Blender 2.79, released on 12 September 2017, was primarily a rendering-focused update. It added built-in Cycles denoising, the Principled BSDF shader, shadow catchers and Filmic color management, while also improving AMD OpenCL rendering, Grease Pencil, Alembic workflows, interface scaling and overall reliability.
What changed in Blender 2.79?
Blender 2.79 combined significant Cycles improvements with workflow and stability updates across the application. The release page reports more than 700 bugs fixed, a figure published by Blender rather than an independent benchmark.
Cycles rendering improvements
Built-in denoising
Cycles gained an integrated denoising feature that reduces visible render noise while preserving important image detail. Because denoising is part of the renderer workflow, artists could use it without relying on a separate external denoising application.
Principled BSDF shader
The new Principled BSDF node was designed to combine commonly used material properties in one shader. It follows the Disney principled model and provides a more practical starting point for materials than assembling every layer from separate nodes.
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Shadow catcher
Shadow catcher support targeted compositing work. It lets a rendered object contribute shadows to a surface while keeping that surface suitable for combining with live-action footage, making computer-generated elements easier to integrate into filmed backgrounds.
Filmic color management
Blender 2.79 added Filmic as a view transform for high-dynamic-range imagery. The goal was to handle bright values and broad exposure ranges more gracefully than a display-oriented transform, which is especially relevant to physically based rendering and compositing.
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AMD OpenCL rendering
The official release notes state: “Blender 2.79 features much faster AMD OpenCL rendering and feature parity with NVIDIA CUDA.” That is a claim about the capabilities and performance targeted by the 2017 release; it should not be read as a comparison with current graphics cards, drivers or later Blender versions.
The same notes warn that AMD GCN 1.0 graphics cards were no longer supported for Cycles rendering in Blender 2.79. Anyone maintaining an older workstation therefore needed to check the GPU generation before upgrading.
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Grease Pencil workflow updates
Frame interpolation
Grease Pencil received frame-interpolation tools to help create motion between keyframes instead of drawing every intermediate frame manually.
Per-layer onion skinning
Onion skinning became available per layer. Artists could view nearby drawings for a selected layer while keeping unrelated layers from cluttering the animation workspace, which made 2D timing and cleanup more manageable.
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Alembic compatibility and stability
Blender 2.79 improved Alembic import and export compatibility and stability. These changes were aimed at making exchanges with other production applications more dependable, particularly in pipelines that move animated geometry or caches between tools.
Interface and application improvements
Reusable application templates
The interface gained initial support for reusable application templates. Templates can provide a predefined starting configuration for a particular type of work, such as animation, modeling or studio-specific production setups.
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Automatic DPI scaling
Automatic DPI scaling improved interface readability on high-density displays by adjusting UI sizing to the display environment rather than assuming a traditional pixel density.
Add-ons and general fixes
The release also included new and updated add-ons alongside broad reliability fixes. Blender’s release page characterizes the overall maintenance work as more than 700 bug fixes.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Blender 2.79a and the corrective releases
Blender 2.79a was a corrective release with no new features. Developer documentation describes it as containing more than 200 fixes. That figure belongs to 2.79a; the available documentation does not establish the same precise count for Blender 2.79b, so the two releases should not be conflated.
Who benefited most from Blender 2.79?
- Cycles artists: denoising, Principled BSDF, shadow catchers and Filmic addressed common rendering and compositing tasks.
- AMD OpenCL users: the release targeted faster rendering and stated feature parity with CUDA for the capabilities covered by the notes, subject to the GCN 1.0 compatibility removal.
- Grease Pencil animators: interpolation and per-layer onion skinning reduced repetitive drawing and improved scene review.
- Pipeline teams: Alembic compatibility and stability improvements helped with interchange workflows.
- Studios and high-DPI users: application templates and automatic DPI scaling improved setup consistency and display usability.
How 2.79 fits in Blender’s history
Blender 2.79 was a mature release in the pre-2.80 generation. Blender 2.80 later introduced a substantially revamped interface and the Eevee real-time renderer, so 2.79’s Cycles-focused additions should be understood as features of the older interface and rendering pipeline rather than as a description of current Blender capabilities.
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