Log Message:
blender: Update to 3.4.1

Changelog:
Released December 7th, 2022

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WHAT'S NEW IN 5 MINUTES

CYCLES

PATH GUIDING

Blender 3.4 integrates Intel's Open Path Guiding Library, adding support for
path guiding in CPU to help reduce noise in scenes where finding a path to
light is difficult for regular path tracing, for example when a room is lit by
light coming through a small door crack.

Guiding is supported for surfaces with diffuse BSDFs and volumes with isotropic
and anisotropic scattering.

Important light directions are learned over time, improving as more samples are
taken.

Find it in the Sampling panel in Render properties.

Note that while Path Guiding helps to render scenes containing simple caustics
(e.g., water surface), it is not designed to be a caustic solver, such as MNEE,
meaning it might not help render scenes containing complex caustics.

Same render time, with and without Path Guiding.

AND MORE CYCLES

Sampling

  * Added Sobol-Burley sampling pattern
  * Improved Progressive Multi-Jittered sampling

Graphic Drivers

  * Intel Arc on Windows: upgrade to driver version 101.3430 or newer to fix
    user interface crashes
  * For AMD HIP on Linux, upgrade to ROCm 5.3 or newer to fix issues with
    textures on Vega and RDNA1 graphics cards
  * For Apple Metal, Intel GPU rendering is now supported starting with macOS
    13

Attribute Node

  * Access Geometry Nodes instance attributes
  * New mode for accessing attributes of the current View Layer, Scene or World

Baking

  * New option to bake specular effects from the active camera view, instead of
    above the surface. This may be useful when baking textures that will be
    viewed from a fixed position or with limited camera motion.

AUTO
MASKING

The auto-masking settings in Sculpt mode are now accessible from the header in
the 3D Viewport.

New methods have been added for automatically masking by cavity, viewpoint, and
area.

SO DEEP

Instead of manually creating a cavity mask, this auto-masking option provides a
faster way of painting and sculpting with Cavity.

Use the "Create Mask" button to convert the auto-mask into a regular mask
attribute (to edit it further or just visualize it).

MASK FROM
CAVITY

"Inverted", "Factor", "Blur" and a "Custom \ 
Curve" give extra control to
fine tune the cavity mask.

Mask from Cavity

AUTO MASKING
IN ACTION

Combine different methods to easily sculpt and paint little details.

  * 1. View Normal
Automatic mask based on the viewing angle.
  * 2. Area Normal
Use the normal direction of the brush cursor from the start of the stroke.
  * 3. Cavity
Sculpt or paint in parts of the mesh sticking in or out.

AND MORE

  * Faster reprojecting attributes using the Voxel Remesher
  * Performance improvements when not using Face Sets and Masks
  * Weight and Vertex painting will use the whole modifier stack if it produces
    no topology changes
  * Face Sets are now opt-in, meaning that primitive objects do not have a Face
    Set attribute by default

UV & CHILL

UV EDITING

SCULPT
RELAX TOOL

The new geometry-based relax brush method helps you improves the quality of the
UV mapping by making the UVs more closely follow the 3D geometry.

As this is a brush, the user can drive the relaxation process.

Non-uniform grid.

ON THE GRID

Several improvements in the UV Editor grid include:

  * Non-uniform grids
  * Pixel spacing
  * Draw grid on top of the image

Align Rotation

Rotate UVs to follow the geometry orientation in the 3D Viewport, or aligned to
a selected edge, or automatically guess the best orientation.

Quickly set a random value to the scale, rotation or offset of selected UV
islands.

AND MORE

  * Live Unwrap support for Grab tool
  * Support for pinned vertices in UV sculpt tools
  * Fix boundary edges for Relax tool Laplacian method
  * Constrain to Bounds for UV sculpt tools
  * UV selection support in many operations
  * Prevent orphaned islands in UV sculpt tools
  * Support constrain to bounds in Rotation operator
  * Add option to use Blender 2.8 margin calculation
  * Many UV Packing operations now work with non-manifold geometry
  * Several fixes

GEOMETRY NODES

WHAT YOU SEE IS
WHAT YOU GET

Introducing: Viewport overlay for Geometry Nodes Viewer Node.
Preview attributes without affecting the final result.

The intensity of the overlay can be adjusted from the Overlay popover in the 3D
Viewport header.

SAMPLE UV SURFACE

A new node to get attribute values based on UV coordinates.
A simple concept that opens endless opportunities.

Sample UV Surface node. Download this file.

PLUS THESE NEW MESH NODES

The new Face Set Boundaries node finds the edges between different patches of
faces.

Corners of Face retrieves corners that make up a face, and Corners of Vertex
retrieves face corners connected to vertices.

Edges of Corner retrieves the edges on boths sides of a face corner, while
Edges of Vertex retrieves the edges connected to each vertex.

Face of Corner Retrieves the face each face corner is part of. Offset Corner in
Face Retrieves neighboring corners within a face.

Retrieves the vertex each face corner is attached to.

NEW CURVE NODES

Curve of Point Retrieves the curve a control point is part of. Points of Curve
Retrieves a point index within a curve. Offset Point in Curve Offset a control
point index within its curve.

The Set Curve Normal allows choosing the normal evaluation mode for curves.

The Sample Curve node now has inputs for the curve index and a custom value to
sample.

AND NEW GENERAL NODES

Retrieves the current modifier object for retrieving transforms.

Retrieves data from specific geometry elements by index.

Retrieves the indices from the closest geometry elements

Interpolates a field input to the closest location on a mesh surface.

Creates points inside of volume grids.

EVEN MORE GEOMETRY NODES

  * Node Group assets are visible in the Add menu of the node editor
  * Trim Curves node now supports cyclic curves
  * Data-block users count visible in the Context Path and Group node header
  * New Preference to duplicate Node Groups
  * Better looking node links
  * Input sockets are reused when creating new node groups
  * Node Groups can now be duplicated with Alt+D
  * Trim Curves 3-4 times faster
  * Attributes of instances are now accessible from materials through the
    Attribute node
  * New, faster evaluation system

GREASE PENCIL

FULFILL

The Fill tool has been greatly improved with new options, shortcuts, and
introducing a new algorithm to close gaps.

The new method uses the Radius of circumference to determine how close the
strokes for filling. This new method is very effective when the extension done
by the previous method (now renamed as Extend) of the strokes never cross.

Use the mouse wheel or PageUp/Down to adjust length of the strokes, S key to
toggle extend method, use D key to toggle extended stroke collision.

Radius method to fill gaps.

AND MORE

  * Import multiple SVG files at once
  * New Offset parameter in reproject operator for surface mode
  * Set Start Point operator for cyclic strokes
  * New "Chain" mode in Time Offset modifier
  * LineArt: Forced Intersection
  * Python: New Trace Frame parameter in Trace operator
  * New "Outline" modifier to generate perimeter stroke from camera view

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE

Animation & Rigging

  * Adjust Last Operation panel in NLA, Dopesheet and Timeline
  * NLA: Draw track background based on strip's extrapolation
  * NLA usability improvements
  * Mute Drivers

Core

  * Override Resource Directories
  * Several improvements to fonts handling
  * Metaball objects are now evaluated as meshes
  * WebM videos frame extraction
  * Support FFmpeg AV1 codec encoding
  * Higher resolution thumbnails in Windows Explorer

Performance

  * Improved performance in Subdivision Surface Modifier
  * Major speed up when batch creating objects
  * Performance: Optimize evaluation of disabled modifiers
  * Faster WebP thumbnail creation

EEVEE & Viewport

  * Headless rendering support on Linux

Pipeline, Assets & I/O

  * Support for PBR extensions in .mtl files
  * OBJ Importer: New global scale factor

User Interface

  * Improved font thumbnails
  * Improved caret when editing Text objects
  * New shortcuts in Python Console editor
  * Detect existing file and add auto-increase for output filepaths
  * Improved editing of text containing non-precomposed diacritical marks
  * Select objects menu now sorted by distance
  * Outliner improvements

Add-ons

  * Import Image as Plane: Improved UI
  * New add-on: Storypencil, for storyboarding

Python API

  * Blender as a Python Module
  * Internal mesh format changes