Hair Stuff! - Blender.Today Live #214

Welcome to another episode of blender today live. I am. I had some sound issues at work at the office, so I had to come home to set this up and uh, as always things don't work as expected, but now, hopefully you can listen to me at least OBS is telling me that the sound is okay, um And I hope the messages that you're saying are: okay, sound is back cool awesome. Welcome to another episode of learner today live and today's live stream is going to be a bit bumpy. I'M literally drag and dropping the The Sounds into VLC like I don't even have set up the live stream um here it's been a while, since I do it from home, but welcome to my home blender today is streaming live, so we are going to be trying To answer questions uh here in the blog post in blender dot community, but we have a ton of updates. Today we have, we don't have water, that's one thing, but we do have a new open movie project that was announced um just this week. The last week the announcement is about Pet Project. It'S a new open movie project that is going to focus on uh cartoon and uh NPR, rendering Grace pencil and something completely different from the latest open movie that came out in December charge. This think of this. As a smaller, smaller production that hopefully one day can be serialized like it can become a series, but it's something small and fun for the team to do and while preparing for a bigger project that it's in the works and actually um this week, we might get Some visits at the studio related to that project, that is in pre-preproduction super fun, but um Paolo. Why are you sharing all of these things that are under a paywall? Well uh. You know this supports a blender project, but actually I also wanted to mention that the blender team has been putting out uh blog posts about the production of charge that are free for everyone, they're freely available and that's what blender studio is about Francesco put it in A in a tweet the other day that is about um, about dealing with production issues and challenges in blender and then putting out these resources available for everybody. So this blog posts are about procedural wrinkles. If you haven't seen it yet, you should check it out because it is a quite eye-opening so about it. Talks about everything, the issue, the results. I don't know if you get to see here the difference, but it's it's especially on this area. You'Re not going to see it with the YouTube compression but go check it out it's in the studio.blender.org website. It really goes into detail about how their the team has been using geometry notes to create the stress Maps. Um. Remember the gudo blender internal stress Maps. Well, something like that, but using geometry notes: it's just just crazy. So all of this is pretty available. The setup blend file is under the blender blender Studio subscription. You know just to to get something in return, but the um the explanation itself and how they got there and the steps to get there they're all freely available. So super nice from the team to do that and another update from the community well from the industry. In general, is that the um, the the the Apple now the open data website, where the benchmarks happens, that you can download The Benchmark and running your own Hardware? It'S been getting the latest uh Apple M2 hardware, and it's it's looking very promising. Of course, still far from what you will get, we have 40 90 RTX with like uses and nuclear power to yeah. It'S still far from that, but um, I kind of like to see how I like it that it scales up apparently um, as in the M2 Max it's supposed to be twice as much of the pro and actually there. It shows in the render so very promising. For the future, there are updates on this. Also this is 3.4 and actually in 3.5. There are many, many more updates to take advantage of these systems so really looking forward to to what is there coming up. So, let's start with: let's start with what is new in blender, and for that, let's let me look for the the pipe there. Mario pipe.mp3, I feel like in the 90s, like at the early 2000s, like opening MP3, there you go. That is how we jump into the section for um, let's, let's start with an unusual one, the post Library. So in the post Library there has been a number of updates that are related to the user interface, mainly the um here that that the team mainly related to the asset browsering as a browser animation at the studio, has made a few improvements, especially on on the Ui like, for example, in the viewport um, the post library, now all the removal, the creation and the flipping of the post has been removed from the viewport in order to make it easier, well, not easier to to make it more clear. Where do things happen? Where um, like all the creation of an asset, happens in the asset browser, while all the applying and the the using it's in the in the actual in the in the editor in the viewport editor the same for the asset browser, for example, pastes new asset and Create process post assets have been added to the new asset menu in the context menu you have apply, post, flipped and and what is it Paolo unplugged? I'M looking at the at the chat here by the way, um Paolo unplugged? Don'T don't mention the words unplugged while someone is live streaming because it makes us freak out um the um, some renamings of some operators, some separators, to make the the UI a bit nicer. The post Library panels have been removed from the asset browser itself and they have been moved into a new catalog menu that has been added to the asset browser in the action editor. Also, the post Library um panel has been renamed to action, so it all fits inside of there action and also when it's empty. It doesn't show like an empty panel um. The asset browser has a new catalog menu which replaces the old edit menu, because it contains undo and redo operators that are not really that are only related to catalogs and not to assets themselves right assets, you edit them like in blender itself or in the um Or in other blend files, and then you load them in the asset browser, so it didn't really belong there. So it's called it's good that this organization is happening. Um in the asset browser speaking of catalogs, you can now set the active catalog as or you can change the active catalog via python. These are requests from the blender Studio, because often you in your tooling, you want to have a an add-on or some operator that changes the active catalog um. This is super handy to have, of course, python only and another change which is user facing for everybody is that now the asset browser has an all setting, so you don't have to be in a specific asset library, but you can see all asset libraries, which is