Originally released publicly in 2022, Goo Engine is a custom Blender build used in DillonGoo Studios' own online anime series. It adds a range of NPR-specific features to the open-source 3D software, including light groups and custom shader nodes in Eevee, Blender's real-time rendering engine. Upon release, DillonGoo Studios commented that its features would not be integrated into the main Blender branch, as they "could destabilize other features, such as Cycles," Blender's production renderer.
These features have now taken a step closer to the main version of Blender thanks to a new experimental or prototype version of the software. In fact, it has been available since September, but this week it received much more attention due to a video published on the Professor Goo YouTube channel. In the video, DillonGoo Studios founder Dillon Goo announces that the studio is "officially joining the Blender development team to create stylized rendering in Blender." Goo notes that this collaboration will lead to the "revival of stylized rendering." The lead developer of the Goo engine, Lateasusual (Chris Klein), will work with Blender's Eevee and viewport module developer Miguel Pozo on new features. One of the first results of this collaboration is already available, as DillonGoo Studios worked on light composition in Eevee, one of the key features of Blender 4.3, the latest stable version.
Like the official NPR prototype branch, DillonGoo Studios will continue developing Goo Engine. It is still based on Blender 4.1, the latest release of the software that includes an outdated version of Eevee, as well as the updated "Eevee Next" rendering version introduced in Blender 4.2. In the announcement video, Goo mentions that the version based on Blender 4.2 was "difficult to get up and running right now." Goo also announced that DillonGoo Studios will be working on an open film using the NPR features it is developing, similar to the official open films created by the Blender studio. Like the Goo engine itself, the project will be funded "primarily" through the DillonGoo Studios Patreon.
The Blender NPR prototype is currently available for download for Windows, Linux, and macOS as an experimental version. The current version is based on Blender 4.4, although NPR features are unlikely to be included in the stable release of Blender 4.4, which is currently scheduled for March 2025. In the announcement video, Dillon Goo commented that it was difficult to predict the timeline for integration into the main Blender branch, but it "could take two years."