Blender 4.5 LTS: User Interface

General

• Support for horizontal scrolling. (afd760f2b7)
• Add "Remove All Materials" operator. (dd43ea4e9e)
• Collection Properties "Restrictions" reorganized as "Visibility". (ad9b5a1b00)
• Color pickers now scale down to miniscule sizes better. (3dc78529f2)
• Ctrl-Wheel while hovering text inputs can increment/decrement numbers in the string. (9741ced8c0)
• Dragging regions into view now works more consistantly. (d9dbd1bafd)
• Improve "Saved" report message to better differentiate between regular saving, "Save As", "Save Incremental", or "Save Copy". (43b3c62a54)
• Improved handling of thumbnails while using Workbench engine. (f13bf270c6)
• Improved line breaking for file paths. (587a7f877c)
• Improved names shown for the various "Select" operators. (6035447ce5)
• Improved typographical line breaking. (4894c888ee, 9dd4e90136)
• Possible flickering of active area highlight removed when resizing. (7215da9390)
• Search menu layout, alignment, arrows, etc all improved. (d66b171996)
• Simplied options for fluids volumetric data settings. (932fa1afb4)
• Simplified message on the dialog to confirm saving over startup file. (e9cc07a24c)
• Wide Enum lists now work at extreme scales. (d61e4d0930)

Pen Tablet Usage

• Editor border outline (and hitzone) can now be increased. (a21481cbdd, 2690c0266a)

  

  Border Resizing

• Region resize highlighting. (b847cc0426)

  

  Region Resize Highlighting

• Tooltips easier to invoke with a tablet pen. (edf2706f8c)
• Selecting Tool icons with a pen won't always bring up alternatives. (8c5393d4c0)
• Pen movement before tool tips pop up no longer stops them from starting. (18d82c5164)
• Hit space widened when resizing areas. (22ad0b9faf)
• Corner zone for area maintenance increased in size. (dbf3a3979d)

  

  Corner Action Zone Size

• Contrast increased for area resize feedback. (cc22de7acb)
• Scroll Bars on the Left Side of Left-Aligned Regions. (3e29f3eaa2, 72e56ab27b)
• Scroll Bars no longer full hide when in a transparent region. (b4194b08d4)
• Increased hit size of the Close Region Action Zone. (daa417d304)
• Feeback on Status Bar while pressing down on corner action zones improved. (3cb1749c31)
• Less accidental opening of neighboring open menus. (166d45b80f)
• Wide menus will stay open while navigating to their contents. (110b8fee41, 2f6a10c75e)
• Consistent Pen Tilt Values from platforms and devices. (e1e250aa84, 914d2e8164, c551d2a819)
• Increased hit sizes for Gizmo parts. (107c744540)

Tooltips

• Tooltips now show disabled message above python path. (24fe1f2d5c)
• Tooltips for assets now include the file name and directory path of the asset. (5ba668135a)
• Tooltips for assets now indicate if they are from the current file or the Essentials library. (e5e7b6232a)
• Tooltip contents now line break better, including multilingually. (3f65f700e5)
• Enum names and descriptions rearranged into a more logical order. (89ad52b22a)
• Eyedropper tooltip can no longer show in non-active space. (28704a47a1)

Icons

• Improved "Presets" icons. (0381f18429)
• New icons to represent error conditions. (e850a09762)
• New vertically-aligned grip icon. (0dce68333f)
• "Not Found" Icon shown when one is not available. (a021176ff4)
• Specific icon added to represent previews while loading. (0ee642611c)
• Colored, and translatable, icons added to represent red, green, and blue channels. (c13d3e2f7a)

  

  RGB Icons

• Gizmos can now use user-defined or generated icons. (ec149a919a)
• Vector icons now align with other types by using float positioning. (dd6b2e648e)
• Reduced size of warning icons on large dialogs. (497f2884e8)

Tree Views

• One can scroll over fully visible tree views now. (6e29616c49)
• Support dropping a tree view item after the last element. (40177a8426)
• Better padding for Tree views without scroll bars. (e6b89924a0)
• Default height of Tree Views increased. (72a38aee7e)

Scrollbars

• Improved scrollbars with handles. (PR#135023)
• NLA scroll bars now hide if the area is made very slim. (9dbd20b369)

