Blender 5.0 is finally here: check out its 5 key features
The splash screen artwork for Blender 5.0: a creature created by Framestore Senior 3D Visual Development artist Juan Hernández.
The Blender Foundation has released Blender 5.0, the latest major version of the open-source 3D software for VFX, animation, game development and visualization.
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.
Below, we’ve picked out five changes that particularly caught our eye, from major updates to Geometry Nodes and color management to hidden gems like the new Compositor modifier.
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.
1. Use Geometry Nodes to manipulate volumes as well as meshes
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.
It gets a lot of love in Blender 5.0, but one key change is that it now properly supports volumes.
That makes it possible to manipulate volumetric data directly using Geometry Nodes, rather than having to convert it to another type of 3D geometry, like meshes or point clouds.
The implementation is based on a new volume grid data type, with data processed using the new grid socket and a set of 27 new nodes.
The change lays the foundations for new workflows ranging from fluid simulation to scientific visualization of volumetric data – and since volume data is stored using the industry-standard OpenVDB library, it should play nicely with other DCC software.
As a bonus, it also makes it possible to use Geometry Nodes to manipulate Signed Distance Fields (SDFs): a way of representing 3D forms also used by a range of new modeling apps.
Using the new nodes, artists can convert meshes or point clouds to SDF grids, then perform Boolean operations on them to quickly build up complex forms.
You can get a deeper dive into the way that volumetric data is handled inside Geometry Nodes, and the new workflows this opens up, in this post on the Blender Developer blog.
Blender 5.0 adds new Geometry Nodes-based modifiers that can be used to quickly distribute copies of an object around a 3D scene, like this new Array modifier.
2. Distribute objects faster with Geometry Nodes-based modifiers
The Geometry Nodes system also underpins many of the other changes to Blender’s broader 3D modeling toolset, which gets six new Geometry Nodes-based modifiers.
They include several that will appeal to layout or motion graphics artists, like the new Array modifier.
Like the legacy Array modifier – still available in the current release – it creates an array of copies of a base object along a line of curve, but also works with circular distributions.
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.
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.
And for a more organic-looking result, another modifier, Randomize Instances, adds variation to the instances created by the other modifiers, randomizing their position, scale and orientation.
Thin film iridescence is now available in the Metallic BSDF shader as well as the Principled BSDF shader, making it possible to render effects like the oxide layer around these exhaust pipes.
3. Cycles: better volume rendering, SSS and metallic iridescence
Cycles, Blender’s main production renderer, gets a number of interesting updates in Blender 5.0.
The thin film iridescence system introduced in Blender 4.2 is now supported in the Metallic BSDF shader, making it possible to create effects like the oxide layer that forms on hot metal.
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.
Blender’s new unbiased and existing biased sampling algorithms for volume rendering.
But perhaps the biggest changes are to volume rendering, which gets a new default algorithm based on null scattering, and using unbiased sampling.
It needs fewer control parameters than the existing biased, ray-marching-based algorithm, and should generate fewer artifacts where volumes overlap.
In addition, smoke and fire simulations are now rendered using NanoVDB, rather than standard OpenVDB, which should reduce memory usage.
Although NanoVDB was originally developed by NVIDIA, it’s supported by most modern graphics APIs: in Blender, it can be used on any of the GPU rendering backends, including Metal.
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.
4. Composite inside the Sequencer with the Compositor modifier
Unlike most conventional DCC software, Blender isn’t simply a 3D modeling and animation tool: it also has its own compositing system and a built-in video editor, the Sequencer.
Both toolsets see a number of important changes in Blender 5.0, but one that particularly caught our eye is the way that you can now use the two of then together.
The new Compositor modifier makes it possible to apply and edit compositing node trees directly within the Sequencer.
That should make workflow a lot more streamlined for motion graphics artists and VFX editors, who no longer have to move back and forth between the Compositor and Sequencer.
At the minute, the Sequencer always uses the CPU compositor, rather than the newer GPU compositor, but we’d hope that will change in future updates.
Blender 5.0 gives .blend files a working color space, including wide color gamut spaces like Rec. 2020 and ACEScg, as well as the default Rec. 709.
5. Color management: ACES, HDR and wide gamut color
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.
First, the software should now play nicer in ACES pipelines with “essential support” for ACES 1.3 and ACES 2.0 workflows.
Blend files now have a working color space, which can now be ACEScg, although the default is still Linear Rec. 709, as in previous versions of Blender.
Secondly, Blender can now display and export HDR and wide-gamut colors, for both images and video.
Assuming you have a monitor capable of supporting them, videos can be displayed and exported using the Rec. 2100 PQ and HLG color spaces used by HDR TVs and YouTube.
Still images can also be displayed and written in the Rec. 2020 and Display P3 color spaces, in PNG, JPEG, WebP, TIFF and JPEG 2000 format.
License and system requirements
Blender 5.0 is compatible with Windows 8.1+, macOS 11.2+ and glibc 2.28+ Linux. It’s a free download. The source code is available under a GPLv3 license.
Read the Blender Foundation’s overview of the new features in Blender 5.0
Read a longer list of new features in the Blender 5.0 release notes
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