2.1.5

What's New

Object Space normal

Ucupaint can now bake and use an object space normal map. This is very useful for hand painting a stylized normal map.

Bugfixes

• Fix: Cannot enable channel's alpha on Blender 4.3+
• Fix: Transferring image masks sometimes will use wrong base color (Blender 2.83+)
• Fix: Cannot bake channel when there are multiple materials in a single object and the active object is in edit mode
• Fix: Opening images from other material can accidentally delete unrelated images
• Fix: Cannot preview the override normal when using layer preview mode
• Fix: Images get Packed after Saving them externally (#230)

2.1.4

Bugfixes

• Fix: Opening images to single layer with Add Mask enabled is causing error (#223)
• Fix: Misaligned mask UI on Open Images to Single Layer popup
• Fix: Duplicated decal object does not use the same collection as the original decal

2.1.3

New Features

• Quick resolution toggle when creating a new image layer/mask (#189 by @Kareemov03)
• Gabor layer/mask type (Blender 4.3+) (Showcase)
• Exclusion blend type (Blender 3.5+)
• Flip G option for loaded normal map when opening images to a single layer
• New button to open an image as a mask for a new layer (#211 by @passivestar)
• Individual color channel (R/G/B) as vertex color mask inputs (#222 by @passivestar)

New resolution toggle on new image layer popup

Bugfixes

• Fix: Some bake types (cavity, pointiness, bevel) does not take into account solidify modifier
• Fix: Baking other object channels does not read the alpha channel
• Fix: Toggle eraser on vertex paint mode cannot go back to original brush (Blender 4.3+)
• Fix: Cannot set some of transition effect properties
• Fix: Cannot go back to original UV when using image atlas on edit mode
• Fix: Adding a new vertex color mask resets the extension mode of a previous decal image mask back to clip (#209)
• Fix: Layer with Flip Y enabled still flips the G/Y channel after changing layer type to non-image
• Fix: Error when replacing UDIM atlas layer to another type
• Fix: Using vertex color alpha as a mask will cause missing UI
• Fix: Blender 2.80+ uses the wrong icons for channel selection on the new layer popup

Label Renames

For more clarity, some labels in Ucupaint are renamed

• Image’s Flip Y is renamed to Flip G
• Spread Fix is renamed to Divide RGB by Alpha
• RGB to Intensity and Intensity to RGB modifiers are renamed to RGB to Alpha and Alpha to RGB

Icon Changes

The show layer channel toggle now uses a new icon for a better representative of what it does

New icon for show layer channel toggle

2.1.2

What’s new

• Uniform vector scaling (#196)
• Preference option to enable/disable auto UDIM detection (#200)
• Now there’s a warning popup when trying to delete/merge unsaved layer/mask images (#193)
• No more single option confirmation popup to move a layer outside of a group (#195)

Bugfixes

• Fix: Copying a layer doesn't copy layer parameters (#194)
• Fix: Trying to bake Fake Lighting throws an error when it's used in certain layer stacks (#191)
• Fix Ucupaint Multi-User Node breaks the node setup when Use Baked and Enable Baked Outside is active (#190)
• Fix: Incorrect image paths if the blend file is saved after images were imported to Ucupaint (#192)
• Fix: Missing UI after using image alpha as a mask (#188)
• Fix: Missing icons can happen randomly
• Fix: Driver can be wrongly assigned after changing layer parameters

Demo

uniform_scale_demo.mp4

2.1.1

This is supposed to be a maintenance release of Ucupaint, but thanks to many PRs from @passivestar, it also has a lot of new quality-of-life features ✨

New features

• Ucupaint uses modern blender icons by default (legacy icons still can be selected in the addon preferences) (#171)
• Open Image as Decal in the file browser (#169)
• New preference setting to skip some popups (shift + click the button will still show the popup when necessary) (#170)
• New preferences setting to use Enable baked outside by default (useful for exporting assets to other apps)
• New operator to set position decal to 3d cursor (#179)
• New image menu to Save an Image Copy

New modern icons on Ucupaint 2.1.1

Changes

• Decal object will use the same collection as the parent object
• SSAA is disabled by default for baking other objects' data since it will quadruple the memory usage

Bugfixes

• Fix: Load material images scans all asset files in the asset browser, which can cause errors and slowdown (#167)
• Fix: Duplicate Ucupaint Node can cause the original node to have multiple users
• Fix: Opening an already existing image from disk won’t use the available image
• Fix: Enabling normal channel inside a group can cause wrong render or bake results
• Fix: Save as Image Copy option does not work
• Fix: Load images from material does not scan images inside node groups
• Fix: Cannot properly load ‘Metalness’ image to ‘Metallic’ channel

