Reference/Release Notes/2.79

= Blender 2.79 Release Notes =



The Blender Foundation and online developer community are proud to present Blender 2.79!

Download the 2.79 Release
In this release:
 * Cycles: Built-in Denoising, Shadow catcher, Principled shader, AMD OpenCL optimizations.
 * Grease Pencil: New frame interpolation tools, per-layer onion skinning.
 * Alembic: Improvements to compatibility, stability and support.
 * User Interface: Initial support for reusable custom configurations, automatic DPI scaling.
 * Twenty Three new and several updated add-ons.
 * And: 100s of bug fixes and other improvements!

2.79a Corrective Release
This corrective release does not add any new feature. It brings a huge amount of fixes (over 200, from real bugs to potential security issues). And some performance enhancements, mostly in threaded code (e.g. in mesh normal and tangent space computation, in SubSurf modifier).

It aims at making Blender 2.79 even more robust and reliable while most of the development effort is focused on the next version, Blender 2.8.

2.79b Corrective Release
This corrective release only fixes a few serious bugs/regressions introduced in 2.79a fixes.

Compatibility Warning

 * Due to various issues with drivers for AMD GCN 1.0 architecture, those cards are no longer supported for Cycles rendering
 * When using add-ons in Blender 2.79 that take advantage of the new data-block pointer properties, the resulting .blend files can't be opened in earlier versions of Blender. Attempting to open such .blend files in Blender 2.78c and earlier may crash.
 * Some Interface Themes may need to be reloaded to work properly.
 * The text color contained in a layout.box is now defined in User Preferences >> Themes >> User Interface >> Box section
 * Rig compatibility:
 * Changes to bbone easing break forward compatibility (i.e. rigs using this feature saved in 2.79 won't behave correctly when loaded in older versions, see ).
 * Changes to IK snapping may affect rigs that use non-uniform IK scaling. (rigs created in the 2.78 builds.)
 * During the 2.78 series: IK snapping was partly broken.
 * This has been fixed for Blender 2.79
 * Rigs created in Blender 2.78 may not be compatible with 2.79.
 * Rigs created in Blender 2.77 may still work.
 * When using the add-on Rigify, please note:
 * Compatibility is broken for this release. There's no guarantee rigs created in previous Blender versions will work correctly.
 * Rigs created in Blender 2.78 may not be compatible with 2.79.
 * Rigs created in Blender 2.77 may still work.
 * Save your work before attempting upgrading your rigs.

Cycles Rendering



 * Denoising built into the renderer.
 * Principled BSDF shader to render a wide variety of materials.
 * Shadow catcher to composite CGI elements in real-life footage.
 * Faster AMD OpenCL rendering and feature parity with NVidia CUDA.
 * Filmic color management for better handling of high dynamic range.

User Interface

 * Application templates to define a reusable configuration.
 * Automatic scaling for high DPI displays on Windows on Linux.
 * Reorganized sequencer and UV editor panels.
 * Custom shortcuts for keyframing and drivers.

Grease Pencil



 * New tools for interpolating between grease pencil frames.
 * Per-layer onion skinning, add blank frame tool, and UI improvements.

Alembic



 * Alembic import and export has been greatly improved, both in compatibility and stability.
 * New supported features include export of linked dupli-groups, sub-frame sampling, face-varying vertex colors, child hairs and empties.

Mesh Modeling

 * New surface deform modifier, to transfer motion from another mesh.
 * Improved displace and mirror modifiers.
 * Various small new tools and options.

Animation



 * Pose library reordering and keying for selected bones only.
 * Better undo for frame changes.
 * Various small new tools and options.

More Features



 * Video encoding settings have been simplified, along with the addition of a Constant Rate Factor (CRF) mode.
 * Blender render and GLSL viewport support for object info, layer weight and Fresnel shading nodes.

Python API



 * Custom properties pointing to data-blocks like objects or materials.
 * Render engine add-ons can now add custom render passes.
 * Inserting custom items in right click menus.

Add-ons



 * New: Dynamic Sky, Archipack, Magic UV, Mesh Edit Tools, Skinify, Display Tools, Brush Menus, Btrace, Is Key Free, Turnaround Camera, Auto Mirror, Camera Rigs, Snap Utils Line, Add Advanced Objects, Export Paper Model, Kinoraw Tools, Stored Views, Render Clay, Auto Tracker, Refine Tracking Solution, Materials Library VX, Mesh Tissue, Cell Fracture Crack It.
 * Updated: Collada, POV-Ray, OBJ, Rigify, Ant Landscape, Add Curve Extra Objects, Viewport Pie Menus, Blender ID, Node Wrangler.
 * Various fixes and improvements across the board.

Bug Fixes

 * As for every Blender release, hundreds of bugs were fixed, thanks to the hardworking Blender developers.