EM 1.6 — In development
Active development line that follows the 1.5 LTS cut. No stable release yet — features, APIs and branch URLs may still move before the 1.6 cut. Track day-to-day status on the EM dev tracker. New projects should still start from EM 1.5 LTS.
Compatibility
- Blender
- 5.1+ · tested on 5.1
What this pin means (ABI · Mac Intel · LTS plan)
EM 1.6 is the active development line on the Blender 5.x series and builds against Blender 5.1. It will pin to the Blender 5.x Long-Term Support release once it is validated against it; see blender.org/download/lts. Mac Intel (pre-2020) users should stay on EM 1.5 LTS: there is no Blender 5.x build for Intel Macs.
Core language — EM 1.6
formal languageThe formal language is the heart of the release. Everything else in the framework — tools, exports, web platforms — exists to author, manage and publish what is described below.
- (Planned) Multi-source assembly pipeline — split out from the 1.5 GraphML Writer & Updater work (DP-48), targeting richer source-driven graph composition.
- (Planned) Boolean + LOD surface strategies on Representation Models — extension of the 1.5 Surface Areale System (DP-50).
- (Planned) Image Viewing System & US image resources — deferred from 1.5 DP-45.
- (Planned) Richer georeferencing — full reprojection capabilities, building on the passive GeoPositionNode mirror introduced in 1.5.
- (Planned) Author / License / Embargo surfacing in EM Tools UIs — completing the DP-51 work that landed at the graph layer in 1.5.
- EMStudio — the standalone desktop editor becomes the recommended EM authoring surface from 1.6. Reads and writes the native
em.jsonformat end-to-end and imports legacy.graphmlgraphs into the native format, so projects started before 1.6 open in place.
Prerequisites
The Extended Matrix language is the heart of the project, but to author and publish a project on your computer you also need a few free, third-party tools alongside the EM-specific ones in the next section. Install them once and they apply to every EM project.
Components of EM 1.6
Sovereign desktop editor for Extended Matrix and successor to yEd from 1.6. Reads and writes em.json natively, imports existing .graphml, and organises work across six task-shaped workspaces. In active development, paired with EM 1.6.
Download EMStudio
Pick your system — the download is the installer for the current build, read from the GitHub release when this page was built.
macOS: the build is unsigned — the first launch needs a
right-click ▸ Open, or
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/EMStudio.app.
Every build, including older ones — release v1.6.0-dev.113 ↗ · all releases ↗
Recommended EM editor from 1.6 onwards. Standalone desktop editor, alpha, developed within the StratiGraph project. Reads and writes em.json natively across six workspaces (Documentation, Graph, DTC, Comparisons, Narrative, Annotator) and imports legacy .graphml graphs into the native format so projects started before 1.6 open in place. Cross-platform installers for macOS (Apple Silicon), Windows and Linux are published with every dev cut — pick yours from the card on the tool page; the version shown is read from the latest published release, not typed here.
Project-level XLSX template that registers every bibliographic and archival source behind an EM project. Document nodes in the graph cite it via stable D.NN ids. Stable since EM 1.3, valid for EM 1.4/1.5; a revised two-sheet schema is in preparation for EM 1.6 (DP-58).
sources_list v.1.3.2.xlsx
Original source registry template, expected to remain valid in 1.6.
Canonical project folder tree for any Extended Matrix project — the DosCO document collection, sub-folders for graphs, exports, sources, and the D.NN document naming convention. Pencil-and-paper foundation; unzip into the project root before authoring nodes.
EM_FolderTree_v1.5.zip
Canonical project folder tree — the DosCO document collection, sub-folders for graphs, exports, sources, and the D.NN naming convention. 1.6 currently reuses the 1.5 folder tree (zip lives on the 1.6 branch for path consistency; identical content). A 1.6-specific revision may ship later if the dev work surfaces new top-level folders.
Connect an Extended Matrix graph to 3D content inside Blender. Browse stratigraphic units, link proxies, drive visualisation by epoch and property, export to Heriverse and CSV.
