Blender 5.2.2 LTS · Reblend 0.4
Blender 5.2.2 with a rebuilt Cycles.
Reblend is a Blender build with changes inside Cycles: bidirectional path tracing, photon caustics, path guiding that runs on the GPU, and nested dielectrics. You use Blender as usual, with your own files and add-ons.
Get Reblend on Gumroad or on SuperHive
×What is in it
Four additions to Cycles. Each one is a setting; leave it off and Cycles renders as before.
Bidirectional path tracing
Paths start from the camera and from the lights and are joined in the middle. It helps when light reaches the camera through small openings or after several bounces. Vertex Merging is an option under it for caustics seen through glass and water.
Photon caustics
A photon map for the light that glass, metal and water focus onto surfaces and into volumes: caustics on a table, light shafts under water. Works with Path Tracing; you choose which lights emit photons and which objects cast them.
GPU path guiding
Path guiding learns during the render where light comes from and samples those directions more often. In Reblend the learning and the sampling both run on the GPU, on Metal, CUDA and OptiX.
Nested dielectrics
A glass with a liquid and ice in it, modelled as overlapping objects. Give each object a priority; where they overlap the higher one wins, and light refracts between the two materials with the right ratio of their IORs. No hand-built interfaces.
×Requirements
macOS
Apple silicon. GPU rendering needs macOS 15 or later. Signed and notarized; opens like any app.
Windows
64-bit Windows 10 or 11. GPU rendering on NVIDIA with CUDA or OptiX; CPU rendering otherwise. Not yet tested on an NVIDIA card, see the known issues.
Linux
Any x86-64 distribution with glibc 2.28 or later. GPU rendering on NVIDIA with CUDA or OptiX, tested on an RTX 4090.
×Before you rely on it
It is a whole Blender, not an add-on
The changes are compiled into Cycles, so Reblend is its own application. It reads and writes ordinary .blend files and uses the same settings folder as Blender 5.2, so your preferences and add-ons are already there.
It is experimental
Keep your normal Blender installed and try Reblend on copies of your scenes first. Things that render correctly today may change between versions; the release notes say what did.
How it is funded
Reblend is a membership, on Gumroad or on SuperHive. Every new build goes to members as it is made, and the membership pays for my time on it. It is one person's project and moves at that pace.
Where to ask
Write to contact@leonidaltman.com. For a bug, include the version line from Reblend's About box and, if you can, the .blend file.