What’s new in this version:
UI Changes:
– Upgraded the design of Blockbench, introducing more rounded corners, gradients, shadows, and paddings, and improving usability
– Multiple panels can now be added into one as tabs
– Renamed former “Element” panel to “Transform”
– Added “Element” panel as a tab behind “Transform”
– Added Montserrat as new headline font
– Settings that were added by a plugin now display the plugin name in the UI
– Added modifier key hint for moving panels without docking
– Updated keyframe icons
– Form labels no longer have colons by default
– Node icons are now displayed in timeline
– Reorganized and sorted Load Images menu into categories
– Removed edit session dialog close button
– Added panel menu option to reset size
Preview options:
– Added preview options menu
– Added option to show/hide gizmos
– Added quick preview background color option
– Allow blueprint reference images in front of the model
– Added setting to toggle double click to select reference image
– Shift click in orbit gizmo to select middle,
– Set antialiasing bleeding fix setting to true by default
Exporting:
– Added STL exporter
– Added GIF exporter for images
– Before asking for save locations for multiple textures when saving, a pop-up now opens to confirm you want to save them
– Added git text normalization for JSON files
Animation:
– Added expanded Molang expression editor
– Added animation groups
– The animation list is now searchable
– Added setting to change default keyframe interpolation mode
– Bind to actor property on keyframes
– Allow locking animation as playing while selected
– Added support for shift and control modifiers when sliding keyframes with keyboard
– Move keyframes up and down in graph editor with arrow keys
– Added animation file save as context menu option
– Added channel filter action to timeline context menu
– Added quaternion interpolation mode (opt-in per timeline animator in generic models)
Texturing:
– Added darken/lighten blend modes
– Added Flipbook texture toggle in texture context menu
– Searchable texture list
– Add action to import image as layer
– Added normal map color picker
– Added setting to toggle automatically loading textures as flipbook
– Images with an aspect ratio of 1×2 are now no longer automatically loaded as flipbook textures
– Added standalone action to apply selected texture to selected elements
New elements:
– Added billboards
– Added splines
– Added armatures and armature bones
– The add element actions in the outliner toolbar have been combined into one Add Element action with a submenu
Minecraft:
– Added display settings support for the new shelf slot
– Added java display settings GUI slot clipping
– Added fallback for query.model_scale
– Added support for cem model field in jem format
Minecraft skin editor:
– Added skin menu
– Added waist bone for minecraft player skins
– Option to convert between slim and wide skin model
– Added custom skin pose saving
– Option to load skin textures from Minecraft vanilla samples pack
Themes customization:
– Added a new CSS-based .bbtheme file format (More info)
– Theme configuration options (Better organization for sets of themes #2657)
– Workflow improvements for theme creators
– Themes can now be edited in an external code editor using CSS syntax
– You can reload themes with the press of a button
– You can enable automatic reload to apply your changes instantly when you save them
– Separate CSS layer for themes, allowing full CSS control without using !important.
Miscellaneous changes:
– Added mesh smooth shading option
– Added Record Gizmos option to GIF Recorder
– Added setting for relative or absolute asset paths
– Allow specifying custom install location on Windows
– Added setting to disable autocomplete
– Added a keybind for adding a mesh to the blender bbkeymap
– Improved outdated client message when opening newer bbmodel
– Added confirmation dialog when loading palette to confirm replacing other palette
– Added button to open file in external program in the JSON error dialog
– Made stretch gizmo operate more granularly
– Added model identifier in collections
– Added legacy bbmodel export
– Improve automatic node name flipping to support R and L notation
– Improve Flip Animation tool to support more left/right name notations
Technical updates:
– Switched codebase to use modules and esbuild
– Introduced typescript
– Added new development workflow, scripts, and VSCode renderer debug integration (see readme.md on the “next” branch)
– Updated required browser version to ES2023
– Replaced compareVersions with new VersionUtil
– Renamed selectLow to markAsSelected on outliner nodes
– Implemented new element behavior system, allowing more hard-coded behavior of elements to be customized on custom element types
– Added full clone support for “object”-type properties
– Change how outliner hierarchy + groups are saved in undo history and bbmodel
– Mobile UI tweaks
– Support for separators in menu sidebars
– Added permission system for plugins using native APIs
– Added scoped file system
– Changed Group.selected to return array
– Added dialog onResize hook
– Plugin dependency order is now resolved on load
– Added collection contains API
– Added support for any data:image/ URL to getIconNode
– Added events loaded_plugin and unloaded_plugin
– Addsed delete functions to Menu and MenuBar classes to make them match their types
– Added new SystemInfo API to get common information about the system that the program is running on
– Added developer menu option to expose native APIS in dev tools
– Added block_size option in ModelFormat
– Made euler order configurable per format
– Support for property inputs in collections
– Changed collection save-over to no longer show file dialog
– Add category option to message box commands
– Added element behavior override system
– Added external data loader option to codec parse functions
– Changed third argument in codec load + parse methods
– Added property support on timeline animators
– Added animation loop wrapping as a format feature flag
– Ensure consistent mesh quad vertex order