Browsing Tag
Blender
253 posts
Ocean, clouds, and splats: D5 Render 3.0 sets sail
D5 Render 3.0 introduces new environment tools, expanded AI generation, and a lightweight D5 Lite for SketchUp users.
Procedural sawdust: EC Wood Grain hits Blender
Eric Charles releases EC Wood Grain, a Geometry Nodes setup that adds procedural 3D wood detail directly in Blender.
CardCutter turns texture into Nanite meshes
CardCutter for Blender 4.0+ generates Nanite-optimised meshes from texture masks for Unreal Engine foliage and decal pipelines.
Free 3D Fruit: Fresh Assets, No Pesticides
Kiri offers 141 free, production-ready 3D fruit and vegetable scans with full PBR textures under CC0 licence.
Over 1,000 free sculpting brushes land in BlenderKit
BlenderKit now hosts over 1,000 free 3D sculpting brushes, integrated directly in Blender and licensed for commercial use.
Better Bend: A Gentler Way to Deform in Blender
Blender’s Simple Deform walks so Better Bend can twist: cleanly, controllably, and without breaking your mesh in half.
Fast Lines for Blender: Stylized Outline Generator Released
RUIDO VFX’s Stylized Outline Generator for Blender adds quick anime-style outlines without shaders or Grease Pencil rigs.
Hover, Don’t Click: Outliner Preview Lands in Blender
Free Blender add-on Outliner Preview shows 360° model thumbnails on hover in the Outliner.
3DEqualizer 8.1 introduces piggyback rig solving, a rewritten Blender export script and new import and export options.
Blender Gets Real Lenses: BagaCam OSL Released
Antoine Bagattini, the creator of BagaPie has released BagaCam OSL, a camera add-on that implements Open Shading Language…
Quad Draw Comes to Blender
New Vulkan-based retopology add-ons make Blender’s mesh work feel like Maya’s Quad Draw, fast, intuitive, and production-ready.
Terrain Wrapping Made Easy: Kiri Engine’s Free Blender Add-on
Kiri Engine releases Mesh Wrap, a free Blender add-on that makes projecting and scattering 3D-scanned terrain pieces onto base geometry fast, precise, and non-destructive.
Painterly Trees for Blender: ShapeScape Studio Blooms
New Blender add-on ShapeScape Studio lets artists grow painterly trees procedurally with NPR shaders, custom meshes, and built-in animation.
KeenTools 2025.3 Brings Blender 5, Character Creator 5 & AE Exports
KeenTools 2025.3 expands host support with Blender 5, Character Creator 5 export from FaceBuilder and Alembic output from GeoTracker for After Effects.
Chaos Adds macOS & AI to V-Ray for Blender
Chaos ships V-Ray for Blender Update 2: macOS support, AI tools, faster distributed rendering, and a long list of bug fixes and GPU tweaks.
Checkpoint, fixed: Pixar ships RenderMan 27.1
Pixar refines RenderMan 27.1: better Lama layering, smarter checkpointing, memory savings, and fixes across Blender and Houdini bridges.
Blender Studio drops “Storm” rig for Blender 5.0
Blender 5.0 gets Storm: a new Blender Studio character rig with CloudRig body, shape-key facial system, pose library and Blender-only compatibility.
the new “3D Onion Skinning” add-on for Blender gives you ghosted frames in 3D so you can see motion timing and spacing without flipping frames manually.
Blender 5.0 hits release candidate!
Blender 5.0’s release candidate is live. Expect ACES 2.0, smarter Geometry Nodes, and a sleeker UI before the final launch later this month.
Pixar’s RenderMan 27.0
Pixar’s RenderMan 27.0 lands with final-frame XPU rendering, multi-GPU scaling, deep compositing, and a production-ready Stylized Looks suite.
Moho 14.4 Goes on a Side Quest: 2D Meets Game Engines
Lost Marble’s Moho 14.4 “Side Quest” links 2D animation with game engines via glTF export, plus Smart Bones in 360°, smarter particles, and smoother strokes.
