For those who don’t know the tool: Blender is the free all in one DCC for modeling, animation, rendering, and export tasks like USD, with Eevee for realtime previews, Cycles for finals, and a Compositor that keeps quietly expanding its job description.

The release vibe: refine, then refine again

Blender 5.1 arrives with a clear theme: make everyday work feel lighter. The focus sits on quality of life improvements, stability, and polish, following a “Winter of Quality” push that solved 350 important issues and also cleaned up code to make future improvements easier.

That mindset shows up everywhere. Some changes are the sort you notice instantly. Others only reveal themselves after a week, when you realize you have not sworn at a dialog box even once. Progress comes in many forms. It is still the same familiar toolset. The difference is how often it gets out of your way.

Raycast: a shader node that likes to ask questions

A new Raycast shader node lands in the material system, built around a simple idea: shoot a ray, get useful surface information back, and use it to drive looks. That unlocks effects that rely on the closest point on a surface from the ray source, or the distance to it. There are demo files showing setups like toon shading and an X ray render effect.

There is also a practical warning: Raycast can be computationally expensive, and baking its output is suggested as a way to improve render times when needed.

Rendering: faster compiles, leaner memory, quicker frames

On the realtime side, Eevee speeds up material compilation by pre processing shader sources. In the standard Barbershop text scene benchmark, GPU shaders compile 25 to 50 percent faster across operating systems. Memory also gets attention. Eevee reduces texture memory use via texture pooling, helping scenes fit into less VRAM.

Cycles picks up performance gains too. GPU rendering improves by about 5 to 10 percent for many scenes, and HIP RT ray tracing is enabled by default on AMD GPUs. If your day includes lots of lookdev iteration, the combined effect is straightforward: fewer pauses between decisions.

Animation and rigging: the biggest speed win in the room

If you care about playback, Blender 5.1 comes with a headline worthy improvement: actions and shape keys evaluate significantly faster, with reported gains ranging from 4 percent to 304 percent in frames per second depending on the file. For cleanup work, the Graph Editor adds a Gaussian smoothing modifier that smooths curves non destructively. It is also explicitly described as resource heavy, with guidance not to use it on too many curves at once.

There are also small but practical timeline and editor touches that help animation feel less fiddly, like interpolation line colors indicating interpolation type in the Dope Sheet and menus.

Compositing and editorial: nodes that earn their keep

The built in Compositor adds a Mask to SDF node. It converts a mask into a Signed Distance Field by computing the distance of each pixel from the mask edges. That supports effects like edge glows, eroding or dilating mask edges, and distance based effects like procedural blurs.

The compositor also gains utility nodes including Boolean, Integer, Vector, and Index Switch, plus support for the existing Radial Tiling node. Speed matters here too. Several key nodes are faster, including Blur, Directional Blur, Vector Blur, Glare, Lens Distortion, and Anti Aliasing, described as 1.2x to 2x faster.

In the Sequencer, the Blade tool adds a box gesture that supports ripple editing, aimed at quicker cutting. Taken together, the message is clear: the VFX and video toolsets are being treated like first class citizens, not the side quest you only visit when your shot count gets scary.

Modeling and sculpt: a pile of small wins

Modeling sees a mix of performance and wrokflow tweaks. Filling for text objects improves, expanding the types of fonts that behave well as 3D text. Filling in general is up to five times faster, especially for n gons with many sides. Snapping adds an option to snap to the center of faces. In sculpt and paint, one visible addition is a Blur brush for blurring surface colors in Sculpt mode.

Grease Pencil: holes, at last

Grease Pencil gets notable workflow improvements, including better handling of strokes and fills and new ways to cut holes in shapes. Holes in fills can be created either via new operators that perform Boolean style operations or via the SVG importer. The draw here is practical: importing SVG and PDF content becomes easier to integrate without the same fill weirdness described in the feature overview. If you have ever built a workaround stack just to preserve negative space, this one lands with a satisfying thud.

Geometry Nodes: more rig friendly, more volume friendly

Geometry Nodes adds a Bone Info node that makes it possible to access bone position data. There are also new nodes for working with volume grids, including nodes for dilating, eroding, and clipping volume grids.