Super convenient some often you don't really care about where this asset library is coming from, especially if you're using it for brushes for things that don't really matter like if you're in a project. Maybe you want to take things from specific asset libraries, but most of the time, if you're, just working by yourself in things like or mat caps, hdris, um and brushes, you just want to see all the brushes right now this Soul set - and this is in preparation - Uh for the new asset Shelf um, the the one that has been covered in the code blog in case you haven't seen it but yeah um things else. Dragon mp3 by hand is like a playing a course and unplug. Ah, it's true yeah. Sorry I didn't get the that connection. Okay, so uh switch in topics. Oh what I was mentioning, let's, let's let me open the pipe there. You go Cycles um in Cycles, the tweaks that I mentioned before about the new systems by by Apple, they are now um. The blender Cycles using metal GPU rendering, is now taking advantage of the new. Well, I don't know if it's CPU or GPU now, but it's taking advantage of the new M2 machines, which is awesome because the announcement by Apple was on the 17th of January. On two days later, blender has it, but the machines were not shipping until like today, 23rd of January, so blender has support for things that haven't even been shipped. Yet isn't that awesome? I think it was the 17 yeah, the 17th um. So that's so cool and I wish uh other well. They they do. Nvidia keeps up with the staff also AMD. So it's good. When you know manufacturers actually keep up with their Hardware, it shows that they care about blender, which is which is awesome, because, let's remember that these changes are not made by blender developers themselves by paid by the blender Foundation, but actually by the um manufacturers by Apple By Nvidia AMD Intel and next cycle, this is a removal. This is a change that, if you are using uh old, really old CPUs like the oldest CPUs, that blender supports and you might see a slightly or tiny reviews in the performance in favor, for supporting newer uh well for banking maintenance, easier for developers and in the Future support more optimization for newer Hardware, but newer, as in like this list like for really old stuff like SSE, 3 and Mex, kernel optimizations, but um, it was keeping it's skipping as E2, and this is SSE 4.1 and abx2 so that shouldn't be affected. Let'S talk about notes this one I mean okay, so there is a new node that it's the start of the show. However, there is a UI change that many of you will like. I bet use checkbox for Xposed Boolean sockets and if I had the Clapping button, I will clap clap clap because this change has been requested so many times you can see all the hearts and attention that it has it that has here in um in fabricator. The change basically just turns the slider 0 to 1 for booleans into a checkbox, something that you would think it's. It'S tiny. How wide didn't happen before? Well, actually, this change. It comes together with another change that I'm going to talk about later. That allows custom properties to have like custom Boolean properties in uh, in objects in in custom properties in general and in blender. So it is a deeper change. You know I like to make emphasis when showing features that they're, not just um, just made like that. Often they require a deeper change in the code, so that is huge. Look at all the Applause and love in the chat. Nice Keep It Coming: yay, um! Okay! Now, let's go! Let'S go to the good stuff and the title of these show hair stuff. Well, not technically only hair, but you're gon na have to use it mainly for hair for grass for curved staff. One of the main things that we're missing in the current the new hair system in blender was child, um particles or well the equivalent of child particles. In the new um system, the new hair system that was introduced in the last in the last release, so Jack mentions new interpolate curves node. This adds a new interpolate curves node allows to generate curves between a set of existing guide curves. So you have two curves and then you want to fill in the space in between with a bunch of curves. So the usage is, you have to provide a one, has to provide a set of guide, curves and a set of root positions for the generated curves. The new curves are created, starting from these root positions and the closest guide curves are used for The Interpreter and for the interpolation. So whatever curve guide is closer to, it is going to be used to guide the newly interpolated particles. There is an additional app Vector that can be provided for every guide, curve and root position, so you can change individually, each uh curve, app Vector and root position. This is typically typically a surface normal or nothing in case. If you just want to follow the existing. Just the following between the position between the two curve guides, this allows to generate child curves that are properly oriented based on the surface orientation there you can read more about it. Remember in the description of this video. You can find links to most of the things that I'm showing here. Usually it's all the things today. Youtube has a limit of 5000 characters for the description of the videos and it didn't fit all of the settings, but this one you can, you can find it so there is even a little screenshot here. So it takes this input. The guide curves, the app Vector and group ID the points, the point up, Vector, Point group ID and the maximum neighbors. That'S how you can control how many neighbors each particle is going to have and the output is on the curves, the closest index, which is a field and the weight closes weight as well. So you can create fun stuff. So yes, the usage, as you may imagine, is not as simple yet as the old interpolate curves like where you just press a button and it's a children, it's not as simple yet but remember that there is a. They are custom, node groups that are going to be built in coming to blender, so that is hope. That is Hope and also. There is a example blend files that you can download to see how this works um. With that in mind, it is useful to see the number of core points in each in a socket inspection tooltip. So when, when you Mouse over a socket um, it used to show the number of splines. Now, it's also going to show you the number of points super handy, but you know what else is handy when things go fast when things run faster things, especially thanks to multi-threading when things get paralyzed Hans has been working so much on this, like I have a At least a huge list of updates - and this is only a tiny fraction of all the changes that are coming Hans - is also rewriting pretty much and refactoring the mesh system