Everything in Notch 2026.2

Updated: 30 Jun 2026

The complete guide to everything new in 2026.2

With 2026.1 cemented as a Gold release, 2026.2 builds directly on that foundation and opens Notch up to a whole new set of workflows. This release brings ONNX AI models, custom HLSL shader nodes, Gaussian Splats, a new Float Array / interactive data system, and substantial advances across physics, particles, deformers and cloning.

For a quick tour of the biggest changes, see the Release Highlights. This page is the complete list.

ONNX AI Models #

Notch has supported AI-based image processing for years — background removal, upscaling, tracking — but this was previously limited to a small set of NVIDIA models. With 2026.2 you can now run a wide range of third-party, state-of-the-art models directly inside Notch via the industry-standard ONNX (Open Neural Network Exchange) model format, imported as a new AI → ONNX Model resource.

These models enable advanced background removal, segmentation, depth and motion estimation, upscaling, feature tracking and more — often at real-time speeds. And if you’re feeling adventurous, you can train and use your own custom models. Models run directly inside Notch with zero additional latency and GPU-native performance in both Builder and Blocks.

The full workflow is covered in the new Working with AI Models guide.

The tracking nodes live in the new Feature Tracking section. The Image Emitter can now tag particles with the ID from the YOLO Tracker via a new option on its “Colour Selection Mode” property.

Custom Shaders #

The Nodegraph has always been Notch’s strength — a fast, iterative way to build complex scenes without writing a single line of code. But occasionally a bespoke behaviour is more easily achieved with code.

2026.2 introduces a new set of HLSL custom shader nodes so you can write your own effects that run straight on the GPU like everything else in the engine — fast, with no custom builds to compile and no need to quit Notch to do it. Just native shaders running in Notch and Notch Blocks.

The declaration of custom properties in shaders has also taken a big leap. Previously you could only declare floats, but now you can additionally declare colours, checkboxes and enum menus, with the ability to set min and max values for slider properties.

Shader resources also gained support for unembedding .fx files from the project, and the Resource Browser now highlights shader resources that fail to compile in red so they’re easier to spot.

Gaussian Splats #

Gaussian Splats have become an important new way of representing 3D objects and scenes without the constraints of polygons and textures, and are a great method of capturing real-world scenes — new AI models can even generate a splat object from a single image.

We’ve integrated splats directly into NURA as a new kind of primitive. Simply drop your .ply file into the Gaussian Splats node. Splats are represented as collections of oriented volumetric points, allowing highly detailed reconstruction from photogrammetry and neural-rendering workflows while remaining efficient for real-time rendering.

Because they’re a first-class primitive, splats can be rendered in any NURA renderer, ray traced, and deformed by the deformer nodes. They interact with the rest of the 3D scene, and in suitable renderers they can be lit, reflected, deformed, and cast shadows.

Manual MCP #

We know many users already reach for LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT to find answers to their Notch questions — and there are better ways to do it. Notch now offers a cloud-based Manual MCP connector, built on the open-source standard for connecting LLM applications to external systems.

Connect Claude, ChatGPT or whatever you use to the Manual MCP connector, to enhance access to knowledge on nodes & workflows, or provide help with custom shaders and scripting.

Interactive & Float Arrays #

A brand new Float Array system makes Notch far more data-driven. Float arrays let you build collections of float values that can be generated from CSV files, OSC messages & modifiers or piped in as an exposed parameter from a media server. Once the float array is generated it can be used to drive points, text, custom parameters, and parameters on any node.

Float arrays connect outward into geometry and text too:

There are new sources for creating Interactive Arrays.

Motion Capture #

The new MOVIN Point Cloud node takes a stream of data from the MOVIN motion-capture system and uses it to display a highly accurate, world-scale point cloud — a collection of points in 3D space with real-world coordinates.

This complements the MOVIN Mocap Skeleton support added in the previous release and can be used for debugging or creative outcomes.

Physics #

The rigid-body engine continues to mature with major new capability and stability work:

• Geometry chunks — each topologically connected chunk within a single geometry can now be simulated as an independent rigid body.
• Improved overall stability, memory usage and determinism, plus better performance and stability with fast-moving collider geometry.
• Procedural falloffs are now supported with the Force Affector and Turbulence Affector.

The new Transform Affector influences the position and rotation of physics objects using the transforms of a target — which can be a single object or a set of cloned objects.

The Physics Root gains a Frame Rate Mode property with “Free” and “Fixed” options (Fixed advances the simulation at a consistent rate for more deterministic results, capped at 20 internal iterations per frame to avoid GPU stalls), plus a Reset input pin. The Rigid Body Procedural has improved friction handling and better compatibility with procedural generators such as Fractal Noise, and the Force Affector is more stable at high “Amount” values.

Deformers #

The cloth and rope physics deformers receive a substantial set of new controls:

Cloth Deformer and Rope Deformer:

• Anchor Mode, Anchor Strength and Anchor Dampening properties to control how the rope/cloth behaves at its anchor points.
• Stretch Mode and Max Stretch for finer control over stretching in low-stiffness or high-pressure simulations.
• A Stretch To Weightmap Scale property, generating a weightmap representing the amount of stretch in the cloth or rope.
• A Simulation Speed property and a Reset input pin to trigger a simulation reset.
• The Cloth Deformer self-collision modes have been heavily optimised for performance.

