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NeotkoCM 2.33 - SnapMaker 2.3.5nighty

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@github-actions github-actions released this 02 Jul 12:29
v2.33
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Proud to announce that @Snapmaker is officially sponsoring this project!!

Development is conducted in close collaboration with the Snapmaker ecosystem and with Radoux/Radu, author of FullSpectrum and now part of the Snapmaker team.
By Neotko — inventor of Ironing/Neosanding (Ultimaker Cura, PrusaSlicer)

Neotko FullSpectrum 2.3.3 (beta) — on Snapmaker Orca 2.3.4 — Release Notes

⚠️ This is a beta. Several pieces below are usable but still being refined — review your generated G-code before long or production prints. Surfaces that are still in progress show a (WIP) marker in the UI.

2.3.3 is an incremental release on top of 2.3.2 (see NEOTKOCM_RELEASE_2_32.md, NEOTKOCM_RELEASE_2_31.md and NEOTKOCM_RELEASE_2_3.md for the full feature set and the upstream Snapmaker Orca patch notes, which carry over unchanged). 2.3.3 lands three substantial pieces: Bottom Surface (paint/sandwich control on the underside of a print, plus the wipe-tower correctness work needed to make it safe), a new MixedFilament Object mode in the Sandwich Painter, and an early RealColor View in the G-code Viewer (physically-based color mixing preview). Everything remains opt-in: at defaults the build behaves like stock Snapmaker Orca 2.3.4.

What's new in 2.3.3

Bottom Surface — paint and sandwich the underside of your print (new)

You can now target the bottom-facing surfaces of an object with the same painting/sandwich machinery previously available only for the top: ColorStitch, PathBlend and solid Sandwich passes, plus a dedicated "Bottom" zone in the Sandwich Painter (Pro tray). Typical uses: coloring the first layer / underside face, controlling the face that lands on supports (a step toward NeoWeaving), and painting a distinct bonding layer between stacked objects.

Bottom surfaces are recognized by role, not by Z-height, and fall into three cases handled differently under the hood:

  • Bed-supported bottom (stBottom) — full density, layer-0 hardlock, fully paintable.
  • Bridge / overhang bottom (stBottomBridge) — bridge density/flow is normalized so paint reads correctly instead of printing under-extruded.
  • Stacked-object contact — painted as a distinct bonding zone (advanced use — e.g. dissimilar-material adhesion).

Restrictions specific to the Bottom zone (by design, for reliability): max 2 solid passes, max 1 ColorStitch pass, and PathBlend always runs in FULL mode (ramp + cap) when enabled.

Wipe-tower correctness work that shipped alongside Bottom Surface (all gated, byte-identical when Bottom Surface / the affected paths aren't in use):

  • Fixed a Z crash (extrusions dropping to negative Z, head into the bed) triggered by Bottom Surface's off-by-one plane lookup interacting with a wipe-tower Z re-alignment path.
  • Fixed bridge purge volume being silently hardcoded to zero on certain wipe-tower toolchange paths, causing under-purged, out-of-spec-looking transitions.
  • Root-caused and fixed a long-standing "phantom tower" bug inherited from the base fork (previously unresolved for a long time, only ever seen as an intermittent issue tied to supports): painted ColorStitch/MMU surfaces were projected using the wrong transform for assembled objects, so the paint silently failed to line up with the sliced surface, degrading to "unpainted" and causing the tower to plan an identity tool-change (no wall, no purge) instead of a real one. Verified by the user on a full assembled plate — walls and painted sandwich now generate correctly everywhere, including fully assembled arrangements.

Status: Bottom Surface is functional and closes out the wipe-tower correctness chapter that blocked it. Known remaining gap: the painter doesn't yet draw the pattern preview on bottom-facing surfaces in the 3D view (the slice itself is correct) — cosmetic only.

MixedFilament Object mode — auto-sandwich by transmission distance (new, beta)

A new object-level toggle in the Sandwich Painter: turning it on for an object replaces all of that object's top-surface and penultimate painting with an automatically computed sandwich (3 solid passes + a forced Perimeter Override) that approximates — via each filament's TD (transmission distance) — the color of the MixedFilament assigned as that object's extruder. In short: assign a MixedFilament to an object, flip the toggle, and the slicer builds the layered color-mixing recipe for you instead of hand-painting it.

The color math is TD-aware (parallel-blend model), not a naive RGB average, so the generated sandwich actually reads correctly once printed and light passes through the layers.

Status: beta, compiles clean, logic verified line-by-line against the engine — user-tested and confirmed "beta muy buena". Known polish items for a future release (not yet implemented): a pattern preview (not just color) for the generated sandwich, and moving the toggle out of the "Pro" panel to a top-level control given how significant it is.

RealColor View — physically-based color mixing in the G-code Viewer (new, early/experimental)

A new RealColor render mode in the G-code Viewer's color-mode combo, showing an approximation of how mixed/blended colors will actually look once printed, using depth peeling and a Beer-Lambert light-transmission model instead of flat per-extruder colors. Aimed squarely at ColorStitch / PathBlend / Sandwich users who want to preview color mixing before committing to a print.