to use generic attributes and the like. We are now in in a transition period in 3.5 that I I I think it would um it should end our about to 4.0 and then in 4.0 there will be like a huge uh cleanup to have to use a new mesh system, so it it's insane Like I can only imagine like we're, 3.5 is going to go beta next week. Then we're going to have 3.6 and 3.7, which is the LTS later this year with, hopefully a full can all kinds of stuff so insane, or at least the first implementation of it. Okay, so back to the to the change. What does it do well and when you are mesh or curve editing like transforming it, for example, using the object info and the transform geometry nodes, which is something you use all the time it was single threaded yep. So now being multitrated, it's so much faster well in a test how much faster in a test on a 4 million word mesh on a AMD, ryzen, 7950x. Okay, so that's another fee! You upgrade it right! Hence you used to have a 39.50 uh. I think anyway, uh on this system, it it's up to five times faster again. This is going to vary depending on your system and how many cores you have. But if you have an AMD ryzen, you should be seeing a huge Improvement. I think AMD um. It'S a king in in Rain course nowadays. So if you look at the code actually it's it's pretty it's just not so much code. If you know what to write exactly right but um, I wonder if the the community could look into these changes and and maybe apply it to other nodes. This is on a pair node basis, most of the time or maybe Hans already did all of them. But I wonder if it could happen, because there are so many notes: okay, what else has been multitreated? The flip faces? Node has been multi set to multi-thread, and that is a 2X performance Improvement twice as fast nice and also the code again, it's uh, just by looking at it, of course, maybe it's but uh. It seems to be pretty straight forward if anyone from the community wants to get inspired by it. Dual mesh also has been improved and by using generic attributes in on a 1 million phase, grid hands observed a roughly eight percent Improvement in the and like milliseconds wide. So nice, for that then another one, I'm gon na try to go fast through these ones because they are just like just everything is faster, like socket logging overhead, when um, when you have weight like too many sockets the um, the way blender was keeping track of Them like logging them has been improved on giving a 15 increase in a case with many math nodes and a larger increase, even in an experimental soft body. Now it's set up did hands just dropped that he has an experimental soft body notes like physics, stuff nice. That'S good to hear so things that are not even released yet are being improved. That'S good to hear um, especially that the larger increase in performance has been in there. So next the next change again skip login sockets for invisible trees. So if you have a, for example, trees that are not being nodes that are not being used, sometimes they would be calculated anyway. This um has been improved and in some cases, some extreme cases. There is avoiding these calculations. There'S up to 70 percent of the total execution time, and the downside of it, though, is that the when you Mouse over the tooltips, sometimes you may not see and the the value until you like recalculate the tree, and that is one small downside in exchange for, Like up to 70 percent performance increase, that's yeah yep. I would take that any time of the day. If you miss this, you can always um just simply um reported, and if enough people do it, then maybe an option can be added to make this take less UI space. I think I already mentioned this last week now I'm confused um, again speed up compute context. Hash generation, what does it mean well that in a test with around one hundred thousand, not group invocations dispatch improves performance about seven percent? What else um, let's see threading this change, apparently makes it. So it is six percent faster on a test file with many node groups and math nodes, and like this I have so many like six percent here, five percent over there whoop um multi-thread transform this doesn't even have the the values or how much faster it is. It'S hard to to measure, but multi-thread can only mean good things: parallelize deleteing, the vertex groups, so in when creating when working with geometry nodes, sometimes you create a mesh. Remove attributes, add new attributes. This is now multi-threaded, so on Horizon 13 3700 at least you what you used to have it's now um how much faster! Well, it went from 15 milliseconds to 8 milliseconds, so nearly twice as fast, so awesome what else more parallelization multitrading! When reading and writing vertex groups um about four times for writing, a group and three times when reading a group four times faster, writing a Vertex group and three times faster reading, a Vertex group. So really, if you have issues with performance, I think that it's a no-brainer just switch to blender 3.5 Alpha tested or wait until next week when the beta comes out. So at least, you feel that you're working with better software, not Alpha software, although the difference between today and next week's, not gon na, be that large, in terms of you, know, features and changes. The um, a lot of overhead, has been removed when calculating when finding textures inside of node groups um, I mean I could just continue with this updates with this change. Let'S go 10 Improvement in evaluation time in a file with extreme number of simple math nodes. 10. Here: 20 over there more parallelization the computation of bounds in the points to volume node, a few milliseconds update on a test with one million points. What else continue going? Um split edges has been improved in performance and set the position. Node has also been optimized. How much faster it's a mystery, but it's much faster um after a while. All these changes are just like: okay, blender is faster, for example, here on a setup, drawing a large node tree is no faster, so even the UI got faster nice. Okay, now back to functional or user visual changes, although you can see how much faster it is when setting a material node in a mesh with no faces now, you're gon na get a warning yep because you can't set um, you can only set materials to faces. So it makes sense that blender lets you know when it's not working, it's not going to work or yield any results. Ui wise Leon made it so the modifier UI now put the field toggles on the right. This also fixes the layout of Boolean properties with the field toggle visible, and this was discussed in the most recent geometry notes: module meeting yeah, it's good to see Leon in the geometry notes, module meeting um when