Leonid Altman
Reblend is Blender 5.2.2 with a rebuilt Cycles underneath. It renders the light stock Cycles struggles with: sharp caustics from glass, water and polished metal, interiors lit by a window or a shaded lamp, and glass with a drink in it. Your add-ons, materials and .blend files work exactly as in Blender 5.2.2, in both directions.
What you get
- Caustics that render. The focused light that glass and water throw onto a table or floor comes out clean, instead of as noise you switch off.
- Caustics seen through glass and water. The floor of a pool through its surface, light gathering inside a glass: scenes stock Cycles can't resolve.
- Clean light from small and hidden lamps. Spotlights, lamps behind shades and lights tucked into fixtures clear up far sooner.
- Faster clean interiors on your GPU. Reblend learns where the light in a room comes from and sends its effort there. In a dark room lit through a window it reached the same quality in about half the time.
- Glass, liquid and ice that overlap. Give each object a priority and model them as they are, overlapping. Light refracts between glass and liquid with the right ratio of their IORs, with no cut-apart meshes and no fake interfaces. New in 0.4.
- A Caustics pass, so you can grade caustics on their own in the compositor.
How it works
The changes live inside Cycles and switch on per scene. Leave them off and Reblend renders exactly like Blender 5.2.2; turn them on where a scene needs them.
Platforms
macOS on Apple silicon (GPU rendering needs macOS 15). Windows and Linux with CPU rendering, or an NVIDIA GPU with CUDA or OptiX. The Linux build has been tested on an RTX 4090; the Windows build shares the same GPU code but hasn't yet run on an NVIDIA card. On OptiX, the first render after launch can pause for a few minutes once while the GPU code compiles.
Membership
Reblend is a living experiment, and memberships keep it going. You get every new build as soon as it's ready, for as long as you're a member. Expect rough edges: your feedback and your scenes decide what gets fixed and built next.
Credits
The French press scene by Christopher3D.
Limitations
- Mac: Apple silicon only; GPU rendering needs macOS 15. No Intel build.
- Windows and Linux: GPU rendering on NVIDIA only. AMD and Intel GPUs render on the CPU. The Windows build hasn't yet been tested on an NVIDIA card.
- Methods: Bidirectional uses a single render device and falls back to Path Tracing with a shadow catcher, rolling shutter or motion blur. Photon Caustics and Path Guiding work with Path Tracing only.
- Blender version: it's a Blender 5.2.2 build, so Blender's newer features arrive when Reblend moves to a newer Blender. Render farms run stock Blender, so Reblend renders happen on your own machines.
- Experimental: settings and defaults can change between versions; check deadline work in stock Blender too.