UI, file I O, and pipeline glue

The UI picks up just under 100 fixes and feature improvements, including the ability to search for controls by name in Preferences. Other practical UI touches include resizing quad views interactively by dragging the center point, and copying and pasting nodes between separate instances. On file formats, new options include AVIF export. Updates also land for USD, glTF, and FBX, with FBX files now including Shape Key normals for better compatibility with game engines like Unity.

For pipeline integration, support includes Python 3.13 and OpenColorIO 2.5, matching the CY2026 spec for the VFX Reference Platform. For virtual reality projects, the arc teleportation system is described as completely rewritten, and OpenXR is supported on macOS.

Availability and licensing

Blender 5.1 is a free download. The source code is available under the GPLv3 license. That free and open model is not new, but it still matters. It shapes how fast features get tested in the wild, how quickly workflows spread through studios, and how often a random late night fix becomes a shared win by morning.

The only remaining job is the boring one: install, test, validate, and only then roll it into serious work. Even a tool with a good mood still deserves a proper pipeline check. And yes, the Blender Foundation clearly wants this release to feel like a calm upgrade, not a reinvention.

https://www.blender.org/press/blender-5-1-release/

The post Blender 5.1 is here first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t now the tool: Resolume develops realtime visual performance software for live events, LED walls, and installations. Its core tools Resolume Arena, Resolume Avenue and Resolume Wire focus on fast playback, live control, and GPU driven image processing, occasionally crossing paths with VFX and virtual production, but usually living in a different department with louder music.

Colour depth, finally

Resolume has released an update adding 10 bit colour output across its software line. According to the company, this increases output precision from 8 bit colour to approximately 1.07 billion colours, reducing visible banding in gradients. The feature is aimed at LED walls, broadcast pipelines, and other display systems where colour depth matters and dithering is not sufficient.

The company states that capture devices supporting 10 bit can now input and output higher precision colour. Updated capture support includes NDI version 6.1.1 and Blackmagic Desktop Video 12.1. These changes are limited to devices and signal paths that already support 10 bit. No claims are made about automatic colour management or calibration.

Speed and responsiveness

Resolume reports faster composition loading, particularly in projects with many layers and groups. MIDI processing has also been optimised to reduce interface lag when handling dense control data. The Arena title bar now indicates when a composition is opening, saving, or closing, making internal busy states more visible during live operation.

These changes are described as workflow and stability improvements rather than architectural changes. Performance gains are not quantified and are Not independently verified at press time.

Wire gets more readable

The update includes several usability changes to Wire. A new Patch Navigator panel allows faster navigation in large node graphs. A Notes panel has been added for in patch documentation. Texture previews now appear when hovering over outlets, and new commands allow inserting nodes before or after existing connections with automatic rewiring.

The node search popup now shows previews, and new nodes include Kaleidoscope, Gaussian blur, cylindrical and spherical coordinate tools, and a stable sort node. Resolume describes these as quality of life improvements rather than new rendering features.

Effects and control plumbing

A new CRT effect has been added, built in Wire and fully editable. Resolume positions it as a starting point rather than a fixed look. MIDI and OSC monitors can now be paused and resumed, allowing inspection of incoming data without continuous scrolling. The REST API has been expanded with new calls for loading compositions, opening multiple clips, adding columns, and checking file accessibility.

Where this sits for VFX people

Realtime event graphics and VFX pipelines do intersect, particularly around LED volumes, previs, and on set playback. However, Resolume remains focused on live performance and operator driven graphics rather than shot based rendering or asset management. It is quite a cool, vibrant tool for what it is, but it does not try to replace traditional VFX or virtual production systems.

The post Resolume adds 10 bit colour and speed fixes first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: Cinebench by Maxon has long been the go-to CPU and GPU benchmark for 3D professionals. It’s based on the Redshift rendering engine that powers Cinema 4D, and its scores have quietly dictated workstation builds across postproduction, VFX, and colour suites for years.

Updated guts for a new generation

Maxon’s official release confirms that Cinebench 2026 has been rebuilt around the latest Redshift core, mirroring the renderer inside Cinema 4D 2026. The test scenes and compiler base have been modernised to reflect current rendering workloads. As a result, scores from Cinebench 2026 are not comparable with those from Cinebench 2024 or earlier. Cinebench 2026 runs natively on Windows x86-64, Windows ARM64, and macOS. It remains free to download from Maxon’s website.