searching in Geometry nodes. We evaluate at index node the value is going to show up before the index, which is uh opposite. How of how the UI looks, but based on feedback from siemen thermos and the community in people are more often likely to choose the um. The value input rename node the face set, boundaries has been renamed to face group boundaries, and the group index has been changed to group ID to match the rest of the like the new conventions for names of sockets um. What else use Dynamic declaration for group nodes? This is an internal change. No user changes visible, like one small benefit, is that when you're, creating a node groups when you're creating sockets like inputs and outputs, now the description or the tooltip is going to be visible immediately, but other than that. I like to show it because it's a huge change that it's opening like it's work in progress, for you know when people ask hey: where are the simulation notes? Well, um, everything that is like simulation or dynamic inputs and outputs, depending on whatever imp or the content of the of the node. All of that require a lot of work under the hood, and this is making it possible. So you can, you can see the scroll bar now. You can't wait. The scroll bar size of these changes like huge. These people are really putting a lot of time and love in what they do for everybody. Isn'T it nice? Okay, no Wrangler, while we're in the node system, the node Wrangler has been improved. It has a little Improvement that makes the principled bsdf the setup like the con. How is it Ctrl T is for mapping control Shifty, something like that. Um, someone in the chat tell me that shortcut that sets up the principal pstf with all the with the maps that are coming from a platform like polyhaven for example.com. Now it's going to work as expected. So thanks to Johan for working on this, so for improving the node Wrangler, which hopefully, this changes can when they become part of blender, because they're super handy um. The next change is these changes are actually not really related to nodes, they're related to attributes the um make the convert attribute and the convert color attribute operators autofill their initial settings with the active attributes, domain and data type if it wasn't explicitly set before so. The first time, instead of having a default value empty now, it's gon na it was gon na take the settings from the active attribute domain, which is awesome, reverse says: Ctrl shift, T multiple setup, yeah Ctrl shift, T blink kind of the node Wrangler be incorporated into Blender, it is already into blender, is just not on by default, because it basically some of the things that it has they're really hacky like the the preview for shaders. It'S a hack right. It adds an emission Shader that connects automatically so those yeah. Some things are a bit hacky, but there are some features that are really legit. That should be part of lender until a solution. A proper solution is, is added okay. So let's talk about um. Well, it's related to attributes. Mesh data mesh curves mesh optimizations to mesh reduce memory consumption when calculating Corner normals again hands on the 12th of December was working on making the a 20 performance Improvement when um calculating the corner normals. For example, when you are using Auto smooth, have you ever noticed how, when you have Auto and auto smooth normals on the, if yeah, if your mesh is really heavy, editing is slower than if you didn't have the auto smooth normals? That'S because, on every transform every time you move the vertices, the normals have to be recalculated constantly in order to Define what is going to be smooth or not right. It'S it that that's actually, the main reason why Auto smooth is not enabled by default on every new primitive that you create. The this change makes it so it's 20 faster to do this kind of changes, which is awesome faster, as in editing, should be faster, but also it uses less memory so yay for that smaller files all together. Well, there are less Ram issues - optimization small one, but in preparation for more optimizations in the merge by distance, it's about two percent - optimization, not bad. Then I mentioned before that that Hans has been working in moving a lot of the default attributes of meshes or like the built-in attributes into a generic attribute, and that has many benefits. It'S a lot of a lot of work. You can see again the size of the the change is huge, but um. This brings a lot of optimizations that are done in one system to all the other through the rest of London, for example, the mesh line node with 4 million points, was about 1.5 times faster from 8 milliseconds to 12 milliseconds. The spring splash screen from lender 3.0 went from no blender 2.0. Well, one of those uh 2.8. The spring splash screen was 42.9, went from 4.3 to 4.5 milliseconds frames per second, so a small update, but the subdivision surface modifier also slightly faster, and this in the future can bring more optimizations because uh yeah things can be made, so they use less memory. For example, a small one but uh it used to use four bytes now three bytes it tightly changes, but you know when you use them more and more, they add up, they use more RAM, they use yeah. So it's good to have this changes and also because any update or or performance movement that gets done to the generic attributes. It gets used by everything in blender um again corpse about one or to four milliseconds have been saved on every re-evaluation on a test file with many curves again smaller changes, but speaking of Curves and folk. You were here in the chat, folk added, drum roll and do system the initial under system to the new curves object. Remember the curves right now, again, speaking of transition, we're in a transition period, blender is going through through uh a teenage face of well. Actually, vendor is 29 years old, a late teenage phase, where it's transitioning right going everything notes getting new data types or the old data types like curves curve move into the new curves, so everything has to be added back. This is the system that has been used for the new hair system, the new data block for the new hair system, where you can sculpt hair, for example, but you didn't have undo so now there is undo but Pablo. Why is there and do if I can't really do anything in in in in the curves? Well worry, not falc added selection operators. You can now select all select random points and select end points, so the the last point of a of a curve which is really handy if you want to like move those wiggle those around just by the tip of each hair purple. I can't even move things yet worry, not Falk has our back. He added the initial transform support, so