This is the newest and least battle-tested feature in this release — implemented and then debugged live against real user screenshots, logs and G-code across several passes. Fixes along the way: the option was invisible on macOS (fixed — was silently falling back to a legacy GL profile that failed a version check); a zoom-dependent shimmer/noise artifact (fixed — the anti-aliasing bias needed to live in camera space, not screen space); thin ColorStitch/PathBlend detail being nearly invisible (fixed — added supersampling to the internal render passes); and medium-TD colors never fully converging to solid the way they should (fixed — corrected the convergence math). One more visual fix (PathBlend "ramp" not showing correct per-segment height) has been implemented and synced but is pending the user's visual confirmation after their next rebuild.

Status: early/experimental — functional and validated on real prints for most cases, but treat it as a preview aid, not a final-color guarantee, until further confirmed.

Example project — BIGTEST.3mf

A sample project BIGTEST.3mf ships at the root of this build. It is a worked example of using Passes to build gradients and of checking colour combinations:

  • The staircase printed with T3 is the one carrying the ColorStitch patterns — use it to see weave / stripe / gradient behaviour.
  • For the clearest colour mixing, load the filament with the lowest TD (transmission distance) into the tower so blended colours read through.
  • The staircases are deletable — remove some to test smaller gradients quickly.
  • Everything is editable via the Sandwich 3D / Paint editor — open the painter or the Sandwich editor to retune passes, angles and palettes.

To try the new 2.3.3 pieces: open the Bottom zone in the Sandwich Painter's Pro tray to paint the underside of a supported object; assign a MixedFilament to an object and flip its MixedFilament Object mode toggle to auto-generate a sandwich; and switch the G-code Viewer's color mode to RealColor to preview mixed-color output.

Beta Defaults & Notes

Unchanged from 2.3 / 2.3.1 / 2.3.2 (Sandwich wipe reserve 10 mm³, Sandwich purge compaction 1.7, NeoTower tower type Classic / Zigurat taper on, Penultimate top layers 0). Default changes only affect new profiles. Bottom Surface, MixedFilament Object mode and RealColor View are all opt-in and do not change existing profiles' output.

Work in progress / not yet in this build

  • Bottom Surface — pattern preview doesn't render on bottom-facing surfaces in the 3D painter view yet (slice output is correct).
  • RealColor View — PathBlend "ramp" per-segment height fix pending final visual confirmation on the user's next rebuild; TD cache invalidation when TD is changed without a re-slice not yet verified.
  • MixedFilament Object mode — pattern preview and top-level toggle placement not yet implemented.
  • Variable layer height is unlocked (under NeoTower + Libre Mode) but still flagged Experimental — prefer fixed layer height for production multi-tool Sandwich prints and review G-code.
  • Sandwich Painter weave preview is WIP — minor surface-selection microglitch and approximate stripe scale.
  • Neoweaving + Monotonic Interlayer Nesting are not yet ported to this base.
  • World-space import is functional at a basic level; importing as Assembled and splitting in Libre Mode is the recommended route.
  • NeotkoEdge is selectable as a wall source, but its extra tuning knobs (Wall Count Stability / Blend Distance) are not exposed yet.
  • Known pre-existing bug (not new in 2.3.3): tooltip colors are hard to read in day/light mode in both the Sandwich Editor and the Sandwich Painter gizmo — a partial fix exists but doesn't cover every tooltip.

Important Reminders (read before slicing a Sandwich)

  • Use Monotonic Line for the top surface pattern (Quality → Top surface pattern). ColorStitch only sequences correctly with Monotonic Line.
  • Enable Penultimate Top Layers to use penultimate effects (Strength → Top/bottom shells), unless you paint a penu recipe (auto-forced per object). Works with normal Ensure vertical shell thickness presets since 2.3.2 — Ensure all is no longer required.
  • PathBlend on the Penultimate zone is still disabled (gradient-direction bug on multi-stair penu surfaces). Top-zone PathBlend works normally.
  • Bottom Surface is restricted by design: max 2 solid passes, max 1 ColorStitch pass, PathBlend always FULL (ramp + cap) — this is intentional, not a limitation to work around.
  • TD values are per-machine, not per-print. Calibrate them so the predicted palette swatches — and the new RealColor View preview — match reality.
  • This is a beta — the ColorStitch Painter weave preview and RealColor View especially are WIP/experimental. Inspect G-code on important prints.

Backward Compatibility

  • ColorStitch remains a UI rename only — config keys, 3MF metadata and saved profiles are unchanged. Projects and presets from earlier Neotko builds (including 2.3, 2.3.1 and 2.3.2) load unchanged.
  • Bottom Surface, MixedFilament Object mode and RealColor View are all additive and gated: objects/profiles that don't use them slice and render exactly as before.
  • New options default to safe/off values and don't affect existing prints unless you opt in.

Neotko FullSpectrum 2.3.3 — on Snapmaker Orca 2.3.4 · ColorStitch / NeoTower / NeoArachne / Libre Mode / RealColor View
Features designed by Neotko · in collaboration with Snapmaker & Radoux (FullSpectrum)

Big thanks to:
SnapMaker
Leszek
Ratdoux / Radu
Sentientstardust
dennisw

Contributors

Snapmaker
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