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Changelog
Version history for Chisel.
3.0.0
The viewport renderer is rebuilt from the ground up. Per-frame tile building, primitive culling, and tape pruning now run as GPU compute passes; navigation and refinement are decoupled; and the per-chain limits double. Also new: F12 rendering, Mirror Object, an exact depth-curve primitive, and a big round of modifier and menu UX.
New
- F12 rendering — render the SDF scene through the active camera to the Render Result
- Mirror Object — mirror a shape across any other object, not just its own origin; moving the mirror object updates the result live
- Mirror across the active object — mirror all selected shapes across the active one in a single step
- Depth curves rebuilt — the Curve primitive hugs the drawn Bezier exactly: circles are exact, sharp corners stay sharp, concave spans stay smooth
- Pinned modifiers — pin a modifier to keep it at the bottom of the stack; new modifiers insert above the pins
- Boolean / Displace target picker — a native object search field for picking the target
Ctrl + DChisel duplicate — duplicates a shape together with its modifier graph (group cuts stay group cuts)- Apply Modifiers — convert to mesh and clean up the source shapes in one click
- Cycle hotkeys —
[/]cycle the primitive type,;/'cycle the modifier operation (Chisel tool only) - RMB context menu overhaul — Type picker, Swap Modifier, modal-adjust shortcuts, plus copy / duplicate / snap / parent / collection entries
- Pie menu dual buttons — click adds a primitive or modifier,
Shift+ click swaps it on everything selected - Show Bounds for non-rendered SDF helpers, plus a Bounds outline mode
- Render flag decoupled from viewport display — hide a shape from the render without hiding it in the viewport
- Debug preferences — diagnostics report, pipeline-cache tools, and a Verbose Logging toggle (console is quiet by default now)
- Tool tooltip shows the addon version and the full hotkey list
Performance
- GPU compute pipeline — tile binning, per-tile primitive masks, interval pruning, and tape compaction all happen on the GPU; the CPU no longer touches per-tile work
- Two-state render loop — navigation draws synchronously at adaptive resolution while the full-quality frame settles on a worker and lands when ready
- Dynamic Resolution — automatically scales navigation resolution to hold a target FPS (Performance panel)
- Per-chain limits doubled — 256 primitives and 512 instructions per chain
- Per-chain occupancy grids skip empty space (replaces the scene-wide grid)
- Clean-frame caching — camera-only frames reuse tiles, tapes, and materials; edits invalidate just the touched object or material instead of the whole scene
- Coalesced per-primitive GPU loads in the chain interpreter (~10% faster march)
- Front-to-back tile ordering and per-chain step budgets tiered by primitive count
- Apple Silicon — the new renderer runs natively on Metal
Fixed
- Convert cutting flat faces through chamfered booleans
- Convert clipping chamfer-smooth blends at the mesh boundary; converted normals now match the rendered surface
- Bake producing all-black maps for boolean objects; standalone bakes rendering the wrong output map
- Twist / Bend mismatch between the viewport and the converted mesh
- Boolean-seam noise and black glitches on multi-chain scenes, especially at a distance
- Curve clipping when rotated or far from the origin, blend gaps, navigation holes, and broken normals
- Crash on
Ctrl + Dduplicate (two separate causes, both fixed) - Crash on undo from a stale handler reference
- Veil no longer hides the objects you currently have selected
- The
Qpie menu only opens inside the Chisel tool;Alt + Qstill works everywhere - Convert to Mesh from the RMB menu now opens its options dialog
- Cone / Trapezoid proxy mesh not updating on cap changes or type switches
Compatibility
- Blender
4.5.7+and5.x— wheels for Python 3.11 and 3.13, on Windows, Linux, and macOS (Apple Silicon) - Existing 2.x scenes load unchanged
- Depth curves pick up the rebuilt SDF automatically — shapes now follow the drawn curve exactly, so loosely-drawn curves may fill out slightly at the corners
- Addon / wheel mismatch is now detected by a build-hash handshake — a stale wheel shows a “rebuild wheels” notice instead of failing silently
1.2.0
New
- Array modifier — repeat shapes along an offset, with smooth blending between copies
- Circle Array modifier — repeat radially around X / Y / Z
- Curve Tube primitive — 3D Bezier sweep with per-point radius (
Alt + S) - Curve Revolve primitive — sweep a 2D profile around an axis
- N-sided prism (3, 5, 6, 8) with independent bevel and cap rounding
- Trapezoid with independent bevel and cap rounding
- Five rounding / blending profiles — Round, Sharp, Soft, Tight, Chamfer
- Mirror Smooth modal in the pie menu
- SDF custom normals option in the convert-to-mesh operator
- Auto-expand bounding box — replaces the old manual-padding setting
- Built-in matcaps with color tint
- Custom primitive icons in the pie and add menus
- Modifier panel toolbar — add, remove, and reorder modifiers without leaving the panel
- Viewport render resolution setting
- Progressive settled rendering — sharper frames once the viewport stops moving
- Blender 4.5 / EEVEE Next compatibility
Performance
- Faster camera orbit and panning
- Smoother viewport rotation across dense scenes
- Static-frame matrix caching to avoid redundant work
Fixed
- Clean operator works on any SDF object, not just parented children
- Curve boolean rendering and cache refreshes correctly
- Curve Revolve profile no longer creates negative-radius artifacts when crossing the axis
- Bake no longer produces black images on certain GPU drivers
- Pie menu modifier rows no longer overlap
- Prism bevel and cap match between viewport and mesh converter
- Prism chamfer blends and ray-march overshoot corrections
- First-frame rotation stutter and undo-related crashes
- Zero-rounding shapes render cleanly; cylinder rim normals are smooth
- Torus rebuilds correctly after editing minor radius
- Adaptive mesh refinement no longer leaves holes
- Flat shading after hide/unhide / undo is gone
- Broken chains are skipped instead of flat-shaded
- Gamma correction in the bake system is version-aware
- macOS / Metal compatibility
1.0.3
Fixed
- macOS / Metal backend compatibility
1.0.2
Fixed
- Orthographic rendering — hit condition, depth mapping, and LOD
1.0.1
New
- Progressive shader initialization with UI status warnings
Fixed
- OpenGL compatibility for boolean chain rendering
1.0.0
- Initial release
- 9 SDF primitives: Sphere, Box, Cylinder, Cone, Torus, Capsule, Prism, Trapezoid, Curve
- Boolean operations: Difference, Union, Intersect with 3 blend profiles
- Solidify and Mirror modifiers
- Edge rounding with Sphere, Smooth, and Linear profiles
- Ray-marching render engine with matcap shading
- Adaptive quality and BVH acceleration
- Mesh conversion: Dual Contouring, Marching Cubes
- Map baking: Normal, Height, Mask
- Pie menu for quick access to all operations