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Summary

This is the first beta release of PrusaSlicer 2.9.6. This release introduces ColorMix - our variation of FullSpectrum, which is a community feature that "mixes" different filaments colors by alternating materials between layers.

To let you enjoy the beta without worries, the beta builds save their profiles into PrusaSlicer-beta directory, so you may use the beta side by side with the current release without ruining your production configuration.

Note that Linux builds are distributed through Flatpak only (flathub-beta), and that their release is couple of hours delayed compared to the github release.

ColorMix

The complete story is beyond the scope of this change log and it is described in a separate blog post and there is also a dedicated video.

The idea of creating illusion of color by alternating different-colored filaments was prototyped by community in the recent months, most notably in ratdoux's fork of OrcaSlicer. Other PrusaSlicer forks like BambuStudio and OrcaSlicer have also taken up the idea. We now bring our own implementation into PrusaSlicer.

When using a multicolor printer, there is now a new button in the right panel, just below Filament dropdowns. This button opens a dialog where you can add virtual extruders, each corresponding to a mix of existing extruders in specified ratios. Once virtual extruders exist, you can use them like normal extruder - assign them to volumes and use them in multimaterial painting. The slicing backend takes care of the rest. Most of the implementation is completely new, except for several fragments of the UI code which were taken from BambuStudio.

We spent quite a lot of time and effort on the color-mixing model, because we were not happy with present implementation. The result is available as a separate MIT-licenced module prusa-fdm-mixer, so anyone can keep building on top of it, just like we did.