Blender 5.3 released with Gaussian Splat support

Watch the Recap Video Make a Splat Gaussian Magic Point of View Radiant Future More About Shading CYCLES Divide and Shine CYCLES A diamond in the Rough CYCLES Gone with Denoise 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. EEVEE Lights Meet Material Nodes Lighting to Your Liking 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. Play Fast Playback is now up to 2x faster on GPU, particularly when playing back EXR sequences. The interactive compositor now supports playback caching. It can be enabled from the sidebar, Options panel. Anisotropic Kuwahara is now up to 10x faster on Apple GPUs, 2x faster on NVIDIA GPUs, and 25-30% on CPU. 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. 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. 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 Plus hundreds of bug fixes, code cleanups and refactors. See the full list of changes. CREDITS Blender is a community project. Learn more on how you can contribute to Blender. List of developers who contributed to Blender 5.3 and all-time contributors. Splash artwork: OVERGROWN, by Blender Studio Cycles diamonds render by Chris Tyler. Butterflies specter shader by Cartesian Caramel. Grease Pencil drawings by Vivien Lulkowski from Blender Studio, Cowboi and Storm by Blender Studio. Huge thanks to everyone involved! 🧡 The Blender team. November 10, 2026