Blender 4.4, the much-anticipated major update to the popular jack-of-all-trades 3D software, currently in its Release Candidate stage, is finally launching later today, promising a wealth of new features and improvements across its animation, modeling, sculpting, rendering, Geometry Nodes, and other toolsets. As the release approaches, lets dive into some of the most notable enhancements coming to the beloved application.Arguably one of the most significant changes in Blender 4.4 is the revamped structure of Actions with the introduction of Slots, a new concept that, according to Blender, allows for storing the animation of multiple elements within the same Action.The developers explain that all Actions are now slotted, and Actions from older blend files are automatically upgraded to slotted Actions. When creating an Action by keying, Blender will attempt to share Actions between related data-blocks. Similarly, when assigning an Action to a data-block, Blender will try to auto-assign an appropriate Action Slot. However, there are instances where a slot is not automatically assigned, which means the Action wont animate the data-block.Some of the example uses of slotted Actions include:Mesh objects: location in the scene (object), together with shape key values (belongs to the object data), and the locations of hook empties (different objects).Camera objects: transform (object) and lens parameters (object data).Meta-ball transforms, where all objects in a group of meta-balls can share the same Action.Materials, which effectively consist of two data-blocks (the Material itself, and its shader node tree).Action Slots new icon:Other animation and rigging updates include the enhanced Pose Library, which now provides a smoother workflow when working with Pose Assets. Bone collection membership is now mirrored when symmetrizing an armature. Relationship Lines for constraints (between the constrained object/bone and the constraint target) are no longer drawn when there is no target. Additionally, the algorithm for generating the values of the F-Curve Noise Modifier has been updated.When it comes to modeling workflows, the 4.4 update adds a new Select by Trait option to select all 3-poles, 5-poles, and so on. It also improves Vertex and Edge dissolve, and now, when joining triangles to quads, the process can prioritize quad-dominant topology, so joining triangles favors creating quads that form a grid, whichcan be controlled via a topology influence factor.The upcoming release also introduces a new brush type, the Plane brush, which the developers describe as a generalization of the existing Flatten, Fill, and Scrape brush types with new options to control stabilization and range of influence above and below the brush plane. Additionally, Cloth brushes now have the Persistent option disabled by default, while Grab Random Cloth and Grab Cloth now use the Local Simulation Area by default.Blenders Compositor has also received considerable attention in the 4.4 update, now featuring support for integer sockets, a much more accurate Fast Gaussian mode in the Blur node, and a completely overhauled Glare node to offer a better user experience and more flexible control.The highlight, however, is the rewritten CPU compositor, which brings significant performance improvements in certain node configurations, better caching of static resources like images, and reduced memory usage in node setups with many pixel nodes, making the compositor generally faster.Other updates include:CyclesSupport for GeForce RTX 500 series.Support for AMD RX 900 series (RDNA4).HIP RT is no longer experimental and will be enabled by default in the next release. The HIP RT library was upgraded to version 2.5, and many bugs were fixed.Improved image texture sampling performance.Smaller Blender package size by compressing kernels.More robust host memory fallback when the GPU runs out of memory.The NVIDIA OptiX denoiser was updated to improve denoising quality. With recent drivers, the improved denoiser is automatically used in older Blender versions. Denoising quality improvements include more consistent denoising, more accurate colors, better retention of detail, and less denoising blotching.Old vs new denoiser:1 of 2EEVEE & ViewportObjects origins now always draw on top of edit mode overlays.Display in Xray mode now fade in-front overlays correctly.The Wire Color option under the Viewport Shading popover is now honored by all wire objects in both Solid and Wireframe shading mode.Wireframes are now displayed in Edit Mode even when Overlays are off.The Vulkan experimental backend received a big update in performance, stability, and compatibility. The backend is still considered experimental due to missing features like OpenXR, OpenSubdiv, Hydra viewport, and animation performanceGeometry NodesThe Limit Surface option from the modifier is available in the Subdivision Surface node.The Normal input node now outputs proper face corner normals instead of just face normals.For existing files, the old behavior is turned on automatically with a boolean property in the sidebar.Collection and Object input nodes have been added.The Find in String node has been added.The Join Geometry and Realize Instances nodes now preserve the vertex group status of input attributes.The text overlay in the 3D view works for matrix attributes now.The Warning node now has a dynamic label depending on the selected type.Grease PencilAdded Stroke placements and auto-masking options back.Reduced the size of the line primitive gizmo.Restored operators that were missing in Blender 4.3.Added back the Fixed, Sample, and Merge modes from the Simplify operator, the Set Start Point operator, the Lasso/Box erase operators, and the Paste by Layer option from Blender 4.2 LTS.Added conversion from Curve to Grease Pencil and from Mesh to Grease Pencil.Invisible layers are now removed from evaluated data.USD & AlembicAnimated Volumes created procedurally in Geometry Nodes, or through the usage of other volume modifiers, are now supported during export.Material displacement support has been added for the UsdPreviewSurface during both import and export.Point instancers with time-varying (animated) attributes are now supported during import.The experimental Instancing option has gained support for object hierarchies and geometry types other than meshes (e.g., curves, point clouds, etc.).Added a Merge parent Xform option: Control if USD prims merge with their Xform parent during Import in order to better preserve scenario-specific hierarchy requirements.Added an Apply Unit Conversion Scale option: Scale the scene objects by the USD stages meters per unit value.Added a Merge parent Xform option.Added Units and Meters Per Unit options: Set the USD Stage meters per unit to the chosen measurement, or a custom value.The processing of edge and vertex crease values has been changed to respect the range of values expected by OpenSubdiv. For subdivision surface assets using creases produced in prior versions, a backward-compatible transform will be applied when loading into Blender 4.4.And more!Click here to check out the full list of Blender 4.4s improvements. Dont forget to join our80 Level Talent platformand ournew Discord server, follow us onInstagram,Twitter,LinkedIn,Telegram,TikTok, andThreads,where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.Source link The post Blender 4.4 Is Launching Today: New Features & Improvements appeared first on CG SHARES.