I’d really like to see something like blender come for the 3D CAD industry, at the moment it feels like the only people who would lose out are AutoDesk. The amount of money that flows in and out of 3D cad (as subscription and then value created) having a first class open source kernel and tooling, would be giving big industrial players freedom to modify and tailor to their needs as well as smaller / hobbyists get started for free!
show comments
lynndotpy
Every time Blender has a new update, I scroll and I'm amazed by how much is in it. Then I realize my scrollbar is only halfway through.
Radial tiling my beloved, and a seemingly far more straightforward array modifier <3 Faster volume scattering for non-homogenous volumes.
For those wondering "where the AI is", the new Convolve Node might be it :) Convolutions are a pretty generic signal processing operation (Hadamard product) which are also used in neural networks which work with images. Realistically though, this will be mostly useful for wonky hand-crafted blurs.
The new sequencer looks fantastic, too. I always went to DaVinci Resolve but I might be able to go full blender. Compositor modifiers in the sequencer is also very welcome.
This is incredible for me.
porphyra
Blender is really an amazing case study of open source software. Apart from the Linux kernel and web browsers/tools, it is perhaps the only open source software that managed to beat all the commercial software in its niche. It has rendered Maya nearly obsolete.
Meanwhile, in other niches, Microsoft Office still beats open source office suites like LibreOffice; Photoshop isn't about to give up its crown to GIMP; Lightroom isn't losing to Darktable; and FreeCAD isn't even in the rear view mirror of Solidworks.
I wonder what will be the next category of open source to pull ahead? Godot is rapidly gaining users/mindshare while Unity seems to be collapsing, but Unreal is still the king of game engines for now. Krita is a viable alternative for digital painting.
show comments
ibaikov
Remember to donate to them. They are amazing - free software, great community and they do so much stuff
bigyikes
What does Blender do differently that makes it such a successful open source product?
It’s powerful and pleasant to use. Even the release marketing page is beautiful and well-made.
I like open source as much as the next guy, but outside of developer tools there is little that comes close to Blender in terms of utility and UX.
Is it funding? Specific individuals? Are there PMs and designers? Whatever it is, it’s working!
show comments
mkaic
I think some of the coolest changes in this release are on the nodes side of things — they added Closures (kinda like lambdas!), Bundles (tuples/structs, I guess?), and Repeat (loops!) (already was in Geo Nodes, now it's in Shader Nodes too).
Blender nodes have come a long way over the past decade and it's incredibly satisfying to see the care with which they have been developed. Blender's node editor is my personal favorite node editor I've ever used in any software, and I often find myself wishing other software adopted some of their UI and UX conventions.
Been a happy user since, oh, v2.75? And looking forward to being a user for many more releases to come.
I've been using blender since at least 2010; it's so exciting to see how much progress it's making.
I'm very excited to see the addition of structs and closures/higher-order functions to blender nodes! (I've also glanced at the shader compiler they're using to lower it to GLSL; neat stuff!) Not only is this practically going to be helpful, the PL researcher in me is tickled by seeing these features get added to a graphical programming language.
If you haven't heard of Blender before, or if you think AI will replace all the work done in it, fair enough. But I'd still strongly suggest looking into what it is and how it works.
show comments
boriskourt
The SDF geometry nodes open up a wild amount of new options. That and node closures solve so many difficult problems, especially in complex scattering. If you haven't checked them out, here is a bit on them and volume grids: https://code.blender.org/2025/10/volume-grids-in-geometry-no...
anon_cow1111
So...... was there ever a resolution with that persistent incompatibility in ROCm/certain AMD drivers and Cycles that made it impossible to render in almost every version of blender? As in, it literally doesn't even detect the GPU outside of eevee
show comments
shevy-java
What can be created with blender is quite cool, but I remember having used it in the past, it was very complicated. I was a lot more productive with Wings 3D; this lacks in functionality compared to Blender, but using it was so much easier.
These days I wouldn't want to bother doing manual animations or mesh creation. The computer must do this for us.
show comments
thot_experiment
Very very sad that the adaptive subdivision is touted as a Blender feature but unfortunately it's a Cycles feature.
Always nice to see these updates though, Blender has really come a long long way.
show comments
dan_hawkins
No Intel Mac support! :(((((
Kye
This reminds me of a Reaper changelog: lots of small quality of life changes each for a small percentage of users that add up to an overall massive improvement. It's not as splashy as huge feature releases but ultimately leads to better software.
show comments
zombot
Have the bots won? A lengthy Cloudflare verification that I'm not a bot, to open an empty page.
show comments
cognitive-gl
Blender is amazing for 3D Modeling. But metaverse is still dead. RIP
show comments
cognitive-gl
Awesome
lwde
The first thing on the website is a Cloudflare Captcha box :/
show comments
zkmon
Graphics and animation should no longer move in the direction of perfecting the representation of real world. It is actually necessary for the graphics to scream that they are graphics and not real photos or real video. The distinction should be very obvious. This is the need of the day.
show comments
donutdan4114
What’s the consensus on the future of this type of 3D tool? Especially for video animation/CGI in movies/tv/ads?
Seems like in 10 years AI will basically make it pointless to use a tool like this at least for people working on average projects.
