Just over a month ago, Blender released the v2.90 of your software, a very important update that introduced new features such as Embre, from Intel and open source, began to be used for ray tracing on CPUs, which improved performance. A few hours ago they released the fourth update of 2021, a Blender 2.91 that has come with news, but also to improve the user experience and usability of this 3D modeling software.
As soon as you enter the release note of Blender 2.91, we can already see the first interesting novelty: they have introduced a tool with which you can sculpt or move clothes, which is more striking if it is seen than explained in words. Below you have a list with the most outstanding news that have arrived with this latest update of 2021.
Highlights of Blender 2.91
- New collision tool for sculpting clothes. Now you can sculpt faster. The new Sculpt Cutter tool now allows you to cut and even add geometry using the box and lasso gestures.
- New Exact Solver tool to deal with complex geometry.
- Text and curve objects now support custom bevel profiles, as does the bevel modifier. All bevel types now also support flat curved caps.
- New modifier for the volume of objects that allows to dynamically turn them into a noise or something messy, ideal for fluids. It also allows the reverse path.
- Ability to convert images into Grease Pencil objects with just one click.
- New Holdout option in materials to paint brushstroke holes and filled areas.
- New search to find settings.
- New support for compound shape collisions enables complex simulations that were not possible before. Multiple primitive shapes can now be combined into one concave shape, resulting in incredibly fast simulations
- Possibility of marking collections in colors.
- Animation curves can now become much more snappy, allowing for more sudden changes with fewer keyframes required.
- Proxy objects can be converted to one-click overrides.
- New emission force in Principled BSDF shader.
- Better alpha blending in the Image Editor.
- Override Cycles calculates the device from the command line.
- Brown-Conrady distortion model implemented.
- Faster video encoding / decoding.
- Supports pure emitting colors in the image editor.
- Ability to remove and relink overrides.
- Python API improvements.
- Now you can control the smoothness of UV rays in Preferences.
- Improved performance in UV / Image Editor.
- Now supports inserting elements into IDProp-based RNA collections defined by py.
- Motion blur rendering of Alembic files (cycles).
- Blender Kit: advances of hairs and complex balls.
- Scene Ray Cast change.
Blender 2.91 is now available for all supported systems from the author's website, which can be accessed from this link. From there, Linux users can download the tarball, so it may be a better option to install the Snap version (sudo snap install blender –classic) or, even better from the point of view of the author of this article, the Flatpak version, available at Flatub. Those who prefer to use the versions of the official repositories of their Linux distribution will still have to wait days (or even weeks or months) to be able to take advantage of all the news in Blender 2.91.