Blender connector changelog

[dogukan]

We’re excited to announce that the Next-Gen Speckle Blender Connector has officially hit stable release with version 3.2.0!

After two months of open beta testing and invaluable community feedback, our completely rewritten Blender connector is now production-ready and brings Blender fully in line with the capabilities of our other connectors like Rhino, Revit and Archicad.

What’s New in 3.2.0

This stable release represents a complete rewrite with our next-generation connector architecture, bringing several key improvements:

Model cards are in

When you publish or load a model, corresponding model card is created. From these model cards, you can:

• Publish a new version of the same model
• Overwrite what gets published (e.g. make a different selection and publish that instead)
• Load a new version of the loaded model
• Overwrite what gets loaded in Blender (e.g. pick a different version)
• Select published/loaded objects

What happens when you load a new version of the same model? Each loaded model comes with its own collection structure. That collection structure and all the loaded objects get removed, and gets created again with the new collection structure + objects.

Blender models looking good in the viewer

We had a known limitation of legacy Blender connector: when you publish a Blender model, famous Blender cube, to Speckle, hard edges wouldn’t look good.

With the next-gen Blender connector, we’ve resolved that issue. Now, vertex normals are included so Blender models looks as good as how they look in Blender.

Loading Blocks options

When blocks from other CAD apps, (like Rhino, SketchUp etc.), now you have the option for controlling how they are created in Blender.

Linked Duplicates: Creates multiple instances of the same block that share identical mesh data in Blender’s memory.

Collection Instances: Converts each block into a Blender collection instance, which is preserving the hierarchical structure of the blocks.

Applying Modifiers

Modifiers, we all love them. They are an inseparable part of Blender. Blender connector now has the option for applying modifiers on publish so your models look identical to how they are in Blender.

Sign in within connector

If this is your first time using Blender connector, you now can sign in to your Speckle account directly within Blender.

The stable connector supports Blender 4.2, 4.3, and 4.4, ensuring compatibility with the latest Blender releases.

Migration from Legacy (V2) Connector

Ready to make the switch? Here’s what you need to know:

• Download and install the Next-Gen Blender connector from connectors page.
• Uninstall the legacy V2 connector (it will remain available but won’t receive updates)

Note that some workflows from the legacy connector are no longer supported

We encourage all users to migrate to the stable 3.2.0 release and let us know if you discover any missing features.

Thank You, Beta Community!

A huge thanks to our open beta testers who provided crucial feedback over the past two months. Your input directly shaped the features we prioritized and helped us achieve true feature parity with our other connectors.

What’s Next?

Property Support

We’re thinking on adding support for loading properties from other models and publishing custom properties from Blender. This could open up powerful workflows for data-driven visualization and parametric animations.

Community Poll: We’d love to hear from you! Would property support be valuable for your workflows?

• YAY
• NAY
• IDK

Tell us more: Drop a comment below and let us know:

• What types of properties would you want to load from other applications into Blender?
• How would you use custom Blender properties in your collaborative workflows?
• Any specific use cases or scenarios where this would be a game-changer?

Your input helps us prioritize what to build next!

As always, the Blender connector remains open source, continuing our commitment to transparent, community-driven development.

Get Started Today

Download the Next-Gen Blender Connector

Try it out and let us know what you think is missing - your feedback continues to drive our development priorities.

[mseawell (Michael Seawell)]

Hello! Just tested 3.2.0 in Blender 4.4.1. The UI updates, especially to model cards, are a welcome change. It seems much more intuitive now.

Some of the critical items for our workflow are not working, however. I noticed instances from Revit are not respected in Blender using the “Linked Duplicates” option. Also, using the “Load Latest from Speckle” button on the model card causes modifiers and custom materials to be removed.

One of the biggest issues is that very often we have to hide objects coming from Revit that are unnecessary for the render (plumbing fixtures, mechanical items, light fixtures that are needed for location reference only, etc.) Normally, we would just move these elements to a collection/layer that is set to be hidden. Unfortunately, when I load latest from the model card, these items that were moved outside of the collection are then duplicated and put back in the scene. If I just hide the object itself in the outliner, Speckle just turns the visibility back on. I would love for Speckle to allow us to freely move items to whatever collections we want and for visibility to be set however we like without obliterating those changes upon the next reimport.

As for object custom properties, we would definitely love to see metadata pulled from Revit for the ID, name, type, level, category, and family. We use this data via scripting to sort objects to collections. With the way Speckle currently organizes objects, we could work with that if not for the issue mentioned previously about resetting visibility of layers. We just have so much content coming from Revit, and dozens of people associated with the project, that we can’t catch everything on the Revit side that should be hidden or removed. It’s easier to sort & hide content within Blender itself.

Thanks for continuing to develop this connector!

[gokermu (Mucahit Bilal GOKER)]

Hey @mseawell ,

Currently we keep track objects and their collections. I can change it to track only collections. This way when you move something to a different collection and load again, it won’t delete them. They’ll stay where they are. But if newly loaded version contains the same elements, in this scenario, you’d have to clean it up the duplicated elements. Would this be better than the current implementation?

As for the properties, we’re thinking of implementing it the same way it works in Rhino as the first pass. You get all custom properties attached to an object.

