Blender 4.3 Update

[BrendanParmer]

• Development to start after Blender 4.3 beta, scheduled for October 2
• https://developer.blender.org/docs/release_notes/4.3/

Features

Compositor

• A White Point conversion mode was added to the Color Balance node, which works similarly to the White Balance view transform but also allows control over the target white point. (021bce8b48)
• A new global Save As Render option was added to the File Output node to be used if Use Node Format is enabled. (9c44349204)

Cycles

Volumes

• The Volume Scattering node now supports more phase functions in addition to Henyey-Greenstein - Rayleigh for atmospheric scattering, Fournier-Forand for underwater scattering, Draine for interstellar scattering and Mie for clouds and fog (PR#123532)

Geometry Nodes

• For Each Element zone (6e5e01e630)
• Grease Pencil Support
• Packed Bakes (3ccfa65245)
  • Out of scope
• Gizmos (24dc9a21b1)
• Warnings
  • Warning node (e8b81065bc)
  • Warning Propagation node attributes (1ee6a8fad5)
• Geometry Names (dc8e9678e1)
• New Utility Nodes
  • Hash Value node (294994e4b9)
  • Integer Math node (bf04513dec)
  • Matrix Determinant node (22d78c5a8e)

Python API & Text Editor

• Added a new rename function to the ID class to allow more complex ID renaming behavior. Directly assigning to the ID.name property is not affected (3e03576b09).
  • Worth investigating, maybe a better approach than the current method
  • Probably would be better, no sense in using it though if we still need a solution for Blender 3.0. Trying to keep compatibility for as long as possible, but maybe it makes sense to eventually deprecate Blender versions no longer supported even by the Institution
• Changing the data type of a reroute node is now done with reroute_node.socket_idname instead of modifying the socket directly. (c40dc9aa03)
  • Don't think NTP'll need any changes, just in case though

Rendering

• A new Metallic BSDF node has been added to the shader editor. (6ccb33e9fe)
• A new Gabor Noise texture node was added. (4f51033708)

User Interface

• Node groups can now have a default node width (e842966c5e).