Ucupaint

Changelog

What's New

• New option to use image atlas when opening images to avoid the max image limit on Blender with OpenGL.

Bugfixes

• Fix: Using a custom image for bump channel will make the UI disappear if smooth(er) bump is enabled
• Fix: Can't install the addon on Blender 4.2+ in a specific case (when Blender mistakenly lists other non-existing ucupaint installations as existing)
• Fix: Some blend files created in the pre-2.0 version can be mistakenly forced to use displacement after the update
• Fix: Weird color shift after painting and saving a float image on disk
• Fix: Manual blender baking can throw an error in the console
• Fix: Baking AO doesn't take into account the alpha of other objects

Changelog

Changes

• Sponsors panel is removed because of the TOS 🥲 (Please keep supporting us!)

Improvements

• All exec and eval calls are removed for security reasons
• msgbus is now used for many parts in Ucupaint. It should have better performance than using depsgraph_update_post

Bugfixes

• Fix: In certain cases, updating an old file can crash Blender
• Fix: Enabling mask while adding a new layer fails
• Fix: Open Images from Material throws an error when there's no BSDF node found
• Fix: Rebaking other object data can fail in the local view
• Fix: Baking other object data doesn't work with the Blender particle system
• Fix: Wrong representation of non-active VDM/bump layers when sculpting a VDM image layer
• Fix: Toggling layer preview mode multiple times can cause a crash
• Fix: Reselecting baked vertices will fail if there are multiple objects using the same material.
• Fix: Doing any vertex attribute operations will fail when using numpy version 2.4+
• Fix: Applying VDM layers to multires in edit mode will throw an error
• Fix: Adding a mask can mistakenly disable halt_update, causing some processes to throw an error.
• Fix: Blend file created before 2.4.0 can fail to update or have wrong shaders after the update.
• Fix: Changing channel to bump in the new layer dialog box doesn't change mask image interpolation to Cubic

Changelog

What’s New

• Paste Blank Layer(s). This will paste the layers with all the settings and modifiers copied, but the pasted images will be blank.
• Button to remove Mio3 UV checker if there’s any, since it can override the current material.

Bugfixes

• Fix: Blender can freeze while baking AO/Pointiness/etc when multiple materials are used, and there are too many polygons involved. It can still occur with Blender 2.83 or lower, but is fixed in Blender 2.90+.
• Fix: Baking AO doesn't take into account the alpha channel.
• Fix: Baking can cause a crash in Blender 5.1 if there are multiple objects and one of them has a string attribute
• Fix: Toggle Eraser doesn’t use the correct eraser for Pixel Art Brush
• Fix: Errors can happen when updating a very old file.
• Fix: Warnings will appear in Blender 5.1 console because of invalid regex codes.
• Fix: Fake Lighting and Edge Detect layers have the wrong gamma if linear blending is disabled.
• Fix: Baking will not function properly if objects are not visible in the viewport.
• Fix: Contributors/sponsors UI can crash Blender.
• Fix: Editing bake channel dialog box after baking will cause a crash.
• Fix: Cannot sculpt VDM image in Blender 5.2.

Changelog

What’s New

• TIFF images are now openable in Blender file browser’s right‑click menu.
• New Space option for the normal preview mode. The object‑space normal preview can be useful for custom normal painting, as shown in the video below.

Painting normal through preview mode

Bugfixes

• Fix: Auto setup new channel does not automatically enable the newly created channel on layer groups.
• Fix: Creating a new image layer and painting it for the normal channel won't work well since the image uses sRGB by default.
• Fix: Baking normal channel for armature posed objects will result in wrong normal map color.
• Fix: Normal channel with legacy smooth bump enabled can output wrong normal.
• Fix: Applying sculpt to a VDM image on an object with Simple type subdivision modifier produces a wrong result (Blender 5.0+).
• Fix: Failed to update any files that have grease pencil objects in them (Blender 5.0+).

Changelog

What’s New

• Support for Blender 5.1 Beta

Bugfixes

• Fix: Error when doing quick setup or when adding a new channel (Blender 5.1)
• Fix: Wrong alpha value if a layer channel is using custom data after setting it to use alpha as the source.
• Fix: Reload scripts will make ucupaint error in Blender 5.1
• Fix: Cannot auto-detect UDIM in Blender 5.1
• Fix: Layer channels can have a wrong opacity label
• Fix: Private sponsors are still listed as private_x
• Fix: Alpha channel doesn't use the correct value in a custom bake target if Combine to Baked Color is enabled.
• Fix: Moving a channel doesn't also move animation data in the node input default value

Changelog

What’s New

• Option in preferences to disable Switch to Material view warning.
• Option to disable warning for an unconnected channel socket.

