Blender 5.3 introduces native support for 3D Gaussian Splats, allowing users to import them as point clouds from PLY, SPZ, and glTF files. The update enables experimentation with Geometry Nodes and native rendering in EEVEE and Cycles. Gaussian Splats, commonly used to reconstruct 3D scenes from photos or videos, are represented as point clouds with attributes for scale, rotation, and radiance.
A new Principled BSDF dispersion feature splits white light into colorful components, enhancing glass and gemstone rendering. Blender 5.3 also integrates NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction as a denoiser, improving image quality and performance. Additionally, the release adds native support for NVIDIA RTX Spark devices and new Material Lighting nodes for toon shading and physical effects like iridescence.
Performance considerations remain due to color space differences between authoring tools and Blender's linear space.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing