Kaiwan Shaban has released Lens Optics 1.5.1, which brings his Cycles lens add-on to native gaussian splat scans in the Blender 5.3 beta and 5.4 alpha.
Lens Optics applies artistic lens characters to Blender cameras, including anamorphic bokeh, vintage swirl and prism looks. The free Lite edition carries 10 looks with the full camera and focus tools. The $24 Pro edition carries all 63 looks, full lens character controls, custom presets and finishing effects such as bloom, halation, streaks and film grain. Shaban describes the looks as artistic, not measured replicas of manufactured lenses.
Both Blender versions are still in development. Blender 5.3 adds native gaussian splat import and rendering across Workbench, EEVEE and Cycles, and is in beta until November 4, 2026, while 5.4 is an alpha. Lens Optics 1.5 covered Blender 4.5 through 5.2 and tested gaussian scans on CPU only, leaving GPU rendering of splats unverified.
Lens Optics 1.5.1 is a separate Windows x64 package with Cycles CPU and NVIDIA OptiX compatibility for native gaussian scans, independent camera focus and Walk Navigation. Focus can be set by clicking a surface in the viewport. Lens looks belong to each camera, while finishing applies to the whole scene.
Shaban tested 1.5.1 with an RTX 3090 Ti on two 5.3 beta builds and two 5.4 alpha builds, where GPU renders of a garden gaussian scan passed for focus, lens character and finishing. Other hardware and later development builds have not been validated. The package does not add Apple Metal, Linux, EEVEE or Octane support.
In a demo on Instagram, Shaban switches lenses with denoising off while walking through the garden scan and moving focus, rendered live in Cycles. He says lens character and depth of field give splat scans "a soft, photographic feel."
Users on Blender 4.5 through 5.2 keep the original 1.5 download. Lens Optics Lite is available free on Superhive.