Bugfixes

• Fix: Multiple normal map layers inside a group layer can't be blended correctly.
• Fix: Layer preview mode for a group layer that contains bump layers can show wrong data.
• Fix: Replacing an Image breaks mapping on generated and object coordinates.
• Fix: Layer channel custom value always resets to 0..1.0 range after disabling.
• Fix: Opening image as a layer/mask in the shader editor will replace the active area with geometry nodes editor (Blender 4.3+).
• Fix: Version label inside a ucupaint node tree doesn’t update to the latest version.
• Fix: Cannot create new color attributes as a custom layer channel source.
• Fix: Cannot bake cavity if there's a VDM layer.
• Fix: Cannot duplicate layer with Set New Decal Position to Cursor enabled.
• Fix: Realtime ambient occlusion layer doesn't account for other object's obstruction when baked to an image.

Changelog

What’s New

• There will be an update notification when there’s a new version from the Blender extension platform.
• When there’s object space normal used, a different method will be used for the final baked normal, so the result will look closer to the unbaked one. (Sample file)

Bugfixes

• Fix: In certain cases, Refresh Linear Color Space button can appear and cannot be removed.
• Fix: Blender can crash while baking other objects data.
• Fix: Changing the blend type of a color channel with an alpha channel pair inside a group can make the layer entirely transparent.
• Fix: Alpha channel can't be baked into a color attribute.
• Fix: Baking other objects with alpha or with SSAA enabled can result in wrong baked data.
• Fix: Baking other objects with no BSDF node will return an error.

Changelog

UI Performance Optimization

This version includes performance optimization for UI drawing, which can be five times faster in some cases, especially on complex layer setups. This meant navigating Ucupaint UI will be less laggy. More improvements are still coming for future versions.

Sponsors Panel Update

More tier members are now visible by default, and all icons are consistently aligned to the left. Support Ucupaint if you also want your name and icons to be included in this list.

Bugfixes

• Fix: Cannot use Use Layer Vector option for mask.
• Fix: A mistakenly unpacked UDIM image can be lost when saving the blend file.
• Fix: Using a color ID mask on a color attribute layer will show a Fix Missmatch button that can't be removed.
• Fix: Inbetween modifier mask produces wrong result.

Changelog

New Features

• Dedicated alpha channel (Demo)
• Decal constraint option to make decal objects stick to the surface (Demo)
• Open layer from Ucupaint material asset (Example)
• "Smoothness" suffix in the file name is now detectable for loading images to a single layer.
• Other object color baking is now available for creating a mask.
• Mirror modifier will be temporarily applied when sculpting VDM images if Mirror U/V is enabled. This will make it possible to sculpt at the mirrored mesh.
• New operator in the normal channel cog wheel button to apply all VDM layers to multires modifier.
• OSL option is now available for layer/mask baking.
• New option to add Ambient Occlusion channel after Quick Setup.
• New option to use transparency for missing ray in other object normal baking.
• Layer alpha is now selectable as the layer channel source.

UI Updates

• New sponsors panel to show Ucupaint supporters and the goal (Demo)
• Info panel now shows contributor icons.
• Both sponsors' and contributors' data are updated once per day.
• There will be a button to switch to material view when the user is in solid/wireframe viewport.
• There will be a warning message when creating realtime AO/Edge Detect layer/mask, which mentions that the rendered/baked result can be different
• Active channel name will be visible when the main channels list is collapsed and layer preview mode is enabled.
• Material-specific options like render method/alpha blending are now moved to the new material dropdown.

Info panel now shows contributor icons	Ucupaint sponsors will be shown in the sponsors panel	New material dropdown for material related settings

Performance Improvements

• Less lag when doing a transformation operation while Ucupaint UI is open.
• Less lag when changing Ucupaint UI sliders.
• Faster native VDM baking for Blender 5.0
• Faster VDM baking since all unrelated objects are automatically hidden while baking.

Changes

• Background layer and alpha toggle are no longer available to use since the functionality is already covered by a dedicated alpha channel.
• Baking other object data now will hide the source objects after baking (It can be changed in the bake dialog box and there’s a button to unhide the source objects).
• Baking fake lighting will use a 32-bit float image by default for better gradient (Blender 2.80+)
• Vertex Color is now called Color Attributes in Blender 3.2+ to match Blender convention.
• Open Available Image renamed to Open Existing Image
• Smooth bump will be enabled by default, but only for Blender 2.76 and 2.77, since it’s the only way to make the bump map visible in the viewport.
• Loading material assets is now only available for Blender 4.0+ since it returns an error in earlier versions.

