Currently available in release candidate form, if all things go according to plan on November 14th Blender 4.0 should be released. Just a mere five months after the release of Blender 3.6 the Blender 4 release is packed with new features.
In the video below we highlight some of the most exciting new features of Blender 4.0 including:
Snapping & Camera Improvements
While these sound minor, they will have a huge impact on how works is done in Blender. Now you can hit the B key while in edit mode and dynamically select a snapping element (face, vertex, etc). Additionally you can hold down alt and have full control over the camera while transforming, scaling and rotating objects.
Light Linking
A long requested feature and a glaring absence in Blender’s feature list, light linking is now available. This gives you fine tune control over how lights interact with objects in your scene.
Geometry Node Tools
This one is so exciting we did a video specifically dedicated to it. The world of geometry nodes have been extended to add tools in addition to modifiers. This enables developers to easily create add-ons that work in edit mode in a “one and done” fashion. This should open up tools development to a whole new audience and requires no Python or C++ programming.
AgX
There is a new color mode, AgX, which handles lights better than the existing Filmic option it is intended to replace.
Realtime Viewport Compositing
A feature added in Blender 3.6, the capabilities of real-time viewport compositing continue to improve with several more nodes supported, including the new Kuwahara node, which makes creating painterly effects a breeze.
BSDF Shader Improvements
The UI and functionality of the BSDF shader node has been cleaned up and new features such as improvements to sheen have been added.
Key Links
You can learn more about Blender 4.0 release and see all of the above new features in action in the video below.