Release Notes

Updated: 30 Jun 2026

This page shows the release notes for the current release, from the major new feature to the tiniest bug fixes.

For a feature focused overview take a look at Everything in 2026.2.

2026.2 (Build 1.0.2.010) (30th June): #

Introduction #

• With 2026.1 cemented as a Gold release, 2026.2 builds directly on that foundation, opening 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. Alongside these advances there is a mountain of bug fixes from user bug reports and our internal testing.

Important #

• Our software signing certificate has recently changed. As a result, Windows may display additional security or confirmation prompts during installation. These prompts are expected, and you may need to click through them to complete the installation of Notch.

• Build Toolchain: Migrated from Visual Studio 2019 to Visual Studio 2022.
  • Updated the Platform Toolset from v142 to v143.
  • Updated the Windows SDK from version 10.0.14393.0 to 10.0.17763.0.
  • Added the latest Visual C++ Redistributables to the installer.
  • Updated applicable third-party dependencies to Visual Studio 2022 compatible versions.

New Resources #

• AI->ONNX Model: Import AI models using the Open Neural Network Exchange (.onnx) format. Learn more in the Working with AI Models guide.

New Nodes #

• 3D::Float Array To Points: Generates a set of points from a Float Array node.
• 3D::Gaussian Splats: Render imported .ply Gaussian Splat models.
• 3D::MOVIN Point Cloud: Creates a highly accurate, world-scale point cloud using data from the MOVIN TRACIN Motion Capture System.
• 3D::Multi-Null Interpolator: Define multiple Null points and interpolate between any pair of them, with global or per-path control over how each transition animates.
• Cloning::Effectors::Continuous Effector: Applies continuous translation, rotation, and scaling to every clone.
• Cloning::Effectors::Custom Shader Effector: Enables custom cloning effects using HLSL shaders.
• Colour::Colour Gradient: Generate and edit colour gradients using an arbitrary number of colour control points.
• Deformers::Vertex::Custom Shader Deformer: Enables custom vertex deformation using HLSL shaders.
• Interactive::Custom Parameters Node: Takes a Float Array and turns its values into your own named custom properties.
• Interactive::Array Sources::Cloner To Array: Creates an Array Source from a cloner system, letting you use cloner-driven looks interactively.
• Interactive::Float Arrays::CSV Float Array: Imports floating-point values from a CSV file into a Float Array.
• Interactive::Float Arrays::Float Array: Stores an array of floating-point values, which can be generated from OSC Float Array or CSV Float Array sources.
• Interactive::Float Arrays::OSC Float Array: Create a Float Array from incoming OSC messages.
• Interactive::Float Arrays::Parameter Array: Uses values from a Float Array to drive parameters on other nodes.
• Interactive::Float Arrays::Values To Float Array: Converts values generated by Modifier nodes into a Float Array.
• Particles::Affectors::Custom Shader Affector: Uses HLSL shaders to create custom particle affectors that influence particle behaviour and motion.
• Physics::Affectors::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.
• Post-FX::Colour::Normalise Colour: Remaps image colour values to a normalised 0–1 range.
• Post-FX::Image Processing::AI Model: Runs ONNX AI models for image processing and visual effects workflows. See here for more information.
• Post-FX::Image Processing::Change Image Format: Change an image’s channel count and bit depth - e.g. 16-bit to 8-bit, or RGBA to single-channel.
• Rendering::AOVs::Custom Object Mask AOV: Build a custom object mask from a set of objects and output it as an AOV from the Render panel.
• Text-FX::Float Array To Text: Converts the contents of a Float Array into text for use in a Text node.
• Video::Feature Tracking::AI Face Tracker: Performs face detection and facial landmark tracking using Google MediaPipe models.
• Video::Feature Tracking::AI Hand Tracker: Performs hand detection and hand landmark tracking using Google MediaPipe models.
• Video::Feature Tracking::YOLO Tracker: Real-time object detection and tracking using YOLO (“You Only Look Once”) models.

