Top image - San Pedro Project by Charles Nandeya Ehouman (Sharlybg)
New features in this version:
OptiX/RTX Acceleration - The CUDA backend now can utilize RTX hardware raytracing through the OptiX library. The benefit in rendering speed depends on scene complexity (the more triangles in the scene, the bigger the speedup).
Non-Uniform Camera Bokeh - Depth of field now has support for non-uniform bokeh distributions, including custom images. In addition, bokehs can now be squashed and stretched anisotropically to simulate anamorphic lenses.
New Materials
Holdout - The holdout option can be used to make the parts of the film covered by the material transparent.
Two-Sided - The Two-Sided material makes it possible to put different materials on the front- and backfaces of a mesh.
New Textures
Wireframe
Distort - The Distort texture is basically a simplified texture mapping, which only allows to translate an input texture. However, the translation offset can be textured (which isn’t possible in the regular texture mapping). So it can be used to perturb one texture with another.
Brick texure now with pseudo-random coloring per brick
Texture Bombing - The new “Bombing” texture can be used to distribute a stencil map over a background, with various randomization options.
Randomized Tiling for Imagemaps - Image textures now have support for Brent Burley’s “Histogram-preserving Blending for Randomized Texture Tiling” (paper). When enabled, the image will be tiled in a randomized fashion instead of in a grid, which can help break up repeating patterns.
Randomized 2D and 3D mapping - Texture mappings now have a randomized mode, where rotation, translation and scale can be set to vary between objects. The seed for the variation can either be the object ID (which is randomly assigned by default) or the mesh island ID.
Corona 16 adds GPU-accelerated Gaussian Splat relighting and a new Parallax Interiors system that renders furnished rooms behind windows using flat geometry, cutting memory overhead for multifamily and tower facades. New AI Assistant beta helps with mood matching and scattering.
A new Windows tool reads native .max files and rebuilds V-Ray and Corona materials for target renderers, letting multi-software studios skip re-setup work.
Epic Games has made the full 23,000-asset Megascans library free on Fab indefinitely as of November 5, 2026, with refunds for 2025 purchases and new AI training rights. The Fab Standard License covers any game engine or tool without renderer lock-in.
Claude Opus 5.5, released September 22, cuts API costs by 40% and speeds output by 30%, making AI-driven scene assembly in Blender more practical for solo artists. The model excels at staging, lighting and rig fixes but not production mesh generation.
Chaos shipped V-Ray 7 Update 5 on November 5-6 with 30+ features including an embedded AI Assistant, Cosmos AI asset generation, and MCP server connections to ChatGPT and Claude. 3ds Max users face delays while Rhino and SketchUp gain immediate native AI access.
Arnold 7.5.4 adds true render pausing, expands viewport acceleration to 3ds Max and Cinema 4D, and introduces a Shader Imager for pixel-level compositing without full rerenders. GPU instance performance jumps 3x for large scene updates.
Chaos embeds AI assistants, MCP server integration with Claude and ChatGPT, 2D-to-3D asset generation, and AMD GPU support into V-Ray 7, Update 5. The update also bundles Vantage real-time ray tracing access for Collection license holders, targeting faster workflows without compromising offline render quality.
Mach9's web-based CAD software now processes drone and helicopter point clouds with automated feature extraction, cutting survey-to-model time by 40%. Export goes to DXF, DWG, LandXML and GIS formats.
A new Windows tool reads native .max files and rebuilds V-Ray and Corona materials for target renderers, letting multi-software studios skip re-setup work.
In this walkthrough, we guide you through the process of building a polished 3D interior scene inspired by the cover of Archmodels vol. 306 – Table Sets.
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