The Blender Foundation has published the release of the free 3D modeling package Blender 3.3, suitable for solving various tasks related to 3D modeling, 3D graphics, game development, simulation, rendering, compositing, motion tracking, sculpting, animation creation and video editing . The code is distributed under the GPL license. Ready builds are generated for Linux, Windows and macOS. The release has been upgraded to an Extended Time of Support (LTS) release and will be supported until September 2024.
Improvements added include:
- A completely redesigned hair modeling system is proposed, which uses a new object type - "Curves", suitable for use in sculpting mode and application in geometric nodes. The ability to use the old particle-based hair generation system is preserved, hair created in different systems can be transferred from one system to another.
- Added a sculpting curves mode that can be used to control the generation of hair and hairstyles. It is possible to use curves deformed using geometric nodes, as well as defining control points or control curves, adjusting symmetry and creating filters in the table editor. Implemented the following tools: Add / Delete, Density (Density), Comb (Comb), Snake Hook (Suspension), Pinch (Pinch), Puff (Inflation), Smooth (Smoothing) and Slide (Shift). EEVEE and Cycles engines can be used for rendering.
- In the implementation of geometric nodes, new nodes have been added to find paths along the edges of the grid, which can be used to generate mazes, lightning and plants - Shortest Edge Path (the shortest path between vertices), Edge Paths to Selection (selection of edges through which the path passes) and Edge Paths to Curves (generation of a curve including all edges in the path). Support for procedural UVs has been expanded - new nodes UV Unwrap (UV-scan) and Pack UV Islands (Pack UV-islands) are proposed for creating and modifying UV maps using geometric nodes. Significantly improved performance of UV Sphere (3.6x faster at high resolution), Curve (3-10x faster), Separate XYZ and Separate Color (20% faster) nodes.
- The capabilities of the Grease Pencil 2D drawing and animation system have been expanded, allowing you to create sketches in 3D and then use them in a 3D environment as three-dimensional objects (a 4D model is formed based on several flat sketches from different angles). Support has been added for recognizing silhouettes around objects and collections, assigning different priorities when objects intersect, and calculating light and shadow separation lines. The Dopesheet Editor provides Grease Pencil keyframes that can be used along with regular objects to animate and set properties. Significantly (by 8-XNUMX times) reduced loading time for art line objects and improved performance (modifier calculation is now performed in multi-threaded mode).
- The Cycles rendering system supports hardware acceleration of calculations using the oneAPI interface implemented in the Intel Arc GPU. Enabled support for hardware acceleration on GPUs and APUs based on the AMD Vega architecture (Radeon VII, Radeon RX Vega, Radeon Pro WX 9100) on Linux and Windows platforms. Added optimizations for Apple Silicon chips. Reduced memory consumption when processing bulk data in the OpenVDB format.
- The Library Overrides interface has been significantly redesigned, all overridden properties in which are now displayed in a hierarchical view showing available labels and icons. Added the ability to quickly switch between editable and non-editable overrides. A submenu has been added to the context menu of the Outliner interface (Project structure) to override the library.
- The motion tracking system provides the ability to create and update an image from pixels behind a plane marker, which can be used to create an undistorted texture based on existing footage and project this texture back into footage after editing in external applications.
- The non-linear video editor (Video Sequencer) offers a new recalculation system for changing the playback speed or adjusting to the desired FPS.
- The user interface provides the ability to attach a scene to a workspace. Made scrollbars permanently visible. Provided display of the manipulator (Gizmo) during transformations.
Source: opennet.ru