Blender 4.5 has arrived and it’s a long-term support release. That means users get two full years of updates and bug fixes, making it a smart choice for anyone looking for stability in serious projects. Whether you’re a solo artist or part of a studio pipeline, this version is built to last.
The biggest news is the move to Vulkan. This replaces the aging OpenGL system in the viewport and instantly makes Blender feel faster and more responsive. Interaction is smoother and the whole UI benefits from modern graphics acceleration. Vulkan is now the default backend, and it’s clear the team is building for the future.
Adaptive subdivision has also been revamped. Thanks to multithreading, it now runs up to 14 times faster. That means better performance in dense scenes, especially with displacement and procedural geometry. You also get more accurate handling of motion blur, UVs, and attribute data.
The compositor sees major changes too. More nodes now run on the GPU, including texture nodes and new standardized inputs. Deprecated nodes are still supported for compatibility, but you can tell Blender is moving toward a more consistent and modern node-based workflow.
Geometry Nodes continues to evolve. Blender 4.5 brings in new nodes like Camera Info and Instance Bounds. It also improves import support for formats like PLY, OBJ, STL, CSV, and even VDB. These changes give technical artists more control and flexibility, especially when building complex procedural setups.
There’s also a new Boolean solver called Manifold. It’s faster and designed to create clean geometry from overlapping meshes. This helps modelers avoid ugly artifacts and unnecessary cleanup when combining objects.
UV editing gets a small but welcome upgrade. UV maps are now visible in Object Mode, and selection behavior is more intuitive. These are small steps that point toward a larger UV tool overhaul expected in future releases.
Grease Pencil fans get new tools too. There’s now a dedicated Grease Pencil render pass for more precise compositing. You can also combine Grease Pencil with Geometry Nodes for even more creative freedom.
Blender 4.5 isn’t just about new features. It’s also a turning point for older systems. This is the last release with official support for Intel-based Macs. Maintaining compatibility for Intel and AMD graphics on macOS has become too costly, so future versions will focus on Apple Silicon. If you’re still on an Intel Mac, it’s probably time to think about upgrading your hardware.
Support for Big Endian platforms and legacy .blend files is also being phased out. Those features will be completely removed in Blender 5.0. Same goes for Collada import and export, which has been deprecated since version 4.2. If you’re relying on Collada in your workflow, now’s the time to explore alternatives.
There’s also a new minimum requirement for OptiX in Cycles. You’ll need NVIDIA driver version 535 or higher. And if you’re a developer working on add-ons that use built-in shaders, you’ll want to update your code to use the new POLYLINES_* or POINT_* shader variants. These are needed to support both Vulkan and Apple’s Metal backend going forward.
And here’s something that might fly under the radar. Blender 4.5 also includes nearly 500 bug fixes. That’s a huge effort by the development team to squash crashes, glitches, and long-standing issues across rendering, compositing, simulation, import/export, and more. You can check out the full list of bug fixes at developer.blender.org/docs/release_notes/4.5/bugfixes.
Blender 4.5 LTS is a powerful release that balances future-facing tech with the kind of stability creators need. The performance gains alone make it worth the upgrade, and the long support window gives peace of mind.
You can download Blender 4.5 right now for free at blender.org. It’s available for Linux, Windows, and macOS.
