Archive notice: This article was originally published on 14 February 2020. It has been translated from German and lightly edited for clarity while preserving its historical context.
Mantaflow physics
Blender Foundation released Blender 2.82 with Mantaflow replacing the previous fluid systems for gas, smoke, fire and liquid simulation. Older fluid files were only partly compatible. Cloth gained internal air pressure and internal springs.
UDIM and interchange
UDIM texture painting and rendering worked in Eevee, Cycles, the Image Editor and 3D View. The new USD exporter covered meshes, cameras, lights and hair with limitations, while instancing remained experimental. glTF export improved, Alembic gained mesh-normal export and the release aligned with VFX Reference Platform 2020.
Rendering and viewport passes
Cycles integrated Nvidia OptiX denoising for RTX GPUs, including multi-GPU support and viewport preview. The developers cautioned against animation use because results could vary between frames. Shader additions included Random Per Island, Map Range, Noise, Wave and custom AOV output.
Eevee could preview Combined, AO, Normal, Mist, Subsurface Color and Subsurface Direct passes. The update also addressed volumetric rendering behind transparent surfaces. Grease Pencil, sculpting, UI and UV tools received further changes.
Test old fluid caches, USD interchange, UDIM paths and temporal denoising stability before migrating production scenes.
Further information: Read the Blender 2.82 release notes.
