What’s New Recap
Round-up of what’s new in Blender 4.5 LTS, in detail.
VULKAN
The Vulkan backend is now fully supported in Blender 4.5 LTS
GEOMETRY NODES
BRING’EM ON
Got OBJ, CSV, STL, VDB, PLY, or a custom text file?
Bring them all together with Geometry Nodes.
Smart Sequencing
When combined with the new Format String node, importing sequences is as flexible as it gets.
THE NEW NORMAL
Custom mesh normals are now editable in Geometry Nodes with the new Set Mesh Normal node! Modify both “Tangent Space” normals and a new, faster “Free” format.
Node Tools
Custom node tools are now easier to organize thanks to support for collapsible panels, including the use of boolean sockets as checkboxes in their headers, just like native built-in operators!
This is part of a refactor that allows the Adjust Last Operation panel to share the same code as modifiers, so future improvements will benefit both systems.
For example, you can now search for attributes within the Adjust Last Operation panel.
What’s Next?
Get a glimpse of what’s to come to Geometry Nodes (spoiler alert: hair dynamics and physics!).
EVEN MORE GEOMETRY NODES
COMPOSITOR
Go Procedural
All the procedural texture nodes you know and love from Shaders and Geometry Nodes, are now available in the Compositor.
Compositing Harmony
The Compositor is now more unified than ever.
Common nodes have been added and can be easily copied across Shader and Geometry Nodes setups.
You can also share your own add-ons and themes!
GREASE PENCIL
GLOW UP
This release is a big one for Grease Pencil. Featuring integration with the Compositor, introducing support for Geometry Nodes tools, missing features have been brought back, and strokes look better than ever.
Blender 4.5 LTS is the perfect match for your next 2D/3D animation project.
Pencil Perfect
A new render pass outputs the visible Grease Pencil strokes and fills into a separate layer.
This pass is useful for isolating, enhancing, or applying effects to Grease Pencil elements during compositing.
Full Control
In addition to the render pass, Grease Pencil rendering can be completely disabled per View Layer using the Filter option, similar to Surfaces, Volumes, and other types.
LOOKING
SHARP
A new supersampling anti-aliasing (SSAA) method improves line quality for smoother lines.
The current subpixel morphological anti-aliasing (SMAA) method is still used for the viewport and final render but now can be controlled independently under Render properties, Grease Pencil panel. This example uses threshold 1.0.
The SSAA sample count can be adjusted under Render properties, Grease Pencil. Note that the SSAA filter size is the same as the Film > Filter Size setting. This example uses 8 Samples.
Using both methods together is also possible (for final rendering), but might cause overblurring.
MORE GREASE PENCIL
PUT IT TO THE TEST
Share and compare your computer’s score with openly accessible benchmarks provided by the Blender community.
GET THE ARTWORK
Blender splash artwork source files are available for you to play with, not only for Blender 4.5 LTS but for previous versions as well.
Make Your Point
Meet Point Cloud, a new object type for representing large numbers of individual points in 3D space. Ideal for visualizing 3D scan data, particle simulations, or sparse datasets.
FILLS LIKE MAGIC
It can be used to clean up an area with bad geometry, which will be replaced with a fresh, smooth, grid-filled set of quads. It almost feels like cheating.
Play the Splash!
This release splash artwork features DOGWALK, the latest open game project by Blender Studio.
The game is free and open source like every Blender Studio project, with a DLC available for those who wish to support the team.
PAINT
Jitter Creeper
Painting in Sculpt, Vertex Paint, and Texture Paint modes supports randomization of hue, saturation, and value either throughout the entire stroke or on a per-stroke basis.
SCULPT
Chop Chop
Manifold is the new faster solver for Trim tools in Sculpt mode. Its name comes from the term “manifold” (also called ‘water-tight’ meshes), and refers to the limitation that it works best on this type of geometry.
It uses the same Manifold library as the Boolean modifier and Geometry Node.
It’s much faster than the previous Fast mode, now called Float.
AND MORE
USER INTERFACE
LOOKING GOOOOD
Blender’s user interface continues to get more polished, more intuitive, and more accessible than ever.
NODE EDITORS
Easy Frames
Adding nodes into frames is easier than ever:
- Press F
- Give it a name (optional)
- Done!
Detaching them is just as simple: press F while dragging the nodes.
You can now create empty frames. Labels are better positioned, and nested frames now alternate in value for easier reading.
PROPERTIES
Clean Workspace
Not using a tab in the Properties Editor? Hide it to reduce the clutter.
This is especially useful for tailoring the editor to specific workflows. For example, in the Video Editing workspace, you might hide the Object and Shading tabs to reduce visual noise.
Tabs can be brought back at any time through the top-right popover menu.
ASSET & FILE BROWSER
More at a Glance
The Asset and File Browser now allows you to see more in two ways:
Labels will now wrap to two lines, prioritizing the beginning and end to clearly show the file extension.
A new Horizontal List mode lets you fit more content on screen, and adjust the preview and column sizes individually.
ASSET BROWSER
Quick Capture
Making previews for your assets just got much easier!
Simply capture what’s on the screen, no need to render.
MORE UI
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE
- Improved Cache.
- Faster video rotation and color space conversions.
- HDR support in Sequencer Preview.
- Mute/Unmute and Mirror now work in Preview.
- Strip Pivot can be adjusted in Preview.
- Snap by default and added Snap to Frame Range.
- Better editor resizing.
- Better reports on framerate/color space change.
- Improved Slip operator with clamp.
- Added cursor to Blade tool.
- Improved handle selection.
- See all changes
- Import animated camera properties.
- Import USD Skeleton rest pose.
- Import primitives: Plane, Capsule_1, Cylinder_1.
- Import DomeLight_1 schema.
- Export: MaterialX now writes Principled BSDF as OpenPBR Surface.
- Export: better support of point instancing
- Export: support Blender Text objects.
-
I/O support for
UsdPrimvarReader_TYPEfor UsdPreviewSurface materials.
Plus hundreds of bug fixes, code cleanups and refactors.
See the full list of changes.
CREDITS
List of developers that contributed to Blender 4.5 LTS
Blender is a community project.
Learn more on how you can contribute to Blender.
Splash artwork: DOGWALK – CC-BY-SA – studio.blender.org
Huge thanks to everyone involved 🧡
The Blender team. July 15th, 2025