Reference/Release Notes/3.2/Nodes Physics

= Geometry Nodes =

Performance Improvements

 * Many curve nodes have been ported to a new data-block, which significantly improves performance with many curves.
 * Updating the Endpoint Selection node resulted in an observed 13x performance improvement combined with the Set Position node.
 * The Mesh to Curve node has improved performance, with 10x improvements possible when many curves are created.
 * The Curve to Mesh node can be 4-5x faster for inputs with millions of curves.
 * The performance of the Resample Curves improved by roughly 6x when sampling many small poly curves.
 * Updating the Realize Instances improves its performance by 2-3x, especially with many small curves.
 * A complete list of the updated nodes can be found here.
 * Many function nodes with more inputs like Map Range, Combine XYZ, and Random Value are 2-4x faster in common cases.
 * Selection inputs are now faster in general as the field system can prepare the data for nodes more efficiently.
 * In a simple test with the set position node, the improvement to runtime was 1.4x with 10% of points selected, and 2.5x with 90% of points selected.
 * Simple functions with a single input and output in a field network like data-type conversion can be around twice as fast in some cases.
 * Writing to vertex groups inside nodes and directly with a modifier output attribute can be 3.6x faster.
 * Values of zero are not written to the group anymore.
 * The Mesh Line primitive was parallelized with an observed 4x performance improvement.
 * A small optimization to the UV Sphere node made it 1% faster.

General

 * The Duplicate Elements can duplicate points, edges, faces, instances, and curves.
 * Updating the node to use the new curves data-block improved performance by up to 150x.
 * Geometry nodes has better support for byte colors, to work better with the changes in sculpt mode.
 * The Store Named Attribute node can write byte colors directly.
 * The "Convert Attribute" operator can convert to/from byte colors.
 * Various systems like implicit conversions and mixing byte colors work in all nodes.
 * Byte colors are displayed as integers (0-255) in the spreadsheet.
 * Adding a new Geometry Nodes modifier from the modifier panel doesn't automatically populate it with a new node tree anymore.
 * It's now possible to specify a default name for modifier attribute inputs and outputs, used whenever creating assigning a node group to an empty modifier.

Named Attributes



 * Nodes to deal with attribute names directly are back!
 * The Store Named Attribute node can create attributes with any name (even names computed with string nodes).
 * The Remove Named Attribute node removes any attribute, which can be helpful as a performance improvement.
 * The Named Attribute input node retrieves an attribute with a name for use in a field.
 * The input node supports attribute search, which automatically sets its output type.
 * Attribute names used in node groups are visualized externally.
 * A new "Internal Dependencies" modifier panel shows all attribute names used by the modifier.
 * A node editor overlay shows attribute names used by names and node groups.

Meshes

 * The Face is Planar nodes can tell when the triangles of an N-Gon don't lie on the same plane.
 * The Merge by Distance node now has a "Connected" mode like the weld modifier, which can be much faster.

Curves

 * The behavior when writing directly to the `position`, `handle_right`, and `handle_left` attributes has been simplified, removing the edit-mode-like logic affecting handles.
 * The Set Position and Set Handle Position nodes still have the more complex behavior.

Legacy Geometry Nodes

 * Most nodes from 2.93, before the fields system was introduced, have been removed.
 * This means that as of 3.2, geometry nodes files are not backwards compatible with files using legacy nodes. Versions 3.1 and 3.0 can be used to port files to the new system.
 * This change can speed up development and remove the maintenance burden of supporting the set of legacy nodes.

= Node Editor =
 * The readability of node link selections has been improved.
 * The entire link is highlighted when a connected node is selected.
 * Selected links are displayed on top, so they are always clearly visible.
 * Selected links are not faded when the sockets they are connected to are out out view.
 * Dragged links still get a partial highlight when they are only attached to one socket.
 * The look of the soft shadow behind nodes has been improved for extreme zoom levels and high resolution displays.
 * The dot grid background has been improved to be more visually consistent with the zoom level.
 * There have been small improvements to the look of the reroute node.
 * Curved node links always attach horizontally to the reroute node to avoid breaking the visual flow.
 * The label of the reroute node is now center aligned.
 * When creating node groups, hidden links are removed, to avoid making unused input and output sockets.