New Features in Upcoming Blender 2.81

The Blender Foundation started posting some details of the new Blender version. The update is expected to be available in November. 

The update will include new retopology tools, sculpting brushes, and implement Open Image Denoise and experimental support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing on Nvidia RTX GPUs in Blender’s Cycles renderer. 

The release goes right after Blender 2.80, July’s milestone update to the software. Ubisoft described the 2.80 update as “a game-changer for the CGI industry”.

Blender 2.81 introduces two new automated retopology systems for converting an entire mesh to animation-ready all-quad geometry.

In addition, the existing Poly Build tool gets new features designed to adapt it for retopology work, helping users to users draw a quad mesh manually over the surface of a source sculpt.

The release also updates Blender’s sculpting toolset, adding a new Pose brush (shown in the video at the top of the story) for repositioning a character, simulating the deformation of a real-world model armature.

Other changes include workflow improvements when working with masks and when sculpting on surfaces with active modifiers, and a new set of falloff curve presets for sculpting brushes.

Blender 2.81 also introduces a new set of shader nodes, including new noise texture types and new math operations, compatible with both Cycles and Eevee.

The update also introduces a built-in batch renaming system for scene items, along with a number of smaller features and fixes. 

You can learn more about the update here.