18. March 2025
Blender 4.4 Features & Release
Hey, Blender fans! 🎨
Excellent point. Over-promising can lead to disappointment, which is the last thing a struggling artist needs. This version is grounded in realism while still being encouraging and focused on tangible benefits.
Revised Version: More Grounded and Realistic
Blender 4.4 is Here, With a Focus on Stability
Less unexpected crashes! Released on March 18, 2025, Blender 4.4 isn’t about adding a dozen complex new features. Instead, it’s the result of the “Winter of Quality” initiative, an effort focused entirely on making the software you already use more stable, faster, and more reliable.
So, what are the practical improvements for your daily grind?
A Big Step Towards Stability: The team has resolved over 700 bugs. While no software is perfect, this major cleanup effort is aimed at reducing those frustrating interruptions. This means a more predictable environment where you can trust the tool and stay in your creative flow for longer.
A More Organized Animation Workflow: Tired of losing track of different takes in the NLA editor? The new Action Slots introduce a more structured way to manage, swap, and experiment with your animations, helping to clean up a process that can often feel chaotic.
A Faster Compositor for Everyone: You don’t need a top-of-the-line PC to notice this improvement. The compositor has been rebuilt to run significantly faster on your CPU. For you, this means smoother previews and quicker final renders for your still images and animations.
Grease Pencil Gets Key Features Back: If you’re a user of Grease Pencil 3.0 and felt like some important tools went missing, this update restores key functionalities, making the 2D/3D workflow feel more complete and familiar again.
Table of Contents
- Release Schedule
- Animation & Rigging: Action Slots
- Grease Pencil 3.0: Fixes & Restorations
- Compositor: Performance & Glare Node
- Video Sequencer: Faster Editing & HEVC Support
- Modeling & UV
- Sculpt, Paint, Texture
- Cycles Rendering Improvements
- EEVEE & Viewport Enhancements
- Geometry Nodes
- User Interface
- Core & Pipeline
Release Schedule
| Phase | Stage | Description | Date | Branch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bcon1 | Alpha | New features and changes | December 2024 | main |
| Bcon3 | Beta | Bug fixing only | February 5, 2025 | blender-v4.4-release |
| Bcon4 | Release Candidate | Prepare release | March 12, 2025 | blender-v4.4-release |
| Bcon5 | Release | Official release | March 18, 2025 | blender-v4.4-release |
Animation & Rigging: Action Slots
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Action Slots System | A major workflow enhancement that allows for easier management of animation data. You can organize distinct parts of an animation into named slots, similar to material slots. |
| Automatic Upgrades | Actions from older Blender files are automatically upgraded to slotted actions and placed in a “Legacy Slot” when opened in Blender 4.4. |
| Shared Actions | Blender now attempts to share Actions between related data-blocks, such as a mesh object’s location and its shape key values. |
| Pose Library Enhancements | The Pose Library now offers a smoother workflow when working with Pose Assets. |
| Symmetrize Bone Collections | Bone collection membership is now mirrored when symmetrizing an armature. |
Grease Pencil 3.0: Fixes & Restorations
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Feature Restorations | Many beloved features depreciated in the initial Grease Pencil 3.0 release have been restored to fix bugs and improve backward compatibility. |
| Simplify Functions Return | Stroke optimization functions like ‘Fixed’ and ‘Merge’ have been brought back. |
| Smooth Points Restored | The ‘Smooth Points’ operator is now available again in the edit point contextual menu for refining strokes. |
| Stroke Placement & Auto-Masking | Stroke Placement has been restored in Draw Mode and Auto-Masking is back in Sculpt Mode, enhancing precision. |
| Layer Group Commands | Layer groups now correctly respond to commands like ‘Show/Hide All’ and ‘Lock/Unlock All’. |
| Solid Shading Mode | Solid Shading Mode now correctly displays color attributes when the Color is set to “Attribute”. |
Compositor: Performance & Glare Node
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Rewritten CPU Compositor | The CPU compositor has been rewritten, leading to significant performance improvements, better caching, and reduced memory usage. |
| Overhauled Glare Node | The Glare node has been completely updated to offer a better user experience with more flexible and refined controls for threshold, smoothness, strength, and saturation. |
| Denoise Node Improvements | The Denoise node now allows users to better balance quality and speed during rendering. |
| Integer Socket Support | The compositor now supports integer sockets for more precise control. |
| More Accurate Blur | The Blur node now features a much more accurate Fast Gaussian mode. |
Video Sequencer: Faster Editing & HEVC Support
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Direct Text Editing | Text strips can now be edited directly in the preview window, with new options for alignment and rounded corners for backgrounds. |
| Performance Upgrades | Significant speed enhancements for image sequence proxies, HDR content playback, text strip backgrounds, and several modifiers. |
| H.265 / HEVC Support | Blender now supports rendering videos using the H.265/HEVC codec. |
| Improved Color Accuracy | Videos are now rendered in the BT.709 color space to prevent inconsistencies, and YUV to RGB conversion is more accurate, fixing color shifts. |
| Higher Bit Depth Support | Blender now supports reading and rendering 10 and 12-bit per channel videos for supported codecs. |
Modeling & UV
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Enhanced Topology Control | A new “Select by Trait” option enables selection by poles. |
| Improved Tris to Quads | The Tris to Quads operation now better favors creating quad topology, giving users more control over mesh structures. |
| Non-Destructive Transformations | Scale and translate transformations are now applied only when necessary, reducing processing overhead. |
Sculpt, Paint, Texture
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| New Brush Type | A new brush has been added to the sculpting toolset. |
| Quality of Life Fixes | This release focused heavily on bug fixes, with 45 issues resolved in the Sculpt, Paint & Texture module. |
Cycles Rendering Improvements
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Improved Denoising & Speed | Cycles receives significant performance boosts and improved denoising capabilities. |
| New GPU Support | Initial support for GeForce RTX 50 series and AMD RX 9000 series (RDNA4) GPUs. |
| ROCm/HIP Support Update | The backend has been updated to support ROCm/HIP 6.2.4, improving performance on AMD GPUs. |
| New Shaders | New shaders have been added, including support for Subsurface Scattering (SSS) with refraction. |
EEVEE & Viewport Enhancements
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Vulkan Performance | The Vulkan backend now handles large amounts of data more efficiently. |
| Bug Fixes & Stability | Several bugs have been fixed to improve the stability and performance of the real-time rendering engine. |
| Extended sRGB Support | Enhanced support for sRGB color spaces has been added. |
Geometry Nodes
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Workflow Enhancements | New features have been added to allow for more complex procedural workflows, offering greater flexibility and creativity. |
| Bug Fixes | A total of 80 issues were resolved for Nodes & Physics as part of the “Winter of Quality” focus. |
User Interface
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Asset Browser Sorting | The Asset Browser now sorts by Asset Catalog by default. |
| Asset Preview Removal | You can now remove an asset’s preview image in the sidebar if needed. |
| Icon Update | The Material Properties icon has been flipped to differentiate it more clearly from the World Properties icon. |
| Status Bar Improvements | The status bar has received several improvements for better usability. |
Core & Pipeline
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Winter of Quality | This release is defined by a focus on stability, with developers fixing over 700 reported issues and addressing technical debt. |
| VFX Reference Platform 2025 | All libraries used in Blender 4.4 are aligned with the VFX Reference Platform 2025, simplifying integration into studio pipelines. |
Download Blender 4.4 and start creating with all these awesome new improvements! 👉 Blender 4.4 Release.
If you struggle with complex scenes check out my Ultimate Blender Performance Guide!
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