Skip to content

Blender 4.4: Pipeline, Assets & I/O

USD

  • Animated Volumes created procedurally in Geometry Nodes, or through the usage of other volume modifiers, are now supported during export (391612c725)
  • Material displacement support has been added for the UsdPreviewSurface during both import and export (b4c2feea38)
  • Point instancers with time-varying (animated) attributes are now supported during import (2523958e0e)
  • Export: The experimental "Instancing" option has gained support for object hierarchies and geometry types other than meshes (e.g., curves, point clouds, etc.) (319c64205d)
  • Python hooks
    • Import: Added new get_prim_map API callable during on_import. Provides a mapping between USD prims and the Blender objects created for said prim. (0df5d8220b)
    • Import: Added new on_material_import API. Provides an opportunity to fully override material loading for certain material types; typically used for cases where the native material import either doesn't support the format or in other highly-specialized scenarios. (74512cc5cb)
    • General: Added support for import_texture and export_texture functions callable from on_material_import and on_material_export respectively (74512cc5cb)
  • New Import options
    • Added a Merge parent Xform option: Control if USD prims merge with their Xform parent during Import in order to better preserve scenario-specific hierarchy requirements (000416c933)
    • Added a Apply Unit Conversion Scale option: Scale the scene objects by the USD stage's meters per unit value. (0c544974d1)
  • New Export options
    • Added a Merge parent Xform option: Control if Blender object transforms are directly written to their data prim or kept separate on Export. This can reduce the number of USD prims in the Stage and better preserves scenario-specific hierarchy requirements (428ab699dc)
    • Added Units and Meters Per Unit options: Set the USD Stage meters per unit to the chosen measurement, or a custom value (0c544974d1)

Alembic and USD

  • The processing of edge and vertex crease values has been changed to respect the range of values expected by OpenSubdiv. For subdivision surface assets using creases produced in prior versions, a backward compatible transform will be applied when loading into Blender 4.4. However, files produced in Blender 4.4 and loaded into prior versions might need to be reworked.

glTF

The main focus of this release is the management of slotted Actions at export and import.

You no longer need to use the NLA Track Names trick to merge multiple actions into a single glTF animation. Now, you can define your actions in Blender, with slots, and export them directly to glTF.

  • Importer
    • Features
      • Manage slotted Actions at import (cf08856ccd)
      • Add option to import scene extras or not (dbb670c6d1)
      • Add option to not select created objects (5997886662)
      • Tweak import option UI (96369594f4)
      • Draco library is now installed in same directory as the addon (faaa12a101)
    • Fixes
  • Exporter

    • Breaking changes on hooks: Lots of modifications on the hooks, because on the management of slotted actions:
      • The following hooks have now the slot or slot_handle as input parameter:
        • pre_animation_switch_hook
        • post_animation_switch_hook
        • pre_gather_animation_hook
      • The following hooks have now the channels as parameter, instead of glTF animation:
        • pre_gather_animation_hook
        • animation_channels_armature_sampled (was animation_action_armature_sampled)
        • animation_channels_object_sampled (was animation_action_object_sampled)
        • animation_channels_sk_sampled (was animation_action_sk_sampled)
        • extra_animation_manage
      • The following hooks have new parameter (object) that replaces other parameters:
        • gather_tracks_hook
        • gather_actions_hook
      • New way for hook UI registration (to let them also work for Collection Exporter)
    • Features
      • Manage slotted Actions at export (cf08856ccd)
      • Always bake scene animation, so driven animated properties can be exported (7ea11a4724)
      • Add interpolation fallback option (748c91ce27)
      • Add 'keep named node' flag for gltfpack (3f68656c7a)
      • Draco library is now installed in same directory as the addon (faaa12a101)
    • Fixes
      • Fix some sanity poll checks (b6346312c4)
      • Fix crash when 'remove armature object' + 'export only def bones' (14302f6af7)
      • Fix crash with extra channel (90e09b93b5)
      • Fix UI (disable option when not available) (f8766c5542)
      • Fix armature object keep channel option (ba737a496c)
      • Fix debug logging (f7a2d0095e)
      • Fix crash when animation on not used material (428ec6c1e3)
      • Fix KHR_animation_pointer to use the material material when texCoord (373191ff2a)
      • Fix recursivity check on gpu instances ( 312289ca60)
      • Fix ignore variant extras at export (4dccaf5fae)
      • Make sure color is white if only alpha is used (b71d8484e2)
      • Fix action filter in Collection Export (71d3e32974)