Software » Animation 3D » Blender 5.0

Blender 5.0 splash by Juan Hernández
What’s New Recap

New features overview by Jonathan Lampel from CGCookie, Harry Blends, Paul Caggegi, Wayne Dixon, Aidy Burrows, Károly Zsolnai-Fehér and Martin Klekner.
Color me impressed.

Blender 5.0 introduces a completely overhauled color management pipeline that natively supports wide-gamut and HDR color spaces.

Rec.709 vs Rec.2020
HDReady
Blender can now display and export HDR and wide-gamut colors for both images and video.

New display and views:

ACES 1.3 and 2.0 views as an alternative to AgX and Filmic and for compatibility with ACES pipelines (both standard and HDR).
Rec.2100-PQ and Rec.2100-HLG displays. May be used for color grading for HDR video export.
AgX HDR view.
Your Safe Space
Introducing: Blend file Working Color space.

With support for Linear Rec.2020 and ACEScg, it is now possible to use a wider gamut of colors for materials, lights and compositing, and to follow common ACES workflows.

Rendering in the Rec.2020 working space allows for the use of a wider internal color gamut.

Set a custom Working Space per file and Sequencer…

Working Color Space UI
…or use the Convert Colorspace node in the Compositor. Read more.

Compositor Convert Color Space
ACES
Team Player
Blender 5.0 includes essential support for ACES 1.3 and 2.0 workflows with the ACEScg working space.

ACES 2.0 view transform and OpenEXR images saved in the ACES2065-1 and ACEScg color spaces.

This covers most needs when working in an ACES pipeline. For more complete support, the official ACES configurations can be manually installed and set through the OCIO environment variable.

Blender 5.0 improved compatibility with the OpenColorIO configuration for ACES 2.0.

When a blend file is loaded that was created with another OpenColorIO config, a warning is now shown.

See the color management documentation for how to make a configuration file work well with HDR and wide gamut in Blender.
MORE COLOR MANAGEMENT
New Convert to Display node
Brush and palette colors are now scene linear
New Linear/Perceptual toggle in color pickers
Tooltips now include descriptions of displays, views, and color spaces
The sky is not the limit.

The Sky Texture node now supports multiple scattering, providing more realistic effects procedurally out of the box.

The new sky model works great for accurate reflections indoor too. The old “Nishita” model is still available as “Single Scattering”.

Night & Day
Generate a sunset scene instantly by animating only one parameter.

Beautiful out of the box, in both Cycles and EEVEE.

Animated sky texture node using a fisheye camera (Cycles).
Radial Tiling setup by Johannes Kollmer
Download this file and play!
Radial Tiling
The new Radial Tiling node is a building block for creating shapes and tilings, including rounded corners.

Radial Tiling Cobblestone
Radial textures with ease.
Multiresolution Baking
Baking from meshes that use the Multiresolution modifier has been greatly improved in Blender 5.0.

Added support for baking Vector Displacement.
Added support for n-gon faces.
Bake only to selected and active images (as opposed to all active images).
Subdivision Level and UV Interpolation matches the Subdivision Surface modifier.
Several issues related to baking at non-zero subdivision levels have been resolved.
Multires Modifier
On and on and on…

Shading nodes now support Repeat Zones, just like Geometry Nodes.

EEVEE supports dynamic iteration count, while Cycles is limited to a fixed number at the moment, with plans to improve this in the future.

Download this background .blend file and try it out yourself!

Raymarch fractal demo. Download this file.
MORE RENDERING
New Bundle and Closure nodes
Added support for Menu Switch node
Faster Voronoi Texture
“Use Nodes” removed
Light Linking can now be overriden
Render passes renamed to avoid abbreviations
Point Density removed
CYCLES
Unbiasedly
Smooth

A new unbiased null-scattering volume rendering algorithm is now the default. It removes blocky artifacts in overlapping volumes and eliminates the need for step size, max steps, and homogeneous volume settings.

Scene where the new unbiased sampling is more efficient.
Both renders took 30 seconds.

CYCLES
Subsurface
Scattering
Blender 5.0 introduces a more accurate random walk subsurface scattering algorithm with multiple bounces, reducing darkening artifacts at the cost of some render time.

New (Multi Bounce)
Old (Single Bounce)
New (Multi Bounce)
Thin Film Metallic
CYCLES
Metallic
Thin Film Iridescence
The physically-based iridescense effects caused by dielectric thin film introduced in Blender 4.2 LTS, is now supported by metals too (Metallic BSDF and Principled BSDF).

CYCLES
Subdivide and Conquer
Adaptive Subdivision is no longer an experimental feature, and always available in the Subdivision Surface modifier.

