The Free and Open Source 3D Creation Software

Get the file used in this video to play with the new node gizmos. This means you can edit the inputs to a node tree right in the 3D viewport – no need to dive into the node editor or modifier stack. You can now add gizmos to node groups! Simon Thommes offers a delightful sneak peek into the abundance of Geo Goodies packed into this Blender update! A new texture node was added that can create procedural Gabor noise for random interleaved bands with controllable direction and width. This method is more complex to use, requiring IOR and Extinction coefficients per color channel as inputs.

Support

It was created by Willem-Paul van Overbruggen (SLiD3), who named it Suzanne after the orangutan in the Kevin Smith film Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. The binary releases of Blender are under GNU GPLv3 or later because of the incorporated Apache libraries. The Blender Foundation initially reserved the right to use dual licensing so that, in addition to GPL 2.0-or-later, Blender would have been available also under the “Blender License”, which did not require disclosing source code but required payments to the Blender Foundation.

Since the opening of the source code, Blender has experienced significant refactoring of the initial codebase and major additions to its feature set. Blender includes many modes for interacting with objects, the two primary ones being Object Mode and Edit Mode, which are toggled with the Tab key. Objects, meshes, materials, textures, etc. can also be linked to other .blend files, which is what allows the use of .blend files as reusable resource libraries. Blender organizes data as various kinds of “data blocks” (akin to glTF), such as Objects, Meshes, Lamps, Scenes, Materials, Images, and so on. In the 2.8 announcements, the Blender team specifically mentioned the Godot engine as a suitable replacement for migrating Blender Game Engine users. It also allowed the creation of stand-alone, real-time applications ranging from architectural visualization to video games.

However, for VFX artists, the new features in Blender 5.0 that have the most practical effect on day-to-day workflows may be the changes to color management. Blender 5.0 gives .blend files a working color space, including wide color gamut spaces like Rec. The new Compositor modifier makes it possible to apply and edit compositing node trees directly within the Sequencer. The new Compositor modifier makes it possible to apply compositing node trees directly inside the Sequencer, Blender’s video editor, without having to switch to the Compositor itself.

Modes

In addition, smoke and fire simulations are now rendered using NanoVDB, rather than standard OpenVDB, which should reduce memory usage. It needs fewer control parameters than the existing biased, ray-marching-based algorithm, and should generate fewer artifacts where volumes overlap. Subsurface scattering has also been improved, with the random walk algorithm better recreating the way light scatters inside slightly translucent materials like skin or marble. Cycles, Blender’s main production renderer, gets a number of interesting updates in Blender 5.0. Other new modifiers include the self-descriptive Scatter on Surface and Instance on Elements, which creates copies of an object on the points, edges or faces of another mesh. It should also be easier to use, thanks to the ability to adjust the array directly in the viewport using a control gizmo, and being based on Geometry Nodes, it’s more customizable.

Blender (software)

A new theme option allows for enhanced highlights around an area when the mouse is over it, for better accessibility. Images display their resolution and color space, movies show their duration, and fonts include previews. All Blender releases this year align with the VFX Reference Platform 2024, making integration and maintenance in studio pipelines easier. Additionally, they can be color-coded using color tags, similar to Collections in the Outliner. A new way to keep your Grease Pencil objects tidy. The Grease Pencil engine was completely rewritten for better performance and to remove deeper limitations.

MORE GREASE PENCIL

For 2D animation and storyboarding, the Grease Pencil toolset now supports motion blur, and sharp and flat corners on strokes. Like Geometry Nodes, Blender’s shading nodes now support bundles, closures and repeat zones, and there is a new Radial Tiling node, plus updates to the Voronoi Texture nodes. But perhaps the biggest changes are to volume rendering, which gets a new default algorithm based on null scattering, and using unbiased sampling. Geometry Nodes, Blender’s node-based system for procedural modeling and scene layout, has been one of the biggest additions to the software in recent years. The 2024 Latvian film Flow (Straume) was made entirely in Blender using the EEVEE render engine.

