Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite
After almost three months since the release of the current stable version of Blender 4.0, The development team recently announced the next updates on which he has been working, being versions 4.1 (in beta state) and 4.2 (in alpha state).
Updating the information of the Blender 4.1 beta, shows us a little of the significant improvements which the Blender team has been working on just a few months after releasing version 4.0.
And this is not to praise the work they mention in such a short time, but on the contrary, the mention of a 5% increase in performance in Linux is to be applauded, in addition to support for rendering using AMD Ryzen APUs based on the architecture. RDNA3.
Main advances in the Blender 4.1 beta
In the release notes on the developers page of Blender, the various changes that have been made so far in this beta of Blender 4.1 already stand out and among the notable features is the support for OpenImageDenoise, an open library for high-performance denoising filters on images rendered using Ray Tracing. This functionality is Compatible with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1600 systems and all RTX series, chips AMD based on RDNA2 and RDNA3 architectures, Intel Arc processors and Apple M series (requires MacOS 13 or later).
Also, Blender 4.1 Cycles now supports rendering using the integrated RDNA3-based graphics chips from AMD, such as those present in the Ryzen 7000G and Ryzen 8000G models and that the ability to disable bump map correction has been introduced, and performance has been improved by 5% on Linux and its derivatives.
Another notable improvement is in the modeling with the change in the "Automatic smoothing" option. Now, in place of this option, a modifier node group resource has been introduced. This means that the base state of the meshes is equivalent to having Auto Smooth enabled with a 180 degree angle in previous versions.
Moreover, New icons have been added to represent the division, joining and swapping areas, improved color picker cursor indication and feedback, improvements made to animation marker drawing and corner rounding for menus and pop-up blocks and input method editors (IME). ) are now compatible with Wayland.
Of the Other improvements in Blender 4.1:
- Added a rendering "simplification" setting that allows you to disable the calculation of face corners and custom normals in the viewport.
- Shape keys can now be locked to protect them from accidental edits in sculpt or edit mode.
- Corner normals of faces are cached and recalculated in fewer cases.
- Creation of mesh topology maps used in geometry nodes and normal calculation is parallelized and up to 5x faster.
- Improved menu quality and pop-up block shadows.
- The Image Editor now allows you to rotate images in 90 degree increments.
- The Image Vectorscope has an updated look and the ability to display a luma or tint scope.
- The Ungroup operator now ungroups all selected group nodes instead of just the active one.
- Improved socket selection when creating node links to reduce the number of erroneous clicks.
- You can double-click the Outliner collection to select all children.
- Modifiers can now be applied from the schematic.
- Walk mode now supports relative up/down.
- Improved mesh border highlighting and contrast for text overlays.
- Added shadowed text for Geometry Node Viewer attributes.
For interested in taking a look at the alpha and beta versions They are now available for testing by downloading the software from the following link. It is worth mentioning that the final version of Blender 4.1 is expected to be released on March 19, while Blender version 4.2 is scheduled for release on July 16.
If you are interested in knowing more about itSo check the details In the following link.