Blender 3.2 Has Been Released

The Blender Foundation announced the release of the long-awaited Blender 3.2. The new version of the software comes with countless new features and tools, including the Light Groups feature, Shadow Caustics, and a Curve Pen tool, upgrades to Blender's existing tools, and countless smaller updates and performance improvements that enhance every possible Blender workflow.

The highlight of the update, no pun intended, is the new Light Groups feature that modifies the color and/or intensity of light sources in the compositor without re-rendering. Thanks to this new feature, artists can now group collections of lights to use in lighting passes.

Another new feature that will be well-received by Lighting Artists is Shadow Caustics. With Blender 3.2, Cycles now supports selective rendering of caustics in shadows of refractive objects based on the Manifold Next Event Estimation method.

With Blender 3.2 you can now use Paint in Sculpt mode. According to the Blender team, it is now possible to paint on millions of polygons, taking advantage of the performance improvements. Plus, the new Paint brush comes with a bunch of new settings like tip shape, wet mixing, flow, and density.

Our favorite Geometry Nodes were upgraded as well, with some of them receiving a massive performance boost. On top of that, the update adds a new Duplicate Elements node, a node that can create a new geometry with the specified elements (point, edge, face, spline, or instance). Plus, Blender 3.2 marks the return of Named Attributes as three separate nodes.

The update adds a new Curve Pen tool that allows its users to quickly add, delete, and tweak control points. You will also be able to switch handle types by holding modifier keys.

The software's Grease Pencil tool gets a new Envelope Modifier, a new modifier that can connect all points that are N points apart and draws a line between them creating a cool-looking sketch effect. Plus, the tool received Build modifier improvements, an improved smooth operator algorithm, a new Keep Shape option in Smooth modifier, and more.

You can check out the full list of upgrades here. Also, don't forget to join our new Reddit page, our new Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we are sharing breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.