2 October 2023

Announcements Weekly Updates
1

2 October 2023
Notes for weekly communication of ongoing projects and modules.

Announcements

  • Blender 4.1 development started and Blender 4.0 is in beta now.
  • Weizhen is on a planned break from Blender development for the next 6 months.

Modules & Projects

New Features and Changes

Animation

  • Warn when a bone is added to a hidden bone collection (commit) (Sybren A. StĂŒvel)
  • Change UI label from “Edit Bone Color” to just “Bone Color” (commit) (Sybren A. StĂŒvel)
  • Add “move bone to collection” operator to pose mode menu (commit) (Sybren A. StĂŒvel)
  • Add channel type options to the Bake Action operator (commit) (Nate Rupsis)
  • Keymap
    • Replace “show all layers” with “show all collections” (commit) (Sybren A. StĂŒvel)
  • Rename the “Skeleton” panel to “Pose” (commit) (Sybren A. StĂŒvel)
  • Add overview of bone collections to bone property panel (commit) (Sybren A. StĂŒvel)
  • Move “solo bone collection” operator to menu and add “show all” (commit) (Sybren A. StĂŒvel)
  • Implement a new curve-aware vertex to B-Bone segment mapping mode (commit) (Alexander Gavrilov)
  • Improve readability of channel colors in channel list (commit) (Sybren A. StĂŒvel)
  • Add operator to “solo” the active bone collection (commit) (Sybren A. StĂŒvel)
  • Add operator to sync bone colors between selected bones (commit) (Sybren A. StĂŒvel)
  • Bone color properties panel layout tweaks (commit) (Sybren A. StĂŒvel)

User Interface

  • Draw asset shelf, image editor, and 3D view tools header transparent with button backgrounds (commit, commit, commit) (Julian Eisel)
  • Change snap icons (commit) (Germano Cavalcante)
  • Keymap
    • Restore most used brush shortcuts (commit) (Julien Kaspar)
    • Industry Compatible Keymap
      • Minor adjustments based on user requests (commit) (Julien Kaspar)
      • Regions shortcuts and fixed inconsistencies (commit) (Julien Kaspar)
  • Node Editor
    • Match Node Editor Node menu with Context menu (commit) (Pablo Vazquez)
  • Anchor right when double-clicking last word (commit) (Harley Acheson)
  • Show waiting mouse cursor while file loading (commit, commit) (Harley Acheson)
  • Allow separate configuration of subpixel antialiasing (commit) (Harley Acheson)
  • Move Bone Wireframe Opacity to general overlays (commit) (Pablo Vazquez)
  • Change Overlay Text Size with Label Text Style (commit) (Harley Acheson)
  • Remove Masking dropdown from tool settings (commit) (Pablo Vazquez)
  • Remove “Modes” label in animation editors (commit) (Nate Rupsis)
  • Remove redundant “Context Menu” in menu titles (commit) (Pablo Vazquez)
  • Move “Reset Recent” inside a menu (commit) (persun)
  • Splash & About menus
    • Reorganize splash buttons (commit) (Harley Acheson)
    • Small changes to links and labels (commit, commit) (Pablo Vazquez)
  • Remove duplicate Make Library Override in Object menu (commit) (Pablo Vazquez)
  • Search
    • Prioritize highlighted last words (commit) (Jacques Lucke)
    • Performance
      • Compute search scores in parallel (commit) (Jacques Lucke)
  • Asset shelf
    • Hide asset shelf by default (commit) (Julian Eisel)
    • Add asset library selector (commit) (Julian Eisel)

Geometry Nodes

  • Node tools
    • Move node tools out of experimental (commit) (Hans Goudey)
    • Store tool group in a separate editor property (commit) (Hans Goudey)
    • Expose non-asset tools (commit) (Hans Goudey)
  • Require modifier tag for add menu, show non-assets (commit) (Hans Goudey)
  • Support baking individual simulations (commit) (Jacques Lucke)
  • Add utility to check for bad geometry element index dependence (commit, commit) (Jacques Lucke)
  • Add Inspection Index to Repeat Zone (commit) (Jacques Lucke)

Realtime Compositor

  • Use Int2 images in JFA algorithm (commit) (Omar Emara)

Video Sequence Editor

  • Improve retiming UI (commit) (Richard Antalik)

EEVEE

  • EEVEE-Next
    • Add tracing options for diffuse rays (commit) (Clément Foucault)
    • Shadow Map Tracing Initial Implementation (commit) (ClĂ©ment Foucault)
    • Object visibility settings for probes (commit) (Miguel Pozo)
    • Irradiance Grid clip distance and probe alignment (commit) (Miguel Pozo)
    • Port subsurface to compute shader (commit) (ClĂ©ment Foucault)
  • Otimize principled BSDF by skipping unused components (commit) (Brecht Van Lommel)
  • Add support for metallic F82 tint (commit) (Clément Foucault)

Curve

  • Adjust behavior of invert selection for bezier handlers (commit) (Campbell Barton)

Mesh

  • Show attribute name collision warning in more panels (commit) (Jacques Lucke)

Shader Nodes

  • Adjust names and organization of Principled BSDF inputs (commit, commit, commit, commit, commit) (Brecht Van Lommel)
  • Clamp various shader inputs for Principled BSDF (commit) (Alaska)
  • Change Specular input on Principled BSDF to affect IOR (commit) (Lukas Stockner)
  • Use single Principled BSDF input for metallic and specular tint (commit) (Brecht Van Lommel)
  • Change specular tint in Principled BSDF from float to color (commit) (Weizhen Huang)

Cycles

  • Add Metallic Tint to Principled BSDF using F82-Tint model (commit) (Lukas Stockner)
  • Light Linking
    • Allow re-ordering in the light linking collections (commit) (Sergey Sharybin)
    • Use checkbox icons for state indication (commit) (Sergey Sharybin)
  • Metal
    • Throttle MetalRT BVH builds to avoid exceeding working set limits (commit) (Michael Jones)
  • oneAPI
    • Fix performance regression by inlining svm_node_closure_bsdf (commit) (Xavier Hallade)

Import/Export

  • USD
    • Improve I/O of emission color in preview surface (commit) (Brecht Van Lommel)
  • Hydra
    • Export Blender shader nodes as MaterialX node graph (commit) (Bogdan Nagirniak)

Python API

  • Add specular tint texture support to node_shader_utils (commit) (Brecht Van Lommel)
  • Add full_path attribute to AssetRepresentation (commit) (Colin Basnett)

Weekly Reports

11 Likes