Blender 3.5 Released

The Blender Foundation has officially released Blender 3.5, a highly-anticipated update to their all-in-one open-source 3D software, bringing tons of updates and new features designed to make the application better in every way.

Exiting its Beta stage, the software brings an upgraded hair system and built-in hair assets, support for Vector Displacement Maps, a viewport compositor and a new timing mode for Grease Pencil, improvements to its Pose Library, and multiple other enhancements listed down below.

One of Blender 3.5's most notable features is the new and improved Geometry Nodes-powered curves-based hair system, first introduced with the release of the 3.3 version. Featuring a slew of enhancements, the upgraded hair system enables you to quickly and easily create any kind of hair, fur, or grass. What's more, the new version of the program ships with a built-in library of hair assets, allowing the user to drag and drop hairstyles from the Asset Browser directly onto the setup.

Another great improvement the release brings is the support for Vector Displacement Maps that has been added to the Draw brush in sculpt mode, providing an easy way to create complex shapes that can have overhangs in one brush dab.

Furthermore, Blender 3.5 comes with a revamped 3D viewport, which got a GPU-based compositor backend. In viewport, overlays are now drawn on top of the compositing result, allowing you to see and interact with your mesh and other objects.

Blender Cycles has also been updated and can now use a light tree to more effectively sample scenes with many lights.

3D Animators also haven't been left out, with the software's Pose Library getting improved with new options and shortcuts and its Graph Editor receiving a new Ease operator, which lets one easily align keys on an exponential curve and quickly make an easing transition on multiple keys.

Blender's Grease Pencil tool has been upgraded as well, getting a new Natural Drawing Speed timing mode in the Build modifier that replays strokes using the speed of the stylus when it was performed.

You can find the full list of Blender 3.5's new features by clicking this link. Also, don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.