New Features #

• 2D::2D Root: Added Picture-in-Picture (PIP) preview in viewport mode.
• 3D Import:
  • Added support for importing Cinema4D scenes with frozen transforms.
  • Added support for importing additional streams of data from alembic particle cache files. For example: .colour, .Cd, .pscale, .orientation, rotation, .age, .size and .life.
• Cloning::Image Cloner: Added “Displacement Fill Mode” and “Displacement Fill Threshold” properties, which allows for duplicating clones for pixels with high displacement, based on a threshold.
• Deformers:
  • Physics::Cloth Deformer and Physics::Rope Deformer:
    • Added a “Anchor Mode” property as well as “Anchor Strength” and “Anchor Dampening” properties to control how the rope/cloth behaves at its anchor points.
    • Added “Stretch Mode” and “Max Stretch” properties, allowing finer control over maximum rope/cloth stretching in low-stiffness or high-pressure simulations.
    • Added “Reset” input pin to trigger a simulation reset.
    • Added a “Stretch To Weightmap Scale” property, enabling the node to generate a weightmap that represents the amount of stretch in the cloth or rope.
    • Added a “Simulation Speed” property.
  • Splines And Lines::Connect With Lines:
    • Added a “Curved” option to the “Line Mode” property.
    • Added “Source Weight” and “Dest Weight” properties to control how much of the source and destination normals are used for calculating the curve shape.
• Generators: Added a “Format” property that allows users to change the output image format and bit-depth.
• Interactive::Hot Zone: Added support for array nodes, allowing each array element to be treated as an individual hit transform.
• Javascript: Added the following node object functions:
  • 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 the start and end times of a node’s time segment in a single call.
• Particles:
  • Affectors::Force Affector: Added a “Node Motion” option to the “Mode” property drop-down to match the functionality of the Velocity Affector node.
  • Affectors::Image Affector: Added “Dampening”, “Force Mode”, “Direction” and “Wrap Mode” properties to massively improve control of the node.
  • Affectors::Mesh Attractor:
    • Added a “Node Velocity Amount” property that allows particles inside the mesh to follow the mesh’s movement.
    • Added a “Node Velocity Mode” property that controls how the node’s movement velocity affects particles. This setting is enabled when “Node Velocity Amount” is greater than zero.
  • Affectors::Points Affector:
    • Added a “Point Position Random Shape” property to control the random distribution shape.
    • Added a “Velocity Apply Mode” property, allowing control over whether the effect is applied as a force or as velocity.
    • Added a “Velocity Mode” property, which allows for the velocity to be either “Vortex” or “Attract” modes.
    • Added “Point Position Randomness” and “Point Selection Mode” properties to control how the points are used.
  • Affectors::Primitive Affector: Added a “Node Velocity Amount” property that controls how much the affector’s movement influences particle motion. Particles inside or near the surface are moved proportionally, with “Radius” defining a soft falloff range based on distance to the primitive surface.
  • Affectors::Shockwave Affector: Added a “Velocity Scale” property, which can be used to directly scale the impact of the affector.
  • Emitters::Image Emitter:
    • Added a “Particles Use Image Colour” property to toggle whether the images’s colour is used as the particle colour or not.
    • Added a “ID” option to the “Colour Selection Mode” property, which allows for particles to be tagged with the ID from the YOLO Tracker node.
• Physics:
  • Added support for geometry chunks, allowing each topologically connected chunk within a single geometry to be simulated as an independent rigid body.
  • Improved overall stability, memory usage and determinism of physics objects in Notch.
  • Improved performance and stability when handling fast-moving collider geometry.
  • Added support for using procedural falloffs with the Force Affector and Turbulence Affector nodes.
  • Physics Root:
    • Added a “Frame Rate Mode” property with “Free” and “Fixed” options. Fixed mode provides more deterministic simulation results by advancing the simulation at a consistent rate. To prevent GPU stalls, simulation catch-up is capped at 20 internal update iterations per frame.
    • Added a “Reset” input pin that triggers a simulation reset when the value exceeds 0.5, and can be triggered again once the value has been set below 0.5.
• Post-FX:
  • Colour::Tone Map: Added “Eye Adaption” and “Adaption Rate” properties to control auto-exposure behaviour. Defaults to off.
  • Warping::Bump Map Warp: Added support for texture wrap modes. See “Texture Wrap Mode U” and “Texture Wrap Mode V” properties.
• Property Editor: Added a new resource drop-down for all nodes that use imported resources.
• Timeline: Added a “Collapse All Compositions” option to the context menu, enabling users to collapse all compositions with a single click.
• Shader Resources: Added support for unembedding shader resources (.fx files) from the project file.

