Blender 3.5 is the latest version of the free 3D software that is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It is compatible with the VFX Reference Platform 2023 and has new minimum system requirements. The metal backend of the preview in the viewport is improved for macOS to increase performance and stability. The path tracing render engine Cycles has also had its performance improved with the metal backend.
A new light tree has been introduced to reduce the noise in scenes with many light sources. However, it works best with physically correct materials and light sources, and some lighting tricks and alienation methods break with physical correctness. The node editor has been cleaned up and the Alt key can now be used to exchange connections between sockets.
The new geometry nodes include an “Image Info” node that can read pixel width and height and determine the frame rate and total number of frames in videos. The real-time compositing in the viewport also allows simple post-processing effects such as a glow effect and lens dispersion. The new pose library in the Asset Browser includes facial expressions that can now be overdrawn.
Blender 3.5 supports vector displacement maps for sculpting tools, which encode movement in an image. The edit mode works more smoothly and allows larger objects due to the partial parallelization work step. The UV layout editing has been improved by limiting all operations to the size of the image.
Blender 3.5 comes with ready-made assets, specifically for editing hair, in the form of geometry node setups. It also supports the 3D format “Universal Scene Description Language” (USD) in compressed form (USDZ). Version 3.5 can import USD shapes and the new native importer for OBJ files catches up with the old Python-based one. The JPEG quality can be selected for glTF export.
Overall, Blender 3.5 contains many improvements and new features such as the light tree, pose library, and real-time compositing in the viewport. Its ability to support vector displacement maps for sculpting tools and the new geometry nodes makes it a powerful tool for creating 3D models.
