Blender 5.2 LTS

Geometry Nodes

Music to your Nodes

Bevel and be well
A new node enters the chat: Mesh Bevel. The long awaited power of detailed procedural control over the edges or vertices.

Effectors
New node-based dynamics come with a bunch of built-in effectors for effortless gravity and/or surface collision application. In 5.2 LTS, three types of customisable effectors are available:

Tag & Filter
Tag-based filtering system for effectors is also here to easily determine which geometries they affect. Each simulated geometry can have multiple tags for the effector to specify which tags it should affect.

Physics: Solved
Reimagined, node based: Blender 5.2 LTS introduces a brand new procedural approach to physics for hair and cloth simulations.

What the community is creating with node-based physics

• Vegetation interaction test render with the new #blender 5.2 Alpha Cloth Dynamics node in #geometrynodes and rendered with #b3d Cycles - Kevin Lim Wanasili (@cgman) May 20, 2026
• Animated hippo 3D model from Sketchfab pic.twitter.com/bBAeHrSO63
• Testing a bit more of the new cloth simulation in #geometrynodes on Blender 5.2, really cool, optimized, and above all very customizable! #b3d #clothsim pic.twitter.com/lDMtM09m4d - Wender Silva (@wendervfx) June 29, 2026
• Cloth sim experiment #b3d #geometrynodes pic.twitter.com/p8B6fM90x9 - Cartesian Caramel (@Cartesian_C) June 17, 2026
• all done :) i learned a lot about the new cloth solver nodes. these are exciting times! pic.twitter.com/WKuqbgl1IH - ashlee! COMMS OPEN (@ashlee3dee) May 18, 2026

Bundle Up
Blender 5.0 introduced the concept of bundles, which can now be attached to geometry to carry arbitrary data across modifier and object boundaries. Use new Get Geometry Bundle and Set Geometry Bundle nodes to unlock new workflows and possibilities.

Cycles

Cached In
On scenes with many image textures, the new Texture Cache significantly reduces memory usage and startup time by automatically generating smaller, optimized texture files that load only the tiles and resolutions needed for rendering.

Easy Savings
One toggle, loads of memory savings. Under Performance → Texture Cache, enable Auto Generate or click Generate. A corresponding .tx file will be generated for each image and automatically updated whenever the image file is modified. Memory savings and performance improvements are highly scene-dependent. Using Texture Cache comes at the cost of a small rendering performance impact and increased disk space usage.

Paper-thin wall
When Thin Wall is enabled, the surface is treated as a slab with its layers mirrored around the base, and the thickness is assumed to be zero. Render by Christopher 3D. This new mode provides a more accurate approximation of thin transparent and translucent materials, combining reflection and transmission for thin glass surfaces, and diffuse and translucent scattering for thin subsurface materials. Render by Christopher 3D.

Color Management

Awesome in Space
Organized color spaces into menus, adding new input color spaces for Apple, ARRI, Blackmagic Design, Canon, and Sony cameras, as well as support for Adobe RGB, common gamma values, and wide gamut textures.

More Cycles & Rendering

• Added: negative anisotropy support for Subsurface BSDF and Principled BSDF's Subsurface component.
• The Random Walk radius scaling and anisotropy to albedo mapping adjustments for matching other renderers better.
• Added: Cast Shadows options for World.
• Geometry memory usage optimization and improved sync performance.
• Raycast Node: Access to custom attributes at intersection point.

EEVEE

Eevolved

What's New

• 2x speed-up in instance-heavy scenes
• Reduced banding using dithering
• Removed limit of 8 attributes per material
• Support for Normal Map Base
• Added Raycast visibility toggle
• Added 1.5GB and 2GB Shadow Pool sizes
• Added Camera visibility for lights
• Plane Light Probes now support Blended materials and Shader to RGB
• Improved consistency rendering across platforms
• Added Anisotropic Filtering

Behind the Screen
The new Backface option under Screen Tracing controls how rays that intersect the back faces of visible geometry are handled. When enabled, intersections with back faces are treated as valid hits instead of misses. This can reduce light leaking when using screen-space global illumination, and lets you fine-tune the appearance of global illumination. It affects both Screen Space GI and Fast GI Approximation.

