Blender 4.4: Product care and fast loading times

The free 3D software Blender is now available for download in version 4.4 for Windows, MacOS and Linux and as a source code. This time the main focus was on software quality, which is why there are fewer new functions, but a variety of improvements and performance sparkles that should accelerate everyday tasks.

The release was preceded by a quality offensive in which not only errors were fixed. The developers have also ported many areas from Blender to more modern technology.

Improved user interface

The developers have processed a long list of smaller problems with the user interface. The button for materials is now better different from that for the world. When rendering an animation directly from the viewport, a charging beam now appears. A glitch in the display of the frames per second (FPS) was fixed.

Numerous menus have re -sorted the developers and, where it makes sense, have given icons. You can now also play animations in sculpt mode and, while an animation runs, the tooltips still work. The text in the tool tips is now better readable.

The information that appears in the status bar at the bottom of the screen was optimized for numerous tools. In addition, Blender now spends warnings when an object has a negative scaling, which can lead to problems with some tools.

Video editing: effects, text boxes and colors

In the video Sequence Editor (VSE), blender videos edited directly in the 3D software. Almost all effects are now working faster. The background box for texts is also rendered many times faster. Corners can be rounded off.

The text tool is particularly popular for subtitles and now supports centered and right -wing representation. Furthermore, you can edit text in the new version in the preview window by changing to edit mode with the tab.

Also in the preview window, any strips can be duplicated with the key shortcut Ctrl+D in the blend. The operation of the VSE is thus approaching the remaining areas of blender. When copying and duplication of strips, blenders take into account blenders such as assigned effects.

Export in H.265 and with a defined color space

The H.265/HEVC codec is now available for playing. This allows videos to be saved with 10 or 12 bit color depth per channel, which is relevant for HDR displays. Blender also supports higher color depth when reading video data.

Compositor: Faster effects

When reworking moving images, the so -called compositing, blender effects calculate much faster than before. The developers speak of a factor of two to ten.

If you first reduce an image in the compositor in blenders 4.3 and then enlarge it again, it pixes, because all transformations are destroyed destructively on the image. This happens in Blender 4.4 as late as possible. In the example, Blender would receive the original pixels of the image. There is a separate node for a desired pixel effect.

Improved node for lighting effects

The atriums for bright light sources in photos and in videos are called GLARE. Blender 4.4 received an updated glare node in the compositor, i.e. a knot that calculates this effect.

Some new parameters have been added to the GLARE NODE and all settings can now be linked to other nodes. In addition to the edited image, only the effect itself and a representation of the affected image areas can be found on outputs. Their maximum brightness can also be restricted, which means that a particularly bright light source, such as the sun, no longer leads to the entire image outsourced.

Complex animation with slotted actions

In the animation system, animations can now be summarized via slotted actions. An animation, also called action in Blend, can be a camera trip, for example. The focal length could change while driving to zoom on an object.

So far, Blender has only been able to save this in two different actions. In Blender 4.4, animations can be grouped and linked. Especially users of game engine such as the unreal engine ask this function because it is also available there.

The innovations have the result that old files are no longer compatible; Blender automatically converts them. If a file with an older version is opened with blender 4.4 or new stored file, only the first action of a group is visible there. Further actions are rejected when saving the file. So be careful.

New minimum requirements

Intel GPUs users must have at least the driver version 101,6557 for blender 4.4, under Linux at least version 31740.8. Anyone who uses an AMD graphics card needs at least adrenaline 24.6.1 or the Radeon per driver in version 24.q2 under Windows, at least the ROCM version 6.0 under Linux.

In return, AMD is now also supporting the RDNA4 architecture of the AMD RX 90×0 series. The hardware acceleration for raytracing hip RT is no longer characterized as experimentally. At NVIDIA, the support of the RTX 90×0 cards is added based on the Blackwell architecture.

Update for the Optix Denoiser

The update of the optix denoiser is also relevant for Nvidia users. After the rendering of a picture with the cycles render engine, he takes care of removing any still available image noise. The new version should deliver significantly better quality.

Graphics interface Vulkan: Reduced loading times

Blender currently uses Opengl. Sooner or later the developers want to switch to the more modern volcano. If you want, you can try the volcanic baking. Then a few functions such as VR support in viewport are no longer available, but Blender 4.4 rewards the change with halved charging time in large scenes. For Vulkan, the installation of the current graphics drivers is recommended.