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)

The post Blender 3.5 should support Metal programming interface? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: The Blender Foundation has reversed its decision to no longer follow the VFX Reference platform. This is according to a report on cgchannel.com.

In toto: The Blender Foundation had previously announced in a blog post by Blender Development Coordinator Dalai Felinto on 4 February this year that it would no longer be aligning itself with the platform. The reasons given for this were that the platform was neither conducive to integrating Blender into larger studios nor to facilitating the further development of Blender.

According to CGChannel, the decision was reversed after criticism was voiced within the visual effects industry (including from well-known employees of ILM or Animal Logic). According to these critical voices, some of which spoke anonymously, the effects of platform support for Blender were much more positive than Dalai’s blog post suggested. According to the critics, the decision to align with the VFX Rerence platform was a success for Blender, resulting in many VFX houses using – and still using – Blender.

With the return to the platform, the Blender Foundation wants to make all upcoming Blender versions in 2023 and 2024 fully compatible with the VFX Reference platform, as reported by CGChannel. The current Blender, i.e. version 3.3, can also be set up to be compatible with the platform.

What is the VFX Reference platform? It was launched by the Visual Effects Society in 2014 with the aim of making it easier for different software solutions used by VFX houses to work together. Every year, the platform is used to define specifications that are relevant to Visual Effects pipelines (e.g. regarding file formats, data exchange standards).

Sources: Blog posting by Dalai Felinto from 27.09.2022, Blog posting by Dalai Felinto from 4.02.2022, message on CGChannel.com. The lead image of this news item comes from the sci-fi short film Tears of Steel, created with the support of Blender.

The post Blender returns to support the VFX Reference platform first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In nuce: The Blender Foundation has released version 3.1 of the open-source 3D software Blender. The new version is primarily intended to bring improvements in terms of performance and speed.

What new features can you expect? The most important new features announced by the Blender Foundation for the release of Blender 3.1 include the following points:

• The Cycles render now has a backend for those GPUs that use Apple’s Metal compute shader computer graphics programming interface. This should result in a significant increase in rendering speed.

• The Cycles renderer has additional features such as: ray tracing precision, new “Adjacent Faces” for baking, merging OpenEXR renderings with Adaptive Sampling, OptiX Temporal Denoising and many more. To get an overview of all the changes to Cycles, click on the corresponding release note .
• The new point cloud objects can be rendered directly within Cycles. You can use them to create high-quality sand or water effects – and even motion graphics. You create the point cloud objects by generating them using geometry nodes or importing them from other applications. There is a separate entry in the online manual that informs you about this approach.
• New nodes for procedural modelling: 19 new nodes await you, as well as mesh modelling tools, extended field control and improved performance. According to the description on blender.org , these are just some of the new features that await you in terms of procedural modelling.
• The user interface has also been enhanced with useful functions: you can now simply drag and drop sockets that are filled with automatically filtered nodes. For example, you can also display only those socket types that can be connected to each other. Or you can search specifically for mathematical functions or blend modes. The whole thing works with both input and output sockets, and is available for geometry, shading and compositor nodes.

  

  

• Under the heading – attention: pun! – “New Kids on the Building Blocks”, the Blender Foundation lists four new nodes that have made it into the new Blender: “Extrude Mesh”, “Scale Elements”, “Stretch Map using Field at Index” and “Accumulate Field”. You can find out everything else about these new nodes in the announcement of Blender 3.1 on blender.org – just look under the corresponding heading with the play on words. It’s worth clicking here, because just below it, fifteen more nodes are listed that should make working with Blender easier in the future.

And what else? If you think we’ve covered the entire range of new features in Blender 3.1 with this (already quite extensive) list, you’re mistaken: A Copy Global Transform add-on, new functions for the Grease Pencil tool or faster playback in the 3D viewport are just a few of the new features you should take a look at before you start your next Blender project.

For those on a tight time budget: As part of the release of version 3.1, the Blender Foundation has also shared a five-minute video showing you the most important new functions in fast-forward. Ideal for those of you who want to get a quick overview.

Click further: You can find detailed information at blender.org.

What’s New in Blender 3.1 in Five Minutes

The post Blender 3.1 is released! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.