Blender 4.1 adds faster GPU ray-tracing, new geometry nodes including a bake node, better curve and hair editing, and a Split Viewer Node for before/after comparisons. The free, open-source software also got viewport speed improvements and a faster video editor.
Oh my. Creating virtual worlds, games, movies and avatars for video conferencing all got much easier and better because the new version of blender, the popular 3D modeling program 4.1 is now here. We talked about 4.0 which was an amazing leaping capabilities, but 4.1 is now here and it does so many things better. I don't even know where to start. Well, actually I do. You'll see in a moment. And before we start, note that Blender is completely free for all of us forever. You can get it right now. Dear fellow scholars, this is two minute papers with Dr. Zsolnai. Now I am a light transport researcher by trade, that is ray tracing if you will. So I was glued to the screen when seeing these amazing improvements in this area. Lets start there. For instance, these simulations are inherently noisy, but denoising algorithms exist that are specifically tailored for ray tracing. And these are now sped up a great deal in Blender 4.1 and they run on your graphics card. Previously you would have had to wait quite a bit for an image like this, and now this gives you usable results almost immediately. They have also added lots of new features to make geometry modeling easier. Better visibility in the viewport, a new system for editing and moving curves around for geometry and hair. And one of those changes is baking. Yes, you heard it right. Baking. They have introduced something that they call the bake node. So what does all this mean? Well, in Blender we can create new 3D objects where we don't really sculpt them, but instead build them with logical patterns, if you will. This is done through geometry nodes which can create interesting, incredibly detailed patterns. For instance here, the crevices of this surface are created from random numbers. Love it. However, for a big piece of detailed geometry, this takes a fair bit of computation which we have to perform over and over again. But not anymore. Imagine these nodes as ingredients for the cake. And now you don't have to bake that elaborate cake every time you want to do something with it. No sir. You can now bake that cake once and reuse it as many times as you wish. So cool. And did I tell you about the fact that there are even more kinds of geometry nodes in this version? Oh yeah. Also in Blender you can not only model these characters, but also animate them. It is now easier to move things around. Motion trajectories can be planned more conveniently and it is easier to select the bones of the characters for animation. And when you have a lot of these moving parts running at the same time, things could get a little sluggish on the overview screen, which is now much more performant. It is now easier to break up a big piece of geometry into smaller ones that we can now move independently. This is wonderful for text animations where it is easier to make every letter have its own life. Simulations can also be baked and we haven't even talked about the many small quality of life improvements. For instance, the user interface looks a little sleeker with rounded corners and drop shadows. Love it being able to select an object with its children components if you will. And more font customizability for the user interface and so much more. It has a seemingly endless list of small quality of life improvements that overall add up to a much nicer experience. But there is more. Don't forget. Blender also includes a compositor with image editing capabilities where you have cool filters to pixelate an image which works better now. And these you can use as textures for your models, inpaint them and so much more. And one of my favorites, the Split Viewer Node. This will be the king of before after comparisons. So caroj, are we done here? Nope, not at all. Get this. Blender also includes a video editor as well which has been sped up significantly. And all this for free. Free. Free for everyone. And it is open source so all of you fellow scholars can contribute. You can download it and play with it. It is one of the best open source projects ever. The link to it is available in the video description. And don't forget it has a bunch of demo showcase files so you don't have to start from a small cube and create everything from scratch. Look, there is so much to explore. I will also recommend that you check out BlendSwap for more free project files. And of course my friend Andrew Price, the king of donuts, also known as Blender Guru. He has legendary tutorials on how to make the tastiest donut the world has ever seen. It is aimed at complete beginners and is now updated to Blender 4. Check it out and now let the experiments begin. Experiment tracking, Model evaluation and production monitoring for your deep learning projects and LLM apps. This is what weights and Biases does and it is the best. Everyone is using it. Try it out now at WNB Me Papers or click the link in the description below.