you can actually now in edit mode of the new curve system or the new hair system. You can now wiggle like select the end point and then wiggle hair around no proportional editing, yet, as I can see, but a welcome addition, this is awesome the team. It'S I mean this is the new curve system right, so even like Grace, pencil can benefit from this in the in the future is like everything is connected with everything. It'S awesome. What else is awesome performance improvements, especially when I don't understand what is going on, but by looking at the at the commit message? Okay, so this comment is by Jack. He did it on a Sunday yesterday why? Okay, at night, at 12, am so actually Saturday night Saturday, Night Fever said Saturday. No, it's fever um. So the change here is ready to function. So it's internal. You know functions inside of lender that improve performance in some circumstances when they are vectorized and or unrolled Loops. What does it mean? Well, this is related to a Sim d. You know throughout vectorization, for noise about something had to do with performance Improvement in the 3D Berlin noise um function. So you know everything is connected with everything. I wonder what it's what's improving in their systems? Okay, let's uh, that's enough geometry! Now! So, let's switch quickly to EV, so I actually I mentioned this one. Last week there is a it's a now I'm last week I had to skip some changes because there was just too many um but yeah. This change has to do with Evie and the mix node, which is now much faster, and it's not a bottleneck anymore, so yay for that everybody uses a mix, node um. The some properties in the samples panel in EV are now animatable. Thanks to Damien, he made the render viewport samples animatable, so you can Ah that's cool, so you can do some frames with less samples and some frames with more samples. For you know, maybe there is one shot that it's really noisy and you just want to animate that one part with more samples there you go, you can do it. Also. The viewport denoising value is also animatable, because why not speaking of Evie or like rendering in general on November, at the end of November, I didn't manage to cover it. The first commits for Vulcan were added, and even though it's just like many of these things back then were like placeholders. We started to see changes and improvements here, like, as you can see in this comment, there is um some change for developers, a change like a warning for developers and for users about deprecation of the old system, but what I like about it is that it's already Mentioned more or less a roadmap of when these things are going to stop working or work, as in blender 3.7 will, which is an LTS release. It'S going to get rid of. Finally, the bhgl, the old um module in favor of newer modules, so users are going to get this, especially if you have an add-on that is using the old system that you're gon na get a warning and you can tell the add-on developer and to to fix It um, which is super nice, communicating three versions in advance, um for well two versions technically in advance for things that are gon na change. Okay, let's I have so many things yet how much time? Oh we we have! We have some time. Let'S talk about Grace pencil Grace pencil has a new option in the build modifier that allows you to build. You know build this when it when it it's a modifier that takes the changes that you did like the drawing and it replays it. Basically, it rebuilds that stroke well now there is a natural drawing option which is going to preserve the speed at what you were drawing it and and um yeah play it play it back at that same speed, um. There is no image, but I remember there was a video somewhere here, basically um. Well, you can try it yourself. Basically, it's you, you draw it really fast and then really slow and it's gon na save it. Uh-Huh you're gon na replay it at the same speed. Another change in the offset, so there is a new addition, offset location rotation scale by layer, stroke and material to the offset modifier so in the outside, modifier allows you to add an offset, but now you can offset by layer, stroke or material. It'S a new setting that lets. You have different options more panels, or is this may maybe a bit old? It is okay. I need to check this uh. Where do I have blender? I think I have it in um blender, but I need to say this because the UI needs maybe a little trick. Let'S open blender live. Can you show the grease pencil change? Okay, maybe I can, I can go to Grace pencil and have a blank stroke go to draw mode and then say I do this change and then tick tick and then have a very slow one. This speed, at which I am editing, should be preserved. If I use the build modifier, so the build modifier draws and then gloop change, timing, um natural drawing speed by default is the number of frames, but natural drawing speed should preserve it and slow nice. Isn'T that great okay? The other change that I wanted to see is the offset modifier. Where is it offset Advanced? Okay, the UI here in this is old developers. Please, when you commit things, um update the the screenshots. Otherwise, it's a bit confusing because the UI here was to like the first implementation was you have three different panels or two different panels here apparently, and they change this to be a setting a mode and you can choose which mode? And now it's a bit less repetitive, it's a bit more! It looks a bit nicer. I think we can still do one Improvement, it's to align the step and the offset together and remove the word layer from the bottom, because it's always layer, step layer offset and it's layer, stroke step stroke, offset material step material. So you can say like material step, offset and align this small thing, but it will make it more connected with the rest um. What else speaking of connected? I don't know, I'm just trying to make a segue um show brush size in draw tool. Cursor. This change by tits, it's a actual, a right click, select proposal that makes it so um when you're drawing you see the preview of the size of the brush, which is pretty handy um. Is there a video here um? Basically, you can see beforehand the size of the brush that you're gon na Rush that you're gon na paint with super handy again. Well, actually I could just show it here, so you see you see the brush. If you want to change that, it's in the view. I think now in the tool, um brush settings and there must be like a like a cursor there you go, you can change the cursor and even has a new color option, but that's another commit um that was done by Antonio. That makes it so it uses the material or the vertex color for the brush cursor. So if you have this color, you see well, I have the material on set, but