Blender 5.0 Released

Blender 5.0 has been released with major upgrades including HDR and wide-gamut color support on Linux via Wayland/Vulkan, significant theme and UI improvements, new color-space tools, revamped curve and geometry features, and expanded hardware requirements. 9to5Linux reports: Blender 5.0 also introduces a working color space for Blend files, a new AgX HDR view, a new Convert to Display compositor node, new Rec.2100-PQ and Rec.2100-HLG displays that can be used for color grading for HDR video export, and new ACES 1.3 and 2.0 views as an alternative to AgX and Filmic.

A new "Jump Time by Delta" operator for jumping forward/backward in time by a user-specified delta has been introduced as well, along with a revamped Curve drawing, which better supports the new Curves object type and all of their features, and a new Geometry Attribute constraint.

Also new is a "Cylinder" option for curve display type that allows rendering thicker curves without the flat ribbon appearance, support for the Zstd (Zstandard) fast lossless compression algorithm for point caches, as well as a new "Curve Data" panel in edit mode that allows tweaking built-in curve attribute values. A full list of changes can be found here. You can download from the official website.

No regrets donating to this project

[haruchai]

to free the source code

Re:No regrets donating to this project

[dskoll]

I donated to Blender after it was already free, simply because it's an absolutely amazing piece of software and I think the Blender Foundation deserves our support.

Me too.

[Qbertino]

I'm listed as a donator because I'm actually one of those rare few who bought a commercial license back when Blender still was closed source and was being sold as a commercial product by NaN. They went commercial for a year or so after blender was available as freeware. I paid 250 Euros and still have the color-printed receipt. I might frame it and hang it on the wall some day. :-)

Release notes

[dskoll]

The original article links to the wrong version of the release notes. The 5.0 release notes are here [blender.org].

The new feature summary video is 50 minutes long!

[Qbertino]

The blender crew effing rocks, that's for sure. I sure hope Ton Roosendahl is enjoying his (part-time?) retirement!

I want to love Blender...

[coofercat]

I want to love Blender - it's clearly a very capable bit of software. I just don't "get" it though.

I'm really only thinking about making models to 3D print, so no where near all the really fancy stuff Blender can do, but every time I try to figure it out, I end up giving up and going back to Sketchup. I don't imagine anyone in Blender Towers misses me in the slightest, but I feel it's a shame.

To everyone that *does* use Blender - keep up the good work :-)

Re:

[dskoll]

I find it very difficult, too, and I don't use it enough for it to stick in my memory. But it is very powerful and a great way to learn it is to go through Blender Guru's beginner's course [youtube.com]. I did it and managed to get a very nice and realistic animated donut.

Re:

[evil_aaronm]

Provincial putz with a "ditto," here. I don't use it often enough to justify a deep dive for training, so while I can make things with it, it's a right pita. And every time I go back to it, I've forgotten how I did it previously. To me, it doesn't lend itself to easy comprehension. But I wish them the best of success.