Hey my friends,

Blender has released a new version, and so did we at Bforartists.

✨What’s new :

• New procedural UV Nodes assets for Geometry Nodes

• Grease Pencil pressure sensistive distance to radius when drawing on surfaces
• New Primitive Add gizmos mode operators exposed to a top level in the toolshelf in object and sculpt mode

• Updates to Grease Pencil asset thumbnails for consistency

• Major performance update and new features of the Smart Mesh Blend asset
• Major refactor for the Add Node sidebar to improve consistency and order
• Refactored Topbar customization and consistency settings panel pass for the Topbar editor, making this more accessible and usable and consistent

• Active Tool dropdown gets icons
• More tabbed toolshelf icons get an update, notably the Annoation icons
• Most Booleans checkboxes now dynamically float left, making these more consistent everywhere
• Sidebars have improved alignment of labels and properties accross the board
• Tabbed toolshelf has improved padding when in 3 columns mode
• Improved selected channel legibility in Animation editors
• Fixed Multi-GPU rendering hard crash
• More Shelf Regions pie menu refinement

🧡 Additional Features from this Blender 5.1.x and 5.2.x series:

• Animation: New Subframes visibility
• Animation: New Looping and playback modes
• Graph: New Smooth (Gaussian) modifier
• Shader: New raycast node
• Shader: Support for DirectX and OpenGL toggles in the Normal node
• Preferences: New Search
• Preferences: New abiliity to toggle Asset library visibilities
• Greasepencil: New Fills and Stroke mode with booleans
• Greasepencil: New primitive gizmos
• Grease Pencil: You can search in layers now
• Geometry Nodes: New Grid Nodes like Gird Mean, Grid Median, Grid Dilate & Erode, Trim String node, Set NURBS Weight and Order, new Matrix SVD
• Geometry Nodes: New Bundle orgnaization nodes in Geometry Nodes
• Geometry Nodes: UV Pack node and Strings to Curves node is better
• All Node editors: New Implicit conversion, and new consistent Input constant nodes, new Menu node
• All Node editors: New Cut Nodes to paste between sessions opertoar
• Weight Paint: New loop selections
• Edit Mode: New delimiters on loop selections
• Edit Mode: New “To Circle” operator
• Text Object: Better drawing
• Compositor: New Camera Info nodes and Integer Vectors, new Mask to SDF node
• Compositor/Sequencer: Now compositor
• Sculpting: New Scene Project brush, and Vertex Color operator
• Data: Better Remap User experience
• Outline: Scroll on rename has improved
• Core: Undo is 30% faster
• Core: Vulkan and Cycles Denoising is marginally much faster and stable, by leagues
• Core: Stability is highest it has ever been with over 350+ fixes

And many more features, bug fixes and more!

Downloads available from both Github, the official Website, Windows store and Blender Launcher v2

📥 Downloads:
www.bforartists.de/download/
github.com/Bforartists/Bforartists/releases

🪟 Windows App
Windows App Store

🧡 Blender Launcher
Github Release
For Arch

📝 Release Notes:
www.bforartists.de/release-notes/

🗒️ Blender Release notes now merged and updated into Bforartists:
www.blender.org/download/releases/

Splashscreen is kindly provided by Krysidian and the @Umbraven_cu (Instagram) Team, the latest winner of the Splashsscreen submissions competition hosted in the Discord server! Thank you!

And finally! Thank you for using Bforartists, making art with it, and sharing this with the art community – this wouldn’t be possible without you.

Draise, Reiner, Blenux (Juso), Znight (Trung Pham), Quackers, Eyad, Sean and all you arty supporters

Hey friends,

We have a maintenance release for Bforartists. It fixes 53 issues, and comes with all the features from Blender 5.0.1 too.

