Blender 2.72 Brings Cycles Volume Rendering To The GPU

The Blender 2.72 open-source modeling and 3D creation software is now available with some exciting changes.

Blender 2.72 brings the pie menus feature for menu items spread radially around the mouse, animation improvements within its editor, a "face split by edges" tool, a new workflow for texture painting, a new "sun beams" simulation, game development improvements, freestyle non-photorealistic rendering improvements, and a ton of other new features. There's also many new add-ons like a new DXF importer, new game publishing features, and much more.

To Blender's "Cycles Render" is now basic volume rendering support officially working on the GPU and experimental support for sub-surface scattering and correlated multi- jitter sampling. There's also improvements to volume rendering, shading, and overall performance.

More information on the just-released Blender 2.72 can be found via the feature overview. Download Blender 2.72 at Blender.org. In case you missed it, since a few months ago Epic Games has helped support Blender.