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 <L=1 M=-1>, <L=1 M=0>, <L=1 M=1>, <L=2 M=-2> … where L is the band index and M is the basis function.

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

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.

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.

Ready to Spark

Blender 5.3 brings native support for NVIDIA RTX Spark devices running Windows 11, including memory optimizations.

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.

More in EEVEE & Viewport

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.

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.

• Blender 5.2
• Blender 5.3

• CPU

• NVIDIA GPU

• Apple GPU

• Relative time to process Anisotropic Kuwahara filter. Lower is better.

More in Compositor

Study the artwork

Blender splash artwork source files are available for you to play with!

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.

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 Blender.

Create and share your own asset library extension. Optionally, access can be controlled via authentication tokens.

GREASE PENCIL

Drawn to Select

Draw Mode now has its own selection tools: Tweak, Lasso, Box, and Circle. Select strokes and adjust them right where you draw.

Move, rotate, scale, duplicate, copy, paste, and delete strokes using the usual shortcuts, or access all these actions from the new Stroke menu.

Carve Diem

Meet the new Carver tool in Draw Mode.

It cuts shapes using proper Boolean subtraction, creating clean cuts in strokes and fills based on a lasso selection. Holes are created automatically when needed.

When a shape has both a stroke and a fill, carving a hole into it also creates a stroke around the hole. Fills that are split apart become separate shapes, making them easy to sculpt further.

One Tool to Fill Them All

The Fill tool can now fill multiple regions at once.

Simply draw a path across multiple regions to fill them all as a single shape, with no gaps or borders in between.

Ramp It Up

Gradient fills now use a ColorRamp input instead of being limited to just two colors.

Flip Out

Mirror the camera view horizontally with the new Flip View operator to evaluate the composition from a different perspective and spot asymmetry or visual imbalances.

This only affects the viewport display. It does not change the camera object’s transform or the final render, which remains unchanged. Use the operator again to restore the original orientation.

Flip View has no shortcut assigned by default, but you can assign your own through the right-click menu or add it to Quick Favorites (Q) for easy access.

I/O

USD Collection Importer

Collections can now be associated to importers.

Similar to the Collection Exporters introduced in Blender 4.2 LTS, Collection Importers make it easy to re-import data with a single click, without having to navigate menus or adjust settings repeatedly.

Configure them through the Importers panel under Collection Properties. Settings are stored in .blend files, making them easy to share and preserving them across Blender sessions.

Only the USD importer is supported in Blender 5.3.

See all USD, Alembic, glTF, OpenEXR, and other I/O changes.

VIDEO SEQUENCER

Cut to the chase

The Video Sequencer gets a full ripple editing framework, a rewritten blade tool, and a long list of editing, interface, and performance improvements, including initial OpenTimelineIO support.

Ripple,
Shuffle,
Overwrite

Welcome Ripple editing to Blender 5.3!

This new overlap mode automatically moves strips forward or backward as edits are made, maintaining timeline continuity without the need to manually close gaps.

Ripple, Shuffle, and Overwrite modes are now consistently used across editing operations. Switch between them while moving strips using R, S, and V.

Making Waves

Complete the ripple workflow with these handy operators:

Ripple Add: Hold Shift while dragging and dropping strips to insert them using ripple behavior, automatically making room in the timeline.

Ripple Trim: Trim selected strips at the playhead and automatically close the resulting gaps. Use Shift+Q or Shift+W to trim from either side.

Ripple Delete: Delete selected strips and move subsequent content back to close the gaps. Use Shift+X.

Cutting Edge: Blade 2.0

Splits are now visualized as a line when using Blade and as a region when using Box Blade. Tooltips display frame values at the split location, while a real-time preview shows the frame beneath the cursor.

Press and hold C in the timeline to temporarily activate the Blade tool.
Release it to switch back to the previously active tool.

But wait, there’s more: Hardware decoding, thumbnail support for Scene and other strips, OpenTImelineIO import and export, and much more.

USER INTERFACE

Search. Sort. Scribble.

Blender 5.3 gets more than a layer of polish. Long-awaited quality of life features and improvements that make this release take a leap in usability.

Sorted Out

Arrange your objects freely with custom sorting in the Outliner. Finally.

Switch back to alphabetical order from the header popover.

Plus improvements to filtering, drag-and-drop behavior, and hierarchy management.

Side Quest

Sidebars in all editors now support search, making it possible to find any property or operator, even inside tabs created by add-ons.

Press Ctrl/Cmd + F while hovering the sidebar and start typing right away, or through the context menu of the tabs and panels.

To clear the search, press Alt/Option + F.

Mark it Down

The Blender UI now supports rendering basic Markdown formatting.

In node editors, write markdown directly in the new Comment node, or in regular layouts for scripts/add-ons through the label_markdown widget. Another handy widget for long strings is label_multiline, it behaves just like labels but allows text to wrap.

But wait: IME support, improved tooltips, box-select gesture, browsable node editor context paths, better Attribute Viewer overlay, Curve widget selection, and more!

What’s Next?

Blender on tablets, texture layers, animation layers? Show your support for upcoming development projects and help shape the future of Blender.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE

Core

• Improved Undo.
• Linking & Appending improvements.
• See all Core changes.

Animation

• Copy Paste World Space
• Convert Rotation Mode
• Improved Playback.
• Pose changes.
• Rigify B-Bone segments.
• Batch rename Timeline Markers.
• See all Animation & Rigging changes.

Python API

• Access to all and selected markers.
• OpenEXR and OpenTimelineIO modules.
• Better color space interoperability.
• See all Python API changes.

Plus hundreds of bug fixes, code cleanups and refactors.
See the full list of changes.

CREDITS