LogInNew Import geometry nodes, Vulkan support, a "Grease Pencil" render pass, and quality-of-life updates beyond count.
Depending on where you live, July 15 may have already begun – or is just about to – marking the impending arrival of the long-awaited Blender version 4.5 Long-Term Support (LTS). As we await its launch, let's take a look at some of the exciting new features, changes, and improvements the Blender Foundation is introducing with the release.
Expanding and enhancing virtually all of Blender's toolsets, the release introduces rotation support for the Snap to Cursor operator, adds new operators – Separate, Join, Convert Attribute, and Split – for the new Curves type, provides additional control over vertex parenting in the Object Properties>Relations panel, and adds a new Boolean solver option to the Boolean Geometry Node and Modifier.
Moreover, the Point Cloud object type has been fully enabled and its experimental option removed, and the Image Editor's Mask and Paint modes now display all selected and active object UVs regardless of object mode.
When it comes to the sculpting and painting workflows, Blender 4.5 introduces the Mask by Color operator in the Mask menu, enables undo steps for property changes in Weight Paint and Vertex Paint modes when appropriate, and brings the new Manifold boolean solver to Sculpt Mode, which offers significantly improved performance and reliability for trim tools compared to previous solvers, though it requires a manifold sculpt mesh.
Brush assets now support duplication into the current .blend file, and users can take screenshots for brush previews. Additionally, painting in Sculpt, Vertex Paint, and Texture Paint modes now supports hue, saturation, and value randomization either throughout the entire stroke or per stroke.
Blender 4.5 LTS' Compositor gets enhanced with the addition of Vector Math, Vector Rotate, Vector Mix, Value Mix, Clamp, Float Curve, and Blackbody nodes, identical to their Shading and Geometry Nodes counterparts, the Image Info node for providing details like dimensions, resolution, and image transformations, an Image Coordinates node, which provides various types of pixel coordinates, including normalized and integer pixel coordinates, and a Relative To Pixel node for converting values relative to the image size into pixel units.
The release also brings support for Boolean sockets to Compositor, a backdrop gizmo for the Split node, and a new overlay to the Image Editor to visualize the render size when the Viewer node is active.
The Geometry Nodes toolset has been expanded with several new nodes for importing external data in formats such as PLY, OBJ, CSV, STL, Text, and VDB. Mesh custom normals can now be edited through GN using the new Set Mesh Normal node, which enables smooth transitions between two meshes without changing topology.
Additionally, Geometry Nodes now include the Set Grease Pencil Depth node for controlling the depth (rendering) option you can also find in the Grease Pencil object-data properties, the Set Grease Pencil Color node for setting stroke/fill color and opacity, and the Set Grease Pencil Softness node for controlling the Softness attribute.
Speaking of Grease Pencil, Blender 4.5 LTS introduces a new "Grease Pencil" render pass, an option to filter Grease Pencil rendering by view layer, and a new supersampling anti-aliasing (SSAA) method for rendering.
"Overall, the new SSAA method produces better Grease Pencil line quality," comments the Blender team. "Here is a comparison between the current method (SMAA) and the new SSAA method. Using both methods together is also possible (for final rendering), but might cause overblurring:"
Perhaps one of the most significant updates in 4.5 is the newly added support for Vulkan, which matches OpenGL in functionality. Support has been added for OpenXR, Subdivision, USD/Hydra, and more, with performance significantly improved compared to previous releases. That said, OpenGL remains the default in Blender 4.5 LTS, but the Blender team encourages users to try Vulkan by enabling it in Preferences.
Other Blender 4.5 LTS updates include:
Animation & Rigging
- Bone viewport display mode can be overridden per-bone.
- Deprecated constraints (Python, Rigid Body) have been removed.
- The Drivers Editor now has separate transform snapping settings from the other animation editors.
- A Duplicate Shape Key operator has been added.
- The Select Grouped operator in Pose Mode now has 4 more options (Children, Immediate Children, Parents, Siblings).
- The Copy Global Transform add-on now supports keying sets.
Core
- Blendfiles saved by Blender from a Big Endian platform will trigger a warning when opened.
- Linked IDs can now also be relocated, if they are not a dependency of any other linked data.
- Some file paths in Blender can now contain "template expressions" like {blend_name} and {resolution_x}, which get replaced by the values they reference when the path is used.
- Blender on Windows now shows a crash popup with recovery options.
EEVEE & Viewport
- A shadow terminator bias was introduced. This allows for the removal of self-shadowing artifacts on low-polygon geometry.
- A new algorithm has been implemented to reduce the depth buffer artifacts caused by long view distances.
- Light leaking caused by large sources of light has been improved. This can make some surfaces darker than they were in the previous version.
- Texture loading performance has been improved.
- Startup performance has been improved.
Cycles
- Several improvements to the experimental Adaptive Subdivision feature that bring it closer to being production-ready.
- Improved bump correction. The new correction avoids washed-out areas near the shadow terminator, preserving more detail from normal and bump maps.
- New Filter Width input on the Bump node.
- In addition to the built-in camera types (perspective, orthographic, and panoramic), it's now possible to implement custom cameras using Open Shading Language.
Rendering
- Images written from the render output can now store meta-data for the pixel density, the aspect ratio into account making this useful for storing the aspect for non-square pixels.
- Rendering with an alpha channel is now supported for the BMP format.
- New light controls.
- A new shader node to control volume coefficients.
UI
- Support for horizontal scrolling.
- Add "Remove All Materials" operator.
- Collection Properties "Restrictions" reorganized as "Visibility".
- Color pickers now scale down to minuscule sizes better.
- Editor border outline (and hitzone) can now be increased.
- Tooltips now show disabled message above Python path.
- Tooltips for assets now include the file name and directory path of the asset.
- Improved "Presets" icons.
- New icons to represent error conditions.
- New vertically-aligned grip icon.
And much, much more!
You can check out the full list of Blender 4.5 LTS' features by clicking this link. Don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.