Drop it twice. The 1st drag adds the Extended Matrix repository, the 2nd installs it. Already added the repository? Once is enough.
No build for that combination — use the fallback below.
Can't drag & drop?
Add the repository in Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Get Extensions ▸ Repositories ▸ ＋ ▸ Add Remote Repository, then install EM Tools from the list:
Currently in the Dev channel (stable build coming soon).
Manual / offline install, without auto-updates: the zip for your system is on the GitHub release ↗.
Active dev line.
Heritage Science Metaverse — the web-based publication endpoint of the framework. Opens any EM-aware scene in a browser with paradata pop-ups, epoch switching and collaborative VR.
No Heriverse release is paired with 1.6 yet; the exporter evolves alongside it. The runtime is in beta — request enrollment (see the /tools/heriverse/ page).
3D Survey Collection — photogrammetry workflow management, level-of-detail handling, metadata propagation. The upstream pipeline that produces high-quality 3D models for EM Tools to annotate.
No 1.6-paired 3DSC release yet — the 3DSC line continues to ship from the main repo. Install path (same as EM Tools): the Blender extension repo, drag-and-drop, auto-updating.
Companion to 3DSC that runs the photogrammetric processing inside Agisoft Metashape — chunk management, alignment, mesh generation, texture baking, ready for the LOD step in 3DSC for Blender.
No 3DSC for Metashape release is paired with 1.6 yet.
The computational core of the EM Framework. Reads, writes, validates and converts EM graphs (GraphML / JSON), enforces the data model, and powers every other tool in the framework.
pip install "s3dgraphy==1.6.0.dev101" Dev releases are published on PyPI as pre-releases. Install with pip install s3dgraphy==1.6.0.dev101 (the pin is required — pip's default resolver skips pre-releases). Use pip install --upgrade 's3dgraphy>=1.6.0.dev0,<1.6.1' to follow the devN → next → … track. To track HEAD instead, clone the branch and pip install -e ..
Installation
Step-by-step installation of Extended Matrix 1.6.
- 1.6 is a development line — no stable release yet. Steps below are for contributors and evaluators. For production work, use [EM 1.5 LTS](/versions/1-5/).
- Install Blender (see Compatibility above).
- Author the EM graph with EMStudio — the recommended editor from 1.6, writing native
em.jsonand importing legacy.graphmlgraphs into the native format. See the [EMStudio tool page](/tools/emstudio/) for the current dev build. - Drop the EM Folder Tree into the project root and register your sources in source_list.xlsx.
- Install EM-blender-tools 1.6.0-dev in Blender — the Install in Blender drag-and-drop card on this page (dev channel, auto-updating).
- (Optional) install the s3dgraphy dev line to script against the in-development datamodel outside Blender — the exact pin is in the s3dgraphy row of the components list above, which reads it from PyPI.
- (Optional) 3DSC and 3DSC for Metashape follow the 1.5 releases until a 1.6 pairing is published.
This page is the EM 1.6 development overview. Content here is provisional — features, dependencies, branch URLs and release timing may all change before the 1.6 release. For the most current development status, refer to dev.extendedmatrix.org.
For new projects: stay on EM 1.5 LTS. 1.6 is the active development line and is not yet recommended for production work.
→ Track day-to-day development progress on the Extended Matrix dev tracker — open projects, ongoing reviews, current branch state.
Authoring surface: EMStudio
From 1.6 onwards the recommended editor for authoring the Extended
Matrix is EMStudio — the standalone desktop
editor developed within the StratiGraph project. EMStudio is
EM-native: it reads and writes the new em.json format end-to-end
and imports legacy .graphml graphs into the native format so
projects started before 1.6 open in place. See the
EMStudio release announcement
for the full context.
Documentation (1.6 development docs)
The 1.6 documentation set mirrors the 1.5 structure on Read the Docs. Pages may be partial or unbuilt while the development line stabilises — fall back to the 1.5 LTS docs or the dev tracker when a section is missing.
