Blender 5.3 released with Gaussian Splat support

Watch the Recap Video Make a Splat Welcome native 3D Gaussian Splats support to Blender 5.3! Import them as point clouds, experiment with Geometry Nodes, preview them in Workbench, and render them natively with EEVEE or Cycles. Gaussian Magic 3D Gaussian Splats are commonly used to reconstruct 3D scenes from photos or videos. They consist of many small, soft, transparent blobs that combine to represent complex geometry and shading. Blender can now import Gaussian Splats from PLY , SPZ , and glTF files, store them as point clouds, process them with Geometry Nodes, and render them in EEVEE, Cycles, and Workbench (solid mode). Point of View Gaussian splats are represented as point clouds, using a new type to tell them apart and with special attributes: scale : A vector represneting the size of the splat. rotation : A quaternion to control the rotation of the splat. radiance:base : 4D Vector as base (DC) radiance of the splats, followed by opacity. radiance:sh_{index} : Coefficients of the spherical harmonics bands >= 1. The order is , , , … where L is the band index and M is the basis function. Read Manual Radiant Future By default, a 3D Gaussian Splat is rendered using an emissive shader. The radiance attribute provides access to the resolved radiance of the splat at the current shading point. There is rudimentary support for making the splat relightable by replacing the Emission node with a hard surface BSDF such as Diffuse BSDF. Performance is still being optimized. Rendering may produce inaccuracies due to differences between the sRGB space used by most Gaussian Splat authoring tools and Blender’s linear color space, particularly in areas with low opacity and high radiance. More About Shading Added support for seven Geometry Nodes Improved color management interoperability See all rendering changes CYCLES Divide and Shine The Principled BSDF now supports Dispersion ! Turn ordinary glass and diamonds into beautiful little rainbows by splitting white light into its colorful components. CYCLES A diamond in the Rough With Dispersion in the Transmission panel, the Principled BSDF can now reproduce the characteristic rainbow effect seen in glass and gemstones. This corresponds to OpenPBR v1.1.1. Roughness anisotropy is also now supported by the Glass BSDF and the transmission component of the Principled BSDF. It behaves just like anisotropy for specular reflections. Read Manual CYCLES Gone with Denoise Blender 5.3 integrates DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction as a new denoiser, delivering cleaner images faster by upscaling and reusing samples from previous frames. Think Cycles looks with EEVEE responsiveness. NVIDIA DLSS brings near-final render quality to the viewport, making lighting and look development faster and more responsive while virtually eliminating flickering between frames during animation playback. Find it in the Denoise panel under Render properties, Sampling. DLSS denoising requires NVIDIA driver version 620 or newer. Learn More Ready to Spark Blender 5.3 brings native support for NVIDIA RTX Spark devices running Windows 11, including memory optimizations. Learn More EEVEE Lights Meet Material Nodes Material Lighting nodes allow authoring how the Material reacts to Lights. This can, for example, be used for toon and stylized shading, but also for complex physical effects like iridescence. Lighting to Your Liking Per-light data, evaluation, and shadow information are now available in the Shader Editor, giving you more control over how materials respond to individual scene lights. Four new nodes and two that received a “Light” mode/space: Light Accumulation : Evaluates its inputs for each light in the scene and accumulates the results. Light Info : Exposes light data properties (Color, Power, and Position). Light Evaluation : Evaluates position-dependent light properties (Diffuse/Specular Term, Attenuation Mask, Direction, and Distance). Shadow Raycast : Outputs a shadow mask value for the light being shaded. Attribute (Light Mode) : Queries custom properties from the Light Object or Light Data being evaluated. Vector Transform (Light Space) : Transforms coordinates to and from the local space of the light being evaluated. A Wider Perspective EEVEE can now render panoramic cameras, supporting all types of projections, from equirectangular and cubemap formats to various fisheye models and mirror ball. The current implementation has a few limitations: depth of field, raytracing, and volumetric temporal reprojection in the viewport are not yet supported. Learn More More in EEVEE & Viewport Sky Texture now shows Sun Disc Vulkan is now default Raytraced Shadows in Workbench See all EEVEE & Viewport changes COMPOSITOR Side Effects You can now stack Effects on your scene just like you would modifiers or constraints. Applying compositing effects has never been easier. One-click, Bloom ! Choose from built-in effects such as Bloom , Chromatic Aberration , Film Grain , and Vignette , as well as effects from online asset libraries or your own custom compositor node groups. Internally, each effect is its own node group, with its output passed on to the next effect. You can further customize effects at any time in the Compositor editor. Read Manual COMPOSITOR Bundle Up 17 Geometry Nodes are now supported in the Compositor, bringing a range of new capabilities across bundles , math and logic, and utility operations. This includes bundle support with Get Bundle Item , Store Bundle Item , Combine Bundle , Typed Bundle , and Separate Bundle . Math and logic nodes such as Boolean Math , Compare , Float to Integer , Integer Math , Matrix SVD , Combine Transform , and Separate Transform . Plus utility nodes including Hash Value , Random Value , Is Viewport , Import Text , and Bone Info . See All Compositing Nodes Play Fast Playback is now up to 2x faster on GPU, particularly when playing back EXR sequences. The interactive compositor now supports playback caching . It can be enabled from the sidebar, Options panel. Anisotropic Kuwahara is now up to 10x faster on Apple GPUs, 2x faster on NVIDIA GPUs, and 25-30% on CPU. Blender 5.2 Blender 5.3 CPU NVIDIA GPU Apple GPU Relative time to process Anisotropic Kuwahara filter. Lower is better. More in Compositor Blend name as default file output name Text Info overlay Gizmos support for transform nodes See all Compositing changes Study the artwork Blender splash artwork source files are available for you to play with! Download Blend File (337 MB) More Splash Blend Files CORE Blender, meet projects . Until now, Blender’s preferences (such as asset libraries) were shared across all projects, and it was up to users to keep related files and resources organized. Blender now supports projects, giving you a way to group related files, share resources, and manage settings across an entire project, whether you’re working alone or as part of a team. Everything Everywhere All In a Project Projects support custom variables that can be used throughout a project, such as a character’s name or a frequently used file path. Per-project asset libraries and color management configurations are also supported. You can even set up a custom splash screen for your project, providing quick access to its files and other recent projects. Add-ons and other extensions per-project will follow in future Blender versions. Projects are entirely optional, most of the time you’ll probably work without one. Learn More ASSETS Asset Libraries ♥ Extensions Asset libraries can now be shared as extensions! Just like add-ons or themes. Browse hundreds of public domain assets available on the Extensions platform via the Get Extensions tab and install them directly from within Blende