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Core

Library Overrides

The main focus for this release is to improve the usability of Library Overrides, in particular the UI/UX.

This includes fixes and refinements on the Outliner views introduced in Blender 3.2 (the Properties and Hierarchy ones), and major simplification of the menus.

Library Override menu in the Outliner, Blender 3.2 vs. 3.3

Library overrides now have their own sub-menu, with only three main operations (make, reset and clear). This is exposed consistently in all three places where the user can control library overrides (the Outliner, the 3D Viewport for objects, and the ID selection widget in e.g. the Properties editor).

Detailed Changes

  • Added full support for camera's background images (3437cf155e).
  • When creating partial override hierarchies, dependencies are considered in both directions, so e.g. if one overrides an armature, the meshes that depend on it will also be overridden now (f0b4aa5d59).
  • Added 'editable/clear' toggle to ID template, using ⇧ ShiftLMB , to allow user to easily toggle between editable override, and non-editable, cleared override statuses (e4dd644d6b).
  • Added/reworked View3D menu into its own sub-menu, with same three main operations as in the Outliner (Make, Reset and Clear, see below for details) (a42896a8a1).
  • LibOverride: Add Make/Reset/Clear entries to IDTemplate contextual menu, see below for details (fec2543648).

Rework Outliner Contextual Menu

Follow-up to design discussions here at the studio, add library override operations into their own sub-menu, with three main entries:

  • Make: Create, or enable for user editing, override hierarchies.
  • Reset: Keep overrides data, but reset all local changes to the reference linked data values.
  • Clear: like reset, but also turn editable overrides back to system overrides (aka non user editable).

Those three options can all operate either on the selected items, their content only, or both.

Advanced operations are moved into a "Troubleshoot" sub-menu, where one can resync, resync enforced, and fully delete library overrides. Those operations always affect a whole override hierarchy, regardless of which items are selected or not.

Ref. c73cc15e07, a93f6a5429.

Data Management

  • Isolated dependency islands of data-blocks (e.g. an Object using a Material, which has a driver using this same Object) are now properly detected and deleted by the recursive purging operation (#T98029, 97dd107070).
  • The ‘Purge’ button of the Orphaned view of the Outliner now uses recursive purge (instead of the ‘one-level’ one only deleting data-blocks with no users) (a27024e36d).
  • The way Blender ensures that all data blocks have unique names has been rewritten, and scales much better to high object counts (7f8d05131a). This speeds up many operations, e.g. importing large scenes, duplicating many objects, etc.

Others

  • JPEG preview thumbnails created faster and with less RAM. (8960c6e060)
  • EXR preview thumbnails created for all types and with less RAM. (f600a2aa6d)
  • Improved report about invalid relation in the dependency graph. (2da7977e3e)
  • Font fallback support. No noticeable changes until we approve a stack of fonts. (524a9e3db8)
  • Variable / Multiple Master Font support. No user-facing changes yet. (b9c0eed206)
  • Duplicating many objects is faster now (2d041fc468, 7f8d05131a). Shift+D duplicating 10 thousand cubes went from 14 seconds down to 2 seconds.