What do folks in the industry think? What’s the long term outlook?
I’d really like to see something like blender come for the 3D CAD industry, at the moment it feels like the only people who would lose out are AutoDesk. The amount of money that flows in and out of 3D cad (as subscription and then value created) having a first class open source kernel and tooling, would be giving big industrial players freedom to modify and tailor to their needs as well as smaller / hobbyists get started for free!
Every time Blender has a new update, I scroll and I'm amazed by how much is in it. Then I realize my scrollbar is only halfway through.
Radial tiling my beloved, and a seemingly far more straightforward array modifier <3 Faster volume scattering for non-homogenous volumes.
For those wondering "where the AI is", the new Convolve Node might be it :) Convolutions are a pretty generic signal processing operation (Hadamard product) which are also used in neural networks which work with images. Realistically though, this will be mostly useful for wonky hand-crafted blurs.
The new sequencer looks fantastic, too. I always went to DaVinci Resolve but I might be able to go full blender. Compositor modifiers in the sequencer is also very welcome.
This is incredible for me.
Blender is really an amazing case study of open source software. Apart from the Linux kernel and web browsers/tools, it is perhaps the only open source software that managed to beat all the commercial software in its niche. It has rendered Maya nearly obsolete.
Meanwhile, in other niches, Microsoft Office still beats open source office suites like LibreOffice; Photoshop isn't about to give up its crown to GIMP; Lightroom isn't losing to Darktable; and FreeCAD isn't even in the rear view mirror of Solidworks.
I wonder what will be the next category of open source to pull ahead? Godot is rapidly gaining users/mindshare while Unity seems to be collapsing, but Unreal is still the king of game engines for now. Krita is a viable alternative for digital painting.
Remember to donate to them. They are amazing - free software, great community and they do so much stuff
What does Blender do differently that makes it such a successful open source product?
It’s powerful and pleasant to use. Even the release marketing page is beautiful and well-made.
I like open source as much as the next guy, but outside of developer tools there is little that comes close to Blender in terms of utility and UX.
Is it funding? Specific individuals? Are there PMs and designers? Whatever it is, it’s working!
I think some of the coolest changes in this release are on the nodes side of things — they added Closures (kinda like lambdas!), Bundles (tuples/structs, I guess?), and Repeat (loops!) (already was in Geo Nodes, now it's in Shader Nodes too).
Blender nodes have come a long way over the past decade and it's incredibly satisfying to see the care with which they have been developed. Blender's node editor is my personal favorite node editor I've ever used in any software, and I often find myself wishing other software adopted some of their UI and UX conventions.
Been a happy user since, oh, v2.75? And looking forward to being a user for many more releases to come.
Donate to Blender! [0]
[0] https://fund.blender.org
It didn't get much of a mention in the release notes but I'm particularly excited about SDF grids in geometry nodes because of this:
https://passivestar.xyz/posts/instance-scattering-in-blender...
I've been using blender since at least 2010; it's so exciting to see how much progress it's making.
I'm very excited to see the addition of structs and closures/higher-order functions to blender nodes! (I've also glanced at the shader compiler they're using to lower it to GLSL; neat stuff!) Not only is this practically going to be helpful, the PL researcher in me is tickled by seeing these features get added to a graphical programming language.
If you haven't heard of Blender before, or if you think AI will replace all the work done in it, fair enough. But I'd still strongly suggest looking into what it is and how it works.
The SDF geometry nodes open up a wild amount of new options. That and node closures solve so many difficult problems, especially in complex scattering. If you haven't checked them out, here is a bit on them and volume grids: https://code.blender.org/2025/10/volume-grids-in-geometry-no...
So...... was there ever a resolution with that persistent incompatibility in ROCm/certain AMD drivers and Cycles that made it impossible to render in almost every version of blender? As in, it literally doesn't even detect the GPU outside of eevee
What can be created with blender is quite cool, but I remember having used it in the past, it was very complicated. I was a lot more productive with Wings 3D; this lacks in functionality compared to Blender, but using it was so much easier.
These days I wouldn't want to bother doing manual animations or mesh creation. The computer must do this for us.
Very very sad that the adaptive subdivision is touted as a Blender feature but unfortunately it's a Cycles feature.
Always nice to see these updates though, Blender has really come a long long way.
No Intel Mac support! :(((((
This reminds me of a Reaper changelog: lots of small quality of life changes each for a small percentage of users that add up to an overall massive improvement. It's not as splashy as huge feature releases but ultimately leads to better software.
Have the bots won? A lengthy Cloudflare verification that I'm not a bot, to open an empty page.
Blender is amazing for 3D Modeling. But metaverse is still dead. RIP
Awesome
The first thing on the website is a Cloudflare Captcha box :/
Graphics and animation should no longer move in the direction of perfecting the representation of real world. It is actually necessary for the graphics to scream that they are graphics and not real photos or real video. The distinction should be very obvious. This is the need of the day.
What’s the consensus on the future of this type of 3D tool? Especially for video animation/CGI in movies/tv/ads?
Seems like in 10 years AI will basically make it pointless to use a tool like this at least for people working on average projects.
What do folks in the industry think? What’s the long term outlook?