Blender 2.82 Released with AI Denoiser for Nvidia RTX GPUs, More

Blender Foundation released today Blender 2.82, a new update to the popular free and open-source 3D computer graphics software that adds new features and numerous improvements.

Blender 2.82 comes two and a half months after version 2.81 as the second biggest update to the latest 2.80 series, adding an AI-accelerated Denoiser for Cycles for NVIDIA RTX graphics cards that supports multiple GPUs. The AI Denoiser is built into Blender’s view layer system and outputs great results with low samples.

Furthermore, this release introduces the ability to export Pixar’s open-source USD (Universal Scene Description) files, full integration of the UDIM tiled-based UV mapping system, and a new Mantaflow system for creating mind-blowing fire, smoke, liquid, and gas simulations.

Cloth simulations has been improved in Blender 2.82 to allow easy simulation of balloons and cushions, as well as to make cloth behave like a soft body. Also improved are the Cycles, which now ship with new operations for the Math node, a new Random Per Island option for the Geometry node, and new interpolation modes for Map Range.

Also included in this release is support for custom shader AOVs, better group node sockets, the ability to preview passes in the Viewport, support for transparent materials to properly blend with volumetrics, normal mapping for non-mesh objects, and numerous improvements to the user interface.

You can download Blender 2.82 right now from the official website for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows systems. To get a quick overview of the changes included in this release, check out the video below. For more details and examples of what some of the new features can do, visit the release announcement page.