• Both front and back faces contribute to global illumination (slider at 1.0)
• Only front faces affect global illumination (slider at 0.0)
• Use it for compatibility with old renders.

What Got Better

• Screen Space Raytracing overhaul
• Principled BSDF sheen accounts for Coat normal
• Critical Fast GI issues fixed
• Shadow visibility fixes
• Depth of Field bokeh fixes
• Shadow artifacts fixes
• Faster and less noisy Fast GI
• Fixed light culling at shallow FoV angles
• Light render passes consistency with Cycles
• Motion blur fixes
• Volume shader compilation fixes
• Improved Refraction BSDF light evaluation
• Improved Vector Transform normals on non-uniform scale objects
• Mix node consistency with Cycles
• Subsurface Scattering indirect lighting fixes
• See all changes in EEVEE & Viewport

Assets

Essentials On Demand

Dozens of new parametric materials, compositing effects, HDR world backgrounds, Geometry Nodes setups, and many more assets have been added to the Essentials library. The best part? Blender isn't any larger. These new assets are hosted online, ready for download whenever you need them.

Make Them Yours
Watch this demo on customizing online assets by Simon from Blender Studio

Host Your Own
Need more? Host your own or add your favorite creator's online asset libraries. Smart indexing makes browsing thousands of assets a breeze. Keep your assets up to date with a single click.

Compositor

New nodes, unlimited possibilities. Do more in the Compositor with six new socket types supported: Matrix, Rotation, String, Object, Font, and Integer Vector. Plus 35 new nodes all-around, from string manipulation to many of which will already be familiar to Geometry Nodes users.

Instant Looks
Whether you're after a realistic filmic finish or a hand-painted watercolor or oil painting style, the new compositing assets provide a quick starting point for a wide range of looks. Additionally, you'll find new utility node groups that can be used as building blocks or incorporated into your own setups.

• 3D to Screen Space: transform 3D coordinates from world to normalized camera space. The inverse is available as Screen to 3D Space. Use it, for example, to drive the Sun Beams position with a 3D object.
• Transform and Project: lower level generalised variation of 3D to Screen Space that inputs from Transform and Projection to compute coordinates.
• Project with Depth: transforms 2D coordinates with their corresponding depth into a 3D vector.

Gizmos Go Further
Compositor gizmos now support auto keying. Transforming a gizmo will automatically insert keyframes, providing a direct way to animate compositing setups from the backdrop or the Image Editor, which now supports gizmos too! As for the viewer gizmo, it now follows the image display offset, so handles stay aligned with the backdrop as you pan and zoom.

More in Compositor

• Much more responsive interactive compositor.
• Switch nodes with a fixed condition (unconnected or directly connected to Group Input) now use lazy evaluation, saving execution time.
• The Distance Threshold mode of the Dilate/Erode node is now faster for relatively large sizes, with execution time independent of the size or inset inputs.
• The Group Output node now displays the total execution time of the node tree.
• Anisotropic sampling now works with Transform nodes and can be used for higher quality scaling down. Previously, it silently used Bi-Cubic sampling.
• The mask rasterizer now uses "Delaunay" tessellator by default providing robust support for overlapping regions.
• The interactive compositor now supports animation playback.
• The interactive compositor runs only when needed: fewer redundant executions, correct updates for referenced scene data, and no blocking from unrelated undo.
• File Extension checkbox in File Output node independent of scene render settings 'File Extension' checkbox.
• EEVEE only: the depth of Grease Pencil objects reflection in the viewport compositor depth pass.
• Blank Image node that returns a new image of a given size and constant color.
• Integer Vector sockets are now supported and used by default where possible.
• New Frame input in the Stabilize 2D node.
• Levels node got Minimum and Maximum outputs.
• Support for Object sockets and Active Camera, Camera Info, Input Object, Object Info nodes from Geometry nodes.
• Objects can be now dragged and dropped from the outliner to the node editor.
• The Node Editor now displays a render region when the backdrop is enabled.
• Socket value inspection support.
• Sockets representing pixel values now show pixel units.
• New masks can now be directly created from the Mask node.
• Support for Default Input Types.

It's a keeper. The LTS in Blender 5.2 LTS stands for "long-term support", meaning it will get fixes for up to two years, until July 2028.

