3/20/25

The release of Blender 4.4

Blender Soft

Blender 4.4 is the new release of the free 3D editor for creating visual effects, animation, games, and visualization. This release focuses on improving workflows and fixing bugs, without major new features, but with important changes including a revamped compositor, updates to animation, sculpting, geometry nodes, Cycles and Eevee renders, as well as the video editor. Below are five key features in Blender 4.4 worth noting.

1. Animation: Streamlining the workflow with Action Slots

Many of the key changes in Blender 4.4 have already been implemented. One of the most important is the change in the structure of actions – data blocks used to store animation data. Actions now have slots, which allows for storing multiple types of data within a single action. As a result, a single action can now store more complex animations: for example, an object that changes color as it moves can be represented using separate slots for its position and material. This change should simplify the workflow when animating cameras, as shown in the image above, and materials, where the material and its shader node tree can have separate slots.
Additionally, it is now possible to combine animations of multiple objects into a single action or split intervals of a single action into multiple ones, providing more flexibility. The change in how animation data is stored in Blender was one of the first major proposals under the Animation 2025 project, which is an ongoing review of character setup and animation tools in Blender. While the initial idea was to replace actions with a new type of animation data block, this change introduces a new Python API and is not fully backward compatible, though existing .blend files should automatically update when imported.

2. Viewport Rendering: Major update to the Vulkan backend
The Vulkan backend, introduced in Blender 4.1 for rendering the user interface and viewport, has received a "significant performance, stability, and compatibility boost." The startup time, from scene loading to the appearance of the final viewport window, is now approximately 5 times faster than the OpenGL backend during a cold start and 2 times faster during a warm start. Vulkan is also now used for displaying the results of Cycles rendering, Blender's production renderer, although it is not yet used for running Cycles, which is still described in the online documentation as "non-viable."
The Vulkan backend is supported on relatively older GPUs: NVIDIA's 10-year-old GeForce GTX 900 series and AMD's 8-year-old Radeon 400 series are supported on both Windows and Linux. However, this feature remains experimental: it lacks support for key features such as OpenEXR and OpenSubdiv, and animation performance still requires improvement.

3. Compositing: Faster composition creation with CPU and updated Glare node

Another internal change in Blender 4.4 is the overhaul of the CPU compositor (the original compositor, not the new Viewport Compositor introduced in Blender 3.5). This work was done in preparation for future updates but also brought a significant speed boost: key nodes, including blur, filter, and mask nodes, now operate 2 to 10 times faster. The Glare node, used for adding flares and glow effects to images, has also become more user-friendly: a preview of the changes can be seen in the video above.

4. Workflow Integration: Support for the VFX Reference Platform CY2025

For visual effects and animation studios, an important update in Blender 4.4 is the compliance with the CY2025 specification for the VFX Reference Platform. This standard, curated by the Visual Effects Society, is updated annually and aims to ensure the use of consistent versions of key libraries across visual effects production tools. Previously, the Blender Foundation considered discontinuing support for the platform, but in 2022, the decision was reversed, and full compliance with the standard was restored in Blender 4.0.

5. And Bug Fixes: A multitude of corrections

One of the key tasks of Blender 4.4 was fixing bugs rather than adding major new features – so much so that we’ve included bug fixes in the list of the five main changes. According to a recent blog post from the Blender developers, over 500 bug reports were addressed in January alone as part of the "Winter of Quality" initiative. The most fixes were made to the Grease Pencil – the 2D animation and storyboard tool, which was significantly revamped in Blender 4.3. The interface, viewport, and Geometry Nodes system also received over 70 fixes each.

Blender 4.4 also brings numerous small but important improvements. The interface has become more user-friendly: fonts, tooltips, and panels have been updated, and the status bar now warns about issues like negative object scaling. In 3D modeling, topology handling has been improved: you can now select vertices with three and five poles, and merge triangles into quads. In sculpting, the Flatten, Fill, and Scrape brushes have been combined into one – the Plane Brush.

Geometry Nodes received new Collection and Object nodes, and rigging now correctly mirrors bone collections. For animators, the export of poses from the Pose Library has been simplified. Cycles has been updated to work with the new version of NVIDIA OptiX denoiser, improving noise reduction on older GPUs. Grease Pencil has restored functions lost after the last major update. The video editor now supports the H.265/HEVC codec and 10-/12-bit video formats, and renders use the BT.709 color space for HDTV.

Blender 4.4 is compatible with Windows 8.1, macOS 11.2, and Linux with glibc 2.28 or newer versions of the listed software.

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