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IT Home reported on November 10 that Blender 5.3, the free and open-source 3D creation software, has been officially released. The new version adds native support for 3D Gaussian Splatting, switches the default graphics backend on Linux to Vulkan, and brings new project management features and a number of improvements to rendering and video editing tools.
For Linux users, the most notable change in this update is that Vulkan has replaced OpenGL as the default graphics backend. The same change has been made to the Windows version, except on ARM devices. The new version also lowers the minimum Vulkan version requirement to 1.1 and makes some GPU and driver features optional to improve compatibility with different hardware.
The Blender development team is continuing to optimize Vulkan performance. Published benchmark tests show performance improvements for Vulkan in several tested scenarios. However, actual performance still depends on the workload and the graphics hardware used.
Another major update is native support for 3D Gaussian Splatting, a technique that reconstructs 3D scenes from photos or videos. Blender can now import Gaussian Splatting data in PLY and SPZ formats and store it as a point cloud. Users can also edit it with Geometry Nodes and render it with the Cycles, EEVEE or Workbench rendering engines.
However, this feature is still under development. The Blender team acknowledges that there are currently some performance issues and limitations in rendering accuracy, especially with transparency effects and lighting.
Blender 5.3 also introduces an optional project management system called Blender Projects, designed to help users manage work spread across multiple .blend files. Previously, users had to manage these files separately. The new system lets them bring the files together in a single project directory and share asset libraries, path variables and project-specific OpenColorIO configurations.
For rendering, Cycles now adds dispersion support to the Principled BSDF shader, allowing it to simulate more realistically the way light splits into different colors as it passes through transparent materials. Viewport rendering now also supports NVIDIA DLSS denoising, and shading of transparent materials has been further improved.
EEVEE adds Material Lighting Nodes, allowing creators to control separately how materials respond to different light sources. This feature is particularly suited to stylized rendering, such as cartoon shading. The engine also adds support for panoramic cameras and improves the rendering of sky textures.
The Video Sequencer has undergone a major overhaul, with the most significant change being a new ripple editing system. When users insert, trim or delete a video clip, all subsequent clips automatically shift position, preventing unnecessary gaps in the timeline.
The Blade Tool has also been completely rewritten, providing clearer visual feedback during use. In addition, the software now offers initial support for importing and exporting OpenTimelineIO timelines, making it easier for users to exchange video editing timelines between Blender and other applications.
The new version also improves video playback performance, particularly when switching between video clips. Users can now also choose to enable experimental hardware-accelerated video decoding.
Blender 5.3 also brings several practical user interface improvements. The Outliner now lets users manually arrange objects and collections instead of relying solely on automatic sorting. All editors now support sidebar search, and a new Comment Node lets users add explanations to complex node trees using Markdown.
Other updates include improvements to sculpting and painting tools, animation workflows and asset management. The USD importer can now link to collections, making it easier for users to import related content repeatedly; support for the glTF and Alembic formats has also been expanded.
Finally, Blender 5.3 raises the minimum macOS version requirement to macOS 13 Ventura or later. Blender 5.2 LTS was the last version to support macOS 11.2 and macOS 12.
IT Home notes that Blender 5.3 installation packages are available for Linux, Windows and macOS, and users can download them from the official release directory. The full list of changes in the new version is available in the official release notes.
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