GPU support: Blackwell, Hopper, and Apple M5

The new benchmark now fully supports Nvidia’s Blackwell-series GPUs, including GeForce 5000 and Hopper cards, and AMD’s Radeon 9000 series. For Mac users, Cinebench 2026 is compatible with Apple M4 and M5 chips, using Apple’s unified memory architecture. Intel GPUs remain unsupported, according to Maxon’s documentation. GPU tests require at least 8 GB of VRAM (or 16 GB of unified memory on Apple Silicon), and the CPU tests scale with available system memory.

New SMT test: threading laid bare

A new SMT (Simultaneous Multithreading) test isolates logical-thread performance, showing how modern CPUs handle parallel workloads. This separates Cinebench 2026 from prior versions, which measured only total core performance. The result gives a clearer view of per-thread efficiency, especially relevant for render nodes and multi-core workstation CPUs.

Real-world alignment with Redshift

Maxon emphasises that Cinebench 2026 now uses the same Redshift code as Cinema 4D’s production renderer, making the benchmark a closer reflection of actual 3D rendering performance. This move should reduce the gap between synthetic test scores and real-world frame render times inside DCC applications.

That said, as always, benchmark results should be validated in actual production environments before being used for purchase or deployment decisions.

Availability and notes for cautious studios

Cinebench 2026 is available now, free of charge, from Maxon’s official site. The installer covers Windows 10/11 (x86-64 and ARM64) and macOS 14.7 or newer. While the tool’s interface remains largely unchanged, the new test scenes and threading evaluation mean you’ll need fresh baselines for every workstation in your pipeline. Studios that have not updated since Cinebench R23 or 2024 will find their old score sheets effectively obsolete.

Given the tight budgets and cautious upgrade cycles across post and VFX, this update serves both as a wake-up call and as free therapy for outdated benchmarking habits. Social media: Cinebench 2026 drops with GPU and SMT upgrades. Time to see if your workstation’s still earning its power bill.

Fact check reminder: Test new benchmarks on your own hardware before using results to guide workstation or render-node purchases.

The post Cinebench 2026: Benchmark therapy first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

TL;DR: Trimble ships SketchUp 2026.0 with a new in-app Collaboration Bar that lets you share via private invites or a public link, collect 3D-anchored comments, and sync views in real time. Visualisation gets AO distance and colour, invert roughness, and user-selectable material thumbnails on Windows. Performance improves across memory, selections, scene transitions, zoom extents, and purging. Live Components gain scale-by-inference grips and saner painting. Modelling and UI see multiple quality-of-life upgrades. You can reset activations inside the app. DWG and IFC pipelines are tidier. Studio users get Texture Projection and Surface Mesh for point clouds. LayOut on Windows adopts a SketchUp-like UI, picks up Trim, Extend, Fillet, Chamfer, and improves DWG handling and Scrapbooks.

Collaboration in Desktop: invites, public links, live cursors, 3D comments

The new Collaboration Bar shares your model to Trimble Connect, then distributes either private invites with permissions (Owner, View Scenes, Comment) or a public link with adjustable access (No Access, View Scenes, View Model). Viewers open the model in a browser, see others’ cursors, navigate and measure when allowed, and leave threaded comments pinned with 3D markers that can be associated with scenes and camera states. You can pull everyone to your current view or jump to a viewer’s avatar to mirror their POV. Real-time updates are on by default.

Visualisation: AO distance & colour, invert roughness, pick your material thumbnail

Ambient Occlusion gets a Distance Multiplier so occlusion remains readable when zoomed out and a colour swatch to move AO away from neutral grey for clearer depth cues. Materials add an Invert Roughness toggle to flip PBR roughness maps quickly. On Windows you can choose Cube or Flat material thumbnails per asset, or let Auto decide.

Performance: lower memory, snappier selections, faster scenes and zoom

Model loading produces smaller memory spikes, component overhead is reduced, and graphics resource handling on Windows is more efficient. Day to day that means fewer freezes on large models and more fluid interactions. Internal benchmarks cite big gains for scene transitions, Zoom Extents, and Purge Unused, plus faster selections and inferences; exact results will vary by hardware and dataset.

