New Features of Blender 3.6

Main image: Blender 3.6’s splash screen art: a still from new Blender open movie Pet Projects.

The Blender Foundation has released Blender 3.6, the latest version of the open-source 3D software, and its latest long-term support release.

It’s a significant update, with new features ranging from the long-awaited node-based simulation system to support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing on AMD and Intel GPUs.

Here are some new features:

• The Geometry Nodes project takes a leap with initial support for simulations.
• Simulation is defined by the “Simulation Zone”, connecting the Simulation Input and Output.
• The Simulation Output node saves the state for the next frame.Simulation results can be cached or baked to storage, this is controlled via a new “Simulation Nodes” panel in the physics tab in the Properties editor.
• The baked or cached results can be visualized in the Timeline editor, together with other types of caches.
• The color of the simulation cache matches the Simulation Zone in the nodes editor.

Simulations can be interacted with in realtime, simply hit play and move your objects around!