Download

Here you can download the latest Bforartists version as well as earlier versions.

Downloads Bforartists 4
Source Code Download
Developer Build
System Requirements
Older Versions

Bforartists 4

Version 4.4.3

is release is based on the Blender main trunk with Blender 4.5.0 Alpha and Blender 4.4.3 at the date of release.

Released on 08.05.2025

Note: Backwards compatibility may be limited with versions of Blender/Bforartists 3.6.0 or earlier.

For addon compatibility, most continue working with every version update – but if they don’t, try use an earlier version of Bforartists or test if the addon works in the latest Blender developer builds. Also, kindly let your addon developer know that they are recommended to have a development version prepared and ready for developer builds of Blender to future-proof their addons – they will eventually need to update anyways.

For backwards compatibility, you can find older versions of Bforartists on Github. github.com/Bforartists/Bforartists/releases

Windows

Note: You need a Windows 64 Bit version for Bforartists. There no-longer is support for 32 bit versions anymore.

Note: The installer is not digitally signed currently, since this would cost a lot of money. Windows may notice that this is a potentially dangerous software, and gives a warning on install. The installer is of course not dangerous. We do not provide a commercial digital signature. You can alternatively use the zipfile version when you don’t trust the installer. The contents are the same.

Linux

Note: the Linux versions are built with Rocky 8. This means that this will most likely run on Linux Distributions that has the same or higher GlibC version, which is glibc 2.28.

Mac OS X

Intel architecture (Legacy)

Silicon architecture

Note: the Silicon and Universal version is experimental. Please report any issues.

These versions will require elevated permissions. Follow these instructions to allow execution.

In case the Silicon version does not start, make sure the App Store and Identified Developers option is ticked. And check if the files and folders tab to see Bforartists is listed and has permissions. Further informations can be found here: support.apple.com/en-au/HT202491

In case it still does not work, try to launch from the terminal with xattr -cr since we don’t have a signed license yet.

Note: The default Bforartists keymap is not mapped to the oskey keys, but ctrl instead. It works fine for Linux and Windows but not with a Mac. You need to switch to the Bforartists-macOS keymap. It is mapped to the oskey keys.

Please have a look at our quickstart video tutorials. They are made with Bforartists 2, but are still valid:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZlqqMAGgMs&list=PLB0iqEbIPQTZArhZspyYSJOS_00jURpUB

When you come from Blender and want to migrate your settings and addons, then you might find this article useful:
www.bforartists.de/migrate-settings-and-addons-from-blender/

Source Code download

The actual source code can be found on the Github project site:
github.com/Bforartists/Bforartists

For previous and official releases have a look in the releases tab:
github.com/Bforartists/Bforartists/releases

In case that you want to compile Bforartists by yourself, the advice is the same as for Blender. Here’s a short tutorial that shows the whole process under Linux Ubuntu 17 www.bforartists.de/data/tuts/Building_with_Ubuntu17.pdf

And here a youtube video that shows how to compile Bforartists 2 on Ubuntu 20:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUhM2YSw1gQ

Here’s the Blender advice for Linux, which goes a bit more into detail:
wiki.blender.org/wiki/Building_Blender/Linux
Here’s the advice for Mac:
developer.blender.org/docs/handbook/building_blender/mac/
For Windows have a look here:
www.bforartists.de/data/tuts/Building_Bforartists_with_Cmake_and…

You might want to compile an older Bforartists version where the newest precompiled libs do not work. Here you can find the precompiled libs for all previous Blender versions:
svn.blender.org/svnroot/bf-blender/tags/

Developer Build

The Developer Build is an actual development snapshot. It is only available as a zip file, and it is undocumented, besides the entries at Github and the issues marked as solved in the tracker. It is meant for users that are not able to compile the source code, but wants to have a look at what the current state of development is. Or to overcome some bugs in the official release.

Note that the developer build is always one week behind. We merge the new Blender features after we create the developer build. This gives us a week to fix the issues that may arrive with the merge …

The current development build is based on Blender 4.4 Alpha !

Windows: www.bforartists.de/data/dev/devbuild-16-05-2025.zip – 397 Mb

Rocky Linux: www.bforartists.de/data/dev/rockydevbuild-16-05-2025.tar.xz – 382 Mb

Note that the Rocky Linux version is compiled with version 8. Another note is that Blender 4 now requires minimum OpenGL 4.3.

Mac: www.bforartists.de/data/dev/Bforartists-4.2.2-universal.dmg – 630 Mb – 06.09.2024

This build should work for both, intel and silicon architecture. Note that Mac does not appear regularly as a dev build.

Note:

Use the developer builds at your own risk. It is a development snapshot, not a release version. The dev build is compiled from the master, and should work. But there may be broken or missing features. Please report them when you find something.

Don’t expect daily builds. We do our best to update the dev build once in a week. But it can happen that even this isn’t possible.

Note that there is no version hint in the developer build. It shows the splashscreen and version number from the last official release when you start it. The folder name shows the creation date. The newer, the more up to date.

System Requirements

Bforartists has the same system rquirements as Blender. So you can also have a look at the Blender page.

Minimum

64-bit quad core CPU with SSE2 support
8 GB RAM
Full HD display
Mouse, trackpad or pen+tablet
Graphics card with 2 GB RAM, OpenGL 4.3
Less than 10 year old

Recommended

64-bit eight core CPU
32 GB RAM
2560×1440 display
Three button mouse or pen+tablet
Graphics card with 8 GB RAM

Higher is of course even better. And please keep your drivers up to date.

Supported graphics cards:

GeForce 400 and newer, Quadro Tesla GPU architecture and newer, including RTX-based cards, with NVIDIA drivers
GCN 1st gen and newer. Since Blender 2.91, Terascale 2 architecture is fully deprecated, try using 2.90
Intel: Haswell architecture and newer.
Apple Silicon: macOS version 11.0 or newer
Intel: macOS version 10.15 or newer

Windows: with the release of Bforartist 2.7.0 the minimum requirements raised from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1

Older Versions

Here you can find the previous versions of Bforartists that are not longer supported. The main versions are linked here. Binary versions of older point upgrades can be found at Githhub in the posts of the single releases. Just expand the assets tab at every release. github.com/Bforartists/Bforartists/releases

Bforartists 3