Bugfixes

• Blender built-in icons are now used whenever possible to avoid missing icons.
• Fix: Baking channel with multiple objects can cause some objects to have wrong color when there is missing vertex color data
• Fix: Sculpting VDM image with Flip Y/Z disabled produces a wrong mesh
• Fix: Baking mask to image returns an error if the active object is hidden in the viewport.
• Fix: Blender 5.0 doesn’t create an output node by default, which is causing an error.
• Fix: Cannot bake layer/mask with blur enabled in Blender 5.0
• Fix: In certain cases, Refresh Linear Color Space button can appear and cannot be removed
• Fix: Toggling the eraser on custom brush with Erase Alpha blending sometimes can cause an error
• Fix: User can mistakenly open color ID attribute as a layer/mask.
• Fix: Removing a layer does not remove its baked image masks
• Fix: Baking mask to image with preview mode enabled sometimes can disconnect the preview node.
• Fix: Animation playback causes errors on Blender 5.0
• Fix: Wrong default value when baking custom bake target if there’s no layer using the channel
• Fix: Cannot register addon when updater JSON is empty
• Fix: Bake other object extrusion and ray settings are not available to access when Use Cage is disabled.

Video Demos

Dedicated alpha channel demo

Ucupaint sponsors panel demo

Decal constraint demo

Changelog

What’s New

• Replace Image in layer/mask source now will open the image from disk.
• Mute Stencil Mask Opacity option is no longer available when doing the quick setup, since it has no purpose anymore.
• Blur types option is now available when doing Bake layer/mask as image
• Now Transition Bump Max Height can use negative values. It’s needed for creating some peel effects (Example)

Youtube demo of baking color ID mask with gaussian blur

Bugfixes

• Fix: Right-click menu on the File Browser can be spawned multiple times after creating a new blend file.
• Fix: Toggle Eraser doesn't work on Blender 5.0.
• Fix: Replace decal layer/mask image is causing the image extension to be repeated
• Fix: Back to Original UV doesn't work when the active image is from a channel's custom source data.
• Fix: Wrong baked channel result if displacement setup is enabled and there's a layer with a non-UV vector. The result is still not an exact match, but close enough.
• Fix: Preview Mode doesn't work with Blender 5.0.
• Fix: Error when trying to bake a channel when there's a missing decal mask image
• Fix: Refill UDIM Tiles returns an error when there's no layer.
• Fix: Paste Layers sometimes can return an error.
• Fix: Cannot set channel’s name on Blender 5.0.
• Fix: Using Add blending for bump map does not contribute to the final maximum height value.
• Fix: Merge layers with normal main channel will return an error.
• Fix: Baked Normal without bump sometimes does not get saved when saving the blend file.

Changelog

Changes

• Opening other layer image/vertex color as a mask no longer automatically set the source input to Alpha since the user doesn't always want to use the image as an alpha clip.
• Using Enable Baked Outside and Displacement Setup will use the combined normal as the final normal rather than the normal without bump. This is because displacement maps are not exportable using GLTF, so by using the combined normal, it makes sure the displacement data is at least already included in the baked normal map.

Bugfixes

• Fix: Baking with Denoise/Dithering enabled doesn’t work with the latest Blender 5.0 Alpha
• Fix: Alpha socket default value gets reset after enabling/disabling channel's alpha
• Fix: Max height on node input always gets reset to 0.1, causing a wrong bake result
• Fix: Vector displacement input socket won't get properly reconnected after enabling/disabling Displacement Setup
• Fix Displacement image won't get baked if there's no layer using but there's a connection to input displacement socket
• Fix: Moving a layer with a transition ramp inside or outside a group can produce wrong color because of wrong connections
• Fix: Baking other object data can spawn an empty image texture node on some materials
• Fix: Wrong other object's channel bake result for channels after Normal
• Fix: Clicking Brush tool after toggling eraser with Smear/Blur tool will revert to using the eraser brush instead of the real paint brush
• Fix: Error when trying to refill UDIM tiles with an empty UDIM image

Changelog

What’s New

• Notification of the time taken after the baking process is completed
• Notification to update when opening a blend file that is created using a newer version of Ucupaint