Xsens Rebuilds Its Link Mocap Suit With 4D Stretch
Xsens reinvents its Link suit: 4D stretch fabric, Wi-Fi 6E, one-click sensors, and fewer cables. mocap setups just got a lot less sweaty, or at least easier to keep (reasonably) clean.
Ucupaint 2.4.0 with alpha channel and decal-constraints
Ucupaint 2.4.0 adds dedicated alpha channel, decal-stick option, UI overhaul and faster VDM baking.
The Cube Moved: Go for the Chaos (Ad) Vantage
Architecture Illustrators and Visualizers test Chaos Vantage for a narrative short and accidentally build a moving house. Unbox proves real-time previz can tell stories, not just sell floor plans.
Procedural Roads Ahead: Blender Add-on “Roads” Lays Asphalt with Vertices
Blender add-on “Roads” builds procedural roads from vertex extrusions. Fast, planar, parametric and $10.
City Life for Crowds: iCrowds Lands in Blender
iCrowds, the new Blender add-on from iCity’s creator, brings smart Sims-style crowds, seven simulation systems, and 100k agents to 3D production.
Camera Array Tool for Blender creates surface-based camera rigs and exports 4DGS-ready image data for Gaussian Splatting workflows.
Blender 4.5 LTS lands
lender 4.5 LTS arrives with studio-grade support; the Blender survey shows where users stand; and Blender 5.0 beta is already here, so its time to plan your upgrade.
Free Blender add-on “Outset Boundary” lets you expand faces with one click
Free Blender add-on “Outset Boundary” offers an outset tool for expanding faces rather than insetting them, nice for quick margins.
Retopoflow 4.0 for Blender
Orange Turbine’s Retopoflow 4.0 brings full Edit Mode integration in Blender and support for curves/NURBS/metaballs, but one tool is still missing in this release.
Accurate Film Simulation for Blender: Analog Soul, Digital Body
Analog meets Geometry Nodes: Blender now has an add-on that simulates real photographic film stocks. Developer Edin Spiegel’s…
Wildlife by Click: Fauna Master Pro Brings 150+ Creatures into Blender
Fauna Master Pro adds 150+ animals and real-time behaviours inside Blender: a fast route to lifelike scenes, though not without quirks.
Painterly Garden: 200+ Ghibli-Style Foliage Assets for Blender
Painterly Blender artists rejoice: 200+ stylised foliage assets by Craftreaper and BD3D, tuned for EEVEE Next, now on Gumroad.
Blender 5.0 Beta!
Blender 5.0 Beta runs until 5 November 2025, bringing ACES 2.0, node and compositor updates, HDR colour support, and stricter compatibility rules.
HFF Munich Hiring: Two Half-Time Heroes Wanted
HFF Munich’s VFX department wants two new tech minds—one for the pipeline, one for IT. Expect creative chaos, cool people, and excellent surroundings!
Free node setup Easy Photorealism turns Blender’s compositor into a one-stop post-processing station with glare, noise, vignetting, and colour tweaks included.
TD Meetup 21: VR, Quill & the Renaissance of Real-Time Storytelling
At TD Meetup #21, Dan Franke showed how Quill VR lets you literally paint, animate, and pivot scenes in real time—no rig, just hand and headset.
RenderMan 27: XPU graduates, RIS retires
Pixar ships RenderMan 27: XPU is ready for final frames, RIS is being phased out, MaterialX joins the toolset, and Stylized Looks evolve.
normalMagic 1.0: Advanced Mesh Normal Control in Blender
SpaghetMeNot releases normalMagic 1.0 for Blender, a toolkit of 16 modifiers that give artists complete control over mesh normals. With features like Surface Insert, Boolean Pro, Smooth Normals, and Normal Transfer, the add-on introduces new modelling workflows, fixes common shading issues, and integrates as a Blender asset library.
Interior assets without flat-pack stress
Ikea trip cancelled: Polygoniq’s Interniq 2.0 drops 800+ Blender interior assets, ready to install via Asset Browser—no hex keys, no queues.