New Shortcuts #

• J: While in the nodegraph, cycles through all the exposed nodes, if any are present, without changing focus to the exposed node.
• All existing shortcuts.

Changes - UI #

• 3D Import:
  • The Alembic importer now supports point-only data and no longer rejects files that do not contain polygon data.
  • Updated the Alembic importer so correctly handle files with topologically animated meshes where UV sets were present but not animated. Static UV data is now used per polygon when animated UVs are unavailable.
• Exposed Property Panel: Improved performance when renaming property groups with large numbers of exposed properties.
• Nodegraph: Updated drag-and-drop behaviour so that hint nodes are displayed when resources are dragged from the Resource Browser into the nodegraph.
• Popup panels: Improved layout by removing unnecessary empty space in certain panels.
• Property Editor:
  • Removed the ability to reset the “Information” property group on the Root node, as this could inadvertently clear the project’s “Creators” field.
  • When a property is locked, the numeric input field is now disabled to match the slider state.
• Resource Browser:
  • Shader resources that fail to load due to compilation errors are now highlighted in red to make them easier to identify.
  • The “Reflect Resource Changes” option now uses a short delay to better handle applications that generate multiple change events for a single edit, reducing unnecessary reloads.

Changes - Nodes #

• 2D::Render To Texture: Updated to prevent a Render Layer or Render To Surfaces node from being connected as a child.
• Rendering:
  • Upgraded to Intel OIDN denoiser v2.5.0.
  • Upgraded to NVIDIA Aftermath v2025.5, which is used for GPU timeout detection.
• Cloning::Linear Cloner: Updated the default range of the “Rotation Heading/Pitch/Bank Min/Max” property sliders from 0-1 to 0-360.
• Deformers:
  • Physics::Cloth Deformer: Heavily optimised the self-collisions modes to improve peformance.
  • Splines And Lines::Connect With Lines: UV calculation has been updated to match the Spread Lines deformer, where U wraps around the line and V runs along its length.
• Generators::Curve Mask:: Updated to throttle the rate of network editing updates when editing the mask in the viewport.
• Lighting::Sky Light:
  • Improved flickering artifacts that occurred when adjusting the sun’s position.
  • Updated the default value for the “Sky Dome Radius” property from 25 to 2500.
• Nodes::Comment: Removed the ability to keyframe the “Colour” property.
• Nodes::Region: Removed the ability to keyframe the “Colour” property.
• Particles:
  • Affectors: Updated the “Falloff” property group so it is consistent across all particle affector nodes.
  • Affectors::Fluid MPM Affector: Updated so that the “Surface Tension” property takes particle weights into account.
  • Emitters::Image Emitter: The input texture is now converted to sRGB gamma space, as vertex colours are assumed to be in that space.
  • Rendering::Point Renderer: Particle velocity is no longer written to the motion GBuffer, resolving visual artifacts it could cause.
• Physics:
  • Rigid Body Procedural:
    • Improved friction handling within the node.
    • Improved compatibility with procedural generator nodes, such as Fractal Noise.
    • Affectors::Force Affector: Improved physics stability when the “Amount” property is set to high values.
• Post-FX:
  • Colour::Tone Map:
    • Fixed behaviour so it now works correctly when tiled rendering is enabled in Builder.
    • Fixed a bug so the node now works correctly when used on a video node.
  • Image Processing::Custom Shader Post Effect: Shader variable names that contain underscores are now displayed with spaces in the property editor.
  • Image Processing::Output GBuffer: Updated the “Depth - Camera Space (Normalised)” Channel mode to take the camera’s near clip plane into account.
  • Stylisation::Chroma Glitch: Updated so that the effect now works on the alpha channel of the input.
• Shading::Texture Sampler: Updated to colour space convert the input texture to the working colour space of the project.
• Video::Image Processing::Resize: Updated property ranges to clamp “Source X/Y”, “Source Width/Height”, and “Destination Width/Height” values between 0 and 16384 (16K).

