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Blender 4.1 is here, bringing with it improvements aimed at quality of life and performance.

The update might not be quite as expansive as the jump to Blender 4.0, but it is nevertheless large in scope – and, once again, too long to list in full. That said, there seems to be something for everyone.

There are a handful of new Geometry Nodes, for example, headlined by a “Menu Switch” node that allows users to create customized dropdown “enum” menus. Existing Geometry Nodes have also received some attention, by way of improvements such as support for node tools in Object Mode and a speed boost to the Extrude Mesh node, which Blender says enables it to work up to six times faster – plus other tweaks and optimizations.

Moving on, the viewport compositor now supports the Cryptomatte, Defocus, Vector Blur and Keying Screen nodes. There’s also a new option on the Performance panel, with which users can toggle between “Full” and “Automatic” precision. The Full option leverages full precision in the viewport and renders, with Automatic using half, but running faster and using less memory.

Improvements to animation keying help users streamline their workflows – by generating Motion Paths in screen space from the camera view, for one, or via a new selection mode that lets them “easily switch bones without leaving Weight Paint mode”.

Blender also says the Video Sequencer is faster, with image filtering improvements that aim to make editing a smoother process.

Speaking of speed, the update places a great deal of focus on how quickly users can work within the software. Timeline drawing, movie writing and reader, the glow effect, the wipe effect, Gamma Cross, Gaussian Blur – all (and more) will now work faster, Blender says, resulting in an “across the board” improvement.

Rounding out the update are new features for Universal Scene Description (USD), with Blender 4.1 giving users the ability to “export armatures and shape keys as USD skeletons and blend shapes”, among several other improvements and additions.

Like the release of its predecessor, familiarizing yourself with the ins and outs of Blender 4.1 will require a bit of a time commitment on your end, although there is a helpful overview video on the update’s release notes page.

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License: The text of "Blender Releases Large-Scale Version 4.1 Update" by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.