

Add-ons
Import Image as Plane: Improved UI
New add-on: Storypencil, for storyboarding

Python API
Blender as a Python Module
Internal mesh format changes
New functions
Breaking changes

https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.4


Blender Foundation and the online developers community are proud to present the first long-term support release of the 3.x series.

Released September 7th, 2022

Hair Grooming demo in Blender 3.3 LTS
HAIR
WE GO

The first milestone of the new hair grooming system has landed in Blender 3.3 LTS.

The most flexible system yet, featuring Sculpt mode and support for Geometry Nodes. The posibilities are endless.

Hair Sculpt Tools
SCULPT IT

The new Sculpt mode for curves gives you unprecedented control for grooming hair.

The list of tools includes:

Add/Delete, Density, Comb, Snake Hook
Pinch, Puff, Smooth, and Slide.

Watch Demo
Community Tutorials
FEATURING
Sculpt on top of curves deformed with Geometry Nodes
Snap to nearest or deformed mesh surface
Supports EEVEE and Cycles
Curves sculpt mode supports selecting control points or curves
Spreadsheet Editor filter by selected Curves or Points
Symmetry support in X, Y, Z axes
Select Random, Select Endpoints, and Grow/Shrink selection operators
GEOMETRY NODES
PROCEDURAL
UV UNWRAPPING

The new UV Unwrap and Pack UV Islands nodes open the possibility of creating and adjusting UV maps procedurally using Geometry Nodes.

See Manual
Community Tutorials
PATH TO
SUCCESS

Three new Geometry Nodes have landed for path-finding across mesh edges.

Create impossible mazes, lightning, growing vegetation, and so much more.

Community Tutorials
Download this demo file.
Shortest Edge Paths
Shortest Edge Paths
Finds the best path along edges from every vertex to a set of end vertices.

Edge Paths to Curves
Edge Paths to Curves
This node generates a separate curve for every edge path from a set of start vertices.

Edge Paths to Selection
Edge Paths to Selection
Generates an edge selection that includes every edge that is part of an edge path.

PLUS THESE NEW NODES AND GOODIES
Volume Cube Primitive
Volume Cube Primitive
Allows sampling a field in a dense bounding box to create an arbitrary volume grid.

Points Primitive
Points Primitive
Creates any number of point cloud points, with position and radius defined by fields.

Mesh to Volume
Mesh to Volume
Same functionality as the existing mesh modifier, now also available as node.

Instance Scale + Instance Rotation
Instance Scale + Instance Rotation
These two new nodes provide access to instance transformations.

Interpolate Domain
Interpolate Domain
Allows evaluating a field on a different domain inside of another field, avoiding the need for a “Capture Attribute” node.

Intersecting Edges
Intersecting Edges
The Mesh Boolean node now has an output field that gives just the intersecting edges.

EVEN MORE GEOMETRY NODES
UV Sphere 3.6x faster for high resolutions
Separate XYZ and Separate Color over 20% faster
Speed-up Capture Attribute if input is unused
3-10x performance improvements in Curve nodes
GREASE PENCIL LINE ART
LIGHT & SHADOW
CONTOUR

The Line Art modifier is now able to calculate accurate cast shadow and light/shadow separation line given a light source reference object.

Read More
Line Art Priority
INTERSECTION
PRIORITY

Specify different intersection priority levels for different objects, then intersection lines would be automatically selected with the object who has the higher intersection priority.

Line Art Silhouette
GREAT
SILHOUETTE

Draw silhouette around selected collection, or around individual objects in that collection. LineArt is also able to identify intersecting and overlapping silhouette geometries.

ANIMATION
GREASE PENCIL
EVERYWHERE

The Dopesheet and Timeline editors now show Grease Pencil keyframes alongside other objects and properties.

Visibility of all object types can be adjusted with filters. The Grease Pencil sub-mode is still available for a more focused experience.

Camera object transforms, animated light properties, and Grease Pencil keyframes all visible at once in Dopesheet Editor
Loading time on Mr. Elephant demo scene.

Unit: seconds
Blender 3.2
Blender 3.3 LTS
PERFORMANCE
FAST LINE ART

Loading time for Line Art objects has been greatly reduced, while calculation of the modifier is now multi-threaded leading to much improved performance.

AND MORE
Ping Pong mode for Time Offset modifier
New Sculpt Auto masking options
Quickly name layers in Move to New Layer operator
Press U in Sculpt mode to select Materials
New Noise modifier option: Only Keyframes
Grease Pencil keyframes visible in Dopesheet & Timeline
See all Grease Pencil changes
Intel Arc A70
CYCLES
INTEL
INSIDE

Support for rendering on the latest Intel GPUs has been added using oneAPI.

This requires an Intel® Arc™ GPU. The implementation is primarily focused on this architecture and future Intel GPUs.

Read More
CYCLES
AMD
VEGA

AMD GPU Rendering for Vega generation graphics cards has been enabled, on Windows and Linux. Both discrete GPUs and APUs are supported.

This includes GPUs such as Radeon VII, Radeon RX Vega Series and Radeon Pro WX 9100.

Read More
AMD Radeon Vega
MORE ON RENDER
Optimizations for Apple Silicon
Reduced memory usage in OpenVDB volumes
Use bones as camera Depth of Field target
Faster OptiX Denoiser with multiple GPUs
New Filmic sRGB Color Space
See all Render changes
PIPELINE
LIBRARY OVERRIDES

Blender 3.3 LTS takes a major leap in usability around Library Overrides, the backbone of a Blender production.

OUTLINER
IT’S IN THE
DETAILS

The Outliner’s Library Overrides mode now displays all overridden properties in hierarchy, using their labels and icons where applicable.

See and edit all overrides at a glance.

Quick Toggle
Easily toggle between an editable and non-editable override with Shift+Click.

Quicker Access
Quicker Access
The new Library Override context menu in the Outliner, right at your fingertips.

MORE
Support for overriding camera background images
Improved performance of View Layer and Library Overrides display
Recursive purge of orphaned items
Better purge of isolated dependency islands
MOTION TRACKING
IMAGE
PLANE MARKER

Create or update an image from the pixels behind the plane marker.

This allows to create an unwarped texture from a billboard from footage, to allow external editing and re-projecting it back to the footage.

Read More
Watch the full video on YouTube
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE
Animation & Rigging
Custom Properties for Actions
Improvements to NLA frame start/end sliders

VFX & Video
Default to descending average sorting in Movie Clip Editor
Improved playback of Variable Frame Rate files
Smooth drawing in Mask Editor
Mask spline visibility overlay
Add mask blending factor for combined overlay

Core
Faster JPEG preview thumbnails
Font fallback support
Duplicating objects is much faster
Better EXR preview thumbnails
See all improvements

Video Sequencer
New retiming system
Add filter method to strip transform
Delete Strip and Scene in one step
Add API function to select displayed meta strip
Add Scene and Strip at the same time in one action

Modeling
New Shade Auto Smooth operator
Nearest Face Snap mode
Improvements to Surface Deform modifier

I/O
USD: Export OpenVDB volumes
Alembic: support for export presets
glTF: Several improvements
OBJ: Support “xyzrgb” and “MRGB” vertex colors
STL: New experimental importer
Massive performance gains importing large amounts of objects in USD, Alembic, and OBJ

Sculpt, Paint
Sculpt Elastic Transform
Improved sculpting performance in EEVEE
Duplicate active Color Attribute
Support packing UDIM texture sets
Voxel Remesh constant size
New icons for trimming tools

Python API
Support search in StringProperty
Expose OpenXR user paths
Improvements to clear() for actions and curves
New properties in NLAStrip
New possibilities in background and baking jobs
See all changes

UV
Unwrap only selected
UV Select Similar
New options in Average Island Scale
Minimize Stretch will now unflip faces
Improved constrain-to-image-bounds
See all improvements

User Interface
Display Gizmos on transform
Pin Scene to Workspace
Keymap Editor: auto-complete paths
Always visible scrollbars
Windows: Dark mode support for title bar
Windows: Precision touchpad support

More
Collection Instance Offset
Support instanced collections in Make Instant Face
Ctrl/Cmd+L in File Browser to edit path
Fixed regression in Rigid Bodies effector forces

https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.3


Blender Foundation and the online developers community are proud to present Blender 3.2. Unleash your creativity with new rendering features, painting tools, performance improvements and much more.

Released June 8th, 2022

WHAT’S NEW IN 5 MINUTES

Cycles Light Groups
LET THERE BE

LIGHT GROUPS

A new type of Cycles render pass that contains only the lighting from a subset of light sources.

Light Groups can be used in order to e.g. modify the color and/or intensity of light sources in the compositor without re-rendering.

Combined
Interior
Pool
Benches
World
Combined
All Light Groups combined in the Compositor.

SHADOW
CAUSTICS

Cycles now supports selective rendering of caustics in shadows of refractive objects.

This is based on “Manifold Next Event Estimation”, a method developed for production rendering.

Read More
VOLUME
MOTION BLUR

Introducing support for motion blur for gas simulations and imported OpenVDB volumes.

Read More
MORE CYCLES
Support Adaptive Sampling with Scrambling Distance
AMD GPU Rendering for Linux
OpenColorIO color space aliases support
New Linear ACEScg color space
Add Alpha Output to Object Info node
Support different Color Management for Render and Viewport
Automatically unpause viewport when switching to rendered mode
Enable Alembic procedural for final renders
Support for Baking to UDIM tiles
See all Cycles changes
COLOR ME IMPRESSED

Blender 3.2 revolutionizes polygon painting with new tools, usability improvements, and unprecedented performance.

PAINT IT BACK

Paint Brush
Smear Brush
Mask by Color
Color Filter Tool
The new paint brush comes with a bunch of new settings like tip shape, wet mixing, flow and density.
Customise the brush freely with all the existing settings.

REMESH

Now when using the voxel remesher all color attributes will be preserved.

This is perfect to color your sculpts as you still experiment and block out the general shapes.

Read More
MASK OUT

Masking, auto-masking and face sets are fully supported with color attribute painting.

Duplicate Elements node
GEOMETRY NODES
DUPLICATE
ELEMENTS

This new node creates a new geometry with the specified elements (point, edge, face, spline, or instance).

Combined with the Geometry to Instance Node, this can be used to create a basic efficient “Array” operation. This should be more efficient because the duplicates are instances.

See the Manual
ASSET BROWSER
ASSET
COLLECTIONS

Expand your asset library with Collections!

Add Collection assets as instances or real objects.
Thumbnails are automatically generated, or customize it with your own.
Read More
MODELING
CURVE
PEN TOOL

Quickly add, delete, and tweak control points. Hold modifier keys to switch handle types.

GREASE PENCIL
ENVELOPE
MODIFIER

This new modifier connects all points that are N points apart, a shape known as envelope.

See the Manual
AND MORE
Build modifier improvements
Improved smooth operator algorithm
Scale Stroke Thickness in Pie menu
New “Keep Shape” option in Smooth modifier
Dot Dash modifier improvements
Improve multi-user Grease Pencil performance
Added cache to speed up object evaluation
See all Grease Pencil changes
VIDEO SEQUENCER
ENHANCED
CHANNELS

Organize your edits by giving channels a name!

You can also mute and lock entire channels.


PLUS
Add frame selected operator for preview
Better handling of animation when transforming strips
Option to limit timeline view height
Use float for transformation offset
Enable edge panning for transform operator
Add filter method to strip transform
Create new scene from VSE
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE
EEVEE
Displacement bump improvements
Shader improvements
Show compilation progress in the 3D Viewport
Bump node optimization
Tangent Vector displacement now matches Cycles

Library Overrides
ReSync up to 10x faster
General improvements
Proxy system deprecated

I/O
Support for WebP image format
New Experimental OBJ importer
FBX I/O Improvements
BHV importing improvements

Viewport
Support maintaining ortho views when rolling +/- 90°

Animation & Rigging
Motion Paths improvements
New “Keep Transform Without Inverse” parent option
Improvements to NLA editor
Support custom shortcuts for “Insert Keyframe” menu
Discontinuity (Euler) Filter available in Dope Sheet
Rigify improvements
Legacy Pose Library deprecated

Core
Improved error message when monitors are connected to multiple adapters
Faster Blender launch with disconnected shares
NDOF device improvements
Improved numerical entry when using Chinese language
Support for Woff and Woff2 font file formats

VR
Camera Landmark from Session
Object Visibility options
Support for HTC Vive Focus 3 controllers


Blender Foundation and the online developers community are proud to present Blender 3.2. Unleash your creativity with new rendering features, painting tools, performance improvements and much more.

Released June 8th, 2022

WHAT’S NEW IN 5 MINUTES

Cycles Light Groups
LET THERE BE

LIGHT GROUPS

A new type of Cycles render pass that contains only the lighting from a subset of light sources.

Light Groups can be used in order to e.g. modify the color and/or intensity of light sources in the compositor without re-rendering.

Combined
Interior
Pool
Benches
World
Combined
All Light Groups combined in the Compositor.

SHADOW
CAUSTICS

Cycles now supports selective rendering of caustics in shadows of refractive objects.

This is based on “Manifold Next Event Estimation”, a method developed for production rendering.

Read More
VOLUME
MOTION BLUR

Introducing support for motion blur for gas simulations and imported OpenVDB volumes.

Read More
MORE CYCLES
Support Adaptive Sampling with Scrambling Distance
AMD GPU Rendering for Linux
OpenColorIO color space aliases support
New Linear ACEScg color space
Add Alpha Output to Object Info node
Support different Color Management for Render and Viewport
Automatically unpause viewport when switching to rendered mode
Enable Alembic procedural for final renders
Support for Baking to UDIM tiles
See all Cycles changes
COLOR ME IMPRESSED

Blender 3.2 revolutionizes polygon painting with new tools, usability improvements, and unprecedented performance.

PAINT IT BACK

Paint Brush
Smear Brush
Mask by Color
Color Filter Tool
The new paint brush comes with a bunch of new settings like tip shape, wet mixing, flow and density.
Customise the brush freely with all the existing settings.

REMESH

Now when using the voxel remesher all color attributes will be preserved.

This is perfect to color your sculpts as you still experiment and block out the general shapes.

Read More
MASK OUT

Masking, auto-masking and face sets are fully supported with color attribute painting.

Duplicate Elements node
GEOMETRY NODES
DUPLICATE
ELEMENTS

This new node creates a new geometry with the specified elements (point, edge, face, spline, or instance).

Combined with the Geometry to Instance Node, this can be used to create a basic efficient “Array” operation. This should be more efficient because the duplicates are instances.

See the Manual
ASSET BROWSER
ASSET
COLLECTIONS

Expand your asset library with Collections!

Add Collection assets as instances or real objects.
Thumbnails are automatically generated, or customize it with your own.
Read More
MODELING
CURVE
PEN TOOL

Quickly add, delete, and tweak control points. Hold modifier keys to switch handle types.

GREASE PENCIL
ENVELOPE
MODIFIER

This new modifier connects all points that are N points apart, a shape known as envelope.

See the Manual
AND MORE
Build modifier improvements
Improved smooth operator algorithm
Scale Stroke Thickness in Pie menu
New “Keep Shape” option in Smooth modifier
Dot Dash modifier improvements
Improve multi-user Grease Pencil performance
Added cache to speed up object evaluation
See all Grease Pencil changes
VIDEO SEQUENCER
ENHANCED
CHANNELS

Organize your edits by giving channels a name!

You can also mute and lock entire channels.


PLUS
Add frame selected operator for preview
Better handling of animation when transforming strips
Option to limit timeline view height
Use float for transformation offset
Enable edge panning for transform operator
Add filter method to strip transform
Create new scene from VSE
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE
EEVEE
Displacement bump improvements
Shader improvements
Show compilation progress in the 3D Viewport
Bump node optimization
Tangent Vector displacement now matches Cycles

Library Overrides
ReSync up to 10x faster
General improvements
Proxy system deprecated

I/O
Support for WebP image format
New Experimental OBJ importer
FBX I/O Improvements
BHV importing improvements

Viewport
Support maintaining ortho views when rolling +/- 90°

Animation & Rigging
Motion Paths improvements
New “Keep Transform Without Inverse” parent option
Improvements to NLA editor
Support custom shortcuts for “Insert Keyframe” menu
Discontinuity (Euler) Filter available in Dope Sheet
Rigify improvements
Legacy Pose Library deprecated

Core
Improved error message when monitors are connected to multiple adapters
Faster Blender launch with disconnected shares
NDOF device improvements
Improved numerical entry when using Chinese language
Support for Woff and Woff2 font file formats

VR
Camera Landmark from Session
Object Visibility options
Support for HTC Vive Focus 3 controllers

https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.2


Blender Foundation and the online developers community are proud to present Blender 3.1, a solid update to an already outstanding release.

Released March 9th, 2022

WHAT’S NEW IN 5 MINUTES

PEDAL TO THE
METAL

Cycles now has a Metal GPU backend, contributed by Apple.

Classroom
Junkshop
Monster
Render time per sample on an Apple MacBook Air with M1 processor. Lower values are better.

Unit: time per sample
M1 CPU
M1 GPU (Metal)
Currently supported on Apple M1 computers running macOS 12.2 or newer,
and Apple computers with AMD graphics cards running macOS 12.3 or newer.

MAKE A POINT
The new Point Cloud object can be rendered directly with Cycles to create sand, water splashes, particles or even motion graphics.

Much more memory efficient.
Faster render times.
Point Info node.
Point Clouds can be generated with Geometry Nodes or imported from other software.
Read More
MORE CYCLES
Ray Tracing Precision
Fisheye Lens Polynomial model
New “Adjacent Faces” for baking
Merge OpenEXR renders with Adaptive Sampling
OptiX Temporal Denoising
Map Range on Vectors
Optional Embree Compact BVH
See All Cycles Changes
BUILD
ANYTHING

Blender’s ever-growing procedural system gets 19 new nodes, including mesh modeling tools, access to time, advanced Fields control, incredible performance improvements, fewer unnecessary updates, and much more.

Notice how the Random Value node changes to match the socket type.
USER INTERFACE
DRAG, DROP, SEARCH!
Speed-up your workflow by dragging sockets to get a list of automatically filtered nodes.

Filtered by matching socket types, see only what can be connected.
Search for math functions or blend modes.
Works on input and output sockets.
Available in Geometry, Shading, and Compositor nodes.
NEW
INSTANCE ATTRIBUTES
Instances can now also have their own dynamic attributes!

This fully elevates them to be their own domain now and enables a powerful workflow by completing the pipeline where realized meshes can inherit data from instances that inherit data from points that inherit data from instances… you get the picture.

Download this .blend file
ASSET BROWSER
Node Group Assets
Mark Node Groups as Asset, drag & drop from the Asset Browser into Shading, Geometry Nodes, or Compositor.

Timings Overlay
USER INTERFACE
Timings Overlay
See at a glance how fast your nodes (including Node Groups) are performing.

Volume Grids
SPREADSHEET
Volume Grids
The Spreadsheet now lists Volume Grids info such as grid name, data type, and class.

NEW KIDS ON THE BUILDING BLOCKS
Extrude Mesh
Scale Elements
Stretch Map using Field at Index
Accumulate Field
The long awaited Extrude node finally made it into Blender! Now a whole different approach to procedural modeling is possible. In this example a procedural chocolate bar is achieved with multiple steps of simply extruding and scaling. Download this .blend file.

PLUS THESE NEW NODES

This new primitive is similar to the Curve Circle, but it can create an incomplete circle.


Merge selected mesh vertices or point cloud points within a given distance.


Convert real geometry into an instance.


Transform a mesh’s faces into vertices and vertices into faces.


Reverses the normals of selected faces by reversing the winding order of their vertices and edges.


The Compare Floats node has been upgraded to be more generic.


Return the size of any attribute domain, like the number of vertices in a mesh.


Access the scene’s current time directly without drivers.


Gives access to the number of vertices and faces connected to each vertex.


Gives access to each face’s vertex count and the number of faces connected by an edge.


Gives access to edge vertex indices and their positions.


Tells how many faces use each edge.


Provides access to the surface area of each of a mesh’s faces.


Outputs a separate index for each piece of connected vertices in a mesh.


Gives the angle between the normals of two manifold faces.

NODES SO FAST
Blender 3.1 brings performance in Geometry Nodes to the next level,
many nodes are now multi-threaded and use less memory.
Do more with less.

Memory usage reduced up to 100x in large fields
Up to 20% improvement in memory use
Improvements to multi-threading with medium loads up to 10x
2-3x speedup processing single values with field nodes
Realize Instances node is now multi-threaded
Access speed in Geometry Nodes up to 40% faster
Domain interpolation now only calculates necessary values
Set Spline Type node is now multi-threaded
Displaying large node trees nearly 2x faster
Cube mesh primitive ~75% faster
Grid mesh primitive is now multi-threaded
Bounding Box node is now multi-threaded
Lower overhead on multi-threading
Faster editing and undo
YUP, THERE’S MORE
Map Range node now has a vector data type option
Boolean Math node has been expanded with more operations
Attribute Statistic node now has a selection input
Added Line and Pivot Point outputs in String to Curves node
Instances can be removed in the Delete Geometry node
Triangulate node now has a selection input
Selection input in the Resample Curve node
New “Offset” input in Set Handle Position node
Spline Length node now includes number of control points
Star curve primitive node has a selection output for the outer points
Better NURBS to Bézier splines conversion in Set Spline Type node
Curve Handle Positions node now has a toggle to output the position relative to the corresponding control point
Cone and Cylinder mesh primitives now have selection outputs for the top, side, and bottom sections
Improved selection of nodes inside frames
See All Node Editor Changes

Example shapes made using Vertex and Edge creasing.
MODELING
VERTEX
CREASING

It is now possible to mark individual vertices as arbitrarily sharp to create interesting shapes more efficiently.

Support for Pixar OpenSubDiv for modeling, rendering, Alembic and USD import/export.

GREASE
PENCIL

DILATE/CONTRACT FILL
The Fill tool now allows negative values, creating a contract effect for styles where an outline is needed.

Read More
PLUS
Shrinkwrap Modifier
LineArt Backface Culling
Export Scene frame range in PDF Export
Merge All Layers option in Merge operator
Randomize parameter in Length modifier
LineArt Noise Tolerant Chaining
Preserve LineArt contour lines when using face mark filtering
LineArt Inverse Collection Toggle
See all Grease Pencil updates
SUB-DIVIDE
AND CONQUER

Playback in the 3D Viewport is now much faster thanks to GPU acceleration support in the Subdivision modifier.

Subdiv. Level 0
Subdiv. Level 1
Subdiv. Level 2
Subdiv. Level 3
Frames per second on Rain character by Blender Studio. Higher values are better.

Unit: Frames per Second
GPU (Blender 3.1)
CPU (Blender 3.0)
Read More
PERFORMANCE IN AND OUT
FASTER .OBJ

Exporting .obj files is now orders of magnitude faster thanks to porting it to C++.

Read More
Large File (365MB)
Small File (20MB)
Time to export an .obj file. Lower values are better.

Unit: seconds
Blender 3.0
Blender 3.1
FBX Export
Time to export a .fbx file. Lower values are better.

Unit: seconds
Blender 3.0
Blender 3.1
FASTER .FBX

A massive improvement can be seen on files with Armatures in REST position.

Read More
GO BIG

The Image Editor can now handle much larger images for preview and for editing.

Video shows a 52K image, repeated indefinitely.

Read More
EVEN MORE SPEED
Asset Browser Library Index Loading
Faster Edit Mode Toggle
Performance improvement on Mesh Vertex and Face Normals
BENCHMARK IT
So Blender 3.1 is fast, but how fast does it run on your computer?

Download and run the Blender Benchmark to share and compare your score with openly accessible benchmarks provided by the Blender community.

Download the new Blender Benchmark
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE
Export USD Preview Surface Shaders
Export animated Vertex Colors to Alembic
OpenEXR DWAB compression support
Several glTF 2.0 improvements
Support for reading Override layers in Alembic files
Python 3.10
Outliner report when Resync is required
Curve Mapping widget improvements
Batch Rename selected items in Outliner
Support for batch renaming Collections, Volumes, and Lights
Improved feedback on area splitting
View Pie menu in more editors
Open File Browser in Thumbnail View when browsing fonts
New Color Space Conversion node in Compositor
Default paths for Fonts on macOS and Linux
Rigify Improvements
Support for floating-point font sizes in UI
Use timecodes by default in VSE
Scene Time node in Compositor
Drag & Drop data-blocks from Outliner into VSE
Separate VSE Meta Strips Python API
Python API additions and changes
Automatic Proxy Building in VSE
Improvements to PDB/XYZ Importer
New Copy Global Transform add-on
UDIM Substitution Tokens support
Improved NURBS Knots Calculation
Convert generic Attributes operator
Equalize Handles in Graph Editor
Fixed tearing artifacts in Image Editor
Auto-close brackets/quotes in Text Editor
Crazy Space access via Python API
Control opacity of wireframe bones
Custom Frame Range for Actions
Graph Editor Slider Operators
Node Groups can now be marked as Assets
Node selection inside Frame nodes has been improved

https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.1


Blender 3.0.1
Released on Jan 26th 2022, Blender 3.0.1 features many bug fixes:

Selection in the 3d view is broken in build from Xcode 13. [T91680]
Fix Cycles AVX test failure with x86_64 build running on Arm. [d02eeccd02]
Fix/workaround macOS Rosetta crash running Cycles AVX tests. [e78a21ae78]
Fix Asset Browser properties region toggle not showing open/closed state. [2af6cb9dce]
Asset Browser: Fix incorrect user message. [24a79289b0]
Fix some shortcut keys not working on macOS with Japanese input. [8b44b756d8]
Mesh Sequence Cache (ABC) an hair interpolated children distribution issue (triangulate modifier seem to fix it). [T92561]
Shift+F1 to switch to asset browser randomly crashes. [T93508]
Subdividing with overlapping tri and quad crashes Blender. [T93563]
Blender 3.0 cannot import FBX (containing more than 8 UV layers). [T93541]
Triangulating a mesh with overlapping tri and quad faces can cause an assertion failure. [T93574]
Asset browser: dropping object on grid in orthogonal view misses the floor plane. [T93388]
Snap Cursor not working after changing Add Object tool settings. [T93732]
Crash on edit mesh with a curve modifier with both a vertex group assigned and the edit mode display option enabled. [T93611]
Dragging the NLA strip cause a crash, if the related action is in tweakmode. [T93707]
VSE: Fix strip with mask modifier not blending. [1fd824345d]
Video editor thumbnails don't show at the default zoom level. [T93314]
Single point NURBS crash in resample node. [T93521]
3.0 Documentation broken link?. [T93773]
Use World background color when rendering pose library previews. [T93467]
When seperating a grease pencil stroke to its own object it will lose all vertex groups. [T93728]
Measure active tool fails in front view with snap incremental enable. [T93869]
Zstd-compressed .blend files from external tools aren't recognized. [T93858]
Change bone name cause vertex group not working until select another vertex group. [T93892]
Crash when trying to load custom preview in asset browser with user library selected. [T93691]
Instances of only vertices/edges not properly shown in viewport. [T84710]
img.has_data Always returns True since version 3.0. [T93871]
Fast GI Approximation Render Crash. [T93874]
Shadow Catcher - Cuda Error in Viewport Rendering with Optix Denoiser. [T93890]
When render with Cycles' Fast GI Approximation, Method "Add" is affected by bounces in Method "Replace". [T93498]
Geometry Nodes: Random Integer min and max values half as frequent. [T93591]
Custom node sockets don't get relinked when dropping a node on an existing link. [T93430]
redundant 'falloff' dropdown in weight paint header. [T93169]
Spare falloff panel. [T94243]
gltf2 not exporting animations in 3.0. [T93704]
Blender freezes when saving with active VR session. [T93649]
Fix meta-ball bound-box calculation reading past buffer bounds. [62ce0c60cd]
3D Cursor is not in the right place after Shift + C (Center Cursor and Frame All). [T93971]
Crash on changing curve type from Bezier to NURBS in Geometry Nodes. [T94082]
Crash when exceeding memory_cache_limit in the viewport. [T92838]
Cleanup: Correct order of guard and lock in moviecache_valfree. [0564b19ff4]
Selecting current action in Undo History Undoes all the History. [T94115]
3d cursor crash when using shortcut. [T94109]
Outliner: Collection dragging tooltip is not updating. [T94184]
Crash when the Home button is pressed in the VSE. [T94254]
Crash when cutting meta-meta. [T94280]
DeltaX does not show how many frames you are moving your keyframes. [T94191]
Fix: Build issue on 32 bit archs. [6514e4c418]
Snap performance regression at high poll rate. [T93408]
Close Area crashes Blender (3.0.0 and 3.0.1). [T94334]
Python error when trying to add Grease Pencil brush preset. [T94375]
Cycles X broke OptiX memory pooling via NVLink. [T93620]
Extruding first vertex of a spline with GN modifier enabled causes a crash. [T94442]
Crash in nvoglv64.dll entering edit mode on curve. [T94454]
Scaling Grease Pencil Strokes in Edit Mode Scales Thickness. [T93163]
Set Origin causes unexpected offset on Grease Pencil strokes when Curve Editing is enabled. [T93134]
Grease pencil hue and tint modifiers don't work with selected material. [T93868]
LineArt: Correct collection intersection mask logic. [7339663bbc]
LineArt: Correct clamping of out of bound isect index. [69c56d2819]
3D Cursor surface projection onto hidden faces. [T94392]
Grease Pencil AutoMerge does not work when Draw Strokes On Back is enabled. [T94620]
Regression: Grease Pencil does not show up in render past 2049x2049 render resolution. [T94169]
Regression: Grease Pencil does not show up in render past 2049x2049 render resolution. [T94169]
Regression: Grease Pencil does not show up in render past 2049x2049 render resolution. [T94169]
Fix T94563: Cycles standalone build error on with strict float/double casting. [7d26cf01f7]
Crash in Compositing. [T94506]
Discontinuous cutting with the knife tool. [T93695]
Knife project fails in orthographic mode. [T94145]
Shadow Terminator Geometry Offset causes artifacts for translucent shader (Cycles). [T93418]
New-file causes Python assert with negative reference count. [T94708]
save_as_mainfile will crash if context has no screen. [T93949]
Constraint Shrinkwrap does not applies, it reset all changes. [T94600]
VR Add-on: Unintended navigation when using Valve Index. [T93509]
Blender Crashing While Appending Animation Action. [T94264]
Export to X3D Fails. [T94122]
Viewport X-Ray is influencing snapping even in material mode. [T93477]
Auto Depth problem with Cliping Region. [T94728]
Auto Depth problem with Cliping Region. [T94728]
Grease Pencil Strokes drawn at 0.0 Strength still visible. [T94799]
Tool Settings: Drag on Tweak not working. [T92953]
Object As Font not working. [T94624]
Fix crash caused by exception in Python gizmo target get handler. [40c5786df3]
GPencil: Copying keys doesn't preserve Keyframe Type. [T94903]
Grease Pencil Drawing don't Update after paste. [T94089]
Line Art: Per object Override Crease setting does not work. [T94878]
Regression: Group Input/Output cannot connect to some custom sockets. [T94827]
Video Sequencer Preview with Prefetch Frames crashes inside Meta Strip. [T94768]
Multiple volumes using same data can cause crash/freeze. [T94715]
Boolean Apply Clearing custom data layers (bevel weight Weight / Vgroup Data). [T94197]
Cleanup: Avoid possible NULL pointer error. [822501d86d]
crash or error when using GPUFrameBuffer.read_color(... data=data). [T94202]
Mesh: Add versioning in 3.0 for vertex normal refactor. [add07576a0]
Unity x Blender 3.0 Integration. [T95099]


Blender 3.0

Today, 3 December 2021, Blender Foundation announces the release of Blender 3.0, to mark the beginning of a new era for open source 2D/3D content creation.

Released 3 December, 2021

SHOWOFF REEL

WHAT’S NEW IN LESS THAN 7 MINUTES

The Freedom to Create, V3

CYCLE FASTER
THAN EVER

Cycles GPU kernels have been rewritten for better performance, rendering between 2x and 8x faster in real-world scenes.

Barbershop
Pabellon
Junkshop
Classroom
Monster
Render time with an NVIDIA Quadro RTX A6000 and OptiX.

Unit: seconds
Blender 2.93
Blender 3.0
LESS LAG, MORE FUN

Enjoy a more responsive viewport due to new scheduling and display algorithms.

Viewport Navigation
Lights Manipulation
Moving around the 3D viewport feels much more responsive now, even with Overlays turned on.
NICE NOISE

OpenImageDenoise was upgraded to version 1.4, with improved detail preservation. A new pre-filter option was added to control the denoising of auxiliary albedo and normal passes.

SHADOW TERMINATOR
New option to reduce shadow artifacts that often happen with low poly game models. Offset rays from the flat surface to match where they would be for a smooth surface as specified by the normals.

The Geometry Offset option works as follows:

0.0: Disabled
0.001: Only terminated triangles
0.1: Default
1.0: All Triangles Affected
Generally, using one or a few levels of subdivision can get rid of artifacts faster than before.

Read More
CATCH BEYOND SHADOWS
Say hi to the new shadow catcher, completely rewritten for Blender 3.0

New features include:

Indirect and environment light support, for more accurate compositing.
Option for lights to be considered included or excluded, that is if they are real or synthetic objects.
New Shadow Catcher pass to fully handle coloured indirect light and emission.
Read More
Coloured shadows and precise reflections make blending 3D with real footage much easier.

tT
SKIN CARE

Subsurface scattering now supports anisotropy and index of refraction for Random Walk. Realistic skin has an anisotropy around 0.8.

THERE’S MORE
Time-based rendering limit
Hardware ray-tracing for baking with NVIDIA OptiX
Faster hair using 3D curves in Optix
Separate presets for viewport and render sampling
Reduced kernel compilation time for OptiX
Improved adaptive sampling
Geometry Offset option to reduce shadow terminator artifacts
Light option to be visible to camera rays
New Position render pass
Volume sampling quality is now the same for CPU and GPU
Baking support for denoising and adaptive sampling
Open Shading Language metadata support for UI labels and checkboxes
Removed Features and Compatibility
Read More
ASSET BROWSER

The first milestone of the Asset Browser project is here!
Your workflow is about to get much more organized.


EASY AS
DRAG & DROP

Materials, Objects, and World datablocks are supported as part of the first milestone, with more planned to come on the next releases.

Download this Cube Diorama .blend file to play with the new Asset Browser.

Asset Libraries
Asset Libraries
Define folders as Asset Libraries in your Preferences so you can load your favorite assets anytime, from anywhere.

Catalogs
Organize your assets in catalogs. These are independent of the .blend file the asset is stored in, providing great flexibility.

Tags
Tags
Special metadata can be added to assets such as author, tags, and asset description.

AND MORE
Custom asset thumbnails
Link, Append, and Append reusing data modes
“Frame Selected” to scroll to the selected assets
Python API
Support rendering previews for Action datablocks

GEOMETRY NODES

The procedural system introduced in 2.92 has been extended with a re-imagined method for designing node groups, a new attribute system, around 100 new nodes for interaction with curves, text data, instances, and more.

GO ON A FIELD TRIP
Discover a new concept for passing around data and functions. Introducing: Fields.

Operations can be built from basic nodes and simply connected together, removing the need for named attributes as a way to store intermediate data, and removing the need for special “Attribute” nodes for simple operations.