it basically shows that the cursor with that color what else provide option for feel in responsive material power, only show when enabled what is this? That'S a long title, let's see! Oh yeah, when um in this, let me open it, it's bigger, so they pop over for stroke, color used to show the stroke color, but not the feel color, but now it does now. It shows even both at the same time, nice um. What else? At the vertex opacity overlay parameter in sculpt, it was simply missing from the overlay panel. Nowadays, you can change the vertex opacity while Ingress pencil, a new change. It'S called allow interpolation to use breakdown keyframes as extremes, and actually this change was updated in the wiki. I asked the Chris pencil team to fix it to change here. Look at that such a nice documentation already making my life easier when in when working on the release notes in a couple weeks. So the change it's called um here - interpolate sequence by default, now uses all different keyframe types as streams and a new Option called exclude. Breakdowns was added to allow users to exclude this type of keyframes from their tripolation. As with the alt like to follow the old Behavior, but by default, is now going to use all the different keyframe keyframe types as extremes um, if you set it as extreme neat, create keyframe using the Eraser if the auto key is on. So if you have the auto key on um, there will, and if there is a previous stroke and the frame change, the new keyframe is going to be created. Nice um removing remove the only shows selected requirement for the editor buttons in the header of the dope sheet. This used to be um to only be like to be disabled, if you didn't have any selected vertices, but actually any selected case, but now it didn't really make sense. So now the requirement has been lifted. The other change is the removal of the duplicate. Ah, it's not a change, it's just a rename, because the name of the operator used to be called delete, duplicate head with a d frames which is not the same as delete duplicate frames. You see the difference and duplicate it. Just a d makes it um like any duplicated frames, instead of just frames that are duplicate that are the same in two different spaces, two different times in the the timeline speaking timeline and storyboard and Grace pencil. The story, pencil add-on now supports audio files and there is a UI refactor that makes it easier to understand switching the modes. Apparently, this should have been maybe another commit with a little screenshot, but it is all part of one change that was done on Tuesday last week. That allows the uh. Well, basically, when you're editing the scenes, it will copy the audio file from the edit scene into the other scenes and to keep the audio in sync awesome. Fantastic. I think the the team, the the blender Studio team, are using the study, pencil add-on to create the storyboards for the new open movie Project. Okay, small changes in the sculpt Department - many has to do with consistency - is the invert expand operator now has been the expand. Invert, the expand operator has been changed to be more consistent, so the mass creation is more consistent with other masking tools. It'S easier to use expanding for masking the face, sets snapping with control or building a mask from repeated operations. It less. It'S less likely to mask certain areas unintentionally, for example, so the change is mainly that it has been flipped based on discussion with a community and with the module members. The next change has to do with the hotkey for expand the change. This is change the expand hotkey to not Auto, create a mask by default, so this will, instead of always graining a mask. This will just expand the current one. If there is one available you be well now, I think we're getting into the Potpourri section, although there is actually a bunch of Animation stuff, all right next UV, the shear operator, the UV Shear, the one that Su yeah now supports constraint to bounce like it has Been done for other operators such as the rotation operator, the in the animation section, there is an is operator added to the graph. Editor was added by Christoph it's a new operator that aligns the selected keys on an exponential curve, so it's called ease operator. The next change in the nla, the non-linear attributes on non-linear animation, editor um. It'S as follow updating blend in and blend out, values to clamp on the nla Strip, transform previously transforming a clay, a clip like a scaling or repeat, wouldn't recalculate the blend in and blend out, values leading to over or under shooting, in with a visual clip artifact. So now, when you do transform like a scale or repeat now, it is going to take into account the blend in and blend out values. Yay quality of life improvements, another one performance. The bake action operator now is about four times faster thanks to Colin bassnet. Thank you, Colin and speaking of the bake or bake animation. Now this operator will use the preview range. If you are using the preview range, the bake is going to use the preview range, instead of always using the non-preview, the full range. It'S a it's a it's! A change for the best, because that way you can always bake previews and before it was just, you have to manually change it. However, it is going to affect your workflow if you were used to just like not care about the preview on and off um. So keep that in mind um speaking of Mind. Well, I don't know what what to connect it here, but Damian is a mastermind on uh in usability and UI changes. For example, the in animation, the constraint owner space was actually taking the tooltips or the description from the world space, and that's not great so this great person over here made made it into its own property. So it has its own descriptions and it's. It shows proper descriptions when it instead of copying from another wrong node the next change, it's a it has to do with the while held, pose propagate option. This option from the post propagate operator doesn't do anything meaningful. Apparently, according to a discussion from the animation module team members, so it was decided to remove it to simplify things. If you use this option or any other option that has been removed, make your voice heard, but um the the animation theme is huge. It really involves a lot of people from all kinds of different parts of the industry, so I think if, if they agree that it needed to be removed, then it's probably a good thing or replace with something better next object check. This is not animation per se. This is something else: let's talk about the popular we are in the poppery section and I think I'm gon na keep going until I get rid of all the news. So next week I