Software » Animation 3D » Blender 3.3

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

Photorealistic Rendering
Blender now features a powerful new unbiased rendering engine called Cycles that offers stunning ultra-realistic rendering.

The built-in Cycles rendering engine offers:

GPU & CPU rendering
Realtime viewport preview
HDR lighting support
Permissive License for linking with external software
Rendering in Blender with Cycles
Modeling in Blender
Fast Modeling
Blender’s comprehensive array of modeling tools make creating, transforming and editing your models a breeze.

Blender’s modeling tools include:

Keyboard shortcuts for a fast workflow
N-Gon support
Edge slide, collapse and dissolve
Grid and Bridge fill
Python scripting for custom tools and add-ons
Realistic Materials
With Blender’s new rendering engine the possibilities for materials are endless.

Key features are:

Complete Node Support for full customization
Physically accurate shaders like glass, translucency and SSS
Open Shading Language (OSL) support for coding unique shaders
Materials in Blender
Rigging in Blender
Fast Rigging
Transforming a model into a posable character has never been easier!

Blender offers an impressive set of rigging tools including:

Envelope, skeleton and automatic skinning
Easy weight painting
Mirror functionality
Bone layers and colored groups for organization
B-spline interpolated bones
Animation toolset
Whether it’s simple keyframing or complex walk-cycles, Blender allows artists to turn their still characters into impressive animations.

Blender’s animation feature set offers:

Automated walk-cycles along paths
Character animation pose editor
Non Linear Animation (NLA) for independent movements
IK forward/inverse kinematics for fast poses
Sound synchronization
rigging
Sculpting in Blender
Sculpting
Experience the joy of sculpting organic subjects using the built-in sculpting feature set of Blender.

Sculpting in Blender includes:

20 different brush types
Multi-res sculpting support
Dynamic Topology sculpting
Mirrored sculpting
Fast UV Unwrapping
Easily unwrap your mesh right inside Blender, and use image textures or paint your own directly onto the model.

Blender allows for:

Fast Cube, Cylinder, Sphere and Camera projections
Conformal and Angle Based unwrapping (with edge seams and vertex pinning)
Painting directly onto the mesh
Multiple UV layers
UV layout image exporting
UV Unwrapping in Blender
Compositing in Blender
Full Compositor
Blender comes with a fully fledged compositor built right in. That means no more exporting to third party programs, you can do it all without leaving the program.

The compositor comes with:

Impressive library of nodes for creating camera fx, color grading, vignettes and much more
Render-layer support
Full compositing with images and video files
Ability to render to multiLayer OpenEXR files
Multi-threaded
Amazing Simulations
Whether you need a crumbling building, rain, fire, smoke, fluid, cloth or full on destruction, Blender delivers great looking results.

Blender’s simulation tools include

Fluid – Realistic water and fluid simulations.
Smoke – Billowing smoke with flames and scene interaction.
Hair – Beautiful wafts of hair that blows in the wind and interacts with collisions.
Cloth – Amazingly realistic cloth simulations for clothing and environments
Rigid Body Physics – Makes any object destructable and collidable
Particles – For creating things like rain, sparks and shrapnel
463e785104
Blender Game Engine Screenshot
Game Creation
Included in Blender is a complete game engine, allowing you to create a fully featured 3d game right inside Blender.

The game engine includes:

Ability to port your models to any third-party game engine
Create or code your own game logic
Full Bullet Physics integration
Python scripting API for advanced control and AI
Support for all OpenGLTM dynamic lighting, toon shading, animated materials as well as Normal and Parallax Mapping
Playback of games inside Blender without compiling or preprocessing
3D spatial audio using OpenAL
Camera and Object tracking
Blender now includes production ready camera and object tracking. Allowing you to import raw footage, track the footage, mask areas and see the camera movements live in your 3d scene. Eliminating the need to switch between programs.

The Camera and Object Tracker includes:

Auto and manual tracking
Powerful camera reconstruction
Real-time preview of your tracked footage and 3d scene
Support for Planar tracking and Tripod solvers
Camera tracking in Blender
3057383d1a
Library of Extensions
With a large community of enthusiasts and developers, Blender comes loaded with a vast array of extensions that you can turn on or off easily.

Some existing extensions include:

Generators for trees, terrain, ivy and clouds.
Fracture Objects.
3D Printing Toolbox.
Rigify meta-rigging system.
Import and Export format support for AfterEffects, DirectX, Unreal Game Engine and more!
Plus many more that you can download here

Video Editing
Blender even comes with a built-in Video Editor.

The Video Editor allows you to perform basic actions like video cuts and splicing, as well as more complex tasks like video masking.

The Video Editor includes:

Live preview, luma waveform, chroma vectorscope and histogram displays
Audio mixing, syncing, scrubbing and waveform visualization
Up to 32 slots for adding video, images, audio, scenes, masks and effects
Speed control, adjustment layers, transitions, keyframes, filters and more.
caminandes_edit_final
Exporting in Blender
File Formats
Blender comes packed with import/export support for many different programs.

Including:

Image
JPEG, JPEG2000, PNG, TARGA, OpenEXR, DPX, Cineon, Radiance HDR, SGI Iris, TIFF
Video
AVI, MPEG and Quicktime (on OSX).
3D
Alembic, 3D Studio (3DS), COLLADA (DAE), Filmbox (FBX), Autodesk (DXF), Wavefront (OBJ), DirectX (x), Lightwave (LWO), Motion Capture (BVH), SVG, Stanford PLY, STL, VRML, VRML97, X3D.
Flexible Interface
Novice and advanced users will love the ability to customize their layout completely. From simply splitting their viewport, to fully customizing it with python scripting, blender works for you.

Blender’s interface also offers:

Consistency across all platforms
No disruptive pop-up windows
Crisp text (support for retina on OSX)