Blender 5.1: AMD Ray Tracing and +10% Speed

Today the Blender Foundation released the open source version of Blender 5.1. This is a major update to the free cross-platform 3D graphics software available on GNU/Linux, macOS and Windows. The release brought many innovations: from default AMD hardware ray tracing to new nodes and performance improvements, writes xrust. The update can already be downloaded from the official website.

Rendering and performance improvements

One of the main changes is the inclusion of hardware ray tracing for AMD GPUs via HIP RT right out of the box. Now AMD users do not need to manually enable extensions — everything works by default.

In various test scenes, GPU rendering performance increased by up to 10%. This is especially noticeable in complex projects with a lot of light sources and reflections.

In addition, a new F-curve modifier “Gaussian Smooth” has been added. It allows you to non-destructively smooth animation curves while preserving the original data. Animators will appreciate the ease of working with subtle character movements.

New features specifically for Linux

Linux users have received long-awaited support for opening windows without decorations in Wayland. Now you just need to add the —no-window-frame argument — and Blender stops depending on the libdecor library.

The use of TBB_MALLOC_PROXY for memory allocation has also been implemented. This speeds up the program on systems with a large amount of RAM and reduces the load on the processor during complex calculations.

Convenience in modeling and sculpting

class=»notranslate»>__GTAG7__ Blender 5.1 introduced an operator for replacing an action on several objects at once. This saves hours when working with large scenes.

Weight Paint mode now supports cycling during Vertex Selection. And in the Garland tool, the filling process has been completely redesigned — it has become more intuitive and faster.

Other new features include:

• support for snapping to the center of the face;
• new option for correcting normals with a logical operator in the Apply Object Transform panel;
• selection with lasso, rectangle and circle in curve sculpting mode;
• improved snapping (Ctrl) and accuracy (Shift) when creating a chamfer;
• new vertex sliding parameters.

Updates in Geometry Nodes and format support

The developers have added several powerful nodes at once:

• Mask To SDF — for calculating signed distance fields;
• Sequencer Strip Info;
• Index Switch, Radial Tiling, Boolean, Integer and Vector Input.

There is a new font connector, as well as full support for AVIF images. For audio output, you can now set the bitrate to 2048 kbps (previously the limit was 384 kbps).

Glare, Directional Blur, Lens Distortion, Anti-Alias, Blur and Vector Blur nodes have been accelerated in Compositor and animation — up to two times faster in real scenes.

Improvements for VR, animation and internal optimizations

For virtual reality, the rendering and behavior of Arc teleportation rays have been updated. Added a new view scaling property to the VR scene check settings, as well as Metal OpenXR graphics binding for full OpenXR support on macOS.

The “Apply to Basis” operator has appeared, which transfers the deformations of the shape keys to the base key and removes the unnecessary ones. The new Raycast node allows you to cast rays directly onto scene geometry.

Internal changes affected the animation system performance assessment, font filling for 3D text, and polygon filling speed. Added a runtime statistics overlay in the 3D viewport, an edge opacity slider in the UV editor, and a transparency score for the Shader To RGB node.

From this release, you can disable resource libraries individually. The Group node now performs implicit data conversion, and the Image and File Output nodes support custom metadata.

Instead of conclusion

Blender is powerful, free, open-source 3D modeling, animation, rendering and VFX software created in 1994 and taken over by the Blender Foundation in 2002 after a crowdfunding campaign. Since then, each release has significantly expanded the capabilities of the program, making it a real alternative to commercial solutions like Maya and 3ds Max. Blender 5.1 continues this tradition, offering professionals and hobbyists new tools without breaking the bank.

Sources: • Blender Foundation official website — https://www.blender.org/• Blender release notes 5.1 (official documentation)

Xrust Blender 5.1: AMD ray tracing and +10% speed