NIFDiff 1.4.176

1.4.176

Fixes

• FaceGen hair that rendered completely invisible in some mods (a bad
  texture-alpha value baked into the file) now shows correctly by default -
  a new "Fix Hair Alpha" toggle lets you see the file's raw value instead
• Fixed a stale thumbnail highlight left behind in other panes after Sync
  Files moved a picked file into them
• Faster, more responsive startup and thumbnail loading, especially in
  large modded folders with many FaceGen files

NIFDiff 1.3.171

1.3.171

FaceGen

• Support for FaceGen face geometry (heads/eyes/mouth/hair) - previously
  unsupported, now compares and renders correctly

NIFDiff 1.2.168

Changelog

Versions are fixed MAJOR.MINOR.REVISION values maintained in
app/res/version.h.in. Every released binary maps back to the commit carrying
the matching v<version> tag. See RELEASING.md.

Entries are written for users, not for the git history: what changed in
the app, not which files moved.

1.2.168

Node & Bone Diff

• New overlay panel (L) comparing the full NiNode hierarchy across panes:
  translation/rotation/scale changes, added/removed/reparented nodes, and
  ambiguous-match detection
• Export the diff to CSV or JSON
• Havok bhkCompressedMeshShape chunk materials are compared and surfaced in
  the existing Material diff panel

Diff Table

• Transform diff columns are resizable by drag, with compact labels kept for
  narrow status/type columns

Images

• Panning is no longer clamped to the image bounds - pan freely regardless of
  zoom or rotation

Fixes

• The Texture Inspector now consistently owns every mouse event over its
  panel, including double-clicks, instead of some falling through to the
  viewport underneath

1.1.163

Textures

• Any pane can show a texture (.dds/.png/.tga/.bmp/...) in place of a
  NIF - the same pane, the same thumbnail strip, swapping content as you browse
• Smooth pointer zoom, rotation-aware clamped pan, 90°/180° rotation, fit to
  screen, and a switchable smooth/nearest sampling mode
• A live dimensions/format/zoom/rotation info bar, plus a full detail dialog
  (I) that adds mip level and source compression
• Browse a DDS's mip chain directly (Ctrl+[ / Ctrl+], or the context
  menu's Mip Level submenu), each level labelled with its resolution
• Checkerboard backdrop behind transparency, R/G/B/A channel isolation, and a
  per-pane Alpha Channel override (Auto / Transparency / Opaque) for the rare
  case the automatic policy gets it wrong
• Lossless alpha handling throughout - loose/uncompressed alpha is treated as
  transparency, block-compressed alpha as data, so a parallax normal map is
  no longer darkened by its own height channel
• Compressed DDS (BC1-BC7) uploads straight to the GPU in its native block
  format - 4K textures open effectively instantly, and a cache keyed on path
  and mip level makes revisiting one instant too
• A loading spinner and a "Failed to load image" state, so a bad file never
  leaves stale content on screen or pollutes Recent Files
• Screenshot (F12 / context menu) now captures an image pane's actual
  on-screen view, not just NIF panes
• Double-click a row in the Texture Inspector to open that material's
  resolved texture - loose or from inside an archive - directly in an image
  pane, reusing the texture already decoded for the 3D view

Resources

• Register Game Data folders for every supported game at once - Detect
  finds and registers Skyrim LE, Skyrim SE and Fallout 4 in one click,
  Set Active assigns a folder to whichever game the active pane's NIF
  belongs to
• Texture lookups are scoped to the NIF's own game, so two games' assets
  sharing a relative path can no longer cross-resolve to the wrong one
• A saved session's file living inside a BSA/BA2/archive now restores
  correctly on restart (previously only plain filesystem paths did)

Shell

• The thumbnail strip browses inside BSA/BA2/ZIP/7z/RAR archives now, not
  just folders - an archive appears as a navigable tile, its contents list
  like loose files, and picking one opens it straight out of the archive
• The window title now follows the active pane's file, not just the app name
• The thumbnail strip shows real decoded preview thumbnails for image files
  too, not just NIF 3D renders

Fixes

• A custom shader placed in a subfolder can #include "Common.hlsli" and
  its own nested includes correctly, instead of silently falling back to the
  built-in shader

1.0.116

First public release.

Compare

• 1-8 panes in an equal-width grid, added and removed at runtime
• Synced views / lighting / file selection across panes, each toggleable
• SYNCED / UNIQUE corner badges flag a pane whose file name is the odd one out
• Single-instance forwarding: opening a .nif whose name matches one already
  open lands in a new pane of the same window - so a mod manager's
  "open every conflicting file" fills one window with all of them
• Material diff panel (I): the selected sub-mesh's shader/texture-slot/
  material values tabled against the same-named mesh in every other pane,
  differences highlighted, loose-vs-BSA source markers included
• Texture inspector (T): per-slot format / size / mip count / resolved
  source with R/G/B/A channel isolation

Rendering

• Full Skyrim/SE vanilla lit path (specular, glow, env maps, model-space
  normals, multilayer parallax, tint masks, effect shaders, decals, alpha)
• Parallax (_p.dds) with parallax occlusion mapping and self-shadowing
• Complex material (ENB / Community Shaders _m.dds) with a probe that
  rejects flat/binary alphas rather than running POM on a fake height field
• True PBR (Community Shaders / PBRNifPatcher) with GGX/Cook-Torrance,
  displacement POM and procedural IBL ambient specular
• Per-path toggles (Parallax / Complex Mat / True PBR) and per-channel
  toggles (Diffuse / Vertex Colors / Specular / Emissive / Lighting)
• 4x MSAA, vertex normal/tangent overlays, wireframe, grid/axes

Navigation

• Orbit / pan / zoom-to-cursor plus Alt chords (Maya/Blender muscle memory)
• On-screen XYZ gizmo per pane; click a nub to animation-snap to that view
• Blender numpad views, orthographic mode, orbit-around-selection
• Close-up floors so pan/zoom never freeze up close; zoom dollies through
  the pivot into a model's interior

Animation

• NIF-embedded transform animations play back: Play/Pause, sequence
  dropdown, scrubbable Time slider, Loop, Speed 0.25-2x
• Sync Anim keeps every pane phase-locked on one clock
• Idle CPU stays at zero when nothing is playing

Resources

• Engine-order texture resolution: override folders -> the NIF's directory
  -> Game Data -> BSA/BA2, with Game Data auto-detection
• Unresolved diffuse renders magenta rather than passing as plain white
• Process-wide texture pooling; async parse/load/decode so panes appear
  immediately and models stream in during the archive scan

Shell

• Per-pane folder thumbnail strips with real 3D thumbnails, keyboard
  navigation and type-to-select
• Drag & drop (left 75% replaces, right 25% inserts a new pane)
• .nif file association, session persistence in
  %LOCALAPPDATA%\NIFDiff\NIFDiff.ini, window placement clamped to a
  monitor's work area
• Collapsible, responsive bottom control strip
• User-editable HLSL shaders with 1s hot reload, a content-hash bytecode
  cache, and shaders.ini binding rules for routing meshes to custom shaders