50 Digital Scars: Halloween Comes to Blender
250 wounds, scars and skin damage brushes for Blender. Perfect for sculpting your next zombie, vampire, or stitched-mouth monster.
Procedural Forest Generator for Blender
A new Geometry Nodes tool for Blender generates procedural forests across biomes, balancing photorealism with performance and fast iteration.
KitBash3D and Greyscalegorilla merge
KitBash3D and Greyscalegorilla merge: R&D speeds up, asset libraries grow, tools expand. Users should see no price or support changes.
TD-Meetup: Join us live, we talk about how VR Speeds Up Animation & Previz!
VR meets previs: Dan Franke shows how Quill VR fuels storytelling and rapid 3D iteration at the TD Meetup this thursday!
Pencil Pro v1.1 turns Blender meshes into living pencil sketches: faster, procedural, screen-space, edge-aware. Works on any mesh, no UVs.
iPhone for Tracking: Beeble Camera enables Free “Virtual Production”
Free iOS app turns an iPhone into a tracked camera for AI-powered VFX passes. Beeble Camera links directly to Beeble Web, Editor, and Blender.
Blender 5.0 Ships Built-In ACES 2.0 View Transform
Blender 5.0 gains a built‑in ACES 2.0 view transform, new HDR and wide‑gamut export, and better OpenColorIO compatibility, making HDR pipelines more native.
V‑Ray 7.1 for Blender: Geometry Nodes and Material Converter
Chaos’s V‑Ray 7.1 for Blender adds support for Geometry Nodes, a Cycles‑to‑V‑Ray material converter, OpenPBR standard and Blender 4.5 LTS.
USDSkel: Optimized Character Rigging
USDSkel is an OpenUSD component that supports scalable, manipulable, and interchangeable skinned characters. Wanna know more?
Clay 4.Doh Update Sculpts Blender Workflow
Rahul Parihar’s Clay 4.Doh update expands his Blender clay toolkit with new tools, modifiers, shader improvements, and perpetual free updates.
UVPackmaster 3.4 Adds One-Click Auto Repacking to Blender
UVPackmaster 3.4 for Blender introduces one‑click Auto Repacking, texel‑density control, vertex‑color grouping and option sets.
Blend Normals at Scale with Smart Mesh Blend Add-On
Smart Mesh Blend is a Geometry Nodes-based add-on for Blender and Bforartists that blends normals across collections using a drag-and-drop wizard setup.
Workstations for Virtual Production
Virtual production wouldn’t be possible without high-performance workstations. These systems deliver the computing power required for rendering, simulations, and complex visual effects directly within the studio environment.
Blender Object Controller and Camera Controller Beta receive updates: new UDP and live camera streaming, world tracking, timeline and keyframe controls, and more.
One Click Damage 2.5 Tricks up Blender’s Sleeve
VFXGuide’s One Click Damage 2.5 for Blender (4.5+) features procedural wear layering, masking, sync, and HERO Module enhancements.
Pixar Faces, Blender Spaces: SMIRK Lets Features Wander Free
Krysidian’s SMIRK toolkit brings detached Pixar-style facial features to Blender—free and Geometry Node-powered.
Blender on iPad Pro at Last—Without Losing Its Blender-ness
Blender Foundation has begun work on a full-feature iPad Pro app with sculpting, Apple Pencil support, and a live demo at SIGGRAPH 2025
River in a Click: Baga River Generator v2 Brings Automated Terrain Carving to Blender
Baga River Generator v2 for Blender adds terrain carving, procedural foam, and scatter modifier support for rapid river creation in 3D scenes.
Game Boy Robot: When Nostalgia Gets a Quad-Based Makeover
Game Boy nostalgia meets quad-based hard-surface modeling in Benavidmark’s detailed 3D robot tribute—every production step dissected.
Blender 4.5 LTS is here!
Blender 4.5 LTS has launched today, bringing two years of long-term support and a significant wave of upgrades.…
SDF Modeler 0.5.3: Sculpt, Blend & Trace – Refined Free SDF Concept Tool
SDF Modeler 0.5.3 adds push/avoid/emboss/deboss blends, spline curvature, 3‑axis mirror, export bugfixes and UI enhancements.