The Connect With Lines deformer adds a Curved option to its “Line Mode”, plus Source Weight and Dest Weight properties controlling how much of the source and destination normals shape the curve. Its UV calculation now matches the Spread Lines deformer.

And, as noted above, the new Custom Shader Deformer lets you write your own vertex deformers in HLSL.

Particles #

Particle affectors gain a wide range of new controls, and the “Falloff” property group is now consistent across all affector nodes:

• Force Affector — added a “Node Motion” option to its “Mode” property, matching the Velocity Affector.
• Image Affector — new “Dampening”, “Force Mode”, “Direction” and “Wrap Mode” properties for much greater control.
• Mesh Attractor — new “Node Velocity Amount” and “Node Velocity Mode” properties so particles inside the mesh can follow its movement.
• Points Affector — new “Point Position Random Shape”, “Velocity Apply Mode”, “Velocity Mode” (Vortex / Attract), “Point Position Randomness” and “Point Selection Mode” properties.
• Primitive Affector — a “Node Velocity Amount” property with a soft “Radius” falloff based on distance to the primitive surface.
• Shockwave Affector — a “Velocity Scale” property to directly scale the affector’s impact.
• Custom Shader Affector — write your own affectors in HLSL (see above).

The Image Emitter adds a “Particles Use Image Colour” toggle and an “ID” option for “Colour Selection Mode”, which tags particles with the ID from the YOLO Tracker. The Fluid MPM Affector now takes particle weights into account for its “Surface Tension”.

Cloning #

The new Continuous Effector applies a time-based rotation, scale and translation to every clone — perfect for continuous, linear patterns of movement. The new Custom Shader Effector opens cloner systems up to HLSL (see above).

The Image Cloner adds “Displacement Fill Mode” and “Displacement Fill Threshold” properties, duplicating clones for pixels with high displacement based on a threshold. The Linear Cloner rotation Min/Max sliders now default to a 0–360 range.

3D Import & Geometry #

3D import received targeted improvements:

• Cinema 4D scenes with frozen transforms now import correctly.
• The Alembic importer reads additional data streams from particle caches — .colour, .Cd, .pscale, .orientation, rotation, .age, .size and .life.
• Alembic now supports point-only data and no longer rejects files without polygon data, and handles topologically animated meshes with static UV sets correctly.

Four new nodes have been added to the 3D section of the Nodegraph:

Colour & Post-FX #

Beyond the long requested Colour Gradient node, we’ve added some swiss army knife image processing nodes for better integration in wider pipelines.

Existing nodes also improved:

• Tone Map — new “Eye Adaption” and “Adaption Rate” properties for auto-exposure (off by default); also fixed for tiled rendering and when used on a video node.
• Bump Map Warp — added “Texture Wrap Mode U/V” properties.
• Chroma Glitch — now works on the alpha channel.
• Output GBuffer — “Depth – Camera Space (Normalised)” now accounts for the camera near-clip plane.
• Texture Sampler — now colour-space converts its input texture to the project working colour space.

The Generators gained a “Format” property for changing output image format and bit depth.

Rendering #

• Upgraded to the Intel OIDN denoiser v2.5.0.
• Upgraded to NVIDIA Aftermath v2025.5 for GPU timeout detection.
• The Sky Light has reduced flickering when adjusting the sun’s position, and its “Sky Dome Radius” now defaults to 2500.

JavaScript API #

New node-object functions for the JavaScript Node give scripted control over time segments:

• SetStartTime() — sets the start time of a node’s time segment.
• SetEndTime() — sets the end time of a node’s time segment.
• SetStartEndTime() — sets both start and end times in a single call.

User Interface #

• 2D Root — added Picture-in-Picture (PIP) preview in viewport mode.
• Timeline — a new “Collapse All Compositions” context-menu option.
• Property Editor — a new resource drop-down for every node that uses imported resources; locked properties now disable the numeric input field; renaming large property groups is faster.
• Nodegraph — hint nodes now appear when dragging resources from the Resource Browser into the graph.
• Resource Browser — shader resources that fail to compile are highlighted in red, and “Reflect Resource Changes” now debounces multiple change events to reduce unnecessary reloads.

New Shortcut #

See all keyboard shortcuts.

New Resource #

• AI → ONNX Model — import AI models using the Open Neural Network Exchange (.onnx) format. See Working with AI Models.

Renamed Nodes #

• 3D::Points From Clones → Clones To Points

Build & Installation #

The build toolchain has migrated from Visual Studio 2019 to Visual Studio 2022 (Platform Toolset v143, Windows SDK 10.0.17763.0), with the latest Visual C++ Redistributables added to the installer.

Our software signing certificate has recently changed, so Windows may display additional security prompts during installation. These are expected — click through them to complete the install.

For the full, fine-grained list of every change and bug fix, see the 2026.2 Release Notes.