Fields Workflow
Named Attributes Workflow
“With fields it’s much easier to build node groups for higher level concepts that work together better than before.”

Read More
At a Glance
At a Glance
A new overlay colors the wires to match the socket they are connected to, making it much easier to spot their type at a distance.

Sneak Peek
Sneak Peek
Mouse over the sockets to quickly inspect their content, know their type, and a handy tooltip about their functionality has been added to a number of nodes.

Circle vs Diamond
Circle vs Diamond
In order to tell at a glance which sockets support fields, single values, or both, sockets are now drawn with a diamond, circle, or combined shape.

AHEAD OF THE CURVE

Native curve data joins the Geometry Nodes party. Resample, fill, trim, manipulate the handles, set spline type, convert to mesh, or get started with the included curve primitives.

Blender 3.0 Curves
A WALL OF NODES
The Geometry Nodes modifier is now supported on Curve and Text objects with full support for the attribute system.

Splines have resolution and cyclic builtin attributes.
Control points have position, radius, tilt, handle_left and handle_right built-in attributes.
Attributes with any name or data type can be created or removed on splines or control points.
Attributes can be interpolated between the two curve domains.
Read More
User Manual
MORE THAN WORDS
Got something to say? Use Geometry Nodes! Blender 3.0 brings the first milestone in Text Nodes.

TEXT NODES
Manipulate strings with new nodes such as:

String to Curves
String Length
Slice String
Value to String
Join Strings
Replace String
Special Characters
Read More
Blender 3.0 Text Nodes
Blender 3.0 Geometry Nodes Material
MATERIALS
Play with materials inside Geometry Nodes!

New nodes include:

Set Material
Replace Material
Material Selection
Material Input
Material Index
Read More
INSTANCING
The way geometry nodes works with instances has been improved, to make it more intuitive and much faster.

Geometry can now be instanced directly.
Mesh modifiers after geometry nodes no longer implicitly realize instances.
Instances are now exposed properly to nodes, and aren’t converted to real geometry implicitly.
The Realize Instances node can explicitly convert instances into real geometry.
Read More
Blender 3.0 Geometry Nodes Instance Nodes
EEVEE ♥ ATTRIBUTES
Mesh attributes are no longer a Cycles exclusive, Eevee now fully supports attributes including those generated by Geometry Nodes.

OUT IN THE WILD






EVEN MORE GEOMETRY NODES
Improved Attribute Workflow
Faster evaluation system
New Overlay popover in Node Editor
Automatic panning when dragging links or nodes
Multi-threaded evaluation of fields
Dot grid background
New context breadcrumbs
Hide frame labels if empty
Mark node links red if there’s no possible implicit conversion
Dim out-of-frame node links
Remove green background when inside node groups
Display node warnings in Modifier
Spreadsheet sidebar to pick components and domains
New nodes design
Volumes now support Geometry Nodes
Faster Instance on Points on multiple CPU threads
Improved Instancing
USER INTERFACE

To celebrate the beginning of a new series, Blender 3.0 sports an updated theme, improvements, and a bunch of new options to further customize the already flexible layout system.

VISUAL REFRESH
Theme update focused on improving contrast.
Panels now have customizable rounded corners and margin between panels to tell them apart more clearly.
Several widgets have been tweaked for consistency, including menu items customizable roundness.
AREA MANAGEMENT
Corner action zones now allow joining any neighbors. Create new areas much more easily.

Additionally, these improvements were made:

New “Close Area” option in the context menu.
Hit size for area resizing has been increased.
Better snapping of areas while holding Ctrl.
Improved mouse cursor feedback when joining is not possible.
PLUS THESE USER INTERFACE TWEAKS
Freestyle UI redesign
3D Viewport Statistics overlay shows local stats in Local View
Flat shading for NLA strips
“List Item” no longer relies on “Regular” theme setting
Improve contrast on playhead
Style drag-drop indicators as tooltips
Improved menu mnemonic underlines
“Active Tab” text uses region’s “Text Highlight” theme color when active
Use arrow icon on context paths
Roundness theme setting for Menu Item
Resizing areas now snap to consistent sizes
Editor header and Tool Settings region swapped for consistency
Improved feedback when closing files
Object thumbnails captured at an oblique angle
Improved placement of child windows when using multiple monitors
Remove separator lines between rows in VSE
Improved scaling of File Browser preview images
Don’t resize temporary windows if they’re already open
Support for Japanese, Chinese and Korean input in text fields on macOS
Ctrl+F while hovering UI lists will open the search for the list
Automatically scroll view to Text buttons when editing
Improved .blend preview thumbnails
Show descriptive display names for Fonts in File Browser
Substantial speed increases for interface text drawing
Associate current Blender with .blend files in Preferences (Windows)
Less jiggling of contents when moving nodes
Increased resolution of blend file thumbnails
Split Dimensions panel
Mouse hit size for area resizing increased
Rework the custom property edit operator
Display indicator in 3D Viewport when Clipping Region is enabled
Z axis lock option for Walk Navigation
Improve the layout of Custom Properties edit panel
Navigation gizmos no longer hide when using modal operators
New filter “All View Layers” in Outliner
WHAT YOU SEE
IS WHAT YOU GET


STRIP THUMBNAILS
The Video Sequencer now supports thumbnail previews!

Enable it via the Overlay popover.
Works with Image and Video strips.
Preview while transforming.
Threaded loading for performance.
STRIP TRANSFORM TOOLS
It is now possible to transform strips directly in the preview region, just like in the 3D Viewport.

New transform tools and gizmos.
Press G, R, S for quick transforms.
Supports axes snapping.
All pivot points supported.
Use the new 2D Cursor as pivot.
Custom Color Tags
Custom Color Tags
Set a custom color to any strip. Define the color palette in Preferences.

Overwrite Overlap Mode
Place strips directly on top of others to overwrite them partially or fully.

Better Snapping
Better Snapping
You can now snap to playhead, strips, and even filter muted or sound strips.

MORE SEQUENCER IMPROVEMENTS
Up to 128 channels supported
Add ASC CDL color correction method
Improved animation performance
Allow effect inputs to be blended if placed above effect
Add Refresh operator to all regions
Select strips at current frame
Draw strips transparent during transform overlap
Improved UI for Speed effect
New sound and video default formats
TAKE CONTROL

Blender 3.0 offers a brand new set of VR controller-based functionality, including the ability to visualize controllers and the ability to navigate one’s way through a scene in VR using controller inputs.

Three types of navigation (teleport, fly, grab) are now available via the built-in VR Scene Inspection add-on.

PLUS MORE VR
New “Absolute Tracking” option to skips eye offsets
Improved animation performance
Higher color depth for VR-displayed images when supported
Use user-defined tracking bounds instead of position at application launch when available
Support for Varjo quad-view and foveated headsets (Varjo VR-3, XR-3)
Fixes
STRIKE A POSE

NEW POSE LIBRARY
Making use of the new Asset Browser, the pose library system in Blender gets a massive revamp.

Create or set poses directly from the 3D Viewport.
Click-drag to blend into the pose.
Right-click on a pose to select or deselect its corresponding bones.
Quickly flip a pose with just a click.
Read More
Download this file and play!

MORE ANIMATION
& RIGGING GOODIES
FCurve and NLA modifier properties can now be overridden
New Keying Set: Location, Rotation, Scale, and Custom Properties
Ctrl+F in animation editors use channel search
Translation/rotation/scale options for custom bone shapes
Remove Target Shear on Copy Transform constraint
Box (or circle) select on FCurves
Make object data single user
Limit Rotation Euler Order
Improved Restrict Range Borders on FCurve modifiers
Blend To Neighbour Pose Sliding
Update All Visible Motion Paths
Added Scale Y for bendy bones
Automatic B-Bone Scale toggles
“Local Space (Owner Orientation)” for Target Space of bone targets
“Apply”, “Duplicate”, and “Copy constraints to selected”
Limit Rotation now removes shear before processing
More Mix mode options in Copy Transforms, Action constraints
Stretch To default Rotation Type set to Swing
Pose Sliding / In-Betweens Tool
See all Animation & Rigging updates
GREASE PENCIL

The 2D animation workflow keeps getting better with new modifiers, a polished drawing experience, and Line Art performance has been greatly improved since the last release.

DOT DASH
This new modifier allows you to generate dot-dash lines on strokes automatically, assign different materials, offset, and more.

Textured Effect Demo
Design Demo
MORE GREASE PENCIL + LINE ART
New Length modifier
Randomize options for Offset modifier.
Custom camera for Line Art strokes
Multiframe support added to Reproject
Convert Text to Grease Pencil object
Line Art stroke offset
Select Random
Convert Mesh to Grease Pencil copies the Vertex Groups
Up to 40% increase in performance calculating Line Art objects
Move to Layer now supports Multiframe
Curvature mode in Length modifier
Cache Line Art modifiers in the same stack
Better automerge on drawings with different thickness
Trim Line Art strokes at the edge of the camera
Copy Materials to other Grease Pencil objects
New Dilate parameter for Fill brush
Automatic creases on flat/smooth surfaces for Line Art
Bake transformed strokes into a new Grease Pencil object
Set caps to be rounded or flat
Mask layers list can now be re-ordered
Line Art objects load up to 50% faster
Better tolerance to faces perpendicular to view
Filter Freestyle face marks
Occlusion effectiveness for materials
Camera overscan for Line Art
Vertex Weight Proximity and Angle
See all Grease Pencil updates
QUICKSAVE

Loading and saving compressed .blend files is now magnitudes faster
thanks to using the Zstandard algorithm instead of gzip.

Load Fast
2.92 splash
2.81 splash
Ember Forest
Mr. Elephant
Loading compressed .blend files.

Unit: seconds
Blender 2.93
Blender 3.0
Save Faster
2.92 splash
2.81 splash
Ember Forest
Mr. Elephant
Saving .blend files with compression.

Unit: seconds
Blender 2.93
Blender 3.0
Read More
TEAM PLAYER

Interoperability takes a leap forward in 3.0 with the support for importing Pixar’s Universal Scene Description and improvements to Alembic.

USD IMPORTER
The first milestone for importing USD files is here:

Meshes with UV coordinates, Vertex Colors and Subdivision.
Cameras, perspective and orthographic.
Curves including USD Basis and NURBS.
Volumes as OpenVDB field assets.
Materials, including an experimental feature to convert shaders to Principled BSDF.
Lights, does not include USD Dome, Cylinder, Geometry.
Read More
Pixar USD
Alembic
ALEMBIC
Support for exporting animated UV maps.
Import per vertex UV maps.
Import and export support for generated mesh vertex coordinates (ORCOs).
New Render and Viewport evaluation modes.
Read More
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE
Improved Collections Syncing in ViewLayers
Faster opening of files with thousands of linked libraries
Wavelength Node in Eevee
Falloff setting for Weight Paint Gradient Tool
Texture Paint Stencil now uses the assigned UV Layer
Better syncing between texture slots while painting
Automatic shading mode in Voxel Remesher


Blender 3.0

Today, 3 December 2021, Blender Foundation announces the release of Blender 3.0, to mark the beginning of a new era for open source 2D/3D content creation.

Released 3 December, 2021

SHOWOFF REEL

WHAT’S NEW IN LESS THAN 7 MINUTES

The Freedom to Create, V3

CYCLE FASTER
THAN EVER

Cycles GPU kernels have been rewritten for better performance, rendering between 2x and 8x faster in real-world scenes.

Barbershop
Pabellon
Junkshop
Classroom
Monster
Render time with an NVIDIA Quadro RTX A6000 and OptiX.

Unit: seconds
Blender 2.93
Blender 3.0
LESS LAG, MORE FUN

Enjoy a more responsive viewport due to new scheduling and display algorithms.

Viewport Navigation
Lights Manipulation
Moving around the 3D viewport feels much more responsive now, even with Overlays turned on.
NICE NOISE

OpenImageDenoise was upgraded to version 1.4, with improved detail preservation. A new pre-filter option was added to control the denoising of auxiliary albedo and normal passes.

SHADOW TERMINATOR
New option to reduce shadow artifacts that often happen with low poly game models. Offset rays from the flat surface to match where they would be for a smooth surface as specified by the normals.

The Geometry Offset option works as follows:

0.0: Disabled
0.001: Only terminated triangles
0.1: Default
1.0: All Triangles Affected
Generally, using one or a few levels of subdivision can get rid of artifacts faster than before.

Read More
CATCH BEYOND SHADOWS
Say hi to the new shadow catcher, completely rewritten for Blender 3.0

New features include:

Indirect and environment light support, for more accurate compositing.
Option for lights to be considered included or excluded, that is if they are real or synthetic objects.
New Shadow Catcher pass to fully handle coloured indirect light and emission.
Read More
Coloured shadows and precise reflections make blending 3D with real footage much easier.

tT
SKIN CARE

Subsurface scattering now supports anisotropy and index of refraction for Random Walk. Realistic skin has an anisotropy around 0.8.

THERE’S MORE
Time-based rendering limit
Hardware ray-tracing for baking with NVIDIA OptiX
Faster hair using 3D curves in Optix
Separate presets for viewport and render sampling
Reduced kernel compilation time for OptiX
Improved adaptive sampling
Geometry Offset option to reduce shadow terminator artifacts
Light option to be visible to camera rays
New Position render pass
Volume sampling quality is now the same for CPU and GPU
Baking support for denoising and adaptive sampling
Open Shading Language metadata support for UI labels and checkboxes
Removed Features and Compatibility
Read More
ASSET BROWSER

The first milestone of the Asset Browser project is here!
Your workflow is about to get much more organized.


EASY AS
DRAG & DROP

Materials, Objects, and World datablocks are supported as part of the first milestone, with more planned to come on the next releases.

Download this Cube Diorama .blend file to play with the new Asset Browser.

Asset Libraries
Asset Libraries
Define folders as Asset Libraries in your Preferences so you can load your favorite assets anytime, from anywhere.

Catalogs
Organize your assets in catalogs. These are independent of the .blend file the asset is stored in, providing great flexibility.

Tags
Tags
Special metadata can be added to assets such as author, tags, and asset description.

AND MORE
Custom asset thumbnails
Link, Append, and Append reusing data modes
“Frame Selected” to scroll to the selected assets
Python API
Support rendering previews for Action datablocks

GEOMETRY NODES

The procedural system introduced in 2.92 has been extended with a re-imagined method for designing node groups, a new attribute system, around 100 new nodes for interaction with curves, text data, instances, and more.

GO ON A FIELD TRIP
Discover a new concept for passing around data and functions. Introducing: Fields.

Operations can be built from basic nodes and simply connected together, removing the need for named attributes as a way to store intermediate data, and removing the need for special “Attribute” nodes for simple operations.

Fields Workflow
Named Attributes Workflow
“With fields it’s much easier to build node groups for higher level concepts that work together better than before.”

Read More
At a Glance
At a Glance
A new overlay colors the wires to match the socket they are connected to, making it much easier to spot their type at a distance.

Sneak Peek
Sneak Peek
Mouse over the sockets to quickly inspect their content, know their type, and a handy tooltip about their functionality has been added to a number of nodes.

Circle vs Diamond
Circle vs Diamond
In order to tell at a glance which sockets support fields, single values, or both, sockets are now drawn with a diamond, circle, or combined shape.

AHEAD OF THE CURVE

Native curve data joins the Geometry Nodes party. Resample, fill, trim, manipulate the handles, set spline type, convert to mesh, or get started with the included curve primitives.

Blender 3.0 Curves
A WALL OF NODES
The Geometry Nodes modifier is now supported on Curve and Text objects with full support for the attribute system.

Splines have resolution and cyclic builtin attributes.
Control points have position, radius, tilt, handle_left and handle_right built-in attributes.
Attributes with any name or data type can be created or removed on splines or control points.
Attributes can be interpolated between the two curve domains.
Read More
User Manual
MORE THAN WORDS
Got something to say? Use Geometry Nodes! Blender 3.0 brings the first milestone in Text Nodes.

TEXT NODES
Manipulate strings with new nodes such as:

String to Curves
String Length
Slice String
Value to String
Join Strings
Replace String
Special Characters
Read More
Blender 3.0 Text Nodes
Blender 3.0 Geometry Nodes Material
MATERIALS
Play with materials inside Geometry Nodes!

New nodes include:

Set Material
Replace Material
Material Selection
Material Input
Material Index
Read More
INSTANCING
The way geometry nodes works with instances has been improved, to make it more intuitive and much faster.

Geometry can now be instanced directly.
Mesh modifiers after geometry nodes no longer implicitly realize instances.
Instances are now exposed properly to nodes, and aren’t converted to real geometry implicitly.
The Realize Instances node can explicitly convert instances into real geometry.
Read More
Blender 3.0 Geometry Nodes Instance Nodes
EEVEE ♥ ATTRIBUTES
Mesh attributes are no longer a Cycles exclusive, Eevee now fully supports attributes including those generated by Geometry Nodes.

OUT IN THE WILD






EVEN MORE GEOMETRY NODES
Improved Attribute Workflow
Faster evaluation system
New Overlay popover in Node Editor
Automatic panning when dragging links or nodes
Multi-threaded evaluation of fields
Dot grid background
New context breadcrumbs
Hide frame labels if empty
Mark node links red if there’s no possible implicit conversion
Dim out-of-frame node links
Remove green background when inside node groups
Display node warnings in Modifier
Spreadsheet sidebar to pick components and domains
New nodes design
Volumes now support Geometry Nodes
Faster Instance on Points on multiple CPU threads
Improved Instancing
USER INTERFACE

To celebrate the beginning of a new series, Blender 3.0 sports an updated theme, improvements, and a bunch of new options to further customize the already flexible layout system.

VISUAL REFRESH
Theme update focused on improving contrast.
Panels now have customizable rounded corners and margin between panels to tell them apart more clearly.
Several widgets have been tweaked for consistency, including menu items customizable roundness.
AREA MANAGEMENT
Corner action zones now allow joining any neighbors. Create new areas much more easily.

Additionally, these improvements were made:

New “Close Area” option in the context menu.
Hit size for area resizing has been increased.
Better snapping of areas while holding Ctrl.
Improved mouse cursor feedback when joining is not possible.
PLUS THESE USER INTERFACE TWEAKS
Freestyle UI redesign
3D Viewport Statistics overlay shows local stats in Local View
Flat shading for NLA strips
“List Item” no longer relies on “Regular” theme setting
Improve contrast on playhead
Style drag-drop indicators as tooltips
Improved menu mnemonic underlines
“Active Tab” text uses region’s “Text Highlight” theme color when active
Use arrow icon on context paths
Roundness theme setting for Menu Item
Resizing areas now snap to consistent sizes
Editor header and Tool Settings region swapped for consistency
Improved feedback when closing files
Object thumbnails captured at an oblique angle
Improved placement of child windows when using multiple monitors
Remove separator lines between rows in VSE
Improved scaling of File Browser preview images
Don’t resize temporary windows if they’re already open
Support for Japanese, Chinese and Korean input in text fields on macOS
Ctrl+F while hovering UI lists will open the search for the list
Automatically scroll view to Text buttons when editing
Improved .blend preview thumbnails
Show descriptive display names for Fonts in File Browser
Substantial speed increases for interface text drawing
Associate current Blender with .blend files in Preferences (Windows)
Less jiggling of contents when moving nodes
Increased resolution of blend file thumbnails
Split Dimensions panel
Mouse hit size for area resizing increased
Rework the custom property edit operator
Display indicator in 3D Viewport when Clipping Region is enabled
Z axis lock option for Walk Navigation
Improve the layout of Custom Properties edit panel
Navigation gizmos no longer hide when using modal operators
New filter “All View Layers” in Outliner
WHAT YOU SEE
IS WHAT YOU GET


STRIP THUMBNAILS
The Video Sequencer now supports thumbnail previews!

Enable it via the Overlay popover.
Works with Image and Video strips.
Preview while transforming.
Threaded loading for performance.
STRIP TRANSFORM TOOLS
It is now possible to transform strips directly in the preview region, just like in the 3D Viewport.

New transform tools and gizmos.
Press G, R, S for quick transforms.
Supports axes snapping.
All pivot points supported.
Use the new 2D Cursor as pivot.
Custom Color Tags
Custom Color Tags
Set a custom color to any strip. Define the color palette in Preferences.

Overwrite Overlap Mode
Place strips directly on top of others to overwrite them partially or fully.

Better Snapping
Better Snapping
You can now snap to playhead, strips, and even filter muted or sound strips.

MORE SEQUENCER IMPROVEMENTS
Up to 128 channels supported
Add ASC CDL color correction method
Improved animation performance
Allow effect inputs to be blended if placed above effect
Add Refresh operator to all regions
Select strips at current frame
Draw strips transparent during transform overlap
Improved UI for Speed effect
New sound and video default formats
TAKE CONTROL

Blender 3.0 offers a brand new set of VR controller-based functionality, including the ability to visualize controllers and the ability to navigate one’s way through a scene in VR using controller inputs.

Three types of navigation (teleport, fly, grab) are now available via the built-in VR Scene Inspection add-on.

PLUS MORE VR
New “Absolute Tracking” option to skips eye offsets
Improved animation performance
Higher color depth for VR-displayed images when supported
Use user-defined tracking bounds instead of position at application launch when available
Support for Varjo quad-view and foveated headsets (Varjo VR-3, XR-3)
Fixes
STRIKE A POSE

NEW POSE LIBRARY
Making use of the new Asset Browser, the pose library system in Blender gets a massive revamp.

Create or set poses directly from the 3D Viewport.
Click-drag to blend into the pose.
Right-click on a pose to select or deselect its corresponding bones.
Quickly flip a pose with just a click.
Read More
Download this file and play!

MORE ANIMATION
& RIGGING GOODIES
FCurve and NLA modifier properties can now be overridden
New Keying Set: Location, Rotation, Scale, and Custom Properties
Ctrl+F in animation editors use channel search
Translation/rotation/scale options for custom bone shapes
Remove Target Shear on Copy Transform constraint
Box (or circle) select on FCurves
Make object data single user
Limit Rotation Euler Order
Improved Restrict Range Borders on FCurve modifiers
Blend To Neighbour Pose Sliding
Update All Visible Motion Paths
Added Scale Y for bendy bones
Automatic B-Bone Scale toggles
“Local Space (Owner Orientation)” for Target Space of bone targets
“Apply”, “Duplicate”, and “Copy constraints to selected”
Limit Rotation now removes shear before processing
More Mix mode options in Copy Transforms, Action constraints
Stretch To default Rotation Type set to Swing
Pose Sliding / In-Betweens Tool
See all Animation & Rigging updates
GREASE PENCIL

The 2D animation workflow keeps getting better with new modifiers, a polished drawing experience, and Line Art performance has been greatly improved since the last release.

DOT DASH
This new modifier allows you to generate dot-dash lines on strokes automatically, assign different materials, offset, and more.

Textured Effect Demo
Design Demo
MORE GREASE PENCIL + LINE ART
New Length modifier
Randomize options for Offset modifier.
Custom camera for Line Art strokes
Multiframe support added to Reproject
Convert Text to Grease Pencil object
Line Art stroke offset
Select Random
Convert Mesh to Grease Pencil copies the Vertex Groups
Up to 40% increase in performance calculating Line Art objects
Move to Layer now supports Multiframe
Curvature mode in Length modifier
Cache Line Art modifiers in the same stack
Better automerge on drawings with different thickness
Trim Line Art strokes at the edge of the camera
Copy Materials to other Grease Pencil objects
New Dilate parameter for Fill brush
Automatic creases on flat/smooth surfaces for Line Art
Bake transformed strokes into a new Grease Pencil object
Set caps to be rounded or flat
Mask layers list can now be re-ordered
Line Art objects load up to 50% faster
Better tolerance to faces perpendicular to view
Filter Freestyle face marks
Occlusion effectiveness for materials
Camera overscan for Line Art
Vertex Weight Proximity and Angle
See all Grease Pencil updates
QUICKSAVE

Loading and saving compressed .blend files is now magnitudes faster
thanks to using the Zstandard algorithm instead of gzip.

Load Fast
2.92 splash
2.81 splash
Ember Forest
Mr. Elephant
Loading compressed .blend files.

Unit: seconds
Blender 2.93
Blender 3.0
Save Faster
2.92 splash
2.81 splash
Ember Forest
Mr. Elephant
Saving .blend files with compression.

Unit: seconds
Blender 2.93
Blender 3.0
Read More
TEAM PLAYER

Interoperability takes a leap forward in 3.0 with the support for importing Pixar’s Universal Scene Description and improvements to Alembic.

USD IMPORTER
The first milestone for importing USD files is here:

Meshes with UV coordinates, Vertex Colors and Subdivision.
Cameras, perspective and orthographic.
Curves including USD Basis and NURBS.
Volumes as OpenVDB field assets.
Materials, including an experimental feature to convert shaders to Principled BSDF.
Lights, does not include USD Dome, Cylinder, Geometry.
Read More
Pixar USD
Alembic
ALEMBIC
Support for exporting animated UV maps.
Import per vertex UV maps.
Import and export support for generated mesh vertex coordinates (ORCOs).
New Render and Viewport evaluation modes.
Read More
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE
Improved Collections Syncing in ViewLayers
Faster opening of files with thousands of linked libraries
Wavelength Node in Eevee
Falloff setting for Weight Paint Gradient Tool
Texture Paint Stencil now uses the assigned UV Layer
Better syncing between texture slots while painting
Automatic shading mode in Voxel Remesher

https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.0


Release 2.93.6

Failed assert when dragging object data-block into 3D View. [T87703]
Can’t duplicate or copy (Ctrl-C) object from linked file. [T90840]
arm64: Viewport and Timeline jump large distances when scrolling the pointer off screen using Shift-Middle Mouse. [T88386]
Cycles render artefacts with motion blur turned on. [T91728]
VSE: Implement sanity check for files with more channels than supported. [rBaaa85ad2e0f]
Some Editors (e.g. Outliner) can be synced with animation editor (‘Sync visible Range’). [T91237]
Crash in sculpt mode using “Smooth” brush and tab with tablet stylus. [T89164]
[GPUOffscreen] draw_view3d doesn’t apply color management settings. [T84227]
Cycles – Rendering on a Nvidia A100 crashes/fails on Google Colab. [T91879]
Fix LLVM 12 symbol conflict with Mesa drivers, after recent Linux libs update. [rBd3f04702890]
GPencil: Memory leak removing stroke from python. [T92185]
Camera BG jitter offset (regression). [T91398]
EEVEE: Specular BSDF incompatible with Shader to RGB when SSR is active. [T88766]
Fix missing null-terminator in BLI_string_join_arrayN. [rB554b1b1663a]
Blender crashes after selecting any object in outliner hierarchy (using statistics overlay). [T92246]
Auto naming of the Vertex Group doesn’t work for Grease Pencil. [T92314]
Clicking in Library Overrides Outliner triggers crash in this file. [T92265]
Crash to desktop with boolean modifier. [T90818]
Crash when calling delete to an empty space with an unselected layer in the outliner. [T91411]
Remesh-bug.crash. [T92355]
2.93: Crash on system with a non-English locale. [T88877]
Blender LTS: Maintenance Task 2.93. [T88449]
Image Editor doesn’t display stereoscopic images. [T92608]
LibOverride: Fix crash in ShapeKeys when making a mesh override local. [rB9a290dd657]
Fix missing proper ‘make local’ call for liboverrides from outliner. [rB9a80455d8774d6b]
Appending crashes. [T89516]
Bones in transformed armatures (rotation and scale) don’t scale properly to cursor. [T92515]
Blender 3.0 – Planar Track – Only half of the image appears in the MovieClip Editor. [T92807]


Release 2.93.5

Crash selecting 3D tracking marker. [T90651]
Image Editor not sampling color from the the currently selected pass. [T90772]
PulseAudio breaks animation playback in new scene (no imported sound involved) LTS backport, 3.0 is fine. [T90887]
Blender popup windows open on the wrong screen. [T90752]
Fix buffer size mismatch in SCRIPT_OT_python_file_run. [rB515bdda3d9c]
Fix invalid mask use for the UV-project modifier. [rB969d6d3a0ff]
Fix “Text to Object” creating invisible object. [rB933c6b7d8a3]
Fix T88909: Win32 getTitle() UTF8 Support. [rBd6facd44b53]
Fix error scaling thumbnails to zero dimensions. [rB16637e7ff40]
Audio causes issues with Playback when PC put to Sleep, Hibernate or when Screensaver appears. [T88887]
GPencil Time Offset Modifier together with Armature Modifier or/and Lattice Modifier broken in 2.93.3. [T91060]
Grease Pencil: Adding driver in Transform doesn’t behave as expected during playback. [T88433]
GPencil: Sculpt Smooth Brush is using Affect Pressure but is not used internally. [T91159]
Loop Tools Relax. [T90600]
Text “Scale to Fit” no longer working properly since 2.93.4. [T91401]
Fix memory leak if an error occurred assigning id-property sequence. [rBec448d5a6ac]
Bisect straight line gesture features dont work (“Flip” / “Snap” option). [T91320]
Workbench doesn’t respect GP simplify options when rendering. [T91448]
GPencil: Scripting weight_get and Vertex Groups not working at expected with several groups. [T91511]
GPencil: Interpolate Sequence crash and quit. [T91534]
Eevee ambient occlusion is incorrect on M1 macMini. [T87801]
Intel HD graphics: Changing Roughness Value to 0 causes mesh to be black. [T88754]
VSE playback periodically refuses to work (Pulseaudio, OpenAL seems fine). [T89045]
GPencil: Tint modifier “apply” removes the effect. [T91607]
Texture Paint Stencil doesn’t use assigned UV Layer. [T91557]
Fix default surface resolution U/V mis-match. [rB4528c9a357a]
Fix ‘WM_window_find_under_cursor’. [rB1ff10bb6d18]
Fix building without audaspace. [rBaf42086e743]


Release 2.93.4

VSE: Flush audio encode after finishing video export. [rB85c08c9717b]
FFMPEG: Fix building with older versions that need FFMPEG_USE_DURATION_WORKAROUND. [rB7ec351c0d53]
VSE: Fix “off by one” error when encoding audio. [rB9511009438d]
VSE: Fix memory leak when adding bad image/movie strips. [rB54a821e8fd7]
VSE: Fix video strip duration calculation. [rBd486d248687]
VSE: Fix seeking issues. [rB00dd68405d8]
VSE: Fix audaspace not reading ffmpeg files with start offset correctly. [rB489df7ac88c]
VSE: Use lines to draw waveform. [rBc634d859b21]
M2T video seeking is broken. [T87967]
Add sanity NULL checks when loading sound sequences. [rB1a4122d4415]
wrong address to get boost libraries in /build_files/build_environment/install_deps.sh. [T90719]
Effect Strip added to a nested Metastrip gets duplicate name (thus inherits fcurves from other Strips). [T90737]
Memorie spike shrink-wrap and geometry nodes. [T89429]
Fix: DNA struct alignment on 32 bit. [rB9fb9bf59967]
Makesdna: Fix detecting 32 bit padding issues. [rB70df9119f46]
Fix FTBFS on mips64el architecture. [rB9d94b358ca1]
Fix memory leak with building springs in the cloth simulator. [rB20f04ce62af]
Knife project leaks memory each time a text, curve, or surface object is used for cutting. [T90791]
Grease Pencil layer transformations ignored by select tool. [T90690]
Fix memory leak in edit-mesh dissolve degenerate. [rBe1e2abd4bf0]
Scale to Fit overflows into a second line. [T89241]
Memory leak after importing a model/ toggling shading workspace. [T88033]
ASAN: Trying to Undo a knife-project operation causes heap-use-after-free failure. [T90493]
blender 2.93.1 fails to build with python 3.10.0b4 (upcoming python 3.10). [T89931]
Incorrect result of Vector Projection (Geometry Nodes -> Attribute Vector Math). [T90567]
Grease Pencil Reproject Strokes on surfaces from a camera’s point of view is incorrectly placing the strokes on the Back Faces when canvas is intersecting the object. [T89101]
Something in Blender can generate invalid (Nan) values in UVMaps. [T79775]
Blender Crashing when opening file. [T89805]
bpy.types.Object.parent_bone not reset when clearing a bone parent. [T88498]
UI bugs in NLA Editor and Action Editor. [T87681]
Animation channels widgets (graph, action, NLA, *dopesheet*) block input for the search channel, and invert search toggle. [T90364]


Release 2.93.3

Cursor vertex snapping not working in UV editor. [T90477]
Fix fix invalid index use for edit-mesh laplacian smooth. [rB4d7f10d6143]
Fix slicing with negative indices. [rBe862874606b]
Slicing certain BMEditSelSeq objects crashes Blender. [T89450]
Fix broken logic in Windows directory query function. [rBa1b687c7a4a]
font loading creates duplicate ID names. [T90417]
Separate by loose parts weird result. [T85436]
Edit mode. Spin tool. Spin center is always on 3d-cursor despite pivot selection. [T86030]
Fix memory leaks in Python gizmo get/set handlers. [rB2be2aeaf0a5]
Fix gpu.types.GPUTexture crash when the size argument was too big. [rBbc627fbf657]
Fix memory leak with Python RNA property get callback errors. [rBa818ad5a549]
LineArt: Occlusion accuracy fix. [rB69edb9c7d96]
BlenderKit: fetch user’s ratings from server. [rBA6a81558b]
BlenderKit: improve ratings UI. [rBA78a5ae9b]
GPencil: Dopesheet channel box selection is offset. [T89952]
Very slow performance when copying rigid body physics. [T76356]
Hair particles duplication with duplicate settings enabled copies all the particles instead of one selected. [T83317]
NodeTree.links.new() can connect one output to a multi-input many times; access violation occurs when disconnecting. [T89416]
UI: Output Metadata: Strip Name no long accessible. [T78469]
Driver Editor not updated in real-time (blender >= 2.90). [T87041]
Crash after Instancing to Scene after making linked Collection local. [T89835]
Spline IK `joint_bindings` parameter is broken. [T83164]


Release 2.93.2

Changelog
Line Art Bug FIx: stroke default in-front should be on. [rB9e64fd461ac3fa05e4ae780ee3a9f41b18c7c216]
Follow Path for empty works only in negative values. [T89153]
Align Orientation to Target keeps rotation when toggled. [T89571]
`bpy.ops.screen.screen_full_area()` resets certain fields of the context. [T89526]
Fix edit-mesh random select regression in random seed use. [rB27e32652679]
Use-after-free when tabbing through numeric inputs. [T89265]
Fix invalid polygon normal array access building bake data. [rB32658bb5c9f]
Select Similar Face Regions triggers AddressSanitizer crash. [T89247]
Undefined Geometry nodes cause a crash when connected to a Group Output node. [T89004]
Set Origin missing from Text object in 2.93. [T88808]
Fix: Crash Requesting GPU_SHADER_GPENCIL_FILL builtin shader. [rB3c6a981fd98]
Viewport Render Preview glitching with Eevee Render Engine. [T89405]
Cleanup: Remove deprecated variables and functions calls from our ffmpeg code. [rBf522e8db228]
Fix T87932: Failure to build movie strip proxy. [rBfe4cbe62dff]
Make encoded video fps correct with ffmpeg < 4.4. [rB14308b0a5ef]
Fix T88623, T87044: Make encoded videos play correctly in VLC. [rB19c0666d408]
FFmpeg: Update proxy settings. [rB00ffe028200]
Fix T57397: Movies are blurred after sws_scale. [rB13ab6b7bb60]
FFmpeg: Fix seeking not returning the correct frame when not using TC index. [rB7eb3e77b94f]
Fix: Wrong logic for checking if we can reuse decoded frame. [rB02a6be54432]
Fix: Prevent small memory leak in VSE indexer. [rBcea80f1add5]
Fix: VSE timecodes being used even when turned off. [rBa68f5456e48]
Fix: VSE indexer seeking not working correctly. [rB7616f4ae577]
Fix: VSE search in mpegts files would fail. [rB444a8cbc2fd]
Fix: VSE seeking with proxy strips would fail on certain frames. [rBbec8e436a1c]
UI: Collection tab should hide when scene master collection is active. [T89422]
Blender crash when showing thumbnail of a strongly skewed .exr image. [T89868]
Fix T89861: Checking face selection breaks UV stitch operator. [rB062764d5d01]
Fix T70356: Scaling up 1×1 pixel image reads past buffer bounds. [rB41bd164e4c7]
Fix object “Set Origin” operating on linked library data. [rB5d1ef0efd01]
BlenderKit: draw categories in asset card. [rBA0d880d12]
BlenderKit: many post-release fixes. [rBA526557bb]
BlenderKit: fix category display. [rBA29db4b5f]
BlenderKit: fix an error when trying to assign material to unsupported object type. [rBAae7be84e]
Alembic export not respecting the renderable flag. [T89594]
Alembic export: evaluation mode option. [rB7b94e7cca49]
TGA Images with any alpha value smaller than one behaves unexpected. [T89034]
Collection user counts are set to `1` on file load. Boolean modifier orphans Collections. [T89765]
Round end-caps on Freestyle lines not working properly. [T88015]
Crash when baking to vertex colors while “Normals-> Auto Smooth” is enabled. [T88756]
Crash when using Cycles preview or render – custom data layer / auto smooth. [T89455]
Crash when editing a Collection Instance referenced by Line Art object. [T89838]
[2.93.2] Geometry nodes: wrongly detected “Node group has unidentified nodes or sockets” error. [T89851]
Persistent data, motion blur, and geometry displacement results in glitchy meshes during rendering. [T89736]
adding a custom AOV doesn’t show the output on the compositors render layer node. [T89981]
Geometry Nodes: ‘New’ Button tries to create node_tree on active modifier, rather than button context. [T89982]
Py API: `bpy.data.orphans_purge` incorrect argument parsing. [T89733]
Drawing with make line tool in an empty scene results crash. [T89724]
It can’t snap vertices when using community addon ‘Snap_Utilities_Line’. [T89812]
Blender File View – can’t type space while holding shift key. [T85517]
Separating meshes by material makes render passes in cycles stuck in 1/64. [T89884]


LTS Release 2.93.1

Changelog
__file__ not set during `.as_module()`. [T88899]
Fix buffer overrun in paint_line_strokes_spacing. [rBcc5392b4d93]
Skin Modifier asserts on invalid normals. [T88111]
Mantaflow inflow with shapekeys is not working anymore (regression). [T88566]
Mantaflow problem with geometry nodes. [T88531]
UV Editor Hide Selected not working on multiple selection. [T88625]
Cryptomatte: EXR sequence does not update when scrubbing the timeline. [T88666]
Cryptomatte only works for the first View Layer. [T88567]
EEVEE: AOVs not same as cycles. [rBe1d2485fd32]
TBBMalloc_proxy is failing on windows 10. [T88813]
ChromeOS: Black screen/window on startup:. [T77651]
When selected a texture in the Properties panel shows another texture in the 3D Viewport. [T88788]
LineArt: Fix edge clipping index error. [rB57301121747]
Grease Pencil Line Art Modifier – Incorrect baking with camera markers. [T88464]
Fix outdated face tessellation use when editing edit-mesh coodinates. [rBb4a81d80537]
Fix image space missing mask display panel. [rBb61f4fd8da3]
Fix modifier deform by armature check ignoring virtual modifiers. [rBbc648018571]
Bmesh: removed deform parameter of from_object still in PyDoc. [T89013]
VSE shading mode ignores Grease Pencil Vertex colors. [T86956]


Blender 2.93

Blender 2.93 LTS marks the end of a series 20+ years in the making,
paving the way for the next generation open source 3D creation pipeline.

