Notes for weekly communication of ongoing projects and modules.

Welcomes

• Thomas Dinges starts full-time as Developer Community Coordinator on November 1st.
• Philipp Oeser is now the go-to developer for the LTS releases.

Announcements

• Blender 3.0 is now in bcon3, and 3.1 is in alpha.
• Blender 3.x roadmap by Ton Roosendaal.

Modules & Projects

Core

• Proposal for changing source code documentation location.

Geometry Nodes

New sample files:

• Cupcakes by Sanctus

  

  cupcakes1920×1080 230 KB

   

Render

• 2021-10-26 Blender Rendering Meeting

New Features and Changes

User Interface

• Theme refresh for Blender v3.0 (commit) (Pablo Vazquez)
  • Use text highlight theme color for active tab (commit) (Pablo Vazquez)
• Improve layout of custom property edit panel (commit) (Hans Goudey)
• Font picking improvements
  • Default fonts folder for Mac and Linux (commit) (Harley Acheson)
  • Open File Browser with Thumbnails for Fonts (commit) (Harley Acheson)
• Node editor
  • Style update to nodes (commit) (Pablo Vazquez)
  • Improve node editor breadcrumbs display (commit) (Hans Goudey)
  • Support transparency for link highlight color (commit) (Dorian)
  • Change node editor grid into a dot grid (commit) (Hans Goudey)
• Animation editors
  • Open animation channel list instead of a popup when searching (commit) (bird_d)
  • Use flat colors for NLA strips instead of a gradient (commit) (Pablo Vazquez)

Cycles

• Distance Scrambling option to improve performance in some cases (commit) (Mathieu Menuet)
  • Scrambling distance for the PMJ sampler (commit) (William Leeson)
• Improve performance with a more accurate volume stack size calculation (commit) (Sergey Sharybin)
• Add additive AO support through Fast GI settings (commit) (Brecht Van Lommel)
• Restore denoising depth pass when enabling denoising data passes (commit) (Brecht Van Lommel)
• Change Position render pass to be not antialiased (commit) (Brecht Van Lommel)
• Various user interface tweaks (commit, commit) (Brecht Van Lommel, Alaska)

Asset Browser

• Improved drag and drop support for object assets
  • Drop object assets and associated objects at the cursor location (commit) (Campbell Barton)
  • Improved feedback when dropping is not possible on drag and drop (commit) (Julian Eisel)
  • Add visual feedback and snapping when dragging an object asset (commit, commit, commit) (Germano Cavalcante)
    • Disable snap-dragging when linking object assets (commit) (Julian Eisel)
• Enable object asset support by default (commit) (Julian Eisel)
• Activate catalog after adding (commit) (Julian Eisel)
• Support dragging catalogs to move them in the hierarchy (commit, commit) (Julian Eisel)
• Show disabled-hint when dragging external assets over catalog (commit, commit) (Julian Eisel)
• User interface layout improvements
  • Changes to various button padding and size (commit, commit, commit) (Julian Eisel)
  • Improve hint for asset library that isn’t found (commit) (Julian Eisel)
  • Rename “Default” asset library to “User Library” (commit) (Julian Eisel)
  • Apply search filter to tags as well (commit) (Sybren A. Stüvel)
• Add Assets menu to the 3D View’s Object menu (commit, commit) (Sybren A. Stüvel)
• Be more accepting of backslashes as separators in catelog paths (commit) (Sybren A. Stüvel)
• Add Author field to asset metadata (commit) (Julian Eisel)

Virtual Reality

• Controller-based Navigation (commit) (Peter Kim)
• View adjustments to allow variable viewer scale (commit) (Peter Kim)

Geometry Nodes

• Image texture node (commit) (Jacques Lucke)
• Support viewing field values from the viewer node in the spreadsheet (commit) (Jacques Lucke)
• Rename geometry sockets to hint about what types they work on (commit, commit) (Hans Goudey)
• Geometry component type warning system (commit) (Jacques Lucke)
• Random/Stable ID changes
  • Only create instance IDs when they exist (commit) (Hans Goudey)
  • Get and set nodes for ID attribute (commit) (Hans Goudey, Jacques Lucke)
    • Used index field implicitly when ID attribute does not exist (commit, commit) (Jacques Lucke)
  • Tweak display of id attribute in the spreadsheet (commit, commit) (Jacques Lucke)
• Handle multiple grids in the volume to mesh node (commit) (Hans Goudey)
• Use vector socket for offset in Set Position node (commit) (Jacques Lucke)
• Add “Fill Caps” option to curve to mesh node (commit) (Hans Goudey)
• Add Brick Texture node (commit) (Charlie Jolly)
• Performance improvements
  • Optimise Voronoi texture node when only some outputs are used (commit) (Charlie Jolly)
  • Avoid logging full field data when not necessary (commit) (Jacques Lucke)
• User interface tweaks
  • Show hint in empty output attributes panel (commit) (Hans Goudey)
  • Remove reference to anonymous attributes in tooltips (commit) (Jacques Lucke)
  • Make subdivision surface node enums more compact (commit, commit) (Hans Goudey)
• Add image socket to switch node (commit) (Johnny Matthews)
• Use true as default in Set Shade Smooth node (commit) (Jacques Lucke)
• Change default raycast direction (commit) (Jacques Lucke)

EEVEE

• Support accessing custom mesh attributes from geometry nodes (commit) (Kévin Dietrich)

Video Sequence Editor

• Support basic selection & delete from previews (commit) (Campbell Barton)
  • Various preview selection improvements (commit) (Campbell Barton)
• Expose preview transform operators in menu (commit) (Aaron Carlisle)

Modeling

• Allow right click to cancel when no cuts have been made (commit) (Cian Jinks)

Line Art Modifier

• Allow trimming edges right at the image border (commit) (Yiming Wu)
• Add the ability to use a custom camera (commit) (Yiming Wu)
• Add option for offsetting generated strokes towards the camera (commit) (Yiming Wu)

Weekly Reports

• Bastien Montagne
• Campbell Barton
• Germano Cavalcante
• Hans Goudey
• Jacques Lucke
• Jeroen Bakker
• Julian Eisel
• Peter Kim
• Philipp Oeser
• Pratik Borhade
• Richard Antalik
• Sebastian Parborg
• Sergey Sharybin
• Sybren Stüvel
• William Leeson