Today, September 30, 2016, the Blender Foundation is proud to release Blender 2.78, the latest stable and most advanced version of the popular, free, open-source, and cross-platform Blender 3D modeling software.

Blender 2.78 comes six months after the release of Blender 2.77 and is a major update that adds numerous new features and improvements, among which we can mention rendering of spherical stereo images for VR (Virtual Reality), viewport rendering improvements, as well as brand new freehand curves drawing over surfaces.

Moreover, the Grease Pencil received awesome improvements and it now doubles as both an animation and a drawing tool, powerful new options have been added for B-Bones, it's now possible to import and export basic operators in the Alembic support, and the Cloth Physics feature received new Simulation Speed option and Dynamic Base Mesh support.

"The draw thickness was moved to stroke, and color to a new palette color instead of saving this information per layer. Now, the layer is only a container, and strokes can use different color, strength and thickness in the same layer," reads the announcement. "With the new design, the brush is independent and it allows create brushes that simulate different types of pencils."

Cycles render engine improvements, new add-ons, and more

Blender 2.78 also comes with lots of improvements to the Cycles render engine, such as support for CPU groups, support for Nvidia GTX 10×0, along with better support for Nvidia GTX 980 Ti and Nvidia Titan X GPUs, OpenCL and CUDA memory improvements, and new changes to the Subdivision & Micro Displacement feature.

Moreover, there's smoke volume support for the Heat and Velocity attributes, the motion vectors and motion blur tools received fluid simulation mesh support, and the Point Density textures have been updated to support normals, vertex color, and weight. The user interface also saw various, much-needed enhancements.

Last but not least, the Blender ID Authentication, 3D Viewport Pie Menus, Object Boolean Tools, Archimesh, Materials Utils/Conversion, MeasureIt, Modifier Tools, Bone Selection Sets, Oscurart Tools, Mesh Tiny Cad, and Carver add-ons have been added. Download Blender 2.78 for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows right now.