Blender on Android: Ported, Not Polished Yet
Blender runs on Android tablets via an unofficial port from developer epai, but major rendering bugs and feature gaps persist.
![A stylized blue cartoon character with big eyes and a wide smile, shown in a wireframe model. The background features a gradient from blue to purple, with text overlay indicating 'Blender [Addon] Rlg Creator [Beta]'.](https://i0.wp.com/digitalproduction.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Banner_Rig_Creator_A_free_Blender_add_on_for_creating_character_rigs.jpg?resize=1160%2C680&quality=80&ssl=1)
Rig Creator’s beta rebuild adds facial rig, Relationship tool, overhauled bone generators, and English names—now free for Blender users.
V-Ray for Blender: Chaos releases Renderer into the Open Source Universe
V-Ray for Blender lands with CPU, GPU, and Chaos Cloud support, plus 5,600+ free Chaos Cosmos assets. Special pricing for Blender users now available.
ScatterFlow Add-on brings gravity‑aware scattering to Blender
Apex Assets releases ScatterFlow, a Blender 4.4 add‑on enabling physics‑based scattering with optional asset pack.
Draw the Line: Octane Edge Tools Brings Outlines to Blender – For Free
Octane Edge Tools is a free Blender add-on from Otoy for creating mesh-based outlines with OctaneRender Toon Material. Controls for edge thickness, object selection, and NPR styles.
Polydex from Poliigon Tackles Asset Chaos
Polydex auto-indexes local 3D textures, models and HDRIs for easy import into Blender with one click.
Procedural Ferns in Blender
Alex Martinelli’s free Blender 4.3+ fern asset uses Geometry Nodes for non-destructive, procedural plant creation with material and instancing controls.
Basefount Animcraft: One-Stop 3D Animation Library & Bridge
Animcraft is a collaborative 3D animation library/editor with re‑targeting, facial rigging, mocap, and DCC/engine connections across Standard and Advanced editions.
Blender 4.5 Beta: Nodes Get Nifty, Collada Gets the Boot
Blender 4.5 Beta brings new Geometry Nodes, USD and glTF upgrades, and drops Collada in 5.0. Here's what's new - and what’s going away.
LiDAR scanning for Everybody!
Scanner veteran Lawren Bancroft-Wilson gives us a look behind the curtain on Lidar Scanning for VFX and Post.
Ucupaint 2.3 adds real-time Ambient Occlusion, rebake-all layers, and bakeable edge detect—because who needs sleep when you can have features?
Step Into the Unknown: ‘Worlds Next Door’ Invites Digital Artists to Create and Collaborate
The Blender challenge Worlds Next Door starts June 8. Artists remix a template into looping shorts—no AI, transparent background required.
Wrap Gen: Because Your Mesh Deserves a Hug
Wrap Gen for Blender lets you procedurally wrap custom geometry around objects using curves and geometry nodes—no manual tweaking required.
Wile E. Coyote Animates in UE5.6 – No Anvils Required
Stéphane Biava demonstrates Unreal Engine 5.6's new animation features, making in-engine animation a viable alternative to Blender or Maya.
Melt Simulator for Blender: Gooey Goodness Without the Mess
CGMatter's Melt Simulator for Blender 4.3 introduces particle, instance, and mesh modes, plus UV advection and time-based melting triggers.
Free Plugin Connects Blender to Nuke – Without Alembic Detours
Free plugin bridges Blender and Nuke via FBX and OBJ – no Alembic or USD needed. Geometry and camera data flow directly into your comp.
UDIM Planet: Free Globe Toolset Orbits Blender, Max, Maya, Houdini, Unreal and C4D
Free add-on "Figments UDIM Globe" maps UDIM textures to globe objects—UVs are auto-generated, PBR-ready.
Scaling New Heights: Blender Users Summit on the Blender Mountain
On May 24, 2025, Blender enthusiasts will gather in Wiggensbach, Germany, to ascend the Blender mountain together.
