Welcome to Blockbench 5.2 - The Screen-Space Update!

Highlights of this update:

• Screen-Space Brush
• Layer Groups
• 3D Plane Reference Images
• Movable Reference Models
• New Color Wheel
• Better Inverse Kinematics

Update Video: Blockbench 5.2 is out! All new features - Youtube

Screen-Space Brush

The Screen Space brush (#1384) is a new brush preset that lets you paint on the viewport as if it was a flat painting.
It does not snap to the face your are painting, and is ideal for painting and blending together the edges between faces.

Like most brush options, there are two ways to enable this:

• You can use a brush preset. Press the small down arrow next to the brush tool and use the built-in "Screen Space Brush" preset. Or click "Brush Presets..." and create your own preset with the "Screen Space Brush Projection" option enabled
• Use the "Screen Space Brush Projection" toggle and add it to a toolbar or a keyboard shortcut. This is useful for toggling the option on the fly without switching to a different brush.

References

• Added the new view mode "3D Plane" for reference images. This lets you place your reference image in the 3D space of your project, it will move with the model as you move your view.
• Added new "Add Reference Image" dialog. This provides basic options when adding a new reference image, such as selecting the view mode.
• Video reference images now have a video controls UI (#2800). This lets you skip to a certain part of the video, control the sound, etc. It has the following options:
  • Play/pause button
  • Video progress bar and timecode
  • Audio toggle and volume control
  • Full screen toggle
  • Additional options (on desktop app and most browsers)
• Reference images now have better support in the 2D image editor, including support for Locked Blueprint mode
• Added new reference model "Minecraft Crafting Table"
• Preview Models can now be toggled individually from View > Preview Models
• Preview models can now be transformed from the same menu and will remember their position after a restart (JannisX11/hytale-blockbench-plugin#83)
• Skyboxes are now rendered in orthographic view (#3702, thanks @ewanhowell5195!)
• Disabled preview scenes in the GUI display slot (#3703, thanks @ewanhowell5195!)

Inverse Kinematics (IK) upgrades

The IK System has been improved. Thanks @PROMETHIA-27 for their contributions!

• Added IK Poles. These are positions that can be placed via Locator or Null Object and determine in which direction an IK chain bends. This is useful for animating things like legs.
• IK compatibility with armatures (#3339)
• IK options and target elements can now be controlled in the Element panel
• Improved IK rendering performance

Texturing Tools

• Added Layer Groups
• Added brush aspect ratio slider
• New custom HSV color selector wheel (#1020)
• The current color is now displayed in the panel selector bar on mobile
• Fill faces and elements via Paint Bucket in UV editor (#3739, thanks @Kannoma!)
• Added setting to switch opacity sliders between 100 and 255 range (#3404, #2254, JannisX11/hytale-blockbench-plugin#182)
• Added option to lock brush to first clicked element or face, or to all selected faces (#1898)
• Color picker now allows picking on locked elements
• Face selections are now kept while switching to Paint mode and painting
• Added presets for Generate PBR Map (#3658)

Mesh Modeling & Weight Painting

• Added more mesh primitives: Icosphere, Octahedron, Dodecahedron
• Added even loop cutting (#1269)
• Use spatial interval as default for extrude/solidify (#3545, thanks @nklbdev!)
• Compute new UVs when using Inset (#3545, thanks @nklbdev!)
• Added proportional editing support on resize and rotate (#3731)
• Made vertices more visible during weight painting
• Made Set Vertex Weights available in object selection mode

Transform UX Improvements

• Added "Flip in place" actions
• Added toggle for moving elements individually with position sliders (JannisX11/hytale-blockbench-plugin#187)
• Added "Move Pivot Values Directly" toggle

Animation

• Added Select Keyframes Before/After Playhead actions
• Added Variable Placeholder panel toolbar
• Added Create Variable Placeholder tool
• Added View Built-in Variables tool (#3355)
• You can now drag to reorder entire animation groups or files
• Particle effects no longer pause at the last frame in "hold on last frame" animations
• Remember timeline filter preferences between restarts

Interface

• Added "Native Window Frame" setting (#3529)
• Added "New Project Dialog" setting
• Improvements to file inputs in dialogs (#3693, thanks @ewanhowell5195!)
  • Long paths overflow on the left, so you see the file name instead of the drive letter
  • Full path on hover as a tooltip
  • Files can be dropped onto an input
• Settings can now be searched by their plugin name
• Rank settings search results by relevance
• Added the ability to resize the start screen
• Double clicking the dialog resizer will now reset dialog size
• Text in the "About" dialog and on the update screen is now user selectable

Plugin Browser

• Added Recently Updated plugin row (#2811)
• Added setting to disable plugin auto updates
• Change plugin icon rendering based on resolution (#3538)
• Save plugin files in the web app (#1186) (#3733, thanks @ewanhowell5195!)