Bug Fixes - UI #

• 3D Import:
  • Fixed a possible crash when loading some 3D files.
  • Fixed a bug affecting Alembic particle data where it was not correctly saved to the geometry cache, causing the data to be lost on reload.
• Nodegraph: Fixed a bug where connection lines were rendered incorrectly when dragging from a node’s expanded input list.
• Profiler: Fixed a bug where child profile entries in the hierarchy were applied on top of the parent giving wrong profiler results.
• Property Editor: Fixed an issue that could cause the colour gradient slider component on certain nodes to respond slowly when updating.
• Resource Browser: Fixed issues with the right-click “Find Resource In Compositions” option, which did not consistently work when the resource was used in embedded nodes.
• Project Merge: Fixed a crash that could occur when merging projects with the “Merge Equal Compositions” option enabled.

Bug Fixes - Nodes #

• 3D:
  • 3D Scene: Fixed a bug when embedding 3D Scene nodes within other nodes. See the embedded nodes workflow.
  • Combine Geometry:
    • Fixed a bug where incorrect materials could be used in the combined geometry.
    • Fixed a memory leak when processing dynamic geometry generated by a procedural system.
    • Fixed a memory leak that occurred when used with the Object To Lines node when the “Output Type” property was set to “Splines”.
  • Duplicate Geometry: Fixed a crash that could occur when toggling the “Retain Source Materials” option.
  • Text: Fixed a bug where merged projects containing Text nodes that use built-in fonts could fail to load correctly or, in some cases, crash.
• Deformers::Physics::Cloth Deformer: Fixed a bug that could cause the scene geometry to disappear.
• Deformers::Weights::Attribute Weightmap: Fixed a bug when used with the viewport Placement tool.
• Fields::Field 2D Root: Fixed a crash when connecting a Select Child Node node as a child.
• Generators::Daylight HDR: Fixed node property defaults.
• Interactive:
  • Hot Zone: Fixed a bug where the hot zone hit index was incorrect when using a Transform Array as an input source.
  • Custom Parameters Node: Fixed a bug where the node input connection line would not draw until the project was saved and reloaded.
• Lighting::Sky Light: Fixed a bug where the sky light did not render correctly on the first frame when used with the Standard Renderer node.
• Particles::Affectors::World Collision Affector: Fixed a bug where collision mesh normals could be incorrectly oriented.
• Physics::Affectors::Force Affector: Fixed a bug in “Vortex” mode where kinematic collisions could pass through dynamic rigid bodies when the simulation used a low number of steps.
• Post-FX::Generators::Composite Image: Fixed a bug where the “Active” property did not function correctly.
• Scripting::Javascript Node: Fixed several when resetting node properties back to default.
• Text-FX: Fixed several issues in multiple nodes, where undoing node-specific property changes would not correctly update the viewport.
• Embedded Nodes: Fixed several issues related to embedded nodes.

NotchBlockVerifier #

• Added a new +logfile command-line option. For a complete list of available command-line options, see here.
• Added support for displaying the time taken to load the block into the UI panel.

NotchRenderNodeCLI #

• Added a new -alpha command-line option. For a complete list of available command-line options, see here.

Renamed Nodes #

• 3D::Points From Clones -> 3D::Clones To Points