Packages, SuperCollider music, and better 3D previews

This release adds a Packages window for finding, adding and configuring tools, brings a Music package for composing and exporting game audio, and improves 3D previews, per-session tools and sign-in.

Featured

A Packages window for the app

The desktop app now has a Packages window for finding, adding, removing and configuring packages. Packages can add commands and menus, new panels, their own editors for particular file types and tutorials, and their settings can apply to your user, to a project, or to this machine's local settings for that project, with a switch for automatic updates on each package. Blender and SuperCollider now arrive as packages, so turning them on goes through the same controls as anything else, and if you want to build your own you can write a package with a manifest and some JavaScript and try it from a local folder. (#608)

Music with SuperCollider

A new Music package lets the agent make game music and sound with you: create a portable AudioSource project, write or edit SuperCollider scores, import WAV samples, render WAV audio, preview it in a session window, and export the audio files into a game project. Music is on by default for new sessions and can be switched off for a session from the Tools row. Onboarding in context offers an eight-second sample theme or lets you describe your own idea, and what the package needs to run is set up the first time you actually use it. (#619)

3D previews show their textures

Models in 3D preview now resolve the textures they ship with, including FBX packs that keep their images in a nearby folder, so models that used to come up black show their materials. Lighting and shadows can be switched on and off and adjusted, and those settings carry over to other models, other preview windows and your next launch, with shadows on by default. An orientation gizmo makes it easier to see and set which way a model is facing. Some assets do not ship every texture they reference, so a map can still be missing. (#565)

Tools chosen per session, with short tutorials

Tools are now chosen per session: turn Blender on for the session where you need it, and every other session keeps its own choices, which are remembered between launches. Short tutorial tips appear in context, one at a time, and can be dismissed or skipped. This is the same Tools row that the package system uses, so what it offers follows the packages you have. (#564)

New

An animated sign-in screen

The sign-in screen now uses the same animated scene as the launch splash and covers the whole window, title bar included. Panels cross-fade and ease between states as you sign in, wait or hit an error, and completing sign-in plays the splash's exit while the app appears behind it. (#566)

Improved

The Tools row lists only what works

The Tools row now offers only the tools that actually do something today, so it no longer presents switches that lead nowhere. The choices behind those entries are kept, so if a tool becomes available later your setting is still there. (#567)

Narrower DevTools in development builds

In development builds the developer tools open docked at their minimum width instead of taking a large share of the window, and a width you drag them to is remembered for later windows in the same run. Packaged builds are unchanged. (#605)

Fixed

Sign-in overlays respond to clicks

On the sign-in screen, the update card, notification cards, tutorial tips and menus sat above a window area that swallowed clicks, so pressing them moved the window instead of doing what they said. They now take clicks normally, in every signed-out state and inside open dialogs, while the rest of the window still drags. (#589)

A tooltip never outlives its trigger

A hover tooltip could stay on screen after the thing it described disappeared, such as a notification you had just dismissed. Tooltips now disappear as soon as their trigger is gone, hidden, moved or otherwise out of play, and also on Escape, resize, scrolling away and window changes. (#596)

Unity projects are recognised at startup

A window opened on a Unity project could come up treating it as a plain folder, leaving out the engine badge, Open Editor and Install Package. Windows now read the project and its engine together, so the right engine information and actions are there from the moment the window appears. (#597)

Sending after signing out and back in

After signing out and signing back in, typing a message in an existing session could show your bubble and then nothing at all. Sends now reach the agent again, and when a message really cannot be delivered the app shows an error instead of staying silent. (#601)

A failed package build is not linked

When you develop a package from a local folder, a first build that failed could still be linked as though it were ready. The tool now checks the build result first and reports the failure instead of linking an incomplete package. (#617)

Windows installers build again

The Windows release build was failing in its installer step. It now uses short working paths and stops immediately when the installer step fails, so a resume can produce the Windows installers that were missing. (#620)

Under the hood

• ci(release): make release.yml resumable from main (resume mode at the release commit) (#568)
• chore(chain): vendor chain_feed.py v5 (Unity-Tests/6000.6.3f1 drop) (#569)
• ci: run GitHub-hosted Linux jobs on the self-hosted Linux runners (#611)
• chore: release v0.19.0 (#614)