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Blender 4.5 LTS: Pipeline & I/O

USD

Import

  • Import: Added support for animated Camera properties (ba60868477)
  • Import: Added support for USD Skeleton rest pose (e45a13118d)
  • Import: Added additional USD Shape primitives: Plane, Capsule_1, and Cylinder_1 (bbab2aa328, 92aab7c3db)
  • Import: Added support for the DomeLight_1 schema (efd871e9ef)

Export

  • Export: The experimental "Instancing" option has gained support for a variety of Point Instancing setups created through Geometry Nodes (07342407d3)
  • Export: MaterialX now writes Principled BSDF as an OpenPBR Surface, which more closely matches than the previous Standard Surface (PR#138165)
  • Export: Blender Text objects are now exported (as mesh data) (3b2bbad609)
  • General IO support for UsdPrimvarReader_<TYPE> nodes has been added for UsdPreviewSurface materials (46ec277713)
    • These correspond to Blender's Attribute nodes using Geometry attribute types

glTF

Import

Feature

- New option to import Scene(s) as Collection(s) or Scene(s) (3e8aabcd0b) - New option to import unused materials & images (705ba465bb) - New option to merge or not material slots (febe562f01)

Export

  • Hook breaking changes: Add mapping parameter in gather_image_hook (c52b5387ba)

Feature

  • Add a new option to export Vertex Color of a given name (2614a43c92)
  • Add a new option choice to export Viewport Material (c3ab321d2a)
  • Cache sampler output (cc3a131947)
  • Ambient Occlusion node Color can now be used as Base Color (dbb2b01ff9)
  • Image uri refacoring. uri is now precalculated, to be able to modify it in hook (a5834743f3)
  • New light exposure is taken into account (71275fc218)
  • New light temperature is taken into account (f9b3baa984)

Fixes

FBX

Import

  • Import: New experimental FBX importer (written in C++, based on ufbx). (PR#132406, PR#138367)
  • The Python based importer is still there; the new one is marked as "(experimental)" in the menu item. Drag-and-drop uses the Python importer; the new one is only in the menu item.
    • New importer is generally 3x-15x faster than the old one, and often uses less memory too.
    • ASCII FBX files are supported now.
    • Binary FBX files older than 7.1 (SDK 2012) version are supported now.
    • Better handling of "geometric transform" (common in 3dsmax), manifesting as wrong rotation for some objects when in a hierarchy.
    • Some FBX files that the old importer was failing to read are supported now.
    • Materials import more shader parameters (IOR, diffuse roughness, anisotropy, subsurface, transmission, coat, sheen, thin film) and shader models (e.g. OpenPBR or glTF2 materials from 3dsmax imports much better).
    • Importer now creates layered/slotted animation actions. Each "take" inside FBX file creates one action, and animated object within it gets a slot.
    • Materials that use the same texture several times no longer create duplicate images; the same image is used.
    • Material diffuse color animations were imported, but they only animated the viewport color. Now they also animate the nodetree base color too.
    • "Ignore Leaf Bones" option no longer ignores leaf bones that are actually skinned to some parts of the mesh.
  • Import settings that existed in Python importer, but are not done in the new one (mostly because not sure if they are useful, and no one asked for them from feedback yet):
    • Manual Orientation & Forward/Up Axis: not sure if actually useful. FBX file itself specifies the axes fairly clearly. USD/glTF/Alembic also do not have settings to override them.
    • Use Pre/Post Rotation (defaults on): feels like it should just always be on; ufbx handles that internally.
    • Apply Transform (defaults off, warning icon): not sure if needed at all.
    • Decal Offset: Cycles specific. None of other importers have it.
    • Automatic Bone Orientation (defaults off): feels like current behavior (either on or off) often produces "nonsensical bones" where bone direction does not go towards the children with either setting. There are discussions within I/O and Animation modules about different ways of bone visualizations and/or different bone length axes, that would solve this in general.
    • Force Connect Children (defaults off): not sure when that would be useful. Often turns animated armatures into garbage when used.
    • Primary/Secondary Bone Axis: again not sure when would be useful.
  • Python API of the old importer was bpy.ops.import_scene.fbx; API of the new one is bpy.ops.wm.fbx_import. The plan is to remove the Python importer add-on at some point in the future.

Export

OBJ

Export

SVG

  • Import multiple SVG files at once (PR#134795)

Images & Movies

  • Add support for writing ProRes codec videos (7d75c5e2bc)
  • OpenEXR:
    • Read and write ACES2065-1 colorspace metadata, to auto detect this colorspace in Blender and other applications. (PR#135823)
    • Preserve compression and bit depth settings when re-saving files. (PR#135656)
  • Color Management: Support OpenColorIO file rules to auto detect color space. The Blender configuration does not contain such rules, but other configurations set through the OCIO environment variable can. (PR#136516)
  • Image Format Settings in the Render Output, File Output, and Image Saving now has a Media Type enum that specifies the general type of the file format, be it Image, Multi-Layer EXR, or Video. (92d5c2078e)