Experimental Settings

Added Experimental Settings menu (#3641)
An alternative to the settings menu, but for niche use-cases, debugging, and experiments.
By design with no localization, no settings profiles, no Action Control integration.
Contains the following settings (to be expanded in the future):

• Plugin load timeout (#3640)
• Max chat message length
• Edit Session server
• Projected Brush sample interval

Minecraft

• Added Cushion skin preset
• Improvements to generated Java item models (#2813) (#3697, thanks @ewanhowell5195!)
  • Read the PR for more details
• Option to resolve the whole parent chain when opening a child model (#3730, thanks @ewanhowell5195)
• Added new Minecraft Java "Shade Direction Override" cube property
• Fill in the bedrock display transform defaults (#3734, thanks @ewanhowell5195)
• Remember bedrock geo material config files in recent project
• Automatically turn on Holding Item toggle for attachables
• Particles and sound effects in animations are now automatically loaded from Minecraft Bedrock resource pack (#3604)
• Exclude new supported Molang queries from generating placeholders (#3355)

Misc changes

• Added "Constant Outlines" setting
• Added option to export armatures to GLTF with multiple separate meshes (#3596)
• The Advanced Screenshot tool now displays a preview of the result
• Added billboard marker colors (#3664)
• Toggle to display element markers in viewport for locators, null objects (#3626)
• Added Keybind to configure scroll to pan view (#3555)
• Allow selecting faces of not selected elements in UV editor (JannisX11/hytale-blockbench-plugin#186)
• Added Close other tabs and Close tabs to the right options (#2651)
• Added support for drag and dropping files from VS Code into Blockbench
• Update Scale tool box UV warning message
• Added new language: Arabic
• Added Max Zoom Distance setting
• Improved Action Control sorting of search results
• Unfold/collapse Groups now affects other nested elements
• Added relative asset path support for sound/particle keyframes (#3177)
• Custom context menu for 2D editor
• Added Flipbook Editor sorting for multi-selection
• Flipbook Editor now displays initial frame indices
• Bounding boxes are now available in generic models
• Center View on Selection in UV panel now focuses on all faces of selected element if no faces are selected (#3744, thanks @ewanhowell5195)

Technical Changes

• Added event hook get_outliner_node_classes to let plugins add classes to outliner HTML elements
• Form API
  • Added new form input type outliner_node
  • Added new boolean option display_icon to SelectInput
  • Form extra_actions field now works for all form input types
  • Added form input reset_button option
• Added BBAnimation and BBKeyframe aliases
• Added new format feature flag molang
• Added types for BarItems registry
• Added RenderTarget util, a performance-optimized alternative to raycasting what's in the viewport
• Improved typescript types and updated parts of the codebase to typescript
• Update dependencies (electron, workbox-build, esbuild)
• Auto-upgrade vertex weights to new format when opening models
• Default plugin author field to "Unknown"