- Extended Matrix language manual (1.6) — docs.extendedmatrix.org/en/1.6
- s3Dgraphy library (1.6) —
docs.extendedmatrix.org/projects/s3dgraphy/en/v1.6
(no dedicated 1.6 build yet;
latesttracks the in-development branch) - EM-blender-tools (1.6) —
docs.extendedmatrix.org/projects/EM-tools/en/1.6
(the project slug on Read the Docs is currently
EM-tools; if a separateem-blender-tools-docslug is published later it will be cross-linked from this page.)
Source repositories — development branches
There is no stable 1.6 release yet, but EM-blender-tools cuts dev
releases periodically (v1.6.0-dev.N tags). Each dev release is a
real download — pre-built .zip for Windows / macOS arm64 / macOS
Intel / Linux × Blender 5.0 and 5.1 ABIs — so you don’t have to clone
the branch to evaluate 1.6.
- EM-blender-tools 1.6.0-dev (latest dev release) —
Dev releases page (filtered, expanded)
(Blender add-on — install the most recent
v1.6.0-dev.N.zip for your platform) - EM-blender-tools (branch HEAD) —
EM-tools_v1.6.0_dev(only if you want to follow HEAD and build locally) - s3Dgraphy —
s3dgraphy_v1.6dev(Python library, in-development datamodel —pip install -e .from the branch) - EM-blender-tools-doc —
1.6(documentation source for the Blender add-on) - EMStudio —
main· dev tagsv1.6.0-dev.N(standalone desktop editor — recommended authoring surface from 1.6)
No stable releases yet. Dev releases (
v1.6.0-dev.N) are installable and useful for evaluation, but the API and file format may still change before the 1.6 cut. Use them to evaluate, test or contribute; do not use them for production reconstructions. For production work, stay on EM 1.5 LTS.
What’s coming in 1.6
EM 1.6 is the active development line that follows the 1.5 LTS cut. The featureset below is incremental and will stabilize as the 1.5 maintenance line continues. For day-to-day status — open development projects, ongoing reviews, current branch state — see the Extended Matrix development tracker.
Headline themes (provisional)
- Multi-source assembly pipeline (planned) — building on the GraphML Writer & Updater work that landed in 1.5 (DP-48), 1.6 aims to formalise multi-source graph composition end-to-end.
- Boolean + LOD surface strategies (planned) — extension of the 1.5 Surface Areale System (DP-50) with boolean and LOD-aware strategies on Representation Models.
- Image Viewing System & US image resources (planned) — the deferred half of DP-45 returns: in-tool image browsing for US resources, paired with the 1.5 XLSX merge wizard.
- Richer georeferencing (planned) — full reprojection
capabilities on top of the 1.5 passive
GeoPositionNodemirror, closing the loop with BlenderGIS and the 3D Survey Collection. - Author / License / Embargo UI surfacing (planned) — completes the DP-51 work that landed at the graph layer in 1.5 by exposing it in the EM Tools UIs.
The list above is a roadmap snapshot, not a commitment. Items may move between the 1.6 cut and a later release as the development tracker evolves.
When to use 1.6
Don’t, yet — for production work. Use 1.6 if you are a contributor or evaluator who wants to track the next iteration of EM and is comfortable working against unstable code, branch URLs that may move, and APIs that are still in flux. For everything else, EM 1.5 LTS is the current recommended line.
Blender pin
EM 1.6 builds against Blender 5.1. It will bind to the Blender Foundation Long-Term Support release of the 5.x series once it is validated against it; see blender.org/download/lts.
Citing 1.6
Canonical 1.6 reference: not yet published. 1.6 has no flag paper yet. Until a dedicated reference appears, citations follow the 1.5 line plus the cumulative-citation rule documented on the How to cite EM page.
Patch history
1.6 has not yet shipped. Patch history will appear here once a 1.6 preview / pre-release lands. Until then, the canonical source of truth for in-flight work is the development tracker.