Blender 2.78: Quick overview of features for architecture

In just a few days we will have a new version of Blender available, and you can expect a lot of new features and resources for architecture. They will come as better support for Cycles or new Add-ons that are “shipped” with Blender already.

For those of you that didn't take a few minutes to read about all the news related to Blender 2.78, here is a brief summary. For more details about the release, you can visit this link.

The first significant improvement is about Cycles! A lot of new GPUs did receive some better support. Since GPU render is extremally important for architectural visualization, you can imagine the impact of adding better support.

For instance, you will find fixes for bad performance with expensive cards like the GeForce 980 and Titan. In the past weeks, one of our students was complaining about slow render speeds with a 980. If you also have those cards, I believe your renders might become faster.

Not only you will find better performance for old GPUs, but also for brand new GPUs. Now you can fully use your GTX 1060, 1070 and 1080 to render architecture with Cycles.

Following with the rendering subject, we have the most welcome support for spherical stereo images for VR. In the past months, VR has become a top subject for architectural visualization. And since Cycles now have support to create such images, we can start to aim our production in this media.

For the modeling and tools section, I will jump straight to the Add-ons that will come with Blender 2.78. A lot of those new tools will benefit architectural artists.

Some of those Add-ons are among my personal favorite tools for architectural modeling in Blender. Here are four of them that will make your life a lot easier:

• Archimesh – The first one is one of the most powerful and flexible Add-ons for architectural modeling. Here you will find options to create walls, windows and much more.
• Measureit – Have you ever use the measurement tools from SketchUp? This Add-on will create something that looks like that in Blender.
• Carver – With this tool, you will quickly create section cuts using boolean operations.
• Mesh Tiny Cad – One of my favorite tools to deal with edge polygon operations. You will have options like extend and trim from CAD tools.

Those are some of my highlights until now. With time you will find some more tools and descriptions about features that will benefit architectural visualization.

You can download Blender 2.78 release candidates from this link.