On October 10, the Blender Foundation pushed a new major version of its amazing open-source, cross-platform, and free 3D modelling software used by numerous animation studios across the globe, Blender 2.76.

Prominent features of Blender 2.76 include initial support for Pixar's OpenSubdiv geometry subdivision technology, support for tiled strokes in Sculpting, support for text effect strips and subtitle export in the sequencer, and a major performance boost to the view-port functionality.

Furthermore, Blender 2.76 introduces a huge performance boost to the file browser, which now supports keyboard navigation using the arrow keys, adds support for absolute grid snapping in the 3D view, and introduces a node auto-offset feature that lets you organize your node layouts much better and easier than before.

What else is new in Blender 2.76? Well, we can tell you that there are more improvements for AMD GPUs, a new Point Density Texture feature for Cycles Rendering, camera zoom motion blur support, the addition of the Edge Offset and Flatten Faces tools, a new Bone Selection Sets add-on, FBX import and export support, and the first stable release of the Game Publishing add-on.

Hundreds of bugs have been fixed

There's no new release of an open-source software without some bugfixes, so, according to the release notes, Blender 2.76 fixes hundreds of bugs that have been reported by users since the previous version of the software, Blender 2.75. Additionally, there are many other small under-the-hood improvements for greater stability and reliability.

As expected, Blender 2.76 comes a free update to existing and news users alike. If you're just getting started with Blender, you can also download it right now for GNU/Linux and FreeBSD distributions, and soon for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems. More details about this release can be found on the project's website.