For those who don’t know the tool: The open-source Godot Engine is a cross-platform game engine widely used for interactive 2D and 3D content creation. Godot 4.6 is shifting focus toward workflow polish, production-ready defaults and deeper rendering and tool enhancements.

Rendering under the hood

Godot Engine 4.6 continues the Vulkan-based renderer introduced in the 4.x series, but most changes in this release target correctness, predictability and tunability rather than new visual effects. The most visible change is a full rewrite of Screen Space Reflections. The new implementation reduces temporal instability and artefacts at grazing angles, with explicit half-resolution and full-resolution modes. The latter is computationally expensive but provides cleaner reflections for high-end realtime visuals and virtual production style scenes.

Reflection probes gain octahedral encoding support, lowering memory usage while preserving angular resolution. This is relevant for large environments with many probes, where cube map memory pressure was previously a limiting factor. Glow is now composited before tonemapping rather than after, resulting in more physically consistent highlights when working in HDR pipelines.

Tonemapping itself is more configurable, with parameters exposed for artists and TDs who need predictable output across displays. Material debanding has been improved to reduce banding in low-gradient areas, particularly noticeable in sky domes and volumetric-style lighting setups.

On Windows, Direct3D 12 becomes the default rendering backend. Vulkan remains supported, but the switch acknowledges ongoing driver instability on certain consumer GPUs. This is a pragmatic rather than ideological decision, and it may matter for studios deploying on heterogeneous hardware.

Physics as an engineering choice

Godot Engine 4.6 makes Jolt the default 3D physics engine for new projects. Jolt is a third-party rigid body solver designed for determinism and stability, and it has been available as an option in earlier versions. Making it the default is a statement that Godot’s in-house 3D physics is no longer considered production-ready for complex scenes.

This change affects collision behaviour, stacking stability and joint simulation. Existing projects are not automatically migrated, and the release notes explicitly warn that results will differ. The engine does not claim bit-exact determinism across platforms, but behaviour is reported as more consistent under load. This is a technical foundation change, not a feature, and it will mostly be noticed when things stop exploding.

Animation systems restored and expanded

Inverse Kinematics returns in Godot Engine 4.6 after being absent in early 4.x releases. The new system is modular, node-based and supports multiple solvers including TwoBoneIK3D and FABRIK3D. These are not cosmetic tools but structural animation constraints that can be evaluated deterministically or iteratively depending on setup.

The animation editor gains direct timeline retiming by resizing clips and keys, reducing the need for script-side adjustments. Node-based constraints can now be targeted more flexibly, which is relevant for procedural rigs and runtime animation blending. While Godot is still not a replacement for DCC rigging tools, the direction is clear. Animation in Godot is expected to survive iteration, not just previews.

Editor architecture and debugging

The new Modern editor theme is the most visible change, but the more relevant shift is architectural. Docking is now unified and panels can float freely across monitors. This matters for technical users who rely on debugger, shader editor and scene views simultaneously. Debugging gains ObjectDB snapshots and diffing. This allows developers to capture the state of live objects and compare them over time, which is useful for tracking memory leaks, orphaned nodes and unintended object growth. Errors in the Output panel now link directly to scripts or resources, including when using external editors. Select and Transform modes are decoupled in the viewport, aligning Godot more closely with established DCC interaction models. This is a small change with large ergonomic impact.

Embedding and deployment

LibGodot is introduced as a supported way to embed the engine into other applications. This allows Godot to run as a library rather than a standalone editor or player. The release notes are cautious about scope, but this opens the door to custom tools, simulation hosts and non-game realtime applications. Export workflows gain patch PCK delta encoding, reducing update sizes for deployed projects. GPU-accelerated 3D texture imports shorten iteration times when working with volumetric or layered textures.

What this release is really about

Godot Engine 4.6 is not a showcase release. It does not promise cinematic visuals or revolutionary workflows. Instead, it concentrates on technical debt, defaults and systems that must be correct before higher-level tools can be trusted. Many changes are invisible unless something goes wrong, which is precisely the point.

As always, new tools and engine versions should be tested carefully before being introduced into active production environments.