Fixes

• Fixed image edit tools not using correct texture in some cases
• Fixed Clear Unused Texture Space not working repeatedly in some cases
• Exclude stylus from UV editor touch navigation (JannisX11/hytale-blockbench-plugin#221)
• Fixed #3672 keyframes move on middle-click drag
• Tweak offset of resize handle for timeline head
• Fixed UI offset while creating new image project
• Fixed edges and vertices selection when mesh faces are visible (#3540, thanks @nklbdev!)
• Fixed orthographic camera clipping and raycaster for models larger than default frustum (#3576, thanks @nklbdev!)
• fix: dispose rebuilt color picker forms (#3584, thanks @sjh9714)
• Fixed error when dragging image from UI
• Fixed #3608 flash in system color when opening application
• Fixed #3602 "Move To" does not work from Action Control
• Fixed #3613 Shift + rectangle select clears selection when click is inside object
• Fixed import issue with multiple nested groups in legacy Modded Entity importer (#3627, thanks @JoshieGemFinder!)
• Fixed #3652 Bedrock bone parent resolution is case-sensitive
• Fixed some UV actions still being available in Paint mode and visible in context menu
• Fixed launch setting not updating file when changed outside settings window
• Fixed plugin "settings" list getting cut-off in some cases
• Fixed #3663 plugin download error handling
• Fixed #3681 square color picker fails on touchscreen edge
• Fixed #3677 Restart without Hardware Acceleration issue
• Duplicating rigs now changes IK setups to new duplicated elements
• Split Mesh now keeps armature weights
• Fixed vertex weights not being adjusted when duplicating armature
• Fixed armature bones being selectable in non-object mesh selection modes
• Fixed several CSS properties not being overridable by themes due to !important flag (#3638, thanks @ewanhowell5195!)
• Miscellaneous performance improvements
• Fixed issues with "this" in bedrock attachable preview
• Fixed #3687 query.time_stamp returns wrong values
• fixed thumbnails of models with only non-exported elements
• Fixed UI issues when too many dialogs are open
• Fixed #3698 Armature bones don't scale via Transform Scale
• Fixed spline gizmos staying on screen when gizmos are hidden
• Load image files past the browser cache (#3696, thanks @ewanhowell5195!)
• Improve mesh deformation display performance (#3701)
• Hide the UV scale gizmo for transparent faces (#3743, thanks @ewanhowell5195!)
• Fixed identifier and exported collections when exporting a collection as a bbmodel (#3740, thanks @ewanhowell5195!)
• Fixed locators exporting twice to glTF (#3737, thanks @ewanhowell5195!)
• Fixed bedrock bone parent casing when the parent comes later (#3738, thanks @ewanhowell5195!)
• Fixed config dialog forms leaking their colour pickers (#3724, thanks @ewanhowell5195!)
• Reset the dialog size when double clicking the resizer (#3729, thanks @ewanhowell5195!)
• Fixed #3207 Can't extrude on specific mesh
• Fixed #3262 typo in molang autocomplete
• Fixed texture meshes not rebuilding when changing the texture file (#3706, thanks @ewanhowell5195!)
• End active drags when the window loses focus (#3722, thanks @ewanhowell5195!)
• Restore the alt tool before switching modes (#3718, thanks @ewanhowell5195!)
• Fixed effect keyframes not being pasted into newly made animation
• Fixed custom skin poses being lost on project conversion (#3720, thanks @ewanhowell5195!)
• Fixed prism editor selection breaking with autocomplete open (#3719, thanks @ewanhowell5195!)
• fixed double click to collapse on panel labels (#3728, thanks @ewanhowell5195!)
• Fixed reference image z-index in 2D editor
• Fixed #1902 Background images in 2d editor cannot be color picked
• Fixed double click in image editor to select reference images
• Fixed local plugins being uninstalled after a failed load (#3707, thanks @ewanhowell5195!)
• Fixed #3713 Issue with combining overlapping keyframes
• Fixed error when copying selection component with no selection bounding boxes
• Fixed reference image issues in image editor
• Fixed race condition when launching dev mode
• Optimized load time when opening Blockbench with many recent projects
• Fix #3745 Can't extrude selection via keybinding when mesh is inside armature
• Fixed merging down an alpha mask layer (#3742, thanks @ewanhowell5195)
• Hide more gizmos in screenshots (#3736, thanks @ewanhowell5195)
• Fixed pasting a mesh selection corrupting the project (#3735, thanks @ewanhowell5195)
• Fixed tooltips clashing with open menus (#3725, thanks @ewanhowell5195)
• Fixed side menus reopening instead of closing (#3726, thanks @ewanhowell5195)
• Fixed GLTF export ignoring render sides set per texture (#3746, thanks @spacechase0)
• Fixed #3712 Old position wireframe double while transforming is inaccurate with non-uniform scaled parents
• Fixed texture and animation files being remembered and loaded in formats where it's not needed
• Fixed dialog dragging bounds not updating when resizing window
• Fixed #3317 cannot vertex-snap pivot point of a mesh
• Fixed depth of vertices when using vertex snap on a mesh
• Fixed arrow keys to move layer
• Only reopen remembered files in formats that need them (#3748, thanks @ewanhowell5195)
• Fixed #3317 vertex snap issues on mesh
• Fixed dialog dragging bounds not updating when resizing window
• Fixed #2147 UV rotated side becomes invisible on texture recreation
• Fixed generated mesh template pixels bleeding past face edges (#3732, thanks @ewanhowell5195)
• Fixed #2306 Recreating texture of meshes creates translucent edges
• Fixed Thai language name
• Fixed touch control issues with status bar transform sliders
• Tweak styling and icon of Download App button
• Fixed extruding an item model with an animated texture (#3769, thanks @ewanhowell5195)
• Fixed cube UV rounding issues (JannisX11/hytale-blockbench-plugin#161)
• Fixed studio preview scene texture bleeding
• Fixed billboard orientation not updating when switching project