In nuce: The 3D graphics software Blender will support the Metal programming interface with the release of version 3.5. This was announced on 13 January this year by Francesco Siddi, Blender’s Chief Operating Officer, on code.blender.org . Blender 3.5 is currently in the alpha phase. The release of the finished version 3.5 is planned for March this year.
In toto: The following new features for Blender 3.5 result from the aforementioned announcement.
- Metal GPU backend support for Mac operating systems: This is to be introduced. Currently, the OpenGL programming interface is still used in Blenders default settings. After a test phase, however, the plan is to switch to the Metal programming interface.
- The Eevee renderer is also to be supported – which means that Mac users will now also benefit from viewport rendering. The user interface is also to be improved. In a corresponding report on 80.lv, editor Gloria Levine writes that the Metal backend was previously only available for the Cycles renderer.
Blender as a member of the Blender Development Fund: The corresponding blog post sets the framework for how the development of the Metal interface took place. The post states: “About a year ago, after Apple joined the Blender Development Fund, Apple empowered some of its developers to contribute directly to the Blender source code.” This invitation to developers to get involved led, the post continues, to the Metal interface for the Cycles renderer – and now culminates in Metal as a GPU backend. With its membership of the Blender Development Fund, Apple – together with many other well-known companies from the media sector – ensures that Blender will continue to be expanded with new features, receive its bug fixes and remain visible within the digital content creation community. The other companies supporting the Blender Development Fund include Adobe, AMD, Facebook, Microsoft, Unity and Reallusion (Digital Production reported on 11 January 2022).
Outlook: Support for the real-time compositor is planned for one of the next Blender releases; again for Mac operating systems. Bug fixes are also in the pipeline – and support for AMD and Intel graphics cards is also in preparation. Digital Production reported on the release of Blender 3.4 on 20 December last year – at that time the Open Path Guiding Library (Open PGL) from Intel was installed.
Click further: To the announcement on code.blender.org.
Sources: code.blender.org (announcement by Francesco Siddi), 80.lv (announcement by Gloria Levine)
