The new version of Blender 2.83 its launch was announced a few days ago and this new version includes more than 1250 fixes and improvements prepared three months after the release of Blender 2.82.
This version of Blender 2.83 is marked as the first LTS version in the history of the project, which can be considered as a stable base, updates with the elimination of serious errors for which they are formed within two years.
It is planned to continue with a similar practice in the following branches. For example, after Blender 2.83, the development of the Blender 2.9x branch began, within the framework of which it is planned to publish four versions: 2.90, 2.91, 2.92 and 2.93. Version 2.93, like 2.83, will be LTS.
In 2021, version 3.0 is planned to be released, which will mark the transition to a new continuous numbering scheme for problems.
What's new in Blender 2.83?
The main focus in preparing the new version focused on performance optimization, in which the work of undo, pencil drawing and preview was sped up. Adaptive sampling support has been added to the Cycles engine.
Also added new sculpting modeling tools Cloth brush and face sets, a noise reduction system with support for NVIDIA RTX accelerators was implemented.
We can also find the support for importing and rendering OpenVDB files. Blender can generate OpenVDB files from the cache of a gas, smoke, fire and liquid simulation system, or transfer them from external applications like Houdini.
The OpenVDB format was proposed by DreamWorks Animatio and enables you to efficiently store and manipulate discrete sparse volumetric data in three-dimensional grids.
Another important change is the initial support for virtual reality, so far limited by the ability to inspect 3D scenes using VR headsets directly from Blender (in view mode only, content switching is not yet supported).
The support is based on the implementation of the OpenXR standard, which defines a universal API for creating virtual and augmented reality applications, as well as a set of layers for interacting with computers that summarize the characteristics of specific devices.
And motor Cycles implements the ability to use the mechanism of OptiX noise suppression in 3D Viewport during preview, as well as in the final rendering.
The implementation Grease Pencil has been completely rewritten. In general the toolkit has become much faster and better integrated with Blender.
When manipulating objects in Grease Pencil, now the usual workflow is used, which is also used when working with polygon meshes in Blender. Border colors are not limited to a single material and each color can have its own color. A new rendering engine has been added to provide a combination of skins.
The rendering engine Eevee, adds support for 10 additional passes for composition. Updating the lighting cache implementation allowed us to get rid of artifacts in the seams and the effect of stretching the fabric.
On the part of the improved functions of the built-in video editor an implementation of disk cache is highlighted, which allows to store cached frames not in RAM, but on disk. Bands provide support for opacity and the ability to preview sound. Added a new panel to adjust the last operation.
Many modifiers have been expanded and updated, including Corrective Smooth, Ocean, Remesh, Solidify, Surface Deform, and Warp.
In 3D Viewport, operations for selecting a large number of small objects have been improved and the color management system has been redesigned (compositing is now done in a linear color space).
How to install Blender 2.83 in Ubuntu and derivatives?
For those who are interested in being able to install this new version of Blender, they will be able to do it from its Snap package.
For the installation, it is enough to have the Snap support in the system and in a terminal type the command:
sudo snap install blender --classic