2.1.0

New features

• Decal mapping (#37) (Demo)
• Load images from material
• Load images from asset browser right-click menu (Demo)
• Load image from file browser right-click menu
• Partial Arabic Localization (#145)
• Use Layer Vector mapping for mask (#157)
• Option to use float image for baked normal and custom bake target(#165)
• Option to change default bake device on preferences
• Denoise option for baking bevel grayscale
• Interpolation option when baking to a layer
• Supports for ACES or any custom OCIO profiles (#163)
• Lower the Blender requirements to Blender 2.76

Changes

• Custom bake target will always use Non-Color colorspace since Blender has a problem showing individual R/G/B channels on image editor if it’s an sRGB image.
• When loading images to a single layer, if a bump and normal map are found at the same time, only the bump map will be used by default since most PBR textures have the exact effect between their bump and normal map.
• Use Displacement Only mode when enabling displacement setup since it produces better displacement on cycles while not affecting Eevee.
• Ucupaint UI will still be accessible when you use Hydra Storm render engine for testing purpose.

Bugfixes

• Fix: UDIM is not detected automatically when rebaking layer
• Fix: Preview mode does not work with normal map layer
• Fix: Edge Detect radius input is not used when creating new edge detect mask (#152)
• Fix: Cannot update some older node setups with smooth bump on
• Fix: Cannot create UDIM layer/mask with a material that has a curve using it
• Fix: Cannot install ucupaint on some Linux distributions that have no toml module installed
• Fix: Using transition bump with add blend type will produce wrong max height value
• Fix: A crash can happen after internally connecting nodes
• Fix: Fix Missing Data is causing layer channel override to be turned off
• Fix: Fix Missing Data can disconnect some layer nodes.
• Fix: Simplify scene can cause an error when trying to sculpt VDM layer
• Fix: Cannot create a new layer on an object with geometry nodes that use panel socket
• Fix: Cannot bake objects with shapekeys on some blender versions
• Fix: Fake lighting does not bake to normal channel (#164)
• Fix: Error can happen when using normalmap override for non-vectorable layer
• Fix: Renaming channel did not rename some of normal input output names

Video Demo

2.0.1

Maintenance release of Ucupaint, contains small changes and bugfixes.

Bugfixes

• Fix: When using multiple materials in a single mesh, painting an image layer will also paint another material’s image layer (#142)
• Fix: Some older files can’t be updated to version 2.0
• Fix: Crash can happen when opening a file created using older ucupaint
• Fix: Merging image layers will add .001 prefix to the image result
• Fix: Merging image layers produces a wrong result on Blender 2.79

Changes

For future compatibility, distutils module is no longer used since it will be removed in Python 3.12.

2.0.0

Ucupaint went on a huge refactor on this release, so it skipped version 1.x and went straight into version 2.0. This refactor opens up new possibilities while adding performance improvements.

New features

• Driver support (Demo)
• Per-layer opacity/intensity (Demo)
• Realtime displacement on Blender 4.2+ (Demo)
• Vector displacement layers on Blender 4.2+ (Demo)
• Bump midlevel is now editable.

Other changes

• Parallax is now hidden under experimental features since it’s inaccurate and only looks good on flat meshes.
• List of layer channels is now collapsed by default because there is already a layer opacity slider.
• Height output from Ucupaint node is now only available when displacement setup is enabled.
• Bump height/distance now uses the same scaling as Blender, so the default value now produces a lighter bump compared to previous versions.

Notable bugfixes

• Fix: Opening an already-used image layer inside a group is causing Blender to freeze.
• Fix: Selecting non-image texture layers did not update the active UV map.

Support

Ucupaint 2.0 still supports all Blender versions from Blender 2.79, so no worries for anyone who still uses older hardware/software

1.2.10

Maintenance release of Ucupaint, this has several bugfixes and some optimization changes.

What's New

• More descriptions of various UI buttons are added
• Interpolation option is an option when baking the channel
• Some icons are tweaked in size to make the collapsible triangle more visible

Bugfixes

• Fix #136: Disable Eraser button doesn't want to disappear in some scenario
• Fix: Using float image layer as normal map produce wrong normal (7e564fb)
• Fix: Baking channels with denoise and FXAA turned on still produce noisy images (560f0d2)
• Fix: Selecting image layers sometimes can cause blender to crash.

1.2.9

Maintenance release of Ucupaint, this has several bugfixes and some optimization changes.

What's New

• Smooth bump is now disabled by default, but all images used for normal channel will be using 'Cubic' interpolation automatically so the bump will still be less blocky than standard 'Linear' interpolation. This will hugely affect the shader compilation and responsiveness of the addon.
• Now ucupaint will switch viewport to material view by default when doing the quick setup.
• Ucupaint has finally been approved on Blender extension platform! (https://extensions.blender.org/add-ons/ucupaint/)

Bugfixes

• Fix #126: Error when baking Other Object's layer when the other object is Text or Curves
• Fix: Cannot duplicate layer with image atlas (f5e6130)