Software Updates

The beta for Blender 5.2 LTS is out now. Here's what's new

New experimental physics simulations for hair and cloth are improving the capabilities of this open source 3D modelling app.

Jordan Gloor

Jordan Gloor

— 2 min read
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The Blender logo over a yellow-to-blue gradient.

The developers of Blender announced the beta release of Blender 5.2 LTS this week, its first long term support release since July 2025. It adds several brand new features to the open source 3D modelling application.

What's new

Blender 5.2 LTS being used to animate hair on a monkey head using the new hair physics.
Source: Blender
  • Cloth and hair physics: Geometry nodes for simulating hair and cloth dynamics are now available. Blender developers stress that these are experimental features and thus prone to breakage.
  • Camera ray visibility: The EEVEE rendering engine added camera ray visibility support.
  • Thin walls: The Principled BSDF shader gained "Thin Wall" input, allowing for an "infinitesimally thin sheet of dense scattering material."
  • Online assets: So long as you've given Blender internet access, it can now be used to browse and download assets from remote repositories.
    • The "Essentials" library also now includes online assets.

What's getting better

The draw tool being sued with the new Bezier curve type. (Source: Blender)
  • Grease Pencil: The draw tool has new curve types, there are new brush assets, and the fill tool has an overhauled filling algorithm. Placement settings for line materials also have new modes, including Count, Density, and Radius.
  • Geometry nodes: There's a new List data type and support for bundle attachments in geometry nodes. You can also play with Sample Sound Frequencies to animate objects using imported sound files.
  • Animation playback: You have several new options for looping playback, including infinite loops, bouncing, frame restore, starting at stop frame, and stopping at end frame.
  • Screen Space Raytracing: The pipeline for Screen Space Raytracing has been overhauled primarily "to address long standing usability issues." Updates include an improved Reflection denoiser and a Backface option for the Screen Tracing sub panel.

Zooming out

Why this update matters: As 3D animation and gaming continues to evolve, the continued development of open source tools for it grow in importance.

My take: I'm not an animator or designer, but I like to see what's possible with the latest version of Blender.

Diving in

The fineprint: There are numerous more small changes and bugfixes to read about in the official Blender 5.2 LTS release notes.

Get it now: You can download the latest beta image of Blender 5.2 LTS from the Blender Builds download page.

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