Released June 2nd, 2021

DO MORE

A total of 22 new nodes were added to the Geometry Nodes editor expanding the attribute system, sampling textures, support for volume data, improved usablity, mesh primitives, Cycles support for attributes, and much more.


Attribute Proximity
Sample Texture
Volume to Mesh
For each point in the input geometry, this node finds the closest position on the target. Learn more.
NOT SO PRIMITIVE
It is now possible to create mesh circles, cones, cubes, cylinders, grids, ico-spheres, uv-spheres, and lines without ever leaving the Geometry Nodes editor . Learn more about Mesh Primitives.

Mesh Primitives inside Geometry Nodes
PLUS THESE NODES
Attribute Clamp
Attribute Combine XYZ
Attribute Convert
Attribute Map Range
Attribute Remove
Attribute Separate XYZ
Bounding Box
Collection Info
Is Viewport
Points to Volume
String Input
Subdivide
Geometry Nodes allows you to create the most flexible modifiers. Download this file and play!

IMPROVED USER EXPERIENCE
Using Geometry Nodes is now much easier thanks to error reporting, search, and a new way to inspect your geometry.

SEARCH ATTRIBUTES
Find the attribute you are looking for!

Domain and Type are displayed for context
Hit Enter to add a new attribute
Supports Fuzzy Search
Results are cached from the latest evaluation for improved performance
HAPPY ACCIDENTS
“We don’t make mistakes, we have happy accidents.”

And it’s important to know when and why they happen. You will now see a notification icon on the nodes that can’t be processed properly.


MEET YOUR NEW BEST FRIEND
Ever wondered what was the exact value for a specific attribute?
The Spreadsheet Editor is here to help you inspect your mesh, instances, or even point clouds.

This is just the beginning. In the future the Spreadsheet Editor will play a key role when managing your scene.
Learn more in the manual.


Learn
Check out the user manual to read about the new nodes, attributes, and more.


Download Demo Files
Learn by example with these files, look out for notes in the Geometry Nodes editor.


#GeometryNodes
The community is already creating the impossible. Join the celebration!

NODES GALORE
For this releases’ splash, the author Erindale went all-in and made the entire thing pretty much using only Geometry Nodes.

Download the .blend file and watch the walk-through.

Blender 2.93 Splash


SCULPT EXPAND

It has never been easier to create, tweak, and expand Masks or Face sets as you sculpt.

Mask Loops & Patterns
Mask Textures
Flexible Face Sets
Preview patterns as you go, create loops, gradients, combine them with mesh filters for incredible results.
MASKS OUT OF THE BOX
Gone are the days of drawing masks from scratch. You can now create masks automatically by loose parts (geometry islands) or Face Sets.

Combine it with Filters for ultimate flexibility.

Read more

Mask based on face sets.
Sculpting on 96M vertices (1.5M per object)
SWITCH IT UP
Splitting complex figures into multiple objects is a quick way to significantly improve performance. In order to ease this workflow, there is a new way to quickly jump between objects while in Sculpt mode.

Simply mouse over an object and hit D.


HOLD THE LINE ART

Automatically generated Grease Pencil lines around your objects.

The Line Art modifier generates stylized lines on your scene, collections, or individual objects.
Learn more in the manual. Download this demo file.

LINE ART OUT IN THE WILD




INTERPOLATE
ANYTHING

The Interpolate operator is now a full-fledged tool!
Rewritten from scratch for a more flexible workflow.

Interpolation now supports multiframe editing to work faster than ever. Learn more.

GREASE PENCIL
IN AND OUT

Import SVG files as Grease Pencil objects.
Export Grease Pencil objects as vectors to use in Inkscape and other popular vector-based applications.
PDF export supports animation, creating one page per keyframe. Great for storyboards!
Reference for SVG and PDF

Grease Pencil Import Export SVG and PDF
WHAT A FILLING

Meet the new Fill tool. It’s faster, more precise, and smarter.

Stroke Extension
Multiframe Fill
Create temporary closing strokes on the fly. Adjuste the strokes dynamically using the scroll-wheel or Page Up/Down.
EVEN MORE GREASE PENCIL
Better Workflow with Autokey
New Multiframe Display
Dopesheet context menu re-organized
Opacity for Annotations
New Layer transform parameters
Multiframe support in Draw mode
Noise Offset parameter in Noise Modifier
Remove limitation to use only one Lattice modifier

Erindale Woodford Phyllo
MORE THAN
MEETS THE EEYEE

The new Eevee looks so good you may want to re-render all your projects.

Volumetrics are now faster, more stable, support soft shadows and area lights.

EEVEE INFLUENCERS
Control how much the diffuse, specular, and volume components will contribute to the lighting.

All area shapes are now supported too!

The new Depth of Field handles close-ups and outlines much better.

VOLUMES + SHADOWS

Blender 2.93 puts the volume back in Volumetrics.

Volume shaders in Eevee now support Area Lights and Soft Shadows.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE

Reduced Flicker on Volumes
Ambient Occlusion Variable Distance
Glass BSDF Improvements
Reduced Light-leaking
Normal Maps Fixes
Subsurface Scattering Improvements
Reduced Noise in Screen-space Raytracing
Fresnel on Glossy Surfaces closer to Cycles
Better Reflection Cubemaps Probes

https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-93/


Blender 2.92

TA completely new workflow for editing meshes, new physics simulation methods, faster Cycles rendering, better compositing with Eevee, and so much more. Blender 2.92 marks the beginning of something incredible.

Released February 24th, 2021


GEOMETRY MEETS NODES

The new Geometry Nodes editor opens the door for creating and manipulating meshes using a node-based system.

A NEW MODIFIER
Create your own custom modifier! Expose properties from the nodes in the modifier stack for an easy-to-use interface.

Read more

Geometry Nodes
New Geometry Nodes Modifier

Pebbles Scattering using Geometry Nodes. Download sample file!
POINT SCATTER
This first iteration focuses on object scattering and instancing, laying the groundwork for more advanced workflows in the upcoming releases.

Read more


Learn
The user manual has been updated with a list of all the nodes, attributes, and more.


Try It
Learn by example with these files, look out for notes in the Geometry Nodes editor.


#GeometryNodes
The community is already creating the impossible. Join the party!

SCULPT GALORE

Oh Yeah Smear It
Pinch It
Beautiful Topology
Smear multires displacement over the limit surface similar to how smearing for colors and topology slide works.
SILHOUETTE ANYTIME
Shape silhouettes as you please with this new option in the Grab tool.

When used on thin meshes, grabbing from one side of the object won’t affecting the shape on the other side.

Read more

ELASTIC SNAKE
This mode deforms the mesh using a kelvinlet instead of applying
the displacement directly inside the brush radius, which is great for
stylized shapes sketching.

Read more

CHOP CHOP
Mesh Fairing allows you to visually remove parts of your mesh by completely smoothing the area inside a Face Set.

Read more

MORE SCULPT GOODIES
Allow inverting the Erase Displacement mesh filter
Paint Studio Light preset
Sculpt Session Stats
Face Set Edit delete Geometry operation
Plane Deformation Fall-off for Grab Tool

CURVE YOUR PENCIL

Grease Pencil strokes can now be edited as curves!

Edit strokes like Bézier curves. Learn more in the manual.

TRACE MOTION

The Trace Image feature now supports image sequences!

Perfect for bringing your storyboards into 3D.

Reference manual

Recommended read: The Future Of Storyboarding: Blender For Pre-Production.

SMOOOOTH

Grease Pencil interpolation has been improved to better deal with different sized strokes.

Previously, the longer stroke would be cut off. With the new algorithm, the strokes are properly “stretched” to fit the extreme shapes exactly.

EVEN MORE GREASE PENCIL
Improved Join Operator
Improved Method for Interpolation
Cutter Tool New Flat Caps
Auto-merge Strokes
Rotate textures in Dots and Strokes in Texture modifier
Copy Effects with Ctrl+L
Reset Vertex Color Data
Limit Bake Animation to Selected Frames
Layer Onion Skin Enabled by Default
Interpolate Tools in Draw Mode

BEYOND PRIMITIVE

Create primitives interactively with just two clicks.


EEVOLVED &#10084;&#65039;

Eevee and Cycles have never been closer!


CRYPTOMATTE
The Cryptomatte standard is now in Eevee! To efficiently create mattes for compositing. The settings are shared between Eevee and Cycles.


SHADER AOV
Arbitrary Output Variables are essential for compositing, now also available when rendering in Eevee! Shader AOV settings are also shared with Cycles.



SPEAK VOLUMES

Volume rendering is significantly more memory efficient, by using a sparse NanoVDB grid. Read more.

RENDER ANYTHING

NVIDIA RTX It's On
OptiX now supports hybrid rendering to combine the power of your CPU and GPU devices.

Ambient Occlusion and Bevel shaders are now supported while using OptiX!

* Make sure to use the latest drivers (450 or newer) to make use of all the features and optimizations.

MAKE A SPLASH

Blender 2.92 introduces APIC, a new method for simulations.

FLIP

FLIP produces a very splashy simulation with lots of particles dispersed in the air.

APIC

APIC produces a very energetic but also more stable simulation. Vortices within the liquid will be preserved better than with FLIP.

EVEN MORE PHYSICS
New Viscosity Method
Improved particle sampling
Faster Playback and Smaller Cache Sizes
Cloth now supports excluding faces from object collision using a vertex group
Disable colliders without removing the modifier
EXPOSÉ

See everything with the new Exposure node in the Compositor.

On the left side the result of the exposure node, on the right the raw image.

Better Premultiplication in Keying Node
New Save as Render option in File Output node
ANIMATION

Better Euler Discontinuity Filter
Custom Object Space for Constraints
New NLA strips will have Sync Length enabled
Improvements on B-Bone Preserve Volume
FCurves with Modifiers are now drawn anchored to the NLA strip
Weight Painting Auto-Normalize Improvements
Bake Action Optional Cleanup
User Interface Improvements


Blender 2.91

The fourth major release in 2020 is here to further improve the user experience, adding powerful new booleans, better cloth sculpting with support for collisions, volume objects modifiers, outline, improved animation tools and so much more.

Released November 25th, 2020

https://youtu.be/3RtNV-kjh5M
WHEN CLOTHES COLLIDE

Introducing collision support for the sculpt cloth brush and filter.

SCULPT FASTER
Speed up your workflow with quick gestures!

Draw a line to:
Trim
Create Masks
Create Face Sets
Use the cursor depth to set the origin.
Combine with box and lasso gestures.
MORE THAN JUST A TRIM

The new Sculpt Trim tool lets you cut and even add geometry using box or lasso gestures.

BOUNDARY BRUSH
This brush includes a set of deformation modes designed to control the shape of the mesh boundaries.

POSE CLOTH
The new Simulation Target property allows the Pose and Boundary brushes to simulate cloth effects as you use them.

SOME MORE SCULPT GOODNESS
Line Project Gesture Tool
Face Set Box and Lasso gestures
Use EEVEE Materials as Matcaps
Fade Inactive Geometry Overlay
XYZ symmetry is now per mesh
Draw Face Sets and Masks in Objects with Constructive Modifiers
Use Cursor Depth for Trimming
Cloth Brush Soft Body Plasticity
Sculpt in any Multiresolution Level
Sharpen Mesh Filter
Erase Displacement Mesh Filter
Invert Smooth to Enhance Details
Sculpt Filter Orientation Options
Add global automasking settings support in filters
Face Set Extract Operator
Edit Face Set Tool
Option to mask front faces only
Option to lock the rotation in the Pose Brush scale deform
Cloth brush Pin Simulation Boundary
See all Sculpt changes
BOOLEANS ANEW

Introducing the Exact solver to take care of complex geometry.

The old method is still available as “Fast“, when performance is preferred over precision.

AND MORE
Use a Collection as Boolean
Better Intersect Knife and Intersect Boolean
More options for Subdivision Surface modifier
Ocean Modifier: Split Viewport and Render Resolution
UV Editor: Better loop select tools
See all Modeling improvements
CUSTOM CURVE BEVELS

Curve and text objects now have support for custom bevel profiles, just like the bevel modifier.

All bevel types now support flat curve caps too!

VOLUME &#8674; MESH

A new modifier for volume objects allows you to dynamically convert them into a mesh, ideal for stylized fluids.

…and vice versa!

MESH &#8674; VOLUME

Convert any mesh into a volume and combine it with the new Volume Displace modifier.

See all Volume Object changes
FROM DRAWING TO 3D

Convert images into Grease Pencil objects with just one click!

For best results use a black and white image.

FIRE IN THE HOLE

The new Holdout option in materials allows you to paint holes in strokes and filled areas.

EVEN MORE GREASE PENCIL
New Cleanup Frames operator
Improved convert mesh to strokes and bake mesh animation
New Step parameter for Interpolate Sequence
Layer Modes in Fill Brush
Automatically adjust offset modifier thickness when scaling
Subdivision parameter for primitives
See all Grease Pencil changes
FIND ANYTHING

PROPERTY SEARCH
Can’t remember where that setting is? Search for it!

Press Ctrl+F and start typing
Results are highlighted in blue
Check the sidebar for results in other tabs
Press Alt+F to clear the search field
Hit Esc to cancel
It even finds results inside add-ons!

TYPOS WELCOME
Sloppy typing? Don’t worry! Fuzzy search makes it so you can be less precise and still find what you look for.

Typing is more forgiving:
gbr will find RGB
txt will find Texture
Write the first letter of each word for fast results:
SSS for Subsurface Scattering
StR for Shader to RGB
PLUS
Add support for Kelvin, Celsius and Fahrenheit units
Open Recent Files now shows path, size and date
Reset to Default Value now works in more places
Dedicated auto-keyframing panel
More consistent Mask menu
New invert filter in Dopesheet, Timeline and Graph Editor
Aesthetic improvements to dialogs
See all user interface changes
COMPLEX RIGID BODIES

The new support for Compound Shape collisions allow for complex simulations not possible before.
You now can combine multiple primitive shapes into a concave shape, resulting in blazing fast simulations.

See all Physics improvements

STAY ORGANIZED

The Outliner got some extra love in 2.91

SHE COMES IN COLORS
Everywhere! Tag your collections with colors.

Pick your favorite colors in Preferences
Colored icons will also show in menus
A colored hierarchy line helps you keep track of levels
OUTLINER &#10084; MODIFIERS
Drag & drop now works for modifiers, constraints and Grease Pencil effects.

Drag within the object (or bone) to reorder
Drag to another object (or bone) to copy
Drag the parent element (Modifiers, Constraints, or Effects) to link all to the target object or bone.
AND SOME
Quickly Switch Modes
Left and Right Walk Navigation
Display Grease Pencil Modifiers & Shader FX
Context-aware RMB menus
Drag & Drop Object Data into the Viewport to Create Instance
Better Hierarchy Lines
See all changes to the Outliner
ANIMATION


SNAPPIER F-CURVES
Animation curves can now become much snappier, allowing for more sudden changes with fewer keyframes required.

This will allow for more extreme curves leading to snappier animations.

Old files will update automagically.

STAY IN SHAPE
Have you ever added a keyframe and had the resulting curve distorted? Not anymore!

All keyframes types can now be inserted without changing the F-Curve shape.


SOME MORE
Better Snap tools in Graph Editor
Sync Length improvements in NLA
Active Keyframe in F-Curves
Evaluation Time slide in Action Constraints
“Copy To Selected” support for keyframes
Better Strip Evaluation in NLA
Child Of constraint no longer jumps around when added
See all Animation & Rigging changes
OVERRIDE ALL

The library override system really shines in Blender 2.91.

Transform Overrides
Resync
On the left the library .blend file, on the right the linked model with transform overrides applied.
BYE PROXY

Proxy objects can be converted into overrides with just one click.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE

New Emission Strength in Principled BSDF shader
Better alpha blending in Image Editor
Override Cycles compute device from the command line
Implemented Brown-Conrady distortion model
Faster video encoding/decoding
Support pure emissive colors in Image Editor
Delete & Re-link Overrides
Python API Improvements
Control smoothness of UV’s in Preferences
Improved performance in UV/Image Editor
Support insertion of items into py-defined IDProp-based RNA collections
Motion blur rendering from Alembic files (Cycles)
Blender Kit: Hair and Complex Ball previews
Scene Ray Cast change
Read the full list of changes at wiki.blender.org



Blender 2.90

Building on the success of the 2.8x series, Blender 2.90 continues to polish the user experience, introducing improvements to EEVEE, Cycles, sculpt, VR, animation, modeling, UV editing and so much more.

Released August 31st, 2020


THE SKY IS NOT THE LIMIT

Meet Nishita, a physically based texture built-in Cycles.

Animated Sky
Node Settings
Download this file and play!

GET IN MOTION

Motion blur in EEVEE has been completely rewritten from scratch, adding support for mesh deformation, hair, and sub-frame accumulation for better precision.

FASTER MOTION BLUR

Intel Embree is now used for ray tracing on the CPU. This significantly improves Cycles performance in scenes with motion blur.

Scenes with high geometric complexity also benefit on average.


Cycles Intel Embree

DENOISE EVERYWHERE

Blender 2.81 introduced Intel OpenImageDenoise in the compositor, in 2.90 you can use this denoiser interactively in the 3D viewport as well as for final renders.

Simply select OpenImageDenoise from the new Denoising panel.

It Won’t
Be Back
The new shadow terminator offset setting helps you to avoid shading artifacts with smooth normals on low-poly meshes.

Farewell blotchy shading!

RENDER MORE

NVIDIA RTX It's On
NVLink support for CUDA and OptiX. When enabled in the Cycles device preferences, GPUs connected with an NVLink bridge will share memory to support rendering bigger scenes.
OptiX is now available on all NVIDIA GPUs that support it, which is Maxwell or higher (GeForce 700, 800, 900, 1000 series).
MULTIRESOLUTION

It is now possible to select the subdivision level to sculpt on and switch between levels, with displacement information smoothly propagated between them.

UNSUBDIVIDE & REBUILD
The Multires Modifier can now rebuild lower subdivisions levels and extract its displacement. This can be used to import models from any subdivision based sculting software and rebuild all subdivisions levels to be editable inside the modifier. Read more.

Unsubdivide different meshes with triangles, ngons and non-manifold geometry.
All subdivision modes available in Multires
All subdivision modes available in Multires.
SUBDIVISION MODES
Multires can now create smooth, linear and simple subdivisions. This means that any subdivision type can be created at any time without changing the subdivision type of the modifier. Read more.

CLOTH FILTER

Simulate cloth on your mesh using four types of simulation.

Use Face Sets to limit the simulations.

BETTER POSE BRUSH

Next to Rotate/Twist, two new deformation modes were added to the pose brush!

SCALE /TRANSLATE

Quickly scale or translate your model without leaving Sculpt mode.

SQUASH & STRETCH

Scale the mesh while preserving volume or a Squash or Stretch effect.

THERE’S MORE
Topology Slide/Relax
The Topology Slide/Relax mode now has two more deformation modes for Slide: Pinch and Expand.

Clay Strips
Clay strips now has more predictable pressure/size and pressure/strength curves. Its deformation algorithm was modified to prevent geometry artifacts in large deformations.

Automasking
The Automasking system was redesigned, so brush will not have and start delay when automasking options are enabled in a high poly mesh.

Pen Pressure
Pen pressure modulation is now supported for the hardness property. The modulation can be inverted for achieving higher hardness with lower pressure.

Boundary
Now mesh boundaries are properly detected by the automasking system in both meshes and Multires levels. This means that the smooth brush does not longer automasks boundary vertices by default and its meshes and multires behavior now matches.

Face Set FK mode
The Pose Brush now has a Face Set FK mode, which deforms the mesh using the Face Sets to simulate an FK rig.

STEP UP YOUR MODELS

EXTRUDE MANIFOLD

This smart new tool automatically splits and removes adjacent faces when extruding inwards.

EDGE & VERTEX SLIDE SNAP

All the snapping options are now available while using edge or vertex slide!


BEVEL IMPROVEMENTS

Custom Profile Bezier Curves
The custom profile for the bevel modifier and tool now supports bezier curve handle types.

New Absolute Mode
The bevel tool and modifier have a new ‘Absolute’ mode for interpreting the ‘amount’ value. This mode is like Percent, but measures absolute distance along adjacent edges instead of a percentage.

Better Material/UV Split
The bevel tool and modifier use a new method to decide which material and UV values to use for the center polygons in odd-segment bevels. It should give more consistency in different parts of the model compared to the seemingly random choice made up til now.

EVEN MORE
Merge By Distance, Rip, Delete, Dissolve, Connect Path, Knife and Tris To Quads now correctly preserve custom normal vectors
Snap support for the Ruler tool
Snap to the intersection between constraint and geometry
OCEAN SPRAY

The ocean modifier now generates maps for spray direction!

Read more

BETTER UV

Automatically adjust UV and Vertex Colors while editing your mesh.

Find the new Correct Face Attributes and Keep Connected under the Options popover.
Pick Shortest Path
Pick Shortest Path: Fill Region
UV Rip
Hold down Ctrl and select UV components with left mouse to select the shortest path between the UV components.
OPENVDB FLUIDS

Smoke and liquids data will now be cached into a single .vdb cache file per frame. Read more.

CLOTH PRESSURE GRADIENT

Apply a pressure gradient emulating the weight of contained or surrounding fluid.

Read more

LOOKING GOOD

Blender 2.90 continues to refine the user interface principles established in 2.8x

NEW SEARCH
Ever wondered in which menu to find a certain operator? Wonder no more! The new search menu shows you that and more:

See the menu and its hotkey
Add the operator to Quick Favorites
Easily assign a new shortcut
Link to the Manual and Python API reference
EASY READING
Columns now feature headings! Combined with left-aligned checkboxes resulting in a more readable layout that takes even less space.

UI Checkboxes Alignment
Checkboxes can be aligned inline with labels and other widgets for a more compact layout.


MODIFIERS REDONE
Modifiers and other stacks now support drag and drop for reordering. Their layouts were completely rewritten to make use of subpanels and the current user interface guidelines.

Shift+D to Duplicate
Ctrl+A to Apply Modifier
X to Delete
A to toggle open/collapse panel
New Move to First and Move to Last buttons
This change also applies to Grease Pencil modifiers, visual effects, object and bone constraints.

STATS YOU WANT
Statistics 3D Viewport
Scene statistics are now available as an overlay in the 3D Viewport!

Statistics Status Bar
Customize the status bar to toggle individual stats, including the new Video Memory details.

MUCHO MORE
Auto-scroll view when dragging Outliner elements
Dragging panels now auto-scrolls the view
Support for bold and italics style fonts
New Instance Empty Size preference
Support for A-Z accelerator keys in pie menus
Extended Mac Alias usage
Local undo/redo support for Text fields
Updated operators interface for consistency
New Outliner Delete Hierarchy
Better grouping of Audio settings
Easier to resize areas
Support for Windows Shell Links
Search Operators (for developers)
NUKE DISTORTION

1. Original Plate
2. Undistorted
3. Composite
4. Distortion Re-applied

This new lens distortion model allows you to solve motion in Blender and do compositing in Nuke or Natron.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE
Initial Wayland Support
Frame Interpolation Speed Effect
Add-ons Improvements
Nuke Lens Distortion Model
Convert Mesh to Grease Pencil
Save as Shapekey
Ray Length for Baking
Data Duplication Improvements
Ocean Modifier Spray Direction Maps
Pass Depsgraph to Drivers
Apply Modifiers as Shape Keys in Linked Duplicates
Library Overrides Overhaul
About Dialogue
Shader Nodes Socket Improvements
VR Landmarks Improvements
Better Data Duplication
Proper Negative Scale Interpolation
Improved Drivers Functions


LTS Release 2.83.5

FCurve editor crash when zooming out to limit [T79254]
Crash displaying the same mesh in two windows [T79260]
Fix interface artifacts on Intel GPUs [388639243053]
Outliner “Make Single User” crash [T79187]
Eevee cubemaps shows black [T79158]
Smooth brushes crasing in dyntopo [T79007]
Too much memory usage rendering animation with persistent images [T78537]
CLOG writes/reads outside allocated memory. [T78730]
Crash converting curve to mesh [T79207]
Fix usercount not decrementing in `gpencil_stroke_separate_exec` [4251a87bf60e]
UV select-linked failure to de-select [T46568]
GPencil weight paint crash when painting over modifier generated [T78884]
Workbench: Fix broken id pass [38e9a349defc]
Workbench: Object color mode broken if more than 4096 objects [T79509]
GPUShader: compile error on AWS Elastic Graphics [T79246]
Blend file corrupted during save caused by high Cubemap Size [T78529]
EEVEE: LightCache: Add warning if the cache cannot be saved [fce71a255cb9]
Crash loading nested set-scenes [T79575]
Fix crash switching render slots when there is only one slot [a9e0aeaf653d]
Triangulate quads with ‘Beauty’ can make zero area faces [T79482]
“Add plane > align” causes crash when certain rigs are in the scene [T77847]
Crash when changing View Layer while VR session runs [T79324]
Video Sequencer image sequence strip source path breaks [T79676]
Crash rendering grease pencil from compositor with multiple scenes [T77885]
EEVEE: Crash on Macos due to lightcache baking [T79703]


LTS Release 2.83.4

Crash when adjusting sequencer property [T78999]
GPencil: Fix unreported missing strokes in interpolation [dcf7a0507755]
Crash related to viewing video files [T78867]
Mantaflow Field weights cannot be animated [T79264]
Batch Generate-Previews doesn’t work anymore [T79031]
Dimensions fail on negative scaled axis [T79272]
Scale to Fit Text Box fails when text is too narrow [T77609]
Copy-pasting strip twice crashes Blender [T77669]
Prefetching can corrupt .blend files [T78837]
Random crash editing shader nodes with textures [T78358]
Missing depsgraph relation when using sound strips in VSE [T78920]
Fix View3D “Mirror” menu, both “Global” and “Local” items are GLOBAL [4a9d903e2bfd]
Crash displaying many aligned buttons [T78636]
Follow Active Quads, divide by zero error [T68845]
Crash when removing strips with prefetching [T78573]
Fresh install of blender 2.83.0 not able to save user startup file [T78037]
Weight Transfer Operator target mesh doesn’t update [T78306]
Weight Transfer Operator “Deform Pose Bones” destination setting [T78308]
Object disappears when scaled, set origin etc after applying smooth [T79180]


LTS Release 2.83.3

Fix alignment/size issue on ARM/RPi architecture [9c41744ef4]
EEVEE: Cubemaps shows black [T75943]
Blender Freezes when using the 3d Scale Gizmo [T77455]
GPU: Apple/Nvidia Proxy check [T78175]
Fix missing GPU image free in background mode [9949b5098a]
Overlay: Weight colors are not in render in the right colorspace [T77780]
Cycles OpenCL error rendering empty scene [T77984]
Overlay: Edit mode + wire drawtype + infront not transparent [T77655]
Overlay: Sulpt overlay not working if object use in-front option [T76229]
Sculpt mode performance regression in 2.83 [T77641]
Faces missing, weird faces added [T74024]
Fix error when filtering in Outliner “Blender File” mode with libraries [d0c986b748]
Fix crash when use GPencil merge without materials [T78337]
Fix undefined behavior when using BSDF nodes inside volume shaders[T76171]
GPencil interpolation crash [T78134]
GPencil: Strokes go missing after Interpolation from another layer [T78042]
Workbench: “Not enough texture slots!” Message being spammed and lags the entire computer [T77759]


Release 2.83.2

Random crash when rendering animation [T77734]
Overlay: “Outline Selected” overlay doesnt affect armatures [T66934]
Crash when closing window while Outliner shows screens [ef0ded4df389]
Crash on undo Draw Face Sets stroke with dyntopo active [T77328]
Fix random crash in Cycles smoke volume loading [2d89951be54d]
UV Editor: Fix Vertex Overlay color not being color managed [000fbef35d24]
Crash after any alembic import undo in an empty scene [T77754]
Crash on proxied rig, custom bone shape, driver targeting rig [T77712]
Crash in VR session when opening material preview [T77830]
Fix memory leak calculating deform modifiers in edit-mode [91b455c00f28]
Incorrect handling of negative-scale bit in DRWResourceHandle [T77913]
VSE Sequencer/Preview crash after fullscreen [T78112]
Compositor Disabled Node Config -> SegFault [T67358]
Undo crash due to IDTemplate operations missing undo push [T78172]
Simple scene created in version 2.82 crashes Blender [T77460]


Release 2.83.1

Fix T77774: New undo code broken by ‘make local’ behavior
Audio SDL: Video editor Sound muted without muting it
Fix T77803: IK Degrees of freedom drawing glitch
Fix (unreported) wrong size of UserPreferences’ `dupflag` parameter. Fix Applied rBdceaef92d7a4: Fix (unreported) wrong size of UserPreferences’ `dupflag` parameter
Fix T77915: Cycles OSL microfacet closure not working in custom shaders
GPencil: Fix unreported Vertex Opacity Overlay not working
Fix T75414: Incorrect masking in Color Balance modifier
Fix T76767: Cycles performance regression with CLI renders
Fix T77853: Error reloading linked library
Fix missing hinting information in monospace font, rB783d3c675ac2: Fix missing hinting information in default font
Fix T77657: NVIDIA Quadro FX4800 crash on startup
GPencil: Improve viewlayer masking check
Fix T77148: Crash changing multiple values for sequencer strips
Fix T77047: Dyntopo Sample detail size on hidden mesh causes crash
Fix T74101: File Browser in macOS fullscreen crashes or makes windows unusable
Fix T77504: Operator search gives wrong results
Fix T76894: Disable clipping region selection in material/rendered mode
Fix T72936: Incorrect gizmo orientation with inherit rotation disabled
Fix menu operator/search clipping the last character Fix Applied rBf649e5c418d9: Fix menu operator/search clipping the last character
Fix T77603: OSL parser fails when script ends with comment without newline
Fix crash running “Edit Voxel Size” operator outside of a main 3D View region Fix Applied rB5fc252feaeab: Fix crash running “Edit Voxel Size” operator outside of a main 3D View region
GPencil: Fix unreported error in Dots Strokes material initialization
GPencil: Fix unreported Shift+F OPacity key not working
Calculate epsilon values for interp_weights_poly to improve accuracy Fix Applied rB9d5e5e282cff: Calculate epsilon values for interp_weights_poly to improve accuracy
Fix T76273 Glitches caused by glCopyImageSubData on windows + intel gpu Fix Applied rB7b754c8c9952: Fix T76273 Glitches caused by glCopyImageSubData on windows + intel gpu
Fix T77358: Gpencil can’t select geometry within transparent layers
Fix T77520: GPencil viewlayer filter produce crash with masking layers
Fix T77367: Blender’s snap package ignores command line options
Fix for T77095: work around render artifacts with AMD Radeon RX 4xx and 5xx
Fix T77164: scaling/rotation fails for 3 selected NURB points
Fix T77156: GPencil view layer filter by layer not working
Fix T77456: Broken vertex paint undo on high-poly objects
Fix T77448: Camera Solver constraint can’t be converted to f-curve


New in Blender 2.83

With over 1250 bugfixes, and further critical fixes due throughout the next two years as part of the Long Term Support program, Blender 2.83 LTS provides the performance and stability needed for major projects. New features include VR support, OpenVDB import, OptiX viewport denoising and a powerful new physics-enabled Cloth Brush.

https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-83/


Blender 2.82a: Bug Fixes

Fix T74003: Autocomplete bug with mesh.loop_triangles. in Blender Python Console. (rB69c587888)
Fix T73898: UDIM crash changing form tiled to single (rBd6977b5)
Fix T73862: Fluid Sim file handle resource leak (rB60890cc)
Fix T74182: Crash saving images from non-image spaces (rB096936fe1)
Fix T72903: Bone envelope & bone size tool functionality swapped (rBdd2cdd436)
Fix T74278: camera border gizmo size (rB9cac5fa681, rB360443a48)
Fix T54270: Reset last_hit and last_location when reading the file (rB2df040ed58fb)
Fix T74431: crash when compiling renderpass shader on some AMD drivers (rB9c4523b1fde4 + rBe5f98c79b0ed)
Fix T74295: Cloth + Internal springs crashes on a non-polygonal geometry (rB1648a7903672)
Fix Fix (unreported) Separate bones creates empty armature (rB498397f7bd8)
Revert "Constraints: remove special meaning of Local Space for parentless Objects." (rBf881162f81e)
Fix T73932: modifying keyframes in nodes fails when there is an image sequence (rBf0a22f5)
Fix crash loading .blend file saved with Blender 2.25 (rBed8aa15)
Fix potential crash with Eevee render of missing image textures (rBab18dbb)
Fix T72253: Mantaflow adaptive domain cuts off (rB32fc22db5679)
Keymap: Add front/back Alt-MMB absolute view axis switching (rBa200986273)
Fix T72028: Crash switching to vertex paint (rB31aefdeec5)
Fix bone envelopes displaying wrong when armature is scaled (rBee7034949fd)
Fix Vertex weight gradient tool show wrong weight/strength values in the UI (rBf38c54d56e)
Fix T74225: Image (from sequence) cannot be loaded (rB9dbfc7ca8bf)
Fix T63892: Tools cannot be registered into some contexts (e.g. PAINT_TEXTURE) (rBd95e9c7cf8)
Fix T73369: corner pin & sun-beam nodes gizmos are too big (rB212660f467)
Fix T74425: Cannot texture paint an images sequence anymore (rBca717f0489)
Add-ons
glTF: Fix some strange reference error in blender api when exporting shapekeys / ApplyModifier (rBA659c121a68)
glTF: Fix crash using compositor rendering for image generation (rBAaf687f5a041ee)


Blender 2.82

The second update of the Blender 2.80 milestone release is here!

