1.4 alpha2

This is the second alpha release that (I hope) brings us a few steps closer to the final 1.4.

As always, thanks to everyone who support this project here on itch.io or on Patreon, contribute new features, nodes or bug fixes, or show the awesome materials they create.

While I have been busy mainly with bug fixes and updates to the shader generation and rendering code, all UI redesigns and improvements in this alpha have been contributed by Jowan-Spooner.

Note that this is an alpha release and that the stable release is still 1.3. Please don't hesitate to report problems or give feedback about this new alpha either in this devlog's comments or on Discord.

As a side note, Material Maker might have a new mascot, created by Tibo. I'm not sure yet how to use a mascot in this project, but I think it looks good and is obviously an expert at creating materials. If you have ideas about this mascot, please don't hesitate to share them in the comments.

General

• The Add Nodes popup has been improved (contributed by Jowan-Spooner)
• The 2D preview and References panels have been completely redesigned, and the context menu has been replaced with a few nice buttons and panels (contributed by Jowan-Spooner)

• Themes and theme support have been improved (contributed by Jowan-Spooner)
• Default layouts have been added for material authoring and painting modes (contributed by Jowan-Spooner)
• New splash screens images and shaders have been added (Crown Gambit, DroppedBeat)

Nodes

• The Roman Numerals node now supports values upto 3999 and has an align parameter
• The Comment node (that was broken in alpha 1) has been rewritten from scratch.
• The Gradient editor widget now has Reverse, Evenly Distribute and Simplify tools (contributed by Jowan-Spooner)

Bug Fixes

• Started fixing material exports (Godot and static materials for Unreal)
• Fixed user libraries problem (contributed by NotArme)
• Fixed splashscreen position with multiple screens (contributed by NotArme)
• Fixed problems in environment editor
• Fixed popup menu locations

Miscellaneous

• Material Maker is now based on Godot 4.4 dev7