Storm makes landfall

Blender Studio has released Storm, a production-ready character rig built exclusively for Blender 5.0. The rig, developed by the Blender Studio team, merges their in-house rigging system CloudRig with a sculpt-driven facial setup designed for expressive animation. It is the latest addition to Blender Studio’s growing library of open production assets, aimed at animators and riggers seeking professional-grade tools inside Blender without third-party dependencies.

Technical build and requirements

Storm’s body rig is constructed using CloudRig, the procedural rigging system developed by Rigging TD Demeter Dzadik. CloudRig allows the modular generation of complex body setups, supporting inverse kinematics (IK), forward kinematics (FK), parent switching, and snapping options. Storm inherits this functionality, offering standard animator controls such as IK/FK toggles, stretchy limbs, hinge switches, and parent snaps. These controls are embedded in a custom UI that appears directly within Blender’s interface, requiring no additional add-ons beyond those included in the file.

The facial rig was designed by Lead Animator Rik Schutte and takes a hybrid approach using shape keys, ribbon guides, and lattice deformers. This setup blends traditional deformation techniques with sculpted corrective shapes, enabling detailed facial performance while maintaining animator-friendly control layouts. The design provides layered control for expressions, including mouth and eye movement, with a focus on maintaining smooth deformation and preserving volume across a wide range of poses.

The download package also includes a pose library containing a comprehensive range of facial, hand, and full-body poses. These assets are integrated into Blender’s Asset Shelf system, allowing animators to quickly browse, apply, and tweak poses directly in the 3D viewport. The rig is fully self-contained; all necessary scripts and dependencies are embedded within the .blend file.

Storm requires Blender 5.0 or later. It is explicitly incompatible with earlier versions, as the rig uses new Blender 5.0 features and API changes. Users opening the file for the first time will be prompted to allow Python script execution, which is needed for the rig’s custom UI panels and tool automation.

The character and rig are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence, which permits both personal and commercial use with proper credit to Blender Studio.

Workflow and production context

Storm’s design reflects Blender Studio’s open-movie production workflow. By building on CloudRig, the team has transferred tools and processes developed during feature projects directly into a publicly available rig. The sculpt-driven facial system emphasises precision deformation over real-time simplicity, making Storm a strong fit for high-quality keyframe animation or performance-based facial acting inside Blender.

The inclusion of the pose library and layered control system streamlines the initial animation phase. Animators can access predefined poses for facial expressions or full-body gestures, modify them on the fly, and store custom versions within the Asset Browser.

Unspecified technical data

While the Blender Studio pages document Storm’s rigging approach and dependencies, several technical metrics remain unpublished. Polygon count, vertex count, rig complexity (number of bones and controls), and viewport performance benchmarks are not stated. Similarly, no formal details are provided about compatibility with motion-capture systems or real-time retargeting. Users seeking to integrate Storm into hybrid pipelines or game-engine projects should therefore conduct their own compatibility tests.

Suitability and testing

For animation and VFX professionals working within Blender, Storm provides an immediately usable, high-fidelity character asset. Its rig structure, UI controls, and deformation fidelity place it at a professional standard similar to Blender Studio’s production characters such as Rain or Sprite Fright’s Ella. However, as with all production assets, the rig’s suitability should be verified in real workflows.

Get it here!

The post Blender Studio drops “Storm” rig for Blender 5.0 first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

In future, Blender will rely on three instead of four updates per year

The Blender Foundation, the brains behind our favourite open source tool, is planning a change in the release of new versions. The Blender Foundation has announced that in future it will focus on three releases per year instead of four. The change is being made based on the experiences of developers and users in recent years. The plan is to leave the software longer in the Bcon1 and Bcon2 phases – the aim is to give users more time to test the latest version of Blender. The developers hope that this will give developers more time to write code, users more time to test, and Studio TDs and add-on developers more time to maintain tools. With these changes, Blender hopes to optimise the development of Blender and make work easier for users and developers. But now to Blender 3.5 !

Upgrades for Hair and more

If you want to save time, check out Blender 3.5’s new library of hair assets. It’s a set of 26 pre-built Geometry Nodes setups that you can easily insert into your scene. These will help you simplify tasks like creating hair curves on a scalp surface, creating clumps and styling hair.

The new and improved Geometry Nodes-based curved hair system is one of the most notable new features of Blender 3.5. With this upgrade, you can quickly and easily create any type of hair, fur or grass. Best of all, you can load a library of hair assets directly into the software for easy drag-and-drop use.

New nodes for procedural modelling and image processing

With the new Geometry Nodes in Blender 3.5, you can now also use Edges to Face Groups to find groups of faces surrounded by selected edges. In addition, there are now Blur Attributes, with which you can mix the attribute values of neighbouring elements. The new Image Input and Image Info Nodes also expand your creative options for processing images.

Reduce noise in cycle rendering with the new Light Tree

Blender 3.5 introduces the Light Tree, which helps Cycles to sample scenes with many lights more effectively. The result: less noise and faster rendering times. Unfortunately, this function is not yet available on AMD GPUs.

Facial modelling made easy with vector displacement maps

Support for Vector Displacement Map (VDM) brushes in Blender 3.5 is one of the latest features for digital sculptors and character artists. With just one click, you can now create complex shapes for noses, ears, horns and tails on your model. VDM brushes are not included in traditional displacement maps as they can move the surface of the model in all three dimensions. Discover the possibilities!

Support for Vector Displacement Maps

Thanks to support for vector displacement maps, you can now create complex shapes with overhangs in just one brush dab using the Draw Brush in Sculpt mode.

Revamped 3D viewport and improvements for Blender Cycles and Pose Library

The 3D viewport has been polished and has been given a GPU-based compositor backend. The overlays are now displayed on the compositing result so you can see and interact with your mesh and other objects. Blender Cycles has been updated and can now also use a light tree to sample scenes with many lights more effectively. The Pose Library has also been improved with new options and shortcuts.

Upgrade for Grease Pencil

For all Grease Pencil fans, there is now a new Natural Drawing Speed Timing mode in the build modifier that renders strokes at the speed of the pencil used to create them.

And even more!

And that’s not all! Other new features in Blender 3.5 include a new timing mode for the build modifier, a new ease operator in the graph editor and much, much, much more. If you want to know more, you can find the latest release here and we’ll take a closer look at all the details in the next issue of DP!

The post Blender 3.5, Wuhu! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Gottfried Hofmann.