can start fresh and maybe do just a half an hour show instead objects support, converting curves object to mesh again. This is has to do with the new curves object, type that, even though it was possible before the convert curve to object to meshes to mesh this. It was for the old ID data block. Now this is for the new one, which is super great and another change that has to do with like objects in general is point clouds. They can now be said that you can now change the origin of a point cloud and you can apply this scale, so the operators that are available for other object types are now available for the point Cloud option type as well close. We don't talk about clothes enough, I'm just even if this change is not going to change your life. This Change is Gon na, Not Gon na Change uh, I'm just happy to see changes done in the clothes system, so the change is a share self and object Collision bvh trees when possible. So if you have a um many objects that could share the same bvh3 they're going to do it now, the buffer vertex no vvh is not buffer. Vertex object with h object. Now, let's reveal vertex buffer object. Bbh is the now. I need to bounding volume hierarchy. There you go calculating the bounds of your volume of the objects in order to better calculate collisions, object, collisions self-collisions and so on and so forth. So this should speed up collisions in your Cloud simulations another change in the cloth. It'S to pre-compute very Centric, coordinates for Collision points, again performance Improvement, multi-threaded and again just happy to see developers looking at this area of blender more for for cloud stuff, I think the the cloth system in blender is not really that bad, but the UI could really Get some love like some tools, some tooling, to make to make it more user friendly to see you know. I mean some tools for grabbing pulling and like like a theory, famous cloth, softwares um software, actually softwares with s plural, doesn't exist. I should learn. Software. Plural. Is software change tracking? Okay? This also it's not a huge change, but it's good to see Sergey working on his um baby project motion tracking, so the change it it does have a user facing change. It'S about storing the lens principle point in normalized space. So, instead of having -1 to plus one is going to be basically when it's centered, it's going to be 0 0. So it's like a local normalized space. For that lens always welcome to see this. This changes there is a change in the in the API to access these properties, but it's cool to see this happening. There was another change. It'S like a complete refactor of how the motion, tracking and system stores, the camera and the objects that has one user facing change that now, when you are changing the active motion tracking object, you're not going to lose, which one is the active track. So usability improvement over there, but the change itself is huge again massive comment. More appropriate changes now we're all going to be all over the place, but it's it's. The last section I swear. Okay, let's officially enter the poppery section I freaked out. I double click on the on the app for replacing for playing videos. Slash text, okay, change. Oh this is super cool images like any kind of image or in the notes or in the textures. There is a new extension type. You know like clip that Clips the texture at the at the end of the texture or repeat that repeats the texture or extend that it extends um indefinitely. If you have one black pixel, it's going to extend whatever, for example. Well now, there's a new one called Mirror, so it well mirrors the existing image so yeah, it's added next to the repeat extent and clip options. Super cool! Thank you! Halam Roberts, mystery pancake! Thank you, mystery pancake, um, okay, another potpourri change and I'm very much welcome. I bet it has many. Yes, acceleration points here, it's a patch by hand that adds a Boolean type for custom properties. So, if you're making your own rig system your own, I don't know add-ons anything that has a custom property like like a material, for example. Here, custom properties: now you can change it to be of type Boolean and the Boolean it's an actual checkbox 2023. We are here we have arrived. Why is the materials list so large by default in very expensive? I think it's because uh yeah, when you have more buttons, it's a bit annoying, can't make it shorter. Well, you could, but then it was gon na look weird, because this you could make it shorter, ah anyways um, what else um USD and not United States dollars? The USD export now is going to make sure that the edit mode changes have been saved Yep. This used to be an issue back in the days with sculpt mode, even if you were in sculpt mode and you saved your blend file in sculpt mode. The next time you open it, you would, I remember there was a bug where it wouldn't save your changes or in edit mode. Even it was so annoying well um in USD. Apparently it was still happening, but thanks to this change by Charles and committed by Michael Kowalski, it's been now fixed. So when you are in edit mode and you export all, the changes are going to be exported properly. Speaking of export, obj add a new option to split by objects or group when importing the same as the older python importer, this setting was missing from the new C plus importer. Now not anymore, it's been fixed by RS. Thank you, ins, peeking off! No, nothing! No! This is uh unrelated um, a change for the windows, users, the windows, users, the forward and back slashes were not really working pretty well. You know on Linux, you have the the slashes forward like it should be in Windows. You don't it's on the other direction, so the vli path utility, like an internal utility blender, now supports both, which is good python API. Another change to ad collection properties to mesh UV Loop layer. So you can access UV and Associated bold attributes such as dot UV vertexelection, dot, X selection and Dot, pin for pin vertices speaking of now. Why would you use the python API well to make add-ons, and you know what this is more like a public service announcement, the add-ons um, the country of add-ons or the community atoms that are not yet official or part of the official builds are not going to Be included in beta RC like release candidate and release builds. This was already the case for release builds, I think, also for release candidates, but the beta used to still have the control add-ons which led to the issue that for 3.4.0 blender 3.4 came without the sturdy pencil addon, and then it was fixed in 3.4.1, but yeah 3.4.0, didn't have um Windows user since we're talking about you Windows users. Now, when you launch blender from the Microsoft