Blender releases its latest major version 2.83 as a first-ever long term support release. That means you get the stability and consistency in your graphics project for a long two years.
Many of you are already aware that Blender is one of the free and open-source professional-grade graphic design software which is capable of doing almost everything that you need for your graphics project.
Using Blender you can create animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, motion graphics, interactive 3D applications, and computer games. Blender’s features include 3D modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, raster graphics editing, rigging and skinning, fluid and smoke simulation, particle simulation, soft body simulation, sculpting, animating, match moving, rendering, motion graphics, video editing, and compositing.
What’s New in Blender 2.83
Coming back to the release, along with the LTS release announcement, Blender 2.83 brings a massive set of changes and fixes approx 1250 bugs. Major new features include:
- OpenVDB file import support
- VR Suport powered by OpenXR
- Blender Cycles supports denoising inside the viewport with NVIDIA OptiX™ AI-Accelerated Denoiser
- Sculpt realistic wrinkles with the new Cloth Brush
- Mesh filters and brush improvements
- Sculpt Face Sets
… and many more features. Check out the release highlights here.
More about LTS
With the LTS release, Blender targets for those long term projects, organizations who want stable graphic design software in their stack, and not jumping around versions in every quarter per se.
Hence, with Blender 2.83 you get two years of support with critical bug fixes. But there’s a catch. This LTS version will not have any new features, API changes, or improvements and only critical bugs would be fixed.
So, there will be two development branches in Blender. The LTS version would be a stable version and Blender 2.9 will be a more bleeding-edge version with the latest new features and additions. All critical bugs from 2.9 would be backported to 2.83. Fair enough.
This release cadence is better for many ways and currently followed by major open-source projects like Ubuntu and LibreOffice.
Download Blender 2.83 LTS and Install
Blender 2.83 is immediately available for download for Linux, Mac, and Windows. For Linux, a stand-alone snap package also available. Check out the download options using the below link.
So, what is your opinion about the new release model for Blender? I think it will help a lot of users and organizations who are depending on the Blender for their long term projects.
