It’s a great week for free and open-source media tools. Hot on the heals of GIMP 3.0 final, we get Blender 4.4. It’s labeled as focusing on stability, but the Blender contributors have packed a bunch of major animation, video, and UI features in there, too. Now, we can say this is the tool used in Oscar-winning films (Flow).
Blender’s community of open-source contributors just tackled what they call the “Winter of Quality.” (Sheesh, I could use a “Spring of Undoing Procrastination and Error.” Might get on that.)
This means in practice that they’ve worked through some 700 issues, and you get a more stable Blender in the deal. But that’s not all that’s there. Blender is always worth a look for anyone working with 3D, animation, and even video. And now it’s quite a lot more powerful.
Here’s the video – expect that cat to be the mascot of Blender forever:
Action Slots now allow you to work with animation across object, including position, materials, and compositing effects, and reuse those animations inside a project or across projects. This previously required working with separate Actions.
Animation improvements also cover constraints, the new F-Curve Noise modifier in the Graph Editor, rigging and Pose Library improvements, and more. Animation is steadily improving in Blender, meaning more users are able to work with animation directly in Blender rather than exporting assets to other tools.
Video Sequencer improvements: Yeah, a lot of people forget that Blender is a video editor. On Linux – I’ll be honest, I hate every other open-source choice, so Blender is the winner in the free/libre category. (Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve runs on Linux, but of course, it’s proprietary.)
This is a major update for video, hidden behind that “4.4 is about stability” headline: H.265/HVEC support, improved text handling, YUV-RGB conversion accuracy, 10- and 12-bit/channel video, improved performance for building proxies, previewing float/HDR, sequencer effects, and a lot more get updated here. I’m guessing a large number of those 700 issues were on the video side because, well, it’s always video.
Blender Extensions keeps expanding – like GIMP, Blender is user-extensible in all sorts of cool ways.
Modeling improvements: Easier finding of poles, improved behavior when joining triangles to quads, better dissolving of edges, improved performance – don’t worry, modeling gets a lot of attention here, too.
And there’s a new Plane brush, which they’ve disturbingly demonstrated by destroying a guy’s nipples and pecs. Add Plane to Flatten, Fill, and Scrape – it’s very cool. My nipples are frankly excited, despite that demo.
Colors follow the OS on Windows and macOS. It’s subtle but – anyone thinking this stuff is just “a Linux thing” hasn’t been following the medium. There are just a ton of UI improvements overall.
Expanded USD support.
Lots of new GPU support. And improved CPU performance. Look at this incredible Apple-style graph of how much faster the CPU-bound compositor is:
There’s a lot more I’m not mentioning here. Check the release notes:
And perfect timing. People just now discovering or rediscovering Blender thanks to Flow will encounter a friendlier, faster, more stable, more polished experience – all from free and open-source technology. Given what’s happening with so much big tech, that’s some promising news for independent creativity in some dark times.
Previously:
Feature image:
Splash artwork: Flow © Dream Well Studio, Sacrebleu Productions, Take Five
Image licensed under CC-BY-SA – https://flow.movie/