Maxon ‘pauses’ development of Redshift for Blender
Strikethrough graphic: Adobe Stock
Maxon has suspended development work on the Blender plugin for Redshift, its GPU production renderer for VFX, motion graphics and visualization work.
Officially, development has been “paused” rather than stopped forever, but the Redshift team is now “redirect[ing] our development focus to other areas”.
The news was announced in late July, but we only spotted when Redshift 2026.0, the latest version of the software – which does not include a Blender plugin – was released.
One of the first major production renderers to support Blender
Originally announced in 2020, the Blender plugin for Redshift made the GPU renderer available to users of the open-source 3D software, as an alternative to its native Cycles renderer.
It signalled growing support for Blender among the developers of the key third-party renderers used in production for visual effects and animation, and was followed by official Blender integrations for RenderMan and – most recently – V-Ray.
(OctaneRender had supported Blender for some years, while Arnold currently only supports Blender via a community-developed add-on.)
Development now ‘paused’, with Redshift 2025.6 the final release to support Blender
The news that development of the Blender plugin has now been halted was posted on the Redshift forum at the end of July by Redshift co-founder Nicolas Burtnyk, now Maxon Executive Vice President for Rendering.
Access to the forum requires an account, so we’ve reproduced the full text below:
We’re pausing development on the Blender plugin for Redshift. We know this impacts those of you who’ve integrated it into your workflow, and we don’t take this decision lightly.
Version 2025.6 will be the final release to include Blender support. When we ship version 2026.0, the Blender plugin won’t be included as we redirect our development focus to other areas. (Note that if we release hotfixes to 2025.6, these will include Blender support).
If you rely on the Blender integration, version 2025.6 will continue working as usual — we’re just not adding new features or updates for now. We understand this creates uncertainty for your projects, and we genuinely appreciate your patience as we navigate these priorities.
We are of course open to hearing your thoughts on this change as your feedback helps us understand how decisions like this affect your work.
We will keep you posted if anything changes down the road.
There are no details in the forum thread on the reasons behind the decision, so we’ll update this story if we get any more information from Maxon.
Price and system requirements
Redshift is compatible with Windows 10+, glibc 2.28+ Linux and macOS 14.0+. From Redshift 2026.0, integrations are available for 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Houdini, Katana and Maya.
The software is rental-only. Subscriptions cost $49/month or $289/year.
Read the announcement that development of Redshift for Blender is being paused
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