With again over a thousand fixes and several important updates that were planned for the 2.8 series. In this release you will find UDIM and USD support, MantaFlow fluids and smoke simulation, AI denoising, Grease Pencil improvements, and much more!

February 14, 2020


Physics Reborn
Blender’s simulations got a major bump with a brand new physically-based liquid/gas simulation system using Mantaflow and improvements in cloth physics.


Light Your Fire
The new Mantaflow system allows you to create mind-blowing fire and smoke simulations.

Read more

FLIP Out
Create lifelike liquids with a new FLIP solver.

Read more
Improved Cloth Simulations
Internal Air Pressure
Internal Cloth Springs
Simulate balloons and cushions with ease.

UDIM
The popular tiled-based UV mapping system is now fully integrated in Blender’s pipeline.

Read more
1001
1002
1003
1004
1005

Pixar USD Export
Blender now supports Pixar’s very own open source Universal Scene Description.
USD files can contain complex layering, overriding, and references to other files. Blender’s USD Exporter takes a much simpler approach.


Read more
Cycles Improvements Read more
Node Improvements
Random Per Island
Geometry node now has a Random Per Island option, to randomize textures or colors for different components within a mesh.

Math
Math node has new operations: trunc, snap, wrap, compare, pingpong, sign, radians, degrees, cosh, sinh, tanh, exp, smoothmin and inversesqrt.

Map Range
New interpolation modes: Linear, Stepped Linear, Smoothstep and Smootherstep.

Noise & Wave
Distortion was improved to distort uniformly in all directions, instead of only diagonally.

Custom Shader AOVs
A new AOV Output node can be put anywhere in your shader node tree and will be exposed as a custom render pass.

And even more:

Denoising
The Albedo pass was improved to work better with the OpenImageDenoise compositor node. Read more.
The Normal pass was changed to output in camera space to work better with the OptiX denoiser. Read more.
Faster Rendering on Windows
BVH build time on Windows has been significantly reduced by using a better memory allocator, making it similar to Linux and macOS performance. Read more.

AI Denoiser
Cycles now supports the AI-Accelerated Denoiser from OptiX, for NVIDIA RTX graphics cards.
Supports multiple GPUs.
Convincing results with low samples.
Built into Blender’s view layer system.
This AI-Accelerated Denoiser was contributed by NVIDIA.


Read more
EEVEE
Many improvements such as better group node sockets, normal mapping for non-mesh objects, performance and quality of render passes.

Read more
Preview Passes in the Viewport
Just like in Cycles, you can now pick which pass to see while in Rendered shading mode.

Combined
Ambient Occlusion
Normal
Mist

Ambient Occlusion, Normal, Mist, Subsurface Direct and Subsurface Color are supported, with more passes coming in Blender 2.83!

Volumetrics + Transparency
Transparent materials now blend properly with volumetrics.

Beyond Sculpting
After the ground-breaking 2.81 sculpt updates, new features keep pouring in.

Read more
Pose Brush with Inverse Kinematics
Slide/Relax Brush
Multi-plane Scrape Brush
Brush Dash Ratio
IK segments property to control how many IK bones are going to be created for posing. Hold Ctrl to twist the deformation.

Even more:

Mask Slice operator: removes the masked vertices from the mesh, with options to fill the produced holes or creating a new mesh object with the removed vertices.
The symmetrize operator can now run with Dyntopo disabled.
The sample detail size operator now works with the voxel remesher. It sets the voxel size to a value that produces a mesh with an approximate detail resolution to the area that was sampled.
Plus more improvements that don’t even fit here, check them out.

Grease Pencil
Many changes in the user interface, dopesheet updates, new tools and modifiers.

Read more

Multiple Strokes Modifier
Automatically generate multiple strokes around the originals.


Polyline Tool
Draw polygon shapes with this new dedicated tool.


Dopesheet Improvements
Quick access to Opacity, Blend and Onion skinning in the channels.


New Eyedropper Tool
Easily create materials on the fly with this new tool.

User Interface
The user interface and user experience keeps getting polished in 2.82; with improvements to the tool system and layout tweaks for consistency.

Read more

Fallback Tools
Now, when you have a tool active, you can still easily box, lasso or circle select when you click and drag outside the gizmo.


UV Gizmos
The UV Editor now supports gizmos for the transform tools, just like the 3D View.

Custom Face Orientation Colors
Brush Settings Overhaul
Text Editor UI Tweaks
Industry Compatible Keymap
Graph Editor Selection & Transform
Consistent Scrollbars
New Icons on File Browser
VFX Reference Platform
Blender is committed to adhere with the VFX Reference Platform. This helps pipelines that depends on different software to have a common set of libraries they are all compatible with.

Read more
Compatibility
Loading fluid simulations from previous versions is only partially possible. Read more .
Due to changes in the Noise and Wave shader nodes, their pattern can look slightly different.Read more.
EEVEE: A fix in how transparent materials react to volumetrics will make them look different (as in, properly lit), there is no workaround other than to tweak the affected materials. Read more.
But Wait! There's More
https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-82/#but-wait-theres-more


Blender 2.80, made by you

The 2.80 release is dedicated to everyone who has contributed to Blender. To the tirelessly devoted developers. To the artists inspiring them with demos. To the documentation writers. To the Blender Cloud subscribers. To the bug reporters. To the designers. To the Code Quest supporters. To the donators and to the members of the Development Fund. Blender is made by you. Thanks!

A Fresh Start
Blender 2.80 features a redesigned user interface that puts the focus on the artwork that you create. A new dark theme and modern icon set were introduced. Keyboard, mouse and tablet interaction got a refresh with left click select as the new default. Quick Favorites menus provide rapid access to often-used tools.

Read more
A Whole New Workspace
Templates and workspaces let you quickly get started with tasks like sculpting, texture painting or motion tracking. They can be customized to create your own efficient working environment.

Read more
Sculpt
Model
Animate
Edit & Grade

What You See Is What You Need
Thanks to the new modern 3D viewport you will be able to display a scene optimized for the task you are performing. A new Workbench render engine was designed for getting work done in the viewport, supporting tasks like scene layout, modeling and sculpting. The engine also feature overlays, providing fine control over which utilities are visible on top of the render.

Overlays also work on top of Eevee and Cycles render previews, so you can edit and paint the scene with full shading.

Read more
Random Colors
Colored Wireframes
Look Dev

Tools & Gizmos
The 3D viewport and UV editor have new interactive tools and gizmos, along with a new toolbar. These make it easier for new users to start using Blender, and for existing users to discover and use tools that previously required obscure key combinations.

Besides gizmos for tools, various elements like lights, camera, and the compositing backdrop image now have handles to adjust their shape or other attributes.


Intuitive Widgets
A set of simple yet functional controls will make 3D interaction fun again.


Toolbars
The new contextual toolbars enable you to quickly access and discover the right tool for the job.

Real Time
Eevee is a new physically based real-time renderer. It works both as a renderer for final frames, and as the engine driving Blender’s realtime viewport for creating assets.
It has advanced features such as volumetrics, screen-space reflections and refractions, subsurface scattering, soft and contact shadows, depth of field, camera motion blur and bloom.

Read more

Eevee materials are created using the same shader nodes as Cycles, making it easy to render existing scenes. For Cycles users, this compatibility makes Eevee work great as a realtime preview. For game artists, the Principled BSDF is compatible with shading models used in many game engines.



2D Animation
Grease Pencil is now a full 2D drawing and animation system. This unprecedented integration of 2D tools in a 3D environment will enable you to create next-level concept art, storyboards and animations.

Read more

Grease Pencil objects are a native part of Blender, integrating with existing object selection, editing, management, and linking tools. Strokes can be organized into layers, and shaded with materials and textures. Besides a draw mode for strokes, these objects can also be edited, sculpted and weight painted similarly to meshes.

Modifiers can be used to deform, generate and color strokes. Commonly used mesh modifiers such as array, subdivide and armature deform have equivalents for strokes. Rendering effects like blur, shadows or rim lighting are also available.



Cycles
Cycles now provides industry-standard functionality such as Cryptomatte, BSDF hair and volume shading and Random Walk Subsurface scattering. Many rendering optimizations were done including combined CPU and GPU rendering, much improved OpenCL start and render time, and CUDA support for scenes that don’t fit in GPU memory.

Read more

Principled Hair BSDF
Rendering physically based hair and fur is now easier and no longer requires setting up a complex shader network.


Cryptomatte
Cryptomatte is a standard to efficiently create mattes for compositing. Cycles outputs the required passes, which can be used in the Blender compositor or any compositor with Cryptomatte support.


Random Walk Subsurface Scattering
The new Random Walk subsurface scattering method provides more accurate results for thin and curved objects.


Subdivision and Displacement
New offscreen dicing scale helps to significantly reduce memory usage, by reducing the dicing rate for objects the further they are outside of the camera view.

Cycles has been used in high-profile short and feature films, and is receiving a growing amount of contributions from the industry. The full list of improvements is available on the wiki release notes. Here are some highlights.

Principled Volume Shader
Bevel Shader
Ambient Occlusion Shader
Performance Optimizations
GPU+CPU Rendering
IES Lights
Disk Area Lights
Vector Displacement
...and more!
But Wait, There's More!
Multi-object Editing
View Layers and Collections
Custom Normal Tools & Modifier
Pixar's OpenSubdiv
Custom Font Text Strip
Bevel Tool & Modifier
Text Improvements
New Armature Constraint
Constraints Improvements
Video Metadata
Alembic
WebM Support
glTF Support
Easier Drivers Setup
Angular Bending on Cloth
Audaspace Upgrade
COLLADA
User Interface Templates
Pie Menus
Better Data-block Management
New Video Sequencer Cache
Status Bar
Unit System Improvements
New Dependency Graph
Cycles Fixes
Topology Rake
Popover UI Widget
Bone Selection Sets
Film-like Curve Mapping
Redesigned User Preferences
Object Scatter
New Tablet Preferences
Rigify
Python API Changes & Improvements
Compatibility
Python API
Blender 2.80 is an API breaking release. Add-ons and scripts will need to be updated, both to handle the new features and adapt to changes that make the API more consistent and reliable. Read more

Removed Features
A number of features that were no longer under active development or did not fit in the new design were removed. By removing the maintenance burden, developers can spend more time on new features and redesign the user interface and implementation to be more optimized.

The render engine Blender Internal was removed, replaced by EEVEE, the new real-time engine.
The Blender Game Engine was removed. We recommend using more powerful, open source alternatives like Godot.
Dupliframes and slow parent were removed, as these are incompatible with the new dependency graph and never worked reliably in the old one.
Try It Yourself

Check out the features by yourself by playing with these files provided by the community.


Race Spaceship
By Alessandro Chiffi / ONdata Studio. Video

18 MB - License: CC-BY


Tree Creature
By Daniel Bystedt
Video demo
398 MB - License: CC-BY-NC-SA


Temple
By Dominik Graf

350 MB - License: CC-BY-SA


Wanderer
By Daniel Bystedt

300 MB - License: CC-BY-SA


Ember Forest
By Mike Pan

71 MB - License: CC-BY


Wasp Bot
By Emiliano Colantoni

58 MB - License: CC-BY


Mr. Elephant
By Glenn Melenhorst

66 MB - License: CC-BY-ND


Architectural Visualization
Made by Marek Moravec. Early video demo.

195 MB - License: CC-0 Public Domain

Stay up-to-date
Weekly Live Streams

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Development Videos

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Blog & Social Media



The official hashtag for Blender stuff is #b3d. Also #blender3d is very active on Twitter, Facebook and other social media.
Special Thanks
The Blender developer community is being supported by the organizational powers of Blender Foundation and its spin-off Blender Institute. The people who work for the Foundation and Institute did a tremendous job to bring Blender is where is it nowadays.

Special thanks goes to Tangent Animation and Aleph Objects, who funded 4 additional developers to work full-time on Blender 2.8 during the crucial 2017 period. This enabled us to work on the viewport, Eevee, collections/layers, UI and tools redesign.

Thanks goes to everyone who contributed to the Code Quest, the massively successful 3 month workshop in Blender Institute during spring 2018.

And we thank everyone who joined the Development Fund in 2nd half of 2018 and 2019. This helped us to keep the core of Blender contributors together to work on 2.8.

And last but not least: special thanks to the blender.org community – the developers, documenters, bug reporters and reviewers – it is thanks to them that we can start this wonderful new era of Blender 2.8x!


Blender 2.80 Release Countdown
A Release Candidate is the final step before the release. Blender has been built and packaged just like the official release, and is available for a short period of testing. Please download it and give it a good try. If things go as expected, the final release will be one week after.

A Fresh Start
Blender 2.80 features a redesigned user interface that puts the focus on the artwork that you create. A new dark theme and modern icon set were introduced. Keyboard, mouse and tablet interaction got a refresh with left click select as the new default. Quick Favorites menus provide rapid access to often-used tools.

Read more
A Whole New Workspace
Templates and workspaces let you quickly get started with tasks like sculpting, texture painting or motion tracking. They can be customized to create your own efficient working environment.

Read more
Sculpt
Model
Animate
Edit & Grade

What You See Is What You Need
Thanks to the new modern 3D viewport you will be able to display a scene optimized for the task you are performing. A new Workbench render engine was designed for getting work done in the viewport, supporting tasks like scene layout, modeling and sculpting. The engine also feature overlays, providing fine control over which utilities are visible on top of the render.

Overlays also work on top of Eevee and Cycles render previews, so you can edit and paint the scene with full shading.

Read more
Random Colors
Colored Wireframes
Look Dev

Tools & Gizmos
The 3D viewport and UV editor have new interactive tools and gizmos, along with a new toolbar. These make it easier to for new users to start using Blender, and for existing users to discover and use tools that previously required obscure key combinations.

Besides gizmos for tools, various elements like lights, camera, and the compositing backdrop image now have handles to adjust their shape or other attributes.


Intuitive Widgets
A set of simple yet functional controls will make 3D interaction fun again.


Toolbars
The new contextual toolbars enable you to quickly access and discover the right tool for the job.

Real Time
Eevee is a new physically based real-time renderer. It works both as a renderer for final frames, and as the engine driving Blender’s realtime viewport for creating assets.
It has advanced features such as volumetrics, screen-space reflections and refractions, subsurface scattering, soft and contact shadows, depth of field, camera motion blur and bloom.

Read more

Eevee materials are created using the same shader nodes as Cycles, making it easy to render existing scenes. For Cycles users, this compatibility makes Eevee work great as a realtime preview. For game artists, the Principled BSDF is compatible with shading models used in many game engines.



2D Animation
Grease Pencil is now a full 2D drawing and animation system. This unprecedented integration of 2D tools in a 3D environment will enable you to create next-level concept art, storyboards and animations.

Read more

Grease Pencil objects are a native part of Blender, integrating with existing object selection, editing, management, and linking tools. Strokes can be organized into layers, and shaded with materials and textures. Besides a draw mode for strokes, these objects can also be edited, sculpted and weight painted similarly to meshes.

Modifiers can be used to deform, generate and color strokes. Commonly used mesh modifiers such as array, subdivide and armature deform have equivalents for strokes. Rendering effects like blur, shadows or rim lighting are also available.



Cycles
Cycles now provides industry-standard functionality such as Cryptomatte, BSDF hair and volume shading and Random Walk Subsurface scattering. Many rendering optimizations were done including combined CPU and GPU rendering, much improved OpenCL start and render time, and CUDA support for scenes that don’t fit in GPU memory.

Read more

Principled Hair BSDF
Rendering physically based hair and fur is now easier and no longer requires setting up a complex shader network.


Cryptomatte
Cryptomatte is a standard to efficiently create mattes for compositing. Cycles outputs the required passes, which can be used in the Blender compositor or any compositor with Cryptomatte support.


Random Walk Subsurface Scattering
The new Random Walk subsurface scattering method provides more accurate results for thin and curved objects.


Subdivision and Displacement
New offscreen dicing scale helps to significantly reduce memory usage, by reducing the dicing rate for objects the further they are outside of the camera view.

Cycles has been used in high-profile short and feature films, and is receiving a growing amount of contributions from the industry. The full list of improvements is available on the wiki release notes. Here are some highlights.

Principled Volume Shader
Bevel Shader
Ambient Occlusion Shader
Performance Optimizations
GPU+CPU Rendering
IES Lights
Disk Area Lights
Vector Displacement
...and more!
But Wait, There's More!

https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-80/


New in Blender 2.80

From an updated viewport to workspaces and dependency graphs.
Blender 2.8 brings updates all over the board.


Viewport
Up until now, the viewport was lagging behind the rest of Blender. Not anymore! Blender 2.8 brings the minimum OpenGL version to 3.3, with even newer features for compatible hardware.

The main use of this technology is Blender’s new real-time render engine: Eevee

Eevee is a fully-featured PBR (physically based-rendering) engine for real-time visualization. With advanced features such as volumetrics, screen-space reflections and refractions, soft shadows, post-processing effects such as ambient occlusion, depth of field, camera motion blur and bloom. More features to be implemented soon include subsurface scattering, object motion blur and contact shadows.
Read more






Grease Pencil
Blender’s 2D drawing capabilities have been greatly improved with 2.8. The new Grease Pencil focus is to create a more friendly interface for the 2D artist, while keeping the advantages of having a full 3D suite underneath.

Grease Pencil is no longer just a stroke, it’s now a real Blender object with huge improvements to brushes and tools.

Read more


Organization
View Layers & Collections
Gone is the limit of 20 layers per scene. Blender 2.8 introduces a new concept to organize your scene with Collections and View Layers. Read more on code.blender.org.



In order to ease the management of Collections, filtering in the Outliner has been improved. Check out the demo video.

Workspaces
Workspaces will allow users to build up their working environment for a specific task. For example there could be workspaces for modeling, sculpting, animation and motion tracking.



More Features
Dependency Graph
At the heart of Blender, the dependency graph is getting a complete overhaul. Not only delivering better performance but also allowing overrides on data in a way not possible before. Read more.

Asset Management
This long awaited feature is finally coming to the 2.8x series. Read more.

Blender 2.8 Design Document
This document is for Blender developers and other contributors to the 2.8 project. It is meant to provide focus and general agreement on technical design decisions, state the goals of 2.8 and the big picture.


New in Blender 2.79

Denoise
Get rid of render noise while preserving visual detail as well as possible.
Same render time, buttery smooth.

Read more
10 samples. No Denoise.
10 samples. With Denoise.
The Dweebs - cloud.blender.org
Filmic Color Management
A new Filmic view transform has been added, for more photorealistic results and better handling of high dynamic range.

Read more
sRGB
Filmic
Andrew Price - blenderguru.com

PBR Shader
Based on the Disney model, the principled BSDF is a new surface shader node. Combining multiple layers into a single easy to use node.

Read more

Faster OpenCL
Blender 2.79 features much faster AMD OpenCL rendering and feature parity with NVIDIA CUDA. Including support for Subsurface Scattering, Volumetrics and optimized transparent shadows.

Read more

Shadow Catcher
Combine CGI elements with real-life footage easily with the new Shadow Catcher feature for Cycles.

Any object in the scene can be a shadow catcher. Controlled by the “Shadow Catcher” option in the object settings. This option will make the object to only receive shadows in a way that it could be composed onto another image.

Read more
More Cycles Improvements
Shaders compilation is now multithreaded, a new light sampling threshold feature was added, speedups up to 20% for CPUs that support AVX2, brick textures have now smoothing and a long-waited feature: texture coordinates for point, spot and area lamps!



Modeling & Modifiers
New Modifier! Surface Deform, transfers motion from another mesh.



Plus a whole bunch of updates. Some of them are:

Displace Modifier: Multi-threading support and new Global/Local space option for X/Y/Z/XYZ directions.
Mirror Modifier: add offset for mirrored UVs.
Mesh intersect has a new Cut separate mode, keeping each side of the intersection separate without splitting faces in half.
New tool to Set custom normals from selected faces.
Improved center of mass calculation for mesh centers.
Read more

Animation
Pose library reordering and keying for selected bones only.
Better undo for frame changes.
Various small new tools and options.
Read more

Grease Pencil
New tools for interpolating between grease pencil frames.
Per-layer onion skinning, add blank frame tool, and UI improvements.
Numpad keys now work when doing sculpt sessions.
Operator to add a blank frame
Reproject Strokes option to project strokes onto geometry
UI improvements
Read more

User Interface
Application templates to define a reusable configuration
Automatic scaling for high DPI displays on Windows and Linux
Image empties now support multi-view stereo
Reorganized sequencer and UV editor panels
Custom shortcuts for keyframing and drivers
More tooltips now show the reason why the button is disabled
Add-on duplicates warning now includes paths
Read more

Alembic
Alembic import and export has been greatly improved, both in compatibility and stability.

New supported features include export of linked dupli-groups, sub-frame sampling, face-varying vertex colors, child hairs and empties.

Read more

Python API
Custom properties pointing to data-blocks like objects or materials.
Render engine add-ons can now add custom render passes.
Inserting custom items in right click menus.
Read more

Add-ons
Blender 2.79 packs a bunch of new add-ons that greatly expand Blender’s functionality, allowing you to create architectural environments using parametric windows and walls, to make beautiful skies, or even meta-rigs to animate cats and horses!


Full list of new add-ons: Dynamic Sky, Archipack, Magic UV, Mesh Edit Tools, Skinify, Display Tools, Brush Menus, Btrace, Is Key Free, Turnaround Camera, Auto Mirror, Camera Rigs, Snap Utils Line, Add Advanced Objects, Export Paper Model, Kinoraw Tools, Stored Views, Render Clay, Auto Tracker, Refine Tracking Solution, Materials Library VX, Mesh Tissue, Cell Fracture Crack It.

Several add-ons were updated as well, including Collada, POV-Ray, OBJ, Rigify, Ant Landscape, Add Curve Extra Objects, Viewport Pie Menus, Blender ID, Node Wrangler.

Read more

More Features
Video encoding settings have been simplified, along with the addition of a Constant Rate Factor (CRF) mode.
Viewport support for Object Info, Layer Weight and Fresnel shading nodes.
OpenSubdiv now supports multiple materials drawing in Cycles textured view
Duplicate Particle Systems
Rigid Body Physics: support for rotational springs with stiffness and damping
Collada improvements
Freestyle improvements
Read more
Compatibility Warning
When using add-ons in Blender 2.79 that take advantage of the new data-block pointer properties, the resulting .blend files can’t be opened in earlier versions of Blender. Attempting to open such .blend files in Blender 2.78c and earlier may crash.
Some Interface Themes may need to be reloaded to work properly.
The text color contained in a layout.box() is now defined in User Preferences » Themes » User Interface » Box section
When using the add-on Rigify, please note:
Compatibility is broken for this release. There’s no guarantee rigs created in previous Blender versions will work correctly.
Rigs created in Blender 2.78 may not be compatible with 2.79.
Rigs created in Blender 2.77 may still work.
Save your work before attempting upgrading your rigs.
Bug Fixes
As for every Blender release, hundreds of bugs were fixed, thanks to the hardworking Blender developers.

Total fixed bugs: 739 (382 from tracker, 357 reported/found by other ways).
https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.79/Bug_Fixes


Blender 2.78b Release Notes

Blender 2.78b is a performance update release which mainly includes speedups for Cycles rendering.

Cycles
Multithreaded shader compilation.
Various optimizations for emission meshes.
Corrected light sampling for Branched Path Tracing, reduces noise leading to faster convergency.
Improvements in constant folding algorithm, removing shading nodes which are not used for final evaluaiton.
Improvements to some procedural textures (brick)
Early light ray termination based on contribution of light to the result.
Fix for background MIS with textures having small bright spots, which was causing fireflies.
Different seed for subframes and different stereo views, allowing "slow-motion" effect and improves VR experience.
Distance culling for objects to remove objects which are too far away from the camera.
Fix for undesirable threads affinity change on Windows.
Avoid various numerical issues in the kernel, solving fireflies.
Fixes for deformation motion blur combined with autosplit.
Better remainedtime estimation.
Various optimizations for deformation motion blur.
Added time steps BVH option to speed up rendering of scenes with motion blur.
Cycles: GPU
Use XDG folder for cache on Linux and OSX, which avoids having per-Blender version folder with all the OpenCL/CUDA kernels built.
Ability to enable/disable individual GPUs as opposite to old behavior with pre-defined combinations only. Not only this helps to some artists, but also makes it possible to have flexible benchmark scripting.
Cycles: CPU
Use more global SSE optimizations for SSE4.1+ kernels.
Multiple improvements for the latest AVX2 CPUS:
Optimized various math utilities (cross-products, dot-products, min-axis-selection and others).
Faster version of triangle intersection function.
Optimization of various steps in BVH traversal algorithm (including both construction and traversal).
Cycles: OpenCL
Added 3D textures support for OpenCL
Make it conditional to compile-in transparent shadows support. Depending on a scene and hardware gives really major render time improvements.
Dependency graph
Solve various race conditions (conflicts between threads which are working on the same data).
Optimization of dependency graph construction time.
Fix missing or wrong relation links, which were causing hard-to-reproduce bone flickering.
Fix various crashes related on linked data blocks.
Fixes for missing animation updates.
Other
Fixed regression crash when adding texture node to compositor.
Fixed crash of inverse kinematics on 32 bit Windows platforms
Improve multi-threaded usage of fluid simulation
Return correct alpha for environment map in GLSL


Blender 2.78 Release Logs

The Blender Foundation and online developer community are proud to present Blender 2.78, released September 30th 2016! This release aims to be a very stable one, so that developers can focus better on Blender 2.8 work. Here are some of the highlights:
Spherical Stereo images rendering support for VR
Grease Pencil is now a full 2D drawing & animation tool!
Viewport Rendering improvements
New Freehand curves drawing over surfaces!
Bendy Bones, powerful new options for B-Bones
Alembic support: import/export basic operators
Cloth Physics: new Dynamic Base Mesh and Simulation Speed option
New Add-ons, individual preferences, Python APIs changes, and a lot of new & updated add-ons!
Many more features, improvements and the usual huge bug-fixes list
Download Blender 2.78
What's new in Blender 2.78
Cycles Micro-displacement - themantissa.net
Cycles Render Engine
Optimizations: Several memory savings & speedups, support for CPU groups
GPU rendering: support for GTX NVIDIA 10×0, improved support for GTX 980 Ti and Titan X, memory improvements for CUDA & OpenCL
Better Subdivision & Micro Displacement experimental feature improved
Smoke volume support for Velocity and Heat attributes
Fluid simulation mesh support for motion blur and motion vectors
Point Density textures now support vertex color, weight and normals
Caminandes VR - cloud.blender.org
Spherical Stereo VR
Cycles now supports rendering spherical stereo images for VR. Including support for pole merging to reduce artifacts when looking straight up or down.

Watch the Caminandes VR demo, by Blender Institute and the Google VR team.

Bump on the viewport - cloud.blender.org
Viewport & Render
The Cycles viewport ‘rendered’ mode now supports more shading nodes and options.

All procedural textures, vertex color GLSL shading, and all projection methods for Image Texture are now supported
Bump mapping support in the viewport (image above)
The Blender GLSL viewport now supports more shading features to match the final render:

Environment lighting using the Sky Color and White modes
Environment map texture reflection with nodes, mirror environment texture influence
Normal Map node from Cycles and multiple tangent spaces
Moreover: Blender Render shading can now be computed in world space rather than camera space, and the stamp metadata feature now supports hiding the labels to save space.

New Freehand Curve Drawing tool
Modeling
New freehand curve drawing tool uses curve fitting for bezier curves, with error and corner angle options, support for tablet pressure, drawing aligned or perpendicular to a surface, tapering, redo operator and calling from Python.

But wait, there’s more!

Edit-mode undo memory optimizations, allowing around 5X-15X memory savings
New N-Gons support for decimate modifier with double precision optimizations
New decimate edit-mode tool and dissolve tool to remove vertices re-fitting surrounding handles
Path select can now also select regions using the Fill Region option
New “Snap Selection to Active” option
New options for bevel modal operations, to change the profile (bevel shape) or number of segments, with mouse movements or numeric input to set the value
Bendy Bones - pepeland.com
Animation & Rigging
Bendy Bones – Advanced B-Bones for Easier + Simple Rigging. Shapes can now be controlled directly using a series of properties. Define a “curved rest pose” for the bone, and use custom bones as their reference bone handles.

Other:

Drivers: new “eyedropper” tool for easier setup and keyframing control
Sorting on Animation Editors: Alphabetical sort option, Fuzzy/Multi-Word name filtering
Dope Sheet Editor: Lasso/Circle Select tools improved
Graph Editor: improvements to keyframing mouse command, and Properties Region
NLA Editor: position of action-local markers is now drawn on strips
F-Modifiers: new dropdown to select type
Keyframes inserting improved, new Moving Hold keyframe type
Rigging: bone constraint target improved, new menu operators to apply delta or normal transforms
Cycles Material View & Render Overlay - cloud.blender.org
User Interface
Render border is now compatible with cached render results (image above), save buffers and full sample anti-aliasing, camera frame.

Other:

Operator search now shows categories and supports multi word filtering
Radial operator (brush size/strength) better displays tool name, current value and precision
More precise snapping editing for the UV editor
New extra waveform visualization for image editor
New eyedropper commands and shortcuts to cancel and reset
New command line option to render multiple frames, ranges or both
Hotplug support for xinput (X11)
Grease Pencil New Brushes - pepeland.com
Grease Pencil
Huge changes done in this release allow Blender to work in a way similar to other 2D drawing software, and to get a production ready 2D animation tool that can mix 2D drawings with 3D objects and composition.

The draw thickness was moved to stroke, and color to a new palette color instead of saving this information per layer. Now, the layer is only a container, and strokes can use different color, strength and thickness in the same layer.

With the new design, the brush is independent and it allows create brushes that simulate different types of pencils.

Other changes:

Layer, Palette, Drawing brushes, Curves panels changed to fit the new design
New Arrange strokes, Palette workflow, Stroke Quality Improvements operators
Parent Grease Pencil strokes to objects
New features such as support for Compositing, Sculpt strokes and editing tools
Re-project Strokes: allows fixing the 3D cursor for precise drawing
Houdini Simulation in Blender - alexanders-artwork.com
Alembic
Brand new basic Alembic support through import and export operators, and data streaming through cache constraints and modifiers.

Import– reads an Alembic archive and creates objects in the current Blender scene, supporting Camera, Curve, Empty, Mesh, Point object types
Export– creates an Alembic archive supporting Camera, Curve, Hair, Mesh, NURBS, Particles object types
New Cache File Datablock – stores various properties related to cache files, to help keeping modifiers and constraints referencing Alembic archives in sync
New Mesh Sequence Cache modifier supports meshes and curves data animations, file sequences
New Transform Cache constraint, allows to stream animations made at the transformation matrix level
Archimesh add-on - github.com/antonioya
Add-ons
New Add-ons

Blender ID Authentication, Archimesh, MeasureIt, Bone Selection Sets, Object Boolean Tools, Carver, Mesh Tiny Cad, 3d Viewport Pie Menus, Modifier Tools, Oscurart Tools, Materials Utils/Conversion.

Updated Add-ons

3D View Navigation, ANT Landscape, Dynamic Space-bar Menu, Mesh Extra Objects, Node Wrangler, Object Cloud Gen, Pie Menus, Sapling Tree Gen, Add Curve Extra Objects, POV-Ray exporter.

Moreover, several changes and improvements have been done to the Python API.

Blender ID
The Blender ID is a unified login system that will give you access to Blender Foundation and Blender Institute web platforms.

Blender 2.78 features the official Blender ID add-on, which allows you to be logged-in within Blender so that other (3rd party) add-ons can provide you with a more tailored experience. For example, with the Blender Cloud add-on you will be able to synchronize your preferences across multiple workstations.

2D Stabilization Improvements
More Features
Sculpting/painting: sculpt edit-mesh memory savings, improvements on Blur-Brush smoothing, vertex/weight painting, Hair Painting and Texture Painting speedup of projection and 2D painting

More:

New vertical alignment options for Text objects
Better CPU Threading Handling and Undo Memory Usage optimizations
2D Stabilization improvements
Dynamic Base Mesh: new option allows animating the rest shape of cloth using shape keys or modifiers above the Cloth modifier
Simulation Speed: it is now possible to adjust how quickly time flows for the cloth simulation, using a new Speed option
Particles & Soft Body: like other physics systems, a group can now be used to specify a set of collision objects
Sequencer sound strips now either show the waveform or the strip name/file name/duration, but never both
Datablock Remapping: new ‘ID remapping’ feature to replace a given datablock by another
Bug Fixes
As for every release, 100s of bugs were fixed thanks to the hard-working developers that help voluntarily and sponsored by the Development Fund.