• On September 7, 2002, it was announced that they had collected enough funds and would release the Blender source code.
• For many, the biggest change is probably the full support for ACES pipelines, improved color management, and HDR capabilities.
• Hydra Storm is a real-time leaveraged rendering engine by Pixar made to keep a consistant look between render engines.
• As well as being the start of a new two-year release cycle, it’s a wide-ranging update, with changes to most key toolsets, including 3D modeling, texturing, animation and rendering.
• As well as the changes covered above, Geometry Nodes now support bundles and closures, and there is a new UV Tangent node, which provides access to tangent vectors on a mesh.
• Blender is a public project hosted on blender.org, licensed as GNU GPL, owned by its contributors.

Video Recap

Blender 5.0 dropped official support for Intel Macs and older GPUs from around 2014, due to the amount of work that comes with maintaining them. The hotkeys for jumping between keyframes have been flipped, meaning the down arrow now moves forward in time for some reason. You now have full support for the ACES 1.3 and ACES 2.0 transforms, and you can even change Blender’s working space to ACES CG. This approach is a real win-win because beginners get easy tools, but advanced users can still dive into the node groups and tweak them. These include a new Array modifier with interactive gizmos and support for circular arrays. Even more exciting is the new support for volumetric Grids using the industry-standard OpenVDB format.

Due to Blender’s open-source nature, other programs have tried to take advantage of its success by repackaging and selling cosmetically modified versions of it. There are also a number of online communities dedicated to support, such as the Blender Stack Exchange. The project builds on the standard Blender codebase but introduces a redesigned user interface optimized for multi-touch and stylus input, including contextual menus, floating panels, and gesture-based controls.

The Blender Game Engine was a built-in real-time graphics and logic engine with features such as collision detection, a dynamics engine, and programmable logic. Additionally, Blender supports many addons and plugins that can make certain tasks easier for users. This allows for integration with several external render chicken road game casino engines through plugins/addons. Blender supports Python scripting for the creation of custom tools, prototyping, importing/exporting from other formats, and task automation. It also includes a non-linear video editor called the Video Sequence Editor (VSE), with support for effects like Gaussian blur, color grading, fade and wipe transitions, and other video transformations. Blender allows procedural and node-based textures, as well as texture painting, projective painting, vertex painting, weight painting and dynamic painting.

The core system for geometry nodes has been simplified, which is great because it is a confusing concept to learn. Sequencer Preview now supports snapping, with source points at corners and origins of all selected, visible strips. Updated nodes can now handle Grease Pencil data seamlessly, processing each layer separately. This node allows for the easy assignment of names to geometries, with automatic initialization based on object and collection names. The color pipeline now supports HDR and wide gamut colors for images and video. Compatibility-breaking changes include discontinuation of support for animation data from Blender 2.49 and older, and pose libraries from Blender 2.93 and older.

Discover how to create blendshape-based facial rigs for VFX and game cinematics with The Gnomon Workshop’s new masterclass. Read a longer list of new features in the Blender 5.0 release notes The Sequencer is no longer tied to the active scene, with the option to switch automatically between scenes when scrubbing or playing back the timeline. The Compositor gets a lot of changes, including the option to reuse compositing node trees across .blend files, and new shelf assets for effects like chromatic aberration and vignetting.

Features

Blender 4.5 LTS was the last version that support macOS Intel and COLLADA import/export, big endian platform and blendfiles. Blender 2.83 LTS and 2.92 were the last supported versions for Windows 7. Blender 2.80 was the last release that had a version for 32-bit systems (x86). As of 2021, official releases of Blender for Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux, as well as a port for FreeBSD, are available in 64-bit versions.

• While it is capable of driving Blender’s real-time viewport for creating assets thanks to its speed, it can also work as a renderer for final frames.
• First, the software should now play nicer in ACES pipelines with “essential support” for ACES 1.3 and ACES 2.0 workflows.
• Additionally, Blender supports many addons and plugins that can make certain tasks easier for users.
• Blender’s Geometry Nodes system now supports volumes as well as meshes, making it possible to create effects like this, achieved by advecting a density field along a velocity grid.

Blender itself can also be compiled & imported as a Python library for further automation and development. With the release of Blender 4.2 LTS in July 2024, EEVEE received an overhaul by its lead developer, Clément Foucault, called EEVEE Next. If one is defined, a volume shader describes the light interaction as it passes through the volume of the mesh. When the surface shader does not reflect or absorb light, it enters the volume (light transmission). One or more bidirectional scattering distribution functions, or BSDFs, can specify if incoming light is reflected, refracted into the mesh, or absorbed. The surface shader defines the light interaction at the surface of the mesh.