✨What’s new:

• Fixed the export/import unusable File dialogue when using the Bforartists hotkeys
• More Icons in data types in Geometry Nodes Selectors
• Fixed instancing options from the Asset Shelf drag and drop
• Fixed Dopesheet missing operators
• Fixed Hotkey dropdown icon
• Cleaned up the Node Editor Sidebars to be consistent with Add menu
• Cleaned up the Preferences NDOF settings

🧡 Additional Features from this Blender 5.0.x and 5.1.x series:

• New Bone Info node for Geoemtry Nodes

Downloads available from both Github, the official Website, Windows store and Blender Launcher v2

Download

Hey my friends.
I am happy and excited to tell you that there is now a book about UI UX design available that is based at all the experience that i have gathered in the last 25 years on various software and game projects, and of course the Bforartists development. Which has accompanied me for more than ten years now.
The book aims at software developers and UI UX designers. And that’s what the content mainly is about.
The first part provides an overview of how to get started as an UI UX designer as a carrer changer. Goes across the various rules that allows you to design a good UI. And gives practical tips on what you need to take care of, and what is better avoided. The second part of the book covers the development of Bforartists up to version 1.0, and gives practical examples. It contains of course lots of theory. The matter is complex. But also lots of practical tips. And explains more than one decision that we did in the Bforartists development.

Currently the book can be found at Amazon in Kindle format.

The title of the book is:
Career Changer – From Developer to UI Designer:
UI/UX Design Fundamentals with Practical Application in the Open Source Project Bforartists
The english version can be found here: www.amazon.com/dp/B0G5NMCG5P
The german version is located here: www.amazon.de/dp/B0G5P5XB34

Hey my friends,

There is a new Blender version available, and so we release a new version too. Bforartist 5 comes with all the massive changes from Blender 5. Plus lots of changes and improvements from our side.

Bforartists is a fork of the popluar open source 3D software Blender. With the goal to improve the graphical UI and usability. And is, like Blender, open source and free to use.

The binary downloads can as usual also be found in the download section of the official webpage. www.bforartists.de/download/
The sourcecode can be found at Github. github.com/Bforartists/Bforartists/releases/tag/v5.0.0
And the release note is here: www.bforartists.de/release-notes/

What’s new:

• 99 new Compositor assets, including shapes, patterns, lens effects, color adjustments, filters and more
• New customizable colored backgrounds on nodes
• New icons in collapsed icon headers
• New customizable Node Editor Overlay for canvas center
• Enhanced Asset Shelf user experience: New packed mode, and love to context menu operators for Armature Pose assets
• Group Operators in Node Toolshelf: Node group operators moved to toolshelf for better accessibility
• New icons for frames with new frame operators
• New Apply operators: Apply with remesh, join, and boolean on selected meshes with one click
• Presentation Addon Enhancement: New Slides operator for presentations
• Interface Consistency Improvements: more robust columns for tabbed toolshelf
• Region Toggle Pie Menu: Added to T key and exposed in header
• Organized Node categories and groups for less bloat and better discoverability
• New Animation Timeline Footers and Dopesheet editor mode
• New quick toggle to Timeline with the Power User Tools
• Consistent paint curve dropdowns in header and sidebar for jitter and pressure settings
• Update to the Curves edit mode to be consistent with other modes
• Adopted the new Blender “Built-in” sequencer scene sync with our legacy 3D Sequencer system with timeline gizmos
• New Geometry Nodes assets and modifiers from Blender adopted to the Bforartists asset shelves
• Smart Mesh Blend by Proximity assets gets material blending, performance modes, and an improved wizard user experience

Additional Features from this Blender 5.0.x and 5.1.x series:

• Improved UV user experience with sync
• New Compositor Sequencer Mode: New Sequencer modifier with access to using compositor nodes with Sequence Info strip integration
• Minimized Theme Panel Visual Update
• Frame Jump is now built into the timeline with seconds and frames
• Geometry Nodes Improvements: Multiple new Grid, SDF, and Volume nodes
• Performance Optimizations: Improved tessellation, subdivision, and general performance
• New Radial Tiling vector node
• New Repeat Zone for Shaders (with bundles and closures)
• New & Updated MatCaps: optional specular lighting in MatCaps improves shading clarity, especially on dark surfaces.
• Dope Sheet Cache Visualization – Clearer feedback on cached frames for animation performance monitoring.
• Video Sequencer Overhaul: Dedicated Strip and Strip Modifiers tabs with drag-and-drop modifier stacks, icons, and search.
• Multi-Scene Sequencer Workflows – Sequencer can now reference different scenes, with Sync Scene Time for seamless editing.
• Grease Pencil Motion Blur: Adds natural blur to strokes with adjustable steps, enhancing animation quality.
• Grease Pencil Corner Types: Per-point corner styles (Round, Sharp, Flat) for more precise stroke design.
• Faster cycles and EEVEE
• Netter Subsurface scattering, volumetrics and multi-scattering
• New sky mode for environments
• Faster unwrapping and field evaluation in Geometry Nodes
• Better FBX, Alembix and USD compatibility
• Adaptive subdivision in Cycles now official
• Metallic Thin Film Iridescence for Cycles

Splashscreen is kindly provided by Bluenile3D, the latest winner of the Splashsscreen submissions competition hosted in our Discord server! Thank you!