Blender 2.77a: Bug Fixes
For 2.77a many fixes for OpenGL display and simulation were made, as well as various fixes to rendering, sequencer and modeling. This bugfix release also solved some regressions in the particle system.
https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.77/Bug_Fixes#Blender_2.77a:_Bug_Fixes


What's new in Blender 2.77

Cycles Rendering
Improved Subsurface Scattering, and faster SSS on GPUs.
Smoke/Fire and Point Density support on GPU.
Customizable motion blur position, support for rolling shutter.
Custom baking passes.
Performance optimizations for large node shaders.
Improved default settings.
User Interface
Viewport: limit and mist indicator improvements, NumPad4/6 keys rotation type change
OpenGL Rendering: faster and higher quality Anti-Aliasing
File Browser: simple “file dropper”, to simply drag & drop files into the blender file browser
Updated Some Shortcuts
Word wrap support for tool-tips, render-stamp, frame-node
Other minor improvements
Modeling
Decimate modifier is now symmetry aware.

New Edit-mode boolean tool, useful to quickly perform edits

Selection tools got several improvements: face stepping option, checker select, next/previous, multiple axis mirror.

Option to get a default UV-unwrapping of new geometry added.

Other small improvements: triangulate & poke, grid-fill non uniform grids, hole support for intersect tool, split-by-edges tool

Sequencer
Strip Modifiers: added white balance and tone map strip modifier, it is now possible to append strip’s modifiers to all selected ones

Effects: speedup of Gaussian Blur effect

Strips

Importing new movie strips now uses movieclip framerate
Masks now can be both relative to strip and absolute to scene time
Nested scene strip support, word wrapped sequencer text
OpenGL previews Scene strips now respect the “Alpha Mode”
Sculpting/Painting
Improvements to snake-hook to drag out long extruded segments, and rotate the snake-hook brush using the new rake option.

Weight Painting

Better Auto-Normalize behaviour
Better Multi-Paint behaviour
Vertex Painting: Orbit last stroke support

Animation
Constraints: added new method to interpolate based on “Polar decomposition”.

Graph Editor: “Cursor X” property now allows fractional values when working with Drivers, added options to insert keyframes at the cursor point

Dope Sheet: better frame range for new editor instances

Armatures: selection now supports selecting children, immediate children and siblings, added options to draw custom shape scale

Motion Paths: Clear Paths operator now acts on all objects/bones, Update Paths button is now shown in the toolbar too

Grease Pencil
Highlights include:

Stroke Sculpting
A proper “Edit Mode” in the 3D View
Recoded eraser with pressure sensitivity
An operator to restrict editing to the active layer only (Isolate Layer)
Transform Manipulator support
Animation editing improvements including Copy/Paste and more advanced channel filtering
… and many more UI tweaks
Datablocks & Libraries Management
Library Handling

In case of missing libraries on load, empty placeholder datablocks get added, which allows to restore or relink.
Missing libraries & linked datablocks are now shown in the Outliner with a small “broken lib” icon.
Deleting Libraries: you can now ‘delete’ a whole library, with all its linked datablocks
Game Engine
Adding a Max Jumps value to the character physics

Screenshot Actuator: the new screenshot mode can be found in the game actuator.

Saving screenshot done in different thread (please read the compatibility issues).

Add-ons
New Add-on: Blend File Utils, supports packing blend files including all their libraries and dependencies into a self contained ZIP file

Updated Add-ons:

OBJ IO: added limited support for MTL texture mapping options
X3D/VRML IO: expanded to support a larger subset of the standar
Python:

the python library was upgraded to 3.5.1 which brings some changes for Add-on and script writers.
all API load functions now have a check_existing argument that defaults to false
New Module: gpu.offscreen, exposes the capability of handling offscreen drawing.
Removed: GreasePencil.draw_mode, as a result of Grease Pencil changes.
More Features
OpenVDB caching: smoke/volumetric simulations can now be cached using OpenVDB as a back-end

Better threading handling: Blender is now massively multi-threaded

Compositing: new invert option to the 2D stabilization node, use mask name as mask node label, expose track velocity as an output of Track Position node, new option to extend image bounds when blurring

Image Editor: now allows visualizing individual R,G and B channels

Cubemap: world textures are now supported in the Blender Internal engine 3D viewport

Spotlights: now they can be scaled on one or several axis (Rectangle and ellipse shapes).

Feature Videos
Compositor Improvements
Compositor 2D motion vector
Grease Pencil Stroke Sculpting
Grease Pencil Clone Brush
Grease Pencil Additive Drawing
Platform/System Changes
Removed support for Windows XP.
Blender now uses Python 3.5.1.
Removed the SCons build system.
Removed redcode library in favor of using ffmpeg which now supports redcode.
Bug Fixes
As for every Blender release, hundreds of bugs were fixed, thanks to the hardworking Blender developers.


Blender 2.76 Release Notes

In this release:

Initial support for Pixar's OpenSubdiv geometry subdivision technology.
A huge view-port performance boost.
Big file browser performance boost and arrow keys navigation support.
Node Auto-offset feature that helps organizing node layouts.
Absolute grid snapping in the 3D view.
Sculpting with tiled strokes.
Text effect strips for the sequencer, supporting subtitle export.
And: 100s of bug fixes and other improvements!

Cycles Rendering
Pointdensity.demo.01.png
New Point Density texture.
Improvements for AMD GPUs (stability on Windows / Linux and compatibility with OSX El Capitan).
Camera zoom motion blur support.
Support for extended and clipped image texture extension.

User Interface
Nodes insert offset.jpg
View-port: The ongoing view-port project brought a big performance boost.
Node Editor: Auto-offset existing nodes when adding a new one.
File Browser:
Arrow-key navigation and selection.
Huge rework of internal code, now quicker & lighter.
It's now possible to display the correct (user edited) shortcuts of modal operations in the UI.

Modeling
252 edge offset 01.png
Two new tools: Flatten Faces and Edge Offset.
Data Transfer supports transferring data between equal meshes better.
Absolute grid snapping for the 3D view was added.
Support custom normals for the Displace Modifier.

OpenSubdiv
Initial integration of the Pixar OpenSubdiv library.
Greatly improves view-port playback performance.
GPU tessellation support.
Improves edge sharpness.

Sequencer
Text seq rel276.png
New Text Effect for rendering text into sequencer output.
Exporting of text as subtitles.
Speed Effect can re-time scenes with subframe rendering.
Improved AltRMB Template-RMB.png selection behavior.

Freestyle NPR Rendering
Rl freestyle strokes.png
Freestyle memory consumption was reduced.
New stroke modifiers were implemented.

Animation
SelectionSet release276.png
Clean Channels tool was introduced that helps organizing channels.
A new add-on to create bone selection sets is bundled.

Game Engine
BGE-camera-shift.png
Possibility of changing camera Lens Shift during game
Python API improvements.
Alpha Anti-Aliasing.
Improved Game Publishing Add-on.

Add-ons
FBX Importer/Exporter got a number of new options.
OBJ Importer/Exporter now fully supports MTL emission of materials.
New version of the UV Add-on with new features.
More Features
Tilled sculpt strokes.
Animation Player:
Sound support!
Pause and start playing using Space.
A time indicator was added.
More datablock previews.
Blender Internal Particle Info Node.
Feature Videos
SneakPeek.png
Have a look at some of the above mentioned features in the demo videos made by the Blender community.

Here you will also find the Developer Sneak Peak series - a video podcast series that showcases important milestones in the development of every Blender release.


Bug Fixes
As for every Blender release, hundreds of bugs were fixed, thanks to the hardworking Blender developers.

Bugs fixed between RC1 and RC2.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.76/Bug_Fixes#RC2
Bugs fixed between RC2 and RC3.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.76/Bug_Fixes#RC3
Bugs fixed between RC3 and Release.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.76/Bug_Fixes#Release
Bug fixed between 2.76a and 2.76b
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.76/Bug_Fixes#Blender_2.76b:_Bug_Fixes


Blender 2.75a: Bug Fixes

The two main fixes to know for this release are:

Game Engine would crash for Objects using velocity clamping
Browsing render passes in Blender crashed.
The more technical info:

Changes from revision 295d0c52a26730edc6d4ed1276e4051cce006be5 to 5af1daa2dc85adcabc057c1f28ca29163fae3d00, inclusive (master branch).

Fix T45234: Stereo Parallel vs. Off-Axis (rB3d12d4b)
Fix T45269: Crash velocity clamping on static objects (rBdb8ccc1)
Fix T45281: IOR Value Slider with "Ctrl" modifier does not increment as intended (rBc503d17)
Fix T45290: Selecting passes in image editor does no longer work (rB6a132aa)
Fix T45237: Dither does not work (rB93608e4)
Fix T45331: Bevel regression (rB791b5fe)
Fix vertex-slide regression with rotated objects (rBc702dab)
Fix vertex-slide helper-line scale (rB51e9a81)
Fix Multi-View UI: convergence is only useless for the parallel camera (toe-in still uses it) (rB80f344f)
Fix Keyframe indicators for NLA Strip properties fails if the AnimData has an active action (rBd96842b)
Correct --help message (rBd3709f4)


What's new in Blender 2.75

Multi-View and Stereo 3D
Real-time visualization of stereoscopic effect
Viewport feedback of stereoscopy cameras, convergence and volumes
Camera stereo settings (pivot, convergence, …)
Render of multiple views
Integration with Compositor and Video Sequencer
Cycles Rendering
Initial support for rendering with AMD GPUs was added
New Light Portals for improving environment light sampling were added
Several Performance and Memory optimizations
Animated Seed is now a built-in feature
Panorama: New Mirror Ball projection mode
User Interface
Viewport:

Depth of Field got an option for high quality display
File Browser:

Ability to display font previews
The size for thumbnails can now be changed
Other:

Search buttons for choosing an object now display an eyedropper icon
Opening/Closing multiple panels is now possible by click-dragging over them
Modeling
A new Corrective Smooth modifier for smoothing deformed areas
Decimate modifier was improved
Great performance boost for Metaball calculations
Tools:

New split off options for the Rip Tool
Un-clamped Edge Slide sliding
More even Subdivide Smooth output
Selection:

Checker de-select now has the option to skip steps
Improved Select Linked options and support
Sculpting/Painting
Symmetry painting support for texture painting in 3D viewport
Dynamic topology distribution was greatly improved
New dynamic topology detail mode
Improved crease brush
And more!
Sequencer
A new “Use Placeholder” option that automatically replaces missing frames of image sequences
Proxies:

Support for storing multiple proxies one custom directory
Option to store proxies per strip or per project
Animation
The new Dependency Graph has landed! (Disabled by default) This is the base needed for developing loads of neat features in the future
Action Management: New features and updates to flesh out the planned workflow enhancements
Action Editor: New features for unlinking Actions and to prevent unwanted/unintentional loss of data
NLA: Name based filtering of animation channels
Grease Pencil: Quite a few “minor” Grease Pencil improvements
Rigging: A new “Armature Symmetrize” and a “Fill Bones” tool were added
Game Engine
New hysteresis parameter for smoother transitions between LODs
Material and World mist attributes now support animation
Debug drawing of Sun Lamps shadow range
Improved collision masks and groups
Replication of rigid body joint constraints for group instances
Python API improvements with subclassing, new options and methods
Over 40 bug fixes (see list).
Add-ons
A new “UI Previews” API for requesting and displaying image files in the UI as custom icons
The “Add Mesh Extra Objects” add-on got a big update
The Collada exporter can now export custom normals
The Python executable is now included with official Blender releases to support multi-threaded script access (better)
Node Wrangler:

Rewritten ‘Align Nodes’ function
Nodes are now spaced evenly and consistently
More Features
OpenEXR format: added support for saving to Dreamworks DWA format and B44 codec
Simplify: We can now split settings for Viewport & Render individually
Better Image metadata support and display:

Blender now will always attach metadata on output rendered image files
This metadata can now be displayed in Image Editor, Sequencer and Movie Clip Editor without having to influence the rendered image by using the “Stamp” feature
The “Stamp” feature is now an option for metadata display
Feature Videos
Have a look at some of the above mentioned features in the demo videos made by the Blender community. Here you will also find the Developer Sneak Peak series – a video podcast series that showcases important milestones in the development of every Blender release.

Bug Fixes
As for every Blender release, hundreds of bugs were fixed, thanks to the hardworking Blender developers.

Re-Designs
The Baking-API now uses an object_id in the bake() function and in the pixel_array table.


Blender 2.74 Release Notes

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.74!

Splash 274.png
Cycles got a few optimizations, a new "Pointiness" attribute and objects can now use the texture maps from other objects, the Viewport is now able to display Ambient Occlusion and Depth of Field, the Outliner was improved in quite some ways, it is now possible to edit normals, the Hair tools developed for the Gooseberry Project are now available (including improved hair dynamics, child hair modifiers and various interaction tools), texture painting can now be done using Cavity Masks, Freestyle memory consumption was greatly improved, the Grease Pencil rewrite from Blender 2.73 was continued to make more editing tools available, improvements for animation interaction and many more features which are worth checking out!

Blender3D FreeTip.gifRelease Candidate 4
Download Blender 2.74 RC4: http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.74
Report a bug: https://developer.blender.org/



Cycles Rendering
Rl pointiness.png
Several improvements for BVH like making it watertight, solving several precision issues and reducing noise
Optimizations:
Black world backgrounds are now removed from the shader graph, resulting in great speed improvements
Various (and great!) memory optimizations
...
Nodes:
New Pointiness attribute for the Geometry node
Control texture space of one object by another
...
And more!

User Interface
Viewport FX release notes.png
New Viewport Compositing brings Ambient Occlusion and Depth of Field right into the Viewport!
View-depth can now be picked using an Eyedropper
Outliner:
An Orphaned Data-blocks Mode was added for data-block management
Deleting of entire object hierarchies
Drag&Drop objects to groups
...
The Node Editor can now show text-blocks in frames
Customizable camera safe areas
And more!

Modeling
Custom normals with transfer data rings.png
Support for Custom Normals was added
Transferring data layers between meshes is now possible thanks to a new Mesh Data Transfer operator and modifier
Tools:
UV handling for Edge- and Vertex Slide was improved
Inverse-square blending for proportional-edit-mode
"Fit Camera View" now works for orthographic cameras as well
A "Split Concave Faces" tool to ensure a convex geometry was added
...
And more!

Particles
07 shape cut AFTER.png
Hair dynamics and editing tools were improved massively:
Support for hair collission with meshes
Simulation now happens using volumetric calculations for more realistic results
Strand bending uses a more realistic approach
Controlling of child hair shapes using curve widgets
New "Spiral" kink mode to generate spirals at hair ends
Toggle buttons for render and viewport visibility were added to the particle settings in the Properties Editor
And much more!

Sculpting/Painting
Release notes cavity.png
Brushes/Strokes:
Improvements to rake and random mapping
Line strokes now support constrains to 45 degree increments
Texture Painting:
Support for dithering for painting on byte images
A new tool "Cavity Mask" was added that creates masks based on mesh cavities or hills
And more!

Freestyle NPR Rendering
Blender 274 Freestyle BNPR NY2015.png
A great memory consumption optimization in stroke rendering was done
And more!

Animation
Rl anim.png
Grease Pencil:
New Editing tools like copy & paste strokes, duplicating active layer, ...
Enable eraser on the fly while drawing with "Continuous Drawing"
Various UI tweaks such as color swatches for Stroke and Fill colors
Grease Pencil data layers are now shown in the Outliner
...
Improvements to the action management to reduce the cases where unused actions are deleted
Pasting keyframes can now be done flipped
Using a new "Follow" option, the animation editors can now follow the time indicator
And more!

Game Engine
Physics:
The first contact point of colliding can now be accessed from Python
Usability improvements
New option "Lock Z Velocity" to avoid micro-jumping
And more!


Add-ons
A new Auto Tile Size Add-on helps setting up the fastest tile size for Cycles rendering
Import images as planes now works for Cycles as well
POV-Ray Renderer now supports volumetric rendering
FBX and OBJ now support custom normals import
New Python API functions
And more!

More Features
There are a lot more features that are new in Blender 2.74, so make sure to check them out!


Feature Videos
Have a look at some of the above mentioned features in the demo videos made by the Blender community. Here you will also find the Developer Sneak Peak series - a video podcast series that showcases important milestones in the development of every Blender release.
Bug Fixes
As for every Blender release, hundreds of bugs were fixed, thanks to the hardworking Blender developers.


Blender 2.73a: Bug Fixes

Fix invalid memory access in gradient brushes - could cause a crash in. (ae18fd5)
Revert "Fix T40257: Frustum culling not working properly". (4fac29c)
Fix T40257: Frustum culling not working properly. (8ebb552)
Fix crash in texture paint sampling when sampling materials without. (def2ef8)
Fix gtest linking on ubuntu and do minor cleanup. (e02af84)
Fix for GTest. (73955e2)
Fix texture sampling with generative modifiers - sample backbuffer. (b996871)
Fix for regression in bmesh connect-pair. (dec523d)
Fix T43204: Shrinkwrap constraint, project mode: Space ignored in bone case. (599c8a2)
Fix T43208 material flickering in edit mode. (1864253)
Fix typo in OCIO configuration file. (9d02e26)
Fix OpenGL Context freeing. (301433f)
Fix BMesh regression: behavior for select more/less. (dcd662c)
Fix T43229: Knife-project regression (broke knife-project). (b77dd13)
Fix T43156: Cycles incorrect final render, proper viewport with moblur disabled. (3f0113b)
SDL wrangler: Support loading SDL2 libraries of different names. (653c6f2)
Sequencer: Don't crash when trying to rebuild proxy without having sequence edits. (1994e84)
Fix T43301: Three of the 'mirror keyframes' tools were mirroring along wrong axis. (6e97db7)
Fix own error in freestyle api. (704494e)
Bugfix T43293: Crash when editing shared GPencil datablock in VSE. (32ffc63)
Fix for security issue loading blend's. (45dfb3b)
Fix T43311: using displacement shader crashes blender. (7fd4c44)
Fix error in freestyle api. (967f93d)


Blender 2.73 Release Notes

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.73!

A major upgrade was given to the Grease Pencil tool, which inter alia brought the ability to edit and animate strokes. The first developments from the Gooseberry Project like a Sequencer Backdrop, Cycles viewport world background and others were added. Cycles got various improvements and speedups, as well as support for cameras inside volumes, the UI got a new 'minimalistic' fullscreenmode and Input Method Editor support for textbuttons (used for complex Chinese and Japanese character input), the Knife-tool was improved, Freestyle got a SVG exporter, and many more features which are worth checking out!



Cycles Rendering
Rl cycles.png
Volume Rendering:
Rendering with cameras inside volume meshes is now supported
Cubic voxels interpolation is a new option helping to avoid artifacts on low resolution smoke simulations
Faster rendering of homogeneous volumes
Support for GeForce 9xx GPUs
Improved rendering with area lights
Viewport specularity for the viewport is now also implemented for Cycles
And more!

User Interface
Rl cycles world bg.png
A new fullscreen mode without any buttons or other "annoying" elements to improve the UI
The 3D View got an option to display the world background right from the viewport
Pie Menus:
Confirm Threshold to confirm a pie menu without releasing the original key
Nested Pie Menus (a Pie Menu within a Pie Menu) are now supported

Complex char.png
Chinese and Japanese complex character input:
General support for Input Method Editors (IMEs) has been added
Only supported for text buttons for now
Only supported on Windows and Linux for now
Supported is Sougou (Chinese), Bing (Chinese), QQ (Chinese) and Microsoft integrated (Japanese)
And now guess why we have a Chinese Splash! ;)
And more!

Modeling
Rl knife tool.png
Knife-tool:
Cuts can now be created using free-hand drawing
Cut-loops can now be closed by double click
Selection:
A new selection method "Select Similar Regions" was added
You can now skip adjacent faces while using the select more/less function
And more!

Sculpting/Painting
Rl sculpt2.png
Texture Painting:
The Add Simple Uvs operator for texture painting now uses a simpler unwrap method for better quick UV layouts
Face-mask edges are now hidden to give proper visual feedback while working with masks
Brushes:
Changing brush size, detail size and strength can now be done using numeric keyboard input
Brush strength can now also be changed for Grab and Snake Hook brushes

Sequencer
Release notes sequencer.png
A Backdrop similar to Compositor is now implemented for the Sequencer as well
Strips:
Strips can now be snapped to other strip's start- and endpoints
A new slip Tool allows moving content within the strip itself
And more!

Freestyle NPR Rendering
Blender 273 Tomo final.png
Freestyle got a new SVG exporter, implemented as an add-on
View maps can now be cached
More options for chain selection and chain sorting were added


Animation
Rl gpencil.png
Grease Pencil (which got a major upgrade):
It is now possible to edit and animate strokes (!!!)
New draw styles were added, e.g. filled stroke interiors, volumetric strokes, ...
The Grease Pencil's user interface (which is now completely defined via Python) has gotten a general overhaul
Two quick access pie menus were added
Graph Editor:
Revised the set of operators for showing/hiding curves from the keyframe area
Circle selection for Curves was added
And more!

Add-ons
Collada Importer:
Importing rigs previously caused problems with leaf bones (end bone of a bone chain) so a fix was created for that.
Added an experimental bonechain Finder to predict the longest possible chains of connected bones.
The FBX Add-on now uses some advanced handling/tweaking options for importing and exporting armatures
The Copy and Paste Add-on is now using version 2.0
To Add-on developers: Some changes were made to the Python API, make sure to check them out and update your Add-ons if necessary!


More Features
There are a lot more features that are new in Blender 2.73, so make sure to check them out!


Feature Videos
Look at many of the above features in the Blender Developer Sneak Peeks - a video podcast series that showcases important milestones in the development of every Blender release.


Bug Fixes
As for every Blender release, hundreds of bugs were fixed, thanks to the hardworking Blender developers.


Blender 2.73 Release Notes

Work in progress release notes for Blender 2.73. You can download a test build with these improvements here: https://builder.blender.org/download/
List of missing notes: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.73/missing
Cycles Rendering
Blender 273 cycles area light.png
Quite a few smaller Cycles improvements are new in Blender 2.73. E.g. support for cameras inside volumes and cubic voxels interpolations, faster rendering of volumes, improved rendering of area lights, viewport specularity,... And we now also support GeForce 9xx GPUs!


User Interface
Rl cycles world bg.png
A new Fullscreen mode displays an environment without any buttons or other "annoying" user interface elements. A number of Input Method Editors (IMEs) are now supported for complex non-latin character input (widely used in east-Asia). Pie menu interaction has been improved by using a confirm threshold and they now can contain nested Pie Menus. The 3D View, which is also a part of the UI, now has the option to display the world background, right from the viewport. Besides from that, there were lots of smaller improvements made.


Modeling
Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.73/Modeling
The Knife-tool now allows freehand cuts drawing and closing of cut-loops via double clicking. Selection during modeling has been improved by adding the ability to select similar regions, plus the select more/less function has gotten the option to skip adjacent faces. A few other improvements were made, like for the Bevel Modifier, Shapekeys,...


Blender 2.72b

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.72/Bug_Fixes#Blender_2.72b:_Bug_Fixes


Blender 2.72a

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.72/Bug_Fixes#Blender_2.72a:_Bug_Fixes


Blender 2.72 Release Notes

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.72. Cycles GPU rendering supports Volume and Subsurface Scattering now. The User Interface comes with optional Pie Menus now and the Tooltips have been improved. For Modeling, a new intersection tool has been added in Edit Mode. Texture painting workflow has been streamlined with easy access to painted images and UV layers. The Compositor now comes with a Sun Beam node. Freestyle NPR rendering is now available with Cycles as well. Additionally, Blender 2.72 features three new addons.

Cycles Rendering
Blender 272 cycles scatter visibility.jpg
Volume rendering and Subsurface Scattering are available on GPU, Volume and Glossy sampling was improved, new Ashikhmin-Shirley distribution for Glossy and Anisotropic BSDFs, memory usage during rendering was lowered, faster OSL rendering, Anamorphic Bokeh support, and better control over caustics.


User Interface
Pie menu manual.png
The long awaited pie menus are available as an addon for &#8646; Tab, Z, Q, &#8646; Tab&#8679; ShiftCtrl, ., CtrlSpace operators. New Tooltip design makes important information more noticeable. Python text is displayed in a monospaced font. Blender Internal preview now behaves like the Cycles preview, it starts rendering at low resolution and improves from there. Improved units parsing, even though devs claim Blender not to feature a units engine it does a better job now.


Modeling
Editmesh intersect.png
A new intersection tool was added, to quickly cut up geometry. It's a bit like boolean but not calculating interior/exterior.

The Bevel Tool and the Bevel Modifier now have the option to set the material of the newly created faces to the material in a given slot.


Sculpting/Painting
Paint tools layers 272.png
Texture painting workflow has been streamlined with easy access to painted images and UV layers, ability to generate strokes with curves and lines has been added, more blend modes are available and new tools to fill and mask have been added.


Compositing
Sunbeams usage.png
A new Sun Beams node has been added to the compositor.


Game Development
Manual gameengine actuator mouse look.png
A new Mouse Actuator allowing between other things to do mouse look has been added.
The Property Sensor has new evaluation types.
The TrackTo Actuator has new menus to select up/track axis.
The Property Actuator has a new level mode.
The Mouse Over Any Sensor has a new X-Ray and Property/Material detection options.
A new BGE Debug and Contrainst Wrapper API have been added.

Freestyle NPR Rendering
Blender 272 textured strokes in cycles ui excerpt.png
The Freestyle line rendering engine has been integrated into Cycles in addition to the Blender Internal (BI). Freestyle provides Cycles users with a versatile non-photorealistic (NPR) line rendering solution. Most Freestyle options work in the same way for both Cycles and BI. Line textures in Freestyle for Cycles are defined by means of shader nodes (unlike Freestyle for BI, which relies on the conventional texture mapping and influence panels). New per-material Freestyle line settings provide a reliable mean to specify line colors applicable to both Cycles and the BI. The Freestyle Python API also has user-visible updates for better code readability and run-time performance.


Animation
More Features
Hue ramps.png
Color ramps now support color interpolation in hue mode both clock- and counter-clock-wise. CtrlF in animation editors now works as a shortcut for activating the Filter by Name functionality. Weights now draw in wireframe mode in the 3D view. Temporary data gets deleted when closing Blender. The video editor got enhanced by a gaussian blur filter. New camera presets: Blackmagic Pocket Cinema and Blackmagic Production 4K.


Addons
Georef 2.png
FBX improvements: Import now supports armatures, shapekeys, animations, with shapekeys also being supported for export.

New DXF importer with support for 3D(SubD) geometry, and geo-referencing. It imports curve types as curves and adds control over various geometry merge options.

New UV addon for align distribution and copy/paste (!!) of UVs.

New Game Publishing Addon is available for game developers!

New addon for named layers & grouped layer management.


Blender 2.71 Release Notes

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.71. Much awaited new features for Cycles renderer include deformation motion blur, fire/smoke and volume rendering and a baking API. User interface now allows for draggable popups and resizable preview widgets. Animation has new interpolation types with “easing equations” presets. Modeling now allows to “split normals” and Sculpting/Painting has new HSL color wheel and constant detail in dyntopo. Game development now allows deactivating logic bricks, multi-threaded animations, cast only materials and “unlimited” action layers. Freestyle NPR rendering has a new textured strokes feature, along with line sorting options.

Cycles Rendering
Blender-2.71-cycles-smoke.png
Cycles now includes support for rendering volume textures, fire and smoke, deformation motion blur, baking textures from cycles materials, more texture interpolation modes and a dedicated UV layer node.


Animation
271-fcurve easing equations.png
More easing equations added to the IPO editor for better animation control, locking time to other windows is again possible, auto snapping is now independent from display type.

The user interface now offers more feedback, especially on errors, updates driver expressions automatically on editing, includes more icons and offers more editing tools.

New tools also include lasso selection support, non-linked duplication for strips, and setting preview range based on selected strips.

Modelling
Release 271 split.png
The new per-face normals feature allows blender to display and export sharp edges correctly without geometry duplication.

In addition, selection tools offer more options.

Sculpting/Painting
Sculpt constand detail.png
New features include a HSL color wheel for color selection and tools to handle homogenous density in dynamic topology sculpting.

Dyntopo and matcap display for sculpt mode have also had performance optimizations.


Game Engine
Deactivate-Logic-Brick.png
UI to deactivate logic bricks, multi-threaded animations, shadows-only materials and more action layers are among the new features for the game engine

Freestyle NPR Rendering
Rim sketch.jpg
Freestyle has been upgraded with textured stroke support. Textured stroke support makes it possible to apply patterns to the lines and simulate rough surfaces or different kinds of brush tips for the strokes themselves.

Line sorting also gives artists more control over the order of line drawing

User Interface
2.71 new brush previews release.png
Interface features include new icons for texture painting, resizeable preview widgets and draggable popups.


Blender 2.70 Release Notes

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 270 Volume.png
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
Blender2.70-PlaneTrackImage.png
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
Header menu collapsed.png
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
Wireframe Mod Result.png
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
GSoC-DepsGraph-ThreadedCPULoad.png
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
FPS-Walk-Navigation-Shortcuts.png
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
Blender261 python changes.png
The Freestyle Python API is an essential part that makes it a highly programmable NPR rendering engine. This API has been reorganized.
More Features
Blender2.70 MaskOverlapFill.png
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.


Blender 2.69 - Release

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.69.

FBX import is now supported, along with improved export. New mesh modeling tools were added and existing ones improved. Cycles subsurface scattering and hair shading were improved, along with the addition of a new sky model, shading nodes and tone mapping in the viewport. The motion tracker now supports plane tracking, to track and replace flat objects in footage.

We have been testing this final release using three 'release candidates'. The official release is now available, published October 30th 2013.


Modeling

A new hidden wire display option was added to help with retopology. Mesh Bisect is a new tool to cut meshes in half. The Bridge, Edgenet fill, Grid fill and Symmetrize tools were improved. New curve and lattice editing tools were added too.

Motion Tracker

The Motion tracker now supports plane tracking, which can be used to replace billboards, screens and other flat things in footage.

Addons

FBX Import support has been added and FBX/OBJ can now export split normals (without the need for the edge split modifier).

Bug fixes

In addition to the new features, over 270 bugs that existed in previous releases have been fixed.

Cycles Render

Hair rendering was improved with a new Hair shader and reorganized settings. Subsurface scattering uses a new sampling algorithm and now supports bump mapping and texture blurring.

Sky rendering now uses a more accurate sky model. New blackbody, vector transform and HSV nodes were added. The non-progressive integrator was renamed to Branched Path Integrator, and is now available for GPU rendering.

Tone mapping now works in the viewport, with photographic film emulation.

More Features

Lists in the user interface can now be resized, sorted and filtered. Further there are small improvements for vertex parenting, empty objects, the shrinkwrap modifier, mask editing, armatures, f-curves and drivers.


Blender 2.69 Release Candidate 2

New features (FBX import, Plane tracking, Cycles SSS, etc) and a whole of bug fixes (270). Help testing this 2nd release candidate!


Blender 2.69 - Release Candidate

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.69.

FBX import is now supported, along with improved export. New mesh modeling tools were added and existing ones improved. Cycles subsurface scattering and hair shading were improved, along with the addition of a new sky model, shading nodes and tone mapping in the viewport. The motion tracker now supports plane tracking, to track and replace flat objects in footage.

2.69 RC release: October 7th, 2013.

Modeling

A new hidden wire display option was added to help with retopology. Mesh Bisect is a new tool to cut meshes in half. The Bridge, Edgenet fill, Grid fill and Symmetrize tools were improved. New curve and lattice editing tools were added too.

Motion Tracker

The Motion tracker now supports plane tracking, which can be used to replace billboards, screens and other flat things in footage.

Addons

FBX Import support has been added and FBX/OBJ can now export split normals (without the need for the edge split modifier).

Bug fixes

In addition to the new features, over 270 bugs that existed in previous releases have been fixed.

Cycles Render

Hair rendering was improved with a new Hair shader and reorganized settings. Subsurface scattering uses a new sampling algorithm and now supports bump mapping and texture blurring.

Sky rendering now uses a more accurate sky model. New blackbody, vector transform and HSV nodes were added. The non-progressive integrator was renamed to Branched Path Integrator, and is now available for GPU rendering.

Tone mapping now works in the viewport, with photographic film emulation.

More Features

Lists in the user interface can now be resized, sorted and filtered. Further there are small improvements for vertex parenting, empty objects, the shrinkwrap modifier, mask editing, armatures, f-curves and drivers.


Blender 2.68a Release Notes

Bug fix update
14 bugs fixed since 2.68 release: (Changes from revision 58374 up to 58534)

Fix #36218: Crash deleting a sequence strip r58374
Fix #36216: Viewport render with CMJ sampler and unlimited passes freezes r58406
Fix #33016: BGE, Blender crashes on Game Engine start r58422
Fix #35195: BGE, Shadow Only lamps only work with Specular enabled r58427
Fix #36227: removing vertex colors crashes r58436
Fix #36223: BGE, fix crash with Game actuator r58440
Fix BGE, incorrect exception for SCA_JoystickSensor.axisSingle access r58441
Fix #36234: Dynamic Topology undo crash r58463
Fix #36224: Cloth Simulation Doesn't Work on Rearranging Modifiers r58504
Fix #36240: Painting Undo Enable Face paint Crash r58509
Fix #36248: Crash using factor input on color mix node r58512
Fix #36247: Ocean Modifier (Geometry in Displace) - Subdivision Surface crash r58513
Fix Ocean Modifier crash when size is zero r58514
Fix #34398: BGE, illegal operator in Expression Controller r58516
Fix #36253: OpenGL viewport rendering to a new window fails r58520


Blender 2.68

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.68.

Many different mesh modelling tools were added and improved. Cycles render performance was improved on Windows and on GPU's. The motion tracker can now automate placement and choice of markers more with new tools. Smoke rendering quality has been improved to reduce blockiness.

Python scripts and drivers are now disabled by default when loading files. This is for improved security, without this feature malicious .blend files could cause problems. See the Python security documentation for details.

2.68 release: July 18th, 2013.

Modeling

Improved bridge tool to bridge multiple loops at once, subdivision, surface blending and bridging face regions. New grid-fill tool filling a grid from edge loops, X mirror and projected proportional editing, snap to symmetry, face split option for dissolve, vertex connect cut across faces.

Physics

Smoke has improved rendering quality avoid blockiness, and subframe simulation support to handle fast moving emitters. Particles can now be emitted from faces generated by modifiers that were not in the original mesh.

Usability

Improved weight painting tools, mask modifier for sequencer strips, 2D image paint more consistent with 3D painting, better key shortcuts display, quick enabling and disabling of multiple layers or visibility, auto indent for multi-line Python statements,

Addons

New addons are Texture Atlas to bake shadow and lightmaps for an entire scene, and Edit Linked Library, for quick editing of linked assets.

Cycles Render

Rendering performance has been improved on CPU and GPU and support for new GPUs was added. A new Mist render pass is available, Ray visibility is now supported for all light sources, and new Nodes have been added. Hair rendering on the GPU has been enabled as well.

Motion Tracker

Some new features and smaller improvements to existing ones were done for motion tracking. Main features are markers' position refining, which allows you to refine marker position after it was occluded by an object, and automatic keyframe selection, which tries to automatically find a best keyframe for the reconstruction.

Python Security

Auto-running Python scripts can now be controlled more securely.

Bug fixes

In addition to the new features, over 280 bugs that existed in previous releases have been fixed.


