Blender

Owned by Anthony Roberts
Last updated: Aug 27, 2024
2 min read

Motivation

Blender is quite possibly the most popular 3D modelling appplication available, definitely the most popular free one. Enabling it would give considerably better performance on ARM64 platforms for Windows.

To run it, you need latest version of Adreno GPU driver: https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/pcs-and-tablets/snapdragon-8-series-mobile-compute-platforms/snapdragon-8cx-gen-3-compute-platform#Software

Status

Nightlies available from blender via Blender Builds - blender.org

Dependencies

All are enabled except OpenPGL, and DPCPP.

A full list can be seen here: blender/versions.cmake at main

Todo

Enable OpenPGL and investigate clang-cl builds.

Known Limitations

Only 8cx Gen3 and above devices work.

Compiling notes

This must be done on a WoA machine - cross-compiling is not supported.

Compiling blender

As blender now has pre-builts available for Windows ARM64, the standard blender build instructions can be followed for a normal build of blender (note, only VS2022 works for ARM64): https://developer.blender.org/docs/handbook/building_blender/windows/

Compiling via build script (outdated)

You shouldn’t need these instructions unless you intend on building the deps yourself - it is likely they may not work. Please speak to @Anthony Roberts if you have queries about this section.

There is a build script written, which takes care of many of the interim steps required to build and run the semi-release version of Blender, available here: Files · master · linaro / WindowsOnArm / packages / blender · GitLab

It should work on the main fork of blender, but mileage may very, as main is a fast-moving target within blender.

To use:

  • Set up arm64 wenv: linaro / WindowsOnArm / wenv · GitLab

  • Clone repo

  • Execute ./recipe.sh origin/main out_dir from a wenv bash terminal - ie, not a vcvarsall/plain CMD instance!

  • Wait for build to complete

Contributing changes

If you wish to contribute changes to Blender, you may do so by making a merge request for your changes to blender’s main repo here: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender

Any changes or issues relating to Windows ARM64 will be directed to @Anthony Roberts by the blender triaging team - if you have bigger changes to discuss, please reach out to Anthony directly at anthony.roberts@linaro.org.

If you have any questions, queries, or concerns, contact @Anthony Roberts

Running

Download a daily build from the blender build bots from here: Blender Builds - blender.org