store, blender will will launch without the console window flashing like that little flash is no longer going to happen um, since we are talking about operating system. Specific changes, Mac OS, remove user notifications, the not user notifications were a bit too enthusiastic in Macos. It will tell you about everything whenever you would change like a compositor material tree or whatever. It was just a bit all over the place so based on community feedback. This has been removed and uh. Nobody seems to miss it so far. If you do miss it make yourself heard and if you are in Maco, if you are in Mac OS blender 3.5 is going to require you to update to a 10.15.. I mentioned this last week, but it's good to remember this change again, because Marco, because yeah you need to update your operating system from 10.13, which was the the previous version, which was I mean this came out in 2017. um to 10.15, which I think is from 2019., yeah, 2019. So, okay, it's still very old. You should probably update as much as you can to get security updates, but uh yeah, small change, but it's not a small change, is that on Linux, GCC on the billboard has been upgraded to 11., so it used to be 9 gc9. Now it's GCC 11 for building blender for compiling your own blender, where this change is this change. Coming from from the VFX platform, um VFX platform reference VFX reference platform, so in order to stay in line with the 2023 change, blender will now require GCC 11 and all these other changes, I think they have been done already. Blender - is still gon na. Be stick sticking to 3.10: it's not going to switch to 3.11 um, so yeah numpy, opening XR. Everything should be in line because of the blender commitment to stick to the reference platform of the industry, something that we are aligned with the industry with okay and gee. I still have a bunch of changes that I was gon na show, but these are has to do with the fbx. Okay, we're talking exporters, fbx bunch of changes, fixes improvements, mystery Ram, fixed export duplicate materials has been fixed. If you ever run into into that and exporting fbx you with my empty materials, soften materials, around eek, really bad bug has been fixed. The exporter, when you were exporting loose edges, they will export sometimes, as one connected polygon really ugly has been fixed. The when importing or exporting The Edge creases will sometimes be missing when reimporting some of the exported meshes that has been fixed. So, unfortunately, there are still people in the world out there in the industry that have to use these closed source um format, fbx um, but yeah. If you still have to use it, it's now better, as in it works better in blender and uh. You know what I'm gon na I'm gon na share everything. So next week I start from scratch the sand position add-on. Let'S talk about Adam now, we are in this in the add-on section. The sun position add-on now has new options. Sun position is a new. Is an add-on that has been there for the in blender for a while that allows you to position the Sun as it would be in the real position in the real place. This change adds two options. One show Surface and the other one is show anal lemas. All right so the show and elements option and the show Surface. It will basically draw a shape that sort of mimics where well not sort of actually mimics. Where is the Sun going to be and the position at which is going to be? What is a nanolema? Let'S search for analem in astronomy and Anna Lemma is a diagram showing the position of the sun in the sky as seen from a fixed location on Earth. At the same mean solar time so same place same time. The position of the sun, the the diagram showing the position from the Sun - that is a analemma. So now you know gltf bunch of updates. Again, I'm only going to show a few, but plenty of bug fixes this week by Julian the now you can choose a JPEG quality when exporting the gltf format. The export attributes is only going to export if they start with an underscore in order to not conflict with blenders own internal attributes, and another change is that the when importing the custom, primitive attributes are going to be imported as mesh attributes. So another great change um. This it's not a user facing change, it doesn't matter to you, but it matters for well. Actually it does matter because it's it's like a little hint of what it's coming. I was so excited when I saw it Jack committed this today. Actually in the afternoon, it's it's a change in the build like when building blender so for the billboard like something like infrastructure had nothing to do with lender. However, when compiling blender blender will now um download the assets repository automatically, if it doesn't exist already, does it ring a bell? Does it does it mean anything to you? Well, it is related to something that the community has been asking for a while the blender Essentials asset bundle. You know in building brushes built-in geometry nouns group to make your life easier. Well, that uh it's coming, it's good to see. You know the little comments that will make this happen and also gitia the the the the system that is going to replace this system, the page that I'm looking at now the fabricator system um it's being replaced soon, as in like this week. There will be updates that you're gon na see somewhere updates, but uh yeah, it's changing, so the team has been working really hard on this throughout the weekend and um late nights early Sundays. Even I have proof of that that people are working on the early weekends anyway. That is all just accept. The last few things I'm sure I was just exciting about is changes late now, Late Show, yeah long, show, sorry about that, and there's probably a ton of questions. 22 questions. Okay: let's try, let's go to, Let's load the ones that are being posted first, because it's only fair that I no actually it's fair that I read first, the ones that have most the most posts: okay, most votes, it's gon na be a very long show. Okay: let's try, let's do 5, depending how long they are okay or hey power. Do you want to fight for the blender level blender developers to make? I don't want to fight lattice modifier for volume we produce geometry notes. It would not have support for deck lattice. Modifier for volumes, you can use geometry notes for that geometry: not support volumes! Um next automatic right now, proportional editing brush in sculpt mode blender will be the first offer to have this feature, but then I'm going to need more than just a description for fighting. If you wanted to fight for this to make it a nicer proposal than just the one line, otherwise, if if it's not there in any other 3D software uh, I mean it's elastic mode is kind of a proportional editing in a way.