Rename “Shape Key” to “Blendshape” for Industry Alignment

Hi Blender community,

I’ll venture to propose renaming Blender’s “Shape Key” feature to “Blendshape.” This would align Blender with established industry terminology and ease communication of core concepts between DCC users.

“Blendshape” is used in most major 3D applications, including Maya, Houdini, Unreal, Unity, Godot, and Cascadeur. Using a different term in Blender introduces a recurring discrepancy for users moving between tools or learning from external material, where “shape key” and “blendshape” are sometimes used interchangeably. Conversations online illustrate this confusion (e.g., Godot forum and Right-Click Select ), as well as product names (e.g. 1 , 2 , 3 ).

Even within the Blender community, the feature is sometimes referred to as “Shape Key” and sometimes as “Blendshape”; and the Blender manual notes that “shape keys may be called ‘blend shapes’” in other terminology. Adopting a single term would make the feature clearer and more consistent to talk about.

This could be introduced gradually through dual-labeling in the UI and tooltips (e.g., “Blendshape (Shape Key)”) to ease the transition for existing users. On the Python side, shape_keys could remain as an alias to avoid breaking scripts or add-ons, while blendshapes is introduced as the preferred identifier.

The intent is partly to deconvolute the global pool of 3D terminology across applications and partly to make Blender more approachable for both newcomers to 3D and users coming from other DCC tools.