And also, thanks again for all art, love, feedback and help for making the Bforartists community what it is today! Without your feedback and support, this wouldn’t be possible

Draise, Reiner, Blenux (Juso), Znight (Trung Pham), Quackers, Eyad, Sean and all you arty supporters

Have fun with the new version. Enjoy Bforartists 🙂

Hey my friends,

There is a new Blender version, and so there is new version of Bforartists. Version 4.5.0.
Bforartists is a fork of the popluar open source 3D software Blender. With the goal to improve the graphical UI and usability. And is, like Blender, open source and free to use.

The binary downloads can as usual also be found in the download section of the official webpage. www.bforartists.de/download/
The sourcecode can be found at Github. github.com/Bforartists/Bforartists/releases/tag/v4.5.0
And the release note is here: www.bforartists.de/release-notes/

This is a major feature update with much love to the Asset Shelves usability with many new accumulated details and features from Bforartists and Blender. This is part of all the latest from Blender 4.5.0 and 5.0.0 to the date – with 169 new pieces of love from us.

Have fun with the new version. Enjoy Bforartists 🙂
Draise, Reiner, Iyad, Blenux, Sean, zNightlord and the rest of the team.

Hey my friends,

It’s been a while since i have added my last bit to this page here. But this turoial does not fit to my other pages, so i add it here.

It is server related. I always forget how i have set up my http tunnel for Webmin. I do this all five years or so. And then i am in trouble again. ChatGPT dreamed away and made me plain crazy when i asked it for help. So i did a web research instead and finally made it  a tutorial for my personal needs.

It’s in the tutorials section. Have fun 🙂

Hey my friends,

As some of you might know, i followed my dreams to be a professional musician for a while. But now i have decided to stop the project. The music market has become too crowded. Spotify contains 100 million tracks nowadays. AI has arrived. And the share for us independent musicians becomes fewer and fewer. It simply makes no sense anymore to ride a dead horse. I will never stop making music, but my professional carreer is over. I will return to a hobby musician status now.

I want to thank everybody involved. It was me a pleasure. Live your dreams my friends 🙂

The music is no longer available. And the official page is already offline. But the AI content of it has moved to a subdomain of this page here  haizytiles.reinerstilesets.de/

This page will now become my main project. AI content and free songs. See you at the other side 🙂

• Reiner

Hey friends, i nearly missed it, but it is now more than ten years that Bforartists, our Blender Fork, has seen the light of day. The official start of the project was 2.6.2015.

It was and is me a pleasure to work with all the people at the project. I want to take a moment to sincerely thank all of you — for your dedication, your smart ideas, your pull requests, your patience with bug reports, and above all, the open and constructive collaboration that has shaped our open source project into what it is today.

A special thank-you also goes out to our loyal users: your feedback, your issue reports, your suggestions, and simply your continued use of Bforartists show us that our work matters.

Open source thrives on community, trust, and a shared commitment to building something better. I’m truly grateful we’re on this journey together.

Here’s to many more releases, late-night coding (and coffee), and continued inspiration through working side by side!

With appreciation and excitement,
Reiner

Hey my friends,

There is a new Bforartists version available. Which is a maintenance release that brings the new features from Blender 4.4.3

Downloads can be found at the usual place. www.bforartists.de/download/

Bforartists is a fork of the 3d software Blender. With the goal to improve the Blender user interface.

Just wanted to add that we have meanwhile arrived at Bforartists version 4.3.0

Bforartists is a fork of the popular 3D software Blender, with the goal to improve the usability. I have been maintaining this project since 2015, when I stopped developing games and doing graphics. And i still do.

www.bforartists.de