Blender 4.3

Splash artwork by Blender Studio

Released November 19th, 2024

Video Recap

Round-up of what’s new, in detail.

Blender 4.3 new features overview by Jonathan Lampel from CGCookie, Harry Blends,
Christopher 3D, and Aidy Burrows from Creative Shrimp.

EEVEE

It’s (real-)time for

LIGHT LINKING

The real-time renderer EEVEE now supports Light Linking and Shadow Linking—features previously available only in Cycles.

More control than eeveer before.

With light linking, lights can be set to affect only specific objects in the scene.

Shadow linking additionally gives control over which objects acts as shadow blockers for a light.

This is now feature parity with Cycles.

Simply create a Light Linking collection and drag in the objects you want to affect. Toggle the checkbox to invert the effect.

SHADERS

A new Metallic BSDF node has been added to the shader editor.

Metallic BSDF

This new node exposes existing, but hard to access metallic material configurations in a small node.

Metallic BSDF recreating Nickel and Copper materials.

Metallic BSDF node.

F82 Tint

The F82 Tint approximation is artist friendly, taking colors as inputs. This is currently in use by the Principled BSDF.

Conductor Fresnel

This method is more complex to use, requiring IOR and Extinction coefficients per color channel as inputs. However, it can produce subtly more accurate results for real-world metals, previously achievable only through custom OSL scripts.

EEVEE does not yet support the Conductor Fresnel type, so it internally remaps the IOR and Extinction coefficients to colors and uses them with the F82 Tint approximation.

TEXTURES

Make Some (Gabor) Noise

A new texture node was added that can create procedural Gabor noise for random interleaved bands with controllable direction and width.

New texture node Gabor Noise example in Blender 4.3

COMPOSITOR

Forget F12. EEVEE passes are now available for interactive compositing.

Multi-pass compositing lets you create complex NPR setups and effects directly in the 3D Viewport.

MORE COMPOSITOR

The Blender Extensions platform continues to grow, offering hundreds of free add-ons and themes that enable endless customization of workflows.

You can also share your own add-ons and themes!

UV EDITING

A new method makes unwrapping organic shapes a breeze.

Minimum Stretch,
Minimal Effort

A new iterative unwrapping method “Minimum Stretch” has been added which can deliver results with less distortion by iteratively refining the result.

Ideal for organic shapes. This uses the SLIM algorithm (Scalable Local Injective Mappings) internally, see the research publication.

It can be used from the Unwrap menu as well as “Live Unwrap”.

New UV Unwrap menu

PLUS

Thanks to portable installation, new environment variables, custom bundling of extensions, Blender 4.3 is easier than ever to integrate in studio pipelines.

GEOMETRY NODES

SO MUCH IT

DOESN’T FIT THIS TITLE

For Each Element Zone. Gizmos. Support for Grease Pencil. Packed Bakes. Custom Warnings. Geometry Names. New Nodes.

Simon Thommes offers a delightful sneak peek into the abundance of Geo Goodies packed into this Blender update!

Overview of everything new in Geometry Nodes by Simon Thommes from Blender Studio.

EFFORTLESS ITERATION WITH

FOR EACH ELEMENT

A new type of loop zone is available now! The For Each Element zone will make it easy to iterate over elements of a geometry in parallel, making repetitive processes a breeze to handle.

You can now add gizmos to node groups! This means you can edit the inputs to a node tree right in the 3D viewport – no need to dive into the node editor or modifier stack. It’s a game-changer for a more intuitive and hands-on experience!

Although built-in nodes aren’t using this power yet, the future looks bright. Advanced users will benefit now, and soon everyone will enjoy Blender’s growing procedural capabilities!

GEOMETRY NAMING MADE EASY

Introducing the Set Geometry Name node, a new node designed to enhance your workflow. This node allows for the easy assignment of names to geometries, with automatic initialization based on object and collection names.

Geometries can now be named with the new Set Geometry Name node.

GEO NODES MEETS GREASE PENCIL

Geometry Nodes now work smoothly with Grease Pencil data, breaking it down into layers with curves and custom attributes. Updated nodes can now handle Grease Pencil data seamlessly, processing each layer separately.

Fan art by Daniel Martinez Lara of “Magical Cat” by Threadwood, drawn using Grease Pencil converted into mesh on-the-fly using Geometry Nodes for a “claymation” effect.

Hash Value

Hashes various types into an integer. Useful to generate stable randomness.

Integer Math

Provides building block support for integer operations

Introducing the Warning Node, which allows custom warnings to be added to node groups, allowing dynamic messaging directly on the interface.

BE ALERT

The display of warnings in the Geometry Nodes modifier has been reorganized. They are now in a panel and ordered by severity and alphabetically.

Bake node in use

Bakes created with the Bake node or Simulation zone can now be packed into the .blend file.

MORE GEOMETRY NODES

GREASE PENCIL

The Grease Pencil engine was completely rewritten for better performance and to remove deeper limitations.

Pencils down up.

Group Hug

Organize your layers into Layer Groups! A new way to keep your Grease Pencil objects tidy.

They allow for easy toggling of visibility, locking, and onion skinning for all the layers in the group.

Additionally, they can be color-coded using color tags, similar to Collections in the Outliner.

Filling Great

A new Fill Gradient tool is here!

Found in Edit Mode below the Interpolation tool, it lets users change the fill gradient (set in material settings) by selecting fill strokes and click-dragging with the Gradient tool.

Four eraser brushes available through the asset shelf.

No Trace Left Behind

The eraser has been rewritten to allow strokes to be “cut”.

Instead of just deleting points, it now correctly solves for the intersections of the eraser’s edge and creates new points on the stroke.

The Soft eraser also does this but for multiple levels of transparency radiating outwards from the center of the eraser.

MORE GREASE PENCIL

All Blender releases this year align with the VFX Reference Platform 2024, making integration and maintenance in studio pipelines easier.

With over a hundred default brushes and an improved interface, Blender 4.3’s new brush workflow makes management, customization, and sharing across projects easier than ever.

Asset shelf in the 3D Viewport while in mesh Sculpt mode.

Asset shelf in the 3D Viewport while in Grease Pencil Draw mode.

Brushes are now assets, making them easy to save, share, and reuse through the Asset Browser.

Organize custom libraries and access your favorite brushes across projects.

Duplicate, save, and edit medatada of brush assets.

AND MORE

USER INTERFACE

Dock-on
Dock-off

Introducing: Area Docking!

Tear an area into its own (now neatly named) window, or dock it back into another area.

Lots to Say

Tooltips now provide much more information than before.

Images display their resolution and color space, movies show their duration, and fonts include previews.

To improve accessibility, tooltips now have dedicated style settings for font size, weight, and shadows.

Clarity

A new theme option allows for enhanced highlights around an area when the mouse is over it, for better accessibility.

Non-active areas can also have a custom border color.

MORE UI

Blender 4.3 runs natively on Windows on Arm, thanks to integration by Qualcomm, which recently joined the Development Fund.

EVEN MORE SEQUENCER

GET THE ARTWORK

Blender splash artwork source files are available for you to play with, not only for Blender 4.3 but for previous versions as well.

Blender 4.3 splash artwork by Blender Studio

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE

Plus hundreds of bug fixes, code cleanups and refactors.
See the full list of changes.

CREDITS