Example of notification after baking an edge detect layer/mask

Bugfixes

• Fix: Material becomes black after merging masks
• Fix: Updating a blend file that has older color ramp versions can produce the wrong material color.
• Fix: UV Mapping doesn't work with curves
• Fix: VDM layer does not work with layer group
• Fix: Cannot create a new channel when the channel list is empty
• Fix: Cannot bake with denoise enabled on Blender 5.0
• Fix: Baked vector displacement image isn't listed in baked normal channel images list
• Fix: Incorrect bump scale when Write Height is disabled
• Fix: Auto image save fails to save EXR image properly.
• Fix: Bump map with Write Height disabled produces wrong blended normal

Changelog

What’s New

• Blender 5.0 Alpha support
• Normalize option for pointiness baking
• Use Cage option for baking other objects' data
• New option for ramp modifier to affect only color or alpha
• Other Object Emission bake option is replaced with Other Object Color since it can also work with Principled or Diffuse BSDF materials
• Active Mask / Override option for layer preview mode is renamed to Active Mask / Custom Data

Bugfixes

• Fix: Artifacts around the alpha area when using baked other object color as bump
• Fix: Refresh UV does not correspond to the custom channel source image, and sometimes can cause an error
• Fix: Expandable subitems do not list non-image/vertex color custom channel source
• Fix: Wrong vector displacement scale on Blender 4.5+

Baking pointiness with Normalize enabled has less banding and is easier to control

Changelog

Maintenance release of Ucupaint, contains only bugfixes.

Bugfixes

• Fix: Creating a solid color layer with a vertex color mask in edit mode can cause missing data that cannot be resolved
• Fix: Baked layer/mask sometimes won’t use the correct UV Map
• Fix: Edge detect and Ambient Occlusion layer use wrong icons
• Fix: Removing Ambient Occlusion channel while Preview Mode is enabled is causing a disconnected node
• Fix: Moving channel order does not also move layer channel input properties
• Fix: Adding a new layer when the active layer is a disabled group on index 0 will make the newly created layer have weird indentation
• Fix: Cannot sculpt VDM image when the scene world is empty
• Fix: A pure black color on the color channel can affect the bake result of the normal channel

Changelog

New Features

• Rebake all baked layers and masks
• Paste layer(s) has an option to rebake baked images
• New layer and mask type, realtime Ambient Occlusion
• Realtime Edge detect can now also be used as a layer
• Realtime Edge Detect, AO, and Fake lighting layers are now bakeable as an image
• New Dither option (for bake channels) to avoid banding color
• New OSL option (for bake channels) to avoid Out of SVM stack error when the material is too complex
• Fill selected geometry option when ColorID or vertex color is added in edit mode
• Copy & Paste custom bake target
• Open Images from Material now will check the node connection by default rather than checking the image names
• Paste layer now works with ucupaint node with a different channels list

Youtube video demo of realtime AO and rebake all layers/masks

Comparison of baked channel result with dithering on and off

Changes

• New float image will use Premultiplied alpha by default since it has better alpha handling.
• Enabling displacement setup will use Displacement and Bump mode rather than Displacement Only

Byte image with straight alpha has outline artifacts compared to float image with premultiplied alpha

UI Update

• All baked channel data is now displayed at the same time
• A bake button is added for some realtime AO/Edge Detect/Fake Lighting layer/mask for easier access
• Most Ucupaint operators now can be assigned to a custom shortcut key.
• Tree name can now be customized from the quick node setup popup
• Remove button is added for baked layer/mask
• Open Image in Explorer is added to the image layer/mask/channel source dropdown (263)
• Toggle Eraser button will be switched to red Disable Eraser button when the active brush is an eraser.

New baked channels UI

Bugfixes

• Fix: Misaligned internal nodes location on Blender 4.4+
• Fix: Replacing a mask type to Backface will create unnecessary nodes
• Fix: Baking with denoise enabled can make the bake result even noisier in some cases
• Fix: Group panel shows unused properties
• Fix: Open Image as channel source always uses an absolute path
• Fix: Duplicate layer won't duplicate its vertex color data
• Fix: Open image to layer channel source sometimes uses incorrect colorspace
• Fix: Bake All Channels causesan error when there's a normal enabled layer with a fake lighting mask
• Fix: Duplicate/Paste multiple layers did not recognize multi-user images and decal objects
• Fix: Bake Bevel Normal sometimes produces wrong result
• Fix: Float image uses wrong gamma color
• Fix: Wrong base color of float baked normal
• Fix: Bake other object channels with SSAA enabled produce wrong results on Blender 4.5