[mseawell (Michael Seawell)]

Hi @gokermu - what you described is how the connector currently functions. If I move an asset out of its collection and reload the model, the asset reappears in the original collection as a duplicate. This is not desirable. At the very least, we need a way to hide assets/collections coming from Revit and not have their visibility turned back on when the model is refreshed.

[mseawell (Michael Seawell)]

an example of this is with light fixtures coming from Revit. We bring in the original fixtures and use them as a location reference for where to place our own higher-res 3d models. Same thing for furniture. It’s very useful to see them in the viewport but disable in renders.

Can you store current visibility settings of collections and objects (e.g. “disable in viewports”, “disable in render”, etc.) so that when the model is refreshed, these options do not have to be set again for assets already in the scene?

[mseawell (Michael Seawell)]

To put it plainly, a practical use of the reload function would preserve as much as possible on reimport. Preserve all materials applied to an object, maintain object/collection visibility settings, UV mapping data, and modifiers.

Right now, I cannot use this connector for the initial import because instances from Revit are not supported, which brings renders to a crawl, and I can’t refresh an existing model in the scene because all changes are reset.

[gokermu (Mucahit Bilal GOKER)]

Thanks for the detailed explanation. This really helps.

As for the Revit instances, they need to be implemented in Revit first and it’s not as simple as blocks because there is a lot involved. But once they are implemented, Blender will support them OOTB because we already support instances for blocks from CAD apps.

[mseawell (Michael Seawell)]

That sounds great. Having instance support will go a long way.

Also, thank you for considering custom properties on an object. We currently utilize properties from Revit to build a variety of scripts in 3ds Max. Would love to bring this functionality into Blender as well.

[gokermu (Mucahit Bilal GOKER)]

Hey @mikecrack ,

We’re getting there.

[mikecrack (Mike)]

Thanks for the update guys!

However you are still ignoring critical use cases for this connector. @mseawell has described multiple times exactly how the community wishes the addon would behave!

Anyways I am very happy you guys are working on this and wish you all the best!

[gokermu (Mucahit Bilal GOKER)]

Blender 3.2.1 is here✨!

Hey @Community ,

We’ve just released Blender connector 3.2.1 with some great improvements based on your feedback.

Preserving Visibility Changes

Your visibility settings now persist across version updates! When you hide objects or collections and load a new version, those visibility preferences are automatically maintained.

Practical example: Load a Revit model in Blender and hide the pipes category. The next time you update to a new version, the pipes collection will remain hidden, saving you from having to manually adjust visibility settings each time.

Thanks to @mseawell for this feature request!

Preserving Applied Modifiers

Applied modifiers are now preserved when loading new versions, maintaining your workflow continuity and preventing the loss of custom modifications.

Thanks to @mseawell for this suggestion as well!

Tracking by applicationId

We’ve implemented a significant behind-the-scenes improvement by switching from name-based to application ID-based object tracking. This change addresses reliability issues specific to Blender workflows.

What this means:

• You can now rename objects in Blender without breaking functionality
• The object highlight button will continue to work correctly, even after renaming
• More reliable object identification and tracking overall

Important note: When you load a new version, object names will be updated to match the names from Speckle, overriding any local name changes.

Fixes

• Upgraded to specklepy 3.0.3, fixing a critical bug that would prevent opening project selection dialog.
• Added client caching: Using connector should feel smoother now (within Blender’s limits) !

Get Started

Ready to try these new features?

Download Blender Connector 3.2.1

As always, we appreciate your feedback and contributions to making Speckle better. Keep the suggestions coming!

[zoomer]

A bit off topic but 3.2.1 does install and activate fine on Mac, but it is no more able to connect to Speckle/load Project.

Blockquote Python: Traceback (most recent call last):
Blockquote File “/Users/user/Library/Application Support/Blender/4.5/extensions/user_default/speckle_blender_addon/connector/ui/project_selection_dialog.py”, line 123, in invoke
Blockquote wm.selected_workspace.id =
Blockquote get_active_workspace(wm.selected_account_id)[“id”]
Blockquote > Blockquote ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^
Blockquote TypeError: ‘NoneType’ object is not subscriptable

Unfortunately installation must have done some changes, as uninstalling and installing 3.2.0 instead does no more work either (even on a Blender that was not yet updated to 3.2.1 - so something somewhere in the Speckle’s Settings)

But will try on Windows …

[Jedd (Jedd Morgan)]

This might suggest a bug on our end, that we are not handling get_active_workspace when it returns None.

I’ll let the team know

[gokermu (Mucahit Bilal GOKER)]

Hey @zoomer ,

This release include a fix for this issue. Since you are using it on Mac, your dependencies may not be automatically cleaned up. I recommend removing the dependencies from:
Users/{USER_NAME}/.config/Speckle/connector_installations/Blender {VERSION NUMBER}

[zoomer]

Great !
Thanks a lot. Works like a charm.

After renaming the old Folders in hidden Speckle Config and starting my Blenders, the Speckle Tab in N-Panel was lost. Just reinstalling Speckle did not help.
But uninstalling Speckle from Blender/Settings/Extensions > restarting Blender > re-installing Speckle from legacy Blender/Settings/AddOns … did the trick.

I think I will test on Windows too nevertheless