It features a new Object Space option to set edge length in object space instead of pixel size. This allows object instancing to use minimal memory by subdividing the mesh once, independent of camera size, and instancing it many times.
A four-vertices plane using Adaptive Subdivision and the camera as dicing object.
Quick demo using a wireframe shader on a simple plane mesh (four vertices).

MORE CYCLES
New Linear 3D Curves
New Portal Depth light pass
New Render Time pass
Better OptiX denoiser quality
Smoke & fire simulations now render with NanoVDB
Stochastic sampling for cubic and linear interpolation to improve performance
Default Cycles material now matches EEVEE
Improved OSL Camera UI
Removed Use Tiling
New driver and hardware requirements

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EUR
EEVEE
Quick Start
Materials now compile much faster across all backends. This means a faster startup and overall experience.

Configurations using NVIDIA and Vulkan backend are up to 4 times faster.

OpenGL
Vulkan
Blender 4.5 LTS
Blender 5.0
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Material Compilation Time in Seconds (lower is better)
3D Viewport MatCaps
3D VIEWPORT
Better MatCaps, no cap
Blender 5.0 features new and updated MatCaps that include optional specular light. This increases shading quality and readability on dark surfaces.

MORE EEVEE
Added support for Material, World, and Samples View Layer Overrides
Up to 3x faster overlays of mesh instances
Refactored Curves drawing and rendering
Improved depth-aware operators
Faster Light Probe Volume baking
Image Texture node supports 32 bit HDR
New Surface Picking object visibility setting
Light Probe Volume compatibility breaking changes
Human Base Meshes v1.4.0
Free to Play
New demo files and updated asset bundles by the community!

The Human Base Meshes asset bundle has been updated with a new fully realistic skeleton asset.

Use it to study, practice, or even in commercial projects! It’s public domain, free as in freedom.

Human Base Meshes v1.4.0 Skeleton
New skeleton asset in Human Base Meshes v1.4.0
COMPOSITOR
Drag & Comp
The Compositor in Blender 5.0 features a new asset shelf, filled with built-in effects to get from nothing to stunning in no time.

Compositor Asset Shelf
Chromatic Aberration
Split Toning
Tune Image
Simulate color fringing caused by lens chromatic aberration.

MORE COMPOSITOR
Compositor setups are now re-usable and can be linked or appended
Added interpolation to Displace node
New Convolve node
Added support for Menu sockets
New Alpha Over Disjoint and Conjoint operations
Split now supports rotation
Added support for custom Extension Mode to many nodes
New Sun Beams mode in Glare node
New Kernel option in Glare node
New Switch Menu node
New node Convert to Display
Most nodes input/output sockets inlined
Lens Distortion now preserves transparency
Better quality Glare effect
Physically based Fog Glow effect
Added Bilinear and Bicubic interpolation to Map UV
Faster and more efficient 2D vector images
Z Combine renamed to Depth Combine
Composite node is now Group Output
File Output, Map UV, Corner Pin, Plane Track Deform, and Bokeh Blur nodes now use translation
Re-designed File Output node
Most nodes now expose their menu options as inputs
Smarter File Output frame append
Alpha Over image inputs renamed to Background/Foreground
Bokeh Blur Size now defined in pixels
Color Balance Lift/Gamma/Gain is now linear
Color Correction Lift is now Offset
Compatibility and removals
Still from Agent 327: view of Amsterdam.
INDUSTRY READY

Just like all other Blender releases in 2025 (Blender 4.4 and Blender 4.5 LTS), all libraries in Blender 5.0 are aligned with the VFX Reference Platform 2025, making studio pipeline integration and maintenance easier.

GREASE PENCIL
A Little Blurry

Grease Pencil objects now support motion blur.

The number of motion blur steps can be adjusted for better quality.

Sharp Corners Ahead
Grease Pencil strokes can now have different corner types set per point.

Flat
Sharp
Round (default)
Grease Pencil Point Corner Types
New corner types per point: Round, Sharp, and Flat.
Grease Pencil: Cyclical End Cap rendering
Go Full Circle
Cyclical strokes now correctly connect start and end segments without gaps or overlaps.

Grease Pencil 5.0 Mumu Mundo
Community Shout-out
Watch Mumu Mundo’s recap of what’s new for Grease Pencil in Blender 5.0.

MORE GREASE PENCIL
New Edit Mode Curve Data panel in the 3D Viewport sidebar
New Pen Tool
Interpolation tool support for Bézier and Catmull-Rom curve types
Join Strokes operator
Bézier handles now match Curve colors
Export Bézier, Catmull-Rom, and NURBS curve types to SVG
Python API breaking changes
SEQUENCER
OVERHAUL

Blender 5.0 brings unprecedented integrat...

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
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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)