Theme

• New options: Themeable Red Alert, Error, Warning, Info Colors. (5956752eb7)
• Loading window background now uses theme color. (81efb13f49)

  

  Themed Loading Window Background - Before / After

• Timeline scrollbar thumb (circle at edges) now visible in Light theme. (101d8782f7)
• Better display of disabled/hidden items in Outliner when using Light theme. (370d8956ae)
• Light theme now defaults to transparent face orientation font color. (9dae51a3d4)

3D Viewport

• Show object data name in 3D viewport text overlays. (55de54557c)
• Shading popover: Move Cavity properties into separate subpanel. (9627bdfab3)
• Drag & dropping collections into the 3D view snaps their position to surfaces and the grid. (103d535fe4)
• Curves info now included in the viewport statistics. (128920633a)
• Curve and Grease Pencil dimensions now shown in transform side panel. (2cc5143ca6)
• Moved "Active Spline" panel from properties space to the "item" section of the 3D viewport. (5fe1051839)
• Added rotation support to the "Snap to Cursor" operator. (c8ab27c5)
• Layout consistency improvements to Shading popover (6329e00cd1)
• Viewport shading mode tooltips are now more descriptive. (38a58a319d)
• Grid and Axes can now be separately enabled/disabled in ViewPort Overlays popover. (836247a146)

Image Editor

• The "Slots" menu now indicates which slots are used as well as the active slot (8f1cd941ce).

Asset Browser

• Generate Preview, Generate Preview from Object and Remove Preview operate on all selected assets instead of only the active one. (32cae542da)

• New operator to take a screenshot within Blender for an asset preview. (5f5c06fc24, Manual)

  • Screenshot can be taken from anywhere within Blender
  • When the screenshot area is entirely within a single 3D viewport, the background will be transparent.
  • The capture area will be remembered for the next run of the operator so it's easy to take the same screenshot.
  • Works for assets in the local file and Asset System Files

  Demonstrates how to take a screenshot for asset previews

• New Horizontal List display mode for a compact view of assets that leaves names readable. (4499fad40e)

  

  Asset Browser Horizontal List display mode

• New Import Settings popover. It contains:
  • The Import Method option previously located in the header. (7a6beb65f4)
  • New toggles for collection instancing for link and append. (6c1c5e8923)
• Drag & dropping collections into the 3D view snaps their position to surfaces and the grid. (103d535fe4)
• Improved spacing of icons and labels in Asset Browser (529ab6555c)

• Asset names in the Thumbnails display mode are drawn with up to two lines (a8b031dcc6)

  Old	New

• The context menu for local brush assets includes Edit Metadata, Edit Preview Image, Save Changes to Asset and Revert to Asset

File Browser

• Slightly decreased horizontal paddings for files in the file browser. (1ca05d3940)
• Improved spacing of icons and labels in File Browser (529ab6555c)
• File names in the Thumbnails display mode are drawn with up to two lines (a8b031dcc6)
• Dragging files from File Browser will drag all selected, not just the active one (38c08b515f)

Timeline Editor

• Timeline allows using markers at a small minimum height. (0354136775)
• Timeline can now be duplicated into new window while very small without error. (b2c4d71f1d)

Node Editor

Frame Nodes

A summary of the frame node improvements can be read on the blog.

• (Named) frames are added with F now. The functionality that was previously on F is moved to J (8ec093a2d8).
  

• Pressing F while transforming nodes now detaches the current frame or attaches the highlighted frame (578f935170).
• Highlight the frame that dragged nodes will be attached to (1e23f9235c).
• Frames use alternating colors now (99a2589217).
• Improved frame label positions (691a2be7f0).

Node Groups

• Panels in node groups can now have toggle inputs (2822777f13).

  

  Panel Toggle

• Support expanded enums in node group interface (8a42e2b59a).

  

  Expanded Menu Inputs

• Vector socket can now have Percentage and Factor subtypes (79d37720de).

  

  Vector Socket Subtypes

• Auto-hide inputs when their usage depends on a menu input (5457cca3de).
  

Built-in Nodes

• Input and output sockets on many nodes have been aligned to use the same row (7e4d50f1db, f19f260ca8).

  

  Inline Sockets

• Value input nodes are smaller now (87c011f8bb).

  

  Minified Value Nodes

Adding Nodes

• Support searching for specific node operations in Add menu (156a405dd5, fb86bf0367).

