Blender, the popular free open-source 3D creation software, released new 4.5 version few days ago!
The new Blender 4.5 is a long term support (LTS) release since v4.2 with 2 years of support, which features full Vulkan graphics API support!
Blender 4.5 Splash
With the new low-level graphics API, it has OpenXR, Subdivision, USD/Hydra support, and significant performance improvements compare to previous release. While, it needs Intel 6-10th gen iGPU and later, HD 7000/8000 and later, while NVIDIA users needs 550 or higher driver for Linux.
The backend has few limitations, e.g., performance issues on virtual reality and huge meshes handling. As it’s not enabled by default, you may get it in Preferences -> System.
The 4.5 release introduced some new Geometry Nodes, including Camera Info, Instance Bounds, Match String, Bit Math, Field Average, Field Variance, and Field Min & Max, Format String, and Grease Pencil Nodes.
It can now import all kinds of files (e.g., .csv, .ply, .vdb, .stl, .obj, .txt) together with Geometry Nodes, by drag-and-dropping them from file manager. And, custom mesh normals are now editable with the new Set Mesh Normal node!
All the procedural texture nodes from Shaders and Geometry Nodes, are now available in the Compositor. Common nodes (such as Vector Math, Vector Rotate, Mix Vector, Math, Clamp, Float Curve, Blackbody) has been added in Compositor and can be easily copied across Shader and Geometry Nodes setups. Plus, new nodes Image Info, Relative to Pixel, Image Coordinates are added.
Blender 4.5 also significantly improved Grease Pencil support. Besides compositor integration and geometry Nodes tools support, it added new render pass, ability to completely disable rendering per View Layer, new supersampling anti-aliasing (SSAA) method improves line quality for smoother lines, as well as animated SVGs exporting support.
Other changes include faster texture loading, startup time, and multi-threaded shader compilation, as well as:
- New user preference to choose between multi-threaded and subprocess compilation.
- New shadow terminator bias for EEVEE & VIEWPORT.
- Add new Point Cloud object type.
- Paint in Sculpt, Vertex Paint, and Texture
- Add large cursors for Linux on hi-DPI monitors.
- Support the Hyper modifier key for Linux.
- New GeometrySet API.
- And tons more! See the official release note for details.
Get Blender 4.5
To download Blender 4.5, just go to its website via the link below:
For Linux, the packages include the official tarball, which contains executable file (as well as run-times) that can be run to launch the software.
While, Ubuntu user may simply search & install Blender snap package from either Ubuntu Software or App Center.
There are as well a community maintained Flatpak package available for choice. And I’ve written a step by step how to install guide for beginners.