Blender 2.68 Release Notes

Work in progress
Work in progress release logs for the upcoming Blender 2.68 release.

You can download the Release Candidate build here. Help us testing, and submit bug reports in the bug tracker!

Cycles Rendering
Rendering performance has been improved on CPU and GPU and support for new GPUs was added. A new Mist render pass is available, Ray visibility is now supported for all light sources, and new Nodes have been added. Hair rendering on the GPU has been enabled as well.
Motion Tracker

Usability and Tools
Mesh bridge uneven after.png
Improved mesh editing tools: Improved bridge tool, grid-fill tool, options to selectively apply weight paint tools, TODO more.
Python Security
Auto-running Python scripts can now be controlled more securely


Blender 2.67b Release Notes

Bug fix update
Over 30 bugs fixed since 2.67 release: (Changes from revision 56594 up to 57118)

Interface
fix stack corruptions in special cases for search popup r56982
fix #35547: incomplete tooltips in node editor r57072
fix #35374: Region overlap + bugs, was missing keymap for REGION_TIMER, which ended up in missing updates happening. r57118
Viewport
fix #35459: global texture coordinates not working with GLSL shaders. r56967
fix #35473: Using Redo panel in View3D after Grease Pencil action moves GP layer to that area r57074
Animation
fix #35443: : Animation player doesn't play some movie formats r56943
fix getting selected bones: wrong list member size for memory setting r56968
* fix for confusion switching active group when running mirror r57101
Composite/Nodes
fix for node-searh menu r56594 r56595
fix for node item polling r56596
Fix #35495:, Material preview don't update (PyNodes regression) r57050
fix for node menu: Show the group input/output nodes in the Input/Output categories respectively, so they can be added with the usual UI in case the user deletes them. r57073
Render
fix #35458: crash in image sampling r56960
fix #35500: Material Copy Crash on specific scenes r57009
Render (Cycles)
fix #35506: enter local view, enable render draw mode, exit local view would keep rendering in the background r57057
Render (Freestyle)
fix for a crash due to de-referencing of a StrokeVertex Python wrapper object r56956
fix #35478: Spatial Noise crashes Blender on Render r56991
fix #35493: Blender crash when rendering freestyle in background mode r56994
fix for freestyle bug which happened when the sketchy chaining is used, stroke geometry may contain a 180-degree U-turn. r57068
Modifiers
fix #35450: bevel make large spikes sometimes. r57004
fix #35513: Multires modifier normal corruption on apply base r57071
Tools
fix #35451: crash with extrude, grab, grab r56935
fix regression in 2.67a, crash in loop-select r56977
fix #35462: own regression with ortho-camera adding points r56990
fix #35518: UV Mapping crashes the Blender with specific image file r57043
Fix #35504: Blender crashes on separating curves with different Evaluation Time / keyframes r57046
fix #35503: Bug with edit-mesh and mirror modifier - extruding was creating faces where it shouldn't. r57063
fix #35543: Bezier curve width and twist fail to apply when more than 1 point is edited r57067
fix #35509: Edit-mesh manipulator median point used bad orientation r57083
Paint
fix error where selecting mask brush once lead to changes in behavior of other brushes hotkeys. r56957
Fix #35426:, masking works wrong in projection painting. r56986 r56989
Game Engine
Fix #35480: object without material crash blender when starting game engine r57052
Physics
fix smoke noise tile was saved in Blender executable directory r56930
Python
fix/workaround installing addons (problem with osx permissions) r56971
Other
Collada: was missing recalculate of normals after mesh import r57077


Blender 2.67a Release Notes

Bug fix update
Over 80 bugs fixed since 2.67 release: (Changes from revision 56533 up to 56912)

Interface
Fix #35286: 'Reset to Default Theme' makes some node titlebars go black (r56647)
Fix #35261: double clicking the up arrow in the file browser to go up multiple directories fast would start drag and drop (r56653)
Fix #56662: files with numbers higher than 2147483648 or with different numbers of leading zeros would show in random order in the file browser. (r56662)
Fix #35284: outline name edit textbox did not show properly in some cases. (r56670)
Fix #56672: search menu buttons (with an X on the right side to clear) had text overlapping the X icon (r35281)
Fix #35273: click in empty space to deselect as used by the Maya keymap gave a python error when used in pose mode. (r56673)
Fix #35262: assigning shortcuts from e.g. delete or selection mode menus (r56676)
Fix #35307: popup menus in nodes, with nodes outside window boundary, were clipped (r56688)
Fix #35342: multi-sample antialiasing makes tooltips look blurry (r56766)
Fix #35415: multi-sample don't work in 2.66 and newer (regression) (r56912)
Fix for toggle drag not working in popups (r56747 r56881)
Change to drag-lock behavior, only use with outliner (this way layers can be changed all at once) (r56748)
Viewport
Fix #35259: Fix crash when enabling mesh analysis intersect with wire edges (r56539)
Fix eternal loop with background scenes (r56689)
Animation
Fix #35253: Fix failure to animate X, Y, Z values in nodes with vector sub-menu (r56581)
Fix #35384: animation to enable/disable render layers was applied one frame too late when rendering animations. (r56851)
Fix #35398: changing render layer name causes animation to be lost. (r56868)
Fix material/lamp drivers not working sometimes when they were used by multiple objects (r56707)
Fix for shape-key drivers executing for every call to derivedmesh (r56880)
Sequencer
Fix #35390: the verticel line indicating scene end frame was off by one (r56872 r56882 r56894)
Composite/Nodes
Fix #35252: Fix crash with the node placed partially behind the screen (r56572)
Fix #35291: crash deleting 'Group Output' node in compositor (r56654)
Fix #35327: compositing Z combine node was not giving the same result as previous versions when the Z values were the same (r56755)
Fix #35330: Blur node crash due to size overflow (r56759)
Fix #35349: multiple viewers nodes crashing during render (r56791)
Fix #35376: node editor throwing python error on some files saved with 2.66 test builds. (r56830)
Fix #35388: grouped nodes not editable in properties ui. (r56857)
Fix #35369: crop node or FileOutput node bug. (r56879)
Fix #35313: object and ID anti-aliased masks are incorrect when using border render + crop (r56898)
Fix string escaping when building python expression for nodes (r56610)
Fix crash loading node groups caused by versioning error (r56611)
Fix for add_node operator, prevent it from re-using settings from a previous call (r56613)
Fix note add operators were not using UNDO option (r56648)
Render
Fix #35219: Fix blender internal auto ray bias to avoid the terminator shadow problem was giving light flickering on a mesh with animated hair strands. (r56577)
Fix #35280: crash when setting Environment Map imagefile (r56620)
Fix #35335: Crash when rendering a text object with a remesh modifier and a material texture (r56749)
Render (Cycles)
Fix #35272: GPU crash with anisotropic shader in group node. (r56650 r56663)
Fix #35282: color ramp set to constant interpolation did not work well (r56651)
Fix #35306: normal mapping not working with flat shading. (r56682)
Render (Freestyle)
Fix #35352: geometry spatial noise freezes on render (r56836)
Fix #35385: rendering crash with modifiers (r56839)
Fix #35245: Freestyle getting stuck on view map creation + memory leaks. (r56905)
Fix crash when closing blend files with no line styles (r56711)
Fix for a copy-and-paste bug in a Freestyle Python API helper function (r56806)
Fix for memory leaks in Freestyle Python API components (r56778 r56807)
Fix for missing finalization of memory blocks allocated in the Freestyle module (r56826)
Fix for built-in style module sketchy_multiple_parameterization.py not working correctly (r56867)
Modifiers
Fix #35317: crash with boolean modifier using an object whose library linked mesh datablock went missing (r56698)
Tools
Fix #35257: 'Brige > Merge' sometimes flips result (r56606)
Fix #35292: edge slide slow with big image in image editor (r56671)
Fix #35289: UV layout export to image was extremely slow for large meshes (r56674)
Fix #35326: even edge slide on open edge crashes (r56735)
Fix #35308: Edge Split operator splits unselected edges (r56760)
Fix for strange behavior with loop select involving ngons (r56773 r56783 r56784 r56785), See: comparison
Fix loopselect-slide (with multicut enabled) changing from vertex-select to edge-select. (r56863)
Paint
Fix part of #35372: distorted strokes when painting zoomed out with a small brush size (r56816)
Fix #35057, #35372: slow texture painting performance. (r56823)
Fix #35355: 2D image paint View mapping mode was dependent on zoom, this was wrong, it should just fit the texture in the brush circle. (r56833)
Fix #35372: sculpting/painting long brush strokes with small brush size would take up a lot of memory. (r56834)
Fix #56901: calling any paint operator from operator search menu with mouse crashes blender. (r56901)
Fix crash on 2d painting when no active object is present (regression), (r56892)
Fix Painting / Sculpting: improve pressure sensitivity (regression) (r56896)
Fix crash due to shared paint cursor function (regression). (r56902)
Sculpt
Fix #35337: sculpt performance regression, partial redraw was not working anymore due to paint cursor redraw problem. (r56763)
Fix sculpt getting slower as you paint a longer stroke. Partial redraw was redrawing the whole area that was painted on from the start of the stroke (r56767 r56828)
Fix #35364: 'D Key' shortcut inconsistency (r56815 r56873)
Fix #35354: dyntopo - materials and UI display issues (r56820)
Game Engine
Fix #31757: Fix setGLSLMaterialSetting has no effect (regression) (r56605)
Fix #34382: vertex position doesn't update when set through Python and "Cast Buffer Shadows" is disabled (r56639)
Fix #35204: new alpha-enabled shadows fail when UVs Change (r56643)
Fix #34631: error displaying texface (r56679)
Fix #34044: error displaying texface for objects with no material (r56680)
Fix #35320: crash when adding property without setting material (r56745)
Fix #35329: action actuator crash with replacemesh, pointers got outdated. (r56756)
Add missing python properties on ActionActuator: layer, layerWeight (r56906)
Particles
Fix #35296: particles crash with long object name (r56668)
Rigid Body
fix #35403: Highlight not updating instantly when removing from Rigid body
Python
Fix #35319: 2x2 matrix inverse and adjugate were wrong. (r56700)
Fix #35336: added a warning in the doc string for nodetree.nodes.new() (r56800)
Other
Fix OS X build with 10.6 SDK, was not working due to recent fullscreen bug fixes. (r56601)
Fix #35255: Fix build for older OpenCollada versions failed (r56537 r56538)
Fix #35267: cmd+v, cmd+c on OS X for copy/paste worked in some editors like the 3D view and text editor but not in the animation editors(r56661 r56678)


Blender 2.67 Release Notes

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.67. New in this release is the Freestyle render engine for non-photorealistic rendering, which can generate 2D line drawings in various styles.

The paint and sculpt system is now much more consistent across different paint modes and has gained various new features. Motion tracking was made faster, and Cycles now has initial support for subsurface scattering.

The node system now support more flexible group editing. For developers of external render engine addons it is now possible to support node based materials.

For 3D printing an addon was added to analyze and export the meshes.

Freestyle Line Rendering Engine

Freestyle is a new non-photorealistic (NPR) rendering engine integrated into Blender. Originally developed as a stand-alone program in an academic research project, Freestyle provides artists with a new tool set for generating 2D line drawing out of a given 3D scene prepared with Blender. Generated lines can be stylized by a variety of stylization options for tweaking line color, alpha transparency, line thickness, and line geometry. The resulting line art can be combined with other render components (e.g., render passes from the Blender Internal renderer and Cycles) through render layers and the compositor. Examples of Freestyle use cases include cartoon rendering, architectural visualization, technical drawing, blue prints, and computer-generated sketches. Freestyle expands Blender's rendering capabilities on the basis of geometry-based visualization solutions specifically geared to 2D-like computer graphics.
Paint System Improvements

The stroke system and brush texture access has been unified and as a result there are many more tools now shared across paint modes. Brush angle control, better brush overlays, separate texture control for alpha and a brand new stencil mapping mode with direct mouse control have been implemented. Many improvements and bug fixes have also been made.
Cycles Rendering

A Subsurface Scattering shader is now available, to create materials such as Wax, Marble or Skin. Minimum pixel width was added to hair rendering and several performance improvements have been made, to render scenes without hair or motion blur faster. The OSL shading system received performance improvements as well.
Motion Tracker

Camera and object motion solver motion are much more accurate and faster because the Ceres library is used now for the bundle adjustment step. In addition the tripod solver is finally fixed and has become usable for longer footage. Smaller fixes were done as well.
Compositing Nodes

Added border for compositor viewer node, which restricts what is to be composited for faster previews. Also border rendering and cropping are finally working as expected. Some optimization was done as well.
Python Nodes

The API now supports custom node types. Nodes can be defined and registered in python scripts like other UI classes. This allows the creation of entire new node systems for addons, external render engines and the like.
Node Editor

Node Groups editing is less cluttered and more consistent with other nodes. Multiple node editor windows can be used independently. Nesting node groups is fully supported. Pinning is supported as well in the node editor to disable context switching.

Usability and Tools

New mesh modeling tools: Individual Face Inset, Poke Face and Knife Project. Faster image display in the image and movie clip editors. Better support for UTF-8 text in the text and console editors, and various improvements to other editors.
3D Printing Toolset

An addon to help with 3d printing is now bundled as well as a new ruler tool and mesh-analysis display attributes such as thickness, sharp-areas and distortion.
Addons
New addons are the node efficiency tools and VRML2 export.
Bug Fixes
In addition to the new features, over 260 that existed in previous releases have been fixed.


Blender 2.66a Release Notes

Note: OSX release now includes the cuda kernels, so it starts with cycles without waiting for building kernels

Bug fix update
Over 80 bugs fixed since 2.66 release:


Interface
Fix #34357: Image editor scope and clip editor track preview did not resize properly with different DPI settings. (r54760)
Fix #33466: Alt+MouseWheel changes frame as well as buttons (r54929)
Fix UI/DPI: user preferences window size now takes into account DPI, otherwise the buttons don't fit properly. (r54945)
Fix soft shadow at top edge incorrectly drawn (r54954)
Fix #34418: Screencast could be started twice (r54961)
Fix #34509: Panel color were not updated from old files properly (r54996)
Allow trackpad and magic mouse swipes to control brush size for circle select. (r55027)
Fix (regression) #34391: Window position not saving correctly for next start-up (r54879)
Fix #34390: quicktime video codec menu showing blank (r54942)
Viewport
Fix #34378: GLSL materials using multiple UV layers fail in editmode (r54783)
Fix #34347: View3D Mini-Axis drawing in error with overlay (r54789)
Fix #34426: Manipulator handles drawn incorrectly by depth (r54923)
Fix glitch rotating the camera in camera mode drawing helper-line in random locations (r54928)
Animation
Fix zoom for graph-editor (and other editors) (r54910)
Sequencer
Fix #34439: Strip modifier - Mask multiply failure (r54901)
Fix #34453: Added RGBA|RGB channels toggle to sequencer preview (r54904)
Fix sequencer crash when pasteing strips after creating new file (r54935)
Composite/Nodes
Fix #34356: Inputs list in file output doesn't appear properly. (r54754)
Fix #34359: Crash when using image output node (r54746)
Fix #34474: "Record Composite" image op segfaults in compositor code (r54948)
Fix #34461: Inconsistent behavior of "Color Mix Node" and "Alpha Over Node" (r54960)
Fix #34507: Adding reroute node into invalid links would crash the compositor (r55047)
MovieClip/Tracking
Fix memory leak when loading multilayer EXR as movie clip (r54934)
Fix for incorrect subpixel precision of marker when using track offset (r55028)
Render
Fix #34351: Displacement map Bake margin does not work (r54748)
Fix #34436: Node editor delete texture crash (r54908)
Fix #34493: Image Sequence texture didn't allow "Offset" with fcurves. (r55012)
Fix #34475: Weird noise bug with Texture nodes (r55021)
Fix for texture preview render with show alpha enabled (r55026)
Fix image transparency backwards compatibility. Now the texture datablock has a 'Use Alpha' option again. (r55022)
Render (Cycles)
Fix #34421: viewport render stuck with no objects in the scene. (r54885)
Fix #34480: hair render in dupligroup did hide the emitter properly in some cases. (r54959)
Modifiers
Fix #34358: Shrinkwrap modifier project along normal did not work correctly (r54793)
Fix #34369: applying screw modifier turns object to black (r55004)
Tools
Fix #34384: Border select in UV Image window crashed (r54816)
Fix for weight paint using values over 1.0 when blending (r54833)
Fix for regression in 'object.shape_key_transfer' operator since BMesh merge (r54834)
Fix #34415: Edge slide results in segmentation fault on certain mesh (r54875)
Fix #34455: Origin to Center of Mass is missing in menu Object > Transform (r54891)
Fix selecting linked faces (r54920 r54921)
Fix #34366: mesh.select_mode operator could not be configure the use_extend and use_expand properly. (r54944)
fix #34486: Selection of bones in armature edit mode only toggles between two bones (r54969)
Fix #34534: Copy/Paste objects hangs (r55051)
Fix (regression) #34438: Solidify crease error (r54882)
Fix missing select menu for weight, vertex, texture paint modes. (r54883)
Fix joining meshes could loose crease/bevel weights (r54899)
Fix (regression) #34449: Edge toggline bevel failed (r54900)
Sculpt
Fix #34370: Collapse-Edges crash in dyntopo (r54827)
Fix #34431: Crash when dyntopo enabled and using view plane mode (r54971)
Fix #34473: Blender Crashes on toggling modes, dynatopo sculpt/object mode. (r55007)
Game Engine
Fix projection clipping (r54733)
Fix #34349: Character walkDirection ADD mode -#INF error. (r54738)
Fix #18967: Enable alpha buffer (useful for TV broadcasting). (r54745)
Fix #34353: Ray cast on Triangle mesh bounded Rigid Body Object crashes (r54757)
Fix #34219: Webcam support under Linux in Standalone broken (r54764)
Fix #34330: Action Actuator "caching" the previous ran actions (r54766 r54767 r54769)
Fix error using actions with multiple scenes (r54767)
Fix object color channels can now be animated separately without zeroing out the other channels (r54772)
Fix error using uninitialized variables for rendering (r54776 r54781)
Fix #34377: Game-Engine - Multi UV mesh's materials not backwards compatible (r54780)
Fix Game-Engine crashing when on material conversions (r54837)
Fix #34440: Motion blur (2d filter) not working in osx (r54912)
Fix #34428 #20856 #20281: converting multi-uv layers. (r54972)
Fix #34523: 2D-Filter produces render error (r55010)
Fix #34517: 2D-Filter causes mouselook script drifting effect (r55011)
Rigid Body
Fix motion paths calculation being incorrect for rigid bodies (r54799)
Allow rigidbody collision groups to be animated (r54818)
Fix #34410: Planes with Rigid Body always keep distance to colliding objects (r54855)
Fix #34420: Rigid objects not resetting original properly after running a simulation. (r54862)
Fix inconsistency with world rebuilding with the start frame (r54990)
Text Editor
Fix Fix text editor bug: ctrl+F is not configurable (r54878)
Fix #54907: freeze when turning on syntax highlight (r54907)
Fix crash when overwriting ascii character with multibyte character (r54917)
Python
Fix Python console bug: "autocomplete" doesn't advance cursor properly when completion includes UTF8 characters (r54824)
Fix #34423: foreach_get crash for any non existant attribute (r54865 r54866)
Fix #34372: mesh.verts.foreach_set not working with normals (r54943)
Fix for python exception getting the ID from an operator button (r54835)
Other
Fix freeing all bakes in particle mode (r54822)
Fix file with packed images crashes on load (r54790)
Fix image alpha version patch with library linked files (r54794)
Fix #34427: Collada export crash with armature (r54856)
Fix X3D import error loading UV's (r4325)
Fix X3D import for images (r4327)
Rigify fixes (r4321 r4334 r4335)


Blender 2.66

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.66. This release contains long awaited features like rigid body physics simulation, dynamic topology sculpting and matcap display.

Other new features include Cycles hair rendering, support for high pixel density displays, much better handling of premultiplied and straight alpha transparency, a vertex bevel tool, a mesh cache modifier and a new SPH particle fluid dynamics solver.

2.66 release: February 21th, 2013.

Dynamic Topology Sculpting

Dynamic topology is a new sculpting mode that subdivides the mesh as needed, whereas regular sculpting only affects the shape of a mesh. This makes it possible to sculpt complex shapes out of a simple mesh, rather than just adding details onto a modeled base mesh.

UI and Usability

Support for MacBook "Retina" Displays was added, proper DPI scaling in all editors, new high-res icons and transparent tool and property regions. User Preferences and Startup File have been split up, new ways to recover sessions were added and copy & paste of objects inside the 3D View is supported now.

Mesh Modeling

The Bevel tool supports bevelling individual vertices in addition to edges now, with one or more segments.

Modifiers

New Mesh Cache modifier can apply animation from external files onto a mesh, a new UV Warp modifier can rotate, scale and translate UV maps on a mesh using objects or bones, and the Laplacian smooth modifier now supports shape enhancement.

Particle Fluid Dynamics

A new SPH particle fluid solver was added, designed for more physically accurate results.

Addons

Added MilkShape 3D format support and EDL Video Import.

Bug fixes

In addition to the new features, over 250 bugs that existed in previous releases have been fixed.

Rigid Body Simulation

The Bullet physics library has now been integrated into the editor and animation system, which makes rigid body simulations available also outside of the game engine. This results in a much simpler workflow and gives more control over the simulation.

Cycles Render

Initial support for hair rendering was added, with triangle strips, cylinder or bezier curve primitives.

Multiple importance sampling for lamps, preview rendering is available inside the properties editor, new closures and optimizations for OSL, non-progressive integrator was improved and support for packed, generated and movie textures was added.

Image Transparency

The image pipeline has be refactored to handle transparency in images better and compatible to standards. There are two alpha types for images that are useful for different purposes, and we now try to automatically do the right conversions and operations.

Game Engine

The character physics type received a number of new options, profiling and debug information has been cleaned up, and simple shadow maps can now take clipped alpha transparency into account.

Collada

Collada import and export was improved for animation: shape keys are now supported, and the armature modifier has been made more stable, respecting axis orientation and scene scaling.

More Features

New features include vertex color baking, more efficient ambient occlusion baking for multires meshes, edge based UV stitching, more control over mapping texture brushes for texture painting, gradient tools for weight painting, and a translate node for the compositor.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.66#Blender_2.66_Release_Notes


Blender 2.66 RC Release Notes

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.66#Blender_2.66_Release_Notes


Blender 2.65a Release Notes

Bug fix update
Over 40 bugs fixed since 2.65 release:

Fix #32837: cycles environment texture not showing image sequence options properly. (r52870)
Fix #33467: Fluid Simulations Speed factor animated wrong result (r52871)
Fix #32174: IK solver stretch was less stable after a code refactor (r52883)
Fix #33485: cycles OSL now autodetects the presence of emission and transparent closures to enable multiple importance sampling and transparent shadows. (r52910)
Fix #33486: cycles CPU image textures were offset wrong by half a pixel compared to OpenGL/CUDA/OSL rendering. (r52915)
Fix #33492: Right click on 'confirm reload' crashes (r52919)
Fix #33489: Scaling normals with Alt (maintains shell thickness) producing wrong result. (r52928)
Fix related to #33480: blender-internal volume rendering, the camera inside volume wasn't accurate (r52930)
Fix #33500: when transforming, tapping shift twice and holding did not enable precision mode. (r52958)
Fix #33510: rotate around selection doesn't work when .blend saved in sculpt mode (r52966)
Fix #33525: Mask points are add offset for the mouse when adding on viewer node with aspect != 1 (r52994)
Fix #33526: Bezier Curve Tilt in transform panel does not work beyond 360 degrees (r52995)
Fix #33530: Blender Crash when selecting "Point select mode" in Particle Mode with and 0 hairs object (r52997)
Fix #33532: vertex paint subtract mode was broken, always resulting in black. (r52998)
Fix #33539: Shift+Numpad 2/4/8 shortcuts for zoom in image and clip editor don't work in Windows, Use Ctrl+Numpad (r53015)
Fix #33546: GPU mipmap generation is not working on some ATI cards (r53037)
Fix #33529: Bevel wire edges would crash (r53061)
Fix #33565: Dynamic Paint modifier surfaces not copied (r53065)
Fix #33571: Knife cut-through code to connect across a face didn't stop after it found one. (r53066)
Fix #33551: End Caps on a curve array with subsurf crashes blender when entering Edit Mode (r53067)
Fix #33534: Building proxies will remove strip animation (r53077)
Fix/Workaround #33493: Checker de-select by default gives uneven selection on a circle (r53086)
Fix #33581: Vertex colors added to meshes with no faces whenver exiting/entering editmode (r53087)
Fix #33590: The Screw Tool in Edit Mode isn't calculating the correct angle step divisions per turn (r53090)
Fix #33505: Motion blur with shutter time > 1 did result in the correct evaluation of some modifiers because it set the subframe to values > 1.
Add subframe support for shape keys.
Point density texture was using an current frame value that was never set. (r53095)
Fix #33487: Game-Engine did not convert objects with rotation modes other than Euler XYZ correctly (r53096)
Fix #33575: Manipulator showing incorrect local axes in armature pose mode. (r53102)
Fix #33580: Masking keyframes disappear from dope sheet when using undo. (r53107)
Unreported Fixes
Fix Game-Player still not using fast GPU mipmap generation (r52867)
Fix issue where image stamp data's strings could be short enough not to fit the entire ID name length. (r52891)
Fix Moving panels in a buttons-region around was calling menu code reading NULL pointer (r52945)
Fix for default startup file having compositor background scale set very small (r53056)
Fix timer events getting handled, after stopping a timer. (r52977)
Fixes for ctrl+click on panel header (r53123)
Fix part of #33469: Cloth pre-roll had a wrong tooltip and low limit of 200 frames. (r53129)
Fix for pose-bones and edit-bones ignoring active element pivot mode (r53104)
Fix (OSX) makeKeyAndOrderFront would show window from orderedWindows list on every loop, so use makeKeyWindow only to avoid flicker when closing app (r53039)
Fix for bevel using the wrong property name when shift was held (r53063)
Fix square color picker drawing the 'cursor' incorrectly (r53038)
Other Changes
3D View: Add back a key to access view-cursor (Alt+Home) (r52996)
Cycles: make "Open Shading Language" a boolean toggle, the other option "GPU Compatible" was confusing. (r53005)


Blender 2.65


The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.65. We focused on making this the most stable release in the 2.6 cycle yet, fixing over 200 bugs.

Fire simulation was added along with many improvements in smoke simulation. In Cycles, motion blur, open shading language and anisotropic shading support was added. For mesh modeling, the bevel tool was much improved, a new symmetrize mesh tool was added, and new Laplacian smooth, decimate, and triangulate modifiers are available.

2.65 release: December 10th, 2012.

Fire and Smoke

Fire simulation was added to the Smoke Simulator. The domain received major updates to improve performance and usability. Smoke can be emitted from mesh surfaces, without the need for a particle system. A smoke flow force field was added to improve interaction with other simulations. Colored smoke simulation and mixing is possible and the interaction of smoke with collision objects has been improved.

Mesh Modeling

The bevel tool now includes rounding and was otherwise much improved, preserving the requested bevel width more evenly and generating better topology. A new symmetrize tool was added to make mesh topology and data symmetric.

More Features

New features include: a tool transfer vertex weights from one mesh to another, antialiased viewport drawing, connected proportional editing in UV editor, improved DPX file read and write, more control over curve taper, collision masks in the game engine and improved camera title safe drawing.

Bug fixes

In addition to the new features, over 200 bugs that existed in previous releases have been fixed.

Cycles Render

Support for writing custom shaders in the Open Shading Language is now available. Motion blur rendering was also added, to make moving objects and cameras appear blurry. There is also an anisotropic shading node, and BSDF nodes can now have different normals, which can be set using the new bump and normal map nodes.

Modifiers

The decimator was rewritten, and now preserves UV's and vertex colors, has an un-subdivide and a mode to dissolve vertices to create planar n-gons. A new laplacian smooth modifier can reduce noise or smooth the mesh while preserving edges and volume. A triangulate modifier was also added, which can be useful for creating game assets with baked normal maps.

Addons

UV texture to vertex color baking was added, the PDB atomic visualization addon was improved, and film response curves were added for the RGB Curves node in the compositor.


Blender 2.65 Release Notes

Work In Progress
These are work-in-progress release notes for the next release. A Blender 2.65 test build is available.

Fire & Smoke Simulation

A Fire simulation was added to the Smoke Simulator. The Domain received major updates to improve performance and usability. Smoke can be emitted from mesh surfaces, without the need for a particle system. A Smoke flow force field was added to improve interaction with other simulations. Colored smoke simulation and mixing is possible and the interaction of smoke with collision objects has been improved.
Cycles Rendering

Support for writing custom shaders in the Open Shading Language is now available. Motion blur rendering was also added, to make moving objects and cameras appear blurry. There is also an anisotropic shading node, and BSDF nodes can now have different normals, which can be set using the new bump and normal map nodes. Border rendering in the viewport now also works outside of the camera view.
Mesh Modeling

The bevel tool was much improved, a new symmetrize tool was added to make mesh topology and data symmetric.
Modifiers

The decimator was rewritten, and now preserves UV's and vertex colors, has an un-subdivide and a mode to dissolve vertices to create planar n-gons. A new laplacian smooth modifier can reduce noise or smooth the mesh while preserving edges and volume. A triangulate modifier was also added, which can be useful for creating game assets with baked normal maps.
More Features

Antialiased viewport, map taper for curves, connected proportional editing in UV editor.
Bug Fixes


Blender 2.64 - the Open Source VFX pipeline

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.64. This release was targeted at improving Blender for the Mango open movie project, along with integrating branches and patches from the past years.

The focus was on creating a full VFX pipeline, with improved motion tracking using a planar tracker, easier green screen keying, and a new mask editor. A new tile based compositing system was added, along with more advanced color management. Cycles rendering got dozens of smaller features and improvements resulting from its use in production.

Sculpting now supports masks, and a skin modifier was added to quickly create a model from skeletons. The game engine got improved shadows and physics options, and Collada export now has more options to tune for exporting to other game engines.

Check the list below for highlights and the full changelog.

2.64 release: October 3rd, 2012.

Mask Editor

Masks can now be created in the image and movie clip editor. They can be used in compositing to define areas of influence for nodes or block out unwanted objects. A mask datablock was added, consisting of splines that can be drawn and edited with the usual tools. Feathering can be controlled per spline point. Animation of these masks is possible with standard keyframing and following motion tracks.

Motion Tracker

Motion tracking was significantly improved by adding planar tracking, and unifying the existing trackers into one Hybrid tracker with finer control. A dopesheet view for markers was added in addition to the curves view. Tripod solving is now supported, for the case where the camera only rotates without moving.

Green Screen

Two new compositing nodes have been developed which are aimed at making green screen keying easier. There is now a new keying node conveniently combining various features from existing nodes along with a new keying algorithm, to makes setup much faster. There is also a keying screen node which produces a gradiented plate to deal with uneven colors of green screens.

Mesh Tools

Bevel and inset now are modal operator with mouse control, a wire frame tool was added to turn edges into wireframe tubes, and vertex/edge/face sorting tools were improved.

Sculpting

Sculpting has received some major improvements such has masking to control which areas of the mesh are influenced by sculpting, new brush map modes to control how textures are projected onto the model, and an input stroke averaging option to make brush strokes smoother.

Skin Modifier

The Skin modifier takes a skeleton made up of vertices and edges as input and generates a polygon skin as output, consisting mostly of quads aligned along the edges. The output is mostly quads, although some triangles will appear around intersections.

Game Engine

Lamps and shadows were improved with support for variance shadow maps, shadow color, sun lamp shadows and lamp textures. Non-power of two textures and compressed textures will now load faster and use less memory. A new Character physics type was added, designed for player controlled characters.

Compositing

A completely new compositing nodes backend was implemented. This new tiled based compositor gives quicker feedback while editing and uses less memory to support working with high resolutions. New nodes were added for bokeh blur, masks and color correction.

Color

OpenColorIO is now integrated into Blender, along with a redesign of the color management system. Now many more color spaces are supported with finer control over which color transformations should be used for display, applied on renders, and used for loading and saving image files.

Cycles Render

Cycles now includes a new non-progressive integrator, tiled rendering with support for save buffers, considerably faster BVH building and multithreaded image loading, and motion vector and UV render passes. New nodes are light falloff, object info, particle info and brick texture, and image texture nodes with blended box mapping and image sequences. There is also support for fisheye camera rendering.

Sequencer

Various speed improvements were implemented in the sequencer, for caching and multithreading of effect strips, to make color grading more interactive. Improved options for comparing the current frame to a reference frame are also available.

Collada

The Collada exporter has been improved for better support of export to game engines, with more fine grained options to control which data is exported.

More Features

Apart from the major improvements in different areas, there were lots of smaller changes such as improvements in the node editor, smoke simulation, user interface, and new tools for curves and meshes.

Bug fixes

Lots of new features were added in this release, but it also includes lots of fixes for bugs that existed in previous releases.


Blender 2.64 Release Notes

Release Candidate
You can download the Release Candidate for Blender 2.64 here:

http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.64/

(Posted September 18, 2012)

Visual Effects
Mask Editor
Motion Tracker

Motion tracking was significantly improved by adding planar tracking, and unifying the existing trackers into one Hybrid tracker with finer control. A dopesheet view for markers was added in addition to the curves view. Tripod solving is now supported, for the case where the camera only rotates without moving.
Green Screen Keying

Two new compositing nodes have been developed which are aimed at making green screen keying easier. There is now a new keying node conveniently combing various features from existing nodes along with a new keying algorithm, to makes setup much faster. There is also a keying screen node which produces a gradiented plate to deal with uneven colors of green screens.
Colors & Rendering
Color Management

OpenColorIO is now integrated into Blender, along with a redesign of the color management system. Previously Blender only supported two color spaces, linear and sRGB, now many more are supported with finer control over which color transformations should be used for display, applied on renders, and used for loading and saving image files in different color spaces.
Cycles Rendering

Cycles now includes a new non-progressive integrator with finer control over sampling, tiled rendering with support for save buffers, considerably faster BVH building and multithreaded image loading, motion vector and UV render passes. New nodes are light falloff, object info, particle info and brick texture, and image texture nodes can now do blended box mapping and handle image sequences. There is also support for fisheye camera rendering, along with various other new options.
Sequencer
Some speed improvements and tools development happened in the Sequencer area. Mainly changes are related on making color grading easier and realtime.

Modeling
BMesh
Sculpting

Sculpting has received some major improvements such has masking to control which areas of the mesh are influenced by sculpting, new brush map modes to control how textures are projected onto the model, and an input stroke averaging option to make brush strokes smoother.
Skin Modifier

The Skin modifier takes a skeleton made up of vertices and edges as input and generates a polygon skin as output, consisting mostly of quads aligned along the edges. The output is mostly quads, although some triangles will appear around intersections.
Other
Rigging / Skinning
Game Engine
Collada

The Collada exporter has been improved for better support of export to Game Engines. Various options have been added for full control of the exported data.
More Features

Apart from the major improvements in different areas, there were lots of smaller changes such as improvements in node editor, smoke, user interfaces; new tools for curves and meshes.
Bug Fixes
Lots of new features were added in this release, but it also includes lots of bug fixes that existed in previous releases.


