Blender 2.83 is now available now in LTS or Long Term Support version. Described a few months back, the long term support version of Blender is meant to remain stable but well supported for two years:
The first proposal is to do one Long Term Support (LTS) release every year. This release would be supported for two years with important bug fixes and updates for new hardware, while strictly maintaining compatibility.
A good reason to do an LTS now is the focus on fixes and patches of the past months. The next release (2.83) although big, will be relatively less experimental, thus a good candidate to keep supporting for a while.
LTS versions also will help to ensure that a project that started with an LTS version can be completed with the same version in a reasonable amount of time. Nice for studios with large projects, but also for add-on maintenance.
So if you are on the verge of starting a long term game or movie project, Blender 2.83 LTS may be the ideal version for you.
Of course long term support isn’t the only new feature in Blender 2.83, with highlight features including:
- New Cloth simulation sculpting brush, as well as other sculpting improvements
- NVIDIA Optix denoiser now works in the viewport as well as renders
- A completely rewritten faster and more powerful Grease Pencil
- Import and render OpenVDB files
- Initial VR Support, specifically the ability to navigate around your scene in VR
- New face set system enabling new visibility options
- EEVEE improvements
- Updated shader nodes
- Performance improvements across the entire application
- Updates to several modifiers
- Video sequencer improvements
- Much, much more
You can learn more about Blender 2.83 in the release notes here or by watching the video below.