Tuesday, March 4th, 2025Posted by Jim Thacker5 key features for CG artists in Godot 4.4html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"The Godot team has released Godot 4.4, the latest version of the open-source game engine.Its another sizeable release, with improvements to core performance, and updates throughout Godots key toolsets, including changes to scripting, audio and platform integration.Below, weve picked out five new features of particular significance to CG artists, as opposed to programmers, including updates to shading, lighting, rendering, animation and physics.https://www.cgchannel.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/240304_Godot44_5KeyFeatures_InteractiveEditing.mp41. New game window lets you edit games directly while theyre runningFor both artists and level designers, a key change in Godot 4.4 is that the game window is now embedded in the Godot Editor, making it possible to view the running game from the Editor.Users can select objects within the game window, streamlining interactive in-game editing.There are also a number of other nice quality-of-life updates to the Editor, including the option to snap 3D objects to one another while placing them in a level, to preview camera views directly in the Inspector, and a built-in material preview in the visual shader editor.2. Updates to LightmapGI improve quality and performance of rendered shadowsIn the lighting toolset, the LightmapGI node now supports baked shadowmasks.The change makes it possible to use static shadows at a distance from the view camera, but dynamic shadows up close, improving performance without sacrificing realism.LightmapGI also now supports bicubic sampling, resulting in smoother-looking baked shadows at a small performance cost, and supports baking tinted shadows from transparent objects.3. AgX tonemapping gives a movie-like look to rendered imagesFor post-processing, Godot 4.4 now supports AgX tonemapping, for giving a movie-like look to rendered images, alongside the existing ACES and Filmic transforms.The implementation is similar to that in Blender, where an AgX View Transform was added in Blender 4.0, but has been simplified for real-time use.It is described as handling very bright scenes better than existing tonemapping modes.https://www.cgchannel.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/250304_Godot44_5KeyFeatures_LookAt.webm4. Animation: new look-at, jiggle physics and animation marker systemsAnimators get a number of new features, including a new look-at constraint system, with the new LookAtModifer3D node partially replacing the now-deprecated SkeletonIK3D.For adding jiggle physics for characters hair and clothing, VRMSpringBone from the VRM format for 3D avatars, previously an add-on, is now integrated directly into the engine.It is also now possible to place markers to create subregions of an animation that can be jumped to or looped without playing the entire animation.5. Jolt physics is now built-in, not an extensionAnother key change in Godot 4.4 is that Jolt, the open-source rigid body dynamics library used as the de facto physics engine by many developers, is now integrated directly into Godot.Jolt, used on games including Horizon Forbidden West, was previously an extension.The new built-in Jolt Physics module is still experimental, and is not yet as feature-complete as the existing Godot Physics system: you can find a list of differences in the online documentation.However, the Jolt extension is now in maintenance mode, and will be deprecated once the native Jolt physics system reaches feature parity.Other changes, performance improvements and platform supportThere are also a number of improvements to scripting, including support for typed dictionaries, tooltips in the GDScript editor, and a new expression evaluator. Core performance has been improved, with large projects loading up to 3x faster in the Editor.Godot also now supports Apples Metal graphics API natively, rather than using MoltenVK to run Vulkan over Metal, which should improve performance on Apple Silicon processors.Platform changes initial support for XR devices in the Android Editor. The Android Editor can also now generate and export binaries directly, rather than forcing users to switch to another OS.License and system requirementsGodot 4.4 is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, and 64-bit Linux and macOS. There are also browser-based and Android ports of the Godot Editor. The source code is available under a MIT licenseRead a full list of new features in Godot 4.4 on the Godot teams blogDownload Godot from the game engines websiteHave your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we dont post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.Latest News5 key features for CG artists in Godot 4.4Discover five key new features in the open-source game engine, including updates to shading, lighting, animation and physics.Tuesday, March 4th, 2025Trimble releases SketchUp 2025.0Check out the new features in the architectural modeling app, also used in concept art, including HDRI lighting and PBR materials.Monday, March 3rd, 2025Tutorial: Dynamic Cloth Simulation for ProductionMaster character effects workflows for animation, cinematics and VFX with The Gnomon Workshop's detailed Houdini tutorial.Sunday, March 2nd, 2025Check out free Blender scattering add-on OpenScatterPromising open-source add-on lets you scatter plants and rocks in your scenes according to elevation, texture masks or guide curves.Sunday, March 2nd, 2025CETA Software launches Artist AccessCheck out the new time-tracking tools in the cloud-based production management platform for VFX. 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