Blender 2.64 Release Notes

Test Builds
You can download test versions of the next release here:

http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.64/

(Posted August 19, 2012)

BMesh
Cycles
Motion Tracker

Motion tracking was significantly improved by implementing planar tracking. It also got some smaller improvements like dopesheet view and tripod solving.
Rigging / Skinning
Sculpting

Sculpting has received some major improvements such has masking, new brush map modes and input stroke averaging.
Skin Modifier

New modifier for generating a mesh skin from an edge skeleton.
Greenscreen Keying

Two new nodes have been developed which are aimed at making greenscreen keying easier. The first one is Keying Screen which produces a gradiented plate to deal with uneven colors of green screens and another new keying node which allows you to create mattes faster.
Game Engine
More Features

Apart from the major improvements in different areas, there were lots of smaller changes such as improvements in node editor, smoke, user interfaces; new tools for curves and meshes.


Collada

The Collada exporter has been improved for better support of export to Game Engines. Various options have been added for full control of the exported data.
Bug Fixes
Lots of new features were added in this release, but it also includes lots of bug fixes that existed in previous releases


Blender 2.63 Release Notes

Under Development
Blender 2.63 is currently being tested for release. See the release schedule and targets.

Release Candidate
A number of test builds and release candidates will be made available before the official release.

BMesh

BMesh is the new Blender mesh system with full support for N-sided polygons instead of only triangles and quads.

In particular there is a new Dissolve tool to remove vertices, edges and faces without making holes in the mesh, a new Inset tool to inset faces, and a much improved Knife tool which takes advantage of N-gons to generate clear cuts. Tools such as subdivide and loop cut will also generate clean topology because faces no longer have to be triangulated.
Cycles

Among the features added in this release are support for rendering environment maps, render layer mask layers, a shadow render pass, ambient occlusion and float precision textures.
Motion Tracker

Motion tracking got some improvements which are mostly relates on 2D stabilization and few smaller tools.
More Features
Other new features in this release include face hiding for sculpting, a compositing node to output multiple files at once or multilayer EXR files, new tools for linking and detaching nodes and more particle rotation options.
Addons
Bug Fixes
This release was mainly focused on stabilizing BMesh, but also includes 110 fixes for bugs that existed in previous releases.


Blender 2.62

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.62. The 2.6x series is being targeted at including all work that happened in branches or patches past years.

The Cycles render engine now has layers/passes, you can track objects inside videos now, have much better and faster boolean intersections and use great new UV Tools.

Check the list below for highlights and the full changelog.

Released: February 16th, 2012.

Cycles Render Engine

A number of new features were added, including render layers and passes, multi GPU rendering and selection of GPU device, improved sampling for complex environment maps, border rendering, BVH caching for faster rendering of camera fly-throughs, and new shading nodes for color correction and a checkerboard texture node.


UV Tools

Many new UV editing tools were added: an advanced interactive stitch tool, to align and join together UV islands. A subdivision surface aware UV unwrapping to reduce stretching. Seam marking in the UV editor, and a tool to compute seams for islands. Sculpting tools to grab UVs and relax or pinch unwraps.


Remesh modifier

The Remesh modifier is a tool for generating new mesh topology based on an input surface. The output follows the surface curvature of the input, but its topology is a uniform distribution of quads. It can generate smoothed output or tag sharp features to better capture corners.


Collada

A Second Life compatibility option was added for exporting armatures, along with a number of other fixes related to transformations and armatures. There is also a new development team that will try to improve the Collada integration further in following releases.


More features

Other new features include: improved bump map quality in the viewport, various new dynamic paint options, international text copy and paste and editing in the text editor, longer names and file paths, drag and drop parenting in the outliner, new theme's preset system and many more changes.


Motion Tracking

Object tracking support has been added, so that not only camera animation can be reconstructed from footage, but also the animation or transformation of objects in the scene. This comes along with many improvements to the tracking user interface and tools.


"Carve" Booleans

The boolean modifier now uses the Carve library, which should give much improved results. This library is more stable and faster, resolving old well-known limitations of our previous library. The general workflow and options available in the user interface are unchanged, usually the modifier will simply run faster and produces a better output mesh. However there also some changes in behavior.


Game Engine

The game engine user interface was polished, editing text objects in the user interface and through the python API has been made easier, full screen and antialiased rendering has been improved, along with various other changes.


Python API

Matrices and vectors math classes were improved in various ways. Column-major access was changed to more standard row-major access and easier access for rows, columns, translation was added. Vectors now can have arbitrary size, and matrices are now pretty printed in the console.


Add-ons

Network render now has support for version control systems, render engines, point cache baking jobs, and a new web interface was added, along with a number of other improvements. There were also features added to After Effects export, X3D export, Atomic Blender PDB import, MHX import, UV layout export, and Screencast Keys.

Bug fixes

As usual, each release includes a long list of bug fixes. For Blender 2.62, we have fixed 205 bugs in existing features.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.62


Blender 2.62 RC

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/2.62


Blender 2.61

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.61. The 2.6x series is being targeted at including all work that happened in branches or patches past years.

Most notable in this release is the new render engine Cycles, the Camera Tracker, Ocean Simulation texture and Dynamic Paint. Check the list below for highlights and the full changelog.

Released: December 14th, 2011.

Cycles Render Engine

Cycles is a new render engine that is available next to Blender Internal. It is a raytracing based render engine with support for interactive rendering, a new shading node system, new texture workflow and GPU acceleration. It is still in development, and more production features are planned to be added, this is the first preview release.

Dynamic Paint

Dynamic paint is a new modifier and physics system that can turn objects into paint canvases and brushes, creating vertex colors, image sequences or displacement. This makes many effects possible that were previously difficult to achieve, for example footsteps in the snow, raindrops that make the ground wet, paint that sticks to walls, or objects that gradually freeze.

More features

Camera sensor size and presets, improved image saving, 3D mouse color wheel editing, more translations to other languages, node muting improvements, region drawing tweaks, and many more small changes.

Add-ons

New Addons in this release are an Adobe After Effects exporter, Atomic Blender (Protein Data Bank) file importer, Acclaim and C3D motion capture importers, and Nuke camera animation exporter and importer.

Motion Tracking

Motion tracking support has been added, to reconstruct camera animation from real footage, and composite 3d rendered object into movie clips. A new Movie Clip editor for loading clips, tracking points and reconstructing motion was added. Constraints can apply this reconstructed motion into the scene, and compositing nodes are available for (un)distorting rendered animations or real footage.

Ocean Simulation

Ocean simulation tools take the form of a modifier, to simulate and generate a deforming ocean surface, and associated texture, used to render the simulation data. Ported from the open source Houdini Ocean Toolkit, it is intended to simulate deep ocean waves and foam.

Python API

The render engine API has been extended for closer integration, a mechanism to detect changes in scenes and persistent callbacks were added, the noise module was updated, and easier access to library datablocks was added, along with various other changes.

Bug fixes

180 bugs that existed in previous releases have been fixed!


Blender 2.61 Release Notes

Under Development
Blender 2.61 is currently under development and release notes are a work in progress, see the release schedule and targets.

Release Candidate is out!

You now can download release testbuilds for 2.61. Use these builds as reference before filing bug reports!

http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.61/

Prominent Features
Motion Tracking
Motion tracking support has been added, to reconstruct camera and object animation from real footage, and composite 3d rendered object into movie clips.
A new Movie Clip editor for loading clips, tracking points and reconstructing motion was added. Constraints can apply this reconstructed motion into the scene, and compositing nodes are available for (un)distorting rendered animations or real footage.
Cycles Render Engine
Cycles is a new render engine that is available next to Blender Internal. It is a raytracing based render engine with support for interactive rendering, a new shading node system, new texture workflow and GPU acceleration.
It is still in development, and more production features are planned to be added, this is the first preview release.
Dynamic Paint
Dynamic paint is a new modifier and physics system that can turn objects into paint canvases and brushes, creating each vertex colors, image sequences or displacement.

Ocean Simulation
Ocean simulation tools take the form of a modifier, to simulate and generate a deforming ocean surface, and associated texture, used to render the simulation data.

More Features
List of other changes.

Python
The Render Engine API has been extended for closer integration, a mechanism to detect changes in scenes was and persistent callbacks were added, along with various other changes.
List of Python changes.
Addons
A new addon was added to export animation data to Adobe After Effects. The camera and placeholders for all of the objects you select can be exported and used to link After Effects' filters or layers basing on your scene created in Blender.
List of Addon changes.
Bug Fixes
While many new features have been added, 117 bugs have also been fixed, see the list of bug fixes.


The 2.60a release is a bugfix release for 2.60

3D window: Armature-bones with wire draw type were not displaying in solid view mode - r41113
3D window header: After collapsing the pull-down menus, no icon available to make them show again. - r41117
Dopesheet: Fixed crash when moving keys in editor - r41128
Audio export: 7.1 export was being miscalculated - r41132
Game Engine: Action actuator breaks animation. IPO options can be set too frequently - r41134
3D Window: missing updates when changing smoke flow settings - r41151
Node editor: missing updates when assigning/removing Materials on Objects - r41152
Adding a new pose to the Pose Library crashed - r41175
Fix for un-handled exception in audio library - r41203
Incorrect keying set names 'Scale' vs 'Scaling', where 'Scale' was hard coded in auto keyframe when 'Only Insert Needed' - r41211
Python: RNA/API, getting Event.ascii would crash - r41214
Addons / Exporter: Quake MAP export gives an error for UV textured geometry - r2504


Blender 2.60

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.60. This is the beginning of the Blender 2.6x series, targeted at including all work that happened in branches or patches past years.

Most notable in this release is 3D audio, UI translation, improved weight painting and a lot of animation system updates. Check the list below for highlights and the full changelog.

Released: October 19th, 2011.

Roadmap

We're reviewing with all branch/patch developers the status of their work and making a migration schedule for all new features. This could include projects like new Mesh editing (BMesh), paint/sculpt improvements, Rigid Body Physics, new Curve/Nurbs system (Nurbana), Ocean Sim render, Particle Nodes, OpenCL compositing, Cycles render engine, Camera/motion tracking, and so on.

We do this in a series of small steps; with stablest branches first. This is the "2.6x series" resulting in a number of releases named 2.60, 2.61, 2.62 and so on. Each release is supposed to be stable, only finished branches will be added. Plan is to make a very tight schedule for this, with a bi-monthly release.

For Blender 2.6x the UI, Python API and general design specifications will remain on 2.5 compatible level, although there are several 2.5 leftover projects to complete still.

3D audio & video

3D audio and speaker objects were added, along with various improvements to the sound system. It's now possible to place speaker objects in the scene, make an animation and mix down to an audio file. Sequence editor proxy support was restored, which can now work in the background, along with support for building timecodes to make scrubbing on all video types possible.

Vertex weight groups

Vertex group modifiers were added. There are three modifiers: one to edit existing vertex groups, one to mix groups together, and another to generate vertex groups based on proximity to other objects. Weight painting tools were added to lock vertex groups, automatically maintain the ratio between different bones, and for fixing poor deformation of vertices.

Game Engine

Navigation Meshes were added for the game engine, used for path finding, so that actors can find the path to a target or flee away. This functionality was implemented using the Recast & Detour libraries.

Texture Face settings moved to materials, for consistency and easier editing. Existing files may need some updates.

Game engine animation was improved internally, with as main external change the unification of F-Curve and Shape Action Actuators into a single Action Actuator, which now includes layering support.

Add-ons

Two new addons have been added to the release: Screencast Keys, to show key presses on the screen for making video tutorials, and Motion Capture Tools, which includes various tools for working with motion capture animation. There have also been various fixes and improvements to importers and exporters, the measure panel, paint palettes, renderfarm.fi uploader, ... see the list of addon changes for details.

Animation system

Animation system improvements were done, especially relating to usability and to polish the interface. Includes changes to the graph editor, dopesheet editor, NLA editor, curves, drivers, constraints, posing, ... Collada integration was improved, making import and export more complete and fixing various issues, especially related to armatures and animation.

UI translation

Internationalization and support for non-western fonts were added, to display the user interface in languages other than English. Efforts to translate in the most common languages is underway, and volunteers are welcome to contribute translations.

More features

Various other features have been added, including a frame node, sequence editor utility operators, improved outliner search, grease pencil poly line drawing, performance improvements, ... List of changes.

Python

New python API features include callbacks for various events, GLSL shader export, environment map texture load/save, texture evaluation and various other utilities.

The behavior of Vector() * Matrix() multiplication was also modified, this may require some script updates.

List of changes.

Bug fixes

While many new features have been added, many bugs have also been fixed, see the list of 165 notable bug fixes. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/changelog_260/Bug_Fixes


Blender 2.60 RC2

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Release_Notes/changelog_260

Since May 2011 we're reviewing with all branch/patch developers the status of their work, and make a migration schedule for all new features. This could include projects like new Mesh editing (BMesh), paint/sculpt improvements, Rigid Body Physics, new Curve/Nurbs system (Nurbana), Ocean Sim render, Particle Nodes, and so on.

Combining these upgrades with a redesign of shader/light system ("Cycles"), Open CL compositing, motion/camera tracking, and all the new Google Summer code projects... it'll become a massive amount of upgrades again.

We do this in a series of small steps; with stablest branches first. This is the "2.6x series" resulting in a number of releases named 2.60, 2.61, 2.62 and so on. Each release is supposed to be stable, only finished branches will be added. Plan is to make a very tight schedule for this, with a bi-monthly release.


Blender 2.59 update log

This is mostly a bug fix release with 140 fixes since 2.58a. Additions include improved keymap editing, 3D mouse support, some new addons and Node UI improvements.
Prominent features (the cool stuff)
3D Mouse support "NDOF"

Blender is now built with support for 3D Connexion devices, for more natural control during view navigation and fly mode - r38908
Custom Keymaps

User edited keymaps now no longer override the builtin keymaps entirely, but rather save only the difference and reapply those changes. This means they can stay better in sync when the builtin keymaps change.

Keymaps in blender are now separated so Addons can properly define their own keymaps without them conflicting with user keymaps

See commit log for details - r39084
Ivy Generator (Addon)
IvyGen-Example-marnal.jpg

This tools adds the ability to "grow" curves over an existing mesh with the option of adding leaves and adjusting many parameters for the final result - r2200

See: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.5/Py/Scripts/Curve/Ivy_Gen
Sapling (Addon)

This tree generator creates completely parametrically generated trees from curves - r2119

See: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.5/Py/Scripts/Curve/Sapling_Tree
Grease Scatter (Addon)
Object grease scatter.png

Grease scatter was used for sintel to place objects around the ally, using grease pencil lines as a guide as to where to scatter objects - r2125
Node editor enhancements

Several enhancements are done related to the node editor/compositor.

Material passes: Materials have pass-index. This pass-index can be used in the compositor to create mattes. It works the same as object passes.
Node insert: Nodes that have no connections can be inserted on a noodle. Just move the node over the noodle and release when the noodle turns orange.
Delete with reconnect: It is possible to delete a node that is connected in the tree, without loosing the connections. The node is deleted, but the links are reconnected as if the node were muted. Select a node and press CTRL-X.
Noodle curves: Some users like straight noodles, other like curved, in the user preferences the level of the curvation can be changed.
Node properties: The UI of the side panel and on the node can now be different. See the Color balance node in the side panel.

Additions

Material passes (like object passes), (See commit log for details) - r38090
New option for multires modifier: Subdivide UVs - r38783
Improved bleed option when baking for seamless edges on UV bounds - r38654
Node: Add delete with reconnect feature - r38344
Node: Curvature is now a setting - r39015
Node: On dragging a non-connected node on a noodle, it will insert it - r38609
UV Straighten tool - r38598
Object Align: high quality option for perfect alighment http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=15171 - r38511

Python API:

Object.closest_point_on_mesh() function - r38449
bpy.path.basename because "//" prefix breaks os.path.basename - r38528
Vector.length_squared to use instead of vec.dot(vec) - r39300

Fixes
Tools/Editors:

fix #27849 3D manipulator widget lost on mesh in edge mode - r38085
fix #27915 Relax Pose crashes blender on bone with ChildOf constraint in linked rig - r38257
fix #27883 object actions did not get duplicated on full scene copy - r38150
fix #27902 autokey bones with individual origins transform not working - r38229
fix #27891 IK stretch gives inaccurate results. Tweaked translation segment convergence weight a bit to match angles better at typical scales - r38232
fix #27866 Curve handle snaps/locks when it shouldn't - r38256
fix #28003 Unable to delete vgroup - r38471
fix #27927 Border select tool fails to select nodes in Node Editor using tweak mode - r38475
fix #28052 PET: Shift-O cycling skips "random falloff" - r38595
fix #28079 UV propertional editing was incorrectly influenced by the mesh X mirror option - r38699
fix #28066 Unchecking 'self project' messes up 'Snap to Vertex' - r38752
fix #28095 Select Pattern don't select all the bone in edit mode & some style changes - r38779
fix #27719 custom RNA properties fail to update drivers - r38793
fix #28117 Diffuse reflection IPO curve not imported correctly from 2.49b files - r38827
fix #28178 make single user copy of object data doesn't work - r39117
fix #27819 Unwrap Menu (U) -> Lightmap Pack throws Python Exception - r38212
fix #28197 Undoing Grease pencil removes last 2 strokes - r39235
fix #28186 textboxes properties not animatable - r39214
fix for crash undoing grease pencil session - r39237
allow bone transforms again for proxy'ed bones - r38071
corrected View Selected operator for image editor so now it works fine for images with different X and Y aspect ratio - r38559
Object Align now correctly computes a global bounding box for all objects - r38510

Sculpt/Painting:

fix #28096 Custom gradient for weight painting in mask mode not working properly - r38785
fix #28112 Vertex paint crash - r38890
fix #28061 Texture (paint) bleeding on edges - r38893
fix #28121 Linked Library objects or object->data should not allow to go to sculptmode - r38855

Modifiers:

fix #27839 UV 'Project from view' ignores camera lens shift - r38052
fix #27861 bevel angle limit at 90deg wasn't working well on cube - r38110
fix #27921 optimal display with 2 subsurf modifiers fails - r38298
fix #27930 many modifiers crashed when used on a lattice with a vertex group - r38300
fix part of #27858 crash trying to apply subsurf modifier as shape key - r38115
fix part of #26811 absolute shape keys should not show influence value in list - r38188
fix: uv project panorama mode was scaled 2x too high - r38054
fix: uv project scaled camera objects would incorrectly effect the result - r38054

Physics:

fix #27347 Particle x-axis mirror editing not working as expected - r38102
fix #27579 Particle cache problem with multiple systems - r38105
fix #27182 particle/collision kill interacting strangely - r38106
fix #27855 crash on enabling high resolution smoke - r38119
fix #27876 particles instancing a whole group didn't take group offset into account - r38141
fix #26962 softbody collision doesn't respect subsurf+displace modifiers - r38235
fix #27683 Blender hangs when baking a particle system when a driver is present - r38265
fix #26873 Animated displacement modifier on an object doesn't work with hair particle objects - r38285
fix #27289 Hair: Render Option - Object does not point objects to end of "hair path" - r38287
fix #27293 Group Instance of particle system is rendered wrong - r38292
fix #27398 Particle systems with animated groups render incorrectly in viewport - r38293
fix #26712 Particle group instance 'Use Count' value gets reset on file-load - r38413
fix #27307 Blender crashes when loading a new scene while baking fluid dynamics - r38408
fix: particle cache should only be cleared on the exact first integer frame, not in the case of a subframe between the first and second frame - r38463
fix: Effector calculations were not thread safe - r38663
fix: loading a file that had particles using a dupligroup from a liblinked file without the library file being present crashed - r38883

Display/Viewport:

fix #27862 OpenGL render animation don't respect .png RGB option - r38109
fix #27810 bones drawn blue in 2.49 file, was still checking stride bone, flag for drawing even though that feature is no longer in 2.5 - r38112
fix #27826 bone envelope head/tail radius not dynamically updated in viewport - r38114
fix #27897 mesh with negative scale disappears while sculpting, clipping planes were wrong in that case - r38236
fix #28037 Camera missing orange selection lines
fix #28206 Motion Paths shown in 3DView even when Only Render option is enabled - r39259
fix part of #27944 color managment discrepancy in GLSL materials with nodes - r38790

Sequencer (Video Editor):

fix #27846 time extend / E key not work in sequence editor - r38113
fix #27848 sequencer strip hard cut looses soft trim on second strip - r38122
fix #27880 sequencer separate images operator lost strip properties like blend mode, opacity, etc - r38145
fix #27879 sequencer didn't draw overlapping strips well, selected were drawn under unselected, and active strips red border color for active strips was not clear enough - r38151
fix #28018 Sequence Swap Data Operator does not work - r38500
fix #28160 Pressing Y on an image sequence to seperate the images takes them out of their meta strips
fix: add strips not checking for overlap by default - r38775

Collada:

fix #27854 Collada import doesn't handle UVW mapping - r38169
option to export only the selection - r38079

Rendering:

fix #27777 vertex color disabled when in a reused node material - r38128
fix #27873 nan pixels in render with degenerate faces - r38139
fix #27888 Render artifacts in 2.58.1 - r38258
fix #27761 Deleting a material output of many causes no output
fix #28034 0.0 Alpha transparency with Raytrace Mirror doesn't render - r38576
fix #27910 baking ambient occlusion, do not consider closer object - r38599
fix #28201 blender crashes when "mpeg" selected for animation rendering - r39243
fix for crash of multires baker when baking from sculpt mode - r38439
fix bug with multires baking to float buffers - r38555

Compositing:

fix #27875 different texture nodes result after decompose/compose - r38140
fix: bokeh blur in the blur node is wronlgy calculated - r38347

Game Engine:

fix #27348 blenderplayer showing a different viewport size in 2.57b - r38501
fix #28026 Copy Game Property broken - r38635
fix #23874 Custom projection matrix doesn't work in custom viewport - r38696

Python:

fix #27863 converting curve spline type from python crashes - r38111
fix #27922 using preset_paths() with an absolute path returns twice the same thing raise an error when an invalid subdir is passed to preset_paths() - r38543
fix #28035 point density texture doesn't bake - r38700
fix #28111 material.pop breaks mt->mat_nr - r38879
fix #28196 assigning RNA arrays such as face UV's would fail in some cases - r39233
fix #28191 error when enabling an addon newer then the blender version - r39212
fix for bpy.path.abspath(), if a path was passed it would get the last directory cut off - r38504
fix for crash when setting layers or saving when there is no active scene - r38077
fix for scripts with python 3.3 - r38294
fix for crash/assert on running dir() on a non collection property - r38850
bgl.Buffer: supports slicing again - r38447
bgl.Buffer: fix for crash with negative index access not being clamped - r38447
corrected matrix, vector multiplication order (was wrong!) - r38674
rna function calls with optional parameters were not giving correct default values for arrays - r38735
allow pose bone matrix to be set - r38193

Interface:

fix #27900 file browser filter, sort, .. parameters were not saved. This is useful if you have a screen setup with a file browser editor - r38233
fix #26704 activating a texture node inside material nodes did not show that texture in the texture properties - r38370
fix #28005 Python Add-Ons are constantly reloaded if twice in the path - r38468
fix #28098 Continuous Grab does not work for movement of the "Backdrop" in the Node Editor - r38761
fix #27951 armature edit mode transform panel shows "nothing selected" even when something is selected - r38356
fix #28172 Cannot restore Add-ons tab in user preferences after a failed attempt to install an add-on - r39117
fix #28213 Imperial unit for 0.001 inches inconsistently displayed as mils and thous - r39297
fix: icon scaling with the DPI setting - r39066
fix: python error in image sampling panel drawing when there is no texture slot available - r38371
fix: icon listview where the icons would only wrap once - r38743
include menu ID's in tooltips when python tips are enabled - r38723

System:

fix #27850 keyboards with a comma instead of a dot on the numpad now get converted to a dot when typing into number buttons, for easier number entry - r38080
fix #27865 weird mouse warping with continuous grab on OS X - r38129
fix #27877 writing .avi files > 4 GB not working on windows - r38142
fix #28109 Old issue with OSX Cocoa code: shift+scrollwheel should send a 'horizontal wheel' event to Blender - r38848
fix #28102 Typing 'C:' into the file selector's directory asks to make a new directory - r39046
fix #28087 Opening files in the text editor ignores the last newline 'n' - r38722
fix "Problem with clock" at 18:39:00, the overflow of the clock was causing crash in the game engine in Linux - r38495
fix Modifier key sticks after Alt-tab on Win32 - r38826

Blender Addons
Import/Export:

DirectX
Export fix for relative paths - r2084
fix for direct-x exporting vertex groups which had indicies out of the objects defgroup range - r2177

Make Human (MHX)
Importer Support for rigify - r2090
Added switch for ignoring Limit rotation and distance constraints - r2206

Quake MAP Export
fix 27860 Quake MAP export error for 2.58.1 - r2093
fix 27949 r2121 Quake MAP exports incomplete brush data from 2.58.1 - r2160
added options: scale, snap to whole value, face thickness, default brush - r2160

X3D
fix issue #1 27896 Names exported as "MA_Black".001 - r2108
fix issue #2 27896: zero length rotation axis exported - r2188
fix issue #3 27896: exporting dupli objects failed - r2189
fix 27833 X3D export incorrectly uses collision node - r2150
fix export non existing IndexedTriangleSet.creaseAngle - r2194
fix for exporting empty scene - r2220

OBJ
fix exporting dupli objects - r2197
fix 28146 OBJ export fails when mesh has no material - r2211

3DS
fix 28150 transformation matrix not exported - r2214

Lightwave
fix 27916 Crash adding EdgeSplit/Bevel modifier to imported lwo mesh - r2135

FBX
fix 27964 2.58 FBX Export can result in missing data and lost animation(s) - r2140
fix 28029 Exporting linked groups to FBX to load on Unity3D - r2141
fix error where armature connections were written out twice - r2205
added option not to export 'Default Take' - r2212
Add XNA compatibility mode - r2205
Option to export XNA compatible armature rotations - r2205
Option not to export mesh edges - r2205
Always export armatures as 'Limb' type - r2205

Other:

Netrender
fix 27796 Netrendering "path:" failing - r2167

Save As Runtime
Skip expoting python libs on OSX since its already included - r2091
fix 27995 phyton32.dll caused "Appcrash" => Runtime crashes - r2191


Blender 2.58a update log

This is mainly a bugfix release containing 25 fixes and various small improvements.
Additions

More flexible size options for particle billboards. This adds scale factors for width and height of billboards, relative to the particle size. It's useful when the particle size is primarily used for collision and the like, so the billboard appearance can be adjusted independently. Also allows non-square billboards.
In addition the billboards can be scaled by the particle velocity with optional head and tail factors (similar to line drawing options). This allows for pseudo-motionblur effects. - r37760
Addon UI: button for removing addons which are installed to user/home paths - r37950

Python API:

Python application event handlers - r37795
adds bpy.app.handlers which contains lists, each for an event type:
render_pre, render_post, load_pre, load_post, save_pre, save_post
each list item needs to be a callable object which takes 1 argument (the ID).
callbacks are cleared on file load.
mathutils.geometry.intersect_line_sphere(l1, l2, sphere, radius, clip=True) - r37820
RenderEngine API: add self.report() error reporting function for render engines, works the same as for operators. - r37916

Fixes
Essential Fixes:

fix: Tile-able displacement map / tile-able painting regression in 2.58 - [#27782], r37899
fix: bake crash with deep shadow, strand and children - [#27807], r37970
fix: incorrect use of GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object, could crash blender - r37881
Thumbnail save for .blend crashed, when being in editmode for a mesh that has other object users as well. - [#27765], r37810
fix: Multires lost from 2.49 file in 2.5x - [#27710,], r37837

Other Fixes:

CMake was installing .bfont.ttf in the config dir which made updating from the previous blender version fail - r37725
fix: Driven properties not checked for legal UI bounds - [#27726], r37744
GHOST Cocoa: move y origin top/bottom conversions out of windowmanager module and into GHOST. Also fixes a problem where e.g. the user preferences window would not open under the mouse cursor correctly. - r37765
revert commit 27133: Committing patch [#27133] "Fix for for Object Color in BGE" by Kupoman. This was causing a lot of backward compatibility problems and side effects. - r37773
W special menu for changing orthographic camera lens scale was missing - r37782
fix: Black and White Render doesn't work and/or Saves as a Blank screen, convert to grayscale when saving renders rather then only writing the red channel. - [#27746], r37783
fix: Modal operator in Special Menu (W) ignores continues grab - [#27747], r37784
fix: Smart UV project no longer works in 2.58 failed with active, unselected objects. - [#27742], r37785
free_bvhtree_from_mesh was incorrectly using sizeof() when clearing memory. - r37787
Fix undeterministic behavior of volumetric renderer - [#27748], r37802
Made clearer in the UI that the approximate multiple scattering always enables light cache
Fixed a potential problem in anisotropic scattering
Default startup theme used same node header color for "in/out" nodes as for "inactive or undefined" nodes. This made it impossible to see which of the output nodes in node setup was 'active' - [#27761], r37808
fix python errors when the sculpt brush is None - r37836
fix for a leak in sound_read_sound_buffer(), used when drawing the sequencer waveform. - r37845
fix: Set Bone Flags - No Scale - Toggle fails - [#27778], r37850
fix: On clicking in a non-active Blender window (when you activated others), the mouse position of the first click was still the old position. - [#27768], r37854
fix: Blender player on OSX not working - [#26850], r37861, r37862, r37865
fix: Smart UV Unwrap Results in Overlaps - [#27787], r37889
Closed regions didn't always draw the (+) icon right place, confusing for users. - r37986
fix: foreach_get was failing on readonly properties - [#27820], r38006
fix: Outliner does not update when parents are cleared - [#27816], r37999


Blender 2.58

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.58. This is the second stable release of the Blender 2.5 series, representing the culmination of many years of redesign, development and stabilizing work.

We name this version "Stable" not only because it's mostly feature complete, but especially thanks to the 1000s of fixes and feature updates we did since the 2.5 beta versions were published.

The next 6 weeks we will keep working on finishing a couple of left-over 2.5 targets and we expect to get feedback and bug reports from users to handle as well. If all goes well, the 2.59 version then can be the final release of the 2.5 series, with a massive amount of new projects to be added for an exciting cycle of 2.6x versions. Target is to release updates every 2 months this year.
The massive 8 page log with changes since 2.57 is here!

June 22, 2011
Blender 2.5 Series Roadmap

What to Expect in 2.58

Big improvements in stability. Since the last version 100s of bugs were fixed.
Feature complete - Although some of the 2.5 targets have been postponed, such as multi-window support showing multiple scenes, a full RNA data level dependency graph, or radial menus.
Changes - If you're used to the old Blender, Blender 2.5 may seem quite different at first. Be prepared to read a bit about this, how to reconfigure things, and learn to use the new built-in 2.5 search functionality!

Open todos: get involved!

There's still topics that needs to be worked on before reaching the final 2.5x release target

First: check this log, you can find Known Issues at the bottom of the following feature description pages.
Second: check if the bug or issue has been added on our todo list in wiki.

This will save you (and us!) from reporting known issues! Bugs can be posted in the bug tracker or using Help &#8594; Report a Bug from inside Blender 2.5.

User Interface
Updated GUI

Blender 2.5 has a new GUI layout, with updated graphic design and a new icon set. The GUI layout has been re-designed to be clearer, better organised and easier to navigate, and is fully customisable with Python scripting. Other improvements include a new file browser, customisable tool shelf and more. Read more...
Add-ons

In Blender 2.53 we've implemented a new method for extending Blender with Python Scripts. These now are being distributed and stored as 'Add-ons" which you can choose to enable or disable each individually. This helps to keep the interface clean and well organized.

Check out the complete Add-on repository.

And the changelog for Add-on scripts.
Custom keyboard shortcuts

Blender 2.5 has been designed from scratch to enable users to configure their own keyboard shortcuts. Key definitions are be grouped in "key maps", and each map can be fully customized and saved. Keymaps can also be configured for special input methods such as directional gestures and tweak events, any-key modifiers, or multi-key input. Read more...

Internal Architecture
Data access

Now all internal data in a .blend scene file, from individual vertices, to inter-object relations, to composite node UI positions, is fully accessible with a consistent system. This enables UI controls, Python Scripting API, the animation system and more, to access and edit all scene data consistently, while providing richer interaction and feedback such as contextual help, in-place keyframing and driver expression editing, and real world units of measurement. Read more...
64 bits for Windows, Linux & OS X

Next to Linux and Windows, we now support a 64 bits versions for OS X too. This required a full recode of the low level windowing library to support Cocoa, which is good news for Blender's future on Macs in general!
Tool system

An "Operator" is the new generalized definition of a tool in Blender. This ranges from file load/save, UI layout management to adding and editing objects and its data. Because the Operator is generic, it can be called uniformly by hotkeys, menus, buttons, or via Python. Operators can be searched, chained (macros) and can provide interactive editing with real-time updates. Read more...
Python Scripting

Blender 2.5 has a full re-implemented Python Scripting API. Anything a user can interact with via the UI - data, options and tools - is also available for scripters now. Scripts are being used for Importers/Exporters, for custom tools ("Operators"), for access to other render engines, and for extending the UI in various ways.

For the next 2.58 release the API will be completed with access to internal notifiers and events to track data changes or UI refreshes.

Modeling
Sculpt and Multi-resolution

Sculpt mode in Blender has been optimized, increasing drawing and editing performance significantly, and reducing memory usage to support more detailed models. New tools have been added and existing ones improved. Multiresolution meshes have also been rewritten, now available as a modifier to integrate better with the animation system, and preserving displacements when editing the mesh topology.
Paint Brushes

Blender's method of accessing brushes for painting tasks has been updated and streamlined. Brushes store all paint-related settings, such as size, strength, tool type, textures and influence curve, and can be switched between in the brush list box or with shortcut keys. As well as the preset brushes included with Blender, you can also save your own, and assign your own shortcut keys to them.

Sculpt Brush and Stroke Upgrade

In Blender 2.54 Beta the focus has been on bug fixing and stabilizing the scripting API in the form of a renaming operation to unify naming and changes to property creation and access.


Solidify Modifier

Blender 2.5 now includes a Solidify modifier, used to non-destructively add thickness to thin meshes (similar to 'shell' modifiers in other applications). Solidify allows you to model a simple thin mesh surface, and have a solid thickness automatically extruded by the modifier.





Animation System
F-Curves, Actions, NLA

One of the 2.5 specs is "make everything animatable". The implications of this didn't make it easy to just port things over, so a couple of important redesigns were needed: Individual properties are animated with F-curves, grouped into actions, and can be instanced and layered and mixed non-destructively in the NLA editor. Effects such as noise and enveloping can be added to animation curves and NLA clips with F-curve modifiers. Read more...
Spline IK

Spline IK is a constraint which aligns a chain of bones along a curve. It is particularly well suited for rigging flexible body parts such as tails, tentacles, and spines, as well as inorganic items such as ropes. Read more...
Animation Editors

The animation editors have had a complete refresh in Blender 2.5 with a new graph editor, supporting multiple objects and F-curves simultaneously, a scene-wide dopesheet, a redesigned Non-Linear Animation editor and new functionality for shape animation, driver, expressions and keying sets. Read more...