Official Godot Engine 4.6 release notes
https://godotengine.org/releases/4.6/

The post Godot 4.6 Arrives With Major CG-Friendly Updates first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Adobe’s Substance 3D Designer 15 (released July 2025) brings long-demanded upgrades for production artists: a unified viewport renderer, native post-processing FX, and direct scene-based context editing. This is not just a facelift—it’s a workflow upgrade for material creators who want to see results that won’t embarrass them in dailies.

Unified Renderer: Real-Time Raster and Path Tracing, No Compromises

The all-new renderer merges real-time rasterization and GPU path tracing into a single engine. Shadows are physically plausible, ground planes are supported, and switching between preview and final-quality output no longer involves arcane OpenGL settings or the creaky Iray plugin. MaterialX support is also built in, which may be useful for studios prepping for cross-pipeline transfers.

This renderer now replaces both the old OpenGL and Iray viewport modes—so what you see in Designer finally matches what you get in production renderers. This isn’t speculative; CG Channel{:target=”_blank”} and 80.lv{:target=”_blank”} both confirm it.

Native Post FX: Bloom, DoF, and Modern Tone Mapping

Post-processing is now handled directly in the 3D viewport. Users can enable bloom for those inevitable emissive materials, add depth-of-field (in raster mode), and choose modern tone-mapping profiles like ACES and AgX. No more exporting a bunch of screenshots for “Photoshop it later” passes—production lookdev can happen right where you texture. These FX are in-app and don’t require third-party plugins.

Scene Context Editing: Import USD/GLTF, Edit Materials in Place

Material authors can now import whole 3D scenes—including USD, USDA, USDC, USDZ, GLTF, PLY, and STL—and replace or tweak materials directly on selected meshes. That means actual context for lookdev: artists can edit, preview, and export scene-based material graphs without round-tripping to another DCC or losing mesh data. This is not a half-step: USD edits are non-destructive and maintain scene fidelity.

Workflow Upgrades: Tooltips, Bakers, CLI

Designer 15 includes context-sensitive, illustrated tooltips for atomic nodes—finally, some clarity for anyone lost in spaghetti graphs. GPU-accelerated bakers are improved, non-square UVs are supported, and the baking CLI is now more sensibly named substance3d_baker.exe.

One Caution: Test Before Production

As always: New features should be thoroughly tested in your actual production pipeline. Rendering, material export, and FX might behave differently outside the pristine confines of Designer’s viewport.

These tweaks (and more) are detailed in Adobe’s own release notes.

The post Substance 3D Designer 15 arrives first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

A recent update to the open-source 3D graphics editor brings a game-changing feature: support for animated Gaussian splats. While this may sound like something out of a physics textbook, the new addition is poised to make a significant impact on game developers and real-time graphics enthusiasts. Let’s dive into what this means for the workflow and potential applications, straight from the source.

What Are Animated Gaussian Splats?

In simple terms, Gaussian splats are a method of applying splat-based rendering techniques in 3D graphics, often used to simulate soft particles or volumetric effects. By animating these splats, the editor now allows for more dynamic, lifelike rendering of such effects. This makes it ideal for real-time applications like games, simulations, or other interactive media. With this addition, the open-source tool expands its capabilities to support animated effects that respond fluidly to the scene, offering an enhanced level of realism in particle rendering.

https://twitter.com/willeastcott/status/1876589797931938126?mx=2

Real-Time Graphics Just Got a Boost

The most significant takeaway here is the ability to incorporate these animated Gaussian splats directly into real-time projects. Whether you’re simulating environmental effects such as smoke or adding complex particle effects to a game, the editor’s new support for animated Gaussian splats brings greater flexibility and realism to your pipeline. Given that real-time graphics demand efficiency and speed, this tool aims to streamline that process, allowing production artists to preview and tweak animations on the fly.

For more information, you can explore the editor’s capabilities here.

Pricing and Availability

As this is an open-source tool, it remains free to use. However, contributions are encouraged if you’re looking to support the project and its continued development.

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The post Supersplat! Open-Source 3D Editor Adds Animated Gaussian Splats first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.