Pending Major Changes in Blender 4.2/4.3

[chsh2]

In Blender 4.2 and 4.3, there are some major updates about Grease Pencil and the add-on system. They may require changes of this add-on, but I cannot finish them immediately. I will make some notes here about the required changes and the future plan.

Grease Pencil 3.0 (GPv3)

In Blender 4.3, the whole Grease Pencil module is rewritten. Since many Python APIs are changed, it is expected that NijiGPen will not work with GPv3 unless I make some updates. In the current 4.3 alpha build, most required Python APIs have not been available, so I cannot do these updates in advance. I think there might be a downtime of at least several weeks before the add-on is available for Blender 4.3 and GPv3.

Another concern is that I want to keep the add-on working for Blender 3.x while supporting 4.3. I am thinking about the best solution to provide compatibility across GPv2 and GPv3.

Extension vs. Add-on

Blender 4.2 changes the way of installing add-ons by introducing extensions. Although NijiGPen can still work as a legacy add-on, I am evaluating whether I should bundle it as an extension. The major advantage is enabling Python packages to be automatically installed, since many users have encountered problems when manually installing them.

However, I plan to work on it after solving the GPv3 problem above, to avoid the case where the extension quickly becomes invalid after release. And the compatibility issue should also be considered here.

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If there are more updates on these topics in the future, I may continue to post here. For those who have already tried GPv3 and the extension platform, it would be greatly appreciated if you could share your experiences.

[chsh2]

I think I have found a way to support GPv2 and GPv3 at the same time (#48). Now all the operators are able to work for Blender 4.3, and I am doing further tests.

As for the extension plan, I decided not to turn the whole add-on into an extension for now. I may start by separating some features as a standalone extension, e.g. brush import.