New: Adopt External Guides operator to drive (skin) hair animation with a set of externally specified guides
New: Weaver and WeaverPattern nodes to allow weaved hair effects like nets and baskets
New: Root generation in Guides from Mesh and Hair from Guides operators is now multi-threaded (about 2x faster in average)
New: Strands have unique unchanging ids through internal API
New: Changed Ground Strands node to use Attach/Detach attribute toggle instead of a Ground button
New: Baked Hair node has option to load an .abc file with dense Alembic hair (WIP)
New: Baked Hair node can import hair thickness directly (without need for Render Settings node)
New: Baked Hair viewport preview is generated from render hair using preview fraction parameter
New: Added a curve to Ground Strands node to control how much original strand positions are offset towards the distribution mesh
New: Added minimum and maximum bend angle values in surface comb
New: Moov physics node has "Capture Initial State" option (WIP)
New: Reduced memory usage immediately after evaluating render-time hair
New: Added "interpolate guides in object space" option to HFG
New: Polygons generated by Mesh From Strands can now be modified using Maya's mesh editing tools
New: Point count in Guides from Curves is now a slider
New: Choosing Alembic animation file in Strand Animation node has two buttons to select existing or a new file
Fixed: Incorrect hair distribution when using "Is Inside Object" in Generate Guide Data
Fixed: Clump node crash when adding and removing it from a guides shape
Fixed: Comb on Surface does not preserve state after scene reload
Fixed: Crash when creating HairFromMeshStrips and going to Attribute Editor
Fixed: Plant guide tool with strange behaviour
Fixed: Errors and crash when turning on HFG
Fixed: Cannot create groom when using "Even" distribution type
Fixed: Strand group patterns containing exclusions (^) don't work
Fixed: Some problems with "Push Away From Surface"
Fixed: Moov simulation fails in scenes with several MoovPhysicsNode nodes
Fixed: Maya crashes when deleting a hair object

Marsel Khadiyev (Software Developer, EPHERE Inc.)