Eevee Enlightenment: Blender Guru’s New Course Shines Bright
Andrew Price releases a comprehensive course on mastering Blender's Eevee renderer, covering fundamentals, troubleshooting, and scene optimization.
The Grove 2.2 brings a radical tech boost with a new Skeleton tool, optimized simulations, and unified naming for Houdini and Blender.
The First Look at Character Creator 5: Prelaunch Offer Starts NOW
Reallusion is set to redefine real-time 3D character creation with the upcoming launch of Character Creator 5 (CC5) this summer. Key updates feature HD character bases, enhanced shaders, and an advanced facial animation system.
Blender’s Vulkan Venture: Community Call to Arms
Blender seeks community assistance to test its experimental Vulkan backend with a detailed supported platforms table included.
Weight No More: Streamlining Blender’s Weight Painting with Robust Weight Transfer
Enhance your Blender workflow with Sent From Space's free Robust Weight Transfer add-on, simplifying weight painting and improving character rigging efficiency.
ICity 1.3.0: Building Blender Cities Faster Than a Coffee Run
ICity 1.3.0 for Blender introduces major performance enhancements and visual upgrades to its Grid and Terrace Block systems, streamlining 3D city creation.
Red Poppies, Bears and Open Source!
Polish war drama Red Poppies (Czerwone Maki) brings the Battle of Monte Cassino to the big screen with over 400 VFX shots, 120 of which were crafted by Polish VFX studio Imaginary Pixels. And the team relied on open-source tools?
CharMorph 0.4: Open-Source Character Creation Evolves
CharMorph 0.4 enhances Blender's character creation with Rigify support, real-time clothing fitting, and customizable skin and eye colors, all under a user-friendly open-source license.
Blender 4.4 Arrives: Slots, Planes, and Glare—Oh My!
Blender 4.4 launches today, introducing slotted Actions, a versatile Plane brush, an overhauled Glare node, and enhanced Cycles rendering. Dive into the details!
Zen UV 5.0: Unwrapping the Future of UV Mapping in Blender
Zen UV 5.0 introduces the Touch Tool, Auto Unwrap, Zen Sync, and full support for Blender 4.4, enhancing UV mapping workflows.
KitBash3D’s Gaea fantasy architecture pack is free on Fab in March, featuring modular medieval buildings for Unreal, Blender, and more.
Good News!
Because the world is the way it is (Gesturing at ... everything), here is a collection of good news!
Blender: 3ds Max-Inspired Material Editor Now Available
Blender users can now streamline their workflow with a new 3ds Max-inspired Material Editor, offering features like node-based material creation and one-click shader access.
Mesh Cleaner for Blender
VFX artist Rob Dickinson releases Mesh Cleaner, a free Blender add-on that fixes common 3D model errors with a single click.
Assetify v.2: Turning Blender Assets into Game-Ready Gold
Streamline your Blender workflow with Assetify's automated texture baking, UV unwrapping, and multi-format exporting.
Architectural visualisation in a war zone
Let's do a 3D reconstruction of the Museum of Western and Eastern Art with Rhino and Blender in Odessa (Ukraine)!
Illuminate Your Blender Scenes with Free God Ray Generator, no prayer necessary
Add atmospheric god rays and glimmering dust particles to your Blender projects effortlessly with Giorgi's free setup.
HouseCraft: Your New Architectural Sidekick
Transform basic geometry into detailed, destructible structures in Blender with HouseCraft, now featuring FBX export for seamless integration into game engines.
Ucupaint 2.2: A Fresh Coat of Paint for Blender Texturing
Ucupaint 2.2 introduces a revamped UI with direct layer channel adjustments.
VFX artist Robert Rioux releases Render Manager and Light Editor add-ons to streamline complex scene management in Blender.
Real-Time Node Previews in Blender—Because Guesswork is So Last Year
Tired of blind node adjustments in Blender? Shader View offers real-time previews directly above each node, streamlining your shader creation process.