Blender 4.5 Brings Big Changes Date: September 19, 2025 Author: Roland Taylor --- Overview Blender 4.5 LTS, released on July 15, 2025, is the final feature release in the 4.x series, with support through 2027. This update focuses on quality-of-life improvements and important upgrades to Blender’s Vulkan backend, bringing it closer to the default OpenGL backend in features and performance. With this release complete, attention turns toward Blender 5.0, planned for later in 2025, which will introduce substantial changes, particularly to the Geometry Nodes system. --- About Blender Open-source creative suite under GPLv3. Developed by Blender Foundation with support from the Blender Development Fund, contributors, and sponsors. Core languages: C and C++, with extensive Python scripting. Beyond 3D modeling and animation, Blender offers compositing, nonlinear video editing, and 2D animation in 3D space. Uses node-based visual programming for procedural workflows. Integrated Grease Pencil tool supports 2D animation, motion graphics, and more. Focuses on non-destructive, procedural workflows preserving original data. Blender also ensures compatibility with the annual-updated VFX Reference Platform for interoperability with other VFX tools. --- Key Developments in Blender 4.5 LTS Vulkan Backend Advancement Moves towards modernizing Blender's GPU rendering backend by abstracting away from OpenGL. Vulkan offers low-overhead, cross-platform GPU communication with parallel-execution, improving rendering performance. While not default yet, Vulkan now rivals OpenGL in functionality. Current limitations include performance issues on very large meshes (100 million vertices+). Future GPU driver updates expected to improve Vulkan stability and support. Viewport and Rendering Improvements The real-time rendering engine EEVEE 2.0 (EEVEE Next) sees better stability and visual accuracy. Introduction of shadow terminator normal bias improves shadow quality. New controls ("Geometry Offset" and "Shading Offset") allow artists to fine-tune shadow rendering. Fixes for light leaking issues enhance overall rendering realism. Performance gains through faster texture loading (via deferred, multithreaded process) and parallel shader compilation. Startup times reduced by skipping unnecessary shading steps. Users can now customize visible tabs in the Properties Editor. Asset Browser usability enhancements, including label wrapping and simpler thumbnail creation. Nodes, Grease Pencil, and Modeling Enhancements Greater integration and shared capabilities across Shader Nodes, Compositor Nodes, and Geometry Nodes. Procedural textures and common nodes now available within the Compositor, enabling new visual effects. Geometry Nodes gain the "Set Mesh Normal" node for precise control over custom surface normals. Introduction of Point Cloud object type to represent and manipulate large point datasets: Useful for 3D scanning, motion graphics, physics simulations, and granular materials. Supports editing and transformations. Maintains high rendering performance with EEVEE and Cycles. --- Looking Ahead: Blender 5.0 Currently in active development with a beta planned for October 1, 2025. Retains Blender 2.80’s user interface paradigm but introduces modernized workflows and feature-breaking improvements. Key upcoming features: Ability to mark entire scenes as assets accessible via Asset Browser. Grease Pencil supports motion blur effects. Linux users gain HDR viewport support on Wayland using Vulkan backend. New .blend file structure for handling enormous meshes (hundreds of millions of vertices). Improved Edit Mode symmetry operations with reliable mirrored editing. Enhanced UV mapping synchronization between viewport and UV Editor. Blender 5.0 format is not backward-compatible with versions before 4.5. --- ##