  

  Add Math Node

• Support searching for various input sockets directly (c157fecc4e, 39a3b44a72).

  

  Input Node Socket Search

• One can create new Group Input nodes by dragging inputs from the sidebar (309ce182b8).
  

• "New Group" operator to create a new empty node group (9e0e94e6e2).

Error Handling

• Show link errors directly on link instead of on node (4a760c1a70).

  

  Invalid Node Link

• Invalid zones are visualized better now (f3294bbd06).

  

  Invalid Zone

• Tooltip when hovering over error icon shows more quickly (a03d0fd512).

Miscellaneous

• Internal links show on muted nodes regardless of whether outputs are linked (e87f744134).

  

  Internal Links

• Vectors sockets now have a Dimensions property to allow 2D and 4D vectors. (02a95d088e).

  

  2D Vector Input

• The width of the Find Node menu automatically adapts to its content (bf696320f6).
• The viewer node jumps in fewer cases when it's activated (e4e49e1634).
• Group node names are initialized from the name of the group (d9317046b2).
• Node search (ctrl+F) now takes dynamic node labels into account (20a6956079).
• Panels remain intact when creating a wrapper node group from a single node (367b7b240f).
• The selection lists for socket types now show icons for each socket type (821e0024d4, e09b57c5d7).

Outliner

• Grease Pencil vertex groups now shown in Outliner. (3b1b05ded8)
• Action Slots are now shown in the Outliner. (d30d4c0c04)

Properties Editor

• Individual tabs can be hidden via context menu or Options popover. (bf18e8f814)

  

  Properties Tabs

• The context path now indicates when material is on object data rather than the object. (a0fdbf0fd2)
• Navigation Bar tabs region can't be hidden by dragging anymore. (c9e7136161, 87dcf4907a)

Spreadsheet Editor

• Domains that are not present in the current geometry set are now grayed out (4ba94714bd).

  

  Grayed out Domains

• The column name is shown in a tooltip when hovering over it (b84e790b81).
• Double clicking on a column edge in the header now makes the column width fit its content (734e3c5589).
• Columns can be reordered manually now (66e96bf134).
• The column width can be edited now (db7b5a480b).
  

• Modified table layouts now persist (0b24f15939, 66a5469bcf).
• There is a new option to display internal attributes (11dc71b258).

  

  Internal Attributes

• Context path has been moved to the left side bar (9ac3e44ce6).

  

  Context Path

Status Bar

• Spacing has been tightened (beaaa428e9).
• Improved display during text and numerical entry. (16a4956ce8)
• VSE Solo Preview operator now shows correctly on the status bar. (ac549dcfde)

  

  Text Entry Status

• Info at the right side of the Status Bar no longer jiggles! (cb11e23605)
• Transforming with proportional editing uses less space on the status bar. (1c2aaa8a57)
• Page Up / Page Down keymap entries now shown as "Pg↑" and "Pg↓" rather than just "P↑" "P↓". (4e33627ebd)
• Icons are now used for trackpad gestures. (48403607dd)
• "Hyper" key now shown correctly. (405d9bc0bb)

Preferences

Keymap Editor

• Show alert when keymap operator not found. (bb215a37e2)

Keymap

• Use horizontal scroll wheel to pan in 3D Viewport. (fcc6e022b1)
• Sidebar: Press numpad period to show the active sidebar tab. (5e2a856566)

Platforms

Linux

• Wayland and X11: larger versions (24x24 and 32x32) of mouse cursors added for high-DPI monitors. (fcf57e2024, 86c0190924)
• Wayland and X11: now support the "Hyper" modifier key, an additional modifier available on Unix systems which can be configured to use existing keys (caps-lock for example), see: PR#136340 for details. (5e2b421996)

macOS

• Custom cursors no longer show very large. (60f480f21f)
• Option, Command + Arrow Input Movement in text inputs. (380f9973b6)
• Improve window positioning and restoration when using multiple monitors. (b0ffd4cb07)
• Use busyButClickableCursor mouse cursor during long operations. (8325e7f5e4)

  

  Mac Busy Cursor

Windows

• Dragging and dropping will now favor file paths over regular text. (b030acbe9d)
• Initial white flash during startup now a less jarring mid-grey. (cf4778df74)