19 January 2026

Announcements Weekly Updates
1

19 January 2026
Notes for weekly communication of ongoing projects and modules.

Welcomes

Modules & Projects

New Features and Changes

This is a selection of changes that happened over the last week. For a full overview including fixes, code only changes and more visit projects.blender.org.

Anim

  • Improve shapekey evaluation performance with threading (commit) - (Christoph Lendenfeld)

Asset Shelf

  • Allow smaller thumbnails (commit) - (Pablo Vazquez)

Attributes

  • Use multi-threading when copying attributes for write access (commit) - (Jacques Lucke)

Compositor

  • Support display window in Movie Distortion (commit) - (Omar Emara)

Core

  • LibOverride: Improve handling of broken hierarchy data on resync. (commit) - (Bastien Montagne)

Cycles

  • Fix runtime kernel compilation of OptiX kernels with CUDA 13+ (commit) - (Patrick Mours)

Functions

  • Support comparing field constants internally (commit) - (Jacques Lucke)

GPU

  • TexturePool separated into per-backend object (commit) - (Mark van de Ruit)
  • VKTexturePool with format aliasing (commit) - (Mark van de Ruit)
  • Shader Tool: Add support for enum and small int in template arguments (commit) - (ClĂ©ment Foucault)
  • Shader: Add fast shader source Preprocessor (commit) - (ClĂ©ment Foucault)

Geometry Nodes

  • Use multi-threading in Offset Point in Curve node (commit) - (Jacques Lucke)
  • New Font socket and turn Curve to String node inputs to sockets (commit) - (Jacques Lucke)
  • New Store/Get Bundle Item Nodes (commit) - (Cartesian Caramel)

LineArt

  • Weight transfer optimizations (commit) - (YimingWu)

Metal

  • Disable matrix comparison operators in most shaders (commit) - (ClĂ©ment Foucault)

Modeling

  • Add corrective flip normals option to apply object transform (commit) - (Tariq-Sulley)

Nodes

  • New tests for node group operator edge cases (commit) - (Lukas Tönne)
  • Change group operator test for pass-through node groups (commit) - (Lukas Tönne)
  • Initial support for built-in icons for built-in enum sockets (commit) - (Jacques Lucke)
  • Support multi-item operations in interface tree view (commit) - (W_Cloud)
  • Preserve zone sockets for Swap Zone operator (commit) - (quackarooni)

Paint

  • Add Color accumulation to Sample Color operator (commit) - (Casey Bianco-Davis)

RNA

  • UI: Improve UILayout RNA warnings (commit) - (Guillermo Venegas)

Sculpt

  • Add ability to temporarily toggle to mask brush (commit) - (ReaalSATYAM)

UI

  • Hide datablocks with dot-prefixed names by default (commit) - (Habib Gahbiche)
  • Nodes: expose mass property unit type for node sockets and interfaces (commit) - (Alberto Pilotto)
  • Persistent collapse/expand state of panels inside popovers (commit) - (Guillermo Venegas)
  • Allow drawing semi scrolled buttons in popups menus (commit) - (Guillermo Venegas)
  • Use regular scroll in menus (commit) - (Guillermo Venegas)
  • Sort alphabetically in some UI elements (commit) - (Philipp Oeser)

VSE

  • Simplify, speedup and fix image proxy building (commit) - (Aras Pranckevicius)
  • Reduce memory consumption when building proxies for many videos (commit) - (Aras Pranckevicius)

Vulkan

  • Add TDR check in VKDevice::wait_for_timeline (commit) - (Christoph Neuhauser)
  • Introduce wait for submission flag (commit) - (Jeroen Bakker)
  • Submit when flushing to avoid OOM and TDRs in background mode (commit) - (Christoph Neuhauser)

XR

  • Explicitly target OpenXR API version 1.0 (commit) - (Jonas Holzman)

Weekly Reports

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