22 May 2023
Notes for weekly communication of ongoing projects and modules.
Announcements
- Release cycle: Blender 3.6 is in beta now, with focus on bugfixing. Blender 4.0 development starts in the main branch.
- USD Project Update
Modules & Projects
New Features and Changes
User Interface
- 3D View
- Rename Copy Vertex Group to Duplicate Vertex Group (commit) (Daniel Salazar)
- Properly center text under previews (commit) (Julian Eisel)
- Improve error message for make relative/make absolute operators (commit) (Colin Basnett)
- Allow configuration of some operator confirmations (commit) (Harley Acheson)
- Add timeline to Geometry Nodes workspace (commit) (Pablo Vazquez)
Geometry Nodes
- Add experimental Sample Volume node (commit) (Erik Abrahamsson)
- Performance
- Remove realize instances legacy behavior (commit) (Hans Goudey)
Mesh
- Move bevel weight to generic attribute (commit) (Hans Goudey)
- Write mesh and movieclip with new format (commit) (Hans Goudey)
Cycles
- Improve performance of orthonormal vector function (commit) (Weizhen Huang)
- Merge Anisotropic BSDF node into Glossy BSDF node (commit) (Lukas Stockner)
- oneAPI
- Enable HIP-RT for AMD hardware ray-tracing (commit) (Sahar A. Kashi)
Video Sequence Editor
- Add go to current frame operator to view menu (commit) (Richard Antalik)
- Smooth transition for retiming tool (commit) (Richard Antalik)
Animation
- Update NLA “TAB” tweak mode to be full stack evaluation (commit) (Nate Rupsis)
EEVEE
- Add Transparent Render-Pass option (commit) (Clément Foucault)
Import/Export
- USD Export
Realtime Compositor
- Implement Convert Color Space node (commit) (Omar Emara)
Python API
- Remove deprecated useless width_hidden property (commit) (Hans Goudey)
- Remove deprecated face/vert custom data API (commit) (Hans Goudey)
- Remove sculpt vertex colors from RNA API (commit) (Hans Goudey)