- Blender 4.3 is now on sale
- Grease Pencil now supports real-world and pixel brush sizes, and linking highlights and shadows improves Eevee’s real-time rendering control.
- Metallic BSDF node adds hyperrealism with lab data
Blender, the world’s leading open source 3D creation tool, has released version 4.3.
The update brings improvements that improve everything from visual representation to performance and user experience.
With this update, Blender continues to close the gap between itself and the best animation software, further cementing its place as an alternative for 3D artists, animators, and developers.
Grease Pen Enhancements for 2D and 3D Artists
Blender 4.3 adds new updates to the grease pencil, allowing users to draw and animate directly within the 3D environment. In this update, brushes are now standalone assets, meaning users can easily transfer them between projects. Users can also define brush sizes in pixels or real-world units, improving precision in drawings and animations.
There’s also a new Gradient Fill tool that makes it easier to create smoother gradients. Perhaps most significantly, all grease pencil operations are now multi-threaded, leading to faster performance, especially in complex projects that demand high computing power.
Blender’s Eevee rendering engine has received major improvements in version 4.3. One of the key improvements is the introduction of highlight and shadow links, which gives users more control over how lighting affects different parts of a scene, allowing for finer adjustments and more dynamic lighting effects.
The user interface has also undergone changes to make it cleaner and easier to use. Icons are now fully scalable SVG, meaning they can be resized without losing quality. The interface’s maximum resolution is now only limited by system memory, giving users more flexibility when configuring their workspace.
Additionally, this update introduces a bright border around the active window, making it easier to identify which window is in use, while color selection has been optimized for faster performance, further streamlining workflow for users. users.
Connecting and disconnecting video strips has been simplified and fit has been improved. Multi-step compositing, a feature also introduced in Eevee, allows users to apply multiple layers of effects. Color correction tools have been expanded, providing additional options for adjusting the visual tone of scenes.
For those working with metallic objects, Blender 4.3 introduces the “Physical Conductor” mode within the BSDF Metallic node. This feature uses laboratory data to more accurately simulate how light interacts with real metals, resulting in more realistic metal surfaces. The addition of the “Orn” slider, which adjusts surface roughness, further enhances the realism of materials such as wood and brick.
Through NotebookChecking