Live Components: scale grips by inference; saner painting

The Scale tool now exposes inference-aware grips for Live Components, making placement and sizing more predictable than nudging bounding boxes. The Paint Bucket can apply custom materials outside a component’s predefined options, with better texture mapping and library compatibility. Not every existing Live Component has scale grips yet, but more are being added.

Modelling & UI QoL: rotate handle logic, see-through scale grips, profile-edge placement, scene undo/redo

Scale grips render through occluding geometry so you can grab the correct handle without enabling X-Ray. Rotation grips hide when you lock a rotation plane to prevent unintended moves. When placing groups or components, you can move from a profile edge so the object turns transparent and background targets remain visible. Scenes now support Undo/Redo, including create/rename/delete. Purge Unused defaults to off; it gains granular controls and a menu command you can bind to a shortcut. On Windows, panels and trays are easier to manage: right-click headers to toggle visibility, drag panels between trays, or tear them off into their own tray.

Activations: fix “too many devices” without leaving the app

If you exceed allowed activations, you can reset all activations and authorise the current device directly in SketchUp rather than detouring to account management.

Interoperability: DWG import options; real hatch import; 3D section export; cleaner polylines; unified IFC exporter

DWG import adds Import Layers as Groups to map DWG layers to grouped geometry with tags for visibility control, and Import Linework Flattened to force Z=0 for 2D CAD, minimising cleanup. Hatches import as faces or edges, depending on type. Export preserves section planes in 3D DWG for downstream section workflows. Other updates include welded polylines on import, better true-curve export, and fewer duplicate instance/definition name collisions. IFC export consolidates 2×3 and 4 into one file type with a new Export Options dialog and a Standard IFC Spatial Hierarchy toggle to scaffold IfcProject/IfcSite/IfcBuilding even if your Outliner is sparse.

Scan Essentials (Studio): Texture Projection, Surface Mesh, scene-aware visibility, reset to georeferenced origin

Studio subscribers get Texture Projection to bake imagery from scans onto SketchUp geometry as reusable materials and Surface Mesh to extract meshes from point clouds with guided parameters. Point-cloud visibility can be stored per scene in SketchUp and LayOut. You can also reset transformations to the original georeferenced coordinates on export.

LayOut (Windows): UI refresh, true drafting tools, stronger DWG pipeline, better Scrapbooks

LayOut on Windows adopts SketchUp-style trays and panels, plus more flexible toolbars. Vector and hybrid viewport generation is faster. Four drafting tools land—Trim, Extend, Fillet, and Chamfer—mapped to Shift+T/E/F/C, reducing selection overhead and cleanup clicks on typical 2D tasks. DWG export can split each page to its own DWG, preserves SketchUp Tag names as DWG layers, and correctly stacks coincident viewports in model space; text, hatches, and tables round-trip more faithfully. Default Scrapbooks gain an Architecture set—doors, windows, living, bedroom, kitchen, bath—as scalable groups.

Bug fixes (selected): stability, materials, components, graphics engine quirks

Expect fewer crashes when editing Live Components or importing large images under the new graphics engine, corrupt normal maps no longer block loads, and file associations prefer the latest version. Selection performance on complex models improves. Numerous Windows and macOS UI inconsistencies are resolved, including materials panel behaviour, tag colour previews, scene tab selection, file thumbnails, Environments downloads, and various DWG importer/exporter issues.

API & developer notes: scenes are now undoable; non-invertible transforms rejected; IFC exporter updated

Scene operations are now undoable. Extension authors must wrap scene edits in Model#start_operation and #commit_operation or risk flooding the undo stack and Extension Warehouse rejection. Non-invertible transforms—like scale-to-zero—are rejected for component instances, groups, and images in both Ruby and C APIs. The Ruby API moves to a unified IFC exporter with options for version and hierarchy; there are new accessors for active section planes, safer page naming, style add/remove returns, and assorted fixes. LayOut’s APIs add linear dimension alignment, leader-line visibility, text strikethrough, attribute dictionaries, and camera/viewport override control. Test any extension that touches scenes, transforms, or exporters.

Upgrade guidance

If your day involves DWG/IFC exchange, LayOut deliverables, or frequent client review, the upgrade pays off immediately. Extension authors should validate scene logic due to undo changes. On macOS, note that cube material thumbnails are Windows-only. Pilot on a single machine, test your critical extensions, then roll out.

The post SketchUp 2026.0 first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Jürgen Firsching.