A nice additional feature is that the Node editor now pans the view if you drag a connection to a side of the editor, similar to dragging and dropping something in a long list. Over in the Node Editors, the grid has been replaced with an array of dots that reminds me of notebook paper and the links are drawn with the same color as whatever socket they’re connected to. The Freestyle UI was overhauled to better match the rest of Blender and make it easier to add and edit the lines drawn on top of your renders. On MacOS, you can now input Japanese, Chinese, and Korean characters into text fields. If you’re using Windows, you can now make a certain version of Blender the default for your system in the user preferences and the console will no longer flash when you start Blender. The header and tool settings are swapped (which I think makes a lot more sense), blend file thumbnails are improved, Ctrl+F will open search when hovering over lists, UI text rendering is drastically faster, the custom properties popup has a lot more customizable options, gizmos no longer flash when using modal operators, instanced objects don’t have a different outline color anymore, and the Outliner has a new filter option for View Layers that allows you to see all of them at once. Splitting and joining editors is now much easier with a new Close Area operator in the right click context menu and the ability to drag from a corner to split other editors. The default theme got a few updates and is looking pretty slick, thanks in part to more padding around panels and rounded panel corners. Made for Blender beginners - or those needing a refresh - our Blender Basics course is free for everybody. New to Blender? Get Started with our BASICS course This new version of Blender isn’t as big of a jump as the 2.4 to 2.5 or the 2.7 to 2.8 overhauls, but it does mark a new era for Blender and there are quite a few new features worth talking about.

It’s because Blender has switched over to using semantic versioning, which is considered good practice for software development.

✨ New to Blender? Get started with our free BASICS course.

Blender 3.0 features