Physics
Smoke Simulation

Blender 2.5 includes a new fluid-based smoke simulation engine. Alongside this is capability to scale up a low-resolution sim, maintaining detail with wavelet turbulence. Smoke can be generated by input particle motion, and can be affected by colliding obstacles and force fields. The smoke data is output as voxels, which can be rendered as a volume. Read more...
Particles

Particle systems have had a refresh, now taking advantage of fully interactive animation playback and editing. New additions include particle path editing with brush tools, a new point caching system, new boids physics and hair dynamics using cloth simulation. Read more...

Rendering
Volume Rendering

Blender 2.5 includes a volume material, intended for rendering particles and gases such as smoke, clouds, and fire. All procedural textures are supported as data sources, as well as two new textures for rendering voxels (such as smoke sims) and point clouds. Various shading options are available from wispy mist-like volumes, to physically based scattering and self-shadowing. Read more...
Ray tracing optimization

As part of the google summer of code, the ray trace acceleration system has had a complete overhaul, making it significantly more efficient and with support for new features such as instancing. Now multiple BVH based acceleration structures are available, in artists' terms, rendering some scenes up to 10x faster! Read more...

Color management

Blender 2.5 includes a first version of Color Management. Currently this is limited to ensuring Linear Workflow during the render pipeline - gamma corrected inputs are linearized before rendering, the renderer and compositor work in linear RGB color space, and is gamma corrected back to sRGB color space for display in the image editor.

Future work may include support for display profiles, LUTs, and finer grained control over input/output conversions.
Other rendering features

Additional rendering features in 2.5 improved bump mapping and image texture filtering, an initial version of deep shadow maps, color management (integrated linear workflow). Read more...

More

More new features, that still needs to be documented on this page:

Installation paths and OS conventions
Windows version: Blender now starts with Command Prompt hidden
External Render Engine API
Python interactive console.
Scopes Display in the Image Editor
Non-blocking Reports in top header
Screw Modifier
Fluid Particles
Network Render
Game Engine Mode in UI
Approximate Indirect Light
Improved sequencer core: it's faster and needs less memory
GameLogic/Audaspace GSoC project merged
load binary data as .blend from memory
Installer for Windows installs since 2.56 in %USERPROFILE% by default
COLLADA support has been stabilized considerably, with improvements to mesh, material, light and node structures
BVH Motion Capture Export
SVG Vector Graphics Import
Blend file thumbnails for Windows and Gnome Desktop Environment.


Blender 2.57b update log
Essential Fixes

* fix crash when pressing Enter on menu item which load a file: Ctrl+N,Enter or Ctrl+O,Enter r36287
* fix crash appending/linking objects #27158, r36313
* fix crash for files saved with file selector open r36321
* fix crash with edge split modifier #26993, r36330
* fix for numerous cases where material links would be lost when making object data local #27178, r36332
* fix for crash getting the vertex weight from object types which don't support this vertex groups. r36291

Rendering:

* fixed a memory leak on canceling bake r36284
* fix for memory leak with node group members that have multiple ouputs some of which are unused #27104, r36290
* fix for node socket bug which lead to incorrect black/white output levels r36306
* fix 3d text and simple deform modifier giving bad results #27048, r36301
* fix for boid particles getting Z clamped to 0.0 when "Allow Flighting" is on. #27112, r36325

Tools:

* fix changing selected shapekeys in editmode causing badly deformed keys #26959, r36296
* mesh.dupli_extrude_cursor (Ctrl+Click extrude), failed when the selected vertex was behind the view #27091, r36279
* fix all mesh normals being recalculated when adding meshes in editmode #27121, 36323
* skip displace modifier when no changes are needed r36319
* setting subsurf with Ctrl+1/2/3/4 now works in editmode too. #27126, r36299

Python:

* fix for crash exporting Collada files to an invalid path #27162, r36326
* RegionView3D.view_rotation was inverted, view_matrix is now writeable r36317

Interface:

* slider widget was showing strange colors with some themes #27139, r36324
* fix for text editor syntax highlighting glitch when changing tab width. r36294

Additions:

* added support for sculpting on blended shape keys r36295
* new view 'dolly', zoom which moves the view port forward in perspective mode, not restricted by the view rotational pivot. (Ctrl+Shift+MMB). r36283
* continuous zoom now uses dolly settings for horizontal/vertical mouse & inverted movement.
* convenience button in modifiers panels to allow switching to the physics tab r36327

Blender Addons

* Unreal Engine Format
o fixed error on export single/all/select action sets.
o added weight when import into blender and filter out the ext.

* OBJ Format
o fixed importing OBJ groups as vertex groups. [#27149], r1865
o fresnel setting was broken on import [#27170], r1869
o importing vertex order was not maintained (added option back) [#27145], r1867

* Povray Render Support: Detect povray binary on unix.
* DirectX Export: Improved phong shader setting. r1871


Blender 2.57a update log
Essential Fixes:

sculpting partial redraw glitch #26932, r36161
crash on entering 3D text editmode (OSX only) #26930, r36179
crash on loading 2.4x files #26904, r36148
loading file with packed audio crashes #26990, r36213
loading large blend files speed-up r36241, r36244

Rendering:

black dots with raytrace reflections & bump mapped dupli-objects #26902, r36165
render crash when tangents are used with modifiers that remove orco coordinates #26933, r36170
incorrect errors for panorama & orthographic camera combination #26906, r36184
no output from texture node group #27034, r36251
crash setting voxel data to negative resolution #27083, r36256
crash when loading invalid voxel data and resource leak - never closing files #27084, r36257
wrong sequencer alpha gradient #25713, r36197

Interface:

top bar 'Add -> Mesh -> UV Sphere + Enter' - crashed #27058, r36242
buttons with centered text truncating the first characters when there wasn't enough space #26937, r36174
single grease pencil points drawing very large in the image editor, r36154
incorrect relative path used when opening audio #26949, r36209
unpacking sounds with a long ID name #27015, r36214
ambiguous operator names in the search popup #26977, r36221
crash copying datablocks with ID Property arrays #26967, r36229
console is not hidden when start blender #26884, r36243
outliner objects showed "active" or "selected" in confusing ways #27026, r36248
freedesktop icons, incorrect install location and copying SVG #27086, r36260, r36261
sunsky presets used deprecated property names #27094, r36268.
non-functional user preference for clamping texture #26955, r36186
smooth tangent iteration field in curve panel not responding #26989, r36198
text editor indentation correction when when line contained ',' or ':' in a string, r36187
text editor copy/paste breaks formatting of script #27014, r36236

Tools:

"make fur" gave errors with multiple selected objects. r36250
mesh editmode de-selecting edge loops #26931, r36159
dupli-extrude-cursor added wrong location when nothing selected #27016, r36216
mesh rip tool access from menu fail #26936, r36226
crash copying mesh, armature, lattice and metaball datablocks while in editmode #27096, r36263, r36264
explode modifier - apply as shape impossible #27075, r36249
add object, localview and undo error #27044, r36245
buffer overflow with string lengths for operators that took ID names, r36219

Compositing:

'Hue Correct' composite node saturates #26945, r36201
'Displace Node' composite node crashes Blender when connected to Z-Buffer #26896, r36202
lens distortion composite node delivered RGBA out with alpha zero #26901, r36212
timeline camera switch failed with compositor renderlayers #26900, r36217
rendering non active scenes from the compositor used wrong frame, r36218
modified nodes inside edited groups not updating the view #27018, r36227

Python:

bpy.context.object.collision access crash #26995, r36204
crash running the transform operator from python #27011, r36215
button input could do incorrect unit system replacements of valid python expressions r36199, r36206
bpy.utils.blend_paths(True) crash #27072, r36246

Game engine:

blenderplayer wasn't finding bundled python #26951, r36208
game engine radar sensor broken #26795, r36234

Animation:

apply scale to armature offset bone children #27006, r36211, r36233
action/NLA editor issues with animation data context #25960, r36222
particle group object viewport and render scale mismatch #27008, r36224
action editor header doesn't update when entering tweakmode on NLA strips #25960, r36225
bugs when linking particles/collision/softbody modifiers #27038, r36228
separate armature would also separate active, unselected bone r36232
available keying set fails in armature pose mode #27090, r36258
b-bone doesn't resize correctly with numeric input #27095, r36270

Additions

API for exporters to write paths with different absolute/relative options. r36155
image and compositor now show the color under the cursor as well as HSV and luminance. r36239

Blender Addons
Fixed

Add Corrective Shape Key: api update. r1830
Fracture Tools: api update r1835, r1836
Povray render export fix for writing invalid names r1842.
Unreal Engine (PSA / PSK):
fixed mesh rebuild for face id materials and vertex groups. r1839
fixed vertex group support r1844
fixed uv's and tri and quad mesh rebuild button r1832
View3D Copy Menu: fixed for new api r1845
3DS Import: support for files which reference non-existing materials. r1846
OBJ Import: loading when in pose mode failed #27019, r1848
RenderFarmFI: Added guidelines for submitting the render and fix error where hasSmokeSimulation lacked parenthesis r1850
Add Mesh Extras: missing argument to menu operator r1850

Additions

added OBJ & FBX options for exporting paths - relative/absolute/automatic/copy-file/strip-path r1828


Blender 2.57
April 13, 2011

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.57. This is the first stable release of the Blender 2.5 series, representing the culmination of many years of redesign and development work.

We name this version "Stable" not only because it's mostly feature complete, but especially thanks to the 1000s of fixes and feature updates we did since the 2.5 beta versions were published.

The next 2 months we will keep working on finishing a couple of left-over 2.5 targets and we expect to get feedback and bug reports from users to handle as well. If all goes well, the 2.58 version then can be the final release of the 2.5 series, with a massive amount of new projects to be added for an exciting cycle of 2.6x versions. Target is to release updates every 2 months this year.

What to Expect

Big improvements in stability. Since the last beta almost 500 bugs were fixed.
Feature complete - Although some of the 2.5 targets have been postponed, such as multi-window support showing multiple scenes, a full RNA data level dependency graph, or radial menus.
Changes - If you're used to the old Blenders, Blender 2.5 may seem quite different at first. Be prepared to read a bit about this, how to reconfigure things, and learn to use the new built-in 2.5 search functionality!

Open todos: get involved!

There's still topics that needs to be worked on before reaching the final 2.5x release target

First: check this log, you can find Known Issues at the bottom of the following feature description pages.
Second: check if the bug or issue has been added on our todo list in wiki.

This will save you (and us!) from reporting known issues! Bugs can be posted in the bug tracker or using Help &#8594; Report a Bug from inside Blender 2.5.

User Interface
Updated GUI

Blender 2.5 has a new GUI layout, with updated graphic design and a new icon set. The GUI layout has been re-designed to be clearer, better organised and easier to navigate, and is fully customisable with Python scripting. Other improvements include a new file browser, customisable tool shelf and more. Read more...
Add-ons

In Blender 2.53 we've implemented a new method for extending Blender with Python Scripts. These now are being distributed and stored as 'Add-ons" which you can choose to enable or disable each individually. This helps to keep the interface clean and well organized.

Check out the complete Add-on repository.

And the changelog for Add-on scripts.
Custom keyboard shortcuts

Blender 2.5 has been designed from scratch to enable users to configure their own keyboard shortcuts. Key definitions are be grouped in "key maps", and each map can be fully customized and saved. Keymaps can also be configured for special input methods such as directional gestures and tweak events, any-key modifiers, or multi-key input. Read more...

Internal Architecture
Data access

Now all internal data in a .blend scene file, from individual vertices, to inter-object relations, to composite node UI positions, is fully accessible with a consistent system. This enables UI controls, Python Scripting API, the animation system and more, to access and edit all scene data consistently, while providing richer interaction and feedback such as contextual help, in-place keyframing and driver expression editing, and real world units of measurement. Read more...
64 bits for Windows, Linux & OS X

Next to Linux and Windows, we now support a 64 bits versions for OS X too. This required a full recode of the low level windowing library to support Cocoa, which is good news for Blender's future on Macs in general!
Tool system

An "Operator" is the new generalized definition of a tool in Blender. This ranges from file load/save, UI layout management to adding and editing objects and its data. Because the Operator is generic, it can be called uniformly by hotkeys, menus, buttons, or via Python. Operators can be searched, chained (macros) and can provide interactive editing with real-time updates. Read more...
Python Scripting

Blender 2.5 has a full re-implemented Python Scripting API. Anything a user can interact with via the UI - data, options and tools - is also available for scripters now. Scripts are being used for Importers/Exporters, for custom tools ("Operators"), for access to other render engines, and for extending the UI in various ways.

For the next 2.58 release the API will be completed with access to internal notifiers and events to track data changes or UI refreshes.

Modeling
Sculpt and Multi-resolution

Sculpt mode in Blender has been optimized, increasing drawing and editing performance significantly, and reducing memory usage to support more detailed models. New tools have been added and existing ones improved. Multiresolution meshes have also been rewritten, now available as a modifier to integrate better with the animation system, and preserving displacements when editing the mesh topology.
Paint Brushes

Blender's method of accessing brushes for painting tasks has been updated and streamlined. Brushes store all paint-related settings, such as size, strength, tool type, textures and influence curve, and can be switched between in the brush list box or with shortcut keys. As well as the preset brushes included with Blender, you can also save your own, and assign your own shortcut keys to them.

Sculpt Brush and Stroke Upgrade

In Blender 2.54 Beta the focus has been on bug fixing and stabilizing the scripting API in the form of a renaming operation to unify naming and changes to property creation and access.


Solidify Modifier

Blender 2.5 now includes a Solidify modifier, used to non-destructively add thickness to thin meshes (similar to 'shell' modifiers in other applications). Solidify allows you to model a simple thin mesh surface, and have a solid thickness automatically extruded by the modifier.





Animation System
F-Curves, Actions, NLA

One of the 2.5 specs is "make everything animatable". The implications of this didn't make it easy to just port things over, so a couple of important redesigns were needed: Individual properties are animated with F-curves, grouped into actions, and can be instanced and layered and mixed non-destructively in the NLA editor. Effects such as noise and enveloping can be added to animation curves and NLA clips with F-curve modifiers. Read more...
Spline IK

Spline IK is a constraint which aligns a chain of bones along a curve. It is particularly well suited for rigging flexible body parts such as tails, tentacles, and spines, as well as inorganic items such as ropes. Read more...
Animation Editors

The animation editors have had a complete refresh in Blender 2.5 with a new graph editor, supporting multiple objects and F-curves simultaneously, a scene-wide dopesheet, a redesigned Non-Linear Animation editor and new functionality for shape animation, driver, expressions and keying sets. Read more...

Physics
Smoke Simulation

Blender 2.5 includes a new fluid-based smoke simulation engine. Alongside this is capability to scale up a low-resolution sim, maintaining detail with wavelet turbulence. Smoke can be generated by input particle motion, and can be affected by colliding obstacles and force fields. The smoke data is output as voxels, which can be rendered as a volume. Read more...
Particles

Particle systems have had a refresh, now taking advantage of fully interactive animation playback and editing. New additions include particle path editing with brush tools, a new point caching system, new boids physics and hair dynamics using cloth simulation. Read more...

Rendering
Volume Rendering

Blender 2.5 includes a volume material, intended for rendering particles and gases such as smoke, clouds, and fire. All procedural textures are supported as data sources, as well as two new textures for rendering voxels (such as smoke sims) and point clouds. Various shading options are available from wispy mist-like volumes, to physically based scattering and self-shadowing. Read more...
Ray tracing optimization

As part of the google summer of code, the ray trace acceleration system has had a complete overhaul, making it significantly more efficient and with support for new features such as instancing. Now multiple BVH based acceleration structures are available, in artists' terms, rendering some scenes up to 10x faster! Read more...

Color management

Blender 2.5 includes a first version of Color Management. Currently this is limited to ensuring Linear Workflow during the render pipeline - gamma corrected inputs are linearized before rendering, the renderer and compositor work in linear RGB color space, and is gamma corrected back to sRGB color space for display in the image editor.

Future work may include support for display profiles, LUTs, and finer grained control over input/output conversions.
Other rendering features

Additional rendering features in 2.5 improved bump mapping and image texture filtering, an initial version of deep shadow maps, color management (integrated linear workflow). Read more...

More

More new features, that still needs to be documented on this page:

Installation paths and OS conventions
Windows version: Blender now starts with Command Prompt hidden
Experimental declarative UI: bpyml, bpyml_ui
External Render Engine API
Console and Reports Editor
Scopes Display in the Image Editor
Non-blocking Reports in top header
Screw Modifier
Fluid Particles
Network Render
Game Engine Mode in UI
Approximate Indirect Light
Improved sequencer core: it's faster and needs less memory
GameLogic/Audaspace GSoC project merged
load binary data as .blend from memory
Installer for Windows installs since 2.56 in %USERPROFILE% by default
COLLADA support has been stabilized considerably, with improvements to mesh, material, light and node structures

Fixed Issues

http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-257/


Blender 2.57 official release candidates online
March 31, 2011

First non-beta of the 2.5 series is going to be released soon, help testing our builds on the http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.57/ !


Blender 2.56a Beta

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.56a Beta. This release is a fix release for Blender 2.56, and thus the fifth official beta release of the Blender 2.5 series, representing the culmination of many years of redesign and development work.

This version is called a "Beta" because it's now for the most part feature complete. The Python API has had some extensive changes, most notably in naming conventions and in creation and access of properties.

Since Blender 2.55 beta over 440 bugs were fixed!

IMPORTANT: Between 2.53 and 2.56 an extensive renaming operation has changed the scripting API a lot, with repercussions also for loading 2.53 .blends with animation into 2.56. Make sure you try the FCurve/Driver 2.54 fix entry from the Help menu.

IMPORTANT 2: This fixes a very bad bug in "undo" for using Cloth/Fluid sim in Blender 2.56 beta


Blender 2.56 Beta

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.56 Beta. This release is the fourth official beta release of the Blender 2.5 series, representing the culmination of many years of redesign and development work.

This version is called a "Beta" because it's now for the most part feature complete. The Python API has had some extensive changes, most notably in naming conventions and in creation and access of properties.

Since Blender 2.55 beta over 440 bugs were fixed!

IMPORTANT: Between 2.53 and 2.56 an extensive renaming operation has changed the scripting API a lot, with repercussions also for loading 2.53 .blends with animation into 2.56. Make sure you try the FCurve/Driver 2.54 fix entry from the Help menu.

IMPORTANT 2: The day after release, a very bad bug in "undo" for using Cloth/Fluid sim has been solved. We'll probably release a 2.56a update soon.


Blender 2.55 Beta

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.55 Beta. This release is the third official beta release of the Blender 2.5 series, representing the culmination of many years of redesign and development work.

This version is called a "Beta" because it's now for the most part feature complete. The Python API has had some extensive changes, most notably in naming conventions and in creation and access of properties.

Since Blender 2.54 beta over 340 bugs were fixed!

IMPORTANT: Between 2.53 and 2.55 an extensive renaming operation has changed the scripting API a lot, with repercussions also for loading 2.53 .blends with animation into 2.55. Make sure you try the FCurve/Driver 2.54 fix entry from the Help menu.


What to Expect

* Big improvements - This software has been used extensively in production of the Durian open movie project "Sintel".
* Feature complete - Although some of the 2.5 targets have been postponed, such as multi-window support showing multiple scenes, a full RNA data level dependency graph, or radial menus.
* Exciting improvements in Sculpting - Faster, much more stable and better brushes.
* Missing/Incomplete Features - Although really most of it is there, not all functionality from 2.4x has been restored yet. Some functionality may work in a different way. Some features are still slower to use than before.
* Bugs - We've fixed a lot lately, but there are still quite a few bugs. For this second beta around 200 bugs were fixed.
* Changes - If you're used to the old Blenders, Blender 2.5 may seem quite different at first. Be prepared to read a bit about this, how to reconfigure things, and learn to use the new built-in 2.5 search functionality!


Blender 2.54 Beta

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.54 Beta. This release is the second official beta release of the Blender 2.5 series, representing the culmination of many years of redesign and development work.

This version is called a "Beta" because it's now for the most part feature complete. The Python API has had some extensive changes, most notably in naming conventions and in creation and access of properties.

IMPORTANT: Between 2.53 and 2.54 an extensive renaming operation has changed the scripting API a lot, with repercussions also for loading 2.53 .blends with animation into 2.54. Make sure you try the FCurve/Driver 2.54 fix entry from the Help menu.

What to Expect

* Big improvements - This software has been used extensively in production of the Durian open movie project "Sintel".
* Feature complete - Although some of the 2.5 targets have been postponed, such as multi-window support showing multiple scenes, a full RNA data level dependency graph, or radial menus.
* Exciting improvements in Sculpting - Faster, much more stable and better brushes.
* Missing/Incomplete Features - Although really most of it is there, not all functionality from 2.4x has been restored yet. Some functionality may work in a different way. Some features are still slower to use than before.
* Bugs - We've fixed a lot lately, but there are still quite a few bugs. For this second beta around 200 bugs were fixed.
* Changes - If you're used to the old Blenders, Blender 2.5 may seem quite different at first. Be prepared to read a bit about this, how to reconfigure things, and learn to use the new built-in 2.5 search functionality!


Blender 2.53 Beta

The Blender Foundation and online developer community is proud to present Blender 2.53 Beta. This release is the first official beta release of the Blender 2.5 series, representing the culmination of many years of redesign and development work.

This version is called a "Beta" because it's now for the most part feature complete. The main topic we still work on is the Python API.


What to Expect

* Big improvements - This software has been used extensively in production of the Durian open movie project "Sintel".
* Feature complete - Although some of the 2.5 targets have been postponed, such as multi-window support showing multiple scenes, a full RNA data level dependency graph, or radial menus.
* Exciting improvements in Sculpting - Faster, much more stable and better brushes.
* Missing/Incomplete Features - Although really most of it is there, not all functionality from 2.4x has been restored yet. Some functionality may work in a different way. Some features are still slower to use than before.
* Bugs - We've fixed a lot lately, but there are still quite a few bugs.
* Changes - If you're used to the old Blenders, Blender 2.5 may seem quite different at first. Be prepared to read a bit about this, how to reconfigure things, and learn to use the new built-in 2.5 search functionality!


Blender 2.49

While one half of the developers were busy with the 2.5 project, the other half happily continued working on directly usable and useful features in Blender. Especially advances in the Game Engine justifies having a well tested, bug fixed and stable 2.49 release.

Check this impressive long list of features!

blender.org team, May 2009

Video Texture

The Game Engine now supports multiple streams of video textures for interactive playback in environments. You can use video files (also from URLs), image files, video captures, memory buffer, camera render or a mix of that.



Real-time Dome rendering

This feature allows artists to visualize their interactive projects within an immersive dome environment. Blender supports Fulldome, Truncated domes (front and rear), Planetariums and domes with spherical mirrors.

by Vitor Balbio, Brazil

Game Engine speed-up

Significant speedup has been achieved in several areas;
- Scene Graph optimizes static objects
- View Frustum culling
- Occlusion culling
- Faster Bullet physics initializing
Overall improvement is signifacent, a complex game like YoFrankie runs 3x faster now.

Bullet Physics

The Bullet library upgrade in this release includes brand new generic 6dof constraint with run-time configurable limits, motors and springs to allow for physics-based vehicles, forklift, robots and ragdolls. And more...

Game Engine Modifier support

Support for non-time dependent modifiers in the GE: no need to apply the modifiers before running the game! Works for physics shape too.

Improved Game Logic and Python API

Improve stability, documentation and completeness for the python API.
* Attribute access
* GameObject properties of any type.
* OpenGL and Geometry modules
* New logic and the rendering functions
* Better error feedback

Texture Nodes

Next to Compositing and Materials, Blender Textures now support Node editing. You can use it to create advanced procedural textures, including fractal based systems. And even better, a Texture Nodetree can even become a Brush for painting.

Projection Painting

Painting in the 3D view has been improved to support projection painting which allows you to paint directly onto your model without having to worry about UV mapping or seams.

Etch-a-ton armature sketching

Etch-a-ton is a development snapshot for sketching techniques applied to rigging. It can be used both for creating chains of deformation bones through various subdivision techniques or through retargetting templates

Boolean improvements

In 2.49 you can put a Boolean Modifier on any level in the stack, allowing you to intersect deformed or subdivided models too. You can also insert multiple Booleans in one stack now.

Creative Commons, from Wikipedia

JPEG2000 support

Blender now supports the new high quality JPEG format. It has much better compression, supports Alpha layers, and HDR color up to 16 bits per channel. JPEG2000 support is available in Blender everywhere, including Sequencer, Compositor and UV texture editor.

Bolt generator script

Python Script extensions

New scripts have been added, tools such as Landscape or Bolt generators, and the importer/exporters had several updates and fixes.
Also worth visiting is the very complete (over 300) Scripts Catalog in our wiki.

Featurettes & Fixes

A lot of smaller features and bug fixes were done for 2.49 as well. Hundreds of reports were handled the past 6 months.


Blender 2.48a update:

A couple of important bugfixes has been done in Blender since the release, especially for using the Game Engine and GLSL.


Blender 2.48

Blender 2.48 includes all the work done on the Blender Game Engine and the Apricot Open Game "Yo Frankie!", with much better functioning game logic editing, character animation, and Blender Material based real-time shaders. And as last minute surprise a Bullet physics update with Softbody support.

We also included a lot of new development in this release; Windows 64 bits support, Grease Pencil for sketching annotations,Sun/Sky/Atmosphere rendering, new modifiers, and an improved text editor with Python API support. And last but not least, an enormous list of open bug reports were handled.

Bug fixes

In the past months the bug trackers went down from 220 (Blender) and 110 (GE) to a wonderfully low 28 (Blender) and 8 (GE). Recently it's been rising though, but still very acceptable and definitely deserving to call this a stable release!

With about 500 commits per month, the list of fixes would not be interesting anymore... we better spend the time on better documentation, clearly having mapped out what's intended to work and how.

Find below the gems we didn't have a document or page for.

* Boolean modifier now results in more optimal result with fewer faces.
* DXF exporter (python) much improved
* Copy/paste text (buttons, texteditor) supports OS clipboard too.
* Snapping includes group duplicators
* Outliner now shows Sequencer strips
* Halo render with lines/circles was broken in 2.47
* Outliner can now toggle visibility/renderability for bones and modifiers
* New UV editor selection mode: Island


Blender 2.47

Continuing Blender 2.4x series, Blender 2.47 is a bugfix release to stabilize the "Bunny Release", serious effort has been put in tracking bugs and fixing them.

A complete list of bugfixes is available if you want to read all the nasty details. Or keep on reading for a quick "short" version:

* New tools and improvement have been made to the Snapping tools.
* Better Game Engine logic.
* Fixed an incorrect transformation for particle group visualization.
* Fixed negative value in the Gamma node with negative input.
* Tangent shading (which only affects specular) made bump mapping not work for diffuse.
* Fixed Mesh Deform Modifier not working on extruded curves.
* Fixed crash converting old particle system from a linked file.
* Object instancing didn't restore matrices correct for Environment Map, this could give object rendering in the wrong position.
* Compositor nodes with use nodes disabled didn't properly redraw the node window on changes.

* Blender would crash if the user cancel the hair softbody bake.
* The Disable Tex option didn't disable textures for the Texface material option.
* Fixed data browse for image painting, which didn't work.
* Action Editor Border Select Channels no longer selects bones.
* Fix bug in X-Mirror for armatures. When a bone in a mirrored chain wasn't named propertly, it would leave the head or tail in an invalid state.
* Fixed baking AO with greater then 16 samples.
* Fixed "Col" option for particle systems does not work correctly with Mat IPOs
* Fixed Particle mirror could fail on some faces.
* Bevel tool was hanging on certain geometry where the edge to be beveled was shared by two faces that had more than one edge in common and caller was not checking return status of Bmesh eulers.
* Fixed Game Engine corrupts Pose data
* When your home directory is full, saving defaults would fail without raising an error.
* Fixed crash on grab/move on axis when nothing selected.
* Update-automatically option in IPO Editor now updates objects using the active IPO-block as their ObAction when transforming keyframes.
* Shift+H would hide unselected objects on unseen layers.
* Color picker didn't always redraw rgb/hsv/hex values.
* Vertex parenting didn't work correct with multiple unconnected curves.
* Fixed crash in fluid bake with large amount of small fluid objects.
* Outliner doesn't update when changing parent in Transform Properties


Blender 2.46
The work of the past half year - also thanks to the open movie project "Big Buck Bunny" - has resulted in a greatly improved feature set, now released as Blender 2.46, the "Bunny release"!
This version supports a new particle system with hair and fur combing tools, fast and optimal fur rendering, a mesh deformation system for advanced character rigging, cloth simulation, fast Ambient Occlusion, a new Image browser, and that's just the beginning. Check the extensive list of features in the log below... have fun!
May 17, 2008
The blender.org team.

Hair and Fur
Many features have been added to make fur and grass rendering for Peach possible. Big improvements were made in visual quality, rendering speed and memory usage.

Image Browsing
The new Image Browser is blazingly fast and stable, and not only allows to browse for images in your filesystem, but can also show previews of materials, textures, world, lamp and image data.

Glossy Reflections
Reflections and refractions are now possible to be rendered with a glossiness factor, controlling the roughness of material.

Render Baking
Great tools for making UV textures: you now can bake normal maps based on rendering a higher resolution mesh, you can bake displacement (including 32 bits depth), and you can bake transparency.

Physics caching and baking
The softbody, cloth and particle physics now use a unified system for caching and baking. For real-time tweaking, a new option "Continue Physics" will continue the simulation regardless of the current frame.


www.malefico3d.orgArmature Drawing
Armatures now support Bone groups, custom Bone colors, automatic colors, more custom shape options, ... and many more goodies for our rigging department.

Armature Tools
Many new tools and improvements have been made to speed up the rigging and posing workflow. There are now tools for more intuitive bone creation, various hotkeys to speedy batch-editing of bones,auto-ik and auto-keyframing tweaks, and many more goodies.

Skinning improvements
Bone Heat Weighting is a new method to create vertex weights for bone deformation, it generates better results, and does not require setting a radius for bones. Also added was Quaternion-Interpolated Deformation for superior blends.

Game Engine improvements
The Blender GameEngine has seen a great deal of improvement with an increase in play-back speed, a number of nice new features including 2D filter compositing, and of course attention to quality through bug fixes.

Soft Shadows
Raytraced soft shadows are now possible for all lamp types; including spot, sun and point lights.

Render Pipeline
FSA gives superior anti-aliasing for high dynamic range and compositing. Zmasks allow rendering of composite masks. Instancing gives efficient memory re-use for duplicates.


Shading features
Cubic shading (to prevent discontinuity banding)
Higher level texture coordinates for duplicates (like feathers)
Lamp fall-off curves
Softer Halos, premul alpha, multisample shadowbuffers, ...

Python Scripts and API
There have been a large number of script additions and script updates, as well as API improvements since the last release.
Particle system rewrite
The particle system has been rewritten from scratch. It now allows advanced hair grooming tools, but also much better physics, boid animation and even explosions!

Cloth simulation
Cloth simulation is available in Blender via a modifier on Mesh objects. Cloth thenrealistically and in real-time interacts with other objects, the wind or other forces, all of which is fully under your control.


Approximate AO
Ambient Occlusion is a render option that darkens areas with less visibility, simulating the effect of environment light. This new AO option is based on quick approximation, giving many factors of speedup.

Mesh Deform Modifier
This new method allows to use any random Mesh cage to become a deformation "lattice" for animated characters. By layering - using both a MeshDeformer and an Armature, you can both achieve high level as precise control.

Action Editor improvements
The Action Editor has been rewritten to have a more flexible codebase that is more future-proof and extendable. This has enabled tools to be shared between the editing modes for Actions and ShapeKeys, and now has many new features...

Constraint System
Constraints are crucial for setting up good character rigs. A wealth of new features have been added to improve and extend this system. Most notable is the addition of PyConstraints, allowing full control to animators.


www.promotionstudios.comQMC & Adaptive Sampling
Blender now includes two new sampling methods, using a Halton sequence (Adaptive QMC) and a Hammersley sequence (Constant QMC).
Raytracing now also supports adaptive sampling.

Sequencer
Many many new goodies in our Video Sequence Editor:
UI made more accessible, new panels/views
Built-in strip blending
Color correction tools
Markers, NTSC support, preview, ...

UV texture editing
UV texture coordinates now are accessible via regular Mesh editmode. And many more features were added such as:

UV draw types
Solid opengl view with textures
2d cursor in Image window

Node editor
New nodes have been added for shading and compositing.

And more features
NDOF devices support
Align to Transform Orientation
Pole target for IK chains
Pose Libraries
Weight Paint visualization
Multi-Modifier support
Weight-group selecting
Custom transform orientations
Distributed rendering options
External Paths Tools
Automerge
Recursive Dupli Groups


The most important Bug Fixes in 2.45 are:

* SSS work with panorama render
* Remove artifacts with negative lights using SSS
* Disable SSS better for preview rendering, so it does not slow down other preview render at all.
* Fix error in Transform Constraint with planar constraints when the plane was perpendicular to the viewport.
* Fix a Vector blur error in "Ztransp" that produce black lines (on edges) appeared, which didn't get blurred away.
* Fix a error in the Particle System that cause bad result in command line renders especially or in rendering first frame of animation.
* Fix Verse crashing in 64 bits Linux.
* Math node now has reflective behavior.
* Importing 3DS files with lamps failed.
* Bundled python modules were not included in 2.44 by accident, making some scripts fail in 2.44 that worked in 2.43 (Windows Only, when Python was not installed)


Blender 2.44

Blender 2.44 was intended to be an upgrade release, mainly for plenty of bug fixes, but the developers took the effort adding at least a few interesting new features.

This version now is fully 64 bits compatible, new modifers were added, a couple of composite nodes were added, and a revamp of the old mesh primitives was done. But most relevant to mention is Blender 2.44's new long-awaited but unexpected feature: subsurface scattering (SSS) support!

May 12th, 2007

Sculpt and Multires

The previous release was the first Blender version to offer 3d sculpt and multi-res. Based on welcome feedback and reporting, a lot of bug fixes and improvements were added.

Python Scripts and API

There have been a large number of script additions and script updates, as well as API improvements since the last release.

New Modifiers

Two new modifiers are available now; "Smooth" and "Cast".
64 bits migration notes

Blender had been ported to 64 bits Dec Alpha in 1998 already, but since 2002 its 64 bits compliancy has been gathering dust mostly. Time for a cleanup!

More features and fixes

Plenty of smaller features made it into this release.

Subsurface Scattering

Subsurface scattering is a new material option to render materials like skin, marble or milk. For these materials light scatters under the surface and leaves at another position. This leads to a softer appearance, as light is blurred out over the surface.

New Composite Nodes

Two new Composite nodes had been added, that can be accessed by the Add > Color menu, expanding further the possibilities of the Composite node editor.

Character Animation

The Action and NLA editors have now better control over visible channels. A new constraint was added, and a "preview range" option was added.

Physics Engine

The Bullet physics engine has had some changes which should give better reproducibility and precision/quality for physics simulations.
Mesh primitives update

The mesh primitives have been revisited, improving their usability and pushing them a little beyond their previous state.


2.43
http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-243/


2.42
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Blender_2_42.727.0.html


2.41
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Blender_2_41.731.0.html


2.40 alpha
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Blender_2.4_pre-release_notes


2.37a
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/2_37a_Release_Notes.597.0.html


2.37
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Blender_2_37.496.0.html




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