In the Godot 4.3 release, five key features stand out, including:

1. Updated Visual Shader Editor for Easier Management of Large Shader Graphs
One of the key updates in Godot 4.3 is the revamped visual shader editor. It has been "rebuilt from the ground up" to enhance both visual appeal and usability, making it easier to "read" large and complex shader graphs. Nodes are now color-coded by category, and connection colors have been adjusted for better visual comfort. Clicking on a node now highlights it for improved visibility. The update also introduces two new node types to help organize graphs: a redirect node can be added to connections between existing node pairs to freely move connections, while a frame node visually groups related nodes together.

2. Pre-Alpha Blending for More Realistic Fire and Smoke Effects
Another change in shading is the introduction of a new pre-alpha blending mode for 3D materials. This feature allows for individual processing of shader output colors for each channel, enabling custom color light effects. Potential use cases include rendering particle effects such as fire, where the same particle can now use additional blending for flames and pre-alpha blending for smoke.

3. Simplified Skeletal Animation Retargeting
Animators gain new capabilities for simplifying the retargeting of animation sets in Godot 4.3, especially for animations imported in FBX format. Key improvements include the ability to import a rest pose as a reset animation, which makes it easier to revert a character's skeleton to the imported pose or a T-pose. Additionally, data can now be imported with just the skeleton, without the character mesh.

4. Copy and Paste Keyframes Between Track and Graph Editors
Animators have received a simple but highly valuable update to improve workflow: you can now "finally" select, copy, paste, and duplicate keyframes. The behavior of the standard animation track editor and AnimationBezierEditor has been unified, allowing keyframes to be copied and pasted from the track editor into the graph editor.

5. Built-in Support for FBX Files
Another significant workflow improvement in Godot 4.3 is the built-in support for FBX file formats. The new FBX importer allows for direct import of characters and animations in FBX format without needing an external FBX2glTF converter. FBX files are now supported across all platforms supported by Godot, and they can be accessed via scripts using the new FBXDocument API.

Godot 4.3 also includes several enhancements to the 2D toolset, such as a new universal parallax 2D node for creating parallax effects and support for frame interpolation in 2D physics. Game designers and programmers benefit from updates to navigation meshes, audio functions, the Godot editor, and scripting in both C# and GDScript. Rendering performance has been improved, with frame rates increasing by “5-15%” in standard 3D scenes and even more in scenes that heavily use GPU particles. The Direct3D 12 rendering driver is now included for Windows titles, eliminating the need for a custom Godot build to support Direct3D 12. The update also enhances XR hardware support, particularly for Meta headsets.

Godot 4.3 is available under the MIT license for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, as well as 64-bit Linux and macOS versions. The Godot editor is also available for browsers and Android.