Grease Pencil

Fill Good
Ink. Welcome the new Grease Pencil Delaunay fill algorithm. It creates exact geometry from boundary strokes, with automatic gap detection, inverse filling, zoom-independent results, and much faster performance.

Ready. Set. Go Random.
Dots and Squares line materials now feature Placement settings to control the distribution of shapes along a stroke. Strokes are now generated at render time instead of as extra geometry, significantly improving performance compared to subdividing strokes with the modifier.

More Online
Don't forget to enable the Online Essentials Asset library: which includes 19 new Grease Pencil brushes by Blender Studio artists and Daniel Martínez Lara. Bundled brush assets got refreshed thumbnails as well as new material controls for Dots, plus settings updates for Airbrush, Ink Pen Rough and Pencil soft brushes.

Even more Grease Pencil

• Move to Layer operator now shows layers groups matching the layer tree structure
• Vertex Brush got blend modes support
• UI updates (icons) for Vertex Paint mode's toolbar
• Shift + L now deselects strokes that are completely selected
• New Draw Tool settings for picking a curve type
• Eraser now uses the last activated eraser brush
• New Fill Strokes option lets generated strokes to carry fill material
• New Scene Units toggle in the SVG importer for scale the import in the scene units
• PDF and SVG exporters now support corner types export

Animation

Loop Mood
Introducing Playback Loop modes!

• Infinite
• Stop at End Frame
• Stop at Start Frame
• Restore Frame
• Bounce

More Animation & Rigging

• Improved UI feedback when using Smooth and Cycles F-Curves modifiers
• Batch delete F-Curve modifiers (All, First, by Type)
• Ctrl+Click on the channel visibility setting in Graph Editor now isolates that channel
• Local View to isolate selected F-Curves.
• Normalize button click in the Graph Editor now performs a normalization even if Auto Normalization is disabled
• In-Between tools now available in Object mode.
• Copy Constraints added to Link/Transfer Data menu (Ctrl+L).
• Auto IK reverse behaviour now works with non-connected parent bones.
• New in Dope Sheet: an operator to select keys by type (Select → Select by Type)
• New operator in Armature Edit mode: use Duplicate and Rename to duplicate selected bones and perform a search/replace on the name.
• Only Insert Available user preference is on by default.
• Motion paths no longer update on the current frame during auto-keyed transforms.
• New Head/Tail slider for adjusting position along a bone when using Bone parenting.
• Additional Space, Align, Length, and Deform options in the redo panel for adding bones.
• New operator for selecting markers left or right of the playhead with [ and ] hotkeys.
• In Pose Mode, parent/child bone selection with hotkeys now works on all selected bones instead of just the active.
• Mirror bones no longer ignore transform lock settings.
• The In-Between tools now work with X-mirror in Pose Mode.
• Correct motion paths display when "Bake to Active Camera" is used with animated camera properties like Focal Length.

You can also share your own add-ons and themes!

Modeling

Stay In The Loop
To Circle, Space Edge Loops Evenly and Flatten operators from the popular Loop Tools add-on are now available as native operators. Rewritten from scratch in C++ for improved performance, while also fixing several corner-case issues.

More in Modeling

Get the artwork Blender splash artwork source files are available for you to play with!

Sculpt

Not So Primitive
Sculpt mode expands its toolkit: drop primitives straight into sculpts with the Add Primitive tool. Insert Cubes, Cones, Cylinders, UV and Icon Spheres while in Sculpt mode.

Scene! Project!
Wrap surfaces onto nearby geometry with the new Scene Project brush, and keep painted color intact through repeated voxel remeshing with a smoother color workflow along the way. See the new Scene Project brush in action in this live demo by Daniel Bystedt.

Remesh, don't wreck.
Vertex Colors preservation comparison between 5.1 and 5.2 LTS

Even More Sculpt & Paint

Video Sequencer

Stack, Style, Scope
The Video Sequencer mastering kit gets real in 5.2 LTS: share compositor effects as modifier assets, style titles and toggle modifiers per preview or render. All of that and more plus grading with HDR scopes.

Compositor + VSE

A new Compositor effect strip runs compositor node trees directly on the timeline with zero, one, or two inputs, plus an effect fader on the input group. Strip modifiers now expose inputs in the panel, driven by the node group interface.