--- title: "7.0.1" canonical: "https://documentation.chaos.com/space/ANIMA/993624068/7.0.1" format: markdown --- *Release Date: July 08 2026*   > Macro (ui-button) This targeted hotfix focuses heavily on refining your daily workflow, boosting overall stability, and optimizing core engine performance. Driven directly by feedback, several quality-of-life improvements have been introduced to make the software feel faster and more intuitive. Alongside the highly requested visual thumbnail view for asset lists, there is a massive speed boost when finding assets thanks to the new two-tier Spotlight search. Waypoint visibility and dynamic scaling are completely revamped to make path creation smoother than ever. Under the hood, the transition to the modernized Diligent renderpass system brings a cleaner codebase and noticeable improvements to viewport stability. Major plugin integrations across the board are tackled - flawless Redshift material rendering in Cinema 4D, corrected character rigging in Unreal Engine, and seamless, hassle-free initialization for 3ds Max headless render nodes. Coupled with a smarter installer, proactive project-saving safeguards, and instant floating license releases to free up your network resources, this update is designed to eliminate technical friction. Our goal is simple: let you focus entirely on bringing your architectural and cinematic environments to life. ## **New Features & Improvements** --- ### **User Interface & Experience** - New Thumbnail View: Added a highly requested visual thumbnail view for the Actor and Vehicle crowd lists, making asset browsing and selection significantly faster and more intuitive. ### **Core & Engine** - Renderpass System Overhaul: Successfully implemented the new, modernized Diligent renderpass system, accompanied by a comprehensive codebase clean-up to maximize overall stability and viewport performance. ### **Installer & Setup** - Robust Unreal Engine Installation: Upgraded the installer with a reliable fallback mechanism that successfully locates Unreal Engine directories, even in non-standard setups where standard Windows Registry checks fail. ## **Refinements and Fixes** --- ### **Paths and crowds** - Enhanced Waypoint UI & Visibility: Streamlined the workflow by ensuring Waypoints are always visible in the viewport and dynamically sized. Billboard and numerical indicators now appear cleanly upon selection, and waypoints automatically highlight when their parent Waypoint Flow is selected. - Waypoint Flow Centering: Waypoint Flows now automatically center to the bounding box of all associated waypoints, providing consistent, predictable behavior that matches standard paths. - Waypoint Scaling & Interaction: Optimized Waypoint scaling logic so the clickable area perfectly matches their visual screen size during path creation. - Automatic Path Creation (Raycasting): Enhanced path raycasting by effectively utilizing backface culling, preventing erratic point placement, and ensuring seamless operation in complex environments with ceilings. - Path Overlay: Refined UI responsiveness by ensuring the AI path overlay only activates when explicitly needed during mesh navigation updates, keeping the workspace uncluttered. - Waypoint Trajectories: Improved Waypoint trajectory calculations to ensure characters remain smoothly and firmly grounded across all complex path configurations. - Spotlight Search Optimization: Implemented a two-tier search system to significantly boost Spotlight responsiveness for both local and remote queries. ### **Asset Library & Environments** - Vehicle Crowds: Ensured that custom dropped vehicles are prioritized and correctly instanced when populating vehicle crowds. - FBX Re-importing: Streamlined the FBX re-import workflow so that updated external geometry is immediately reflected in the viewport, removing the need for application restarts. ### **User Interface & Experience** - Project Workflow: Improved project data management by proactively prompting users to save and name *Untitled* projects before adding new scenes, ensuring consistent data. - Drag-and-Drop Functionality: Expanded drag-and-drop capabilities, allowing users to intuitively assign Motion Categories directly into an Area's Properties panel. - Viewport Visuals: Corrected a visual regression with hemisphere drawing that occurred when selecting or creating a waypath, ensuring a polished viewport experience. - Fixed minor UI issues:  including text clipping off-screen in long message boxes and broken scene tab states in Untitled projects. - Fixed Drop panel asset search: Resolved an issue where the search and filtering engine was disconnected from the Drop panel. ### **Core, Engine & Installer** - Auto-Update: Fixed an issue where the internal update process would fail in Anima 7. - License Management: Optimized licensing communication to instantly release floating network licenses when Anima Designer closes, freeing up AXYZ servers even if a plugin application is still running in the background. - Installer: Resolved an issue in which legacy versions (such as "Chaos Anima 6") persisted in the Windows "Add or Remove Programs" panel after a successful upgrade to Anima 7. - Installer: Fixed a bug in the Installer where pressing the "Back" button on the Licensing dialog would incorrectly skip the necessary system AutoNext checks. - Clean Uninstalls: Improved the installation process to ensure legacy entries (such as "Chaos Anima 6") are cleanly and automatically removed from the Windows "Add or Remove Programs" panel when upgrading to version 7. - Rendering & Shaders: Enhanced visual fidelity by sorting transparent render pass order when ghost models are present on screen. ### **Plugins** - Cinema 4D Integration: Updated core includes to support newer versions of Cinema 4D and optimized the UI layout by relocating the baking scene panel to improve the user experience. Additionally, improved stability and viewport visibility when using Anima Drop alongside background cloud downloads. - Redshift (C4D): Refined material handling to fix multiple issues, ensuring Redshift vehicle textures and materials render beautifully, accurately, and refresh correctly right out of the box. - Unreal Engine: Strengthened the import process for rigged characters to guarantee flawless mesh deformations and behaviors upon import. Additionally, suppressed unnecessary RHI console warnings in Unreal Engine 5.8 for a much cleaner output log. - 3ds Max: Enhanced plugin robustness to ensure seamless initialization on headless render nodes (e.g., Deadline workers), entirely removing the need for a prior manual UI session. - Corona Renderer (3ds Max): Perfected Motion Blur synchronization for vehicles, ensuring all parts align accurately and predictably during rendering.